Camden Town Boy

Devil's Tower, Newark

2008-11-09T22:12:00.001-05:00

Just like on the movie. Close Encou ters Of The Third Kind, someone in
Newark, NJ has been visited by alien life forms. Howeve, unlike the
sculpture of Devil's Tower Roy Neary builds in his living room out of
potting soil, this one is built out of the remains of the Westinghouse
factory that used to Occupy the space you can see right there. I'll
dig up some pics later to add to this post showing the building where
it used to stand. Until Then, enjoy this glorious image of a mountain
of debris that has stood now for almost two months, with no sign of
ever going away. Enjoy...

NYC Chocolate Show

2008-11-09T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well... Some piccies from the NYC Chocolate Show. We only stayed here
about an hour before discovering there was a much more exciting wine
and nibblies show called Taste. Om nom non nom!

Being a Brit in America

2008-02-12T17:32:00.000-05:00

Today's Terror Level is somewhere between Bert and Ernie. In NYC, we're still on a constant state of Bert. Can't wait until this War on Terror is won, so we can go back to Cookie Monster. I miss living in Cookie Monster's world. Back in Britain, I've just read that the Terror Alert level has dropped from A Bit Cross, to Irritated.

Okay, some things I've learned since moving to the US.

I've always been a bit of an accent chameleon. Though there was a weird time when my carefully-learned middle-class North London accent started slipping into a country-fied Norwich accent (not bath, not barth, but baaath, no idea why), and people from Norf London didn't believe I came from there. Anywho, I've been here for 10 years and still have a mostly British accent but I speak fluent American. Don't want to be accused of being a typical Brit refusing to learn the local language.

I've learned how to say tom-ay-to. I've learned that words with T's in the middle, like 'butter' or 'water', are pronouned with a D: 'budda', 'wadder'. I've learned that here in the North East, all non-alcoholic beverages to the exclusion of wadder are sodas. I've also learned that if you want to catch up with US popular culture of the 70's, 80's and 90's that you may have missed by not being here, you watch VH1, like 24/7. There's nothing worse than sitting in a bar while five guys talk about how great Jimmy Buffet is, and not having a frigging clue what they're on about. Now I know, see, and I realize that Jimmy Buffet makes me want to scrub my brain with a brillo pad.

Unusually, whenever I go back to the UK, my accent goes all Cockney, and I never spoke like that before. It's like I'm overcompensating in order not to get screwed over by cab drivers, but end up doing it all the time. It works both ways, actually. When travelling with my American wife, and we need to know how something new works, like the Oyster card, I can get her to ask about it. She'll get the most useful information, as she's a tourist, and has an accent. I'll get nothing, as I have an overblown mockney accent, and everyone presumes I know all there is to know about everything. Over here, when dealing with counter staff, or children, my accent tends to head closer to the US shore, simply because I don't need the hassle. In the end it's all about the hassle. I'm in a rush, I need someone to understand me instantly, I'll slip over to the appropriate accent.

More than anything, I miss British humour. We can get quite a lot of stuff on YouTube: Little Britain, The Fast Show, Spaced, stuff like that. And there's a lot of really crap shows like Are You Being Served? and Keeping Up Appearances, and whatnot. But most of all it's the stuff you forget about because you simply don't find it here. Like these letters from Viz magazine.

I just saw a van drive by with the company name 'Seafood Solutions'. I must admit, I didn't know seafood was a problem.
Martin Kristos

It is said that gentlemen prefer blondes. I hope then that lesbians prefer brunettes, otherwise we might have to organise some kind of
rota system.
Johnny Pring

I'm beginning to think there may be something in this climate change after all. Four months ago it was very cold and now it's quite warm.
Alan Heath

A woman whose daughter was hospitalised in a US tornado told ITV News that "God would make her better." presumably, that's a different God
from the one that almost killed her with a tornado.
M Lovejoy

"She can dish it out, but she cannot take it", I once heard someone say of me. And it's true - I'm a school dinner lady and I'm allergic
to mashed potatoes.
Mrs Pinches, Hereford

I heard on the news that the January storms had cost this country a billion pounds. What an utter waste of money. If anything, they did
more harm than good.
S Prodnipple, Scarborough

So Princes Harry and William are throwing a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their mother's death. I'm glad that they can
finally laugh about it, but throwing a party seems a bit harsh.
D Antarctica, Rhyll

I think Sir Paul McCartney should try to put his current predicament into perspective. In olden days, if you were unfortunate enough to be
robbed by an omniped, it would almost certainly be a pirate. At least he's going to come out of this alive.
Stella Matlock

What is it with diabetics? One minute they're on the floor with a loved one standing by screaming "Give him some chocolate! Give him
some chocolate!" The next day someone offers them a piece of chocolate and quick as a flash they say "No thanks, I'm diabetic." I wish they'd
get their story straight.
T Potter

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a bored housewife looking for some action. Eager to please the young lady I sent her my ironing. That
should keep her quiet for a while.
Warren

THIS new police knife amnesty is a bloody nightmare. I dutifully handed all my knives in and now I've got nothing to eat my dinner
with.
Richard Karslake, Oxfordshire

TO THE zookeeper in 1978 who replied "I'll tell you when you're older" when I asked him why one of the monkeys stuck its tongue up another
one's arse: I'm 36 now and still waiting for that explanation.
Joe McKeown

I HAVE just returned from a diplomatic trip to the Congo and I can testify that at no point did I see anyone drinking Um Bongo.
Neil Palmer

I'M A terrorist, and when ID cards come into force I will probably employ great cunning and not declare that as my job. I'll probably say
I'm a grocer or something.
A Terrorist

WHY DON'T NHS bosses start hiring obsessive compulsives as nurses? Their attention to hygiene and constant hand washing would see an end
to MRSA outbreaks in no time.
Stu Bray

'Alton Towers - Where the magic never ends', or so the commercial says. Imagine my disappointment when it closed at 7.30.
Colum Hill

'Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak', sang Thin Lizzy in 1976, 'somewhere in this town'. Well, I'm guessing it's going to be at the prison.

There are many times when Americans like to lord it over us Brits. They like to remind us that we'd be speaking German if it wasn't for them. They like to tell us having a President is better than having a Queen. That being a citizen is better than being a subject. And going to the dentist is better than not going to the dentist. Stuff like that. My brother-in-law used to make fun of our TV. "You've only got, what, like, three channels?" I'd remind him it's five, and that he only has seven. The rest are cable channels, and we have hundreds of those. I also remind him that we had satellite TV about 10 years before the US really did, and we're going digital first, and my Mum had a cellphone before his Mom... But then I realise I'm heading towards what can only be described as a Pointless War of National Pride, and I try to save my PWoNP's for the French. Especially after seeing Henry V.

I usually don't hear anything from anyone, really, until July 4th. Every year, my father-in-law and his friends will hold beers aloft and yell, "Down with British Tyranny!", then jocularly elbow me in the rib. I'm pretty used to it now, after almost 10 years, but if anyone does say anything else, I usually say, "The US is like a petulant first girlfriend. Sure, she says she dumped me, but really I was just looking for an excuse to dump her. So she goes away and does her own thing and I don't think much of her for a while, 'cause I have, like, about 50 different girlfriends all on the go at once. Then they all start finding out about each other and I'm getting dumped right, left and center, and sure enough, there she is, strutting about, being all high and mighty and saying 'I told you so' and whatnot, and acting like she's better than me and all the other girlfriends. And I'm like, nuh-uh! And she's like, for sure! Then one day I get the shite kicked out of me, and next thing I know, she's nuking Japan and that, and I'm like... WOAH! Can't we just be friends? So we've been kinda dating on and off since then."

Like I said, it's all about the hassle.

I've been holding off on posting this entry for way too long. Time to send it off. In parting, I'd like to leave you with yet another Doctor Phil McGraw quote. Dr. Phil reminds me of The Sphinx from the vastly underrated Mystery Men. I used to think he was straight-talking, and deep. Then he got his own show, and now I've realised he's just plain dumb.

Dr. Phil says: Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.

Too true, Dr. Phil. Too true.

Discussing The Downfall Of Radio

2008-01-05T09:15:00.000-05:00

TuneLab Music - Everything That Rocks » Discussing The Downfall Of Radio

This is a pretty interesting article here discussing how modern rock radio, and by extension, all niche-market radio in the US, is failing its audience by playing mostly tracks by artists that are five or more years old. "Did radio get stuck in the 90's?" the author asks. Well, yes and no. You'll find that it has less to do with the programming directors choice of music, and more to do with whether or not you can attract an audience that are old enough to buy beer.

From the Broadcast Law Blog article above: "While there are no laws specifically prohibiting the advertising of beer on radio stations with younger audiences, the Federal Trade Commission and Congress have been very concerned about all alcohol advertising, especially advertising that appears to encourage under-aged drinking. Thus, to avoid regulation, the Beer Institute has adopted voluntary standards that require its members to advertise only on radio stations which have an audience that is at least 70% comprised of those older than the legal drinking age."

Apparently that 70%, while it does not correlate perfectly with TuneLab's findings of roughly 50% of all modern rock radio tracks being over 5 years old, is still a big reason why we don't hear many newer acts on radio these days. Modern rock radio has shifted to a more adult-oriented format, because that's what brings the big alcohol sponsorship in. It's a big shame, as Jay points out, because in 5 years time, there will be less of todays music to pull from to attract the same audience, as less of todays music is getting airplay now. Eventually, I can imagine, there will simply be a station that plays nothing but Nirvana, Chili Peppers (post-Blood Sugar Sex Magic), Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam. We're pretty close to that already.

"If you want more, you have to require more from yourself." I have no idea what you're talking about, Dr. Phil.

Things I Never Realised as a Child

2007-11-21T11:43:00.000-05:00

When you're a kid, you just seem to take things as presented to you, without much in the way of judgement. Now, I really don't want to turn into a Daily Mail reader, constantly banging on about how things were better in my day, and that the world is being Elmo-fied from childhood up, but seriously... How can you not when you read stories like this?

Old School Sesame Street Not For Kids

"Nothing in the children's entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then - as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 - a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole."

The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters

"So many too choose from. The crows are very specifically depicted as poor and uneducated. They're constantly smoking; they wear pimptastic hats; and they're experts on all things "fly," so it's really a team effort contributing to the general minstrel-show feel to the whole number. You could pretty much pause this video at any second and use it as evidence in your hate-crime lawsuit against Disney."

Fire-Breathing Dragon Banned from Book

"In Who Wants A Dragon? - published by Orchard Books last year - Ms Gardiner says: "I was told, 'You can't have the dragon breathing fire because it goes against health and safety.'

"It doesn't really make any sense."

Deep breaths, CTB, deep breaths. Let me leave you, instead, with a moment of clarity from Doctor Phil.

Awareness without action is worthless.

Exactly, Herr Doktor. Exactly.

Free Speech, Religion, and a Headline I Thought I'd Never See

2007-10-03T13:14:00.001-04:00

One thing that constantly surprises me about the US is the addiction to religion. Growing up in Britain makes you the equivalent of agnostic in the US, even if you do believe in a higher power, and I often find myself outraged by the constant evangelizing and proselytizing all around me. In the morning, on TV, there will be as many channels running Christian programming as there will be running news and weather reports. The news itself is filled with stories of religious outrage or indignation about some minor event or another. In some areas of the country, one of the first questions when you meet a new person is "which church do you belong to?". When you grow up in a country where the stock answer to this question is "The Church of Pub", it takes a little getting used to.

Two stories in the news recently (this post got lost in the mail before I could post it) have highlighted the quandary I have between proselytizing and freedom of speech. In Indiana, a mother is complaining that a school board's introduction of a school uniform has infringed her daughter's right to wear t-shirts with a Christian message to school. In Colorado, a girl who inserted an unapproved message encouraging students to convert to Christianity in her commencement speech is suing her school board for threatening to withhold her diploma until she apologized to the entire school. I'm happy for these people for whom religion really means everything, but in a country that is supposedly 80% Christian, what do you have to prove? And who are you proving it to? Taking the first article here as an example, the school board has set a uniform for all the students to wear. It's a polo shirt and khakis. Really simple. You can buy 20 variations of that uniform from Old Navy for about $100. But she wants to wear a t-shirt. Okay.

"The school is basically saying I can't wear a shirt that talks about Jesus or Christ or God or any religious type of T-shirt because we have to wear a polo," Brittany said.

No. The school is basically saying you can't wear a t-shirt AT ALL. Suck it Brittany, you spoiled little cow. Wear your martyr-shirt after school, for Chrissakes, like EVERY OTHER KID HAS TO. Brandon can't wear his Slipknot t-shirt, LaDamon can't wear his $80 Sean John t-shirt and little Madison can't wear her Hello Kitty t-shirt, either, so suck it up and move on. Sure, it would be better if there was no uniform, that you could wear what you want. My high school didn't have a uniform. Lots of others around where I grew up did. You know what, the kids that go to those schools wear it, because they have to. They don't want to, but they do. In fact, it's such a normal thing, that it hardly ever even gets discussed. They're not banning Christmas, they're not out to stop you from spreading the word of the lord, they're not darksiders. Just go to school, show up to class and STFU, already, okay?

Ahem. Anyway. Yeah. Weird country, the US, filled with individuals with a massive sense of unbridled entitlement. But thene again, you probably already knew that, right?

Finally, the headline I never thought I'd see. Coogan Could Sue Courtney. I mean, seriously. Who the hell would connect the dots between Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson, Kurt Cobain's widow and Alan bloody Partridge?

$250,000 won't get you to Central Park West? Personally I use a $2 metrocard and the C train.

2007-10-03T12:35:00.001-04:00

This really appeared on the Women Seeking Men section of the Craigslist Personals in New York. The ad is a classic case of someone who has spent far too much time watching Sex and the City, and wants the Manolo Blahnicks without having to work for them. The response that follows, luckily, has restored my faith in humanity once more.

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy. I'm not from New York. I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think I'm overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won't get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms

- What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won't hurt my feelings

- Is there an age range I should be targeting (I'm 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I've seen really 'plain jane' boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I've seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What's the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I'm being up front about it. I wouldn't be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn't able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 432279810
THE ANSWER

Dear Pers-431649184:
I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your
bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring
my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity...in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't
be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty
hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold...hence the rub...marriage. It doesn't make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case
you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful" as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to
believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way. Classic "pump and dump." I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Special driver's licenses to be issued to sex offenders

2007-10-01T18:29:00.000-04:00

From Tampabays10.com.

Tallahassee, Florida - There's a new law to help protect your kids against sex offenders.

School safety is top priority for many parents. Some schools already have security systems like the "Raptor" which can do quick visitor background checks to identify sex offenders.

But there's a new and faster way authorities hope to keep your little ones safe.

"Starting August 1^st, anyone with a Florida driver's license or identification card will have a new designation on their driver's license or identification cards if they have been convicted as a sexual predator or offender," said Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Public Information Officer Ann Nucatola.

That new driver's license has a marking on the bottom right-hand corner with a special number identifying the law that particular sex offender violated.

Hmm... This is a little old now, but...

Okay here are some thoughts.

Once anyone is on that registry their life is over. You may as well shoot them as put them on that registry. If they're such a risk to society that they must be monitored like a good little Soviet for the rest of their life may as well be locked up for that time.

As a deterrant, it's useful, don't get me wrong. But not even murderers get the kind of treatment after they have served their time that sex offenders get. Those convicted in the Nuremburg trials didn't go on a registry after release (for those who were). What's worse, is that the range and breadth of that offense and subsequent monitoring is only ever going to grow.

