Art?

ZURICH, Switzerland Some people will do anything to appear in the papers. But few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country's biggest media companies into publishing a two-page ad he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume.

The man, who claimed to represent the Italian fashion giant, called up the Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung last week to book the expensive color spread in Sunday's edition, a spokesman for the paper said.

Christoph Zimmer told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the man asked for the 60,000-Swiss-franc (about $50,000) bill to be sent to Gucci.

"We've spoken to Gucci and apologized for the mistake," Zimmer said. "We're going to try and get the money back from this guy, but we don't rate our chances."

The Milan, Italy-based Gucci could not be reached for comment.

Zimmer said the paper fell for the scam because the call arrived too late for the advertising department to check whether it was genuine.

It wasn't the first time that the mysterious model — a dark, handsome man appearing to be in his late 20s — tried to sneak his way into the limelight.

According to the Zurich-based daily Blick, the man attempted to book concert venues by passing himself off as Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. The paper said it narrowly avoided also being conned, but was tipped of the hoax by record company Sony BMG, which represents Chayanne.

The man is under investigation for alleged fraud, said Meinrad Stoecklin, a spokesman for police in the canton (state) of Basel.

Feces-Filled Package Sent To Seminole County Commissioner


"SANFORD, Fla. -- The person who sent a Seminole County Commissioner a smelly package probably didn't agree with the commissioner's request for thousands of dollars in new office furniture.

Seminole County sheriff's investigators aren't yet sure where the feces came from or who sent it to Mike McLean's office.

Officials said the sender wrote comments on the white, letter-sized envelope that made it clear the sender was not happy about the furniture purchase. There was no return address.

A Postal Service spokeswoman said the U.S. Postal Service prohibits sending feces through the mail except for medical or veterinary purposes, and in those instances the samples must meet rigorous packing and labeling requirements.

Without some implied or written threat, however, a poop-filled package won't get the sender in trouble on the first offense."

That last sentence is the best part... start sending your own "special delivery" packages. Apparently, it's O.K.

Clip Bandits. The band members have never met, according to the buzz, don't even know each other's names. Mellow tune reminds me of Jack Johnson's stuff.(4:31)



Little viralvid of how to be "Number one on the Google". Reminds me of the original "Office" series. (4:12)



Odd Human slinky action. Kind of mesmerizing, kind of creepy. Probably be better if someone made you put a little bitter dot on your tongue....(5:16)

Sinkhole in Guatemala, apparently the result of improper sewage flow under the city.
So, not only would it suck to fall in, but the landing wouldn't be very nice either.

Sharks

Prisoners of YouTube
Meet the most hilarious people ever to lose their jobs, friends, livelihoods, and their dignity—all for your personal amusement
By John Cook

Marylynn Aminrazavi was happy. She was on vacation. Decked out in beach casual—oversized white T-shirt, colorful beach towel, hair in a bun—she leaned back in a chair by the Atlantic Ocean, put on her daughter's iPod, and closed her eyes. Lost in the music, she began to sing along. Loudly.

The whole article, including a few more memorable "performances".

The last image of Andrew McAuley, taken from a camera retrieved from his kayak, which was discovered off the coast of New Zealand. He is believed to have drowned after crossing to within 55 kilometres of the South Island.

For 30 days and nights, wherever the Australian adventurer turned his salt-rimed eyes, he understood his solitude. His only solace was his courage and determination.

"I never once doubted he would do it," his wife Vicki said yesterday. And he almost did.

Paddling by day, drifting at night while he slept in a protective cocoon, Mr McAuley, 39, crossed 1500 kilometres of ocean. On February 9 he was within 30 nautical miles, or 54 kilometres, of the South Island of New Zealand, close enough to photograph its mountains.

Some time the next day, he expected to make landfall and achieve a long-held ambition to become the first man to take a kayak across the Tasman Sea. His wife and son were waiting for him in Milford Sound.

