Drinking whiskey clear!
My take on news from around the world…
Sad news from New York:
NEW YORK – The New York Post is dropping Liz Smith’s column this week to save money, leaving the legendary gossip columnist without a newspaper home in the city for the first time in 33 years. “I’m very sorry that that has come to an end, and that I wasn’t valuable enough for them to keep me on,” the 86-year-old Smith said Tuesday.
The bar is in New York’s Chinatown. It’s a recent Saturday afternoon. It looks beer-stained and sweaty with the lights on, packed with plastic folding chairs and power cords. A giant disco ball hangs above an audience of 425 who are all on their MacBooks. They talk, blog, tweet and text during presentations in one fluid, convergent communicative stream. Even virtual people like to have actual conventions.
There are a few people at this conference who qualify as Internet celebs — people you either have or haven’t heard of in direct proportion to how much time you ever spend online: Obama Girl is expected to be here; so are well-known bloggers, fontmakers and stunt artists. (Hey, there’s the guy who once a year inspires hundreds of people to ride subway systems at the same time, without pants.)
But the guy everyone really hopes to meet is named “moot.”
The remains of a five-year-old Australian boy have been found in the stomach of a crocodile, police say.
Jeremy Doble was last seen on 8 February playing near his family’s home beside a flooded mangrove swamp in northern Queensland.
Police now say he was attacked and eaten by a 14ft (4.3m) crocodile who was then trapped in a flooder river.
via BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Boy’s body found in crocodile.
When police arrived, they saw a stopped, running car at a green light, facing eastbound on Speedway.When the officer approached the car, he saw the woman was asleep, with her dress pulled up to her stomach and her underwear pulled down to her mid-thighs.
The officer knocked on the window several times. She did not respond, so he opened the door and began to shake her arm. Upon opening the door, he saw a three-quarters-empty bottle of Sailor Jerry Navy Rum on the floorboard of the passenger side. There was a strong odor of intoxicants coming from the woman and the car.
After about two minutes of trying to wake her up, she awoke, saying, “No, Clint, not right now.”
via Police Beat – News.
One of the most physically painful TV moments in our lifetime was having to watch poor Montel Williams sell the last remainder of his soul for worthless Barack Obama commemorative coins.
It seemed just yesterday that the talk show host with the Yul Brenner scalp was chumming it up on the daytime talk show circuit, interviewing women who love too much or husbands who love way too much with people other than their wives. It was like watching the rock-bottom moment of a man’s life in the wake of his waning glory days without it airing on VH1.
via Obama coins hawked by Montel Williams a ripoff? Well… duh! – TV Squad.
– Here’s a funny story about my “birth town” of Snellville, GA (my family moved from Snellville to Duluth when I was 13; I consider Snellville to be my “birth town” and Duluth to be my “home town”, if that makes any sense). It seems that the mayor isn’t getting along with a city council member. In fact, relations between the two are so bad that Mayor Jerry Oberholtzer has been asking for police escorts… to the bathroom at City Hall! I guess Oberholtzer is afraid of getting peed on or beaten up… or something.
– If you want news about the Carolina Panthers football team, the last place you want to go is their website. While other teams have sites where mild dissent is welcomed in blogs or opinion pieces, the Carolina Panthers’ site is all about toeing the company line. That’s why the QC Sports Blog advises you to look at the Panthers’ online store – where Julius Peppers and Ken Lucas jerseys are on sale. Is this their subtle way of saying that Peppers and Lucas won’t be back?
– As you probably know, many of England’s cities date back thousands of years. In fact, some of the neighborhoods and streets in Britain are so old that people have forgotten how an area got its name in the first place. This has led to endless arguments over the use of grammar on street signs. For example, one London neighborhood is known as “Earls Court” to the post office and local council, but “Earl’s Court” to the London Underground. The city of Birmingham is so sick of hearing complaints that “St. Paul’s Square” should be “St. Pauls Square” or “Kings Norton” should be “King’s Norton” (or even “Kings’ Norton”) that it has abolished apostrophes on all street signs.
– The UK spent $6.6 billion on a new identification card system. The new ID card has biometric technology built into it… but guess how many card readers the UK government bought? That’s right: none. Not a one. Not a single police station, customs house, passport control line or court house has a reader in the entire United Kingdom. So all that biometric data – the stuff that’s supposed to differentiate the almost $7 billion system from the basic laminated ID cards that have been around for ages – is useless. Read more here.
– Around 92% of all Windows bugs could be “fixed” if people would run without admin rights. Unfortunately, Microsoft historically didn’t take much action in this regard (it wasn’t until Vista that they came up with UAC), and because of this, many lazy software vendors wrote code that would only run under an administrator account. So now people feel like they have to run as an Administrator. I wish someone would fix this situation. Read more about it here.
– The economic downturn is really hurting the “entertainment” industry. Specifically, it’s really hurting events you have to buy a ticket for, like sporting events, concerts, circuses, etc. (which is why I put “entertainment” in quotes). Many sports teams are trying to ease the hurt by offering “package deals”. For example, you might be able to get 4 $100 tickets, parking, 2 game programs, 4 hot dogs and 4 drinks for $80. But this promotion is the lamest ever: buy $48 worth of tickets to see Sesame Street Live’s “Elmo Makes Music” event at the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, New Jersey… and get four free tacos from Taco Bell! Jeez – why even bother?
Read about it here.
– The North Carolina legislature, never one to shy away from taxing anything that moves, is considering taxing digital downloads like music and movies. This is hardly surprising, as North Carolina has the highest tax rate in the South. Unfortunately, the $12 million that such a tax would allegedly take in is only a squirt of water in the $20 billion bucket that is the state’s current budget deficit.
– Speaking of deficits, the United States Post Service has such an operating deficit that it’s considering dropping a day of mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure. What may surprise you about this is the actual day the USPS is considering: Tuesday! Yeah, I thought it would be Saturday, too.
– Travel site TripAdvisor has come up with a list of the worst hotels in America, based on the ratings users leave on the site. The “winner” is Hotel Carter, a budget hotel located near New York’s Times Square. You should check out the reviews of the place: not only does almost everyone rant about how awful the place is, many have also uploaded pictures of the bed bug bites they recieved whilst staying there.
– In sports news, although the Charlotte Bobcats (the team) are showing signs of life, the Charlotte Bobcats (the business entity) are still struggling. Amusingly, while the Bobs have beaten several good teams lately (causing local media and bloggers to start talking about how the Bobcats are “for real” this year), the team is actually only 1 game ahead of last year: 18-26 this year vs. 17-27 last year. But then again, what do you expect from a team with an absentee owner that doesn’t even know his way around town?
– It seems like there have been a million articles published about the Super Bowl this week, but so far I’ve only found that this one could hold my interest. It’s all about how the Steelers and Cards are a lot alike in business terms. It’s a good read – you should check it out!
– Lastly, Davidson phenom Stephen Curry hit a 75 footer in last night’s game. Check out the video here.
Dear Royce Zeigler II and Kimberly Trenor,
You will die the most painful death imaginable and then burn in hell for all eternity.
Love ya,
God
Read the sad story here.
