Tokyo Japan

Study: shampoo may cause breast growth in boys

BOSTON Researchers think scented oils that are found in some shampoos, soaps and lotions can cause temporary breast growth in young boys, but only in rare cases.

A preliminary study says the oils appeared to disrupt the boys' hormonal balance.The federally funded study comes from the University of Colorado and the National Institutes of Health and is reported in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Three boys, ages four, seven and ten, developed the condition while using products containing lavender and tea tree oils. All three were normal again when they stopped using the product with the natural oils.

Hormone experts advise parents to consider the possible risk. But because the condition appears to be rare and temporary, they're not suggesting a ban on sales.

CAT WASH.....OMG!!!!

See it HERE.

Harry Potter Horses Around

Harry Potter is officially a man.

Daniel Radcliffe, the 17-year-old actor from the "Harry Potter" films, bares his skin to show he's all grown up in the publicity photos for the play he'll star in on London's West End next month.

In Peter Shaffer's "Equus," Radcliffe gets to romp around naked with actress Joanna Christie. But for the publicity stills he's shown sans shirt in her equally bare embrace.

Other photos, taken by celebrity snapper Uli Weber, show the young Brit horsing around with a white stallion.

In "Equus," Radcliffe plays a stable hand named Alan Strang. The play opens at the Gielgud Theatre on Feb. 27 in London.

"Daniel does not want to step away from Harry Potter but he does want to show he is a rounded actor capable of very different and diverse roles," his publicist Vanessa Davies told the London Daily Mail Tuesday. "He has tremendous support from Harry Potter fans."

Happy Hump Day

Fat-fighting POT drug

GW Pharmaceuticals says it has a cannabis-derived treatment to suppress hunger; company plans to start human trials.

Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc said Tuesday it plans to start human trials of an experimental treatment for obesity derived from cannabis.

Cannabis is commonly associated with stimulating hunger. Several other companies, including Sanofi-Aventis with Acomplia, are working on new drugs that try to switch off the brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke it.
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GW Pharma, however, says it has derived a treatment from cannabis itself that could help suppress hunger.
Big Pharma's drug wish list for 2007

"The cannabis plant has 70 different cannabinoids in it, and each has a different effect on the body," GW Managing Director Justin Gover told Reuters.

"Some can stimulate your appetite, and some in the same plant can suppress your appetite. It is amazing both scientifically and commercially," he said in a telephone interview.

GW said it plans to start clinical trials of the new drug in the second half of this year. Medicines have to pass three stages of tests in humans before being assessed by regulators in a process that takes many years.

Sanofi-Aventis' (Charts) Acomplia, which it believes can achieve $3 billion in annual sales, is already on sale in Europe and it is waiting for a U.S. regulatory decision in April.

Several other big drug companies also have similar products to Acomplia already in clinical trials.

GW is best known for developing Sativex, a treatment derived from cannabis that fights spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients. Sativex, an under-the-tongue spray, has been approved in Canada, but has hit delays with regulators in Britain.

GW, which competes with rivals such as AstraZeneca (Charts), submitted Sativex for assessment by several European regulators in September, and hopes to secure approval for the UK, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands in the second half of this year at the earliest, the company said Tuesday.

GW said revenue for the year ended Sept. 30 was slightly ahead of expectations at £1.98 million, £1.35 million of which came from Sativex.

The firm posted a pre-tax loss of £13.9 million, in line with forecasts. According to a poll of analysts by Reuters Estimates, the loss in 2007 will be £13.5 million.

GW's marijuana plants are grown indoors in a secret location in Southern England.

"With a U.S. partnering deal and a European approval both expected this year, we remain very comfortable with our Buy recommendation," Investec analyst Ibraheem Mahmood said.

GW shares were up almost 5.5 percent, valuing the company at £92.5 million.

Hospice helped dying man lose his virginity

Hospice helped Nick Wallis lose his virginity

A young disabled man who receives care for his life-limiting illness at a hospice run by a nun spoke yesterday of his decision to use a prostitute to experience sex before he dies.

Sister Frances Dominica gave her support to 22-year-old Nick Wallis, who was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Sufferers usually die by their thirties.

Mr Wallis told staff at the Douglas House hospice in Oxford that he wanted to experience sexual intercourse. He explained that he had hoped to form an intimate and loving relationship with a woman, but his disability had acted as a barrier.

He told The Daily Telegraph: "It was a decision two years in the making and I discussed it with my carers and my parents. Telling my mother and father was the hardest part, but in the end they gave me their support.
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"There are many aspects of life that an able-bodied person takes for granted but from which I am excluded.

"I had hoped to form a relationship when I went to university, but it didn't happen. I had to recognise that if was to experience sex I would have to pay for it out of my savings. My mind was made up before I discussed it with anyone else."

The hospice staff, after taking advice from a solicitor, the clergy and health care professionals, decided to help him.

"I found an advert from a sex worker in a magazine for the disabled," said Mr Wallis. "The initial contact was by email and then by phone."

It was arranged for the prostitute to visit his home in Northampton. "My parents went out," he said.

"It was not emotionally fulfilling, but the lady was very pleasant and very understanding. I do not know whether I would do it again. I would much rather find a girlfriend, but I have to be realistic."

Mr Wallis has decided to talk in public about his decision as part of the BBC documentary series about life inside Douglas House and its associated hospice for children, Helen House.

"I have done so in order that people may understand the issues that face people in my situation. I suppose some people may be judgmental."

He said he did not discuss his decision directly with Sister Frances, who founded the two hospices. "But I know she gave me her support."

Sister Frances described Mr Wallis as "delightful, intelligent and aware young man".

"I know that some people will say 'You are a Christian foundation. What are you thinking about?'. But we are here for all faiths and none," she said.

"It is not our job to make moral decisions for our guests. We came to the conclusion that it was our duty of care to support Nick emotionally and to help ensure his physical safety."

Mr Wallis's story can be seen on The Children of Helen House, BBC2, 10pm Tuesday.

Bubzac

The Burkini

Get yours HERE.

Penny worth a Nickel

Talk about pennies from heaven.

A potential shortage of coins in the United States could mean all those pennies in your piggy bank could be worth five times their current value soon, says an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Sharply rising prices of metals such as copper and nickel have meant the face value of pennies and nickels are worth less than the material that they are made of, increasing the risk that speculators could melt the coins and sell them for a profit.

Such a risk spurred the U.S. Mint last month to issue regulations limiting melting and exporting of the coins.

But Francois Velde, senior economist at the Chicago Fed, argued in a recent research note that prohibitions by the Mint would unlikely deter serious speculators who already have piled up the coinage.

The best solution, Velde said, would be to "rebase" the penny by making it worth five cents rather than one cent. Doing so would increase the amount of five-cent coins in circulation and do away with the almost worthless one cent coin.

"History shows that when coins are worth melting, they disappear," Velde wrote.

"Rebasing the penny would ... debase the five-cent piece and put it safely away from its melting point," he added.

Raw material prices in general have skyrocketed in the last five years, sending copper prices to record highs of $4.16 a pound in May. Copper pennies number 154 to a pound. Prices have since come down from that peak but could still trek higher, Velde said.

Since 1982, the Mint began making copper-coated zinc pennies to prevent metals speculators from taking advantage of lofty base metal prices. Though the penny is losing its importance — it is worth only four seconds of the average American's work time, assuming a 40-hour workweek — the Mint is making more and more pennies.

Velde said that since 1982 the Mint has produced 910 pennies for every American. Last year there were 8.23 billion pennies in circulation, according to the Mint.

"These factors suggest that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin museums," he said.

Moment of Zen...

"They're blaming the losses on the launch of their unpopular economy car, the Ford Federline. I guess there was a problem with them getting a whole bunch of Mini Coopers pregnant." -- Jimmy Kimmel on Ford Motors' $12.7 billion in losses in 2006.

Lovely Addition to your Truck

Get them HERE.

Escapee caught after country-song odyssey

It had all the makings of a country song: an escaped prisoner, his terminally ill mother, a Wal-Mart truck, NASCAR and a Nashville singer's tour bus.

Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, was arrested around 11 p.m. Friday near the Daytona International Speedway where he had been watching a race, said Lt. Patrick Myers, spokesman for Daytona Beach Police.

Gay escaped from a prisoner transport van Sunday in South Carolina, police said, and he evaded a five-state manhunt by stealing a pickup, a big rig and a bus that belongs to singer Crystal Gayle. No one was reported injured while Gay was on the loose. (Watch the bus take a tour of NASCAR track )

Initially, police said, his motive for fleeing was simple. "I take it he was just trying to see his mom," said Michael Douglas, the police chief in Pleasant View, Tennessee, near the home where Gay's mother is dying of cancer.

Gay, who has a history of theft involving trucks and other heavy equipment, escaped during a bathroom break in Hardeeville, South Carolina, as he was being taken from Texas to face felony theft charges in Alabama. The van was taking a route allowing it to pick up prisoners in other states.

There was no immediate indication Saturday if Gay was represented by an attorney.

He stole a pickup truck in South Carolina and made his way more than 300 miles northwest to Manchester, Tennessee, where he stole a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer filled with $300,000 worth of merchandise, police said.

On Tuesday, Gay got to within 50 yards of his mother's house, about 25 miles northwest of Nashville, but abandoned the Wal-Mart truck and fled into some woods, authorities said.

"What he done was wrong, but he knows his mama don't have long," his mother, Anna Shull, told The Tennessean this week. Efforts to contact Gay's family were unsuccessful Friday.

Authorities don't think Gay got to see his mother.

Later in the week, authorities said, Gay stole the bus belonging to Gayle -- the younger sister of Loretta Lynn, known for her long hair and hits such as "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Gayle didn't know the bus was missing from a Nashville garage until speedway officials called, police said.

Gayle said she was relieved that no one was hurt.

"My heart goes out to him and his family," Gayle said. "It's a sad story, his mother is very ill. I do hope he gets to see her."

Gay was being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail in Daytona Beach. He was charged with grand theft auto, and he also had three outstanding warrants from Tennessee and three from Alabama, police said.

A man believed to be Gay arrived Thursday night at USA International Speedway in Lakeland, Florida, telling the track's manager he was there with NASCAR racer Tony Stewart and asking him for help getting a new generator for the tour bus he was driving, officials said.

The Speedfest 2007 event is being held there this week, but there are no plans for Stewart to appear.

"His story just started having a lot of inconsistencies, so we asked him for some identification," said speedway President Bill Martino in a phone interview Friday. The man, who Martino said was clean-cut and dressed nicely, refused and fled.

Track officials, suspicious of the man's story, provided authorities with the license plate number of the tour bus.

Gayle didn't know the bus was missing from the Nashville garage where it was parked until speedway officials called Thursday night, police said.

Her husband and manager, Bill Gatzimos, couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday, but he told WSMV-TV, "There's got to be a country song in having your bus stolen and taken for a joyride by a fugitive."

Wonder Woman Episodes Free Viewing

See Episodes of Wonder Woman HERE.

Bonnaroo lineup leaked...

As if the news regarding Rage Against the Machine reunion for Coachella wasn't enough, this year's Bonnaroo lineup reportedly leaked from a source within the Manchester Times!

The Police (headline)
Bob Dylan (headline)
Pearl Jam (headline)
Tom Waits
Willie Nelson
Umphrey's McGee
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
Modest Mouse
The Black Crowes
Ryan Adams
My Morning Jacket
Arcade Fire
Keller WilliamsBand
Hot Chip
America
TV on the Radio
Fountains of Wayne
Les Claypool
The Shins
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Toots and the Maytals
The Roots
The Decemberists
Of Montreal
Cat Power
Ozomatli
Perpetual Groove
Band of Horses
John Butler Trio
Nickel Creek
Medeski Martin and Wood
Lily Allen
Neko Case
Keiren Hedben (Four Tet) & Steve Reid
The Hold Steady
Earl Scuggs
Charlie Louvin
Man Man
Grizzly Bear
Konono #1
The Slip
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Uncle Earl
Annuals
Beirut
M. Ward
Cold War Kids
Girl Talk

ToothTunes: A Rockin Good Idea...

Brushing your teeth is about to feel – and sound – better than ever as Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), deliveron its promise of product innovation with the revolutionary TOOTHTUNES, a brand new toothbrush featuring proprietary technology that will encourage people of all ages to brush for two full minutes – the amount of time generally recommended by dentists.

“Hasbro is focused on delivering innovative products anywhere kids and their families shop,” said Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s Chief Operating Officer. “TOOTHTUNES is an excellent example in terms of how we can bring to market highly innovative, entertaining product that extends beyond the traditional toy and game aisle.”

TOOTHTUNES’ safe and patented technology transmits songs and music vibrations through the teeth, which are then heard in the inner ear. Users will hear two full minutes of the hottest music from today’s biggest stars which will keep them brushing. Some brushes will feature a congratulatory message upon completion.

The revolutionary toothbrush uses a micro-chip that provides hit music from the industry’s hottest artists, including Black Eyed Peas, Hilary Duff, Destiny’s Child, KISS, Kelly Clarkson and The Cheetah Girls, among others. To launch TOOTHTUNES, Hasbro has formed a strategic relationship with today’s top record labels including Interscope Records, Hollywood Records, Walt Disney Records, EMI-Capital Records, Sony BMG and Universal Music Group.

TOOTHTUNES is more than incredibly innovative – it is also very practical. Kids will enjoy brushing their teeth and parents will be thrilled that their child is developing good dental hygiene habits.

What the entertainment industry is saying about TOOTHTUNES …

“TOOTHTUNES is wildly innovative, and we are thrilled that ‘Wake Up,’ the hit song by Hilary Duff, will help tween kids literally wake up with a smile every morning,” said Rob Souriall, Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Promotions, Hollywood Records (Part of the Buena Vista Music Group). “TOOTHTUNES is pure magic…and our company is known to believe in magic.”

“Everyone in the music industry who experiences TOOTHTUNES ‘gets’ it immediately,” said Fred Goldring, a prominent entertainment attorney whose firm represents Will Smith, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce and Gwen Stefani. “There is a real ‘wow’ factor in everyone’s reaction the first time they try it.”

What dentists are saying about TOOTHTUNES…

Members of the dental community are equally enthused. “I was so impressed when I heard about TOOTHTUNES that I wanted to be part of its development,” said Dr. Ed McLaren. “It’s difficult to get kids to brush – they think it’s boring. But with popular music from the artists that kids love, this is the brush that will finally get them brushing for the two minutes that dentists recommend.”

McLaren’s wife, Dr. Sandy McLaren, who has been practicing dentistry for over 20 years with adults and children, feels this could change how people brush. “As a dentist and a mother of three, I’m excited to see this much needed innovation. I let some of my patients try TOOTHTUNES and they flipped. This is clearly the most entertaining product to ever enter the oral care industry.”

“The most important thing we can do for our teeth is to simply brush longer, TOOTHTUNES encourages kids to do just that, helping them to establish good brushing habits early in life,” she continued.

Hasbro will introduce up to twenty different versions of TOOTHTUNES this , each featuring a hit song. Kids can choose from a variety of their favorite tunes, the first wave to hit store shelves includes: Let’s Get It Started, Black Eyed Peas; Wake Up, Hilary Duff; Walk Away, Kelly Clarkson; Shake A Tail Feather, The Cheetah Girls; Beautiful Soul, Jesse McCartney; Survivor, Destiny’s Child; Rock & Roll All Night, KISS and Fun, Fun, Fun, The Beach Boys. For updates on new TOOTHTUNES releases visit www.toothtunes.com.

Malcolm Made Me a Mogul

We know him as Reese, the bullying dimwit older brother on Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle," but it seems Justin Berfield is no dummy. He's now on the fast track to become a Hollywood mogul.
The 21-year-old is stepping behind the camera to produce feature films and television projects through his own production company, J2TV/J2 Pictures. He's got two films slated, "Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia," the first authorized biography of the legendary Grateful Dead guitarist, and the Jessica Simpson vehicle, "Blonde Ambition."