Let's take this news story from a couple of months ago:

Family says I-4 rage led to mooning
SANFORD - A family driving west on Interstate 4 in a silver Mercedes-Benz on Sunday evening made the men in the black Chevrolet Tahoe mad.

The Mercedes had cut them off, the Tahoe's driver later told a Seminole County deputy, so front-seat passenger John Thomas Taylor dropped his pants and mooned the family, including their 14-year-old son, according to a Sheriff's Office report.

[...]

If convicted of the charge alleged by the Sheriff's Office, Taylor could face up to 15 years in prison and forever be identified as a sex offender.

So, if the first article is true, by the time the I-4 "mooner" goes to trial, if convicted, he will end up with a permanent mark on his driver's license for everyone to see. These days you need your license to travel, buy cigarettes and beer, pick up a prescription, heck here in New Park Slope you can barely use a dry cleaning service or return an unwanted gift to Ann Taylor without having to provide your license. Everyone's going have him labeled as a flasher. He won't be able to live near a school or a park with a playground, which in many places means he can't live in a town. If he has kids, he can't pick them up from school, or attend his children's graduation. And I'm using the term "his" interchangeably.

I was thinking about not posting this as I don't want to come off as defending sex offenders, as I'm not. There are a group of people out there that are vile and should go to jail, directly, without passing go or collecting diddley-squat. I just hate the registry, and wish there was some better way we could protect people rather than lumping anyone caught peeing behind a tree in the same bucket as child-molestors and having them tagged, filed and monitored like pound dogs for the rest of their lives. Kill them, lock them up until they die, or let them free, but this bizarre half-freedom we've given them doesn't help anyone, IMO.

Media Bias Survey Heavily Biased

2007-09-26T18:59:00.000-04:00

I just filled out the above survey by the company Polling Point. It was about whether opr not we perceive bias in US TV news.

After filling out the entire survey, I found they had a feedback form at the end. This is what I had to tell them, and I never leave feedback for surveys.

Your poll has pre-concluded that there should only be two parties in US politics, and only two forms of political opinion, which skews the data. There are no choices of any other political persuasion until the final political question, forcing the questionee to give either possibly conflicting data, or data that is flatly incorrect. Choice A/Choice/don't know, is not the same as Choice A/Choice B/None of the above (please specify). You may want to take a look at that.

Also, you have mislabeled CNN as a major network. It is a cable channel, a 24 hour news channel, which ABC/NBC/CBS is not. I'm assuming that the FOX option was for the FOX network, and not the Fox News Channel, which should not be listed as a major network, either. The FOX network, of course, doesn't have a national news program, which also skews your data.

Finally, your list of news anchors is skewed. Bill O'Reilly, as contemptible as he may be, is not a news anchor like Brian Williams. His show is an Op/Ed show, not a news broadcast. No anchors for Fox News Channel are given in comparison to Brian Williams. Likewise with Wolf Blitzer for CNN. I'm quite sure that your survey will exemplify network news over Fox News, and it's no surprise, as the survey itself is biased. I have signed up for weekly surveys, but will quickly unsubscribe if the underlying agenda of the surveys are quite so blatant as this one's is. And, for the record, I have no love at all for Fox News.

Those crazy guys! They biased their survey about media bias. One of the people they compared Brian Williams to was Jon Stewart. Of course we're all going to vote for Jon Stewart. Silly, silly, people...

Jesus and the Home Owner Association

2007-08-29T14:16:00.000-04:00

I remember when I was a kid being a little afraid of the dark. The house where I grew up in Primrose Hill had a walk-out basement leading to a yard and a small road and beyond that was a small housing estate. There was a streetlight right across the road and a night, when you went to the toilet, that light refracted off the back door window and seemed to follow you as you walked from left to right, right to left between the staircase and the bathroom. Scared the bejeezus outta me every time. Also, sometimes, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there been some clothes or something crumpled on a chair that looked like a weird monster. My mind would play all kinds of tricks on me when I was young, but I mostly grew out of it. Now, sometimes, I think I can see a bug or something out the corner of my eye crawling across the floor, but I look and there's nothing there. I'm usually a little drunk when that happens, though.

Now, however, at the ripe old age of 36, I don't really much that isn't there. Emily West of Lodi, California, on the other hand, claims to see Jesus in a knot-hole in her wooden fence. Apparently, it's there in the above photograph. Now granted my vision isn't exactly 20/20, and I've never been good at those Magic Eye things, but... Where the friggery is Jesus in that picture?

"I looked up and saw the face of Christ in the fence and I said, "Whoa," West said.

I look at that and say, "Buh?". Am I taking crazy pills? Is my imagination now so poor that not only do I not see the face of Christ, I don't see a face at all. There's absolutely nothing there to be read into. She's a survivor of breast cancer and great for her for making it through that. But West sees this as a sign that "things will be okay from now on". I'd rather get a opinion from a doctor on that than from a stake of gnarled wood rammed into the ground.

Meanwhile a little further north in Belmont, California, Estrella Benavides is getting a little more than cryptic whorls of wood as a sign of God's existence: actual messages from God. In her head. But they can't stay there, oh no. They must be displayed to the world across the exterior walls of her house and all over her car. Unfortunately, God doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense these days.

Now because of these messages on her house, she's being sued by the city she lives in, after she refused to pay a $5,000 fine for violating the city's sign ordinance. Now I actually think it's a shame that she can't express herself this way. If it was a mural, I doubt she'd be under such a hefty scrutiny from the city, plus it's her property, and she really should be able to do whatever the hell she wants to do on it. But... no. I'm sure it would destract drivers or bring down neighbor's property prices or whatever, and so we need ordinances such as this so we can lock up the crazy people.

What we don't need is ordinances to lock up the sane people. Unfortunately, that sort of thing makes Home Owner Associations cream their pants. HOA's are strange organizations which lord over suburban communities, making rules about how tall your lawn has to be, whether or not you can have a fence in front of your house or if it has to be hidden behind it, or what time you're allowed to put your garbage cans out at night to be picked up in the morning. They're not totally evil, though, as they also do things like hire snow ploughs so you can get your car out in the morning after an overnight storm, etc. What I didn't realize is that many of them impose a rule that bans clotheslines. Seriously.

In an attempt to go green, Michelle Baker of Vermont has stopped using her tumble dryer and is now drying her clothes in her yard, and, with her husband has started a company that makes clotheslines, the Vermont Clothesline Company, selling clotheslines all across the country. Lucky for her, Vermont has introduced a bill that will "override clothesline bans", and a national movement being tagged the "Right to Dry" campaign is on the rise. This ABC News article has really opened my eyes to just how pathetic much of HOA-run USA has become:

"the overwhelming majority" of community associations regulate or ban them, says Frank Rathbun, vice president of communications for the Community Associations Institute in Virginia. Sixty million Americans belong to one of 300,000 homeowners' associations, according to the institute, a national organization of community association leaders and management firms.

The rules exist for aesthetics, residents' expectations, and property values, Rathbun says: Environmental leanings have to be balanced against the desires of those who find their neighbors' blue jeans, khakis, and the occasional flannel nightgown to be unseemly, unsightly or both.

How far up your own arse do you have to be even think of a statement like that? Oh, I forgot what country I was living in for a second. The laaaaaand of the freeeeeeeeee...

If you could be any animal...

2007-08-20T12:36:00.000-04:00

Yeah, well. I would.

Especially today.

I am evil and you will all hate me

2007-07-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

But this is too weird not to pass on. Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday.

This bizarre little video is starting to get a cult following on YouTube. Tay Zonday is the next Star Wars Kid. Like SWK, the most interesting part about an internet phenom is not the original video, but all the strange stuff that springs up based on it. For Chocolate Rain, it's cover versions, people video-blogging in an effort to explain what it means, parodying the song, remixing the song, putting an effect on it so the song sound like Darth Vader sang it... It's incredible the kind of effort people from all over the world put into coming up with some kind of answer or comeback to one thing that suddenly gains popularity in an internet filled with literally billions of similar things. So with no further ado, here's a brief selection of what's available on YouTube, making Tay Zonday a internet superstar. Bless you, Tay, for you are now made of win.

Here's an attempt to explain the song.

Here's a kid in his bedroom kinda grooving to the song.

Zak Broman conducts a fake interview with "Tay Zonday".

Someone made a rather dull video for the song based on footage of Family Guy.

Sick of it yet? How about this Darth Vader-ised version...

Another attempt to explain it goes awry.

Sister Maria de Lupus does a cover of the song.

Here's another video recorded from the PSP game Monster Hunter Freedom.

And finally...

The internet is an extraordinary thing.

Fighting the Unwinnable War

2007-07-17T14:00:00.001-04:00

I've heard it called the Long War and the War Against Terror, but there's always been this strange optimism that somehow we can win. We've been fighting it now for almost 6 full years, and now, according to this New York Times article, we'll be in it for at least another 3.

WASHINGTON, July 17 - The United States will face "a persistent and evolving terrorist threat" over the next three years, as Al Qaeda continues to plot attacks comparable in scale to those of Sept. 11, 2001, the nation's intelligence agencies said today.

Less than one year after the events of 9/11 led us to this position, I wrote this piece on a site that was actually about the band I was in at the time. I wrote it because it explained a little about the lyrics to an album I was working on back then. I'm not the kind to completely blow my own trumpet, I buy CDs of royalty-free lopps and samples for that sort of thing, but it seems I was quite prescient back then...

An Unwinnable War?
According to George W. Bush's inexorable State Of The Union address in January 2002: "When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning the war on terror." Oh, reeaaa-ha-eaallly...

And exactly how is the war against terror going to be won? Exactly when will the victims of terrorism be able to celebrate VT Day? Is the US plan to take complete control over the entire planet and subject all 5 billion of its people to a single police state, hammering down all the sticky-out nails of dissent or resistance? Well if Ashcroft had anything to with it...

The more you subjugate people, the more people will fight back. Simple as that. Communism couldn't survive, the Roman Empire couldn't survive, hell, even George Lucas knows what happens to Evil Empires. This is simply an unwinnable war, and what makes it worse is that people are allowing the US government to get away with all sorts of injustices because we are in a "war situation". Unfortunately, it seems most people here haven't realised that this war doesn't have an end.

The first rule of Consensual Fighting Club is...

2007-07-11T14:33:00.001-04:00

Don't talk about Consensual Fighting Club. The second rule is No Smoking.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/161625.html

Three men in jail over bomb at church

By MARTHA DELLER

Star-Telegram staff writer

STAR-TELEGRAM

Map: Arson investigation

Three Burleson men who belong to a "radical Christian activist group" were in the Johnson County Jail on Friday night after a church deacon caught two of them attempting to ignite an explosive device on Independence Day at a church under construction in north Burleson, authorities said Friday.

Dayton Lee Calaway, 19, and Michael Philip Plaisted Jr., 18, were arrested Wednesday night near the Victory Family Church after they got bogged down in mud as a fleet-footed deacon chased them from the church in the 400 block of Northwest John Jones Drive, police said.

Two other people drove away, the deacon told officers.

An explosive device in a glass container was found propped against the church door. The suspects apparently tried to detonate the device twice before being interrupted by the deacon, police and Burleson Fire Marshal Stacy Singleton said.

As authorities were investigating at the church, they were notified of a fire on undeveloped land behind a north Burleson residential subdivision. A nearby resident reported seeing a vehicle drive away.

On Thursday, Jered Michael Ragon, 18, voluntarily went to the police station for questioning after Calaway and Plaisted implicated him, police Detective T. Catron said. Police called a MedStar ambulance because Ragon's feet were burned, and a emergency medical crew treated him at the station.

Ragon had gotten gasoline on his feet as he tried to destroy evidence from the church fire in the field, and his feet were burned, Catron said.

Calaway, Plaisted and Ragon face charges of arson at a place of worship, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, Singleton said.

They remained in the Johnson County Jail in Cleburne on Friday night with bail set at $30,000 each. Ragon also faces a charge of tampering with evidence; bail was set at $5,000.

The glass container from the church and evidence found in the field have been sent to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lab for analysis, Singleton said. The ATF and the U.S. attorney's office are reviewing the case to determine whether federal charges will be filed, he said.

Search warrants served Thursday night and Friday morning at Ragon's and Plaisted's homes uncovered evidence that was also sent to the ATF lab, police said.

Cmdr. Chris Havens, the Police Department spokesman, said the suspects boasted about belonging to a leaderless group of 10 or 15 who share a belief that society has become too focused on self-improvement and self-gratification and has lost focus on the glorification of God.

"They admit to being Christian and being brought up Christian, but they believe there should be one denomination and one church, not multiple denominations," Havens said.

"They did not say they had a name for their group, other than they were a radical Christian activist group. That was the way they explained their group," he said.

The suspects said the group has three levels of involvement: Bible study, consensual fighting and destructive acts. Because one of their beliefs is free thought, however, participation in all three levels is not mandatory, they told police.

There's more at the site, but this is just brilliant. Of course, it will doubtless receive hardly any press outside the blogosphere, because despite being as crap at terrorism as the London and Glasgow Airport "bombers" of two weeks ago, they're all white Christians, and will therefore be presented as criminals rather than terrorists. What a fun place this country is turning into! I'm so glad I'm here to witness it.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Destroy 'Em

2007-07-05T14:41:00.001-04:00

Far be it from me to look at the Republican Party campaigners with a gleeful schadenfreude, but this story is pretty awesome. I'm no fan of the Republicans, and to be honest, I'm not much of a fan of the Democrats either. Neither seem to be untainted nor useful in a public servant sense, but the game going on behind the scenes in the race to the Whitehouse is becoming more worthy of ESPN than CNN, and it's more fun to get a little behind the no-hopers that have some semblance of personality than it is to follow the likes of Mitt Romney, who, besides once strapping his dog to the roof his car on a family outing back in the day, is pretty boring to listen to. "Double Guantanamo!" indeed. What a pussy.

It takes real balls to stand up and declare that one of the greatest evils in the US is the Internal Revenue Service, that income tax should abolished, and the US should withdraw from the United Nations. Republican Congressman Ron Paul has stated all those things, and continues to break away from the party line, calling for an immediate end to the Iraq occupation and re-instating a policy of non-intervention. I don't agree with everything he says, but I have to admire him. And it looks like many more are doing so each day, from Libertarians disillusioned with the crazies in their party, to Republicans dissilusioned with the crazies in their party to Democrats dis... Oh, you get the picture.

So here's Ron Paul, one of the Big 8 (R) candidates, and he discovers that he, for no given reason, has been excluded from a candidates' forum in Iowa last weekend. He cries a little bit, then decided to do something about it. If they won't let you in their rally, book the place next door and draw a bigger crowd than all the other 7 candidates put together. That's how a president is supposed to act.

Nose Ring, Big Butt Cures Scarlett Fever

2007-07-05T14:20:00.001-04:00

Get it!?!? Scarlett Fever! Come on you E! Online readers, it's genius, right?

Okay, well anyone who read my rant the other day about how entertainment news is fast overtaking actual real event news will be glad to know that according to Hollywoodtuna.com, because Scarlett Johansson has gotten herself a nose-ring and is wearing shorts that give her a butt, she'll never EVER win "Sexiest Woman Alive" again. Just so you know, ladeez, you're just a lack of nose-ring and a pair of ass-flattening pants away from taking the title right out of her sweaty little fingers.

[sigh]

Next!

Separated at Birth?

2007-07-05T13:00:00.001-04:00

Al Gore III

Little did I know that Al Gore III, Al Gore's son, who has just been arrested for being able to hit 100 mph in a Prius (oh and some drugs were involved) looks scarily like a fat Alan Tudyk.

Alan Tudyk

Okay. Maybe not that much...

For When We Don't Always Have Paris...

