“Beat It” – Mariachi Style
Add comment July 27th, 2009
Archive for July 27th, 2009
Saudi girl crowned Miss Moral Beauty
Saudi beauty queen Aya Ali Al Mulla trounced 274 rivals to win a crown, jewellery, cash and a trip to Malaysia, and all without showing her face, Saudi media reported on Friday.
With her face and body completely covered by the black head-to-toe abaya mandatory in the conservative Muslim kingdom, 18-year-old Mullah was named “Queen of Beautiful Morals” late on Thursday, newspapers said.
There was none of the swimsuit and evening gown competitions and heavy media coverage of beauty pageants elsewhere when the contest was decided in the eastern city of Safwa.
Too bad Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 didn’t have a chance to enter the competition.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
New service lets Jews tweet a prayer to God
JERUSALEM — Judaism’s holiest prayer site has entered the Twitter age.
The Western Wall can now be accessed through the networking service, allowing believers anywhere to have their prayers placed between its 2,000-year-old-stones without leaving home.
1 comment July 27th, 2009
Mansion’s ‘cross’ didn’t help banker’s tax case
One of the most artful property-tax tricks in the history of Illinois — a sham of near biblical proportions — has finally been exorcised.
This is the story of Chicago banker George Michael, who lives in a gorgeous $3 million mansion in Lake Bluff. Being a man of logic and finance, he didn’t much like his $80,000 yearly property-tax bill.
So he found an Internet outfit called the Church of Spiritual Humanism. According to the church’s Web site, it’s not big on faith, but it’s all about reason:
“If you agree that Religion must be based on Reason, you can be ordained right now for free, and be still able to practice your own religious traditions by simply clicking the button below:
“ORDAIN ME.”
And lo, Michael clicked “Ordain Me,” and it was done.
Michael submitted evidence to the Illinois Department of Revenue that his mansion wasn’t really a mansion. It was a church and therefore exempt from the burden of $80,000 a year in property taxes.
The article goes on, but this is the part that cracked me up:
Michael’s evidence that his mansion was a church included a copy of his snazzy Internet clergy ID card, which authorizes him to “perform all duties of the clergy including marriages, baby namings, invocations and all manner of religious ceremonies.”
He also included a photograph of the home depicting a suspicious-looking cross on the exterior wall of the mansion. The photo appeared a tad askew.
“This equal-sided cross was drawn on the photograph with a marker and did not physically exist at the time the photo was taken,” Galvin wrote in his order.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
The Name Makes For Some Irony In The Story
TV mega-preacher Creflo Dollar, one of several high-profile ministers being accused of fleecing their flocks to finance their lavish lifestyles, is being sued by a California businessman who says the pastor stole his business idea of charging followers a monthly fee for devotional text messages.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to watch puppies on TV
It’s not their actions which are funny, it’s the reaction, or over-reaction of the weather man. Especially how his laugh changes around the 51 second mark.
2 comments July 27th, 2009
Oklahoma Baptist newspaper apologizes for fake endorsement
State Rep. Sally Kern said Monday she was the first to alert a Baptist newspaper that it had made an error in printing a copy of her “Proclamation for Morality” with a fake endorsement from the governor.
The Baptist Messenger, the official newspaper of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, published Kern’s proclamation in its July 16 edition, making the document appear to be on state of Oklahoma “executive department” letterhead, complete with the state seal and signatures of Gov. Brad Henry and Secretary of State Susan Savage.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
Eating 36-year-old government-issued cake
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Serving a 36-year-old government-issue cake at an Army retirement ceremony sounds like a classic bureaucratic mistake, but there was no mistake about it.
Retiring Army Col. Henry Moak served it up himself — at his own ceremony.
Moak had saved the cake since 1973, when he got it while serving in Vietnam, and had long-standing plans to open it upon his retirement.
Pound cake served in a can was standard fare in military C rations back then. Moak said it was his favorite, and he could not get enough of it.
In front of friends and family who attended his retirement ceremony Friday at the Pentagon, Moak eagerly opened the can.
Answering the question of whether the anticipation was the same now as back then, Moak said, “Yes, even more!”
“I won’t eat it if it’s black and moldy,” he told onlookers.
“You can hear the pop of the air coming out,” he said referring to the vacuum seal on the can.
To most people’s surprise, the opened can revealed a still-edible yellow cake. The ceremonial sword used to cut Moak’s real retirement cake was also used to dig into the can and cut out the cake.
