Pic of the Day
Quote of the DayA REAL JOB KILLER |
| Web Site Worth the Visit The Truth About Europe Proven true by Snopes, here's an essay of truth about European elites that is staggering with its truth. European Truth HERE |
| TIDBITS SIXTY USES FOR TABLE SALT 1. Soak stained hankies in salt water before washing. 2. Sprinkle salt on your shelves to keep ants away. 3. Soak fish in salt water before descaling; the scales will come off easier. 4. Put a few grains of rice in your salt shaker for easier pouring. 5. Add salt to green salads to prevent wilting. 6. Test the freshness of eggs in a cup of salt water; fresh eggs sink; bad ones float. 7. Add a little salt to your boiling water when cooking eggs; a cracked egg will stay in its shell this way. 8. A tiny pinch of salt with egg whites makes them beat up fluffier. 9. Soak wrinkled apples in a mildly salted water solution to perk them up. 10. Rub salt on your pancake griddle and your flapjacks won't stick. 11. Soak toothbrushes in salt water before you first use them; they will last longer. 12. Use salt to clean your discolored coffee pot. 13. Mix salt with turpentine to whiten you bathtub and toilet bowl. 14. Soak your nuts in salt brine overnight and they will crack out of their shells whole. Just tap the end of the shell with a hammer to break it open easily. 15. Boil clothespins in salt water before using them and they will last longer. 16. Clean brass, copper and pewter with paste made of salt and vinegar, thickened with flour 17. Add a little salt to the water your cut flowers will stand in for a longer life. 18. Pour a mound of salt on an ink spot on your carpet; let the salt soak up the stain. 19. Clean your iron by rubbing some salt on the damp cloth on the ironing surface. 20. Adding a little salt to the water when cooking foods in a double boiler will make the food cook faster. 21. Use a mixture of salt and lemon juice to clean piano keys. 22. To fill plaster holes in your walls, use equal parts of salt and starch, with just enough water to make a stiff putty. 23. Rinse a sore eye with a little salt water. 24. Mildly salted water makes an effective mouthwash. Use it hot for a sore throat gargle. 25. Dry salt sprinkled on your toothbrush makes a good tooth polisher. 26. Use salt for killing weeds in your lawn. 27. Eliminate excess suds with a sprinkle of salt. 28. A dash of salt in warm milk makes a more relaxing beverage. 29. Before using new glasses, soak them in warm salty water for awhile. 30. A dash of salt enhances the taste of tea. 31. Salt improves the taste of cooking apples. 32. Soak your clothes line in salt water to prevent your clothes from freezing to the line; likewise, use salt in your final rinse to prevent the clothes from freezing. 33. Rub any wicker furniture you may have with salt water to prevent yellowing. 34. Freshen sponges by soaking them in salt water. 35. Add raw potatoes to stews and soups that are too salty. 36. Soak enamel pans in salt water overnight and boil salt water in them next day to remove burned-on stains. 37. Clean your greens in salt water for easier removal of dirt. 38. Gelatin sets more quickly when a dash of salt is added. 39. Fruits put in mildly salted water after peeling will not discolor. 40. Fabric colors hold fast in salty water wash. 41. Milk stays fresh longer when a little salt is added. 42. Use equal parts of salt and soda for brushing your teeth. 43. Sprinkle salt in your oven before scrubbing clean. 44. Soaked discolored glass in a salt and vinegar solution to remove stains. 45. Clean greasy pans with a paper towel and salt. 46. Salty water boils faster when cooking eggs. 47. Add a pinch of salt to whipping cream to make it whip more quickly. 48. Sprinkle salt in milk-scorched pans to remove odor. 49. A dash of salt improves the taste of coffee. 50. Boil mismatched hose in salty water and they will come out matched. 51. Salt and soda will sweeten the odor of your refrigerator. 52. Cover wine-stained fabric with salt; rinse in cool water later. 53. Remove offensive odors from stove with salt and cinnamon. 54. A pinch of salt improves the flavor of cocoa. 55. To remove grease stains in clothing, mix one part salt to four parts rubbing alcohol. 56. Salt and lemon juice removes mildew. 57. Sprinkle salt between sidewalk bricks where you don't want grass growing. 58. Polish your old kerosene lamp with salt for a brighter look. 59. Remove odors from sink drainpipes with a strong, hot solution of salt water. 60. If a pie bubbles over in your oven, put a handful of salt on top of the spilled juice. The mess won't smell and will bake into a dry, light crust which will wipe off easily when the oven has cooled. |
Steve Irwin Knew It Was Coming
Every time this man came upon my TV screen I immediately clicked the channel to another station. He annoyed the hell out of me and the fact that he's now dead doesn't change this factoid.