2007-07-02T17:27:00.000-04:00

What a shame this seems so staged.It's actually quite indicative of how bad news broadcasts are in America that even protests about how bad news broadcasts are in America are nothing more than self-referential, neo-post-modernist infotainment.

Here's a case in point: CBS Evening News anchor, Katie Couric.

Not only is she constantly under fire from TV critics, but also from her peers. Dan Rather said she is "dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage", and at $15m a year, I'm sure she cries every night into a pillow of money, since it is Rather's shoes that she now fills. But I fear that Desperate Dan has missed the point somewhat on what has happened to CBS Evening News. Firstly, it's on in the evening, at around 6.30pm. And let's face it, your average American worker simply doesn't work 9-5 anymore, with a nice 20 minute commute to arrive home in time to sit by the TV and watch it. Any of it.

Secondly, there's no news there. And the link in the first paragraph of this little diatribe shows that off for all it's worth. There's no news anywhere. Insider is not much more than an extention of the evening news, these days, and actually, if you include the follow up Entertainment Tonight program, which is basically the same thing but with a different presenter, it actually lasts longer. Sure, we get 1.5 hours of local news before that, but with generally only 5 local reporters, how many real stories are getting? And this is just CBS. NBC also has its Nightly News show which is then followed by Extra! and Access Hollywood. ABC has the ABC World News show, which is the biggest misnomer I've ever seen, as unless a bomb has gone off somewhere, you're lucky if the 'World' extends beyond Central America, and by Central America, I mean Kansas.

So why is US television news so bad these days, when all you have to do is see 'Good Night and Good Luck' to realize that it was, once, extremely good?

It's not money, but it is. Even back then in the age of the Burrows' and the Cronkites, news departments had to pander somewhat to sponsors. For every stone turned, there had to be one unturned. But back then news departments were expected to still provide news items, even if the content may be a little suspect, and the reason behind that is that those departments were expected to lose money. They were festering sink-holes of cash for a major network who were prepared to lose it for the sake of quality journalism. Not highly-paid anchors, but actual quality journalism. Now, however, we have shifted to news departments which are expected to make profits, in the same way that tabloid newspapers do, by sensationalizing real-world events, and by filling your screen with pointless stories of pretty starlets and things either shock you or make you go 'awww!'. Of course, none of this is revelation, but strangely it seems to be missed by the networks themselves,and this is why I mention Katie Couric by name.

Ever since Couric took over the hot-seat at CBS, the Evening News ratings have tanked, and this has been such a tale for national debate that it would cause otherwise respected journos such as Dan Rather to make the remarks he made. Overlooked slightly is that Brian Williams and NBC's Nightly News has ratings that are falling faster than those of CBS, but that CBS still remains last, with Charles Gibson's ABC World News coming out on top.

Even more overlooked than all of this is that ratings, when news is concerned, shouldn't actually be a factor. No news show should be deciding what constitutes a worthy news story based on whether it will put butts on seats, they should be reporting the news, period. You don't want to be showing the same stories at the same time as everyone else? Then stagger your broadcast, rather than having 3 major networks broadcast the evening news at exactly the same time, followed by 2 networks going to into exactly the same post-news programming. It seems there are two reasons why ratings are tanking for evening news: one, the lack of news; two, there's no one there to watch it. Replace your pointless entertainment shows with a news broadcast at 7.30pm instead of 6.30, and you may pick up a whole bunch of viewers, if there's still time before the country forgets what good news is and starts thinking that US Weekly is more important than USA Today.

TIVO and that

2007-06-21T15:00:00.001-04:00

I now own a TiVo unit, but I only have basic cable extreme. That means I get about 40 channels, but most of those are local programming (high school TV) or home shopping channels. One of the reasons why I got it is because we do get Discovery Health Channel, which shows lots of great trauma unit shows (real life, in the OR trauma unit shows) overnight, and I wanted to record those and watch them in the morning. Nothings more fun than sitting down to breakfast while someone's getting a 2x4 removed from their ribcage.

Problem is, there's a weird discrepancy between the cable channels I actually get, like on my TV, and the channels I'm supposed to get, which I'm suscribed to on my TiVo. I've no idea why, but I can't TiVo Discovery Health. I can TiVo CNBC, but we don't get that on my TV. We get USA on my TV, but not on my TiVo, etc. Very frustrating.

Of course now, what that means is I record a lot of stuff from PBS. Documentaries, Globe Trekker (I now officially have a crush on Justine Shapiro, and they need to get Cristina LaMonica on more, too), Doctor Who... You know, educational stuff. Luckily I do get TBS, which shows a lot of movies overnight, but I never time to watch them, unless I wake up in the middle of the night (like 3.30am, which I'm sonetimes wonet do these days for some reason). So I get to watch movies at 4am, like Deep Impact and, two days ago, Dark City. Deep Impact was mostly stupid, but man, I'd forgotten how cool Dark City was, and how its overriding themes were totally destroyed by the Matrix, which filmed in the same studio on some of the same sets right after DC wrapped. Any hoo, last night I managed to sleep the whole way through. Maybe tonight I'll setmy alarm for 4 so I can catch up on Doctor Who, and two episodes of original Battlestar Galactica I have saved.

I keep looking at upgrading to regular cable, but can never find a real guide to which channels I would get if I did. My cable provider lists pretty much all the channels, but I've no idea which ones are premium. Annoying. And the real question is, do I really want all those channels? Of course, the answer is no. One day, we'll get a proper service which allows us to pick and choose which channels we receive. I have no interest in the E! channel, or Cartoon Network, or the frigging Golf Channel, forchrissakes. Why can't I just get the broadcast channels, PBS and Sci-Fi? Oh, and Comedy Central, so I can keep up with the Daily Show and Colbert Report.

Meh.

Next subject please!

Today is the Summer Solstice. The longest day of the year. It's so weird that the sun sets here a full hour before it does back in Camden. Sure we can get some pretty stunning sunsets, especially where I live, as the orange light refracts off the smog trailing from New Jersey's industrial wasteland to the east, nature just don't make colours like that. But I miss the long, light evenings, sometimes, though I mostly miss enjoying those long light evenings in beer gardens. Well, I miss beer gardens.

Let's face it, I miss getting drunk and watching the sun go down. Is that so wrong?

On UK/US Patriotism and Symbology

2007-06-20T17:08:00.000-04:00

Another post originally made on BritishExpats.com. This was in response to an article on WashingtonPost.com about British Students in the USA and their impressions of patriotism and flying the Stars and Stripes in the USA. Many thought it was "very peculiar". I've had similar reactions myself, but after much thought came up with this conclusion on the subject.

Okay, this ended up a lot longer than I was expecting. If you don't feel like wading through the whole thing, here's the breakdown. Americans wave the Stars and Stripes as it is one of the only things that binds all Americans together. Brits don't need to wave a flag, as we have been acting as a family unit for the better part of 100 years. So here's the long version.

My take on the issue is this. Unlike Britain, America was founded much more on notions of individualism and personal freedom. In the early years of the Union, people were aligned with their individual home states rather than with America as a nation. The American Dream is to arrive poor and prosper on your own merit, leaving a legacy for your children. During the Civil War, the Federal government had gained much more control over the state governments, and afterwards there was a concerted effort by the Federalists to shift the allegiance of the people from their home states to the nation state of the USA.

In order to do that, you need symbology that people who are living as individual family units can look at and feel part of a greater group: Old Glory, the Bald Eagle, Uncle Sam, Chevy Silverados, etc. You may notice that the further you get from the big cities of the coasts (of course there are exceptions to this, as always) the more symbolic that patriotism becomes; the need to show a group identity becomes stronger due to a more insular local community, rather than the extended community of a larger city. So, the way I see it, Americans look at the Stars and Stripes with pride in the accomplishments of the nation they belong to and for the founding principles which it symbolises. Remember that the Pledge of Allegiance asks us to pledge first to the flag, then the nation itself. The flag has become the USA in the minds of many Americans.

<deep breath!>

In Britain, however, we are far more used to the idea of the British nation being a kind of family unit. Rather than leaving others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, we would prefer to help those of us in need as a nation. Most of us (excepting those who were born during Thatcher's reign) grew up in an era of nationalised industries, working for the nation as a whole, with a national health service, a free comprehensive school system, grants for those who were otherwise unable to afford to go to University, free school milk, etc. We knew what is was to be British, because we were part of the system, whether you believe that is right or wrong.

In Britain, it's the rapid descent of the empire which created these national programs, in some ways bringing the people closer together as a unit, and as we became more of an extended community, we found we didn't need to cling onto the cultural symbols of the nation as a whole, such as the Union Jack. We don't need to hang the flag outside the door to show our Britishness, because we are inherently living out our Britishness everyday. If this is the case, then it's feasible to say that only those who felt threatened by this new socialist(-ist) society, who believed that Britain was some kind of group of individuals rather than a collective family needed that kind of symbology. Not needing the flag to feel British anymore, we let the NF take it for themselves.

Now it's interesting that in recent years, as the social system is slowly being torn apart from within to a more Americanised value system, and more and more people are feeling threatened by immigration and fear of terrorism, AND Britain is becoming less of a family unit and more divided, with Scotland and Ireland gaining their own parliaments, and national independence parties gaining more and more seats and popularity, that NOW there are calls to 'take back the flag' as it were, to reclaim the symbol that many consider 'stolen', but was, in fact, let go as an unnecessary object.

Of course, I could just be talking out of my arse.

Upon the Death of Bernard Manning

2007-06-20T16:55:00.000-04:00

So you're going to see a whole bunch of posts from me today, seeing as I've figure a way around my work's blocking of blogger. Here's a post I made on BritishExpats.com on the subject of whether Bernard Manning was a racist.

Bernard Manning was a racist. Said so himself in an interview with, of all people, Mrs Merton.

MRS MERTON: "... some people say you're racist."
MANNING: "Yes. Yes, I am. Some people I like, some I don't like. These people think they're English because they're born here. That means if a dog's born in a stable, it's a horse."

He then got into an argument with Richard Wilson (Victor Meldrew) and said "Where were the Pakis at Dunkirk and Monte Cassino?"

Which would have been been fine were it not for the fact that the first troops into Monte Cassino were the guard of the Maharajah of Jaipur. In fact 2 Indian divisions fought at Monte Cassino. Moreover, 2.5 million Indians volunteered (not conscripted) to fight on the Allied side during WW2. It was the largest volunteer force raised by any nation for that war. They even won 30 Victoria crosses.

Personally I never cared for him, and I'm no bleeding heart liberal. Never found him funny, and I won't miss him. But here was a bloke, who served his national sevice and became an entertainer, I can't fault the guy for that. Different strokes, etc. I can't bear a person, however, who bases his views of large swathes of people on inaccurate information. We can tell all the racist jokes we want, and we can keep our prejudices all we want, as we do all have them, that's Psych 101. Just base your prejudices on facts, because comedy is much more funny when it's true.

I... I Want Him Buried...

2007-06-20T16:06:00.001-04:00

As soon as Judge Larry Seidlin started his overwraught, chest-thumping, alligator-weeping ruling over the burial-place of Anna Nicole Smith back in early 2007, everyone knew he was playing it for the cameras. This was the ultimate ending to the downward-spiraling circus of Smith's life; like a kid in a world of fairground carnies, she span around face up to the sun until finally she fell down, too dizzy to notice anything, and died. Not content to let her live her life in the spotlight, others flocked around her trying to get in there, from the family of the multi-millionaire she married, to the Judge called in to preside over the custody battle that ensued for months over her body. In the real world, Judge Seidlin would have had his name in the newspaper for the duration of the trial.

This, however, is the USA, and he wasn't dealing with a habeas corpus writ on A.N. Onymous, this was Anna Nicole, the Marilyn Monroe of our generation, meaning she didn't actually have to create anything or do anything of any major worth to become famous. And, in the same fashion, all Judge Seidlin had to do was throw a wobbly in front of the world's press in a Florida courtroom and he was known around the world. In Andy Warhol's world, he'd be famous for 15 minutes.

This, however, is the USA, and there's a kind of national lottery that people who have made it onto TV can win if they play the game properly, get the right agent, and hang on for the ride. Cable TV is filled with ex-cast members of MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, a Tv show about a tanning salon is quickly making the Olly Girls famous, Chris Daughtry somehow has a recording career despite NOT winning American Idol... And now we hear Judge Larry Seidlin has been picked up by CBS for his own Judge Seidlin show. Not content with having Judge Judyand Judge Joe Brown fouling up the daytime TV slots, the powers-that-be at CBS actually fell for the ANS performance and are ready to give him an afternnon time-slot, should his pilot show do well. He has already quit the court he worked in Florida, but his show won't debut until Fall 2008. 18 months is a long time in Entertainment News here in the USA, and sitting on that Fame Lottery ticket for so long may be his downfall. Remember Reuben Studdard?

No. Neither do I.

A test

2007-06-08T08:03:00.001-04:00

Erm... Is this thing on?

1.31.07 - Never Forget

2007-02-01T13:17:00.000-05:00

From Boston's News Times Live website comes this extraordinary tale of how 38 blinking LED boxes brought the city to a halt yesterday, and that the two guys who put them there, as part of a 10-city wide marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, have been arrested and are charged with "placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct". Of course, as none of this is intentional, we can only speculate as to what Boston's legal system considers a "hoax device". Up until today, I was figuring this over-reaction (none of the other cities - including New York - had complaints or 911 calls made about the boxes placed there) was yet another example of the terrorists winning. After all, if that's all it takes to shut a city down, real terrorists might as well just get jobs in marketing.

But then I saw this, and realized everything's gonna be okay.

These are the signs that were being held by protestors and supporters outside the courthouse where the two were being arraigned.

Sheer. Genius.

Fifth Annual War on Christmas

2006-12-21T12:57:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it seems like Americans walk around deliberately looking for stupid things to be offended by. In the months of November and December, however, this strange compulsion gets amped up to 11 in the now annual cultural battles of what conservative commentators gleefully refer to as the War on Christmas.

I've written about this kind of ridiculousness before on other forums, mostly in a more outraged fashion, but here I'd like to mention some of the more amusing segments of this years' War that I've spotted so far.

In San Carlos Park, Florida, neighbors are expressing outrage over a Christmas nativity scene, featuring a black baby Jesus, and wise men and shepherds represented by toy monkeys and other animals. The creche was, however, created by the five children of a devout Christian woman who sees no harm in the way the scene is depicted. The neighbors, of course, want her remove it, calling it a "mockery". Silly neighbors.

A Long Island, New York school bus driver was nearly fired for wearing a Santa hat, because one of the kids he drives doesn't believe in Santa. That's right, a parent called the company to complain about a red and white hat. The same red and white hat he's been wearing every winter for the last five years. Silly parents.

In Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a mocking website has appeared to take stabs at the mayor, who earlier this year passed an ordinance that penalizes local businesses for using illegal immigrants. The site, called nosantaforhazleton.com, claims that as Santa would fall under the legal definition of illegal immigrant, Hazleton doesn't want him there. It is a hoax, but a very clever and funny hoax. Who said the Americans have no sense of sarcasm.

A new report has also been released just in time for this year's battle, which claims that 8 percent of Americans will not shop at a store if it doesn't have Christmas decorations up. It also claims about 40 percent of shoppers "continued to express displeasure at the lack of Christmas decorations in retail stores..." and that many shoppers will actively decide not to shop at that store again if there was no or little decorations. So Santa hat school bus driver bad; tree in store good.

In Colorado, a woman is facing being fined $25 a day for hanging a wreath in the shape of a peace sign on the front door of her own property. Apparently neighbors are happier to misinterpret the peace sign as a 'Satanic symbol celebrating the defeat of Christ'. Obviously, that's exactly how the Prince of Peace would have interpreted it as well.