At 7.15pm, the New Zealand Coastguard picked up an almost indecipherable distress signal from a vessel that identified itself as Kayak 1. There were two clear words: "help" and "sinking". Then silence.

The following evening, his upturned seven-metre kayak was seen from the air. The kayak was recovered but Mr McAuley's body has not been found. It is believed he drowned in 15-degree water when the kayak capsized while he was asleep. He did not have an immersion suit, which might have helped him survive in the cold sea.

Today his wife, his three-year-old son Finlay, his parents, and his brother and sister will attend a memorial service at the Macquarie Lighthouse in Vaucluse.

Oddness....

Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie (4:21)...



This old Burger King commercial's even creepier than the current ones (1:00)...



The best of SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy... i.e. any bit with Sean Connery
Part 1 (8:29)...



Part 2 (8:06)...



Craig Ferguson Opens up(12:30)...

About 100 years ago, a German housewife named Melitta Bentz punctured the bottom of a brass pot, lined it with blotting paper, and — voilà! — made the first coffee filter. Almost a century later, a perfected version of Bentz’s design is still used. “Coffee filters aren’t as likely to crumple or dissolve in water as typical paper because they have better ‘wet strength,’ thanks to longer fibers,” says Melinda McDonald, communications manager for Bunn, a beverage-equipment manufacturer. “Additionally, the fluted sides and cupcake shape allow substances to flow through the filter freely and prevent grains from flowing over the sides.”

Use Coffee Filters to:

1. Diffuse the flash on a camera. When you’re taking a close-up, soften the brightness by placing a coffee filter over the flash.
2. Strain wine from a bottle with a broken cork. Place the filter over a pitcher or a carafe and slowly pour the wine into it.
3. Serve popcorn or other snacks. The filters act as disposable bowls, so there’s no dishwashing.
4. Make yogurt dip. Use a rubber band to secure a paper coffee filter over the mouth of a deep cup or jar. Slowly pour 8 ounces of plain yogurt onto the filter. Let drain for one hour. In a bowl, mix the thickened yogurt with 1 small minced garlic clove, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crackers.
5. Heat up leftovers in the microwave. Use a filter as the protective covering over a bowl or a plate.
6. Prevent soil from draining out of flowerpots. When repotting, place a filter at the bottom, over the drainage hole, then add the soil.
7. Prevent scuffs and scratches on fine china. Use flattened coffee filters as spacers when you stack your dishes.
8. Protect hands from Popsicle drippage. Slide the wooden stick of an ice pop through a coffee filter so your hands stay mess-free.
9. Serve pita sandwiches. A circular filter is the perfect size for carrying a sandwich on the go.
10. Clean windows and glass when you’re out of paper towels. Coffee filters leave no lint or other residue.

Putting Our Money Where Our Mouths Are: Boycott the RIAA in March

Alright, we've been following the RIAA's increasingly frequent affronts to privacy and free speech lately, and it's about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it's totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don't like the way they're behaving, we can let them know with our wallets.

With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways.

Firstly, I encourage everyone to purchase music from unsigned bands and bands on independent record labels. There are tons of great artists out there, many of which you're probably already a fan of, that have nothing to do with the RIAA. Buy their records at eMusic, an online store that sells independent tunes in beautiful, DRM-free MP3 format.

Secondly, you can still support RIAA-signed bands without buying their music. Go see them live and buy their merchandise; they get a hell of a lot more money from that then they do from album sales. And hey, you could benefit from getting out more, couldn't you?

If you are unsure whether or not an album is put out by an RIAA label, the handy RIAA Radar will clear everything up for you. They have both a search engine and a great bookmarklet, so be sure to get yourself hooked up.

Let me just reiterate that we are not saying you should stop buying music and start pirating everything. We need to send a message with our wallets to the RIAA, and that message will only be stronger if we show support for musicians without your money making its way to the lawyer fund.

