Year: 2009

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Captain Obvious returns!

Why is it that some men feel the need to tell me that they would sleep with some obviously beautiful celebrity?

You’d “tap” Jessica Alba? Really? Really? Welcome to the least exclusive club in the entire world, buddy: “Men Who Would Sleep With Jessica Alba”! We currently have 3.8 billion members. We meet on Tuesdays at the Y. Bring cookies. Come early – seating is limited.

Call me stupid… call me old-fashioned… but I always thought that “I’d tap that” was used when talking about friends, chicks at the grocery store… that kind of thing, or maybe a celebrity that most people wouldn’t consider to be attractive. In fact, the whole point of “I’d tap that” was to bring attention to the fact that you’d sleep with someone who wasn’t especially known for her looks. Thus, you’d say something like “You know Brenda at JustCuts? I’d tap that!” or “I can’t help it…  I’d hit Kirstie Alley”.

To say that you’d “tap” or “hit” someone obvious like Scarlett Johanssen, Angelina Jolie, January Jones or Katy Perry… well, it just sounds stupid. If given the chance, all of us, the entire male population of planet Earth, would do the same thing, genius. I know your mom told you that you were special, but really… you’re not.

But that’s just me talking.

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Monday’s “Random Stuff” Post

– Heroes star Hayden Panettiere was the star of the recent bomb, I Love You, Beth Cooper. If you saw the film (or the trailer, or the commercial) you might remember the pivotal opening scene, where a high school valedictorian uses his commencement address to announce his longtime crush on Panettiere’s title character. Well, it seems that a jackass viral marketing team paid a real-life valedictorian in Los Angeles $1800 to “spontaneously” reveal her secret crush during her own commencement address. A member of the marketing team was on hand to record it for posting to YouTube. The team did not ask for permission from the school administration or the Los Angeles Unified School District… so parents were subjected to what was essentially a marketing gimmick for a crappy movie in the middle of their children’s high school graduation. Stay classy, marketing folks!

– Food Network star Guy Fieri’s two restaurants are getting horrible reviews on Yelp.com. It’s unclear whether the restaurants actually suck, or if this is some kind of backlash against the celebrity or what. It’s still funny, though.

– Barnes and Noble are adding DRM to certain ebooks… to “protect the copyright”… of public domain books. I don’t understand it, either.

– A 14 year-old British racing star who was nearly decapitated in a racing incident has made a full (and remarkable) recovery.

– A simple, $5000 facelift surgery might cure migranes.

– Gibraltar’s airport has a major road that runs across a runway:

Gibraltar Airport

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Tweets in Outlook

Twitter is, of course, a highly popular “microblog” site where people post short items about their lives. Microsoft Outlook is an all-in-one program that does email, RSS feeds, calendaring, task lists and more.

If, like me, you’re one of those people who uses Outlook several hours a day, you might be interested in TwInbox, a free plug-in that allows you to send, receive, archive and search tweets in Outlook:

TwInbox

Setup is really simple: just install the plug-in and provide it with your Twitter login information. The plug-in allows you to receive all your tweets in a single folder, or you have have TwInbox create subfolders for each person you’re following. As mentioned, you can create new tweets from Outlook, too. What’s more, because every tweet becomes a standard Outlook post, you can archive the tweets to a PST file and search them like anything else in Outlook! In fact, the only thing you can’t do is follow new people (you’ll still need the web interface for that).

TwInbox is free and available here.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-02

  • So the US loses to Mexico 5-0… and the 14 US soccer fans are sad. #
  • Fact: No one knows who owns the Frusen Glädjé brand. Kraft says it sold it to Unilever in 1993; Unilever says it wasn't part of the deal. #
  • Man, I'm hungry! #
  • @goodbyesimone Please come to Charlotte, NC soon! 🙂 #
  • TFLN: "I feel like tequila is God's way of lighting my fuse to do something awesome" #
  • Pip Brown is 30 years old? She looks like she should be hanging out with Ashley Tisdale! #
  • @ Dammit Janet #
  • Christopher Dodd has prostate cancer? There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not finding it… #
  • Glen Campbell is covering the Foo Fighters now? http://ping.fm/rQghr #

