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A Strange Coincidence

So yesterday I was reading this thread over at the SDMB about strange coincidences in people’s lives, so I thought I’d share my own story:

“Karen” transferred to my high school in my senior year. She liked the same music I did, we had similar senses of humor, and she liked to party, so we became fast friends for the next couple of years.

Karen was really wild though, and she was eventually kicked out of her house for stealing money. So she moved in with a friend… and stole all of his cash, did all his drugs, and ran up his phone bill. She then moved to Pensacola, where she moved in with a girl… and, after a couple of months, stole all her cash, did all her drugs, and ran up her phone bill. She then moved to New Orleans, where she moved in with a guy and (wait for it) stole all his cash, did all his drugs and ran up his phone bill.

Karen would then move back to Atlanta and try to reconcile with her family. But her wild ways would eventually get the best of her, and she would move out and start her “Triangle of Terror” all over again: ripping people off in Atlanta, then Pensacola, then New Orleans, then Atlanta again.

She would normally call me when she was back in Atlanta, and at one point it really seemed as though she had a genuine interest in getting her act together. Things were going so well, in fact, that her grandmother (her legal guardian, the one she had stolen from to get kicked out in the first place) allowed her to have a friend from Pensacola stay with the family for a week. The friend was named Jessie, and I remember her well because I picked her up from the airport (and because she also burned a gigantic cigarette hole in the back seat of my car after passing out drunk a couple days later, but that’s neither here nor there).

Continue reading “A Strange Coincidence”

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FRIDAY FUN: Best Coast

I really fell in love with the song “When I’m With You” by the band Best Coast a couple of months ago. But my love affair has been rekindled now that the official music video has been released. The Internet also seem to love it too, judging by how many places have posted the video:

I guess that chick likes hamburgers… which makes her kinda hot.

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Friday’s Roundup

– The Smoking Gun has posted the original police report about the Ben Roethlisberger fiasco in Milledgeville here. It’s pretty disgusting.

– Speaking of The Smoking Gun, I just noticed that they have greatly expanded their archive of concert riders. Who knew that Def Leppard ate more like grandparents than rock stars?

– In an interview with Cnet, famous hacker Marc Maiffret has declared Microsoft software to be more secure than Apple’s. Specifically, he says that Apple tries “to market themselves as more secure than the PC, that you don’t have to worry about viruses. Anytime there’s been a hacking contest, within a few hours someone’s found a new Apple vulnerability. If they were taking it seriously, they wouldn’t claim to be more secure than Microsoft because they are very much not.” Read the entire interview – it’s really worth it.

– While we’re on the subject of security… for a while now, I’ve been trying to tell people that the popular “alternative” PDF reader Fox-It is not necessarily any more secure than Adobe Reader. Here’s at least one person who agrees with me.

– Perhaps it surprised researchers, but news that tainted fruits and veggies end up in overpriced inner-city markets rather than the ‘burbs is no news to me.

– Hey, do you have a spare £6.2 million lying around? Then you could have bought a rare 17th century Persian rug from Christies. The rug, which sold for 20 times what the auction house had expected, is now known as the “World’s Most Expensive Rug”.

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Roethlisberger to go?

It’s just part of the NFL’s considerable rumor mill at this point, but sources are saying that the Steelers might be looking to trade Big Ben:

Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson is reporting that the team is at a “tipping point” with Roethlisberger. Team ownership is apparently “shaken” by how much Steelers fans are irked by all the bad press their team is getting.

Wow. I don’t know what to say. On a personal level, I think he should been shown the door weeks ago. But he is a great quarterback, and it’s hard to imagine the Steelers without him. On the other hand, trading Ben not only frees $65 million in salary, it would also (presumably) give Pittsburgh a metric ass load of draft picks.