So come on, make next month one to remember. Let's stand together and let the RIAA know that yes, we are paying attention and no, we aren't going to put up with their unethical practices any longer. –Adam Frucci

Went to lunch and drinks with a friend today, she told me about this site where you can look up the latest greatest things going on in your city.

Restaurants, shows, shopping, things to do, etc.

Just the thing to bust out of a routine of returning to the same places.

The site?


Seattle's Daily Candy

(There's links to other cities on the front page.)

So, some of the "old" diseases have been making a comeback because....

Some people have stopped vaccinating their kids.


Why?, Because they're afraid the vaccines themselves are not safe, citing mercury poisioning and Autism, to name a few.

Sad how people buy into these knee-jerk scare tactics.

Here's the ABC news story...


Should Parents Worry About Vaccinating Their Children?
Fears of Vaccinations Rise, Diseases Reemerge
By JOHN STOSSEL, KRISTINA KENDALL and PATRICK McMENAMIN
Feb. 22, 2007— - When we worry, we worry the most about our children. Everyone wants to keep them safe.
When politicians want us to fall in line, they always talk about saving the children. And our feelings about kids have created very intense emotions about vaccines. Some people say vaccines are dangerous. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that they have "poisoned an entire generation of American children."
Kennedy has added his voice to the chorus of angry parents who are convinced that mercury in vaccines causes harm to children.
"It's causing IQ loss, mental retardation, speech delay, language delay, ADD, hyperactivity," he said.

Worrying About Vaccinations

Barbara Loe Fisher, who heads the Vaccine Information Center, goes on television to alert parents about the dangers of vaccines.
On the "Today Show," she said, "We need to find out why so many of our highly vaccinated children are so sick."
The biggest worry today is autism. Before kids received so many vaccines, says Fisher, "you didn't see autistic children. Autism was so rare. Most people had never heard of it."
And the protestors blame the vaccines.

'Vaccines Don't Cause Autism'

Dr Paul Offit is the chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's also in the vaccine business. He developed and patented the rotavirus vaccine.
"I think that it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical about anything you put into your body, including vaccines," said Offit. "And vaccines do have side effects. But vaccines don't cause autism."
Offit can say that with confidence because the National Academy of Sciences recently reviewed the science. They concluded that 19 major studies, tracking thousands of kids, all show no link between vaccines and autism.
"The question has been raised, it's been answered," said Offit. "Vaccines don't cause autism."
Then why are so many kids being diagnosed with autism? Because kids we once said had other conditions are now being called autistic.
As researchers from the March of Dimes put it, "improvements in detection and changes in diagnosis account for the observed increase in autism." Their data on autism rates in California showed that the increase in autism diagnoses almost exactly matched a decline in cases of retardation: autism prevalence increased by 9.1 cases per 10,000 children, while mental retardation dropped by 9.3 per 10,000.
"People that we once called quirky or geeky or nerdy are now called autistic," said Offit. "Because when you give that label of say, autistic spectrum disorder, you allow that child then to qualify for services which otherwise they wouldn't be qualified to get."

Not a New Concern

Two decades ago, "20/20" did a report which said that the whooping cough vaccine may lead to permanent neurological disorder and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
Personal injury lawyer Allen McDowell said vaccine makers were victimizing kids, and more than 20 years later, he still says the vaccine makers put money before safety.
"There's no dispute about that. They were making so much money off the old vaccine they didn't really have any incentive to improve it."
McDowell made money too. The lawyer won lots of lawsuits.
"I made -- a good chunk of money," he said.
The vaccine makers did revise the whooping cough vaccine and the new version was approved by the FDA in 1991.
"The old (whooping cough) vaccine was probably our most reactogenic vaccine, which is to say that it had the highest rate of side effects," says Offit. "I mean, it could cause seizures with fever -- although it didn't cause epilepsy, meaning the permanent seizures --[but] it certainly could trigger seizures…it caused pain and tenderness at the site of injection…it caused floppy baby syndrome, a so-called 'hypo-tonic, hypo-response' syndrome. It caused persistent, inconsolable crying. And so, there was always an interest in trying to make that vaccine safer. But the science had to catch up to that."
Those serious side effects were temporary, not the permanent conditions for which lawyers often sued vaccine makers. In fact, comprehensive studies also reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences did not find that the old vaccine caused SIDS or permanent brain damage.