First, let me tell you about my eyeballs. They work. And every time I saw this man "perform" I couldn't get over how incredibly stupid he was.
Let's see...one of his favorite tricks was to go to the edge of a pond or lake populated with crocodiles and twirl around a whole chicken tantalizingly. The alligators would get a sniff of such fine food and would, duh, lunge out of the lake and attempt to wrest the bloody raw chicken from Irwin's hands. Irwin would jump back while still dangling that chicken which, of course, caused the hungry gator to keep lunging at the food.
I could do the same thing with no training.
Not that I'd want to mind you and I'll allow that on some level Irwin's dance of the hungry crocodiles was a form of entertainment. Americans enjoy watching fast cars race around a track, or skiers negotiating treacherous slopes, or mountain bikers climb rocky hills and descend into steep declines. It's an element of danger and we respond to it. Irwin's alligator games had an element of danger but hey, what the hell was he supposed to be teaching us idiots out here in la-la land? How to tease hungry reptiles out of the pond by using a bloody chicken as bait? Well should we all need that information than hey, Irwin taught us well how to do it.
Beyond that...what do we learn from Irwin's infamous alligator baiting? That alligators will lunge at the chance for a juicy food morsel? Any human with a dog or cat pet knows that animals tend to do this.
So okay, perhaps I am being too harsh on the engagingly enthusiastic Irwin. How about the time he got it into his head that he could tease the hungry alligators whilst carrying his baby son under his arm like a sack of potatoes? That little incident, rarely mentioned in the memoriam of this man, really turned me off. It's one thing to put yourself in danger but an innocent child?
Another thing my eyeballs saw Irwin do was to chase poisonous snakes through the grass. The snake would be busily slithering away from the outstretched hands of Irwin and Steve would keep reaching out with his bare hands and try to grab the reptile. Once again, I could do this. Once again, not that I want to. I learned long ago to not try and grab snakes with my bare hands while it was trying to run away. Once again, what does this Irwin maneuver teach us? I mean I too could chase a snake and attempt to catch it with my bare hands. Add a little common sense and I might try to catch the snake by the tail instead of near the serpent's teeth. Duh.
The point of this rant is that while Irwin was ballyhooed as a fellow who taught us all about nature, frankly the man never taught me a thing. He was a side show, an entertainer and while his dangerous antics gave some of us a glimpse of wildlife we'd not ordinarily see, there was nothing in Irwin's performance that gave me any additional insight into nature beyond my common sense.
From the age.com:
Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, has died after being stung by a stingray in Queensland, according to reports.
Mr Irwin apparently died in a marine accident on the Great Barrier Reef, initial reports say. A spokeswoman for Irwin's Australia Zoo said she was aware of the
reports but the zoo would not be making any statements at this stage.
From Australia_zoo.com:
"Crikey means gee whiz, wow!""When I see what's happened all over the world, they're looking at me as this very popular, wildlife warrior, Australian bloke. And yet back here in my own country some people find me a little bit embarrassing."
"Crikey, mate. You're far safer dealing with crocodiles and western diamondback rattlesnakes than the executives and the producers and all those sharks in the big MGM building."
"I bled a lot. I got hit across the face. We couldn't film for seven days. I got whacked, underwater, across the face. I finished the shot, got into the boat and blood started coming out."
"I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute, and I'm fine with that."
"I have no fear of losing my life. If I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it."
