Blogs are Stupid

Simply the Best

This is so....random....

From realityblurred.com:


The Surreal Life 5 cast announced.
Kathy Griffin was half-right: The Surreal Life 5 is coming to VH1, but The Amazing Race 6's Jonathan won't be the reality TV cast member. Instead, that role will be filled by two people: The Apprentice's Omarosa, fresh from her Fear Factor appearance, and Top Model's Janice Dickinson. The other cast members are Jose Canseco, Bronson Pinchot, and Salt-n-Pepa's Pepa. The show debuts in September.

Jose Canseco....Omarosa...and Bronson Pinchot????

From one of my roommates:
"Not that you need any more ammo to ridicule VA, but ...

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=621173"

The percentage of Virginians qualifying as obese is growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the nation, according to a federal study.

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System found that 23.7 percent of 1,027 Virginians surveyed by telephone qualified as obese. That's up from 9.9 percent of 170 respondents in 1990, and gives the state the nation's fastest growing waistline.

The first 15 minutes of the next episode are available here.

Like I've said before, if you haven't seen the BBC version, netflix it now. It's awesome.

From the site the episode is hosted on:


• "Are you sure about that tie?"

• "Have you heard about any job openings?"

• "I can't stay late today. I have a little date with Susie from accounting."

• "I hope to work for a great leader one day."

• "I think I left those contracts at the bar."

• "Wow, how big is your HR file?"

• "Aren't you a little old to be a manager?"

• "Wish me luck - big interview today!"

• "I am a little hung over, so can we talk later?"

• "It's been a tough day. Can I have a hug?"

I think I'm gonna stop posting on this soon...its getting old...but for today:

USA Today reported that the No. 2 fast food chain is set to debut its Enormous Omelet Sandwich Monday.

The sandwich will have one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon, according to the newspaper.

Chris [10:47 AM]: http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/28/news/midcaps/burgerking_breakfast/index.htm?cnn=yes
Pete[10:48 AM]: holy cow
Pete[10:48 AM]: you want it, don't you?
Pete[10:48 AM]: haha
Pete[10:49 AM]: that's a nice qoute @ the end


"The critics will still label it food porn," Sherri Daye Scott, editor at fast-food magazine QSR, told the paper. "But the average male fast-food customer does not have a problem with this."

I wasn't going to blog this week and then i saw this:

SleepTracker Watch:

Heres the intro paragraph from the review page:

A few weeks ago we told you about a product called SLEEPTRACKER. The SLEEPTRACKER watch is unique in that while it tells you the time and has a built-in alarm like every other digital watch, this one actually monitors your sleep and wakes you at the moment that your body would best adjust from moving from a sleeping state to being awake. Does it live up to the hype?


it looks really interesting...

You won $100,000! Whoops, never mind
Thousands thought they won big in the Daily News' scratch-off game, until the correction ran.
March 21, 2005: 4:08 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Thousands of New Yorkers thought they had won up to $100,000 over the weekend in the New York Daily News Scratch 'n' Match game -- until the newspaper ran a correction.

While the News ran a notice touting a "special announcement" on the front page of Monday editions, readers didn't know about the correction until they opened the paper. Stories about the flap ran in rival papers including Newsday and the New York Times.

Whereas this guy is just funny:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biggest individual lottery winner had no time to celebrate after becoming 20.4 million ($27 million) richer, because he was too worried about being late for work.

When the salesman, who was not identified by WestLotto, arrived Thursday to buy his weekly lottery ticket at a shop in the industrial Ruhr area he was told last week's 12 ticket that he hadn't bothered to check had won the jackpot.

The man's reaction left the lottery operator dumbfounded.

"After he was told he had won the jackpot, he said he didn't have time to chat because he would get into trouble with his boss," a lottery spokesman in the western city of Muenster said.

Instead, he rushed off to catch a bus to work.

There were few details about the lucky man, a pigeon-lover in his 30s, except that he planned to trade in his rented apartment for something a little bigger in the country.

It was not known if he would stay on in his job as a salesman.

Slate.com Bushism of the day:

"I repeat, personal accounts do not permanently fix the solution."—Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005

I can't find the link on si.com, so until I do, here it is:

Incredible Lightness of Being Gilbert
Printed by Sports Illustrated
Story by Chris Ballard

His routines are eccentric, his workouts defy logic and his jokes inspire teammates to choke him. So how is it that Gilbert Arenas is the driving force of the resurgent Wizards?

When Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas was a rookie with Golden State, teammate Troy Murphy decided to give his mother a tour of the Warriors' practice facility one afternoon. "We came into the workout area, and music was blasting, and the place was empty," Murphy recalls. "Except for Gilbert on the treadmill." Nor was Arenas alone. His two pit bulls were on treadmills beside him, tongues swinging to and fro. "It was like he was their trainer," says Murphy, shaking his head at the memory. "He was bragging how he got them up to 3.7 miles and he'd have them at 4.0 the next week

Three years later Arenas remains just as unorthodox, not to mention just as zealous, about his training. When the team is idle he often works out three times a day: first with the team at practice, then to do drills at 8 p.m. and a third time around midnight, when he hoists 300 jumpers with the rebounding machine. His rationale: Since most of his peers don't work out during the season, this is his chance to overtake them. And the key wrinkle to this master plan for NBA domination? Starting with the 42nd game -- the season's precise midpoint -- Arenas stops the extra workouts. "So while everyone else is burning out," he says with a conspiratorial nod "I'm finally getting my legs.”

Asked about this logic, Wizards coach Eddie Jordan offers a resigned shrug. "Chalk that up to Gilbertology," he says. "There's ideology, and then there's Gilbertology." Indeed there is. Even in the warped world of NBA players, Arenas is eccentric -- a hypercompetitive, big-hearted prankster who marches not only to a different drummer but also to a rhythm section all his own. Take his elaborate pregame routine: He gets his meal from the same place (Boston Market), gets dressed in the same meticulous order (jersey first), listens to the same music in the same order (Lil' John last) and, when the team huddles up, reaches under forward Antawn Jamison's jersey to tickle his underarm in the same spot. That most teammates embrace him as "different" (guard Larry Hughes) or "colorful" (center Brendan Haywood) is due in large part to the fact that the 23-year-old Arenas is also very, very good. At week's end he was averaging 25.4 points (seventh in the league), 4.4 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.97 steals to lead the Wizards -- who won 25 games last season – to a 33-27 record, the third-best in the Eastern Conference.

At 6'4" and 205 pounds, Arenas is powerful enough to bull his way to the basket -- "a straight-line assassin," Jordan calls him -- as fast as anyone in the league not named Iverson or Parker, and able to dunk on anything that might get in his way. He can hit both the midrange jumper and the three, a rare combination in the dunk-or-distance NBA. "A bitch to guard" is how Houston Rockets guard David Wesley grimly described Arenas, who scored 33 in a 101-98 Wizards win on March 2. Warriors guard Derek Fisher, who at times appeared to be wading through three feet of water while chasing Arenas two days later, was worn down by his "relentless attacking" even if he'd taken a bad shot on the previous possession. "That," said Fisher, "is mental fortitude.”

Arenas might chalk it up to something else, though who knows what. He believes his strength comes from not lifting weights: "I'm mentally strong." He sleeps only three hours a night: "I just got a ticking mind. That's how it is with all the great ones, like Jordan and Iverson." And though he watches tape of opponents, he does so selectively: "I have the mind-set that a guard can't stick me. So I watch the bigs and see how they like to play. If you're a shot blocker, then I jump into you. If you take charges, then I pull up for the midrange.”

He blends seamlessly with Hughes and Jamison, former Golden State teammates in 2001-02 who were reunited last summer when Jamison was acquired from Dallas; they're on pace to become the first threesome since 1990-91 to each average 20 points. In Eddie Jordan's version of the Princeton offense, Arenas and Hughes slash to the basket while Jamison flips in his array of leaners, jumpers and floaters. While Arenas is technically the point guard, Hughes might handle the ball on any possession, which frees both of them to play off the ball, making both harder to defend. At the other end Hughes (first in the league in steals through Sunday) and Arenas (fifth) form the equivalent of a two-man security checkpoint at half-court: No matter who you are, you're getting hassled, if not patted down. "They're almost like Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton with Detroit," says Jordan. "Larry plays the passing lanes a lot, and Gilbert plays off of that passing lane. They're like twins out there.”