Berfield is also developing a challenge-based reality series featuring legendary NASCAR driver Richard Petty. Justin also owns ten residential and commercial properties in the Los Angeles area, including Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's former home from MTV's "Newlyweds."

Weird Al interviews Kevin Federline

Super Bowl Ticket Options

We took the liberty of scouring craigslist (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Miami) for all the latest proposals. Here's a primer on what appear to be the guiding principles if you want to land some coveted Super Bowl seats:

1. Sex sells: Doesn't it always? One young woman calling herself "Miami bound girl" is offering what she coyly bills as "Indecent Proposal: a night with ME for SuperBowl Tickets." (OK, that's not really coy.) She says that she wants tickets to surprise her fiancé, and stresses that she is "not selling sex!" Then again, she adds hopefully: "Hell, if I am drunk enough ... and you are cute enough ... maybe we will hit it off and be romantic." Don't worry, fellas, there's a picture included. The only catch is that this has to be a "secret" because her fiancé "would be upset if he knew how I got the tickets." Don't worry, we'll keep this just between us.

2. Is that a ticket in my pocket, or am I just glad to see you?: While "Miami-bound girl" is willing to trade companionship for tickets, at least two gentlemen (?) are hoping to do the reverse. One sums up his situation succinctly: "Here's the deal. I'm a 21-year-old guy that lives in Miami. I had 2 tickets and a girlfriend. Now I only have 2 tickets." Ladies, be forewarned; he's only looking for a "BEAUTIFUL, HOT GIRL." On the plus side, he has no criminal record, "not even a speeding ticket." A second fellow recently broke up with his fiancée (let's hope it wasn't "Miami-bound girl"!) and already has his tickets, plane tickets and hotel -- but, alas, no date. He's hoping that "another young lady" can take her place. Evidently, you'll have to check whether he has a record on your own.

3. Selling skin: Specifically, the skin on the swollen belly of a pregnant woman for advertising purposes. Bears fan Jennifer Gordon made such an offer -- but no Colts ads, please -- in a craiglist ad posted on Monday with the catchy headline: "My Body for your Super Bowl tickets." (She's a PR manager, natch.) Gordon's ad drew some 45 inquiries through Wednesday and was picked up by the Chicago Sun-Times. It also seems to have inspired a copycat, a woman offering a "Pregnant belly for advertising" in exchange for three (why not?) Super Bowl tickets. She says she's willing to put an ad on her stretch-mark free, 30-week-pregnant belly because her husband and dad are huge Bears fans, though she will consider "any advertising including the Colts." Sellout! Given these proposals, though, offers by guys to advertise on a bald head or by painting a body waist-up or even with a "permanent" tattoo might not get the desired attention.

4. Selling more skin: One unnamed chap (we assume it's a he) is willing to trade his lifetime gold VIP membership at a Wisconsin strip club for two tickets. He claims the membership is worth $1,000 a year, though it's unclear how many trips one has to make to reach that "value." We recommend, though, that this gentleman also place his ad on the NFL Players Association site to reach the ideal target audience, i.e. guys who both have Super Bowl tickets and love strip clubs.

5. Old-fashioned barter: Do you need $5,000 of dental work or, perhaps, Invisalign braces for you and four friends? Would you like a cement driveway installed? Have a hankering for a professional fireworks display? How about a high-def videographer for your wedding, or a DJ for said nuptials? Need some plumbing done, or a general contractor? Selling your home? There's not one but two offers from real-estate agents to take care of that on the arm. All you need to give in exchange for any of these freebies, of course, is a pair of Super Bowl tickets. If goods rather than services tickle your fancy, you might be interested in a 2001 Mitsibushi Galant (two tickets) or a used car or truck of your choice from a car dealer (up to $15,000 in vakue for four seats) or a new 50" plasma HDTV (for two seats).

6. Trading on sentiment: Some hopefuls try to pull the heartstrings. This category includes "Super Bowl tickets needed for dying family member," "I Made a Promise to My Son -- Now I Need Two Super Bowl Tickets", "Hardworking single mothers looking for Bears Superbowl Tickets" and "I Bleed Blue and White and I need a miracle." The last chap also helpfully offers that he spends his time "rescuing and rehabilitating marine mammals and sea turtles." (Awwww!) But does that make him any more deserving than, say, "Decent guys trying to buy tickets [to] the Super Bowl"? You be the judge. If you're looking to help the next generation of fans, a12-year-old "huge" Colts fan "wants2go2superbowl" since he's worked hard and "gotten good grades." (Be forewarned that he'll need a second ducat for his mom, who must come "for supervioson," and perhaps for spelling help.) A slew of posters try to establish their bona fides as loyal supporters of either the Bears or Colts, hoping that other fans with extra tickets might give them a price break while ensuring that the seats don't end up in the grubby hands of a scalper. Then there's one poster who, curiously, lists himself (or herself) as a "DIE hard Colts & Bears fan." Way to play to both sides of the aisle.

7. Sign of the times: The Super Bowl itself will only last about 3 1/2 hours, but a piece of signed memorabilia is forever. At least that seems to be the thinking behind those fishing for tickets with collectibles as bait. One poster is offering a signed Walter Payton helmet in exchange for two tickets, though he rather crassly hypes his product's value by adding about the late Sweetness: "HE CANT SIGN ANYMORE." Another poster is offering a Payton-signed game jersey for either two prime seats or four in the upper level. Still another offers your pick of a Payton-signed football, a Brian Urlacher-signed mini-helmet or a Michael Jordan-signed rookie jersey. If you prefer psychedelia to pigskin, perhaps you'd unload your two tickets for a signed lithograph by the Grateful Dead's late lead singer, Jerry Garcia, which was supposedly appraised at $7,000. The seller will also toss in some old backstage passes from 1995 in case you own a time machine.

8. Tickets for tickets: Some are looking to swap somebody's bird in the hand -- as long as the bird is Super Bowl tickets -- for many more in the bush. Two Bears fans and one Colts supporter are offering their season tickets for the entire 2007 season in exchange for Super Bowl seats. One curious offer, perhaps from someone who has misjudged the type of people selling Super Bowl tickets, wants to swap four tickets to The Oprah Winfrey Show for two seats to the big game. One poster who already has a pair of (lower level) Super Bowl seats, though, is looking to drive a much harder bargain. He/she wants to trade the two seats for permanent rights to a pair of Cubs season tickets. And hey, only respond if you're serious, because "it's not very hard to find out if you actually own the seats you're offering and the language in the contract will ensure extreme financial penalties should you back out of the agreement at any time." Easy, counselor.

9. Location, location, location: Maybe what you really want is to get away for longer than just a weekend in Miami. How about trading two seats for a week in a condo in Hawaii (with airfare) or at a timeshare in the Caribbean? Maybe winter sports are more your speed. Then turn those seats into a rent-free week at a "$2 million condo" in Aspen or a ski lodge near Deer Valley, Utah. Hey, you can see the game just as well on TV anyway.

10. When all else fails, go for shock value: Perhaps the most eye-catching, if groan-inducing, headline is, "My right nut for Superbowl tickets." Now that he (and we hope it's a he) has your attention, he goes on to say, "You don't really want to take it, but I can't miss this game." Hey, if I had some extra seats, I would definitely help this earnest fellow. And I wouldn't charge him more than, oh, four or five times face.

My Box in a Box...

Ms Clinton Sings...

