:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 10.20.2004 ::
:: So Weird ::
From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
LEAD STORY
A new computer gadget enables someone to apply direct physical stimulation sexually to another person over the Internet, thus advancing "cybersex" far beyond its previous limitation of mere words and pictures. According to a September report on Wired.com, the vibrating "Sinulator," with wireless receiver, can be activated remotely at different speeds and force by a spouse or anyone else who uses the device's password at Sinulator's Web site, and that manipulation can be done not only by keyboard and mouse, but by a male placing the Sinulator's transmitting sleeve ("Interactive Fleshlight") over his penis and thrusting at his (or the recipient's) preferred speed and force. "Thus," summarized the Wired writer, "a man can be thrusting in Cleveland while a woman is penetrated in Seattle." [Wired.com, 9-24-04]
Throw the Book at 'Em!
In February, a 38-year-old Disneyland worker was killed when he fell from a three-part parade float and became trapped between the second and third sections. Disney's float was termed a "serious" workplace violation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and in August, it fined the multibillion-dollar company $6,300. [KNBC-TV-AP, 8-11-04]
Great Art!
The 223-page novel "The Train From Nowhere," by a French writer using the name Michel Thaler, is reported to be the first novel in history with no verbs, and its May publication was met with damning reviews. "Thaler" has called the verb "like a weed in a field of flowers" and his book a "revolution in the history of literature," that it "is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art." Critics noted the book's lack of action, in that it consists only of, according to London's Daily Telegraph, "lengthy passages filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikable passengers on a train." [Daily Telegraph, 5-9-04]
Inexplicable
A Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) columnist reported in September on a man who recently drove into his housing community at 10:30 p.m. to discover about 500 14-inch-high, ceramic-faced Ronald McDonald dolls neatly lined up in the middle of six streets, two to three feet apart, with no witnesses or explanation as to how they got there or why. The columnist, Bill Wundram, discovered only that the dolls were probably taken from the warehouse of a promotions company in nearby Camanche, Iowa, but is still stumped as to motive. [Quad City Times, 9-15-04, 9-24-04]
Readers' Choice
Stephen P. Linnen, 33, who was a lawyer for the Ohio House Republican state legislators' caucus, was sentenced in September to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to 53 misdemeanors, including 40 times springing out from hiding places while naked and photographing the faces of women reacting to the surprise (and also for fondling 13 of them). However, the judge refused to label Linnen a "sexual offender" and said he poses "absolutely no risk to public safety." [Columbus Dispatch, 9-28-04]
posted by me
:: 12:23:00 AM [+] ::
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