Though Arenas will tell you he always knew he'd succeed -- in February he became the first player from the 2001 draft class to make an All-Star team -- he might be the only one. He left Arizona after his sophomore season but wasn't taken until the 31st pick. His response, after a brief cry on the phone with one of his coaches, was to head directly to the gym. (Did we mention that Arenas likes the gym?) With the Warriors he chose the same number he'd had at Arizona, 0, because "that's the number of minutes people predicted I would play." By midseason of his rookie year he cracked the starting lineup. He also made quite an impression on his teammates.

To say Arenas enjoys a good practical joke is like saying Timothy Leary enjoyed the occasional recreational drug. He responded to the veterans' orders to bring doughnuts to practice by buying plain ones and sprinkling baby powder on them -- that is, when he wasn't buying frosted ones, licking each one and putting it back in the box. He also took great joy in stealing his teammates' keys and hiding them in, say, a bottle of water. Then there was the time Arenas showed up on the team charter wearing a Fran Tarkenton jersey -- make that forward Chris Mills's Fran Tarkenton jersey, a specially ordered throwback that Mills had been talking about for months. Arenas had sneaked into Mills's house the night before and pilfered the prized shirt. Once on the charter, he opened his jacket to unveil what he loudly proclaimed "the best jersey in the world!" and proceeded to attack the lunch spread, making sure to wipe his hands all over Fran. "Talk about someone getting choked. I got choked for like five minutes," Arenas says, then nods appreciatively as if remembering a particularly good Merlot. "It was funny, though."

Despite his antics, teammates say they love playing with Arenas because, like the puppy who pees all over the couch and then wags his tail furiously, he's consistently good-spirited. "You can't get mad at him," says Warrriors guard Jason Richardson. "You just have to laugh."

As immature as Arenas may have been off the court, he was playing beyond his years on it. In his second season he won the Most Improved Player Award and signed a six-year, $64 million deal with the Wizards in the off-season, a decision he made in characteristically bizarre fashion: He flipped a coin 10 times to decide between the Los Angeles Clippers and Washington. When the Clippers' side came up eight times, Arenas says he knew what he had to do: go "against the odds" and join the Wizards.

After averaging 19.6 points last year, during which he missed 27 games due to an abdominal injury, Arenas has improved markedly at both moving without the ball and making decisions with it. Through Sunday, his turnovers were down to 3.0 per game from 4.1. Though he remains emotional ("the designated hothead who gives us that edge," says Hughes), Arenas has benefited from the calming presence of Jamison. He has cut down on his technical fouls and ceased taking halftime showers in his uniform -- something he did with the Warriors when, upset because he thought his teammates weren't trying, he needed to "cool off his head." (Naturally, he wrung the jersey out and wore it in the second half.)

Arenas's upbringing was -- surprise! -- anything but conventional. He was raised by his father, Gilbert Sr., who took sole custody of him just before his third birthday. (Gilbert says he's seen his mother only once since, when she showed up at a game during his rookie season.) Gilbert Sr., who played baseball at Florida Memorial College and was briefly a walk-on with the Miami football team, was a part-time model who, after landing bit parts in TV shows (including Miami Vice), packed up the two-man family when Gilbert was eight and drove cross-country in his Mazda coupe, heading for Hollywood, where dreamers go to make it big. Of course, it's also where dreamers go to sleep in their car in some forlorn Burbank park, which is what dad and son did for the first two nights. Eventually, they settled into a routine. Gilbert Sr. would get up at 3 a.m., work at UPS, come back to their San Fernando Valley home, sleep and then audition all afternoon. Gilbert Jr. would play ball and raise hell, not necessarily in that order. Still, he took a lesson from his father. "He was an inspiration," says Gilbert, who says his dad remains his best friend. "He showed me, without even saying it, what hard work does."

Though Gilbert is, by his account, very single -- "I'm on the market!" he says, rubbing his hands together -- he also has an innate paternal, or at least fraternal, instinct. Before this season he bought enough jerseys so that, after home games, he can take one off and toss it to someone, usually a young fan, in the crowd. For the second Christmas in a row, he spent the day with 200 kids; this time he took them to see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie before giving each a gift. While there, he met Andre McAllister, a 10-year-old who was the only member of his family to escape a December house fire. "I took him under my wing and decided that I would be his big brother," says Arenas. So he bought Andre clothes and set him up as a frequent ball boy at Wizards games. Andre can now be seen sprinting through the MCI center halls, shagging rebounds during pregame shootarounds and, at halftime, inhaling the giant banana splits available in the media lounge. Asked on a recent night about Arenas, Andre described him as nice and funny and "a whole lot of other stuff" in between spoonfuls of ice cream so large that he had to stop periodically to ward off brain-freeze. Andre then added that he'd played one-on-one with Arenas. Asked who won, Andre answered as if it should be self-evident: "I did."