No matter which side of the war you fight for, you probably won't win. Americans just want to punish you somehow, and if it doesn't involve losing your job, it may very well be Mariah Carey's version of All I Want For Christmas being blasted at you in the store for the 100th time. But let's face it, when you discover that even Richard Dawkins celebrates Christmas, it's probably more fun to sit back, grab some nog and watch the hilarity ensue from afar, safe in the knowledge that no one is targeting you this year, and praying for the day when there'll be a ceasefire.

'No One Shot by Cheney' Now Valid Headline

2006-12-11T18:08:00.000-05:00

Seriously. What has this country come to when the Vice-President of the United States makes headlines by not shooting anybody?

Article even helps us all out by listing who doesn't get shot by Dick Cheney.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Not shot by Cheney.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.
Not shot by Cheney.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford
Not shot by Cheney.

Luckily, 10 months ago, Texas lawyer Harry Whittington was shot by Dick Cheney. Otherwise, James Rosen, the author of the article, would had reeeeaaalll trouble trying to fill those extra eight paragraphs, wouldn't he?

At Last A Reason to Support McDonalds

2006-12-11T17:18:00.000-05:00

But why did it have to come from the American Decency Association?

December 7, 2006 - McDonalds: a repeat advertiser on VS "Fashion" Show

McDonald's must hear from us! A company that generates millions of dollars from families through Happy Meals sponsors the destructive pornography of Victoria's Secret.

Contact:

McDonalds Corporation
Andrew McKenna Sr. - President
McDonalds Plaza
Oak Brook, IL 60523
Phone: 630-623-3000
Toll-free: 800-244-6227
Fax: 630-623-5004
McDonaldsCorporation@mcd.com

Sample letter: Millions of Christian people like me spend money minute by minute in McDonald restaurants every day. You are dirtying our airwaves and thereby our children and families when you carelessly and insensitively sponsor Victoria's Secret "Fashion" Show.

You were the only fast food restaurant to attach your name to this lust-fest. You advertised on this show in 2005 as well.

Here is what you helped bring into millions of households Tuesday night, December 5.

The women used their bodies to lure and entice while the camera focused in on barely covered crotches and breasts, mostly bare bottoms, and cleavage. And while the women seductively paraded across stage, men's reactions were shown from the audience.

Do you want my business? Advertising on Victoria's Secret "Fashion" Show is not the way to earn it and keep it.

In closing, I say shame on you, McDonald's. You have not conducted yourself with excellence.

Sincerely,
....

Luckily, according to the site, if you don't want to buy products to piss off the ADA, you have a choice of these fine corporations: Dell computers, Circuit City, Vaseline and Sunsilk hair products (Unilever). Yay!

Get your pork sausages just in time for Hannukah

2006-12-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Williams Sonoma, in their infinite wisdom, have been selling holiday gift treats, including Ham and Pork based products, such as:

Fra'Mani Pork Sausages

Internet/Catalog Only

Inspired by memories of the delicious cured meats his Italian grandfather prepared for his Chicago delicatessen, chef Paul Bertolli brings a rare zeal to handcrafting authentic salumi – salted and cured meats or sausages in the Italian style. The former Chez Panisse chef and award-winning cookbook author follows pastoral traditions learned from artisan producers in Italy. Made from the finest-quality naturally raised pork and free of fillers, Bertolli’s fresh coarse-ground sausage coils lend superb flavor to Italian specialties. Each coil is enclosed in natural hog casings, tied with twine and accented with fresh bay leaves. Shipped fresh, the sausage will keep for one week refrigerated, unopened. 2-lb., 2-oz. coil (serves six).

To ensure freshness, perishable items are shipped overnight from the supplier. These items are not eligible for Rush Delivery. Orders will be delivered within one week.

For Hannukah Delivery please order by Sunday, December 10th at Noon PST.

This item cannot be gift wrapped.

Notice that second bullet point above. What the hell would anyone celebrating Hannukah want with a bunch of linked pork sausages? I mean, according to Jewish observance, you're not even allowed to touch them...

Silly Williams Sonoma. Stick to over-priced serving tongs. No split pea and ham soup for you.

Missed Connections - Brooklyn Style

2006-12-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

There's a kind of classified ad that's becoming more popular these days, called Missed Connections. Usually you write one of these for someone you bumped into on the subway, or helped down the stairs - your eyes met and there may have been attraction, but you had to go your separate ways.

Only in Brooklyn could someone write a missed connection for someone who helped them in a bakery after throwing up. This country does amuse me so.

Apparently there was no cheese in sight

2006-12-07T17:58:00.000-05:00

Yep. In true New York Post style, someone offers the US a way to get out of the hellhole that Iraq has become since the invasion, and hey, classy paper that it is, it calls them Surrender Monkeys.

Smart, NYP.

Very. Smart.

Long Distance Information, Give Me Uckfield, East Sussex

2006-12-07T16:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this didn't happen in the US of A, but it's still a great story and ties in with something that happened to me recently when I was in the US of A.

So I'm at work, and I get this email from my boss's crackberry:

Hey Rid - it's Trip. I'm using Jerry's Blackberry. Mine's not working. We're near Picadilly[sic]. I know it's touristy around here but is there a decent low-key place to get a pint and some food around here?

So I figure he wants somewhere fairly cheap and out of the way to drink and eat. Bear in mind it's about 6.30pm GMT, and he's in one of the most "touristy" parts of London.

Of course, the expensive, non-low-key, touristy thing is the reason why I know nothing of pubs by Piccadilly. I've been to a mega-pub there, with a massive tree in it (actually it's Waxy O'Connors), but it's so cavernous that if you head off to the toilet, you'll need a roll of string and a trail of breadcrumbs to find where you left your friend. If you ever find your friend. But that's it. My extent of drinking in the West End starts and ends around Leicester Square, or maybe a few jaunts to Covent Garden. But now they closed down the Intrepid Fox, there's really not much point.

So I decided to hit google with this phrase: Piccadilly Pubs. Up pops this link for a site called Beer In The Evening, which not only provided pictures, but reviews, and a little map of where it was.

So here's the reply:

If you haven't found a place yet, The Goat Tavern, on Stafford Street has recommended food and good beer selection. From Piccadilly Circus, walk on the left side of Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner. Make a right on Albemarle Street, and it should be across the road on your right on Stafford St, btwn Staff and Old Bond St. Wish I could join you. R.

Within ten minutes I get this:

We found it. Thanks for the tip.

I mean, seriously. If you stop to think about it, how bloody cool is that? This guy is 3,000 miles from me, and without even picking up a phone, I can direct him not to the nearest pub, but to one with food, and with a high customer recommendation. I'm like his own personal Zagat's. 10 years ago, this sort of thing was a pipe-dream. 20 years ago, it was the kind of thing you saw on the Max Headroom sci-fi series.

Needless to say, however, that my boss is now glad he didn't do the same thing when he went to Singapore earlier this month, as I probably wouldn't have been so gracious. Not sure what google comes up with if you type in Blue Oyster Bar Singapore.

And I don't want to find out.

However, all of this pales in comparison with this story, where a climber, stranded on Table Mountain in South Africa, called his granddad on a cellphone in Uckfield, and got the old guy to go online and look up the number for a local mountain rescue station.

The internet may be for porn, but it could actually save lives. Oh, get you a pint of Bombardier in a foreign country, too.

Won't someone think of the cats?

2006-12-04T13:46:00.000-05:00

Seriously. When America's War on Drugs begins to extend to Catnip, it's time to pull the plug on funding this bunch of government lackwits...

However, I have seen cats get wicked crazy on 'nip', they snort it, or lick it, and freak out a bit, then lie on their backs and get all docile and wide-eyed. If only we had something like that for kids on planes.

Here, look kitty! Here's a picture of a green bag! You'd like that, wouldn'tcha!

Yeah. Cats are weird.

Coventry Unusual Suspects Reunion - 2006

2006-11-28T06:43:00.000-05:00

So I'm actually on holiday in the UK right now. Last weekend, went up to the midlands, Coventry to be precise, to catch up with old friends. Little did I know, I was in for a bit of a surprise. Old housemate Fluffy came all the way from Kent to come visit, and it all turned into a bit of a reunion...

DAY ONE: Friday at the Whitefriars

When asked about what it was like living in our old house, Fluffy denies everything...

Dudge spins Broomie a yarn, while Fergie and Copie look on. And, yes, it appears Copie has stolen both mine and Fluffy's hair.

Ben reacts appropriately to the situation.

Me and Paul catch up with Mark 'Khorne' Buttree, who I haven't seen in about 10 years.

DAY TWO: Watching Rugby at the Aardvark, and then, heck why not, back to the Whitefriars...

Fluffy has been stung by a wasp. On the ring finger. He has a very big (wedding) ring and can't get the damned thing off. At this point, the hospital has given him drugs to reduce the swelling, which means he can't drink, but the drugs aren't working, so he's wrapped the thing in ice in case that works instead. Here he is resting his head on the thing, desperately hoping that holding his hand up will help some.

Fluffy anoints my head with melting wasp-sting ice. I feel positively saved from the threat of wasp-stings.

Broomie and Marty-T commiserate after watching England lose again.

After finally giving up and heading to the hospital to get his ring cut off, Fluffy joins us back at the Whitefriars later in the evening decrying 'I don't care if the drugs make me fall asleep in five minutes, I'm having a bloody beer.'

Not content with just being old housemates, me and Fluffy discover we were separated at birth.

Seriously. It's quite scary.

Hankering for a little slice of home, I decided to buy two bags of Roast Chicken crisps. Half way through the first one, everyone complains that 'it really smells', so I have to wait until Sunday morning before I'm allowed to eat the second one.

And so the reunion went. Day Three was spent at Broomie's writing a new song for Earth Calling Angela, but like an idiot, I forgot to take pictures of this momentous occasion. So I'd like to thank everyone who came out for our two days of catching up, debaucherous nostalgia trips, and general silliness. Meant a lot to me, it did.

Tailgating at the Eagles

2006-11-28T06:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm a Giants fan. But I'm not so crazy as to turn down the chance to tailgate at the Eagles if a friend from LA flies over for his birthday. Here's some piccies for those interested.

Drunken Trivial Pursuit the night before.

Too much DDR!

KPK waits impatiently for her 9.30 mimosa.

Mini barbecue put together, not with tools, but by HUMAN HANDS...

The crew finally gets the mimosas in. Paca, KPK, Buni & Dyl.

Paca throws a perfect ball...

Dyl catches like a typical Seahawks fan...

And, yes, I was actually there.

Wicked day all round, apart from me still being a little weak from 2 weeks of allergy recovery. Cheers everyone!

I didn't get a Pahrump outta you!

2006-11-17T15:45:00.000-05:00

Something tells me this is going to repealed before St. Paddy's Day...

Squersheys - Not Just For Dogs Anymore

2006-11-13T17:11:00.000-05:00

And I thought Hershey's chocolate just tasted like shit...

Salmonella fears prompt Hershey recall

Associated Press

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario - A variety of Hershey chocolate products and candies in Canada were voluntarily recalled Sunday because of fears of salmonella contamination at a factory.

There have been no reported illnesses associated with the products, Hershey said in a statement.

Hershey brand chocolate bars, chocolate chips, Oh Henry! bars, Reese's peanut butter cups, and Cherry Blossom sweets were among the affected products.

None of the recalled products were produced for Halloween or Christmas.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials said they were told by Hershey that it doesn't appear there was a widespread delivery of the affected products to stores.

It was unclear where in Canada the affected products may have ended up and it was not immediately known how long that will take to find out, said Marie-Andree Lefebvre, a CFIA spokeswoman. The recall did not affect Hershey products sold in the United States, the CFIA said.

The recall involves chocolate produced at the Smiths Falls, Ontario, factory between Oct. 15 and Nov. 10, Lefebvre said.

The recalled chocolate and candy can be identified by date codes found on the back of each package - the affected date codes range from 6417 to 6455.

Consumers should check codes on chocolate bars they purchase as not every product on store shelves are affected.

"For example it's not all the Oh Henry! bars that are affected by this recall," Lefebvre said.

Hershey officials did not immediately return telephone calls Sunday.

Production at the plant in Smiths Falls was shut down last week, and the company did not say when it will resume.

The Hershey Co., based in Hershey, Pa., is the largest candy maker in the U.S.

Salmonella generally cause a nonfatal, diarrhea-causing illness. Other symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fever and headache. There are about 2,500 types of salmonella.

Tech Spam

2006-10-26T13:42:00.000-04:00

So I get a lot of spam emails. A lot. So much I wrote an IDM/Techno album inspired by the weirdness that appears in Spam mails. They have titles like 'atomic' and are filled with deliberate spling mistakes and e x t e n d e d c h a r a c t e r s to try to loop around spam filters. Sometimes you get a bunch of randomly generated words. Sometimes there's a section from a novel in there. I call it machine poetry. One day I'd love to organize it and make a book out of it.

But this latest one is just plain weird. And very long. Looks like it's straight out of a technical manual for something. I'll strip the dangerous-sounding web address, but everything else gets left in. If anyone can translate this for me, you get a prize.

Sandra has uploaded some new software for you!