Moak took a bite and put up his thumb, “It’s good, it’s still kind of moist,” he declared.
No word on how her felt the next day.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
Bay of Pigs
More pics of pigs on a beach here (on the right hand side).
I didn’t know they could swim.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
I’m tempted to try this the next time I see frosted glass
So where I work I have about a 12″ frosted glass barrier on top of my counter for privacy reasons. I found out today that a simple piece of scotch tape will make the opaque glass clear? It was quite strange.
Add comment July 27th, 2009
Boy Sells His Toys to Help Family
I know the story is about a week old, but I wanted to post it nonetheless.
An 11-year-old Ohio boy is helping ease his family’s financial burdens, one toy at a time.
Zach McGuire is selling his toys to raise money for his family, which like others across the country, has bills piling up and a home in jeopardy.
The youth said the idea came up during a conversation with his father.
“You can’t live in toys, or eat toys,” he told CNN television affiliate WNWO. “Even though they are fun, you don’t need them.”
Zach plans to use the proceeds for a good cause: helping his unemployed father.
But it turns out the kid has had a big heart for a while . . .
It’s not the first time Zach has helped those in need. In 2005, he sold Kool-Aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina and raised $400. A few years later, it was “Cocoa for California,” which he sold to help wildfire victims.
1 comment July 27th, 2009
Bag of Randomness
- WifeGeeding continues to recover well – thanks to all for your prayers and comments. We have two post-op follow up appointments this week. Maybe when all this is over, we’ll make Kool-Aid wine.
- I hear a new Tron movie is coming out. I didn’t really care much for the first one, but there was a Tron video game on the Intellivison that I really enjoyed.
- I actually finished a book. It was nothing special, just the book about a local sports radio station.
- I’ll go ahead and say it for Nathan S, even though I disagree with him “For a real sports station, listen to ESPN Radio.”
- One question remains unanswered after reading the book, how exactly did the term P1 come into being.
- Does it really take a lawsuit to figure this out?
- Cowboys training camp starts this week, and I’m not at all excited. As a matter of fact, I canceled my NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. I just don’t want to get my hopes up again only for them to slide in December, and that December schedule looks tough.
- I did catch some of the soccer game that was played at the new stadium. For a sporting venue, it looks really cool. Great sight lines, crowd appears close, should be great for football.
- And for the second year in a row, I’m not playing fantasy football. But I do like the commercial Joe Flacco filmed to have you pick him to be on your team.
- Today’s version of a nerd wearing a pocket protector?
- Speaking of nerdy, remember when Star Wars Episode I came out and the whole world thought that young Jake Lloyd, the kid that played Anakin, would have the world by a string a be in a ton of movies? Well, I found this interview of him ten years after the movie, and it appears that he didn’t get rich from the film and got teased about it a lot in school. And just by looking at his list of work on IMDB, he really hasn’t done much after the movie other than some video game work.
- Speaking of more nerdy stuff, I actually watched live coverage of ComicCon. I would love to attend one of those one day.
- Speaking of Star Wars, how about supporting Storm Troopers.
- I think it’s well known that I like to keep politically informed, and it’s pretty obvious which political party I lean towards, but I’ve never been the type to advertise such a thing on my car. Or any other subject matter on my car for that matter.
- The FBI doesn’t process 600 billion fingerprints a day, but they do process a whole heck of a bunch.
- Most of Sunday was spent watching a marathon on the Discovery channel called Cronkite Remembers, and it was absolutely fascinating. Basically, it was eight to ten one hour episodes of Cronkite talking in front of a fireplace recapping his career with all sorts of news footage. Even though I never have spoken to either of my grandfathers, it felt like I was in a room talking to a grandfather recapping the best and worst in life. There were a lot of events I have heard about, but never really knew about, so this was very informative. Also, there were a lot of parts I had a lot of knowledge about, but it was great to see what happened behind the scenes.
- If you are interested, you can buy the whole series on Amazon for under $30.
- In one part, Cronkite interviews LBJ after his presidency, and Johnson stated that as a gift to 168 heads of state, he sent them the Apollo 8 Eathrise picture. The recipients of the gift were elated, and he even got a thank you letter from an enemy, Ho Chi Minh.
- WifeGeeding leaves me the nicest notes
- Grace
4 comments July 27th, 2009