I know Ben’s reputation is shot to hell in Pittsburgh, but is this really what we want?

via Steelers listening to offers for Roethlisberger?.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-11

  • Just because your plan has unlimited text messages, that doesn't mean you should take it as a challenge! #
  • wonders how many people shouting "dog murderer" are also pro-abortion… and how many of them offered to take the dog. #
  • @AnglophileA http://tinyurl.com/yhbvrt3 #
  • OK. Time to change the subject! #
  • OMG! It's finally raining in Charlotte! My hunny will be so happy! Take THAT pollen! #
  • Testing testing #
  • Testing (again) #
  • @askseesmic Ping is posting my Facebook pings as wall posts, not status updates. Other networks work fine. Any ETA on a fix? Thanks! #
  • @DrPizza About the Ping\FB thing, see this: http://tinyurl.com/ykdz7q2 PS – its Rex Fenestrarum from Ars, not a spammer! in reply to DrPizza #
  • "Take a trip around the world today, in the back seat rolling down a shady lane…" #

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Awwww crap! (Ashes to Ashes)

Just a heads-up:

I was out of town last week when the first episode of season 3 of Ashes to Ashes aired in the UK. I didn’t get to watch the episode until I returned home this past Monday night.

I have company coming in from out of town this weekend, so when I heard the announcer say that Ashes would “return in two weeks”, I was happy. I figured that this would give me lots of time this week to catch up on errands and clean up the house for my guests, so I could start on the recap next Monday… and be fully ready for episode two next week.

Well, come to find out the “back in two weeks” thing only applies to the high-def version of the show. BBC HD is apparently running coverage of The Masters golf tournament this week on their HD channel. So the SD version will air in the UK in just a couple of hours.

So it seems that I’ll be two episodes behind when I start the recaps on Monday. My apologies – life got in the way the past two weeks!

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R.I.P. Malcolm McLaren

RIP Malcolm… [pours a bit of his 40 on the curb]

The former manager of the Sex Pistols and one of the seminal figures of the punk rock era, Malcolm McLaren, died Thursday, his son said. He was 64.

Joe Corre said his father died of an aggressive form of cancer in Switzerland, declining to give the exact location because he said he wanted to avoid a media scrum.

via Sex Pistols’ former manager McLaren has died at 64.

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Duran Duran alert!

Duran Duran debut albumAs I’ve mentioned several times on this site, Duran Duran’s self-titled debut album is one of my all time favorite albums. It was one of the first records I ever bought, and I was certainly the first album I ever bought where I said “this music is for me”.

A few months ago, word leaked that the band was working on a “deluxe version” of this album (as well as Seven and the Ragged Tiger and Arcadia’s So Red The Rose; Rio was done last year).

The three disc set – which includes a remastered version of the album, a disc full of demos and rare live recordings, and a DVD of some rare videos such as live Old Grey Whistle Test performances and the “club version” of the “Planet Earth” video – won’t go on sale for at least a few weeks in the US – Amazon says April 20; DD’s website says it was pushed back to May 20. But the disc has already been released in the UK, and mp3 rips are already showing up online.

Here are some quick thoughts about the set:

– Lots of people are trashing the album remaster, saying it’s the “worst they’ve ever heard”. I won’t go that far – in fact, as far as I can tell, it sounds okay to me… it’s just not that great. I’m listening to the remastered version of “Girls on Film” as I type this, and it sounds more or less like a slightly tinny version of the last (2003) CD issue… and not “as tinny as a 70s TV”, as others have complained.

– The demo version of “Girls on Film” is surprisingly… rocky!

– It seems that “Planet Earth” once had an additional verse. The demo version – which clocks in at 5:03 – has an ending verse which goes something like this:

I came outside
I saw the night fall into rain
She brightened (?) flashes in my brain
Whatever happened to the world we used to know
I’ve got you coming over here

You can also hear this verse in some early live bootlegs, but it’s interesting to hear an “official” version of the “lost” verse.

– And lastly… the thing hardcore Duranies have been waiting to hear for years… the original version of “Tel Aviv”. The version we all know and love is an instrumental tune, thrown in as the last track on the debut album. With the demo, we find out that it was originally a long song (6:03) and had a full set of lyrics. Have a listen:

[audio:duran_aviv.mp3]

Wow! It’s just… something to finally hear this song after almost thirty years. I’ve known about the “original” version of “Tel Aviv” for years, since a snippet of the lyrics once appeared in a Duran Duran book in a photograph of one of Simon’s early lyric notebooks. I mean, I don’t “feel like I can die happy now” having heard the song… but as a longtime Duran Duran fan, I feel like one of the biggest mysteries of the band has finally been solved… ya know?