View your available uploaded software from Sandra @

install (whether or not you actually use it as the installa-
an insecure function written by Nate Williams; in subsequent releases
the scsiformat shell script from FreeBSD 2.2). FreeBSD 2.2 and later:
can be picked up with a recursive diff for later feeding to patch.
pieces of the FreeBSD operating system, they are notorious for not
52:(kgdb) print tp
/usr/bin/ldd
leftmost column, and subsequent lines are indented with a single TAB.
At this point you should reboot your system with your new kernel.
Technical discussions
direct access to a printer, you should use the spooler anyway since
rattan|line|diablo|lp|Diablo 630 Line Printer:\
/usr/var 0 50 75 0 50 60
Please note that the stable tree endevors, above all, to be fully
If your port requires significant user interaction/customization to
memory parity logic, making it almost impossible to detect when a
FreeBSD's default kernels usually come with two SLIP interfaces
If you don't have a CDROM, or you want to make sure you get the very
narrow) and many hundreds of bug fixes.
to VT100/102. It works well on some laptops which have hardware
The simple spooler configuration consists of the following steps:
them for the file you need. Here is an example of a list of files that
2nd kelly 10 (standard input) 1635 bytes
This means that you should look for some entries that start with wcd0
Please make any checks payable to FreeBSD, Inc., sent in care of the
configuration in /sys/i386/boot/netboot/Makefile. See the comments at
have all your devices. The easiest way to check is to reboot your
o PLIST - a list of all the files that will be created when the
for them.
outer cylinders of the drive there is more space so more sectors per
/MAKEDEV sd0
loaded at all. Update the boot blocks, the recent ones do load the
(e.g., `Makefile'), set ${DIST_SUBDIR} to the name of the port
echo Dialing.
# make
IN NO EVENT SHALL %%your_name_here%% BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
domain.
Architecture and design discussions
:nx=VH9600:tc=std.57600:
know how to use it, but what if you cannot recall the command name?
subscribe []
each drive has its own direct connection to the controller.
swapfs 192.1.2.3:/swapfs
noipdefault # remote PPP server must supply your IP address.
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
device sio2 at isa? port "IO_COM3" tty irq 5 vector siointr
administrative one; it does not mean the person concerned is
Previous or default values are in [brackets] ,
devices, 16550A-based serial interface cards are much prefered. If
inexpensive commodity PC hardware is also its liability when it comes
INQUIRY command is sent by the kernel on boot to see what kind of
FIFO timer has expired (stale data), or
the kernel decide what to do next.
18.2.5.4.7.2. RUN_DEPENDS
#!/bin/sh
supposed to send +12 VDC or -12 VDC, and the receiver is supposed to
for the quota files, this is not recommended since all of the various
based PC's, ranging from 386sx to Pentium class machines (though the
When you are using the parallel interface, you can choose whether
you look at existing examples before starting. Consider the following
o Make a ``restore file(s)'' option to CTM, something like:
are identical in performance. There are differences, and in some
controller scbus0 at ahc0
Note that when you create /etc/sliphome/slip.login and
cases, you should at least be able to make a port, so do not let the
10.4.2.3.7. Tagged command queueing
mailqueue whenever I have the PPP link up, by typing
communication parameters with the fs, fc, xs, and xc capabilities;
generally the default for Sun workstations), you will need to set this
4.2.2.
transfers, but when the DMA transfer counter reaches zero, the
go a long way! Donations of hardware are also very important to
Ghostscript and using a special text filter for your printer, you can
recommended.
in the word. (This requirement was set in the days of mechanical
To enable the emulator, add the following to your configuration file
nel as described in the ``kernel configuration'' section.
file. Users can print jobs with lpr -#5 (for example) and get five
removed by LPD, particularly if there have been errors during
outside the i386 directory is common to all platforms which FreeBSD
sliplogin usually logs good informational messages via the daemon
[janegrunt 10543] cat ~/.klogin
Wangtek and Archive QIC-02/QIC-36 tape drive support
IRQ line. You should use whichever one works.
currentFreeBSD> and the FreeBSD CVS commit message mailing
These permissions allow the user uucp and users in the group dialer to
/usr/share/examples/sup/cvs-supfile. If you would rather track
endeavor to replace such software with submissions under the more
prior to any device probing. Hence you are able to even debug the
This is the easiest kind of change to make as it does not involve any
#
mileage may vary. Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
that this supports one-way communication only (FreeBSD to printer);
4.2.3.2. Compiling ports from the Internet
National Semiconductor has made available a program named COMTEST that
compile their own ports from source.
MAINTAINER= acheFreeBSD
/etc/syslog.conf to see to which files syslogd is logging).
later, several megabytes of physical memory will be wasted.
Traditionally, a Baud Rate represents the number of bits that are
A minimum of four megabytes of RAM is required to run FreeBSD. To run
SCSI is an acronym for Small Computer Systems Interface. It is an
name of the dependency is put in to the package so that pkg_add will
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
o
SLIP support is rather primitive, and limited primarily to hard-wired
2.2. Preparing for the installation
with a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4 Lite bits. The
the two modems listed above that have internal UARTs were caused by
you have general FTP access to the Internet then the following FTP
564-0100
target.
grunt# kstash
as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms.
Sony SDT-5000
time available for the task. Amanda solves this problem. Amanda can
pid=`ps ax |grep pppd |grep -v grep|awk '{print $1;}'`
want to experiment with it.
sio14 at 0x168-0x16f flags 0x1005 on isa
c/o Jordan Hubbard
we connect to. This type of route is normally used for local
configuration file. The "archive set" also contains nightly

The Dangers of Watching TV

2006-10-24T12:33:00.000-04:00

SYRACUSE, N.Y. A six-year-old boy may have been trying to imitate wrestling moves when he hanged himself from a doorknob.

This is a real AP story, as recounted on a Tennessee TV station's website. WTVF Newschannel 5 calls itself a News And Information Leader. Yet they somehow didn't stop to think about this first sentence of the re-posted article. Exactly which freaking wrestling moves involve a belt and doorknob?

As much as I love those kinds of promos for evening news that are the TV equivalent of a 10 second terrorist act ("Could breathing air be killing your kids? More at 11"), this kind of journalism ("Could muscular men pretending to fight each other kill your kids? More at 11") is nothing more than mentally stunted and lazy. Sure, kids watch TV and play out what they watch, but, you know, accidents happen. This strange need not just to find a reason or cause for a death, but to be able to apportion blame and then to attack the fingered cause or reason is becoming a pandemic in US society. It's so unnecessary, ultimately unsatisfying, and never really solves anything, other than some small-minded desire for vengeance or some twisted concept of justice.

Take another story here in New York. After one, maybe more incidents where kids have been killed or injured playing baseball, New York City Councillors are being asked to legislate against aluminum baseball bats being used for sports in NYC public schools. That's right, because, you know life is dangerous, and sport is part of life, so obviously, when someone gets hurt playing a sport that uses equipment, and that piece of equipment doesn't actually cause the damage, we need to create and enforce a whole set of new laws in order to protect our children from these scary devices. Let's just get this straight, kids aren't being killed by getting hit with the bat, they're getting killed by getting hit with the ball.

So, of course, we outlaw the bat, despite there being no evidence whatsover that these metal bats are any more dangerous than wooden bats, other than being able to hit a ball harder and faster, but unlike, say, a bullet from a gun, this effect of being hit by a ball flying off an aluminum bat isn't constant. It might kill you, it might just leave a bruise. If one is to outlaw a particular tool, for any reason, one needs to prove a consistent causality. A bullet to the head consistently kills or maims, a baseball doesn't.

Ergo, thus and therefore: Aluminum bats aren't dangerous, but being in the ball's way can be. Even with a wooden bat, if you get hit full-force in the temple or the solar-plexus, you may die. Accidents happen. We don't need to blame or outlaw anything. We need to come to terms with it as a fact of life.

Revenge of the MILFs

2006-10-24T10:17:00.000-04:00

Once again women of America are about to be subjected to an onslaught of 'what men think you should be'. This time, in a new Unreality TV show, called Hottest Mom in America, contestants are lining up, babies cradled in their arms, to be judged as worthy of appearing on TV based on looks, and, no doubt, social incompatability with other contestants.

Now I like looking at women just as much as the next guy. Heck, maybe even more than the next guy, but this seems like such an arbitrary competition. I mean, let's face it. You don't need a reality show to pick who you think is the most attractive woman out of a crowd and say "YOU! YOU ARE THE HOTTEST MOM IN AMERICA!" but apparently the producers of this show seem to think that WE THE PEOPLE should choose over a long period of time, who is hotter this week than they were last week. Then, of course, if the show's a success, there'll be another series, debunking the theory that the woman who wins this contest is actually the Hottest Mom in America by picking someone totally different. Much like the Greatest Rock Songs in the World... Ever CD was followed by the Greatest Rock Songs in the World... Ever 2, which, if my song was on the second disc, would piss me off. I mean, how come I never made it onto the first disc? Not great enough for you, you pathetic wankers!

But I digress. Mothers across America are lining up for this competition in order to appear on TV, and win a prize, but they're being duped. Essentially, this whole thing is a ruse to find the "Face of Restylane", a new Botox-like "Dermal Filler" which is injected into the face. All entrants must agree to participate not just in the TV competition, but also in the Face of Restylane competition. The winner of the TV competition gets $25,000 college scholarship for one child, $25,000 in cold hard cash AND one year's free treatment of Restylane.

In other words, even America's Hottest Mom is not hot enough for America. She must inject her face with hyaluronic acid in order to feel good about herself. Now, if the woman vote the hottest mom in America needs to be injected with 'dermal fillers' after she wins the competition, what does that say to all the women at home watching the show?

Vote for the new Seven Wonders of the World

2006-10-18T16:48:00.000-04:00

Here's the 21 finalists from new7wonders.com, picked from over 200 possible sites worldwide. Go there to see the potential wonders in the swimsuit and eveningwear rounds, and laugh at the stupid interviews the Easter Island Statues give. "We want world peace... yeah. World peace and the destruction of all enemies of Easter Island."

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece

2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain

3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia

4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico

5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

6 Colosseum, Rome

7 Easter Island Statues, Chile

8 Eiffel Tower, Paris

9 Great Wall, China

10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey

11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan

12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow

13 Machu Picchu, Peru

14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany

15 Petra ancient city, Jordan

16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

17 Statue of Liberty, New York

18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom

19 Sydney Opera House, Australia

20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India

21 Timbuktu city, Mali

US full of Internet addicts: study

2006-10-18T14:10:00.000-04:00

Of course, I can take it or leave it. So long as I have my PS2. Of course, that would assume that the five computers I have in my house became TVs so I can play Madden in the basement (Madden 06 arriving on Friday! Excited!) while Buni watches Gray's Anatomy in the family room.

Wait. Who am I fecking kidding. I'm a professional intranet content manager. If it weren't for the internet, I'd be out of a job. So yeah, it's not really addiction, it's homework.

Or...

Um...

The dog ate it.

Yeah.

Somebody PLEEEEZE Buy K-Fed's CD

2006-10-18T12:06:00.000-04:00

According Kevin Federline, after the extraordinary non-success of his first single, Popozao, he decided that the album he had recorded no longer fit the kind of music he wanted to make. So he went back into the studio and re-recorded the entire thing from scratch. No biggy. I've done it myself. But I have a suspicious feeling that EVERYONE around him realized that no one was ever going to buy it. Luckily for K-Fed, someone gave him a second chance. Chances are, that was his missus, bankrolling him so he can get something released.

Now she's practically begging for people, not just to buy his new CD, but to SELL IT. The fan who helps sell the most CDs gets to go to Brit and Kev's Halloween launch party. Sounds great, an inbred spasmodic white-boy rapper and his pregnant wife hold court while other people party.

The second prize, however, is a thing to behold. The sneakers Kev wore at the Teen Choice Awards. I could put those on Ebay, and see how much people would pay me to burn them. Or, you know, I could give them to charity and let some homeless guy walk a mile in K-Fed's shoes. Yeah, maybe I'd do that. It's much more like the American Way.

On a more serious note, I was listening to something on NPR the other day about cotton and developing countries, and how charities handing out free clothing to the poor is actually harming clothing industries in developing worlds because we're removing people's need to buy from local manufacturers. Where's that article... Ah, Bingo! Of course, it's not the only factor, but it's worth a long thought, IMO.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

2006-10-13T18:10:00.000-04:00

Make Lemonade.

When life hands you limes...

Get the salt baby, it's Tequila Time!!!

Woo-hoo!

Friday night!

Yeah!

Join me down the pub, kids, it's happy dance time.

Meanwhile Back At The Whitehouse...

2006-10-13T17:14:00.000-04:00

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming to the White House.

In 2004, I made a promise to the American people, we would cut the federal budget deficit in half over five years. Today I'm pleased to report that we have achieved this goal, and we've done it three years ahead of schedule. (Applause.)

This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th.* [sic]

And this is the point where you have to kinda stop and ask for a rewind.

Did he just say February 30th?

Well yes, and I love how the whitehouse.gov's staff actually caught that and added the little [sic] and an asterisk pointing to a footnote that reads: "September 30th".

These poor guys at whitehouse.gov, who have to transcibe, verbatim, the drivel that pours from Our Glorious Leader's head. I pity the fools.

Like Anyone Would Have Noticed Anyway

2006-10-13T16:08:00.000-04:00

Behold the face of evil. Well, an artists' rendition of it, anyways. This is the guy who planned to blow up the Prudential Building in Newark, NJ, and caused untold strife by forcing cops to relinquish their daily routine of shooting gangbangers and crack addicts and protect one single building for a month and a half.

Unfortunately, the Pru tower wasn't the only building he had plans for. One of the buildings he had a full blueprint for on his laptop when caught in Pakistan was the Citigroup Center in mid-town Manhattan; the building which, up until a month ago, I used to work in. So I'm quite happy he decided to plead guilty yesterday at Woolwich Crown Court, actually, as I'd prefer not to be blown up or even targeted, truth be told.

Demonstrators Gone Wild

2006-10-13T14:16:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in this photo is a blond woman protesting about not being able to walk topless in Florida.

Her manner of protest? Taking her top off. She was promptly arrested.

However, a new Seventh Circuit Appeals court ruling has upheld an earlier decision that she can be topless, as long as it's "part of a legitimate political protest".

So, she can't actually legally be topless. But she can protest against not being able to be legally topless, by being legally topless.

Now I know this is Florida, and let's face it, nothing makes sense in Florida. In fact, Florida is like a dark state made entirely of anti-logic... a living Edward Lear poem... a... I mean, it's just Florida, for Pete's sake. But seriously, this is the kind of twisted logic Kirk used to blow up Vulcan heads.

And it seems to be an expanding mindset here in America. If there's no rule for something, make a rule. If that rule doesn't work for everybody, make another rule as an exception to the previous rule. Whatever you do, don't either fix the first rule, or, Lord forebid, get rid of it entirely. After all, what kind of Land Of The Free would this be without rules on top of rules on top of rules that we all have to follow anyways?

California Grape Growers: All They Ever Do Is Wine, Wine, Wine

2006-10-10T19:05:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the popularity of the movie Sideways, in which the main wine-connoisseur character, Miles, screams "I'm NOT drinking any FUCKING MERLOT!", merlot sales have, like, totally slumped, dude.

Which is a shame, because a good merlot can be a great wine, even to have around the house. And, those of us who understood the movie know that Miles' hatred of merlot is simple: People like his actor best friend, Jack, would drink it happily without a thought. Plus, his hatred of merlot ties into his hatred of all wines other than Pinot Noir. Why? Because he is Pinot Noir. When he says:

"It's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet."

We all know he's talking about himself. He's explaining himself to Maya, and why he's such a psychological mess, needing someone who is "the most patient and nurturing of growers" to "coax" him into his "fullest expression".

Shame such a smart allegory would threaten to ruin the livelihoods of merlot growers in Wine Country. They deserve something better than that.

Even if a good percentage of what they produce is "Quaffable... but far from transcendent."

The Soundtrack To Your Life

2006-10-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

A game apparently. Here are the rules:

If your life was a movie (and you weren't the director), what would the soundtrack be?

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your music player with full library (iTunes, Win amp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every scene listed, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new scene, press the next button

So here goes.

Opening Credits: Golddigger (Diplo Mix) - Kanye West
Waking Up: California Uber Alles - The Delgados
First Day At School: Genius - Pichshifter
Falling In Love: Refugees - Funker Vogt
Fight Song: Going Slow - Tin Star
Paranoid: I Can't Breathe - Gary Numan
Life's OK: Edge Of No Control Part 1 - Meat Beat Manifesto
Mental Breakdown: Microsize Boy (Darkmonki Remix) - Tweaker
Driving: Herd Killing - The Future Sound Of London
Flashback: Wavy Line - Meat Beat Manifesto
Getting Back Together: Catatonia - Mulder & Scully
Wedding: Patricide - Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard
Birth of Child: Midway - Harmstation
Final Battle: I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys
Death Scene: offEND - Front 242
Funeral Song: The Wheat - Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard
Ending Credits: The End Starts Today - Bis

Wow. Like that's either extremely prescient or utterly ironic...

Charlotte Church

2006-10-10T13:04:00.000-04:00

Not sure why, probably because I've been in the US for 8 years and haven't had to deal with the media frenzy over her, but I have a confession to make.

I fancy Charlotte Church.

Why? Who the hell knows. She's boorish, dresses like a chav, and has a bad Welsh accent. Not a sexy Welsh accent - a bad Welsh accent. And she sings the kind of songs that make me want to slash tricycle tires.

But she so freaking gorgeous I want to slap her.

Hard.

Ho hum. With any luck, she'll turn into my last obession: Lindsay Lohan. Plucked from the depths of Disney obscurity into a drunken nightmare of bulemia and boyfriend fights. Then I won't care anymore, and can go back to trawling Brooklyn looking for both Michelle Williams AND her husband Heath Ledger...

Psycho Killer, Qu'est Que C'est?

