Like the waitress who got a $10,000 tip, it seems that other people (besides me) have all the luck. Another case in point:
After a 16-year-old in Britain paid $190 for a PlayStation 2 on eBay, police say he received a box that contained the game console and bundles of euros worth more than $90,000.
If I were that kid, I’ve give VERY POSITIVE feedback to the seller.
If you click through to the Washington Post link, you’ll learn that Gerald Ford died last night.
Interestingly, Ronald Reagan died today too, according to the Post.
UPDATE: Okay, maybe I should clarify. I’m not a literary snob like this guy. I’m not advocating that people should be reading James Fenimore Cooper or Nathaniel Hawthorne. I, too, enjoy my share of massively popular culture (e.g. "American Idol").
I mean — honestly — I’m the first person to agree that it is okay to have a cheeseburger for dinner sometimes. Everything doesn’t have to be endive salad.
And even then, some very well-read intelligent people I know swear that the Potter books — apart from actually being fun — are very well-written and qualify as "literature".
So, in other words, I’m not anti-Potter or anti-Rowling. I’m just anti-hype. I mean, my God, we just weathered the whole iPhone thing, and now we’re all going to be talking about this for the next week?
And — okay — I’ll admit it — I’ve never read a Potter book, or seen a movie. Or even a trailer for a movie. It’s like being the only one not "in" on the "inside" joke, or like being the only guy at the formal ball wearing cargo pants and brown shoes. Call it jealousy if you want — I’ll cop that plea.
So let me ask you Potter people out there — where does a Potter virgin start? Book One? Or should I watch the movies?
…and chances are you’ve never heard of him.
Norman Borlaug was honored with the Congressional Medal of Honor yesterday, to go nicely with the Nobel Peace Prize that he received in 1970.
What did you do to earn these honors?
Oh, he only saved a billion lives, that’s all.
None of the papers covered it, so I thought I would give the man a nod.
Borlaug created a new strain of wheat. Dwarf wheat.
What’s the big deal? Well, back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, India and other developing countries were facing an agricultural crisis. They could grow wheat, but the stalks of the wheat were so tall and heavy that they collapsed on themsselves, virtually annihalating the crop. This was leading to massive starvation.
Borlaug came along and perfected the science behind a new strain of wheat — dwarf wheat — and he cut through international red tape to see that developing countries were able to produce it. His work saved — literally — billions of lives.
They should build statues for guys like that.
Australian scientists have reportedly come up with a box that lets television viewers change channels, switch on the DVD player or switch off an irritating presenter with the wave of a hand.
The controller’s built-in camera can recognise seven simple hand gestures and work with up to eight different gadgets around the home, reports The Daily Mail.
Want to ask that girl/guy out on a date, but you’re too shy?
University of Zurich researchers have created a spray that can relieve people of shyness, and help them socialise with others. The spray is very easy to use, and an individual can boost self-confidence just by squirting it up the nose.
The researchers say that the spray harnesses the powers of a feel-good hormone called oxytocin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is involved in social recognition and bonding.
The mammalian hormone is produced naturally by the body when a person is in love, and it also induces labour in pregnant women. The spray contains a synthetic version of it, created in the laboratory.
RING is a vibrating alarm designed for people who hate the loud blaring sounds of a typical alarm. The charging cradle is where you set what time you want each ring to go off. The ring fits over the tip of your finger and when that opportune time arrives, it vibrates. Putting the ring back on the dock shuts off the alarm.
The benefits are two-fold. It’s perfect for couples whom wake up at different hours. Never again will you be disturbed from your precious sleep when the alarm goes off. It’s a discrete sensation that only you feel. Another application is for the hearing impaired helping to improve their quality of life.
And finally, something totally unnecessary:
Cooler ScoopTM keeps hands from getting cold and wet when you go for that ice cold beverage. Prevents dirt and germ ridden hands from contaminating the ice in your cooler. Self-draining scoop also eliminates water from getting on floor. Features built-in bottle opener.
