American Idle

So you still don't think American Idol is scripted? Watch Paula Abdul critique one singer's second round performance before it happens. Watch the other hosts frantically try to cover.

Darwin Awards 2008: We Have A Winner

Brazil gives up on priest carried off by balloons
(story here)

The Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli has been missing since Sunday, when he lifted off from the port city of Paranagua strapped to 1,000 balloons and wearing a helmet, an aluminum thermal flight suit, waterproof coveralls and a parachute.

...and nobody got a picture of this?!

UPDATE: This is an alleged photo.

Only 246 shopping days left until xmas...

i saw a commercial on TV last night advertising the 2009 Dodge Journey. This practice of releasing next year's models has been around for decades (eg. the '65 Mustang is often called 64½). But this is April! I bought a brand new 2008 Nissan in February and now in April of '08 it's technically a year old already. This cheesy marketing gimmick is really getting out of hand - most of the major auto manufacturers have now released their 2009 models (see article at Car and Driver)
My question now is, how far will they take this? Will we see the 2010 models by January '09? sooner? at what point does it become ridiculous?

My baby I purchased in February, are you now old news?

My Favorite Guitarist: Greg Howe

WTF?! There are some stupid people out there...

How Obsolete Are You

from the website www.obsoleteskills.com

When was the last time you had to...
Change the ribbon on a typewriter
Rewind audio or video cassettes
Adjust the rabbit ears on your TV set
Check your beeper
Format a floppy disk
Have to put www in front of every URL
Load film into a camera
Use a darkroom
Lick stamps
Pay with a check
Use a pay phone
Look up a business in the Yellow Pages
Switch from TV to Game Mode on the box behind the TV
Blow into a dusty Nintendo cartridge to make it work
Use the Dewey Decimal System to find a book
Wind your watch
do Long division (other than for school)
Call the radio station to find out what song that was
Rip the trim with the holes off the sides of computer paper
Call someone collect
Replace the tape in your answering machine
Thread a filmstrip
Pop popcorn with hot oil
Heat a ``TV Dinner'' in the oven
Get up to manually change the channel
Repair a television set
Sharpen a razor blade
Add water to your car battery
Ride a single-speed bike
Set the time on a VCR
Download music from the original Napster
Put tape over the punched-out holes on a VCR tape so you can use it again
Use correction fluid
Put a nickel on the tone arm of a record player to keep it from skipping
Pop in a flash cube
Use a choke
Clean a vinyl record
Defrost the refrigerator
Refill a fountain pen
Use carbon paper to make copies
Change tracks on an 8-track tape
Tape songs off the radio onto a cassette tape
Sniff freshly mimeographed tests
Send a handwritten letter
Write in cursive
Mow the yard with a non-powered push mower (May be coming back, though ...)
Manually enter prices into an old-fashioned cash register
Clean the head of your VCR
Crawl under the door of a pay toilet

Priceless

Britney Spears in minor car accident

I realize this is old news by now (story here) but it was too amusing to pass up, and a couple of comments are in order here...

Spears was in stop-and-go traffic when her car struck a 2006 Nissan in front of her that had stopped. The Nissan then pushed forward into another vehicle. No damage was noted to any of the vehicles.

I don't know how many of these kind of accidents you've been in. I rear-ended somebody in "stop-and-go traffic" in my lifted Suburban last summer and ended up with $4000 in damage. I can't conceive how you can hit a car hard enough to push him into the next car and still not have any damage. My guess is that people were paid to not notice any damage.

Finally... WTF is this woman doing driving a car?! How many examples of her poor driving judgment do we need before her license is revoked? Obviously somebody is using an entirely different numbering system when adding up her driving record points.

Mascots Gone Wild

Crayola Continues Its Progressive Bent

There are certain American icons that we rely on for stability in this topsy-turvy world. For many decades, Crayola had the honor and responsibility of setting the standard for color names. Burnt Umber was simply brown until Crayola called it Burnt Umber. Whether it was 8, 16, or 64 colors, Crayola defined color.
This isn't the first time that Crayola has caved in and renamed some of it's colors, we've begrudgingly accepted that a little change is occasionally necessary. We gradually accepted the trendy shift that introduced colors associated with well-known objects, eg. 'Macaroni & Cheese'.

But this time they've gone too far. It would have been barely tolerable to give the colors names of emotions (eg. 'Envy Green'). These latest changes, however, have to be a discouraging forecast of impending mamby-pambyism.
Without cheating, see if you can tell me what color is:
1) super happy
2) fun in the sun
3) giving tree
4) bear hug
5) happy ever after
6) famous
7) best friends
8) awesome

(OK, if you insist on cheating, here is the story that prompted this post.)

People, this has to be stopped or the next step will be:

Created by OnePlusYou

i don't know how this could have happened.

Rare skiing accident in the Keweenaw

I don't have much pity for snowboarders.
Anyway, here is the story.

Public Restroom Question #38:

I'm generally in favor of dental hygiene, but when I stumble across things like this, it actually makes me a little queasy. I'm not microphobic, but let's face some facts - there is some nasty nasty business that takes place in public restrooms, by some nasty nasty people, that have no qualms about leaving their nastiness behind for others. So much nastiness that it can easily permeate the entire restroom even after the more scrupulous visitors. I, therefore, keep my visits seldom, short, and with minimal contact. I would not walk barefoot or take food into a public restroom. Brushing your teeth in there just seems counter-productive if you ask me.

ps. i thought it would be interesting to use only pre-existing tags for this post.

DB Cooper Where Are You

Expert: Parachute not D.B. Cooper's
AMBOY, Wash., April 1 (UPI) -- An old parachute found in rural Washington last week wasn't used by skyjacker D.B. Cooper back in 1971, an expert said Monday night.

Earl Cossey told The (Portland) Oregonian Monday night an FBI agent took the parachute to his home last Friday and asked him if he believed it could be the one Cooper used when he leaped from a Northwest Airlines flight the night of Nov. 24, 1971, with $200,000 in ransom money.

"Not even close, not even close," said Cossey, who packed the four parachutes given to Cooper.

An agent in the FBI's Seattle office told The Oregonian the law enforcement agency wanted to take one more step Tuesday before commenting.

The mystery of what happened to Cooper after he leaped from the jetliner that night remains unsolved.

/look for it to appear on EBay shortly

Update: Heals may be on to something here. Could this be DB Cooper?