The Benefits of Vaccinations

Lost in this debate is the disease the vaccine prevents. Whooping cough racks a baby's body with violent fits of coughing. In its most extreme form, it kills. But after "20/20'"s vaccine report, many parents told their doctors, "I'm scared of your vaccine."
I asked Dr. Richard Saphir, my children's pediatrician, what he thought of that program.
"It was certainly alarmist," he said.
In fact, when my daughter Lauren got a fever after one of the vaccines, he decided not to give her the final shot, and a short time afterward, she got whooping cough.
Dr. Saphir said that the fact that I was a "20/20" correspondent made him even more anxious about giving my daughter the vaccine.
My daughter recovered from her whooping cough. She was surprised to hear that our reporting could confuse parents and influence doctors.
"Parents go in and force their physicians to agree to not give the vaccines even though the physicians say, you're making a stupid decision?" she asked. "Then you guys are doing a really bad thing."
Parent Suzanne Walther agrees. On internet sites, Walther read so many horror stories about vaccines, that so she postponed vaccinating her daughter, Mary Catherine.
"Some of the vaccine stories said that if I had my child vaccinated they were going to die of SIDS," she said. "I'm very protective of my children, I don't want to do something to them that might cause them harm."
But not vaccinating caused harm. Mary Catherine got very sick with spinal meningitis.
"Our pediatrician put us in an ambulance to go to Vanderbilt Hospital immediately," said Walther. "It is a deadly disease. There's a huge risk of deafness, blindness, it's very painful."

Resurgence of Old Diseases

Mary Catherine recovered, but she's one of many kids who are coming down with diseases doctors once thought were nearly eradicated, like mumps, measles, and whooping cough.
These diseases are coming back because pockets of frightened parents won't vaccinate their kids, some, after they search for information and end up on websites like Barbara Loe Fisher's. I asked Fisher about how sites like hers scare parents.
"You're really the vaccines' scare center. When you scare people stupid, and they don't get vaccinated, that spreads nasty diseases," I said.
"I don't think I've scared anybody stupid. We do not tell people to vaccinate or not vaccinate," she replied.
Fisher says she can't say whether vaccines are "good or bad."
"You can't say vaccines are good, vaccines haven't done more good than harm?" I asked?
"It's a complex issue," she said.

The Fear Factor

McDowell is now thinking about filing new lawsuits saying vaccine companies caused autism. I told him I thought he was an opportunistic hustler, preying on worried parents. McDowell disagreed.
"That's not the way I look at it. I look at it that I'm doing a service for the public in these immunizations."
He said of the whopping cough vaccine that, "if there hadn't been the litigation, they'd still be using the same old vaccine and causing a lot more serious problems."
Nonsense, says Offit. Lawyers didn't make the whooping cough vaccine better. "Science is always a process of evolution, and I think we had to get to the point in science where we could make the kind of purified products at commercial level that, that we couldn't do before," Offit said. The lawsuits "are a great example of just what can happen when, when lawyers go crazy…I think there's a certain profiteering that comes with, with fear."
So I told McDowell I thought he was part of the Fear Industrial Complex, scaring people and making money off of it. After a long pause, he said, "True."

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Some new Rude T shirts from the deviant minds at

TshirtHell.com

P.S. Some NSFW stuff at the link

Just a minute, I think I've got something in my eye....

Not usually much for the sentimental, but this pic struck me....