Because this hardly ever happens:
Jessica Osborne, 20, received the gift from a family of regulars at the Pizza Hut where she works in this northeastern Indiana town.
The family — a mother and two sons — stopped in recently for their usual: two Mountain Dews, a cup of hot water for tea and a large Meat Lover’s Stuffed Crust pizza. They requested Osborne as usual and chatted about their lives.
"They make your day better when they come in," Osborne said.
She said she told them how she had started college twice but had to drop out because she didn’t have enough money. They told her of their plans to move away, and she asked that they say goodbye before leaving town.
They returned last week and handed Osborne a check, folded in half, with money from an education fund they had set up after a death in the family.
The tip? $10,000.
Now, I consider myself a reasonably generous person, and — believe me — I’m happy for Ms. Osborne. But unfortunately, I worry about going into restaurants once this story gets out. Suddenly, evey single waiter and waitress is going to tell me their sob story in the hopes that I’ll whip out my checkbook and, you know, put them through college or something. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, but I’m not very wealthy. Plus — you know — I want a nachos and an avocado dip first. And a glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble. That’s why I came into the establishment in the first place.
Okay. I’m a neeb when it comes to this TIVO-to-video editting thing.
I whittled down the three-hour TIVO recording of yesterday’s Fox 8 Morning Show to the 15-or-so minutes where the cast of "The Full Monty" performed exceprts, etc.
A couple of problems with the result:
So I gave up.
Maybe I can figure it out soon, when I have the time. In the meantime, Fox 8 has posted one excerpt (the best one, I think) here.
The morning show promo thing was fun — I’d done it once before for Footloose at CTG — but getting up at 4:30 a.m. to get there is definitely not fun. There was a lot of talk about what we could and could not get away with on live TV. Some of the more suggestive language and choreography was altered at the last moment (although Fox seems quite content with the most suggestive clip, seeing as how they’ve put that — and only that — on their website).
Emily passses along an anecdote:
This morning, at the CRAAAACK of dawn, a group of cast members did live performances on the Greensboro morning show. Our call was 5:45am, which is way too early for anyone to be awake, let alone singing at the top of their lungs. Luckily, we all did fantastic, and hopefully it will pull in more audiences for the shows. Heather and I sang a bit of "You Rule My World (Reprise)" and the girls and I did the last section of "Woman’s World", which I can barely sing at 8:00 at night, let alone six in the morning. The nice newscaster lady asked me to please not use the word "pissed" when singing (my line is, "Work all day, I come home and he’s all pissed") and we agreed to change it to "and he’s all ticked". I, however, forgot about our change until the very last second and drew a total blank. I ended up spitting out the word "mad" instead of "pissed" and barely made it through the next line! I don’t think it was too bad, though, and at least I didn’t say "pissed"!! I’m sure anyone up at that hour is probably half-asleep and wouldn’t have noticed anyway.
She did great, as did everyone else — especially considering the ungodly hour. It’s a small price to pay for full, lively houses. I urge everyone who hasn’t seen the show yet to attend.
And even if you saw the show in Winston-Salem, it might be worth a second look in Greensboro. There’s simply a different "vibe" in the new space. Bring your binoculars.
Anonymous Liberal’s takedown of John Stossel is too good not to reprint here:
In his latest column, John Stossel mocks Michael Moore and explains why our health care system would be so much better if we just allowed the free market to work its magic. He writes:
America’s medical system has problems, but profit is the least of it. Government mandates, overregulation and a tax code that pushes employer-paid health insurance prevent the free market from performing its efficient miracles. Six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties. That kills the market. Patients rarely shop around, and doctors rarely compete on price or service.
It’s always the knee-jerk free market worshipers like Stossel who are the most clueless about how markets actually work. Stossel thinks that the problem with our system is that third parties (i.e. insurers) pay for most services. The implication is that if people paid out-of-pocket for medical costs, they would be more cost-conscious and would shop around for better deals, thereby forcing providers to compete and lower prices. This makes sense until you actually switch on your brain for more than three seconds, at which point you realize that it’s total nonsense.