2006-10-10T11:44:00.000-04:00

So, there's a movie out now called Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. A prequel, I would imagine. As the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is supposed to be based on true events, and there's no real record of anything happening vis-a-vis Leatherface and the gang before that event one can only assume that this movie covers the events of the five teenagers driving from Mexico to a Lynard Skynard concert prior to their meeting with a disturbed hitchhiker who subsequently shoots herself. It should really be like a road movie. But, as everyone knows, shit don't work out that way when there's money involved.

Ho hum. Yet another monster movie, then...

Lost at Weddings?

2006-10-08T11:13:00.000-04:00

No article for this one. It's just a personal story. If you're ever at a wedding or a party, where you only know the person who invited you and they're busy mingling with all the people they know, and you're just standing in the corner like a proverbial wallflower...

Put you Gaydar and find the gay couple.

Trust me, you'll have a great time.

Britney Spears - Sleep With Me, I'm Not Too Young

2006-10-06T11:16:00.000-04:00

Oh, the joys of discovering new cool websites! This site has clips from songs that you can hear forward, and backward, to find the 'hidden message'. Stairway To Heaven is there, Hotel California, Another One Bites The Dust, and best of all - Hit Me Baby One More Time. Yes, Britney Spears supposedly has a hidden message in her first single: Sleep with me, I'm not too young.

Funny - I thought the message was pretty blatant in the video.

The Best Fantasy League Ever

2006-10-05T19:34:00.000-04:00

It's a fantasy celebrity gossip league game.

Seriously.

It takes five tabloid magazines and you pick eight celebs, and then you get points for how much, and what kind of, coverage the celebs get in the tabloids.

It's so effing kitschy, I just had to join...

APP.COM - Playtime on peaceful grounds | Asbury Park Press Online

2006-10-05T16:08:00.000-04:00

Something in this article disturbs me. Not sure if it's the fact that kids are becoming less able to play without adult 'coaching', or if it's the fact that this school is bending over to accomodate this phenomena. Either way, there's a ton of political correctness involved here which I think has a chance of doing more harm to a child's development and socialisation than good.

There's been many a rant against schools that play competitive sports but with no goal, no end result, no winners or losers - in order to build self-esteem. I'm going to try not to join in the chant here but it's going to be hard.

An educator for 29 years — the last nine at Wolf Hill — she wanted to bring play back. Principal Renee Bonin — a classroom teacher for many years — signed on, and "peaceful play" recently was introduced at Wolf Hill School, the borough's elementary school.

"We know so much about learning," Bonin said. "There is academic and social learning. In order to rise to the top, you have to be socially and emotionally adept," and interacting on the playground helps teach those lessons.

This is all well and good, but I'm not sure what the long-term effects of creating a structured, heavily supervised, utopian environment during recess could be. Essentially, the teachers and aides are forcing children to play by the rules set for them, limiting a child's imagination. Whereas once upon a time, a child would invent their own games, in their own time, here we see adults wishing to micro-manage what a child can play, in order to make things more 'fair' and 'safe'. In what part of adult life are things fair? In what part of being a grown up are you really safe? When finally let go to find their place in the world, how are these kids going to react?

People can learn through structured activity and self-actualisation, but, you know, we also learn from our mistakes. The school of hard knocks gets a bad rap, but it has one hell of a track record. Maybe we, as adults, need to remember that sometimes before we deny entry to that school for the next generation.

NewsChannel 5.com – Nashville, Tennessee - School Board Meets About Possible Bible Class

2006-10-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to stay away from religious issues on this blog. There's just too many cackling lackwits over here to keep up with.

However, this story could not be overlooked, thanks to one line which, if it's not a typo, perfectly describes how religious asshats really think (emphasis mine, the article doesn't seem to notice this one):

"The Bible was the first textbook in our educational system, and so to really be well rounded, well balanced, and well education, you need to know about the Bible," Redmon said.

Seems like Mr. Redmon could do with reading some textbooks other than the Bible. May I suggest The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English, perhaps?

Go Wildcats! - Deadspin

2006-10-04T16:25:00.000-04:00

You know, everyone's been passing this one round because, well, there's a guy with his hand down his pants.

My question is how is the vampire in the middle of the picture able to stay out in sunlight?

My Belief-O-Matic Results

2006-10-03T18:10:00.000-04:00

I'm not much of a church-going person, to be honest, but, according to the Belief-o-matic, if I were, I should be a Unitarian. Here are my results...

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (95%)
3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (92%)
4. Neo-Pagan (80%)
5. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (74%)
6. New Age (74%)
7. New Thought (74%)
8. Secular Humanism (73%)
9. Scientology (59%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (55%)
11. Baha'i Faith (55%)
12. Taoism (53%)
13. Reform Judaism (50%)
14. Theravada Buddhism (48%)
15. Nontheist (44%)
16. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (42%)
17. Orthodox Quaker (37%)
18. Jehovah's Witness (36%)
19. Hinduism (35%)
20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (28%)
21. Sikhism (25%)
22. Jainism (23%)
23. Orthodox Judaism (16%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (14%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (10%)
26. Islam (10%)
27. Roman Catholic (10%)

High court rejects sex-toy case - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

2006-10-03T11:21:00.000-04:00

Texas, Georgia and Mississippi all have laws banning manufacture, marketing or dissemination of an “obscene device” including those shaped like sex organs.

Personal massagers? Banned.
Vaccum cleaners? Banned.
Oysters? Banned.
Bananas? Banned! Banned! Banned!

High court rejects sex-toy case - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

This planet is crazy: US library ban on JK Rowling - most wanted

2006-10-02T13:05:00.000-04:00

More from Banned Books Week:

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has been voted the author Americans most want to ban from libraries over fears that her books promote witchcraft.

The American Library Association (ALA), who compiled the list for their Banned Book Week, said there were more than 3,000 attempts to remove the books from libraries and schools between 2000 and 2005.

The ALA said some of the main reasons cited for protesters trying to get controversial books removed from circulation were sexually explicit material, having an occult theme or offensive language.

Other complaints highlighted books with violent content or promoting homosexuality or a religious viewpoint.

Other authors on the list include John Steinbeck, for racism, violent language and sexism in Of Mice and Men, Harper Lee for To Kill a Mocking-Bird and William Golding for Lord of the Flies.

Rowling said: "As this puts me in the company of Harper Lee, Mark Twain, JD Salinger, William Golding, John Steinbeck and other writers I revere, I take my annual inclusion on the list as a great honour."

An ALA spokesman said: "Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to express one's opinion, even if it is considered unorthodox or unpopular and it stresses the importance of ensuring others have access to those viewpoints."

Houston Community Newspapers Online - Parent criticizes book 'Fahrenheit 451'

2006-10-02T12:49:00.000-04:00

In other news from the World of Irony: Parent requests Soylent Green to be printed in blood on human skin, and all copies of 1984 should come with a free web-cam, and DNA testing kit...

A Caney Creek High School dad is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book "Fahrenheit 451" as classroom reading material.

Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language.

"The book had a bunch of very bad language in it," Diana Verm said. "It shouldn't be in there because it's offending people. ... If they can't find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn't have a book at all."

Alton Verm filed a "Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials" Thursday with the district regarding "Fahrenheit 451," written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1953. He wants the district to remove the book from the curriculum.

"It's just all kinds of filth," said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read "Fahrenheit 451." "The words don't need to be brought out in class. I want to get the book taken out of the class."

He looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, "dirty talk," references to the Bible and using God's name in vain. He said the book's material goes against their religions beliefs. The Verms go to Grand Parkway Church in Porter.

"We went them to go after God," said Glen Jalowy Jr., Grand Parkway Church youth minister. "We encourage them that what you put in your mind and heart is what comes out."

Alton Verm said he doesn't understand how the district can punish students for using bad language, yet require them to read a book with bad language as part of a class.

Diana Verm and another classmate decided to read an alternative book. They leave the classroom when the class reads or discusses "Fahrenheit 451," she said. The two students were given "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn because it shares common themes with "Fahrenheit 451," said Chris Hines, CISD assistant superintendent for secondary education.

"Fahrenheit 451" is a science fiction piece that poses a warning to society about the preservation and passing on of knowledge as well as asks the question about whether the government should do the thinking for the people, Hines stated in an e-mail to The Courier. Other themes include conformity vs. individuality, freedom of speech and the consequences of losing it, the importance of remembering and understanding history and technology as help to humans and as hindrances to humans, Hines stated in the e-mail.

"They're not reading books just to read them," Hines said in a telephone interview. "They're reading it for a purpose. ... We respect people's rights to express their concerns and we have a policy in place to handle that."

A selection process is used for materials other than textbooks, according to district policy. The materials must meet various standards, be appropriate for the subject, age and social and emotional development of the students and motivate students to examine their own attitudes and behavior, according to district policy.

While the district does not know of any other challenges to "Fahrenheit 451," there may have been students who have decided to read a different book. The district estimates about 1 percent of students request to read a different book than assigned, according to the e-mail. "Fahrenheit 451" has been used in CISD curriculum for at least 19 years and "likely prior to that," Hines said in the e-mail.

The district hasn't received challenges on any other books in the four years he's been with the district, Hines said.

A district student, employee or resident can challenge any educational material in CISD on the basis or appropriateness, according to CISD EFA (local) policy. An informal reconsideration is first attempted. Informal requests are not documented, so Hines said he did not know how many requests were handled informally.

The person can make a formal challenge, which Alton Verm did. A committee will be appointed to review the material, discuss the material and report findings about the request to the principal, parent and superintendent, Hines said. The process takes about two weeks.

The Montgomery, New Caney, Splendora and Willis school districts have similar policies.

NCISD banned "Draw Me a Star" by Eric Carle and "Absolute Power" by David Baldacci, but it has not received a book challenge in three years, Cindee Reynolds, NCISD superintendent/community relations executive assistant, stated in an e-mail to The Courier. Montgomery ISD received one request from a parent to review instructional material, but the district has not banned any books, Babette Eikenberg, Montgomery ISD human resources executive director, stated in an e-mail to The Courier.

Alton Verm's request to ban "Fahrenheit 451" came during the 25th annual Banned Books Week. He and Hines said the request to ban "Fahrenheit 451," a book about book burning, during Banned Books Weeks is a coincidence.

"Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read" is observed during the last week of September each year, according to the American Library Association Web site, www.ala.org. The week celebrates the freedom to choose or express one's opinion, even if it might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them, according to the Web site.

Jerilynn Williams, Montgomery County Memorial Library System director, said Banned Books Week keeps the public aware that it is imperative to have access to information in a democratic society. Banning books causes libraries to limit access to information by withholding a person's right to explore a wide variety of opinions to form their own opinions, Williams said.

"Not every book is appropriate for every person, but every person should have their work that they choose," Williams said. "The public library is for everyone."

The Montgomery County Memorial Library System has received 65 requests to challenge books since 2002, Williams said. The library has removed "Castro," for factual inaccuracies, and "Tomorrow Wendy," because it was not under the library's current guidelines, Williams said. The library also has a process for people to follow if they challenge a book, Williams said.

However, Williams said a public library is different than a school library.

"As a public library, we are the library for everyone," Williams said. "The school library is meant to be the library for that select group at that school."

To view a school district's policy on book selection or how to challenge a book, visit the individual district's Web site.

Kassia Micek can be reached at kmicek@hcnonline.com.

LA Weekly - ¡Viva Border Volleyball!

2006-09-30T16:09:00.000-04:00

http://www.laweekly.com/images/stories/06/36/36town2.jpg

This is freaking awesome.

When the Texas one goes up, can we go Paintballing in it?

By JOSHUAH BEARMAN

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 3:00 pm

California’s most desolate and unknown beach is desolate and unknown for a reason. It has no name, no facilities, no parking lot. There are no signs for it inside Borderfield State Park. There are no signs for the park either. To get there, you depart the 5 freeway 10 miles south of San Diego, follow the roads to where the gas stations give way to horse stables, get lost in the overgrowth and streams of the Tijuana River delta, and from there walk the dirt road two miles through coastal dunes to emerge at the Pacific.

This is a filthy beach, where the Tijuana River deposits human waste, heavy metals, toxic poisons and other industrial effluvia from Mexico into the ocean. “CONTAMINATED WATER; DEEP HOLES; RIPTIDES; NO LIFEGUARD; NO SWIMMING!” the signs announce.

No switching sides allowed

This is also a geopolitically divided beach, purposefully hidden, a DMZ in miniature where the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol would prefer no distractions as they monitor the fence of metal pylons that draws a 20-foot-tall line in the sand all the way into the sea.

It is the perfect beach, in other words, for the world’s first game of international border volleyball.

This is the idea, at least, as I trek to the beach with no name to meet Brent Hoff and three other collaborators who plan to stage the match. There, under the noon sun, are a lone umbrella, some towels, lots of water and a brand-new volleyball. Hoff is the editor of Wholphin, a new DVD magazine published by McSweeney’s. For the DVD’s menu, Hoff wants to film a game of beach volleyball using the border fence as the net.

Through the pylons we can see hundreds of people — families, kids, ice-cream vendors and fishermen — all hanging out on Mexico’s side. The fence itself has kind of a beach vibe here: It’s broken in parts, and Mexican nationals wander back and forth, left alone by the border-patrol units perched up on the hill unless they happen to wander a bit too far.

“Why not use this no-man’s land as a real beach,” Hoff adds, now spinning the volleyball in preparation, “and see if we could strike up a friendly pickup game? There’s no law against that.”

Or is there? Hoff suddenly wonders if hitting the ball back and forth constitutes a violation of U.S. Customs law, since goods are technically being transported across an international border. “Does a nice volley amount to three strikes? Can we all get thrown in the slammer?” One friend of Brent’s refused to come down because he thought we’d all get shot.

We decide to take our chances. Here we are, under the perfect sun of San Diego, where beach volleyball reigns, so why should that be any different just a few miles south?

With Hoff’s three collaborators filming, he needs a second, and so I am volunteered to be the other half of Team USA. By chance, we are both wearing white tank tops, beaded necklaces and swim trunks — just the right uniforms for Team USA to show everybody who’s boss. (U-S-A! U-S-A!) Hoff’s shades are yellow and mirrored for a nice finishing touch. We approach the fence. Within seconds Team Mexico is formed, and the match begins.

Beach volleyball is a much different game when played over two-story metal pylons. Strategy and nuance go out the window. There are few sets and certainly no spikes. Mostly, it’s tit-for-tat power bumps that send the ball in 30- and 40- and even 50-foot arcs. The ball hangs in the air so long that a lot of time is spent looking skyward, bracing for another bump that hopefully goes in the right direction. Waiting for one good knock to fall from the blue, it occurs to me that our entirely new sport makes for some extreme, if inadvertent, political theater. Despite the difficulty, the game is fun — and surprisingly uninteresting to the border patrol, who zipped down at the drop of a hat several times earlier but now seem content to observe us with binoculars.

Spectators line up on the other side too. Beachgoers watch the game, and a bunch of kids doing a college art project film us as well. We learn that our opponents are two guys named Jerry and Larry. Jerry grew up in El Monte. He’s in Mexico because he “made mistakes in his life” — I notice a big “EMF” for the El Monte Flores gang on his arm. But now, he says, he’s on the right path. Larry is a student with long, rocker hair; he’s wearing a black shirt and jeans.

Although we’re not really playing for points, it’s clear we’re losing. Hoff makes heroic dives, and I’m (sort of) pulling my weight in the volleys that develop, but Jerry and Larry have strength and stamina, despite the fact that Jerry is older and wider than me and Hoff combined, and Larry looks like he should be melting.