Does this moon look familiar? Possibly not, even though it is Earth's Moon. Locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its well-known near side to Earth. But from lunar orbit, Apollo astronauts also grew to know the Moon's far side. This sharp picture from Apollo 16's mapping camera shows the eastern edge of the familiar near side (top) and the strange and heavily cratered far side of the Moon. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the far side looks very different from the near side which is covered with smooth dark lunar maria. The likely explanation is that the far side crust is thicker, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form the smooth maria.

From AstronomyPicoftheday

Random YouTubin'...

Four guys, one instrument, (3:32)...



Their site.

Some of these would make great T-shirts(5:09)...



Finally, a quick bit about coming home drunk (2:34)...

Random pics....

Downloadable Screensaver all about a bug's life.....BUGORGY

P.S. All Screensavers can have hidden malware files, download at your own risk, I did not verify this one.

Are you smarterer or stoopiderer than Average Joe?

Click

91 More

Granny accused of stealing a football

From The Telegraph.Co.UK, paper....

A grandmother arrested after being accused of keeping a football that was kicked over her fence is to have her case reviewed.
Police watchdog, the IPCC, has confirmed it is dealing with an appeal by 56-year-old Angela Hickling about the handling of her arrest on suspicion of stealing.
Mrs Hickling was fingerprinted and forced to give a DNA sample after accusations that she had kept the football were made by a neighbour.
The case was later dropped after police searched the mother-of-three's home, in Heanor, Derbyshire, and found a lack of evidence, she said.
Derbyshire police refused to comment today on reports that the officer who dealt with the dispute has now been reprimanded.
An IPCC spokesman said: "We received an appeal about this on January 24, which we acknowledged that day, and we just recently received the background papers about the case from Derbyshire Constabulary.
"We are now considering the appeal."
Speaking to the Derby Evening Telegraph in October, Mrs Hickling said: "They just took me in and said I had been arrested on suspicion of theft of a football.
"I had to go and have fingerprints taken and DNA samples taken with a swab in my mouth.
"It just seemed totally bizarre for something like that. It was taking up two police officers on a Friday night while they could be out solving real crimes."
After a 15-minute interview, Mrs Hickling was told she could leave and would hear from police about whether charges would be brought.
Days later, she was informed the Crown Prosecution Service would not be pursuing the case.
However, Mrs Hickling took the matter to the IPCC believing actions taken by the police had been too severe.

Apparently all the other more severe crimes have been solved in the U.K., allowing such resources to be spent on the loss of a 12 dollar ball!!!

Woman goes into labor yells..

“Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Can’t!”











She was having contractions.

Interesting collection of sayings from the land down under... P.S. some possibly NSFW words.

WHO WE ARE: A column about Australia, by David Dale

My candidate for National Metaphor was The Magic Pudding, because it's the image used most often in political rhetoric and most appropriate to describe the way we regard our continent. But on the very day I wrote that, the British media raised a candidate for National Simile -- the father of a Qantas fight attendant speculated that the people who dobbed her in for dallying with Ralph Fiennes were probably "as ugly as a hatful of arseholes".

I asked for your proposals, and from the 60 dissertations you sent, I derived this glossary of useful comparisons for every occasion:

All over it like a seagull on a sick prawn.
All over the place like a wet dog on lino.
Better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.
Busier than ... a one-armed taxi driver with crabs, a one-armed bill-poster in a stiff breeze, a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad, a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.
Colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, a well-digger's arse, a witch's tit.
Couldn't ... fight his way out of a wet paper bag, find a root in a brothel (with a fistful of fivers), organise a fart in a curry house, organise a pissup in a brewery, pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
Couldn't sell ... beer to a drover, icecream in hell.
Dry as ... a dead dingo's donga, a pommy's bath towel.
Face like a dropped pie.
Finer than frog's hair.
Flat out like a lizard drinking.
Full as ... a butcher's pup, a fat lady's gumboot, a Catholic school.
Few snags short of a barbie.
Gone like last week's pay.
Happy as a dog with two tails.
(The winner's) harder to pick than a broken nose.
Head like a chewed Mintie.