Only, according to Arenas, that's not how it happened. "Of course he'd say that," Arenas says with a big, incredulous smile. "But I'm not going to let him win."

For once with Arenas, the message was straightforward: If you want success, you have to earn it. Just the way he did.

Via Wonkette.com:

Lookin' for love on the Hil

No wonder Democrats can't get their message out: When Sen. Hillary Clinton held a conference call with reporters on Medicaid cuts yesterday, a reporter who put his phone down without hitting "mute" subjected listeners to his apparent flirting on another call.

When Hillary got on the line with reporters, she had to practically shout over this man's loud yakking in the background, The News' James Gordon Meek reports. She gave up after several minutes, complaining that the noise was "distracting" and "so unfair to all of you."

Seconds after Clinton got off the call, reporters heard the man identify himself as WLIU Long Island News Director Jim Asendio. He was on a call with a person "going to a bar" for St. Patrick's Day.

"God, you sound sweet," Asendio said to his phone mate."Five-four? Okay, I'm 6-foot-1. You have a what? A little cushion? You have a nice, round a-? What's your chest? That's not small. I'm more of a thigh and an a- man. ... Don't get into any trouble, and if you do, call me."

Atleast two people sent this to me and expected it to be on my blog:

Slate.com - Teams We Hate:

Highlites:

Duke:
Led by sore-losing, ref-haranguing coach Mike Krzyzewski, Duke has long been a hotbed of whininess, but junior J.J. Redick is the first Blue Devil to publicly elevate it to an art form. In recent profiles in Sports Illustrated, on ESPN, and probably in Cat Fancy, the whey-faced shooting guard revealed that when abuse from opposing fans becomes too heavy, he escapes by composing verse. "No bandage can cover my scars/ It's hard living a life behind invisible bars," he writes in one tear-stained stanza.

When the non-existent bars start closing in and the bandage-defying scars get itchy, J.J. need only look down the bench to find kindred souls. Blue Devil assistant coaches Steve Wojciechowski and Chris Collins understand. They too had crew cuts and held their wrists perpendicular to the ground after every made basket.

While players like Luol Deng, Elton Brand, and Corey Maggette go on to demi-stardom in the NBA, it's the scrappy, high-strung little guards who come back to Coach K's side to form a living endowment of faux defensive intensity. Around 2008—when pro defenders have finished demonstrating that Redick can't deploy his robotically perfect shooting stroke when he's guarded—look for the once-great collegian to take his curdled hoop dreams back to Durham and join them. Don't worry, young fella. There will always be a clipboard for you at the end of the bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium. And it will say "J.J." in big, blue, puffy letters.—Josh Levin

I must say though that I find BIG fault with this point:

Kentucky:
But all that's only mildly nauseating compared to the most repulsive part of UK basketball: Ashley Judd, superfan.

What the hell? Ashley Judd is the BEST part of Kentucky basketball. I will watch Kentucky games just to see Ashley Judd.

Stanford:
Why, yes, I did know that Tiger Woods went to Stanford. Yes, and John Elway, too.

Forty-seven Olympic medals from 1990 to 2002? And 71 team championships since 1980? And 14 Nobel Prize winners? You really are good at counting.

What's that? Did you mention your SAT scores? Yes, you did. Several times. Why am I smiling? It's just so cute how much you like to talk about them.

No, I haven't seen you play this year. Sorry.

No, no, don't tell me. Let me guess. You have a white guy with very important hair? Is he named "Casey" again? And how many "Academic All-Americans" do you have?

It's going to be so hard for you on Sunday, won't it? When Duke beats you? That must really hurt—like when your frat brother stole your girlfriend? Fifty weeks a year, you tell yourselves you're the only great school with great sports—and then the Blue Devils show up. Yes, I know you won an NCAA title—just like Duke. But wasn't yours in 1942?—David Plotz

...

Yahoo News:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian man on trial for having sex with dogs claims he did it out of compassion for man's best friend, a Belgian paper said on Friday.

