“You føcking stupid… title thieving… føcking little slut.”
The Rumpus Interview with Jill Sobule
As a musician I have always refrained from criticizing another artist. I was, “well, good for her.” It did bug me a little bit, however, when she said she came up with the idea for the title in a dream. In truth, she wrote it with a team of professional writers and was signed by the very same guy that signed me in 1995. I have not mentioned that in interviews as I don’t want to sound bitter or petty… cause, that’s not me.
Okay, maybe, if I really think about it, there were a few jealous and pissed off moments. So here goes, for the first time in an interview: Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe “not good for the gays,” title thieving, haven’t heard much else, so not quite sure if you’re talented, fucking little slut.
Emmy & ATAS: “I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process.”
Emmy Format Shift Angers Writers
The Emmy awards announced Thursday plans for a change in the format of the ceremony. Eight of the 28 Emmy categories will be pre-taped, in order to shave minutes off the lengthy program time. Two of the categories excluded from the ceremony are for writing, and given that there are only four writing categories in the Emmys to start with, There’s understandably some resentment. More than 100 television writers have signed a letter protesting the changes. James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporterhas the letter, and further details:
We, the undersigned showrunners and executive producers of television’s current line-up of programs, oppose the Academy of Television Arts and Science’s decision to remove writing awards from the live telecast. This decision conveys a fundamental understatement of the importance of writers in the creation of television programming and a symbolic attack on the primacy of writing in our industry.
MÄN SOM HATAR KVINNOR (or, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)
WaPo Whining Called Out
The Time Gawker Put the Washington Post Out of Business
Spurred on by his editor, a Washington Post reporter complained over the weekend that we “stole” his profile of a ridiculous “generational guru” when we blogged about it on this site. Our question: where’s your outrage at your editors?
To summarize this little media controversy: reporter Ian Shapira profiled Anne Loehr, a consultant who gets companies to pay her to explain the mysteries of Gen Y. Our own Hamilton Nolan wrote an item about it in which he reprinted four of Loehr’s most laughable quotes and ridiculed them. After initially being pleased that his metro profile got some play on a widely read blog, Shapira changed his mind when he got an email from his editor: “They stole your story. Where’s your outrage, man?” This led Shapira, in a piece for the Post‘s Outlook section, to conclude that his job is doomed.
Clip ‘n Dales
Science Proves Cats Indeed Are Evil
Cat Call Coerces Can Opening
A study in the journal Current Biology finds that some cat purrs include a high-frequency plaintive component that gets people to do cats’ bidding. Karen Hopkin reports
Listen to this podcast:
Anyone who’s ever had a cat knows how demanding they can be. Let me out, let me in, give me food, give me different food. The list goes on. But how do these clever kitties convince us to do their bidding? A study in the July 14 issue of Current Biology suggests it’s all in how they ask.
Karen McComb of the University of Sussex started studying persuasive cat calls after realizing that her own pet used a hybrid between a purr and a cry to get her out of bed in the morning. McComb got recordings of other cat calls. And back in the lab, she found that humans thought purrs made by cats who were trying to solicit a snack were more urgent, and less pleasant, than those made when kitty was, say, relaxing on the sofa.
Turns out that the “feed me” purr includes a high-frequency component, absent from the contented purr, that makes people want to reach for a can opener just to make Fluffy stop. It’s obviously part of “Fluffy’s Master Plan (song) for World Domination.”
—Karen Hopkin
Video Of Largest Snake Ever Found
“Well, you see, Judge, it got all small and grew teeth – and so now she wants a divorce.”
Support Your Local Library
UK’s most prolific library book borrower
by Severin Carrell
A 91-year-old woman from Stranraer in south-west Scotland is believed to be Britain’s most prolific library book reader after staff at her local library realised she is on the brink of borrowing her 25,000th book. Louise Brown, who borrowed her first book from Castle Douglas library in 1946, now reads about 12 books every week – chiefly Mills & Boon romances, war stories and historical dramas – and has never had a fine for returning a book late.
Two Pi Bitches
Kigurumi Yu
Behind The Lists
from Slate (lifted from Michelle Gagnon, author of the great book BONEYARD)
The Book Industry’s Best-Seller ListsWhat are they, and why do they matter so much?