The Paris Hilton Storage Locker

Remember that storage unit that Paris Hilton had way back? She didn’t pay the bill, yadda yadda wonk eye yadda. Anyway, that is not as nearly as interesting or entertaining as what was in the storage unit. Let’s run down the list:

* Prescription bottles of the painkiller Hydrocodone
* Valtrex herpes medication
* Sleep aid Ambien
* A medical bill from a Los Angeles clinic, billing an “Amber Taylor” (same birth date as Paris) for a miscarriage in March 2003
* A journal of her alcohol-induced dreams
* Nicole Richie’s University of Arizona ID card
* Nicky Hilton’s Nevada marriage certificate
* Several bank statements, including one with an monthly balance of $9.26

The list speaks for itself. Paris Hilton is a troglodyte with not one drop of talent, class, or intelligence. Though it seems she has a few drops of STDs and sperm. This is why modern science is fucking horrible, if this was the dark ages the body of Paris Hilton would have already rotted through from letting horses, sheep, and the local mob give her a good rogering. Plus, we probably would have burned her at the steak for being a witch. The only way someone with no talent can get so popular is by being a witch! BURN HER!

Those dark age peoples might have just been pure genius.

One item to share from the booty can be seen below. After seeing that picture I just don’t understand how Mischa Barton can date Cisco Adler and why he would pose nude. Ewwww.

The Flintstones Theme Song

Britney's "Hooker look"

Dave and Tommy share a moment

THE ART OF FROG FARMING

Most business-minded farmers can figure on making about $69 gross income on an acre of wheat . . . approximately $160 from the same amount of corn.. . and around $175 with an acre of soybeans. Then there's Leonard Slabaugh, a Missouri farmer with a completely different approach. For Leonard swears that his highly unusual crop—LIVE BULLFROGS—returns a full $10,000 profit . . . per acre . . . and requires only one hour of his time each day!

"Why, I can harvest 6,000 frogs a year on this two-acre farm . . . and I realize anywhere from $2.50 a pound to $25 per frog!" Leonard Slabaugh—against a background of grunts and croaks—was telling me his success story with as much enthusiasm as a gold prospector who's suddenly struck it rich. "Yep, you can make big money with these little rascals. Come on out to the breeder pond and I'll tell you all about it."

PLOP, PLOP, PLOP

As we walked up to the mini-lake, I saw hundreds of startled giant bullfrogs jump into the water. Then, half a minute later, pairs of marble-sized eyes began peeping above the surface of the pond like submarine periscopes searching for the enemy.

True bullfrogs (Rana catesbiana)—the webfooted livestock that Slabaugh specializes in—are not difficult to identify since they're the largest frog native to the continental United States. Although their natural habitat centers around the woodland lakes and ponds of the eastern and southern U.S., these profitable amphibians have been known to thrive in cultivated waters as far west as the Pacific coast and as far north as southern Canada.

"The demand is greater than the supply . . . it always has been," Leonard Slabaugh continued. "I sell all that I can produce and still have people backed up on waiting lists: Supermarket chains and wholesale outlets buy 'em in enormous quantities. Big restaurants want 'em shipped out on ice. People come by here and pick'em up by the buckets full. High schools and colleges need bullfrogs for their biology classes, and laboratories use 'em for medical experiments. Why, the market is growing continuously all the time."

As I soon learned from Mr. Slabaugh, there are even scientists at NASA (the space agency) who want to launch some of his frogs into orbit! They'll pay him $25 each-for 30 of his best stock a month—until the contract ends in 1982. That's $750 in addition to the estimated $1,500 to $2,000 of monthly income that Leonard now makes raising his giant croakers!

SECRET INDUSTRY

If frog farming is so profitable, then, why aren't more people doing it? "This is a secretive business," Mr. Slabaugh admits. "I tried to raise frogs when I was 18 years old, but—back then—I didn't know how to keep enough of each hatch alive all the way up to salable size to make it worthwhile. Oh, I talked with other farmers all right, but they made frog breeding sound like the worst occupation in the world and wouldn't give me any help. I even looked for printed material about the subject, but there simply wasn't any available."

Why such secrecy? Leonard now believes he knows the answer. "Successful farmers just don't want to talk about the business. The fewer of us in it, the better. It's like the magician who won't explain any of his secrets. No matter how hard you try, you just can't do a magic trick unless someone else shows you how it's done. Oh, you might figure some of 'em out by yourself . . . if you spend twenty years tryin' . . . but it's not worth the trouble. Well, frog farming is the same way."

Slabaugh then went on to tell me that a female Rana catesbiana—wild or domesticated—will lay as many as 20,000 eggs along the edge of a pond. If left to shift for themselves, about 90% of those eggs will either sink to the bottom and die or will be eaten by predators before they hatch into tadpoles a few days later. And, out of the few lucky ones which make it that far, all but 6 to 10 of the vulnerable little tads will somehow fall prey to nature (and to each other, because they're cannibalistic) during the nearly two years which it takes for them to grow legs and become adult frogs. In other words, the odds against survival for the species are only a mere 20,000 to 10!

The magic secret of making Big Money in this business, then, boils down to a single golden commandment: Find some way to increase the egg-to-frog survival ratio in your ponds. Inexperienced farmers—the ones who start from scratch without consulting old hands like Leonard Slabaugh—find out, the hard way, that it can take several years to learn everything that Leonard told me in just a few hours.

Even if you have to dig out the "tricks of the trade" on your own the hard way, though, the effort can still be worth it. Because—once armed with those secret—seven a beginner can start producing 5,000 to 10,000 marketable bullfrogsfrom each pair of breeders on his or her farm during his or her first two years of efficient operation!

Now that can quickly add up to serious money, so you're quite obviously way ahead of the game if you can pick the brain of a sly ol successful frog raiser (like Leonard Slabaugh) before you plunge into the business . . . rather than after. I was lucky enough to do just that . . . and here's what I learned:

THE SECRETS EXPOSED!

Over the years, Slabaugh has found that a five-pond breeding, hatching, and maturing system (one BREEDER, one HOLDING, and three GROWING pools) works the best for his two-acre enterprise.

The first of these bodies of water is the BREEDER POND. This permanent "home" for Leonard's mature male and female stock (which range from 4 to 25 years in age!)-is 20' X 100' X 4' deep and contains approximately 100 of the amphibians (half male, half female).

Naturally, this is Slabaugh's "key" mini-lake, and he has taken steps to protect it. Several years ago, Leonard installed a tall corrugated aluminum fence all the way around the pond to keep out dogs, cats, raccoons, and other predators. Later he added wire fencing buried about 18 inches deep to discourage burrowing animals from digging their way in. (Eventually he installed this same kind of protection around all his ponds.)

"My breeding stock is now safe and they frolic around out there all during late spring and early summer," Leonard says. "When each female lays her eggs, they look just like tiny black seeds suspended in a clear jelly. These masses of eggs are called spawn and it clings to the grass and water plants all around the pond's edge for a little while, until I can get out to collect it. And I make it my business to do that as soon as possible so all these eggs won't sink to the bottom and get away from me!

"I generally harvest a couple of buckets full of the eggs at a time. Then I take 'em over to the incubator tray." This container—a wooden frame measuring 2' X 2' X 4" deep, with plastic wire screen nailed across its bottom—protects the delicate spawn (while it's suspended in a HOLDING POND) until it can hatch.

Since large tadpoles tend to feed on smaller ones—and on frog eggs—Leonard is quick to transfer each day's wiggly hatch from the incubator tray directly into the 50' X 20' X 4' deep holding pond. By the time all the new tads are removed from the tray, they've grown to about the same size and no longer seem much interested in bothering each other.

"I get about an 85% survival rate—nearly 17,000 tadpoles from each 20,000-egg hatch—and, believe me, that's hard to beat!" This "secret" hatching technique is one of the reasons Leonard Slabaugh makes such a profit from his frog farming operation.

Slabaugh believes that another reason is his special GROWING POND design. After just 4 to 5 months in Leonard's holding pool, his tadpoles have made the metamorphic change into frogs and are ready to spend the next couple of years fattening up in his three "U"-shaped mini-lakes. The arm of each "U" is about 150' X 15' X 4' deep and—because of their unusual shape—the bodies of water have more bank area in relation to their volume than do ordinary round or oblong lakes. From a bird's-eye view, in fact, this "growing area" on the Slabaugh farm looks like a long winding canal, rather than a series of three ponds.