"I would never blame an animal if it bit me, because I'm at fault, not them. I heal so quickly. If you cut my arm off I would grow a new one."
"I'm high as a kite, mate. I'm flat out like a lizard drinking, all the time. You know I have trouble just sitting here. You know, I'm just like, got to get up."
Media Nuggers
From Freeper Anita at FreeRepublic:
Brian Williams Laments Stay at President's Hotel
When we arrived last night, we were stopped at a steel barricade, manned by Secret Service, Louisiana State Police and National Guard troops with dogs. I explained that we simply wanted to go to our hotel rooms, and that I was joining up with the president's traveling "bubble" in the motorcade, early tomorrow. That's when a tall guy, straight-faced and apparently born completely without irony... approached our menacing rental car.
Chris Matthews thinks Dan Rather will boost his ratings
Yeah, I'd like more people to know about the show. It takes people a while to discover things, but we have the electoral cycle coming up, and we should be at the top of this game. Getting [Dan] Rather on the show regularly now is fabulous. People are going to hear a lot of the thoughts he hasn't been able to express over the years.
Rumsfeld snubs Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel has struck out with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for an interview on his forthcoming Discovery Channel special, just as he did for more than five years at ABC's Nightline, Koppel says.
Heh, Nut Keith Olbermann beat by Nancy Grace by a whopping 82%!
- Glenn Beck at 7p delivered the program's largest key demo audience to date with 275k, out-delivering MSNBC's Hardball w/ Chris Matthews (148k) by 82%!
- Nancy Grace at 8p delivered the program's largest P25-54 audience of the year (340k) to beat MSNBC's Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann (187k) by 82%.
Rolling Stones Going the Route of the Dixie Chicks?
Seems the Rolling Stones are giving a concert and no one wants to come. Hey, the Rolling Stones were musical icons of my era and I loved them. It's now forty years beyond my adolescent zeal for this group and I must be unkind. This group is so diseased and washed out from years of promiscuity, drugs and booze that, well who wants to watch crazy Uncle Albert dance around weirdly once again?
From Showbiznews.com:
Mick Jagger and his bandmates will never have to worry about where the next paycheque is coming from.
And that is, perhaps, something they should be grateful for judging by the apparent apathy surrounding tickets sales for the Rolling Stones's homecoming concerts in Britain this weekend.
Incredibly for the biggest grossing tour band on earth, hundreds official tickets are still available for their Twickenham concert on Sunday and next Tuesday as well as their concerts in Cardiff and Glasgow
Speaking of Rock Groups
+---------- Bizarre Origins of Rock Band Names ------------+
The Bay City Rollers: Came up with their name by sticking a pin in a map of the world. It landed on Bay City, Michigan.
Buffalo Springfield: Members of the group were stumped for a name. A member of the band was looking out their manager's window at a construction site in Hollywood, when he spotted a steamroller with the brand name "Buffalo Springfield."
Iron Maiden: A medieval torture device.
Jethro Tull: Named after the 18th century British inventor of the seed drill.
Pink Floyd: An amalgam of two American blues artists, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Steely Dan: Based on the name of a dildo in William Burrough's novel, The Naked Lunch.
Three Dog Night: It is a practice of Australian aborigines to sleep with three dogs on particularly cold nights.
UB40: Named after the British unemployment benefit form.
The Velvet Underground: Lou Reed lifted the name from a title of a cheap paperback novel.
When Photographs Weren't Altered
Joe Rosenthal, photographer of the famous Iwo Jima flag raising picture, died this past month at age 94.
Once upon a time journalistic photographers were proud of their craft. Once upon a time they didn't use Photoshop to alter their art. Once upon a time the camera recorded the image and the image was the truth.
From the Mercury News.com:
Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote that he almost didn't go up to the summit when he learned a flag had already been raised. He decided to [go] up anyway, and found servicemen preparing to put up the second, larger flag.
"Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know."
Denzel Washington, and Brooks Army Medical Center
Don't know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio,Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers who have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the United States, especially burn victims. There are some buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a Hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the Hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base, but as you can imagine, they are almost filled most of the time.
While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his checkbook out and wrote a check for the full amount right thereon the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.