After an hour or so, we call it quits. Our wrists are red and raw as we go to the fence to shake hands. A crowd gathers for this moment of cultural exchange, which turns into a photo opportunity. Like China’s pandas, Hoff and I are goodwill ambassadors. See how furry and friendly we really are? We’re not all saber rattlers up here! We take pictures with Jerry and Larry, with the art-school kids, with some tourists from Canada who are marveling at the whole thing.

All this activity finally brings down the hammer of the border patrol, and a jeep shows up to separate us. The officer is friendly but firm. He’s just come on shift and has no idea we’ve been playing volleyball over the fence for the past hour.

“Really?”

He tells us that a daredevil launched himself across the border in a cannon a while back, but that ours was, in fact, the first-ever game of international border volleyball.

“And it worked over that tall fence?”

“Yup,” we say. “We’re up for one more round if you want to play.”

“No, man,” the officer says. “I’m on duty.”

Junk Food Blog: Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick

2006-09-30T15:15:00.000-04:00

There's something inherently wrong about this product. American's are weird, anyway, mixing sweet and savoury with abandon; but this... This... Just look at it carefully...

Mystery meat surrounded by CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCAKE.

Seriously.

It's actually making me hungry.

Now I'm craving battered sausage.

BillingsGazette.com :: Bar fight at the Irma roils Cody

2006-09-30T15:09:00.000-04:00

The reaction of the tourists here is almost as amusing as the name of the reporter...

By RUFFIN PREVOST
Gazette Wyoming Bureau

CODY - It's usually the mock Old West gunfight outside the Irma Hotel that has tourists talking, but an old-fashioned barroom brawl late Monday night captivated at least one out-of-town couple.

"A couple came up to me after it was all over and shook my hand and said, 'We're from South Carolina, and we just want to thank you, that was the best bar fight and greatest entertainment we've ever had,' " said Scott Richard of Cody.

Richard said he was present for the melee, and at times became sucked into the fracas. In a town known for rowdy saloon brawls, Richard said he heard the fight described as the biggest in 15 years.

Details of the incident are sketchy. Police declined to release names or other information, citing an ongoing investigation and possible charges. Some were briefly hospitalized following the fight, which ended around 12:40 a.m. Tuesday, according to eyewitnesses.

Kelly Jensen, administrative services director for the city of Cody, said she was unaware of the extent of any injuries.

According to Richard, the fight broke out shortly after midnight in the Irma's Silver Saddle bar.

"Somebody in the bar, as a joke, yelled, 'Last call for alcohol,' " said Richard. A drink then got sloshed onto the ceiling, where it dripped onto an individual who took umbrage with the turn of events, he said.

"This skinny guy stands up and starts lipping off," Richard said.

Amid an attempted apology, someone else threw a punch, and Richard said he stepped in to try to break things up but was also hit.

"And then all hell broke lose," he said.

According to eyewitness Jasper Nielson of Cody, the bar was particularly busy, with a number of hunters and outfitters present.

A large group was also in the bar celebrating a birthday, he said.

As many as a dozen people were fighting at one time, with three or four separate incidents dying down and starting again over at least a 20-minute period, Nielson said.

The fight was at times bloody and brutal, and it continued outside on the hotel porch, where a window was spattered with dried blood Thursday.

"It looked like a grenade went off," Nielson said of the scene afterward.

Although bartenders tried to intervene - including one who suffered a dislocated elbow and severe bruises - the fighting continued.

Police were delayed in responding because the two officers on duty were tied up at a previous call, where a reportedly violent suspect was barricaded in a bedroom.

Jensen said 911 dispatchers received an initial call about the Irma incident at 12:25 a.m. An off-duty police officer and a Park County Sheriff's deputy arrived at the scene by 12:41 a.m.

Some at the scene questioned that timeline, estimating a 30-minute delay, but said they were unsure when hotel staff first called police.

Officers reported learning that seven individuals were involved in the altercation, Jensen said. Nielsen estimated at least a dozen people were fighting at once.

A number of glasses and bottles were broken, according to eyewitnesses, and hotel maintenance worker K.C. Forsyth said a chair and table were broken. "That's never happened before," he said.

Officers solve overcrowding puzzle - at Krispy Kreme: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

2006-09-30T14:56:00.000-04:00

As if they didn't spend all their time there anyways...

Ex-doughnut shop answers sticky question

By Erika Pesantes
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 30 2006

Boynton Beach· Mayor Jerry Taylor admits the place he's found to house police officers, who work out of the congested police headquarters, will elicit chuckles.

But good-humored police are ready to brace themselves for the batch of jokes. In fact, bring them on, they say.

Taylor says the former Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop on Boynton Beach Boulevard just west of Interstate 95 could be perfect for a police substation. He will propose leasing space that would relieve the cramped police station during Tuesday's commission meeting.

"There's really no room to turn around. People work in the type of environment you put them in," Taylor said of the current 18,354-square-foot location. "It's not conducive to good performance if you cram people like sardines."

The Krispy Kreme site is spacious and has plenty of parking, he said. The doughnut shop, which opened in August 2003, flopped and now remains vacant and up for lease.

At the police station attached to City Hall, fingerprinting must be done in hallways that are crowded with filing cabinets and other office supplies.

Recently, a team of 18 traffic unit officers worked out of a 400-square-foot room with moldy carpets. They moved out, but 12 officers and sergeants from the Community Action Team are due to move in.

They currently work in a 150-square-foot space.

"It's not pleasant to come to work and walk through a maze to get to your office," Maj. Frank Briganti said. "At this point, we're so cramped that anything would be welcomed.

"After a few months, the doughnut jokes will wear off and we'll be happy to occupy the Krispy Kreme place."

A 2003 study found the Police Department desperately needed an additional 53,000 square feet of space to work comfortably -- nearly three times the size of the current headquarters.

Sgt. Philip Hawkins said occupying the site of the former Fire Station 2 would be ideal for police. It just needs to be revamped, he said, adding it has generators and large bay doors.

"It's got everything," he said.

Over the past five months, police officers have been shifting around the tight quarters and even overflowed into a classroom at its range at Miner Road and Gateway Boulevard.

About 200 police officers and clerical employees squeeze into the police headquarters and the 6,981-square-foot range.

And more employees are soon expected -- five additional police staffers have been budgeted for.

Taylor said leasing space to alleviate the department would be an interim solution until construction of the 65,000-square-foot police facility at the site of the proposed Emergency Operations Center at Gateway Boulevard and High Ridge Road begins in late 2009.

For now, police anxiously await relief, despite the jokes that may roll in.

"It's a bad stigma we're trying to kick," said Sgt. John Bonafair. "But we're willing to work with whatever they give us. If we get the space, we'll take the jokes."

What's Your Beer Personality?

2006-09-29T12:55:00.000-04:00

Bugger. I hate these things. I never turn out the way I want to. I should be Stella Artois. Sam Adams is for beer nerds.

You Are Samuel Adams

You're fairly easy to please when it comes to beer - as long as it's not too cheap.
You tend to change favorite beers frequently, and you're the type most likely to take a "beers of the world" tour.
When you get drunk, you're fearless. You lose all your inhibitions.
You're just as likely to party with a group of strangers as you are to wake up in a very foreign place.

What's Your Beer Personality?

Your favourite group/artist and your top 3 songs by them

2006-09-28T16:41:00.000-04:00

Saw this question on forum I frequent. This, I guess, is my answer...

Today I'm gonna go with Meat Beat Manifesto.

1. Circles from Satyricon. I first heard this album on an overnight ferry to France to meet up with my then girlfriend for Valentine's Day. It was the beginning of the end of our 2 year relationship, and the lyrics just struck me. "Why do we idolise it, if we can't justify it?" Add to that a cool acid-jazz groove, and these great discordant harmonies, this song seems shorter than it really is (4.15 minutes), but mostly because I want it to last forever.

2. Now from 99%. I've only recently (like in the last few years) been able to play catch-up with MBM's earlier stuff. Now is the perfect introduction to the band, a funky, jazzy backbeat that could have been the backdrop to an early Public Enemy track. The lyrics are little wanting, and it can be a little jarring to hear a white guy from Swindon rapping, but all the hallmarks that would make this the band that should be much bigger are there.

3. Acid Again from Actual Sounds & Voices. Where does this opening sample come from? It's brilliant... "Are you unhappy?" "I'm happiest I've ever been. I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all, really. I'm very sad, I'm... I'm not happy. I'm so fat - I don't feel very pretty. I really don't." "You know a lot about drugs?" "Oh, I live for drugs. It's great. Just lately I... freaked out... on acid... I freaked out very, very badly. You know I don't think I'll ever take acid again and before I thought that was the best thing in the world. I never want it again. Never acid again." And a slow burning Moog tune explodes into one of the coolest, aggressive live-drum breakbeats ever recorded. The simple "acid again" sample, along with an extra "I dig that" slides around the groove, giving way only to gloriously psychedelic sitar refrains, 303 knob-tweaking, chunky guitar chords and housey-synth riffs. Once it starts all I want to do is dance my freaking arse off for 7 solid minutes. It's the perfect mixture of everything Acid has come to mean to the British public; pure psychedelic electronica.

Ahem. Luckily for everyone I have no ambition to a music journalist.

VILLAGE CORPSE TWIST By LARRY CELONA, DAN KADISON and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN - New York Post Online Edition: Seven

2006-09-28T15:36:00.000-04:00

I love the last line of this story. New York's West Village is one of my favourite places to hang out when in the city. If you get a chance, go to the Four Faced Liar on West 4th Street - cheap beer, fantastic juke-box, and a great mix of people.

Most of my early West Village experiences involve hanging out with gay friends for some reason. Usually being invited to someone's party and then having the 'friend' who invited me not show up. So there I am, the only straight male at a party filled with some of the most camp gay guys I've ever seen, every single one doing their best to convince me I must be gay, too.

"Look, you must be gay! Look at your long fingernails! You're drinking gin! You're kissing boys!" Etc...

Yeah, they'd usually have me convinced by the end of the night. But, cock-tease that I am, I'd always leave 'em hanging.

Some of the gay bars in the West Village can be a little intimidating if you're straight, though, especially when you have to take a leak - best advice: take a guide with you. Finally - stay alert - that way you're less likely to end up lashed to a railing in a rubber suit like this guy...

September 28, 2006 -- Only in the West Village, kids . . .

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday - as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it's other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

"The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face," said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

"I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early."

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

An autopsy will be performed today to determine how the man died. Police sources said there was no sign of a struggle and they don't believe he was a victim of foul play.

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

"I'm staring at him and I think, 'Is that a prop or a real person?' His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn't get up, like he lost his balance," Samuel said.

"He didn't look like a person. I think he had a black mask on; I couldn't see his face.

"I was looking at him for a while. I've never been stumped before trying to identify people. I'm ashamed of myself in a way because, I didn't realize it was a human being."

A worker repairing a gas leak at Hudson and Leroy Street said "I thought it was a decoration for Halloween. I thought it was a scarecrow."

Another passer-by, Ralph Constanza, 31, said, "It looked like he had a bad night, I can tell you that."

MiamiHerald.com | 09/24/2006 | Local moms compete for 'Hot' title

2006-09-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

I really don't know what to say here, really. Most of it would be smarmy, and filled with 'Jugs of Hot MILF' style punnery. Though I imagine I could throw a little social commentary about how 'Desperate' the networks are to pull a new reality TV show out of a 'Housewives' beauty pageant.

Not to fear, though. I'm not quite lowering myself to Entertainment Tonight standards... yet.

A gaggle of gorgeous moms from across South Florida lined up in Miami Beach for a chance at cash prizes, a modeling agency interview and the title of 'Hottest Mom in America.'

BY LAURA MORALES

llmorales@MiamiHerald.com

RONNA GRADUS/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Jacqueline Atwood, 17, from Hobe Sound, keeps her mother, Danielle, 47, company as she waits to audition for 'The Hottest Mom in America', a new reality TV show.

More photos

At 5 a.m., when many partygoers are going home from clubland, a bunch of fair ladies began lining up Saturday outside an empty Miami Beach theater with no velvet rope and no bouncer.

Some wore classy, elegant dresses, while others looked set to embrace a brass pole. There were naturally pneumatic stunners and others who obviously had had some, ahem, surgical assistance.

But they all shared one sultry goal: to become the Hottest Mom in America -- and earn some cash for themselves and their kids.

There they were: scores of foxy South Florida moms flocked to the Byron Carlyle Theater on 71st Street, happy to spend up to two or three hours waiting in line for their turn to audition for the hot mom contest.

Mark Hughes, the show's executive producer, said more than 200 women turned out for the auditions. ``We want moms who are not just physically attractive, but confident, energetic, smart and involved with their kids and communities.''

Everybody, it seems, wants to be sexy from the cradle to the grave these days. Given our national obsession with hotness, it's no surprise that ''reality'' contest shows are so popular.

''I think I'm a pretty hot mom, and my son is the world to me,'' said flaxen-haired Yvonne Leibow, a Miami loan officer, communications student and mom of 2-year-old Devin. ``My family supports my being here. They agree that I'm hot.''

Gawking male motorists agreed, too. Distracted by the bulging cleavage and lithe legs on display, a few rubberneckers nearly crashed into one another.

Every so often, a crew member with a headset would run up and down the line of contestants, motioning for them to cheer wildly and wave their arms in the air whenever a TV camera ventured close.

''I don't know what the heck we're supposed to be cheering for, but here goes,'' said Meisha Robinson, a North Miami single mom and beauty salon manager. 'I'm here mostly just to say, `I did it.' My family can't believe it.''

Sagine Douge, of Hollywood, said her husband told her she was crazy. ''You're gonna get up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday?'' mimicked Douge, who has a 1-year-old son, Jordan.

To audition, the moms tell a camera why they think they should win and briefly display any showbiz talents, like singing or dancing. The computers take stills of the contestants, which are later displayed on the show's website, hottestmomin

america.com.

Through further interviews, the field will be narrowed to 50, then 10, then five, Hughes said. ``Some of the ladies see it as a chance to begin a career in TV, but most are just having fun with it.''

The winner will get $25,000, plus a $25,000 scholarship for her child or split among her children, an interview with a modeling agency and treatments with Restylane, an injectable antiwrinkle gel, for a year. Auditions are scheduled through October in Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, New York City and Los Angeles. TV stations then will bid to air the show once it's done filming, Hughes said.

Homestead ''hottie'' Stacey Christidis, wearing what looked like a shirt with the bra on the outside, said she would use the prize money to pay medical bills for her daughter Malaina, 6, who has autism.

''Motherhood is the hardest job,'' said Christidis, a doting mom who also has a 3-year-old son, Nico.

"Why not make some money at it?''

KGBT 4 - TV Harlingen, TX: Frisco outs art teacher after museum trip

2006-09-27T13:20:00.000-04:00

Friscoans: Sex-starved Puritan prudes? Maybe...

Frisco outs art teacher after museum trip

FRISCO, Texas Frisco school trustees aren't renewing the contract of a veteran art teacher who was reprimanded because a student saw a nude sculpture during a museum visit.

Sydney McGee has been on paid administrative leave from Fisher Elementary School since Friday.

McGee's contract runs through the end of the school year.

Board members declined to take questions after their closed meeting tonight. They have previously said there were concerns over McGee's performance.

Her attorney, Rogge (ROWG-EE') Dunn says he would wait for written clarification from the school district to decide how to proceed.
McGee's attorney says the teacher's troubles started after taking 89 students on a school field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art in April. The principal later admonished McGee about the trip, telling her a parent complained about a student seeing nude art.

AP Wire | 09/26/2006 | Man in thong leaves behind video of burglary attempt

2006-09-27T13:02:00.000-04:00

File under "Borat Wannabe".

FORT MITCHELL, Ky. - A Kentucky man wearing only a thong and carrying a knife is accused of videotaping himself attempting a burglary, then leaving the tape behind, police said.