HAPPINESS IS A CLEAN HOME

Although some farmers have experimented with giant plastic-lined or concrete pools, Leonard has found that earth ponds—with natural plant growth on their banks—produce greater numbers of healthier frogs. Furthermore, he has encouraged this growth by sowing a permanent "pasture mix" of wild seeds and clover around his mini-lakes. (A couple of goats on the outside of the fences keep everything nicely trimmed where passersby can see it.) A few local Missouri water plants in the pools themselves add a final touch.

(A little further south in Arkansas, frog farmer Vol Brashears keeps the banks of his vest-pocket lakes thriving with watercress, peppermint, iris, lilies, cane, and other native bog plants. Vol also believes a natural setting is better for his aquatic livestock and that it sets up an "eco-balance" that keeps frog ponds naturally clean and pure.)

As a final self-cleansing touch, Slabaugh leaves a trickle of water flowing through his ponds at all times. Wirescreen filters at each end of the chain of pools keeps out foreign matter and frogeating snakes.

FEEDING TIME

The natural diet of adult bullfrogs consists mainly of live flying insects, but Leonard has a "secret" food supplement which-he swears-dramatically increases his livestock's rate of growth.

He wouldn't tell me what this supplement is . . . but I did notice thousands of tiny crawfish flipping around in Slabaugh's ponds with both his tadpoles and mature stock. Leonard didn't want to talk much about the crawfish, however, so we dropped the subject.

(In Arkansas, Vol Brashears says his frogs love crawfish and eat them almost exclusively. Vol adds a few flying insects to the amphibians' diet by hanging a series of light bulbs around the frogs' watery homes. The lights-which are left on a couple of hours each night-attract thousands of flying snacks for his ever-hungry but fat bullfrogs.)

Since tadpoles are largely vegetarian - except for all-too-frequent nibbles at their brothers and sisters-they need a lot of natural pond greenery to eat while they're growing. A healthy algae bloom can provide both phytoplankton and zooplankton for the baby amphibians . . . which also relish common "pond moss" or Spirogyra. These natural foods, obviously, should be encouraged.

Bear in mind, though, that you can get too much of a good thing . . . in this case, weed and algae growth. That is: While it's true that mature frogs breathe air, tadpoles must get their oxygen from the water in which they swim . . . and weeds and algae sometimes can draw so much oxygen from a pool of water that there's nothing left for anything else. If you ever see your tads coming up to the surface and trying to breathe (just the way fish occasionally do in a stagnant lake), skim off or otherwise cut back the plant growth in that pond . . . immediately.

DISEASES

Although bullfrogs seem to be fairly disease-resistant—Slabaugh has never had an epidemic in his stock—two illnesses can strike your aquatic crop if you allow your ponds to become overcrowded or dirty.

Saprolegnia is an ugly fungus that sometimes grows on a bullfrog's skin and the disease is very contagious. No cure is known and infected amphibians should be separated from their healthy brothers and sisters and destroyed as soon as possible.

Another—equally ugly—disorder is caused by bacillus hydrophillus fascus and is commonly known as "red leg". The slang name comes from the fact that the bacteria cause the blood vessels in a frog's legs to congest, swell, and turn red. This condition can be fatal . . . but it is often cured merely by keeping the infected amphibians out of water and in a cool place for several days.

As with most of the disorders which attack any livestock on a farm, the two diseases mentioned above are best "cured" by preventing them in the first place. And cleanliness is the best preventative of all. (This is the principal reason Slabaugh keeps a trickle of water circulating through his ponds . . . it has the same natural cleansing action of a slow-moving stream in nature.)

HIBERNATION

The bullfrog growing season in southern Missouri extends from early spring to late fall. As might be expected, however, the amphibians slow down considerably as cool weather approaches and eventually—when the temperature drops to about 40°F—go into hibernation. (That is: All the fat a croakers swim down to the muddy bottoms of their ponds, burrow in, and go a to sleep until the following spring.)

"Winter is the best part of the year for a me," Leonard says. "It's a vacation. All I 'have to do during the cold months is keep the bottoms of the ponds from freezing. The tops I don't care about . . . even if ice freezes down a foot or two -from the surface. That ice won't bother a my snoozing brood at all as long as they're surrounded by water and mud that's 32° or warmer."

TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

As spring again creeps back across the land, Slabaugh's sleepy bullfrogs dig themselves out of their muddy beds, swim to the tops of their ponds, and crawl onto the. mini-lakes' grassy banks.

Although Leonard's growing ponds are usually crowded, the frogs don't mind as long as each male has a threeto-four-foot patch of shore to call his own. And that—of course—is where the disputes sometimes arise ... as a young male squabbles with an old croaker over a choice piece of territory. Because bullfrogs have no teeth or claws, however, the contenders rarely actually hurt each other . . . but the battles sometimes become quite heated nonetheless.

"Why, they wrestle just like boys," says Slabaugh. "They'll jump up on their hind flippers and grab each other 'round the chest with their front legs and throw each other to the ground with a thunk! Then after a while the loser just gives up and hops away to look for another place in the sun. And the winner! Why he takes a seat on his property, puffs up, and begins to sing an amorous frog song about what a fine fellow he is. And believe me, that soon has a bunch of females poking their heads out of the water and batting their eyes in his direction."

THE HARVEST

If you don't know better, you've probably envisioned a frog farmer's "roundup" of marketable livestock rather in terms of an old Keystone Kops movie . . . with herdsman and amphibians all running, jumping, and splashing back and forth through their man-made swamp until one side or the other finally "gives". Not at all. The operation is really much more refined than that.

As Leonard points out: "Wild frogs do spook easy, but domesticated ones—which soon become accustomed to seeing their owner puttering around every day—get to be just like pets. Mine usually jump into the water when they see me comin' . . . but pretty soon they crawl up on the shore again to find out what doin'. I have to be careful not to step on'em."

This herdsman/livestock relationship explains why Slabaugh's harvesting technique may not be exactly sporting . . . but why it surely is quick: Leonard simply walks around at night with a flashlight and plucks his amphibians off the ground with no more difficulty than a gardener collecting cucumbers. That's for the small orders. When Leonard wants to gather several hundred of the frogs at a time, he just scoops them up in a fish net.

CLEANING THE CATCH

Although some people (the inexperienced among us) tend to lump frog legs into the same category as escargot (Ugh! Snails), that comparison is really a mistake. Bullfrogs may be a little short on beauty, but they're extremely clean animals. And they're definitely not (how should I say this?) . . . slimy . . . like trout (and most other widely eaten pan fish) are when they're taken fresh from the water.

"Frogs are easier to clean than any other animal," says Leonard Slabaugh (and he ought to know, because he's cleaned a passel of 'em in his day). As a matter of fact, cleanin' a frog is a whole lot easier than cleanin' a fish: Just remove the head and the insides and then skin it. That's all. Every bit of the meat makes for good eatin' . . . even if the fancy restaurants do just serve the hind legs."

Slabaugh's marketable frogs weigh in at about a pound live . . . and a halfpound dressed. Which means—at prices currently ranging from $2.50 to $4.50 a dressed-out pound—that Leonard is realizing a minimum gross income of $1.25 to $2.25 from every frog he sells. (And he makes even more, of course, on the smaller animals purchased live at higher prices by schools, colleges, and research labs.)

At that, Slabaugh stands in awe of another grower he knows who lives near Las Vegas, Nevada. "Those restaurants out there charge $18 a plate for just two fried frog legs," Leonard says. "And that of boy is gettin' eight dollars a pound for the meat he sells. Why, he's sittin' on top of a gold mine."

And why would anybody pay $18 for two frog legs . . . or even half that much (as is more common) for three or four of the drumsticks? Because the meat is pure white and tastes very much like chicken . . . a very tender and very delicate chicken. If you've never eaten frog legs, you've missed a rare treat.

HOW TO GET STARTED

Raising bullfrogs—then—can be fun, profitable, and easy . . . if you've got a couple of acres to work with, have just a little bit of common sense, and are willing to let an "old-timer" in the business help you get off on the right foot.