The question I have is why does: Alec Baldwin, Madonna,Sean Penn and other Hollywood types make front page news with their anti-everything America trash and Denzel Washington's Patriotism doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the Local newspaper in San Antonio?
Rest In Peace Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford enjoyed a 53 year film career and starred in 85 films. An avid horseman and former polo player, Ford appeared in a number of Westerns, “3:10 to Yuma,” “Cowboy,” “The Rounders,” “Texas,” “The Fastest Gun Alive” and the remake of “Cimarron” among them. His talents included lighter parts, with roles in “The Teahouse of August Moon” and “It Started With a Kiss.”
On television, he appeared in “Cade’s County,” “The Family Holvak,” “Once an Eagle” and “When Havoc Struck.” He starred in the feature film “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” which later became a TV series featuring Bill Bixby.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Actor Glenn Ford, who played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as “The Blackboard Jungle,” “Gilda” and “The Big Heat,” died Wednesday, police said. He was 90.
Paramedics called to Ford’s home just before 4 p.m. found Ford dead, police Sgt. Terry Nutall said, reading a prepared statement. “They do not suspect foul play,” he said.
Ford suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s.
Glenn Ford was an entertainer and he did it well. Farewell to a fine man who carved out a fine film career and didn’t annoy us in the process.
Web Sites That Changed the World
Amazon used to be a large river in South America – but that was before the world wide web. This month the web is 15 years old and in that short time it has revolutionised the way we live, from shopping to booking flights, writing blogs to listening to music. Here, the Observer's Net specialist charts the web's remarkable early life and we tell the story of the 15 most influential websites to date.
John Naughton
Sunday August 13, 2006
The Observer
By any standards, the web represents a colossal change in our information environment. And the strange thing is that it has come about in just 15 years. Actually, most of it has happened in less than that, because the web only went mainstream in 1993, when the first graphical browsers - the computer programs we use to access the web - were released. So these are early days. We can no more envisage the long-term implications of what has happened than dear old Gutenberg could.
The strangest thing is how casually we have come to take it for granted. We buy books from Amazon, airline tickets from Easyjet and Ryanair, tickets for theatres and cinemas online, as if doing so were the most natural thing in the world. We check the opening times at the Louvre in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in New York (or browse their collections) online. We check definitions (and spellings) in online dictionaries, look up stuff in Wikipedia, search for apartments to rent on Craigslist or a host of local lookalikes such as Daft.ie in Ireland. You can buy and sell just about anything (excluding body parts) on
eBay. Children seeking pictures for school projects search for them on Google Images (and download them without undue concern for intellectual property rights). Holiday snaps escape from their shoeboxes and are published to the world on Flickr. Home movies likewise on YouTube. And of course anyone with doubts about a prospective blind date can do an exploratory check on Google before committing to an evening out with a total stranger.
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the web we've assembled a list of sites that have become the virtual wallpaper of our lives. What the corresponding list
will be like in 15 years' time is anyone's guess. As the man said, if you want to know the future, go buy a crystal ball. In the meantime, read on and wonder.
John Naughton's history of the internet, A Brief History of the Future, is published by Phoenix at £7.991. eBay.com
Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US
Users: 168m
What is it? Auction and shopping site2. wikipedia.com
Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US
Users: 912,000 visits per day
What is it? Online encyclopaedia3. napster.com
Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US
Users: 500,000 paying subscribers
What is it? File sharing site4. youtube.com
Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim,2005, US
Users: 100m clips watched a day
What is it? Video sharing site5. blogger.com
Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US
Users: 18.5m unique visitors
What is it? Weblog publishing system6. friendsreunited.com
Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK
Users: 15m
What is it? School reunion site7. drudgereport.com
Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US
Users: 8-10m page views per day
What is it? News site8. myspace.com
Founded: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, 2003, US
Users: 100m
What is it? Social networking site9. amazon.com
Founded: Jeff Bezos, 1994, US
Users: More than 35m customers in over 250 countries
What is it? Online retailer, primarily of books, CDsand DVDs10. slashdot.org
Founded: Rob Malda, 1997, US
Users: 5.5m per month
What is it? Technology news website and internet forum11. salon.com
Founded: David Talbot, 1995, US
Users: Between 2.5 and 3.5m unique visitors per month
What is it? Online magazine and media company Salon grew out of a strike.12. craigslist.org
Founded: Craig Newmark, 1995, US
Users: 4bn page views per month
What is it? A centralised network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements and forums13. google.com
Founded: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998, US
Users: A billion search requests per day
What is it? Search engine and media corporation14. yahoo.com
Founded: David Filo and JerryYang, 1994, US
Users: 400m
What is it? Internet portal and media corporation15. easyjet.com
Founded: Stelios
Haji-Ioannou, 1995, UK
Users: 30m passengers last year
What is it?: Budget airline
The Liza With a “Z” Divorce
I don’t recall enjoying any gossip much more than the Liza Minnelli-David Gest joke of a divorce. But of course their divorce is a joke because their marriage was a joke.