If he fell into a barrel full of tits he'd come up sucking his thumb.
(I'll be) off like ... a bucket of prawns in the sun, a salami in the sun.
Missed by a bee's dick
Piss in my pocket but don't tell me it's raining.
Shoot through like a Bondi tram.
Silly as a bum full of Smarties.
Smiling like a mother-in-law in a divorce court.
So bucktoothed, she could eat a watermelon through a barbed wired fence.
So hungry ... I could eat the arsehole out of a dead dingo, I could eat the crotch out of a low flying duck.
Sticks to the road like shit to a blanket.
Sweating like a fat chick in lycra.
Tight as a shark's arse.
Ugly as a hatful of arseholes.
Up and down like a bride's nightie.
Useless as ... tits on a bull, a glass door on a dunny, a letterbox on a tombstone, a pork chop at a synagogue.
Vanished like a fart in a fan factory.

Wonderful as they are, these images do seem to be stuck in a time warp. With the exception of the Baghdad bricklayer, they could all have been created before 1950. Every language needs to be serviced regularly, and we may be falling down on the job with ours. So now, instead of traditional expressions, I'm looking for original wordplay along the lines of "empty as a Corby boogie board bag", "pure as Justice Einfeld's driving record", "self-effacing as Eddie McGuire", "convincing as a Debnam promise", "competent as a NSW Cabinet Minister", etc.

BALTIMORE - Three unpaid parking tickets cost Kelly Watson her Ford truck. When Watson, 32, of Columbia, went to retrieve her 1999 Ford F-250, the city had auctioned it off. A vehicle, with an estimated Kelly Blue Book value of $6,700, sold for $2,500. Somebody got a great steal. And it sure wasn’t Watson.

“I’m still in shock,” she told The Examiner. “I can’t believe I lost my car for a couple of parking tickets.”

Watson parked her car in front of a friend’s house in West Baltimore on Sept. 26, 2006. Four hours later, she said, it vanished.

Believing the F-250 was stolen, Watson called Baltimore Police Department. After filling out a report and checking the impound lots, police promised to call if the car turned up.

After a month of checking with the city, Watson finally received a call, but not from the police.

“Someone called on my cell phone and asked me if I wanted to buy my car back for $3,000,” she said. “I was like, how did you get my cell phone number?”

It gets worse. Watson found out that, despite the stolen-car report, the city had towed her truck to its impound lot on Pulaski Highway for three unpaid parking tickets that totaled $574 in fines.

That’s the city’s policy. Three tickets, and your car is towed. When she complained, city officials cited a certified letter receipt signed by her. They say Watson knew the car was there. Watson says she never signed anything.

“I told them it wasn’t my signature, I never received the letter,” she said.

The United States Postal Service agreed. In a letter sent to Watson’s attorney, Peter Semel, the U.S. Post Office admitted that the certified letter receipt was in fact forged.

“Sometimes a carrier signs it as a favor, so the person doesn’t have to pick it up at the post office,” said U.S. Postal Attorney William Neel.

Still, the Postal Service won’t take responsibility for her loss. Not their problem, they say.

Adrienne Barnes, spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation, said the city was simply following procedures.

“City law gives us authorization to dispose of a vehicle within 45 days,” she said. “We take steps to notify the owner. After the allotted time, the vehicle becomes a safety hazard.”

City Councilman Jack Young, District 12, doesn’t see it that way. And he’s looking forward to a showdown with DOT officials March 1 at a hearing on his resolution that calls for city officials to explain why cars are sold so quickly.

“We can’t just sell people’s cars because we can’t get in touch with them.” he said. “It’s a lame excuse. We should use whatever means necessary to contact people.”

So, Warner and EMI, respectively the 4th and 3rd of the big four music companies, are trying to alternately buy each other out.

Latest dirt... Warner offers $3.7 billion.