"You don't need as elaborate a setup as I've got when you're just startin' out," Slabaugh advises. "Forget about breeding stock and havin' five ponds and all the other extras, at least in the beginnin'. Just buy live tads—they can be shipped cross country—and keep 'em clean and healthy in one pond. Then, as they start sproutin' legs, move 'em over to a second pool and let 'em grow. The hardest part will be waitin' two years until your first batch reaches market size but, after that, you've got it made. Then you can start plowin' money back into the operation until it's as big as you want to make it."

And if that route into the frog business doesn't appeal to you, Leonard suggests another approach: "Dabble" your way in. "Catch a coupla wild bullfrogs or buy a pair of breeders for about $30 from someone already well established in the game. Then just let nature take its course and see how well you do experimenting with your amphibians' whole life cycle on a small scale for a couple of years. After that—if you like the business—you can start building ponds and go into this thing in a big way."

And how will you know if the fellow you purchase your original breeding stock from really does sell you both a male and a female frog? Easy. Look at the eardrums (the black circles just behind the eyes on each of your critters). The male's eardrums will be larger in diameter than his eyes are (or about twice as wide as the space between his nostrils). The female's eardrum, by contrast, will be just about the same size as her eye (or slightly smaller than the space between her nostrils).

And you probably are better advised to purchase that first pair of breeders, rather than trying to catch them in the wild. Bullfrogs are classified as game animals in some sections of the country and their capture is subject to regulation. In Missouri, for example, a bill of sale from a licensed frog raiser must accompany every shipment of brood stock. In many areas, it's even illegal to transport a wild bullfrog across a state line for any purpose!

THE SHORT CUT

Of course, if you really want to get into the frog business right now and with the fewest missteps possible, there's always Leonard Slabaugh. After 35 years of trial and error and profitable operations, he stands as about as good an authority on the subject as anyone . . . and, as this article has already demonstrated, of Leonard truly enjoys introducing others to the many mysteries of his profession.

Of course you can't expect Slabaugh just to give away all the knowledge he's worked so hard to acquire. But the onetime fee of $1,500 which he charges for his "complete course" of bullfrog farming trade secrets seems to be reasonable enough . . . especially since it does contain all those secrets, a list of proven markets for the animals (both live and dressed out), and a followup consulting service (just in case you run into snags in your venture later on).

You can contact this "Wizard of Frog Hollow" by writing to Leonard Slabaugh, Route 3, Box 59, Poplar Bluff, Missouri 63901. Or call him by dialing (314) 785-7517. Or just drive on down to Poplar Bluff and visit the farm (parts of it are open to the public). You won't have any trouble finding the place, especially at night: It'll be the one that's filling the air with more croaks and groans than The Great Dismal Swamp.

Doesn't all that noise bother Leonard Slabaugh? Would it bother you . . . if you knew that each one of the 20,000 or so bullfrogs you own was worth up to $25 apiece?

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Presidential Intelligence

A report published Monday, by the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the educational community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.

There have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F.D. Roosevelt to G.W. Bush, who were rated based on scholarly achievements:
1. Writings that they produced without aid of staff.
2. Their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors, which were then scored using the Swanson/Crain System of intelligence ranking.

The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points. In order by presidential term:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [D] 142,
Harry S Truman [D] 132,
Dwight David Eisenhower [R] 122
John Fitzgerald Kennedy [D] 174,
Lyndon Baines Johnson [D] 126,
Richard Milhous Nixon [R] 155,
Gerald R. Ford [R] 121,
James Earle Carter [D] 175,
Ronald Wilson Reagan [R] 105
George Herbert Walker Bush [R] 98,
William Jefferson Clinton [D] 182,
George Walker Bush [R] 91

In order of IQ rating:

182 . . William Jefferson Clinton [D]
175 . . James Earle Carter [D]
174 . . John Fitzgerald Kennedy [D]
155 . . Richard Milhous Nixon [R]
147 . . Franklin Delano Roosevelt [D]
132 . . Harry S Truman [D]
126 . . Lyndon Baines Johnson [D]
122 . . Dwight David Eisenhower [R]
121 . . Gerald R. Ford [R]
105 . . Ronald Wilson Reagan [R]
098 . . George Herbert Walker Bush [R]
091 . . George Walker Bush [R]

The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest at 155.

President George W. Bush rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.

The six Democratic presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than Carter [D] has released his actual IQ (176). Note the institute measured him at 175.

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President G.W. Bush, his low ratings are due to his apparently difficult command of the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary [6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents], his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.

"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said.

"He has no published works or writings, which made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We relied more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."

The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist For more information on the Lovenstein Institute, go to http://lovenstein.org//

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Worlds most expensive home in Bozeman MT

If you're looking for a new home and have $155 million to spare, you could be the proud owner of the world's most expensive abodes.

Forbes.com, the online site of Forbes magazine, on Thursday said timber and real estate baron Tim Blixseth has just upped the ante in the price of the world's most expensive home, planning to build and sell a home for $155 million.

The 53,000-square-foot stone and wood mansion will be built at the Yellowstone Club, a members-only, residential ski and golf resort near Bozeman, Montana developed by Blixseth.

That tops the $139 million asking price for Updown Court in Windlesham, England, which was listed No. 1 in the Forbes.com list of the world's most expensive homes in 2006.

It also exceeds the $125 million that U.S. media mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump is asking for the renovated estate he owns in Palm Beach, Florida.

Blixseth, who ranks No. 322 in the 2006 Forbes 400 list with a $1.2 billion fortune, said he had already received interest in the home.

"Some of (the world's richest) just have to have the best. Price is not an issue," he told Forbes.com.

The 10-bedroom mansion will sit on 160 acres and will come with a private gondola-like chairlift that will carry residents to the Yellowstone Club's private ski slopes, an indoor/outdoor swimming pool, and a home movie theater, and it is fully furnished.

GPS Shoes

Good news for worried parents. These GTX GPS Xplorer Smart Shoes will let you keep track of your kids no matter where you are. Here's how it works.

Define a "safe" area around your house or school that it's safe for your kids to wander around. When the GPS signal goes outside of the area, an SMS will be sent to your phone alerting you of the situation. Then you're free to call your wife, the police, or Chloe from 24.

The shoes last several days on one charge, which means they may or may not be juiced when you need them most.

Rabbi Yells "Cut!" Over Porn Flick

The producer of an all-Israeli porn flick is under attack from rabbis who say his use of a food-certification symbol ain't kosher.

Yesterday, Tight Fit Productions of Van Nuys, Calif., the purveyors of "Assraelis," which was shot entirely in Israel with all-local talent, and in Hebrew (with, uh, English subtitles), received a cease-and-desist order letter from a lawyer representing Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum of KOF-K Kosher Certification, a New Jersey company that puts its stamp of approval on Kosher goods. Tight Fit's DVD-cover claim of Israeli authenticity is accompanied by a Hebrew letter normally reserved for rabbi-ordained meats, grains, and other foodstuffs.

KOF-K's lawyer says that Tight Fit is using the symbol "illegally" in violation of State and Federal Law, and plans to sue "if the situation is not rectified as quickly as possible." Oren Cohen, the owner of Tight Fit, finds the action "funny," but will modify the cover art before the film's release next week -- to satisfy what he calls the "very nice" rabbis.

No word from Cohen, who himself does not observe the Kashrut, on whether, despite their Kosher claims, meat and milk products were mixed during the making of "Assraelis."

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Hendrix image used on energy drink

A new energy drink has come under fire from Jimi Hendrix fans by using the music legend's image on its packaging.

California-based Beverage Concepts is due to release the non-alcoholic drink Liquid Experience this coming April.

The image of Jimi Hendrix has also been licensed for a range of other products including baby clothing, an air freshener and a lava lamp.

According to the BBC, some of the profits from Liquid Experience - named after the 1967 Hendrix album Are You Experienced - will go to an unidentified music education foundation.

Red Hot CHili Peppers bassist Flea told the BBC, "To see his image and the beautiful feelings it has created in me cheapened by advertising is very disappointing."
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Nude jogger `not a pretty sight'

One of the strangest wildlife sightings in the Cupertino-Saratoga foothills has yet to be identified: a naked jogger, wearing only shoes, glasses and a black tam hat.