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Hotel Babylon: Season 4, Episode 6

Hotel Babylon
Season 4, episode 6
Aired: July 31, 2009 on BBC1

hotel_babylon_s04_e06_01

SYNOPSIS

Hotel Babylon is in trouble. Thanks to an accounting error, the hotel now owes £200,000 in taxes. Sam thought he’d fixed the problem when he snagged a “royal wedding” for the hotel – a wedding between a member of Britain’s 24th wealthiest family and a minor princess from Liechtenstein’s royal family. As always, though, things don’t go according to plan: the groom was spotted cavorting with another woman, so now the wedding’s off… and the £250,000 that Sam was charging an Italian gossip magazine for the wedding pictures falls through… or does it? Sam has an idea. Since Gennaro Fazio, the Italian magazine’s owner, doesn’t know what the couple looks like, the hotel will have a fake wedding, thus bringing in the much needed £250,000.

Meanwhile, Tony spies a lonely teenage guest, Jo (Kelly Osborne) and tries to play “friend matchmaker” with equally lonely Mandy (Eleanor Gecks). Mandy is a competitive swimmer, and is staying at the Babylon to film a commercial, for which she thinks she’s getting paid £60,000. Her overbearing parents seem to be enjoying the good life – ordering expensive wines and high-end dinners, having expensive designer shoes brought to the hotel – while Mandy is forced to work and train almost non-stop. After Mandy’s mother, Alexis (Annabelle Apsion) rubs Tony the wrong way, he tells Jo how much money Mandy is really getting paid to film the commercial – £300,000! Jo, of course, tells Mandy, who retaliates by inviting her grandmother to take charge of her finances.

Continue reading “Hotel Babylon: Season 4, Episode 6”

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Corporations suck…

I love America as much as the next guy, but sometimes American corporations make me so mad… I just don’t even know what to do.

Here’s a couple examples:

– Xcel Energy, an energy company in the American Midwest, is hurt and angry that people might have the nerve to use solar power instead of (or in addition to) the company’s electricity. Their solution? Charge people for not using them!

– Did you know that many companies have arrangement with AT&T to provide discounted wireless services to their employees? Well, guess what? To get the discount, you have to pay a $36 activation fee!

This last thing isn’t about an American corporation, but it bothers me nevertheless: you know those American flag lapel pins that Barack Obama got in trouble for not wearing during the campaign? Well, British police officers have been wearing similar (British) ones in support of their troops overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan… until now. Someone found them “offensive”, and now the cops are being ordered to cease wearing them.

What’s with Europeans? I “get” that they think Americans are weird for flying the flag everywhere. And I can even almost see their point. But there are people who live in Britain who find the flag offensive? Really? Really? Sure, America’s got a few neo-Nazis, Communists and Black Panther types that feel the same way, but they’re hardly numerous enough to be taken seriously.

Europeans are weird.

UPDATE: The Metropolitan Police changed its mind; the Union flag lapel pins are now OK.

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Save the Cheerleaders!

This is just disturbing:

[A] suit was filed in Mississippi that alleges a school official—more specifically a teacher acting in her capacity as a cheerleading coach—demanded that members of her squad hand over their Facebook login information. According to the suit, the teacher used it to access a student’s account, which included a heated discussion of some of the cheerleading squad’s internal politics. That information was then shared widely among school administrators, which resulted in the student receiving various sanctions.

This is wrong on so many levels. I understand that many schools have “conduct policies” where students may be disciplined for activities that take place off school grounds and not on the school’s clock. For example, a kid can get kicked off the football team for posting to MySpace or Facebook a picture of himself smoking a joint. I don’t agree with those policies, but I can see where school administrators are coming from.

Continue reading “Save the Cheerleaders!”

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Space Stuff

Here are a couple of groovy new things from the astronomy geeks:

Soap Bubble Nebula

Pictured above is the “Soap Bubble Nebula”. Originally discovered by amateurs, this rare nebula shows the moment when a star explodes and expands out to form a gas ring. Read more about it here. You can find a high-res version of the above image here.

Flying Saucer Cloud

Pictured above is a cloud that looks remarkably like a flying saucer. The picture was taken by scientists aboard the International Space Station. Read more about it here.