Sunday, October 22, 2006

The Perfect Gorm

Stop the presses! I mean, “Exit program!”
CBC News: “Reuters is opening a virtual news bureau in Second Life, a three-dimensional online world inhabited by hundreds of thousands of users and one of the world's most popular virtual economies.”

Maybe he can cover this story…
From CNET: “[E]ven in the open-minded "Second Life" community, what people consider to be acceptable may have its limits. Some of the virtual world's biggest fans are shaking their heads over what users call age play.’ This age-based role-playing can take on various forms: It can be as innocuous as people acting out a family dynamic, or as potentially troubling as two adults engaging in sexual role playing, with one of the avatars made to look like a child.”

Tickle Me Elmo’s 10th iteration.
The New York Times tells me that It’s called “T.M.X. Elmo (the X doubles as a Roman reminder that this is the 10th such doll and a pledge that the toy is ‘extreme’).”

Extreme? Elmo? Does he have tats? Does he engage in age play?

That's so Starbucks-y
NYT: Starbucks chairman Howard “…Schultz said it was ‘not out of the question that we would self-publish’ new authors. Some of the chain’s projects have been relatively intimate and artsy — for example, two several-day-long salons, one at the Sundance Film Festival, one in New York, where the doors were open to free spoken-word performances, musical collaborations and one-act plays.”

Starbucks is currently promoting Mitch Albom’s new book, which is called TAKE ME WITH YOU TO HEAVEN, MORRIE, or something.

What were they thinking?
Seattle’s new slogan is “metronatural.” It has lent itself to much mockery.

Borat!
AP: “A top Kazakh official has an invitation for the British comedian whose depiction of a homophobic, misogynistic, English-mangling Kazakh journalist has outraged the Central Asian nation: Come visit.

“Deputy Foreign Minister Rakhat Aliyev said in an interview that he understands why Kazakhs are unhappy about Sacha Baron Cohen's character, Borat.

"’But we must have a sense of humor and respect other people's freedom of creativity,’ Aliyev was quoted as saying by Kazakhstan Today.

"’I'd like to invite Cohen here,’ he said. ‘He can discover a lot of things. Women drive cars, wine is made of grapes and Jews are free to go to synagogues.’"

More news from Kazakhistan
AFP: “On Thursday it emerged that the incorrect spelling ‘bankh’ appears instead of ‘bank’ on the country's newly issued currency.”

A visitor to Kazakhistan reports
From the Independent UK: “That evening, we head for the Soho Almaty Club. I plump for a shot of ‘Rzhanaya (Glavspirttrest)’ from the vodka menu. Our fellow diners promptly refill our glasses as they are drinking by the bottle. A series of impressive cover bands start up, and on the dance floor I happen across Kazakhstan's curling champion. Just when I think it can't get any better, Deep Purple's Roger Glover and Don Airey appear on stage and bash out ‘Black Night’, having just played to 6,000 in the city. The audience, particularly the national curling champion, goes wild.”

Deep Purple trivia
Wikipedia: “During 1972, Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on, releasing Machine Head, an album that was due to be recorded at a casino in Montreux, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but after a supposedly accidental fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig burned down the casino the album was actually recorded at the nearby Grand Hotel -- this incident famously inspiring the song Smoke on the Water.”

From the mouths of babes.
Or Antonin Scalia anyway: "It so happens that everything that is stupid is not unconstitutional."

Does he mean that not everything that is stupid is unconstitutional? Or does he mean that everything that is stupid IS constitutional?

More phonies
Two blogs, Walmarting Across America (supposedly by a couple of middle-aged RV folk blogging about their wonderful cross-country Wal Mart experiences), and another on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a supposedly grassroots advocacy group,"committed to fostering open and honest dialogue...that conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families," were revealed to have been created by the public relations firm, Edelman, which is employed by Wal-Mart

And there’s another fake blog, as well, on the WFWM subsidiary site Paid Critics, which exposes ties to unions and other special interests that are tarnishing Wal-Mart’s reputation. Edelman was behind that one too.

Uh Oh
Israeli DebkaFile reports: “Tuesday, Oct. 17, the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group steamed into the Persian Gulf to join the US naval, air and marine concentration piling up opposite Iran’s shores. It consists of the amphibious transport dock USS Nashville, the guided-missile destroyers USS Cole and USS Bulkeley, the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea, the attack submarine USS Albuquerque, and the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island.

“…, [T]hree US naval task forces will be in place opposite Iran in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea by October 21. The other two are the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and the USS Enterprise Strike Group.”

Uh Oh Oh
Sfindymedia.org “The war ships, scheduled to arrive in the Straits on Oct. 21, include the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Eisenhower, a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine and supply ship. The mission of this armada is not known, but there are reports that angry naval officers within the Eisenhower Strike Group have told antiwar retired officers that their ships are being sent to launch a military attack against Iran.”

Listen to my alter ego! It’s a podcast, just like the ones the young people do!
Here: http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/20/ian-shoales-wasting-time/

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

> “On Thursday it emerged that the incorrect spelling ‘bankh’ appears instead of ‘bank’ on the country's newly issued currency.”

Maybe it will turn out to be cheaper to change the spelling in the dictionary, rather than reprint the money....

-D.E.

2:09 PM  

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