July 2008 Archives

Did your parents give you a long or silly name? No matter how bad it is, there's no way it can be as bad as this girl's, whose name was so terrible, a judge ordered her parents to change it.

The parents of a New Zealand girl named Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii have been ordered to change her name because it risks making her the target of abuse and ridicule.
 
A lawyer acting for the girl claimed she was so embarrassed by her name that she had kept it from her friends, insisting she should be known as "K" instead. She also feared that if it became public she would be mocked and teased.

The lawyer claimed the girl fully understood the absurdity of her name, unlike her parents who had not considered the implications when they named her.

I would make a crack about a nine-year-old having her own lawyer, but this is one of the few instance I can think of where it's justified.

Think about a block of plastic explosive. Now think about a package of string cheese. When you get right down to it, they look rather similar, right? At least that's what Centerville police want you to think. 

Around 3 p.m. Saturday, Centerville police and units from South Davis Metro Fire responded to a phone call advising the Davis County Sheriff's Office that a bomb had been placed inside the grocery store at 350 E. Pages Lane.

The store was evacuated shortly after the call came in. During the evacuation, a Dick's employee reported seeing a cylindrical device wrapped in duct tape near a cooler of dry ice.

Additional units from area police departments were called in to assist with traffic control and the evacuation of Dick's and nearby businesses.

Centerville police Lt. Paul Child said the businesses remained closed for about two hours while bomb-sniffing dogs and a bomb technician checked the building and determined it was safe.

The cylindrical device the employee saw turned out to be a piece of string cheese wrapped in duct tape, made to resemble a bomb.

The secret mozzarella threat to our country.

They must be really strappd for cash at one Las Vegas TV station to turn to a sponsorship with McDonalds. Hopefully that station won't be airing Super Size Me any time soon.

Two cups of McDonald's iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

They've been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they're still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.

Some journalists may be upset with this, but I for one think it's a good idea, as do my credit card bills. McDonalds people, call me.

	Do not adjust your computer monitors, what you're seeing is correct. Hundreds of Santas on parade in the middle of summer. It's all part of the 52nd annual World Santa Claus Congress held in Copenhagen, Denmark. You have to wonder if it's such a good idea to have this many Santas together, lest believing children have their hopes dashed. Furthermore, they couldn't find a more seasonal time? I guess not. During all the other parts of the year they're probably busy working in Malls. Hit the jump for the full Associated Press article.

I know they don't care much for the president in San Francisco, but something about this plan smells funny.

The measure certified Thursday would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

Supporters say the idea is to commemorate the mess they claim Bush has left behind by actions such as the war in Iraq.

Still, a sewage plant? Isn't there a broken sidewalk somewhere they could dedicate instead?

... and they are very adamant about this after a travel advertisement appeared in a London magazine proclaiming the opposite.

The campaign, which plastered the London subway with posters advertising the charms of South Carolina and five major U.S. cities to gay European tourists, landed with a resounding thud in South Carolina, where the issue of gay rights has long been a political flashpoint.

The advertisements were timed for London's Gay Pride Week, which ended Saturday. The posters touted the attractions of the state to gay tourists, including its "gay beaches" and its Civil War-era plantations.

Was that really the best slogan they could come up with? It sounds like something a fourth grader would say. Also, we have people in the office who have lived and worked in South Carolina, and they have yet to recall seeing a single "gay beach."

I think the headline on this Reuters story says it all. "Lifelike dolls repel and attract." Considering I get the heebie jeebies from some very unlifelike dolls, these things would freak me out.

"Reborn babies" are disconcertingly life-like baby dolls carefully crafted in vinyl, which have become swiftly popular mainly with collectors, but also with nostalgic grandparents and grieving parents.

Made and collected by an online community of enthusiasts, they are painted several times to create the mottled colour of newborn skin, have mohair hair and eyelashes, and are weighted to make them feel as heavy as human babies.

This Australian monk got a little too excited that the pope was going to be visiting.

An L.A. city councilwoman wants you to eat health. Or else! She's calling for a moratorium on all new fast food development for part of the city.

Jan Perry's proposal, mimicking boutique communities that freeze out such franchises, is supported by nutritionists and community activists, who call restrictive zoning an apt response to "food apartheid."

"Food apartheid?" That terminology is so problematic, I don't quite know where to begin.

There's a scene in the TV show Arrested Development where a frustrated environmentalist says to Portia di Rossi's character, "You don't get nature, do you?" To the man who made a calender of shirtless Mormon missionaries, I'd have to say, "You don't get Mormonism, do you?"