Once celebs fade out of favor with the public they have to do increasingly bizarre things to get attention. Attention is a celebrity need for without it they are just average guys like us. Witness Tom Cruise who actually had to cavort crazily on Oprah’s couch and have a new baby to regain the attention he once had in “Top Gun”.
This is when the going gets good and now Liza, who married Gest of the questionable sexuality for attention and now she must divorce the man. A man who claims that Liza gave him an STD and go on, does anyone really think those two ever had normal marital relations?
Strange, I feel no pity for either of these two goofballs. I do give them credit for amusing us peons out here in la-la land.
From the NY Post:
September 4, 2006 -- The Liza Minnelli-David Gest court clash has gone from nasty to nuclear, with Minnelli accusing her estranged hubby of having tried to "poison" her, and Gest charging that his marriage to "Liza with a Z" had him scared that he was David with an STD.
According to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the four-times-married Minnelli, 60, claims that she was "living in fear" while she and the producer were together, afraid he was "trying to poison her with drugs."
Speaking of Has-Been Tom Cruise
Paramount fires Tom Cruise. Heh.
His conduct, per Paramount Honcho Sumner Redstone, “has not been acceptable to Paramount."
Hey the guy’s been jumping around on Oprah’s couches, dabbles in that ridiculous Scientology and went and had a baby to regain the public’s adoration. We the public consider him an idiot. So Paramount fired him.
Good.
From OpinionJournal.com:
Then, of a sudden, the clouds parted and delivered unto us, courtesy of a scoop on this paper's front page, Paramount's Sumner Redstone firing Tom Cruise. It doesn't get any better than this, and this deserves some elaboration.
Our narrative turns on a question: Why so public? Why did Sumner Redstone drive Mr. Cruise out of the fort in the hot midday sun? And did he ever. Of Mr. Cruise's recent "Mission: Impossible III," Mr. Sumner allowed that the action scenes in the first few minutes were "breathtaking." That sounds like the punch line of a famous joke that cannot be printed in this newspaper.
Hollywood, a thoroughly Pavlovian town, chose to explain the event in terms of a spreadsheet, suggesting that Mr. Sumner was using Mr. Cruise to pare back the share of total revenue that megastars siphon from franchise movies like "Mission Impossible.
Continuing on With Has-Been Celebs
CBS’ beloved Katie Couric has already faded to third place in the network news ratings and soon, I predict, any ratings at all will be nonexistent.
See, the world is done with Katie. Sure she was cute and perky and almost welcome with our morning coffees. After a while, well the woman’s presence in our collective lives got boring. We get bored out here in la-la land and there’s always another talent or another waiting in the wings.
CBS threw every dollar they had a Katie and us minions just ain’t buying it. Who said that bit about leading a horse to water …?
Add to the amusement, we discover that in its all out PR campaign to shove perky Katie down our throats, CBS resorted to photo-doctoring, something that seems to be all the rage with the Lamestream Media of late.
Ending With a Smile: The Power of Makeup
href="http://patfish.blogspot.com/2005/01/gossip-compilation.html">More Gossip/Speculation HERE
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