Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky...

...mass hysteria!

Blackalicious Shout-out

I awoke this morning to find a nice little shout out to me about my current favorite rap group Blackalicious on Blah Blah Blog. Here is the first sentence of the post:

"Maybe I am old and out of the loop, but I just discovered the genius of Blackalicious, and it took a Jewish guy from Long Island to introduce me."

My street cred has probably now increased at least 25% due to how I've helped spread the word about Blackalicious's delicious rhymes and deft beats. I can go on and on about how amazing this group is but really Chris's post says it all, plus, he provides an opportunity to download Alphabet Aerobics, the songs that first made me love the group, as well as Chemical Calisthenics, which actually makes physics sound gansta. As Chris put it, they are "like Kool Mo Dee with a master's degree."

Thanks Chris

Sold! Virgin Mary seen on a Grilled Cheese Sandwhich

It sold for only $28,000!

To me, that is incredibly low amount for a holy relic. This sandwhich is a physical embodiment of the mother of god and I don't know what's worse, the woman selling it or only fetching less than a top of the line Ford after selling it. Adding sacralige to sacralige, an online casino bought it. Christ almighty, a casino! It would be funny if they had a press conference where someone ate it live on camera. You could bet on how much time it took to eat it, if he threw up and if he's going to hell.

You can read more about it straight from CNN.com's mouth after the jump.

Thanks Phyl

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (AP - 11/23/04) -- A woman who said her 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich bore the image of the Virgin Mary will be getting a lot more bread after the item sold for $28,000 on eBay.

GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, confirmed that it placed the winning bid, and company executives said they were willing to spend "as much as it took" to own the 10-year-old half-sandwich with a bite out of it.

"It's a part of pop culture that's immediately and widely recognizable," spokesman Monty Kerr told The Miami Herald. "We knew right away we wanted to have it."

Photos posted on eBay show what can be viewed as a woman's face emblazoned on the sandwich, a bite taken out of one end. Bidding closed Monday.

In a statement, GoldenPalace.com CEO Richard Rowe said he planned to use the sandwich to raise money for charity. Kerr and Steve Baker, CEO of GoldenPalace's management company, Cyberworld Group, flew to south Florida on Monday to make arrangements for a sandwich handover from its owner, Diana Duyser.

"I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God," Duyser, a work-from-home jewelry designer, said in the casino's statement.

The online auction site initially pulled the sale, saying it didn't post joke items. The page was restored after the company was convinced that Duyser would deliver on the bid, said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

Duyser said she took a bite after making the sandwich 10 years ago and saw a face staring back at her. She put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand. She said the sandwich has never sprouted a spore of mold.

Neu: I get to hit you

Dr. David Graham, associate director of science for the office of drug safety at the center for drug evaluation and research for the Food and Drug Administration testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and shows them what is colloquially known as "the flying asshole."

If only George, Turtle and a few others read my blog, I could hit them too...

Flashback: State Song Lyrics

I was going through a folder I have on my work PC which contains all sorts of random docs, such as a spreadsheet used to plan my bachelor party, a letter to my pediatrian requesting my immunization history, a list of places to eat around my office and a video, shot from the doomed Columbia Space Shuttle, of Israel from space (email me if you want this - I don't want to post it and get hit with the bandwidth overages). I also found the lyrics to a song I learned in 5th grade which I sang in some concert: The 50 States in Rhyme Song. For all those who are nostalgic, especially for a time when we thought of states as just states, not red states or blue states, here is the song:

Alabama and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, and Connecticut and more.

I for one can sing from memory the song up till the "#28's Nevada" part.

Tragedy on the Mountain

In the news today:

Rangers removed the ice-encrusted bodies of two other hikers who died on the peak in an unexpected early blizzard in the Sierras. The deaths occurred on El Capitan, a forbidding granite mountain at Yosemite National Park,

The two deaths created a gruesome sight for a helicopter crew that managed to fly close enough Wednesday to spot the bodies, which were blue and dripping with icicles as they dangled from their ropes about two-thirds of the way up the precipice.

To retrieve the corpses, rangers rappelled down El Capitan, put the bodies into yellow mountaineering bags, and carried them on their backs hundreds of feet to the summit.

The two victims - an unidentified Japanese man and woman - had been ill-prepared for the weather, a ranger said. They also had their arms around each other, probably in an attempt to keep each other warm.

I can think of a very sad 2 person play that could be written about this tragedy. Such a sudden storm of sadness.

In display of toughness over his new "mandate," Bush executes turkey with bare hands to satisfy conservatives

In a reversal of a long-standing tradition of awarding a Presidential pardon to a select Thanksgiving turkey, President George W. Bush instead snapped the turkey's neck using only a single, bare hand.