He's cordial and polite, not threatening. He doesn't do anything obscene. He avoids confrontations. A white middle-aged man with a paunch, he isn't much to look at.

But his frequent appearances in the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve are startling hikers, equestrians, runners and cyclists, whose idea of sightseeing usually involves something more scenic.

``He passed me and said `Good evening,' '' said equestrian Sue Bowdoin, while riding her horse Randy last summer on the Wedding Tree Trail in the south end of the park. ``I thought: Ugh!''

``I think he has a screw loose,'' said Bowdoin, of Santa Clara.

The recent cold snap seemed to keep him indoors, or at least more fully clothed. But for the past year and a half, there have been consistent reports of his nude workouts on Maisie's Peak, Vista Loop trail and others.

On warm days, the tam stays home.

Many sightings come from horseback riders at nearby Garrod Farms Stable who exercise their animals in the 739-acre preserve. One rider says that she chased, cornered and confronted him, yelling that he should not expose himself to children, women and the elderly.

He acted worried, she said, and backed away from her.

Bowdoin recalled a second sighting last fall. ``He was running behind me, then started to cough and make noises so I wouldn't be startled,'' Bowdoin said. ``I pulled over and he went right by. He never did or said anything.''

And he maintained a steady pace throughout.

``I think he is not one of those guys who is deliberately trying to offend you,'' she said.

Park rangers have never seen him and his identity is still unknown, although efforts are under way to identify and apprehend him, said Gordon Baillie, a management analyst with the district.

Nor have his clothes or car keys been found, leading some to suspect that he's a neighbor.

Jogging au naturel is risky, given the abundance of poison oak in the park.

It's also illegal. Open Space District Ordinance Section 412 states: ``No person shall expose any part of the pubic or anal region or genitalia while on District Lands in Public View.'' If they catch him, rangers have to identify him -- a tricky proposition, given that he has no pockets to hold a driver's license. Suspects who don't have IDs are asked for their name and address, which is then verified by phone against driver's license records at the dispatch center, Baillie said.

How would he be picked out of a police lineup?

His skin is pale, turning red and sweaty with exertion. His hair is dark. So are the frames of his glasses. There isn't much body hair.

``He's frumpy. Plain. Not in good physical shape,'' Bowdoin said. ``It's not a pretty sight.''

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See the 20 Greatest Guitar Solos

1. Stairway To Heaven - Jimmy Page

2. Eruption - Edward Van Halen (Option 2)

3. Freebird - Collins/Rossington

4. Comfortably Numb - David Gilmour (Option 2)

5. All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

6. November Rain - Slash

7. One - Kirk Hammet/Metallica

8. Hotel California - Don Felder/Joe Walsh

9. Crazy Train - Randy Rhoads (Option 2)

10. Crossroads - Eric Clapton

11. Voodo Chile - Jimi Hendrix

12. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

13. Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan

14. Layla - Clapton/Allman

15. Floods - Dimebag Darrel

16. Heartbreaker - Jimmy Page

17. Cliffs Of Dover - Eric Johnson

18. Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix

19. Highway Star - Ritchie Blackmore

20. Bohemian Rhapsody - Brian May

Others of Note:

26. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Kurt Cobain

36. Black Star - Yngwie Malmsteen

56. War Pigs - Tony Iommi

59. You Really Got Me - Dave Davies

80. You Shook Me All Night Long - Angus Young

81. Sweet Jane - Hunter/Wagner

96. Honky Tonk Women - Keith Richards

97. Cherub Rock - Billy Corgan

Bonus: Just an AWESOME find not to be missed... Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King & Albert Collins "Texas Flood" 1988

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Is there a mirror in yer pants? 'cuz I can see myself in 'em.

You might not be the best lookin' girl here, but beauty's only a light switch away!

Man - "Fat Penguin!"
Woman - "WHAT?"
Man - "I just wanted to say something that would break the ice."

I'm not no Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make yerbed-rock!

I can't find my puppy, can you help me find him?, I think he went inta this cheap motel room.

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If yer gunna regret this in the mornin', we kin sleep 'til afternoon.

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Rare primitive shark captured on film

A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 metres (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.

The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Marine park staff caught the 1.6 metre (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.

The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws.

"We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare," said an official at the park. "They live between 600 and 1,000 metres under the water, which is deeper than humans can go."

"We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," the official said.

The shark died a few hours after being caught. Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive.

Cruise 'is Christ' of Scientology

TOM Cruise is the new “Christ” of Scientology, according to leaders of the cult-like religion.

The Mission: Impossible star has been told he has been “chosen” to spread the word of his faith throughout the world.

And leader David Miscavige believes that in future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.

A source close to the actor, who has risen to one of the church’s top levels, said: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.

“Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”

Cruise joined the Church of Scientology in the ’80s. Leader L Ron Hubbard claimed humans bear traces of an ancient alien civilisation.

Bam Bam Bigelow passes away

From WWE:

WWE.com has learned that former WWE Superstar Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow has passed away in Florida.

Kevin Doll, the Public Information Director for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Bigelow was found dead early Friday morning in his home in Hudson, Fla.

"We can confirm that Scott Bigelow was found in his home this morning. At this time the cause of death is unknown," Doll told WWE.com.

Doll also confirmed that the Pasco-Pinellas Counties medical examiner has taken the body and an autopsy will be performed.

Bigelow, 45, worked for WWE, ECW and WCW extensively throughout his 20-year sports-entertainment career. A former ECW Champion, ECW Television Champion and WCW Tag Team Champion, he is perhaps best known for his rivalry with Lawrence Taylor that culminated in the main event of WrestleMania XI in 1995.

Who in the heck thought this was a ....

E. Howard Hunt dies at 88

E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Hunt died after a lengthy bout with pneumonia, according to his son, Austin Hunt.

The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many from the spy-tale genre.

Yet the bulk of his notoriety came from the one thing he always insisted he wasn't -- a Watergate burglar. He often said he preferred the term "Watergate conspirator."

"I will always be called a Watergate burglar, even though I was never in the damn place," Hunt told The Miami Herald in 1997. "But it happened. Now I have to make the best of it."

While working for the CIA, Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars -- Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis, all who had worked for Hunt a decade earlier in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

All four also had ties to Miami, where part of the Watergate plan was hatched.

"According to street gossip both in Washington and Miami, Mr. Castro had been making substantial contributions to the McGovern campaign," Hunt told CNN in February 1992. "And the idea was ... that somewhere in the books of the Democratic National Committee those illicit funds would be found."

The idea was wrong, and the fallout escalated into huge political scandal.

Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Twenty-five men were sent to prison for their involvement in the botched plan, and a new era of skepticism toward government began.

"I had always assumed, working for the CIA for so many years, that anything the White House wanted done was the law of the land," Hunt told People magazine for its May 20, 1974, issue. "I viewed this like any other mission. It just happened to take place inside this country."

The Hunt recruits and James W. McCord Jr., security director for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, were arrested June 17, 1972, at the Watergate office building. One of the burglars was found to have Hunt's White House phone number.

Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy, along with the five arrested at Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later. Hunt and his recruits pleaded guilty in January 1973, and McCord and Liddy were found guilty.

In March 1973, McCord wrote a letter to the federal judge in his case, John J. Sirica, claiming perjury occurred and there was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent.

In a secretly recorded conversation that same month that became one of the key pieces of evidence of the White House cover-up, White House Counsel John Dean told Nixon that "we're being blackmailed ... Hunt now is demanding another $72,000 for his own personal expenses; another $50,000 to pay his attorneys' fees."

After some further discussion, Nixon said: "If you need the money, I mean you could get the money. ... I mean it's not easy, but it could be done."

Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign.

"I felt that in true politician's fashion, he'd assumed a degree of responsibility but not the blame," he told The Associated Press in 1992. "It wasn't my idea to go into the Watergate."

Hunt also was involved in organizing an event that foreshadowed Watergate: the burglary of the the office of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, published in 1971.

Watergate was one of many wild tales -- some true, some not -- that followed Hunt through the final decades of his colorful life.