Daily Gazet Van Antwerpen said the 36-year old in the eastern Belgian town of Genk told the court he had sex with dogs "out of love for animals," since a lot of them can't have sex, especially those locked up in refuges.

The man, only identified by his initials, could face six months in jail if convicted.

He had worked in an animal refuge before and had also posted thousands of pictures on the Internet of himself having sex with dogs, the paper said.

so glad to make this list:

NEW YORK, March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Just in time for the NCAA final four,
GQ magazine names the top ten most obnoxious college sports fans.

    Duke: The Cameron Crazies are the Clay Aikens of college sports fans-too
    loud, too geeky, too cute, and terminally annoying. It'll take twenty
    consecutive losing seasons just to make them tolerable again.

    West Virginia: The Mountaineers might be the college-sports version of
    soccer hooligans. Nothing says school spirit like lighting 1,129
    intentional street fires (according to Morgantown Fire Department data
    from 1997-2003) or hurling a whiskey bottle, golf balls, and a trash can
    from the stands.

    Maryland: They don't say "Fear the Turtle" for nothing: Terp outrage
    caused over $500,000 worth of damage on a single night in 2001, and the
    frequent vulgar outbursts at home games have prompted university
    officials to seek the state attorney general's advice on how to control
    UM fans.

    Ohio State:  OSU hell-raising after the 2002 Michigan football game-which
    involved more than one hundred fires, including a nine-car victory
    pyre-cost the city of Columbus over $135,000 in police overtime.

    Harvard: With their tweed jackets and sickening chants of "safety
    school," the Crimson faithful are the epitome of Ivy League smugness.

    Washington State: Cougars fans are still talking about that time after
    the 2002 Apple Cup when rival University of Washington athletic director
    Barbara Hedges told people, "I feared for my life."  Of course, we'd like
    to see what those fans would do if someone threw beer bottles at them.

    Minnesota: In 2002 & 2003, Minnesota fans waged two full-blown riots,
    setting fire to a TV-news van and causing around $200,000 in total
    damage, all after winning the ... NCAA hockey championships?  We don't
    want to think about what they'd do if they won a title that mattered.

    Florida State: They started the tomahawk chop.  Let us repeat that: They
    started the tomahawk chop.

    Vanderbilt: Vandy actually makes this list for student-fan apathy.
    Despite being smack in the middle of arguably the nation's best football
    conference, student fans have grown increasingly scarce as the team's
    fortunes have tanked.  Home attendance at Vanderbilt Stadium is so anemic
    that after a 2003 Vandy victory over Kentucky, it took fans a pathetic
    ten minutes to tear down the goalposts.

    Colorado: Few college fans take more joy in rioting than the Buffaloes of
    Boulder, whose lust for postgame rampaging led local officials to
    institute a "sofa ordinance" in 2002 to curb the burning of furniture
    during sports-related celebrations.

and I'm back to work.

1) Peter Angelos is evil.

Baseball executives say Angelos has two goals. One is to take a disproportionate share of profits from the Nationals, who already appear to be outperforming the Orioles at the box office (and maybe even on the playing field). If he can't accomplish that, sprinkle a little hell around greater Washington by keeping the Nats off TV and undermining efforts to build the team's fan base. "He certainly is laying out a legal position," says Bill Hall, a key negotiator for the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission in the deal to win the Nats.


2) Police restrain GMA booker during Today Show Interview
Atlanta police handcuffed Good Morning America booker Mike Nagel this morning after complaints about his disorderly conduct, TVNewser has learned. Nagel was trying to interrupt NBC's interview with Atlanta hostage Ashley Smith this morning. (And some of it happened on-air: does anyone have screen grabs from 'Today?') Here's how the incident unfolded, according to sources at both networks:

ABC, really, really wanted an exclusive interview with Smith. And they thought they had it: They were under the impression that they were the only network morning show with the Smith interview. But Smith's attorney had arranged for NBC's 'Today' show to pre-tape an interview with her prior to 7am. Then she would walk around the corner to ABC's bureau for a live chat on GMA.

..bla bla....

Smith made it to NBC's remote location around the corner from ABC's bureau. While Lauer was pre-taping his interviewing with Smith, "Nagel was doing whatever he could to get this interview to stop," according to an insider. Smith's attorney tried to calm him down, but the police had to get involved. He was not arrested or charged, though.