Virgin Mary seen on a Grilled Cheese Sandwhich

My co-workers alerted me to this auction for a grilled cheese sandwhich that has an image of the Virgin Mary on it. At first eBay yanked the auction thinking it was a joke but the woman protested and proved that yes, she has been sleeping with a grilled cheese sandwhich on her bedside table for 10 years. It just has to be the Virgin Mary - look, no mold! This is from the actual description: "The item has not been preserved or anything, It has been keep in a plastic case, not a special one that seals out air or potiental mold or bacteria, it is like a miracle."

The funnier part is this: go to eBay and type in "Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese" into the search box. There are now tons of auctions with Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese in the description title - they are all trying to take advantage of this crazy auction. There are non-holy grilled cheese sandwhichs for sale, pics of the virgin mary for sale and even "Sexy Pantyhose NOT Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich" for sale. As my co-worker Jason just mentioned, "Why when someone sees a woman's face on a food item, in a window, etc does that person automatically think its the Virgin Mary. What about other women, like Pat Nixon?"

Thanks Jason and Chris for illuminating my day

Its "Laugh at others" time

Anna Nicole was HAMMERED at the American Music Awards. You can watch her try to talk here. The key word is try.

Thanks Ro

Because I'm Fat, I'm Fat, Really really fat

This is burger was just introduced by the Hardee's fast food chain. Yes, it looks ridiculously delicious. Its called the Monster Thickburger and is made of two 1/3-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. Now for the downside: it contains 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat. That's right. 107 grams of fat. Your intake for the day is supposed to be around 60 grams of fat. This burger gives you enough fat for 2 days. I would need to bike for 4 hours (at 10 mph) to burn this puppy off. Oh but it looks so tasty...

After the jump read the article that was on MSNBC about it. Thanks Neu for making my mouth water.

Hardee�s serves up 1,420-calorie burger; Fast-food giant skips diet craze, creates fat-filled sandwich
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:47 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2004

ST. LOUIS - As many fast-food chains introduce healthier fare amid fears of being sued, Hardee�s is serving up a hamburger with 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat.

St. Louis-based Hardee�s Food Systems Inc. on Monday rolled out its Monster Thickburger � two 1/3-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. The sandwich alone sells for $5.49, $7.09 with fries and a soda.

The introduction comes at a time when McDonald�s Corp., Wendy�s International Inc. and other fast-food giants have broadened their offerings of salad and other lower-calorie fare amid concerns that the industry could be held legally liable for America�s obesity epidemic. Last year, a federal judge in New York dismissed two class-action suits blaming McDonald�s for making people fat. McDonald�s was also skewered earlier this year by �Super Size Me,� an award-winning documentary that targeted the fast food industry.

Even before the new Monster Thickburger, the chain offered five sandwiches with 1,000 calories or more, and eight overall that have more calories than what was once the big-burger standard � McDonald�s 600-calorie Big Mac.

�Maybe this is a smart strategy because there are still folks out there who care about the taste and size of their sandwich, and less about their weight,� said Jerry McVety, president of the restaurant consulting firm McVety & Associates in Farmington Hills, Mich.

In trading Monday, shares of Hardee�s parent company, CKE Restaurants Inc., closed up 13 cents, or 1 percent, at $12.63.

Daily Candy's Lexicon IX

I received these words and definitions in my inbox this morning courtesy of Daily Candy. I thought I'd share:

beighborhood
n. Area populated by good-looking people. ("Let's go downtown. Fifth Street has turned into a total beighborhood.")

DIZO
n. Acronym. Describes (busy, working, all-too-typical) couple: Dual Income, Zero Orgasm.

Earnest Hemorrhage
n. A man who is oppressively forthcoming with every thought and feeling. Antonym: Ernest Hemingway, linguistically stingy author.

foxymoron
n. One who is incredibly dumb but incredibly cute, who simultaneously attracts and repels. ("I'm so ashamed. I hooked up with that foxymoron last night.")

GHaG
n. Acronym. Girl-Hating Girl. The one whose only friends are guys.

hobeau
n. A less-than-hygienic boyfriend. ("Better open the window. Here come Gloria and her hobeau.")

nontourage
n. A group of undesirable sycophants. ("The party was fun until Justin showed up with his nontourage.")

pharmasecrecy
n. The secret bond one has with her pharmacist. ("Only Mr. Myers knows the truth about my little Klonopin/Paxil/laxative habit.")

showflake
n. Person who chronically misses every appointment (e.g., haircuts, doctor visits, dinners). ("Is Louisa going to show, or is she pulling a showflake again?")

SoDeeWah
n. Socialite/designer/whatever. The model/actress/ whatever of the '00s. You know the type.

staremaster
n. Gym dandies who constantly check themselves out in the mirror. ("If that staremaster touches his pecs one more time ...")