3 point seven.

Billion.

Dollars.

Thats a lot of money for those poor guys who've been just about bankrupted by the hordes of music pirates out there, forcing them to sue grandma's and little girls for the three songs they downloaded " illegally " just so they can put food on their family's table.....

Yeah.

3.7 Billion.

Countless hours of wasted court time, thousands of lawyers getting rich, declining profits for the record companies who have the thankless task of....

Wait, I'll think of it...

Hmmm,

Still thinking.

Oh yeah. Signing new bands and promoting their music. Profiting obscenely for doing so for many years. ( 25 bucks for a CD!!!??? ) Screwing those same bands over at every turn.

If you like a band, go see them. Buy their album. Check out Indie stuff, Myspace and Youtube are great ways to discover new talent. Support who you like, tell your friends. Tell RIAA to go away.

P.S. here's the Reuters news story re.

the offer...

Those of you who read my ramblings know I have very little use for our "celebrities", but this headline wrote itself, I couldn't pass it up. Forgive my indulgence....

Norwegian Cruise line forced to cancel all reservations in order to fit Rosie O' Donnell on board.

The story...

O'DONNELL DENIES RUINING HUNDREDS OF SUMMER HOLIDAYS

US TV host ROSIE O'DONNELL denies spoiling hundreds of holidaymakers' summer vacations when she hired out a Caribbean cruise ship, insisting their complaints have nothing to do with her. The outspoken television star allegedly chartered the full capacity of a cruise liner headed from New York to Bermuda and the Bahamas in July (07), forcing Norwegian Cruise Line to cancel other people's bookings, reports the New York Daily News. An official statement from the company released yesterday (20FEB07) fails to mention the cause of the cancellations. It reads, "The company sincerely apologizes for this change and would like to thank its guests for their understanding." However, O'Donnell is confident she is not the one responsible for the messed-up plans. Her spokeswoman CINDI BERGER says, "It's not Rosie's fault. This is an old issue. This happens every time someone charters a cruise, but because it's Rosie, people want to make it an issue."

Got a new/gullible/simply dumb friend/ coworker/relative/employee who talks a big game when it comes to automotive things but really doesn't know jack?

Send him out for a half-pound bottle of blinker fluid, a new johnson rod and a couple of adjustable powerbands from this site, styled to look like a real autoparts supply....

KalecoAuto.com. Many other essential parts and gizmos at the link, too. Worth a browse through.

Got some time to kill? You can watch cheese age in real time at this site...


Cheddarvision

Wonder if you can buy the very block you've been watching mature?

Have a jar of change at home? Too lazy to roll it and bank it yourself and too cheap to pay one of these machines 9-10% to do it for you? Here's a hack that'll give you all your money....

Background

Recently, CoinStar started a campaign where they won't charge you any fee if you turn your coins into iTunes gift cards, Amazon gift cards, or Virgin mobile cards. The machine doesn't actually give you any cards, but rather PINs which can be typed in on the sponsor's site and redeemed for their value. This works because the CoinStar machine has the power of the internets.

How to do it

This is really quite simple. Follow the directions as usual, but when it asks how you would like your money, make sure to pick the iTunes gift card. After it counts all of your change, the machine will ask you how much of your money you want as a gift card and how much you want as cash. Go ahead and set it all to gift card. Now, before proceeding, you need to find a way to unplug the phone jack from the back of the machine. I'm lucky because the wall phone jack for my local CoinStar is at about shoulder height right next to the machine.

Now the poor machine is in quite a pickle. It already has all of your change, and it can't give that back to you. It can't give you an iTunes card either. It could give you cash, but it's not going to lay that 9% fee on because you obviously didn't agree to that when you put your change in the machine. What can it do? Give you cash for FREE. After a few minutes of trying, it will simply give up and just give you a slip which can be redeemed for cash at the store customer service counter.

Shamelessly stolen from Antiyawn.com.