I thought it was kinda funny seeing the guy all angry in the background of the interview.

Video: Follow the link and click launch by the free video.
You can see the dude on his cell phone in the background.

this just seems so.....stupid:


March 15, 2005 -- 'APPRENTICE" wan nabe Kristen Kirchner, "fired" last month, has proven that Donald Trump was wrong to can her — or so she says.

"They've lost nonstop since I was fired," Kirchner says of her team, "Street Smarts," which has lost in three consecutive episodes. "They didn't show how good I was. I was really holding the ship together."

To further prove her point, Kirchner issued a press release asking if she should have been fired — and she's using $5,000 of her own money to reshoot the Dove ad that ultimately led to her dismissal on the NBC show.

Kirchner said she might even take her finished ad into the boardroom during "The Apprentice" finale — and demand that Trump watch it.

"It's going to be interesting," she said.

Kirchner was project manager for the "Street Smarts" team and was canned by Trump, who called her team's leadership "a mess" and the commercial they created "terrible."

"I'm cool, but I'm a businesswoman, and if Donald Trump wants to make a mockery of me, that's something he's going to have to deal with," Kirchner said.

"He attacked me in the business world, and to me, that's unforgivable."

NBC officials had no comment.

Link to her official press release.

Oh my god, I can't believe I forgot to celebrate this!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - For math nerds, Monday was a day when they could have their Pi and eat it, too.

"It's Pi Day because the date is 3/14 -- the first three digits of Pi," said Howard Greenspan, who oversaw a Pi Day Party online with a Pi drop at MathematiciansPictures.com, a Web site that sells Pi paraphernalia.

"This is the perfect holiday to celebrate in cyberspace," Greenspan told Reuters in a telephone interview from Toronto.

"We dropped the giant Pi online at 1:59 p.m. Eastern time," Greenspan said, noting that "3.14159 are the first six digits of Pi."

For those who flunked math, here's a clue: Pi is "that infernal and literally never-ending number that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter," Greenspan said. It takes its name from the Greek letter Pi.

Greenspan, who swears he is not related to U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites), said another Pi drop was planned online at 1:59 p.m. Pacific time.

So many people clicked on the Web site to watch the first Pi drop that the server was overwhelmed briefly. Instant replays were run. (See: http://www.mathematicianspictures.com)

Kornheisers Wash Post Bracket:

Check the Austin Region, lower right on the screen, the 11 seed.

The PEJ study didn't attempt to identify bias on cable news. But it says this is evident: "Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air." The study says nearly seven out of ten stories (68%) included personal opinions from FNC's reporters -- "the highest of any outlet studied by far." 4% of CNN's segments included journalistic opinion. 27% did on MSNBC.

On stories about the war in Iraq, 73% of FNC stories included "personal judgments," compared to 2% on CNN and 29% on MSNBC. And the same is true for presidential election coverage: 82% of FNC stories included opinions, compared to 7% on CNN and 27% on MSNBC

Blurb Source.
Main Source.

Update:
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz comments more on the report.

Interesting article from Sunday's Washington Post...I haven't even had enough time to read the whole thing, and I doubt this is going to get much publicity, but its pretty interesting nonetheless:

ATLANTA -- On what he considered to be an unusually slow afternoon at a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport security checkpoint last October, security screener Alvin Spencer passed the time by placing his watch on the X-ray belt he was monitoring.

"Curiosity got the best of me, I guess," said Spencer, a federal employee of the Transportation Security Administration, "and I put my watch on the X-ray machine, just to see what it would look like."

A few moments later, the watch was gone. It would find its way into the hands of NFL quarterback Michael Vick, one of the league's biggest stars.

It took six days for Spencer to get the watch back. The tale of its disappearance would involve charges of a police coverup and the allegation of a $20,000 extortion attempt and pits the TSA against the Atlanta Police Department.

We should get these installed at work.....much more useful than foos or Gauntlet Dark Legacy - which we dont have anymore :(

NBC has some clips available of the American Version of The Office...while the clips look ok, I know the American version is going to be no where as good as the British version. The British boss was 100x better than the American one.

Seriously, if you haven't rented the DVDs of the BBC's The Office Season 1 and 2, check them out.