First, and most obviously, health care services are not like TVs and stereos. While some services are elective (and these are already paid for out-of-pocket), the vast majority of medical services are not. If you have a heart attack, you are whisked away to the nearest hospital and operated on. There is no time or opportunity to shop and compare rates. Even for non-emergency care, you usually don’t know what you need until you’ve seen a doctor. And at that point, it’s not very realistic to expect people to get second and third opinions and compare prices ("please don’t treat me, doc, I’m just browsing"). Going to the doctor is a major inconvenience, usually requiring time off work. People don’t like doing it. They just want to be treated and leave. And many don’t even have the option of shopping around. If you don’t live in or near a big city, your options are generally limited. Many people only have one hospital in their area.
Moreover, not being doctors themselves, most people lack the knowledge necessary to meaningfully compare services. Sure, they might be able to determine who’s cheaper, but that doesn’t really help. If anything, I’d be tempted to go with the most expensive provider, on the assumption that what costs more is better quality. I may be willing to buy the bargain brand toilet paper, but when it comes to my life, I’m not fooling around.
Perhaps most devastating to this argument, though, is the reality that when people are forced to pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses, they generally stop going in for routine preventative care and monitoring. This results in worse health outcomes (and unnecessary deaths), and has the perverse effect of raising health care costs. Preventative care has repeatedly been shown to reduce overall costs by heading off (i.e. preventing) the occurrence of conditions that are much more expensive to treat.
Finally, there’s a reason why we rely on insurance to pay health care costs. It’s the same reason we have car insurance and home owner’s insurance: without pooling risk, the costs would be unmanageable. Most people don’t have the financial resources to pay out-of-pocket to settle a lawsuit with another motorist or rebuild their home after a fire or pay for a heart transplant. The only way such things would ever be affordable to an average person is through participation in a large risk pool (i.e. buying an insurance policy).
The rest of Stossel’s column is devoted to tired cliches about how the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. This is of course true in many cases, but not particularly useful in the health care context, where nearly every system in the world necessarily relies on a mixture of government and private sector services and money.
Toward the end of the column, Stossel offers this challenge:
I’ll pay you $1,000 if you can name one thing government does more efficiently than the private sector.
That’s pretty easy actually. The government provides health insurance to the elderly much more efficiently than the private sector possibly could. I don’t see how this can be argued. What does Stossel think would happen if we suddenly did away with Medicare?
The reason the government has to insure the elderly is because private insurance would be prohibitively expensive to most people. As you get older, the odds that you will need expensive health care services dramatically increase, thereby making you a much greater insurance risk. This coincides with you dropping out of the work pool and having less income. Put simply, absent Medicare, most elderly people would not be able to afford insurance and would not have the resources to pay for costs out-of-pocket. That’s why we created Medicare in the first place.
Medicare’s costs may be soaring, but that’s not because Medicare is inefficient. It actually has a remarkably low overhead. Costs are soaring because health care costs in general are soaring due to the proliferation of new medical technologies and treatments.
There is simply no way that the private sector could provide health care to all elderly people in this country at anything near the efficiency of Medicare. John Stossel owes me $1000 dollars.
That’s right. For Republicans, "None of the Above/Don’t Know" comes in at 23%, beating out Rudy Guiliani (21%), Fred Thompson (19%), John McCain (15%), Mitt Romney (11%), and the rest of the pack. None of the Above surged in the polls — it was only 14% last month.
For Democrats, "None of the Above/Don’t Know" comes in a distant third behind Clinton and Obama (and just ahead of Edwards).
"Now this — this is supposed to be what we look like — men and women", quips one of the guys in "The Full Monty", opening up a magazine.
Yeah, right.
Faith Hill meets Faith Hill. Via Shakesville.
Give me the sensual natural curves of an Emily Mark or a Heather Maggs (or, ideally, both of them at the same time) — or any one of a dozen other women I know — versus a photoshopped ET-like anorexic gaze of anybody, and I’ll be happy with that trade. And I’ll line up a thousand guys who’ll agree with me.
