Four day weekends rock. That is all.
And now, the news…
Just a few of the more interesting articles I’ve come across over the past few days. Silly reporters…
Great White Shark Gatecrashes Tuna Dinner Party
SYDNEY (Reuters) – A Great White Shark has gatecrashed a tuna research project in Australia, mysteriously appearing inside a fishing pen containing around 100 tuna.
The 13-foot shark, weighing around 1,500 pounds, is thought to have either bitten its way into the tuna pond or leapt a 7.5 feet electrified fence while chasing a seal last Thursday.<<FULL STORY>>
“A head count of the tuna showed two had disappeared.” Must’ve sucked to be the guy chosen to make that count…I knew there was a perfectly good reason for not accepting that oceanography internship…
Study: Sugary Drinks Help Children Get Fat
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The proof’s in the calories: those sweet sodas, bottled teas and fruit drinks can make your children fat, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
Children who drank more than 12 ounces of sweetened drinks a day gained significantly more weight over two months than children who drank less than 6 ounces a day, the team of nutritionists at Cornell University in New York found.
The soft drink industry has long argued that a lack of exercise and not the availability of drinks is responsible for the rise of obesity in the United States. <<FULL STORY>>
I want to be a scientist when I grow up. News Flash: eating stuff makes you get bigger, animals don’t like getting poked with sticks, and women still don’t find my lab coat sexy…
UK Lesbian to Give Birth to Online ‘DIY’ Baby
LONDON (Reuters) – A lesbian is to give birth to one of the first babies conceived in Britain using sperm provided by an Internet donor service, British newspapers reported Saturday.
The baby of Jaime Saphier, 26, is due in January. She and her partner Sarah Watkinson, 31, who live in the northwest city of Liverpool paid the Web site www. mannotincluded.com 1,305 pounds ($2,156) to match them with a sperm donor and provide a full medical screening of the donor.<<FULL STORY>>
Why do I somehow see ‘supply and demand’ just beating the tar out of this idea? Sure, it sounds like a great idea and maybe it would even help to offset some of our porn costs, but will the lesbians be able to keep up with our ever-increasing sperm supply? Will just anybody be able to do this or will it be one of these broadband-only services? Also, how much will any necessary adapters cost upfront, or will some sort of rental program be available?
Eminem Pulls a Jacko
Eminem’s latest celeb target: Michael Jackson.
The people-displeasin’ rapper, who has provoked Mariah Carey, dissed Christina Aguilera and denied “Weird Al” Yankovic, spoofed Jacko Tuesday in Scotland, dangling a fake baby from a hotel window.
…
As for Yankovic, the musical funnyman expressed disappointment that Eminem blocked him from filming a music video for his latest opus, “Couch Potato,” a reworked version of the 8 Mile hit, “Lose Yourself.”
Eminem’s rep said, at the time, that the rapper didn’t mind “Weird Al” messing with the song’s lyrics, but that he wanted to preserve its image.<<FULL STORY>>
I couldn’t care less about the whole Michael Jackson thing, but preserving Eminem’s image?! He’s fucking Eminem – what’s left to preserve? As far as I’m concerned, that’s like Jeffrey Dahmer suing for damages because he’s really just an artistic chef at heart…give me a break! Puffy (Sean Combs, P. Diddy, Schwang Doodle, or whatever…) let him do it, so what’s the problem?
Just think – if the news wasn’t so exciting, I might actually be writing right now…
Tycho and Gabe make a funny…
One of the funniest Penny Arcade strips I’ve read in a long time:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-06-30
I’m feeling extremely old…
Well, the concert last night was…very, very, very loud…and that’s about all I can say without being harsh! I drove Lori and one of her friends down to Grand Rapids for the day to see a band that she had been dying to see, and although it was probably the worst sound that I’ve ever heard come out of a PA system ever, including that one year at the high school talent show, I’m pretty sure that she had a good time, so I guess taking one for the team is an ok option at this point. I actually even considered going out to the car and bringing back a book to read because pondering the latest fashion trends got boring after a while – combat boots, knee socks, and a schoolgirl skirt, topped off with fishnet everything and pink hair – I guess that’s what happens when the kiddies these days are allowed to dress themselves! There was also one girl that was dressed exactly like a waitress, but apparently she wasn’t one, which was both odd and slightly obnoxious because it meant that much more time trying to find someone that actually would like to bring me another beer. Overall, it was a very loud, blood-curdling experience, but then again, I do remember some people saying the same thing when I went to see a little band called Aerosmith for the first time, so I suppose that each generation should be allowed its Partridge Family!
On the upside, it did give me a chance to catch up with Courtney for a few hours, which was something that I really needed, even though I didn’t quite realize it at the time. She’s got this funny way of bringing life back into perspective for me and helping me to know which things I should actually be sweating about and which ones are just there to keep the backdrop colorful. It’s good to have some aspects of your life that will always remain constant, despite the ever-growing whirlwinds that lead us from day to day without so much time to stop and think, let alone be reminiscent every now and then. Even though it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the lines open as the years fly by, I like to think that in the end there will still be somebody there that can put my life back into perspective for me one last time, and you just don’t meet people like that every day so it certainly is important to hold onto the ones you’ve got.