Posted Thursday, Sept. 3, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET
These days, it seems as if half the books in bookstores have the word “best seller” or some variant on the cover or the flap copy, as in “the best-selling author of …” But what does that mean? About as much as the phrase “original recipe” does on a jar of spaghetti sauce. Neither the government nor the publishing industry regulates the use of the term, and besides, there are many different kinds of best-seller lists published every week in the United States. There are the major national lists (the New York Times, theWall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly) and the major regional lists (the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune). There are lists that compare sales at chain stores with sales at independent stores. There are romance lists, business lists, African-American lists, religious lists, health lists, and children’s lists.
What is a best-seller list? It is a ranking of the relative sales of particular kinds of books at certain groups of stores within a one-week period. Best-seller lists tell us not which books sell the most, in absolute terms, but which fiction, nonfiction, or advice books sell the fastest at the bookstores list makers think deserve attention. A how-to book that sells 20,000 copies in one week will shoot to the top of the best-seller lists, whether or not those are the only copies it ever sells. A novel that sells 200 copies a week for 10 years will never appear on the lists, because each week it will be beaten by faster-selling books.
Little Boots in the Bedroom Getting Her Tenori-on
Two Turntables And A Set of Sure-Grip Wheels
Could roller disco save clubbing?
A series of skating events, starting tonight, will be hosted by high-profile DJs, as music promoters experiment with new ways to make the crowds roll in. Emma Love reports
DJs these days pop up in the most unexpected places. Not just in nightclubs or on the summer festival circuit, but now as entertainment at roller discos too. Yes, you read that right; it seems that roller discos are having something of a moment, helped along by a healthy dose of well-known DJs on the decks and plenty of live performances by bands. But is this latest mix-up in the arts world a step too far – we’re already used to seeing poetry and book classes at festivals, dance in art galleries, theatre under railway arches, pianos on the streets and debates in nightclubs – or simply a brilliant swing back to all things 1970s with a cool, live music twist?
It’s not that roller discos haven’t always had DJs on the decks, rather it’s that by introducing high-profile names and live bands to perform alongside them, they’ve suddenly upped their game considerably. What was once just a kitsch night out with a touch of nostalgia has become a music event that counts. The question is what’s next: live gospel choirs singing Christmas carols at ice-skating rinks? Now that would definitely be something else worth getting your skates on for.
Cobus Toxicity
Run And Pee And Miss Not A Beat
Web site helps time mid-movie bathroom breaks
NEW YORK — The mid-movie dash to the restroom can turn us into calculating Hussein Bolt wannabes: Ah, this looks like a lull — time to dash.
When we return to our seats, we pray the answer to “What did I miss?” isn’t “Darth Vader is really Luke’s father” or “the girlfriend is a really guy.”
The Web site RunPee.com can help with such anxious guess work.
The site provides recommended opportunities to race to the restroom. It tells you when the action or romance wanes, and gives you a cue (“Baby O.J. is taken from Bruno”) for your exit.
There are, of course, limits to the usefulness of RunPee. But it’s also found friends in cyberspace like WhereToWee.com, a site in the works that tells you where the nearest restroom is.
High-tailing It Out Of Church
Preston Scarbrough, 7, ‘steals’ family car to avoid going to church and leads police on a car chase
Aww! The lengths some people will go to avoid attending church.
A seven-year-old boy in Plain City, Utah, decided it was too hot to go to church on July 26, so he “borrowed” the family car and went on a joy ride instead.
Deputies found the car near the local high school and tailed it for 10 blocks, all while the driver weaved in traffic lanes and blew through stop signs.
Preston maintained speeds up to 45 miles an hour, even though he had some trouble reaching the pedals.
“His speed was slow, but erratic … and so he would kind of scoot down lower to push on the gas and kinda sit up on the seat more to see right where he was going,” Bell said.
The chase came to an end at Preston’s home, when he got out of the car, ran and hid in the basement.
Old Folks Music Reviews
Feed The Little Baby Owl Yum Yum
A snowy owl hatchling swallows a mouse at the Geiselwind leisure park in Germany
The Woman With The Melon And The 9mm
Amen, Brother – Six Seconds To Jungle
lifted from Taylor O
The Gorilla And The Meat Cleaver
S.C. worker fights off robber wearing gorilla suit
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CONWAY — It was far from an inconspicuous robbery attempt.
Authorities say someone in a gorilla suit tried to rob a Conway restaurant this week, but the crime was foiled by a worker wielding a meat cleaver.