Helped by the tape, police arrested Rodney McMillen, 36, of Covington, over the weekend and charged him with burglary, Police Chief Steve Hensley said. He was found at his mother's home in Norwood, Ohio, Hensley said.

McMillen is accused of breaking into a woman's apartment on Sept. 20, clad in only thong underwear and carrying a knife, Hensley said. The woman fended off the attacker, who left the apartment and fled into a stand of trees near the apartment complex, Hensley said.

Investigating officers found a video camera the burglar left in the apartment and found video of McMillen's family on the end of the tape, Hensley said.

Investigators were able to identify some of them and tracked down McMillen at his mother's house, Hensley said.

McMillen was being held in the Hamilton County Justice Center in Cincinnati on $50,000 bond, awaiting extradition to Kentucky.

Pistol Found in Carry-On at Md. Airport

2006-09-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

Luckily, it was neither liquid nor hidden in a lipstick case.

And I love how everytime ANYTHING happens now, particularly at airports, we instantly need to be told that it had nothing to do with terrorism.

(09-22) 17:53 PDT LINTHICUM, Md. (AP) --

Security screeners discovered a pistol in a carry-on bag at Baltimore's main airport Friday morning, and two concourses were evacuated when its owner disappeared, authorities said.

The bag was held at the security checkpoint at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, but the man who owned it passed through, airport spokesman Jonathan Dean said.

There was no indication of terrorism, police said.

Police, security officers and search dogs unsuccessfully hunted the terminals for a man in his early 30s, wearing blue jeans and a red and black track jacket, Transportation Security Administration police spokesman Jonathan Green said.

"We simply were acting with all due precaution," Dean said.

The pistol was a .25 caliber semiautomatic, Green said.

Concourses A and B, which serve Southwest Airlines, reopened after 90 minutes. Passengers were being required to go through screening again, Dean said.

More than a dozen flights were delayed, said Cheryl Stewart, an airport spokeswoman.

Killer Teddy Bear Leaves 2,500 Fish Dead

2006-09-27T11:53:00.000-04:00

Beware the bears, man!

(09-25) 14:16 PDT Milford, N.H. (AP) --

A teddy bear has been implicated in 2,500 deaths. Of trout, that is. State officials say a teddy bear dropped into a pool at a Fish and Game Department hatchery earlier this month clogged a drain. The clog blocked the flow of oxygen to the pool and suffocated the fish.

Hatcheries supervisor Robert Fawcett said the bear — who was dressed in yellow raincoat and hat — is believed to be the first stuffed bear to cause fatalities at the facility.

"We've had pipes get clogged, but it's usually with more naturally occurring things like a frog or even a dead muskrat," he said. "This one turned out to be a teddy bear and we don't know how it got there."

The deaths prompted Fawcett to release a written warning: "RELEASE OF ANY TEDDY BEARS into the fish hatchery water IS NOT PERMITTED."

He said it's not known who dropped the bear, but urged anyone whose bear ends up in a hatchery pool to find a worker to remove it. "They might save your teddy bear, and keep it from becoming a killer," he said.

"It's kind of a cute little teddy bear and people wouldn't think that a cute little teddy bear would be able to kill fish."

TV on the Radio give a ‘voice to our time ’ - ALTERNATIVE ROCK - MSNBC.com

2006-09-26T19:20:00.000-04:00

Easily the greatest album of this year.

NEW YORK - TV on the Radio already had a singer before Kyp Malone joined the band.

Tunde Adebimpe’s soulful, oscillating croon was considered by many one of the strongest voices in rock music, thanks partially to his ability to individually render each of the syllables in a few words like “storefront cemetery.”

The band has been a fixture of the vibrant musical scene in the hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, which has also included the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Liars. TV on the Radio, with Adebimpe’s urgent vocals and David Sitek’s layers of guitar and electronic fuzz, first showed its potential on the 2003 EP “Young Liars.”

Soon after hearing it, Malone — already a friend — joined the band, bringing an exceptionally high-pitched voice and another songwriting perspective, adding to an already talented lineup, rounded out by bassist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton.

“It’s been my dream for a long time ... to marry early ’90s noise with Usher,” says the bearded, soft-spoken Malone. “And then when I met [those] guys, it was like that can actually happen.”

“I see a space for me,” jokes Adebimpe, finishing Malone’s sentiment.

What specifically constitutes the space of TV on the Radio has led to some head-scratching metaphors and desperate grasps for language. Sitek, also the band’s producer, would prefer not to label it any more specifically than “rock.”

“I personally am trying to be like Earth, Wind and Fire and Wu-Tang,” says Adebimpe, who spent much of his childhood in Nigeria, moving to New York about 14 years ago. He remains the group’s primary vocalist.

‘Simply one of this year’s best albums’
Whatever the concoction, TV on the Radio finally sound fully formed on their new album, “Return to Cookie Mountain,” released last week on Interscope Records. Though the band’s 2004 disc, “Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes,” was reviewed well and won honors like the Shortlist Music Prize, critics say “Cookie Mountain” is their greatest achievement.

The New York Times called it “simply one of this year’s best albums”; Vanity Fair described it as “beautiful, inspired noise”; and Pitchforkmedia.com wrote that TV on the Radio “fulfill the enormous potential hinted at on its first three records.”

They also have at least one rock legend in their corner: David Bowie, who first heard the band several years ago when his doorman passed a CD along. He’s since guided them with advice and puts in a guest appearance on the song “Providence.”

“They have a strong link with the great body of American poetry, especially Beat poetry,” Bowie has said. “The sampling, multi-tracking and mashing identifies them as the spawn of a techno-industrial society.”

At a recent interview in Williamsburg, Adebimpe, Sitek and Malone lamented the transition of their neighborhood from grungy and unified to increasingly chic and socially dispersed.

Befitting their hipster roots, the three can express disdain for less progressive ways of life. They speak of “some rich person” or “accountants” like enemies, and refer to their own work as “art.” (Sitek, Malone, Adebimpe and Bunton have also individually been involved variously with painting, photography, animation and filmmaking.)

But the band spends as much time laughing as they do fretting over politics, and the overarching impression TV on the Radio gives is that they are aggressively conscious — both of themselves and their times.

“We wanted [‘Cookie Mountain’] to be the most accurate representation historically of us and our relationship with each other and the world — and that just isn’t easy,” says Sitek. “Hopefully, we’re giving a voice to our time that addresses a bunch of stuff that isn’t the most common subject matter for popular music.”

Not afraid to attack Bush
Much of the album is imbued with thoughts on the current state of the world. On the disc’s opener, “I Was a Lover,” Adebimpe and Malone sing in unison: “We’re sleepwalking through this trial/ And it’s really a crime, it’s really a crime, it’s really a crime.”

Last year after Hurricane Katrina, TV on the Radio released the song “Dry Drunk Emperor” free on their Web site. Both vicious and beautiful, it attacked President Bush, urging people to “shut down this hypocrisy.”

On Sept. 14, TV on the Radio kicked off their current tour in New Orleans, an intentionally symbolic opener for the band. Sitek, who grew up in Baltimore, sees government’s failure of cities elsewhere, though: “Everywhere is New Orleans,” he says.

“It feels criminal to me to know what’s going on in our name around this world and to just keep turning up the cognitive dissonance,” says Malone. “And everyone’s doin’ it. I’m not saying we start a militia — I don’t know, cause I don’t really know what to do.”

Shortly after saying this, TV on the Radio will head to Manhattan to perform on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” where they’ll play their blistering new single, “Wolf Like Me.”

Though Adebimpe stops short of raising an army, he spews a fury of passion through his microphone and out through television sets — his eyes closed, his head flayed backward, and his left arm waving spastically.

He sings over and over: “We’re howling forever and ever, oh oh.”

Police: MySpace photo prompted woman to hire hit man

2006-09-26T18:45:00.000-04:00

Yet another reason why I never put anyone else's face on my MySpace pages...

MESA, Ariz. — A 22-year-old woman was arrested after authorities say she tried to hire someone to kill another woman whose photo appeared on her boyfriend's MySpace.com Web page.

Heather Michelle Kane was booked Tuesday for investigation of conspiracy to commit murder, Mesa Detective Jerry Gissel said.

She was arrested after she met an undercover Mesa police detective at a grocery store, gave the officer $400 and offered to pay an additional $100 once the woman had been killed, according to court records.

The records say Kane gave the undercover officer photographs taken from her boyfriend's social networking Web page of the woman she wanted killed. She also requested a photo of the woman's dead body.

It wasn't clear if the boyfriend and the targeted woman were romantically involved, Gissel said.

“Madden” curse strikes again? - Reuters Newsblogs

2006-09-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

I love this game, even though I'm still playing the 2004 edition. Please Madden, don't put any Giants' players on the cover next year, mmkay?

It looks like the infamous “Madden curse” has claimed another victim. Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander broke his foot in Sunday’s game against the New York Giants and will be warming the benches for at least two weeks.

Alexander, last season’s NFL MVP and cover athlete for “Madden NFL 07″, joins a growing list of players who have been injured or had a dismal season after having their likeness on the cover of the best-selling football game from Electronic Arts Inc.

Athletes poo-poo the curse, which some say has taken over where the so-called “Sports Illustrated jinx” left off.

Here’s a quote from Alexander, which was attributed to an August story in USA Today: “The way I look at it, if I was going to get hurt this year, being on the cover had nothing to do with it,” he said. “So if I was going to be hurt, I’d rather be on the cover than not on it.”

Here’s a list of prior “cursed” ”Madden” cover players, from an August 27 report in the Los Angeles Times:

2001: Eddie George of the Tennessee Titans, which went to the Super Bowl the previous season but lost, bobbled a pass in a playoff game against Baltimore. The pass was intercepted by a Baltimore defender and returned for a touchdown. The Titans lost.

2002: Quarterback Daunte Culpepper sat out five games because of injury, and his Minnesota Vikings finished 5-11.

2003: Running back Marshall Faulk suffered an ankle injury and failed to rush for 1,000 yards, and his St. Louis Rams finished 7-9, after having gone to the Super Bowl the previous season.

2004: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick broke his leg the day after the video game hit stores and ended up playing only five games.

2005: Linebacker Ray Lewis sat out a game because of injury, ended his season without a single interception, and his Baltimore Ravens failed to make the playoffs.

2006: Donovan McNabb, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, sat out the last seven games due to injury. The Eagles lost five of them and failed to make the playoffs.

Needed this game this morning

2006-08-16T14:46:00.000-04:00

Had a stupid meeting this morning where at least five of the following meaningless corporate phrases were used: Going Forward, Benchmark, Mindset, Best Practice, Well-Positioned, Fast Track, Client Experience, Leveraging, Synergy, Result-Driven and Assimilate.

Probably could have won if I had discovered Corporate Bingo before.

Cats That Look Like Hitler

2006-08-10T11:29:00.000-04:00

No idea why anyone would not find this funny. Some people don't however, but if it was called Cats That Look Like Charlie Chaplin, would they still complain?

Best Craig's List Entry Evar

2006-07-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

I think this is for real...

Jets Season Ticket - FREE! - Read Inside

Reply to: sale-186845632@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-07-27, 8:59AM EDT

Hello Friends,

I'm writing today with a terrific offer for a huge Jets fan!

How would you like to have a free season ticket to see every home game for the entire year? What if I told you the seat was only seven rows up section 132, close to the field and directly in line with the 45-yard line?

Interested? I thought so.

But here's the best part: I'm giving away the ticket for FREE. My wife, my usual game-time companion, recently left me for her business partner. His name is Jack O'Shea, and they had sex for the first time in a hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at a conference. But that's neither here nor there.

The point is, my wife always used to accompany me to games, and it will be very hard for me to go this year without her. I'm looking for someone friendly, easy-going, and tolerant to attend all Jet home games in her place. Gentlemen only, please.

You're probably wondering: why don't you just ask one of your friends? Nope, it won't work. All my friends remind me of my wife, because we used to attend social functions together. Often, Jack O'Shea was also present, though I never suspected at the time that my wife would have an affair with him. I always thought she was happy.

So I'm offering the ticket for free to a relative stranger. However, there are certain rules you must follow.

1) Do NOT mention Jack O'Shea. As you can imagine, it's a really sore subject with me. He slept with my wife, and continues to do so. Therefore, Jack O'Shea must remain out of our conversations.

2) Be a HUGE Jets fan. This includes drinking beer, at least three per game, and cheering loudly for the Jets and making rude comments about other teams.

3) Respect the officials. I don't go for profanity. That's the kind of thing Jack O'Shea would do, and it's classless.

4) Number Four is the most important. My wife, before she left me, would wear a New York Jets cheerleading outfit to all the games. Everyone in our section would comment on how attractive she looked, and some would make cat calls. This is one of the things I will miss the most. I will not ask you to wear the cheer leading top, as I know this is demeaning for a male. However, I do insist that you wear the New York Jets cheerleading SKIRT.

It's okay if you wear it over a pair of jeans. You may NOT wear it UNDER the jeans. That defeats the entire purpose. Also, you may NOT retaliate if anyone is to make cat calls at you. I will provide the skirt.

5) Jack O'Shea, who used to be our family friend, has a pair of season tickets only three rows away. He will probably be taking my wife to most games. As you can imagine, I do NOT want to seem bitter or sad. Whenever she looks at us, we must both cheer loudly and act as though we are having the time of our lives. If she approaches, I will plug my ears with both fingers, look at you, and say "Do you hear something?" At this point, you should look around, puzzled, and say "No, I don't hear anything." We will repeat this as necessary until she goes back to her new boyfriend, Jack O'Shea.

6) Did I mention you should be a HUGE Jets fan?! We're New York's team! I think this year we'll win the super bowl!

That about covers it, my future friend. Please respond with a bit about yourself, and why you'd be the perfect candidate for my great season ticket!

Please do not mention Jack O'Shea in your reply.

no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

186845632

Bugger

2006-06-20T17:44:00.000-04:00

2-2 draw with Sweden.

Sweden 2-2 England

It's a draw, and we're through to the 2nd round, but for some reason I keep feeling like we lost this one. Especially after we were playing so well in the first half.

At this rate, we don't stand a chance against Ecuador. The team will have a lot of thinking to do before the weekend.

Camden Town Boy

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APP.COM - Playtime on peaceful grounds | Asbury Park Press Online

NewsChannel 5.com – Nashville, Tennessee - School Board Meets About Possible Bible Class

Go Wildcats! - Deadspin

My Belief-O-Matic Results

High court rejects sex-toy case - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

This planet is crazy: US library ban on JK Rowling - most wanted

Houston Community Newspapers Online - Parent criticizes book 'Fahrenheit 451'

LA Weekly - ¡Viva Border Volleyball!

By JOSHUAH BEARMAN

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 3:00 pm

Junk Food Blog: Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick

BillingsGazette.com :: Bar fight at the Irma roils Cody

Officers solve overcrowding puzzle - at Krispy Kreme: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

What's Your Beer Personality?

Your favourite group/artist and your top 3 songs by them

VILLAGE CORPSE TWIST By LARRY CELONA, DAN KADISON and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN - New York Post Online Edition: Seven

MiamiHerald.com | 09/24/2006 | Local moms compete for 'Hot' title

A gaggle of gorgeous moms from across South Florida lined up in Miami Beach for a chance at cash prizes, a modeling agency interview and the title of 'Hottest Mom in America.'

BY LAURA MORALES

llmorales@MiamiHerald.com

KGBT 4 - TV Harlingen, TX: Frisco outs art teacher after museum trip

AP Wire | 09/26/2006 | Man in thong leaves behind video of burglary attempt

By MARTHA DELLER

Star-Telegram staff writer