Precious and few are the moments we spend together, so smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em…
Will you be my friend? Seriously…I have money…
http://www.friendster.com
What’s up with this – are people really this desperate nowadays?! Online personals and dating were bad enough, but now we’ve got online “let’s just be friends”? I guess I just don’t understand the logic behind this one – instead of actually enjoying my love for water and SCUBA diving by frequenting dive stores and exploring the deep blue seas, thereby meeting new people through physical interaction, with the help of Friendster I can simply tell everyone that I like diving and all that it entails from the comfort of my personal computer, thus completely eliminating the hassles of going to the beach and swimming underwater and actually seeing chicks in their bikinis right from the get go. Does society really need another reason to not have to leave the house and go outside once in a while???
Actual quotes from Friendster fanatics:
“I like your profile…maybe we can play tennis sometime.”“We all know that meeting people out in the wild is a risky proposition.”
“Friendster is a great interactive site with innovative interactive capabilities allowing users to ‘break the ice’ and communicate with other possible friends.”
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – Friendster, because going out in public and carrying on an actual conversation is something that nobody should ever have to do…ever.
…didn’t get b-b-b-b-back ’til the 4th of July…
It was another one of those heat wave days, only a little better than yesterday – it just barely struck the triple digits, where as yesterday we saw them for several hours. It was still something like seventy-five when Brandi and I went for our walk, but there was at least a bit of a breeze, so it wasn’t nearly as bad. People tell me that I’d never make it in Florida, but I would assume that you’d get used to it eventually, just as we’re used to wearing shorts in fifty degree weather up here. Plus, they’ve got A/C like everywhere, right?
I did notice something less than flattering about one of the apartment complexes that we normally pass – no matter what time of night it may be, there always just happens to be somebody throwing up outside. Last night at midnight – somebody’s throwing up. A few nights earlier at, say, 9:00 PM – somebody’s throwing up. I’d be willing to bet that somebody’s throwing up there right now, so if you’re planning on moving to the area anytime soon, I can certainly give you the address of someplace you might want to avoid…
And I have a nice red line down the left side of my laptop’s display suddenly and I have no idea where it came from. Today I did spray it down and clean it, but I can’t see how that would make a difference. Should an LCD that’s only a year and a half old be going bad already, or is this just a scam by Dell to slip out from underneath the warranty and get me to drop another two grand for a new computer???
That’s a lot of compruder!
$5m boost to trilogy’s finale
Peter Jackson’s special-effects company Weta Digital is reaching deep into its chest of high-tech sword and sorcery to complete the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King.
It has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, in a deal which on list prices would be approaching $5 million.<<FULL STORY>>
Weta thinks big for finale
Supplier IBM has begun delivering 1174 blade servers, each with dual 2.8 gigahertz Xeon Intel processors and 6 gigabytes of memory.
Weta technical head Scott Houston says about 3200 processors will be running flat out next month on The Return of the King, making Weta Digital the largest Intel-based high-performance computing centre in the world by Intel’s estimation.<<FULL STORY>>
I love the Internet, where a different slant is born every minute! I was fairly impressed with the computing power behind the first story, but then I found this second one and I just want to know – which is it?! Either way, this is still one of the very few movies I’m actually looking forward to this year – hopefully it’ll make up for The Hulk and The Matrix: Reloaded and all of the other crap we’ve been subjected to so far…
Have wizards, will travel…
Mom surprised me the other day with a copy of the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was extremely cool because I hardly said a word about the book, except that there was a big release party planned downtown Friday night for all of the kiddies. (No, I didn’t go – there’s just something about a 22-year-old guy running around in a cape that’s just got creepy written all over it…) Unfortunately, I can’t even start reading it yet because I’m still a book behind, but I did start on #4 last night and as fast as I blew through the others, it shouldn’t be long before I’m stuck on all of the hype like everybody else…
In other news, it seems that just as I got caught up on my latest deadlines, two or three new ones jumped on board, which don’t get me wrong is a very good thing, to still be in work and all, but it’s still a bit stressful. This week, however, I do get to write about festivities for the 4th of July, which are pretty much limited to fireworks and sparklers up around here, so hopefully that’ll be a little easier than, oh say, writing about golf. And of course, the week following that will be featuring our illustrious Alpenfest, which I’ll be covering a little more “tastefully” than I have in the past.
A few of our readers though it was funny, but hey – what do a million or so complete strangers know, anyways?
A View from the Top…
Today was a very cool day.
As part of a media relations deal, myself and two exceptionally attractive reporters from one of the local television stations were given the opportunity to take a tour of the Mackinac Bridge, which for you out of towners is the largest suspension bridge in the Northern Hemisphere. Ok, technically they were there to spread some light on a recent toll increase (because the bridge is currently being repainted), while I was there mainly to say, “Wow…” intermittently while they were trying to film, and come up with an entertaining, yet educationally-slanted column for next week’s paper, but either way it was probably the most interesting thing I’ve done for this paper so far and if the column comes out half as good as the pictures did, then everybody should end up more than happy…
 |
 |
 |
My only regret was that I didn’t bring my laptop with me because after the tour, it was just way too nice of a day to go back home and sit in front of a computer for the rest of the day. 80-some-odd degrees with a cool breeze coming off the Straits would’ve been the perfect environment for writing that column…but of course, I probably would’ve ended up falling asleep anyways! Ahhh, the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer…
More like St. Crap…
I heard parts of the “new” Metallica album, St. Anger, on the radio the other day and I’ve come to only one conclusion:
After years of legal battles, Metallica has finally found a way to beat the file-sharing thieves at their own game…by putting out an album so absolutely horrible that no one would ever even consider pirating it.
R.I.P. Metallica – it was fun while it lasted…