UPDATE: Jezebel imagines the memo from Redbook‘s photo editor to a lowly intern:
Some more salient of the fixes:
1. SCALP: You know what we need here? Some more frickin hair. Please, we could practically reuse her to illustrate one of those perennial female pattern baldness pieces. HELLO, did she not get the message that extensions are the new earrings? Take it from Lauryn Hill, white bitches INVENTED the weave, just like Koreans invented fake nails. And speaking of, Faith: nice manicure! For me to poop on!!
2. CROWS FEET: What’s this under those eyes? Blanche? Dorothy? Jesus Christ, we’ll try to get you overtime for this shit.
3. THOSE CHEEKS: What exactly do you think she’s hoarding in there? Snacks to get her through Ramadan? And boy could bitch take a little time out on that deviated septum…
4. OMG THAT EARLOBE: This is a personal one, since no one will probably be able to tell once it hits the cover, but please do some work on that hideous earlobe of hers for me and ixnay on the fucking MOLE. Lasers were invented for a reason, lady!
5. NECK: I feel bad about hers.
6. LIPS: More lines! Ugh: What’s this bitch do, move her mouth into unflattering positions for a living?
7. CLAVICLE: I know they’re hot in New York, but so are those fucking terrorist scarves. This shit does not fly in Middle America. Just pretend like she has no bones. Also, get rid of that welt from the strap of her dress digging into her flesh; we know she’s fat. Everyone else doesn’t need to.
8. BACK FAT: What is this, the new muffin top? She’s spilling out all over that attractive sundress. Gross. And could her posture be worse?
9. THAT HAND, #1: What’s it DOING there? Ugh, I don’t even want to know. Make it an arm. And pleaaaase make it look like she’s sucking in her tummy like a good celebrity.
10. ASS: Chop.
11. ARM: is absolutely FINE, with about 50% less girth and 80% less Mystic Tan! It’ll probably look unnaturally long and frail and Teen Vogue on the cover: I’m okay with this. Anything to spare readers the grotesque sight of THAT HAND, #2.
All right, see what you can do, and don’t stop till she looks at least as young as Reese Witherspoon, or someone, you know, the kids your age would jerk off too. I have faith in you. Ha.
This is no longer a war about saving the Iraqi people. This is about survival and revenge, and returning soldiers are telling the tale:
Many of these veterans returned home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the war and the way it is portrayed by the US government and American media. The war the vets described is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war in Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
"I’ll tell you the point where I really turned," said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. "I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg…. An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything, it just looked at me like–I know she couldn’t speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?… I was just like, This is–this is it. This is ridiculous."
Much of the resentment toward Iraqis described to The Nation by veterans was confirmed in a report released May 4 by the Pentagon. According to the survey, conducted by the Office of the Surgeon General of the US Army Medical Command, just 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of marines agreed that civilians should be treated with dignity and respect. Only 55 percent of soldiers and 40 percent of marines said they would report a unit member who had killed or injured "an innocent noncombatant."
More:
So you go there in the middle of the night, and you want to catch them — you want to catch the Iraqis off guard. So you enter the house fast and furious. You kick down the door, and you run upstairs, and you get the man of the house and you get him out of bed, and his wife is laying next to him. It’s Baghdad, it’s July, it’s August. His wife sometimes may be exposed, because of her night garments in the middle of the night, which is humiliating for that woman and for that man and for that family. And you separate the man from his wife, and if he has children, you put his family in a room, and, you know, you put two soldiers on the door, outside the door, to make sure that his family stays in that room. And then you get — we had interpreters, so we would take interpreters with us throughout the house. And we would have the man of the house, and we would interrogate him over and over again. “Who are the insurgents? Do you know who they are? Are you with them?” And, you know, basically we would tear his house apart. We would, you know, take his bed, turn that upside-down, dump his closets, his drawers, if he had them. I mean, just anything.