Slate.com Bushism of the day:

"I believe we are called to do the hard work to make our communities and quality of life a better place."—Collinsville, Ill., Jan. 5, 2005

Click here to listen to an audio version of Bush's comments. The Bushism is at 40:52.

From OBrien (like I would load up Fox News on my own...):

Wis. Man Wants to Legalize Cat Hunting

MADISON, Wis. — Hunter Mark Smith welcomes wild birds on to his property, but if he sees a cat, he thinks the "invasive" animal should be considered fair game.

The 48-year-old firefighter from La Crosse has proposed that hunters in Wisconsin make free-roaming domestic cats an "unprotected species" that could be shot at will by anyone with a small-game license.

Its a quality show, watch it dammit.
(I post this because I watched the double episode last night which was quality and was just talking about it with a coworker)...

Its not cancelled....yet...but dammit, watch it

ESPN predicts the rest of the year in sex:


2005, the Heat Yet to Come:
some highlites:

Maria Sharapova will turn 18 on April 19.

Anna Kournikova will announce the formation of the World League of Sexy Tennis and will serve as its first player/commissioner. As part of her new contract, she will be guaranteed three tournament singles victories.

Using Mike Piazza and Jeff Garcia as their role models, dozens of professional athletes will start rumors that they are gay in the hope that it will help them bag a Playboy model.

During negotiations with the league over a new collective bargaining agreement, NBA players will request the salary cap be raised by $50 million per team, citing the results of a study by an Ivy League college that shows the average player pays 98 percent of his salary in child support.

Maria Sharapova will turn 18 on April 19.

The Tennis Channel will quadruple its ratings after it drops live tennis and instead broadcasts still photographs of Marat Safin's girlfriend 24 hours a day.

Oh, and Maria Sharapova will turn 18 on April 19.

where you wake up from a nap or something at like 7pm and think "oh shit, im late for school" then realize its 7pm and not 7am and feel a lot better.....yeah, school was awhile ago, but anyway:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Astonished German police picked up an 8-year-old boy at 3 a.m. who had accidentally set off to school thinking he was late, authorities said Thursday.

"He seemed to have got into a panic he was late and went off to school by himself with his rucksack," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Aachen. "You'd think the parents weren't looking after him, but that wasn't the case here."

Police found the boy as he was heading home after he discovered the school was still closed.

...and no, this isn't some political post.
I thought this was pretty interesting..just because the numbers are so high


Users Confuse Search Results, Ads

NEW YORK -- Only one in six users of internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Sunday that adults online in the United States are generally naive when it comes to how search engines work.
...........

But only 38 percent of web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half --47 percent -- say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

If/When I get laid off...this will be my new job.

From The Washington Post:

To: All ActionEyewitnessTVNews

Personnel

From: News director

Subj: Snow coverage.

Folks: Just wanted to offer a few reminders about how our TV station covers snowfall in the Washington area:

1. We mobilize "full team coverage" whenever snow is predicted, is falling or has fallen. We also do it if snow might fall. Or if it happens to be January, February or March.

2. Backdrop graphics: Before it snows, the sign on screen should read, "Snow on the Way?" If we get 1 to 2 inches, it's "Snow Emergency!" Three to 7 inches: "Killer Storm!" Anything more, we run with "Avalanches, Cannibalism Feared."

3. Anchors: Use dramatic verbs, even for minimal snow totals. Bad: "The region received a dusting today." Better: "Snow paralyzed/pummeled/blasted/buried the Washington area today." Better still: "Armageddon."

4. Reporting locales: The overpass. The city salt hut. The big-box hardware store. The supermarket (remember: Any market in which three shoppers are buying milk, bread or toilet paper simultaneously constitutes "panic buying").

5. Interview subjects: Anyone out walking or driving in snow. (Required question: "You're walking/driving . . . in THIS weather?") Cute kids home from school. The first guy to buy a shovel at Home Depot.

6. Best winter-weather footage, in terms of ratings: a) Car/bus failing to climb icy hill; b) More impressive snowfall somewhere else; c) Two cars skidding into each other (will accept video of this occurring ANYWHERE in U.S.).

7. Advice to weather forecasters: "Snow" is a terribly overused word. Instead, use weathery sounding words such as "precip" or "wintry mix." When in doubt, fall back on "the white stuff."

8. As soon as the snow stops, go with new graphic: "Winter Wonderland!"

And never admit we got the forecast wrong. Bundle up!