The Sun News of Myrtle Beach reported that the worker said he was hit over the head late Monday night while taking out the trash. The 21-year-old worker told authorities that he wrestled with the costumed suspect and ran back into the business, but the suspect followed him.
When the robber ran to the cash register, the employee said he picked up the cleaver and hit the suspect in the arm, sending the person running out with the kitchen utensil stuck in the suit.
No money was taken.
Pole Dancing Rookie
Emiri Miyasaka’s Porny Outfit
Miss Universe Japan’s Sexy Outfit Causes a Serious Stir
Posted Jul 29th 2009 at 3:15PM by Katie Hintz
Studly Effects
Amanda Lear – The Stud – My Beat Club
Performed at Musikladen!
Keywords: guilty pleasures classic hits musikladen classic rock concert clips rock disco hits playback lipsync seventies beat club 70s
Video from my-beatclub
Pink Panther Lives
Balkans’ Pink Panther jewel thieves smash their way into myth
Members of the unglamorous gang, which has hit boutiques in Paris, London and Dubai, are heroes to some in their war-ravaged native Serbia. ‘I hope you rob the U.S. Federal Reserve,’ one fan writes.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia — So let’s get this straight. A guy in the raspberry business from western Serbia smashes and grabs his way through a heist eight time zones away in Tokyo and scoots off past shopping centers and sushi bars with a $31-million necklace known as the Countess of Vendome.
It happens.
Djordjije Rasovic graced arrest warrants, a thief with brazen nerves, part of an international Balkan crime gang known as the Pink Panthers. He and one of his accomplices, Snowy, another name too whimsical for the harsh impulses of the former Yugoslavia, brought a bit of high jinks to a land haunted by war criminals and atrocities.
They come in rough, swinging hammers and axes, shattering glass, flashing semiautomatic pistols and an occasional grenade, and vanishing with gems in satchels lined with toilet paper to prevent scratching.
They’re untailored and uncoiffed, preferring black leather jackets and ball caps to cashmere and cuff links, a kind of “Ocean’s 11” minus the panache. But they’re disciplined and fluent in many languages, and they strike with precision.
“They’ve become more than pure criminals, they’re heroes,” said Dragan Ilic, a morning radio talk show host in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. “They’re violent but they haven’t killed anyone. It’s as if they’re saying, ‘We can beat the technologically superior West with our raw power and intelligence.’ They’re feeding the Western myth of the dark, tribal Balkans — these criminals coming from those wars and woods.”
Spirited Woman Almost Shoots Old Man Having Sex With Her Young Filly
Police: Man’s sex with horse captured on tape
by Jeffrey Collins – Jul. 29, 2009 11:29 AM, Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina man has been arrested for having sex with a horse after police say the animal’s owner caught him on surveillance camera.
Police say this isn’t the first time 50-year-old Rodell Vereen has been charged with buggery – last year he pleaded guilty to having sex with the same horse and was placed on the state’s sex offender list.
Police arrested Vereen on Monday, when he returned to the stable 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach where owner Barbara Kenley says a camera caught him having sex with her horse earlier this month. This time she was waiting for him with a shotgun and says she thought about shooting him but didn’t want to go to prison.
ForgottenBookmarks.com
I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everyday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books.
Today’s post comes from author Jan Markley.
From Jan:
I have a friend who loans me books and there are always weird bookmarks left in them. I have her copy of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and inside was a sticky note that read: “11 am wear open toed shoes,” a scrap of paper with ” thievery corporation” scrawled on it, a costco card and a coupon for a manicure.
UPS To Use Robots To Deliver Packages Via Sewer Lines Maybe
Robot Design Delivers Packages Through Sewers
It’s 2020, and cities are so overcrowded that it’s impossible to deliver packages. UPS trucks have nowhere to double-park, and obnoxious bike messengers can’t even ride on pedestrian-jammed sidewalks. How, then, can important parcels reach their destinations in a squalid megalopolis of the future?
Through the sewers, of course.
The brainchild of designer Phillip Hermes, the Urban Mole is a capsule that travels through existing networks of underground pipes in order to transport packages as diverse as groceries, signed documents and any title that appears on Oprah’s Book Club. The Mole frees up our streets and roads for important matters, like mobilizing armies against the cyborgs that will inevitably plague our future cities.
Able to move parcels as large as a shoebox, the Mole fully encapsulates its contents from surrounding waste water.
Dude, Relax – It’s More Batter Than Chicken Anyway