And I would say eight out of ten times we never really found any intelligence at all within these homes that would lead us to believe that these people were members of the insurgency. What they were was just Iraqis in their own communities. And we came in there, and we came in uninvited. And I believe — and I don’t blame this on the US military at all. I don’t. I blame this on George Bush. But when you’re involved in a military operation like that, you enter these homes as if you’re going after the enemy, as if you’re going after bin Laden himself, when, for the most part, they’re just families living in their homes, trying to get a night’s rest before they get up and go to work in the morning, if there is work for them. And it’s just — I believe that this created a lot of resentment among the Iraqi people, causing them to join a resistance movement against US and coalition forces in Iraq.
A Baghdad resident emails a friend:
Today I went to the morgue. I saw horrible things there. I didn’t see [H’s] photo among them. Some figures cannot be easily recognized because of the blood or the face is terribly deformed. I saw also only heads; those who were slayed, it’s unbelievable. Tomorrow, we will have another visit to make sure again. In your country, when somebody wants to go to the morgue, he may naturally see two or, say, three or four bodies. For us, I saw hundreds today. Every month, the municipality buries those who are not recognized by their families because of the capacity of the morgue. Imagine!
Background here.
AP:
A man convicted of killing a police officer won a reprieve a day before his scheduled execution, after his lawyers argued that several witnesses had recanted or changed their testimony.
The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday granted a stay of execution of up to 90 days to Troy Davis, 38, who was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in 1989.
He had faced a Tuesday execution date before the board’s decision, which came after less than an hour of deliberation. The stay means the execution will be on hold while the board weighs the evidence presented as part of Davis’ request for clemency. The board must rule by Oct. 14.
It gnawed on my head, and I could feel flesh tearing away. I grabbed the animal by the throat; its fur felt like a dirty wet dog, only thicker. I hit it with a rock, but the rock crumbled, so I wiggled back into the fetal position. Its teeth cut deep into the bottom of my skull; I actually heard bone cracking. I ripped myself loose and plunged another twenty feet down and into a crevice. The grizzly couldn’t reach me. The terrain was too steep. It turned away, and a few seconds later I heard Jenna scream. And then I heard absolutely nothing. I touched the top of my head and felt only bone. What was left of my scalp hung in front of my face, and I couldn’t open my right eye.
Yeah. That’s pretty much what I expected it would feel like…
Anyone in the Triad up tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 6:00 a.m. should have their head examined should turn their television sets to the local Fox station’s "Good Morning" show (whatever the hell it’s called) for LIVE segments and promos of "The Full Monty" which opens this week in Greensboro. It’s Fox 8.
From 6:00 to, oh, 8:30 a.m., there will be LIVE selections from the show, and cutaways as they go to commercials and so on. We’ll be on LIVE remote from the Carolina Theater.
Why the fuck will we be doing LIVE selections from the show at 6:00 a.m.? Purely for the morning show. Apparently, taping it tonight and then showing clips tomorrow morning is too "high-tech". [Note to self: Don’t use the word "fuck", which I’m not inclined to do anyway….]
No, actually, being LIVE is a psychological thing — it kind of lets the sleepy viewer know that "Hey! The world is awake, and you should be too! Look! There’s some people already performing a musical in a theater right in your town! Get out of bed, sleepyhead!"
Anyway, I’ll be doing my "gay Latino character" in a scene which is not actually in the show. VIcki (played by Heather) sings "Love That Man" about and to her "husband", but the Steve cannot be there tomorrow, so she’ll be playing it off of me (as my gay Latino character) instead. Which, now that I think about it, doesn’t make any sense. Hmmmmmm. But it’s only a 15 second "tease" (at 6:40 a.m.), so I don’t think it’s a big deal.
At around, 6:49, the men will perform a bit from the song "Scrap". I’ll be in that. And at 7:35 a.m., I’ll be actually playing a scene where "Reg" does a very bad strip audition. I don’t play "Reg" in the show, but he can’t do it, so I’ll be doing that as well.
There will be lots more — again from 6:00 to 8:30 — so be sure to tune in and/or TIVO.
Esquire