Chad Hardy said he bears no ill will toward the council of elders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"I felt like I spoke my truth," the 31-year-old entertainment entrepreneur said. "Bottom-line, they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have."

"Men on a Mission," which has sold nearly 10,000 copies at $14.99 each, included pictures of 12 returned missionaries wearing black slacks, but not their trademark white shirts, in modest poses. The men also were photographed in traditional missionary garb and share their religious beliefs in biographical sketches.

I'm not even Mormon, it just seems to me the sort of thing that would be fairly obvious the LDS Church would have a problem with.

When you hear the stickup line, "Hand me over your money or I'll light you up like a Christmas tree," you normally expect the perpetrator to be packing something a bit stronger than a fluorescent light bulb.

The offender, who's been described as chubby, walked into the Shell service station at Breakfast Creek in Brisbane's north about 4.45am (AEST) today and demanded money, police said.

He used the fluorescent light tube to threaten a female worker, before fleeing the scene on foot with a sum of cash.

So wait...they gave it to him? All the more reason we need more light bulb control laws.

Again, file this one under plain creepy. A man who describes himself as a human pincushion is celebrating the olympics by sticking the flags of all the different nations competing into his face.

Attached to acupuncture pins, the flags represent competing nations and his hope for world peace.

The crowning glory is a needle shaped like the Olympic torch, which slides neatly into his brow.

"We are used to seeing people paint national flags on their faces in other Olympic Games, so I thought why not just put the flags in vertically?," said the 58 year-old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine.

No photo unfortunately, but if you follow the link, there is a video. Not for those with queasy stomachs or common sense.

Did you know fold-up couches could kill? I didn't, but then again, I don't live in St. Petersburg.

St Petersburg's Channel Five said the man's wife, upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.

The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space.

This is why we desperately need couch control in this country. Of course, it will never happen if the NRA has anything to say about it (National Recliners Association).

I couldn't think of anything funny for the topic because this one just grosses me out. You don't see them much around here, but back on the East Coast, every summer we were plagued by cicadas. They would always molt and leave their dead skin on trees. It was disgusting. Or beautiful according to two girls who have started a business turning dead cicadas into jewlery.

Katheryn Maloney and Brady Cullinan are selling jewelry made out of the cicadas that swarmed their town of Sandwich this summer.

The pair charges $10 for earrings or necklaces made out of the bugs' lacquered carcasses.

They tell the Cape Cod Times that some people find the jewelry gross, but others are impressed with its uniqueness.

I think I'll pass on this one  

According to the Associated Press, Grand Junction's yearly country music festival causes pregnancies in the area to jump. Do fertility drug makers know this?

Nurse-Family Partnership supervisor Wanda Scott says referrals to her agency from the Mesa County Health Department quadruple every year after the music festival Country Jam. Scott told commissioners about the phenomena Monday during a presentation called, "How are the Children?"
Scott says on average the health clinic sees between 25 to 30 pregnancies a month. She says five weeks after the festival that number jumps to almost 80 a month.

If they ever have a smooth jazz festival, the city might be overrun nine months later.

Animal rights can be a touchy issue sometimes. I think most people would agree that in the best of situations, we'd rather not see dogs being chained up and left alone. That being said, I think most people would say the same about people, even if they are doing it voluntarily.

   Shana Gustafson gave up some of her freedom Sunday to raise awareness for the plight of dogs that spend much of their lives on a tether.
    The 29-year-old Albuquerque woman wore a collar and chain for eight hours at Los Altos Park in observance of "Chain Off," a national event organized by Dogs Deserve Better, a group dedicated to ending the practice of dog chaining.

However much Ms. Gustafson believes in her cause, it occurs to me that chaining yourself up with a dog collar in a park in Albuquerque might attract entirely the wrong kind of supporters.

I bet high gas prices have a lot of people reconsidering some of their political views on different subjects. The war in Iraq? Alternative energy? Drilling in Alaska? Extraterrestrial lifeforms...hey, wait a minute...

 

Steven M. Greer, founder and director of The Disclosure Project, said that with gas at record prices, it's time for the government to tell what it knows about alien propulsion. "In light of the growing energy and environmental crisis, it is imperative that the people of the United States know the truth and work to see that full disclosure occurs as soon as possible," Greer said in a statement.

I thought we were trying to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign energy sources?