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked

Reading this article has further infuriated me - I was pissed off that Kerry threw in the towel and went down without a fight the day after Election Day but now I'm really pissed off. I keep reading more and more info about how the election would have been rigged and while at first I thought it was one or two isolated incidents, now I'm starting to believe a bit in a conspiracy here. Yes, I know its easier to think that "we were hacked" instead of "we lost" but the facts are the facts. After the jump, read an article I grabbed from CNN.com on 11/05/2004 about one such "interesting anomoly."

Thanks Chris for making my blood boil...

Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.

State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome.

Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result. (Full Ohio results)

The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error.

The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections. (Touchscreen voting troubles reported)

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor.

In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred.

Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said.

The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine.

Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round. (E-vote goes smoothly, but experts skeptical)

When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said.

"All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to."

A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem.

More Election 2004 info

I have a feeling that I'm going to be posting info about the 2004 election for a long, long time. I still need to post about how both the Red Sox and George Bush won this year - I mean, what else will happen? Will the magnetic poles flip sometime before New Year's Eve? That isn't supposed to happen for another 10,000 years or so but who knows, its been that kind of year.

Here are two things that I was sent today that I would like to share, the first is funny and the second will really make you think:

>> A proposed cover of Time Magazine that probably won't be published anytime soon.

>> An interesting comparrison of maps. In one corner, a map of the U.S. Pre-Civil War. In the other corner, a map of how the country voted this year.

Thanks Phyllis for sending

Election 2004: Smart People voted for Kerry, Dumb people for Bush

You just can't beat these stats. However, I'm more than slightly dismayed to see that NJ has a higher IQ average than NY (albeit by 2 points but still, Jersey is Jersey and I would have thought for sure that the combined mullet weight would have brought down their average...)

Thanks again to Kevin Moeller

Frontline Show to Watch on 11/9

Hurry up and watch this upcoming Frontline on PBS about how "the multibillion-dollar 'persuasion industries' of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives." It sounds interesting, compelling, slightly scary and yes, I work at a marketing company so there will be a serving of guilt along with this program for me at least.

I'm saying "hurry up and watch" because who knows how much longer PBS will survive in this "New America." For illustration, here is part of a post that I got on BoingBoing from someone named Molly:

I got a very clear picture of his base constituency when having a discussion over lunch with some co-workers about our favorite children's shows. I was commenting on how much I liked Sesame Street, and one woman (a very vocal Christian conservative) said, "Oooh.. Sesame Street is too tolerant for me". To my horror, several other women nodded their heads in agreement. I guess I didn't even think there was such a thing as too tolerant.

Yikes.

New Map of America post 2004 election

While this might not make it into the Rand McNally atlas, it should:

I'm sort of surprised today about how I'm not as angry as I thought I'd be. I've almost, dare I say it, moved to the acceptance stage of grief. I think the answer to my lack of anger today is religion, namely my religion. I'm jewish, therefore I'm used to ALWAYS being in the minority. I asked my father at 12:37 AM on Wednesday morning, "Why do I always have to be in the minority? I mean, i know I'm Jewish so being a minority is sort of baked into my existence but look at that map [red state/blue state] - there is almost no blue on it! It is seriously depressing. Its like the entire U.S. is against us." His response was, "Smart people will always be in the minority. It's a fact of life that you need to deal with." Unfortunately, as this election was one between those who chose illusion over reality, I think he's right....

Thanks to Kevin Moeller [via Erik Neu] for providing the map

Election 2004: Gore Vidal's take on it BEFORE it happened

I'm not sure who MC is in the exchange before but GV is Gore Vidal. It would be scary if the election was still coming up but now that we know we are going to suffer through another 4 years of GWB, its downright frightening. Read below:

MC: Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?

GV: No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count
votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?

So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can't lose.

MC: But Gore, aren't you still enough of a believer in the democratic instincts of ordinary people to think that, in the end, those sorts of conspiracies
eventually fall apart?

GV: Oh no! I find they only get stronger, more entrenched. Who would have thought that Harry Truman's plans to militarize America would have come as far as we are today? All the money we have wasted on the military, while our schools are nowhere. There is no health care; we know the litany. We get nothing back for our taxes. I wouldn't have thought that would have lasted the last 50 years, which I lived through. But it did last.

GV: But getting back to Bush. If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office.
He's made every error you can. He's wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can't find jobs. Poverty is up. It's a total mess. How does he make
such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power.

MC: You paint a very dark picture of the current administration and of the American political system in general. But at a deeper, more societal level, isn't
there still a democratic underpinning?

GV: No. There are some memories of what we once were. There are still a few old people around who remember the New Deal, which was the last time we had a government that showed some interest in the welfare of the American people. Now we have governments, in the last 20 to 30 years, that care only about the welfare of the rich.

MC: Is Bush the worst president we've ever had?

GV: Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.

MC: How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?

GV: I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later
they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won't be pretty.

Thanks Phyllis!

NeuCom: Germans love David Hasselhoff...

...actually the Europeans love me. They miss me and clamor to replace me via the premier pan-European dating site.