His alleged involvement in the purported conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy was among the most popular spy-esque stories Hunt was linked with. One theory, which still exists in the minds of some, was that Hunt was in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, that his image was captured in photographs from the scene.

"I was in Washington, D.C., on November 22, 1963," Hunt wrote in a December 1975 letter to Time magazine, a note penned while he was incarcerated at Eglin Air Force Base's prison camp. "It is a physical law that an object can occupy only one space at one time."

Everette Howard Hunt was born October 9, 1918, graduated from Brown University in 1940 and was commissioned as a Naval Reserve officer in Annapolis, Maryland, the following year. He served as a destroyer gunnery officer, was injured at sea and honorably discharged from the Navy.

From 1949 through 1970 he worked for the CIA, and was involved in the operation that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemala's president in 1954, plus the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

Hunt declared bankruptcy in 1997, largely blaming his Watergate fines and legal fees. A $650,000 libel settlement he was awarded in 1981 stemming from an article alleging his involvement in the assassination of Kennedy was overturned, and he never received any of that money.

"I think I've paid my debt to society," Hunt said in 1997. "I think I've paid it amply."

Hunt spent his final years in a modest home in Miami's Biscayne Park neighborhood with his second wife, Laura Martin Hunt, and declined many interview requests from The Associated Press.

His first wife, the former Dorothy Wetzel Day Goutiere, died in a plane crash in 1982. Besides his wife, Hunt was survived by six children.

A memorial service was scheduled for Monday in Miami.

Grand Master Bobby Fischer

Read the history HERE.

TSA'S Latest Idea of a Security Checkpoint

Beach Weddings ROCK !!!!

Art Buchwald -The Last Word

See it HERE.

When it's time to hang up the THONG...

Dave Attells's eat it or....

The Tickle Bed

This bit of art is guaranteed to raise a giggle at a Mayfair gallery exhibition.

German artist Sandro Porcu, 40, has installed the tickling bed, complete with revolving ostrich feathers, for members of the public to try out.

Featherbed artist

The work, called Bed, was an instant hit when it went on display at the Alexia Goethe gallery in Dover Street last night. It is part of the Story exhibition, which also features sculptures, film and photography on the theme of telling stories.

A gallery spokesman said: "Every work in this show inspires a multitude of stories involving the personalties and memories of both viewers and artists."

The Human Clock

See the Clock HERE.

Art Buchwalds Final Column

GOODBYE, MY FRIENDS
By Art Buchwald

Several of my friends have persuaded me to write this final column, which is something they claim I shouldn't leave without doing.

There comes a time when you start adding up all the pluses and minuses of your life. In my case I'd like to add up all the great tennis games I played and all of the great players I overcame with my now famous "lob." I will always believe that my tennis game was one of the greatest of all time. Even Kay Graham, who couldn't stand being on the other side of the net from me, in the end forgave me.

I can't cover all the subjects I want to in one final column, but I would just like to say what a great pleasure it has been knowing all of you and being a part of your lives. Each of you has, in your own way, contributed to my life.

Now, to get down to the business at hand, I have had many choices concerning how I wanted to go. Most of them are very civilized, particularly hospice care. A hospice makes it very easy for you when you decide to go.

What's interesting is that everybody has his or her own opinion as to how you should go out. All my loved ones became very upset because they thought I should brave it out -- which meant more dialysis.

But here is the most important thing: This has been my decision. And it's a healthy one.

The person who was the most supportive at the end was my doctor, Mike Newman. Members of my family, while they didn't want me to go, were supportive, too. But I'm putting it down on paper, so there should be no question the decision was mine.

I chose to spend my final days in a hospice because it sounded like the most painless way to go, and you don't have to take a lot of stuff with you.

For some reason my mind keeps turning to food. I know I have not eaten all the eclairs I always wanted. In recent months, I have found it hard to go past the Cheesecake Factory without at least having one profiterole and a banana split.

I know it's a rather silly thing at this stage of the game to spend so much time on food. But then again, as life went on and there were fewer and fewer things I could eat, I am now punishing myself for having passed up so many good things earlier in the trip.

I think of a song lyric, "What's it all about, Alfie?" I don't know how well I've done while I was here, but I'd like to think some of my printed works will persevere -- at least for three years.

I know it's very egocentric to believe that someone is put on earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was. And after this column appears in the paper following my passing, I would like to think it will either wind up on a cereal box top or be repeated every Thanksgiving Day.

So, "What's it all about, Alfie?" is my way of saying goodbye.

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Columnist Art Buchwald Dies at Age 81

Columnist and author Art Buchwald, who for over four decades chronicled the life and times of Washington with an infectious wit and endeared himself to many with his never-say-die battle with failing kidneys, is dead at 81.

Buchwald's son, Joel, who was with his father, disclosed the satirist's death, saying he had passed away quietly at his home late Wednesday with his family.

Buchwald had refused dialysis treatments for his failing kidneys last year and was expected to die within weeks of moving to a hospice on Feb. 7. But he lived to return home and even write a book about his experiences.

"The last year he had the opportunity for a victory lap and I think he was really grateful for it," Joel Buchwald said. "He had an opportunity to write his book about his experience and he went out the way he wanted to go, on his own terms."

Neither Buchwald nor his doctors could explain how he survived in such grave condition, and he didn't seem to mind.

The unexpected lease on life gave Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, time for an extended and extraordinarily public goodbye, as he held court daily in a hospice salon with a procession of family, friends and acquaintances.

"I'm going out the way very few people do," he told The Associated Press in April.

Buchwald said in numerous interviews after his decision became public that he was not afraid to die, that he was not depressed about his fate and that he was, in fact, having the time of his life.

Often called "The Wit of Washington" during his years here, Buchwald's name became synonymous with political satire. He was well known, too, for his wide smile and affinity for cigars.

Among his more famous witticisms: "If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it."

Naturally, he found the humor in his choice to renounce dialysis, and he wrote about it in some final columns.

"I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die," Buchwald wrote in March. "How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I wasn't in a hospice.

"But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time _ the best time of my life."

Last January, doctors amputated Buchwald's right leg below the knee because of circulation problems. Losing it was "very traumatic" and he said it probably influenced his decision to reject the three-times-a- week, five-hours-a-day dialysis treatments. In 2000, he suffered a major stroke.

His syndicated column at one point appeared in more than 500 newspapers worldwide. It appeared twice a week in publications including The Washington Post and was distributed by Tribune Media Services.

In a 1995 memoir on his early years, "Leaving Home," Buchwald wrote that humor was his "salvation." In all, he wrote more than 30 books.

"People ask what I am really trying to do with humor," he wrote. "The answer is, 'I'm getting even.' ... For me, being funny is the best revenge."

In 1982, he won the Pulitzer, journalism's top honor, for outstanding commentary, and in 1986 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He also was at the center of a landmark battle with Hollywood over the question of who originated the idea for Eddie Murphy's 1988 hit film "Coming to America."

Buchwald first attracted notice in the late 1940s in Paris, where he became a correspondent for Variety after dropping out of college.

A year later, he took a trial column called "Paris After Dark" to the New York Herald Tribune. He filled it with scraps of offbeat information about Paris nightlife.

In 1951, he started another column, "Mostly About People," featuring interviews with celebrities in Paris. The next year, the Herald Tribune introduced Buchwald to U.S. readers through yet another column, "Europe's Lighter Side."

"I'll Always Have Paris!" is the title of a 1996 book. He celebrated his 80th birthday at a party at the French Embassy in Washington.

Among the many who visited Buchwald at the hospice was French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, who brought a medal honoring the 14 years Buchwald spent as a journalist in Paris.

Buchwald returned to the United States in 1962, at the height of the glamour of the Kennedy administration, and set himself up in an office just two blocks from the White House. From there, he began a long career lampooning the Washington power establishment.

Over the years, he discovered the allure of show business and in 1970 he wrote the Broadway play "Sheep on the Runway."

But he was best known in that realm for the court battle over "Coming to America." A judge ruled that Paramount Pictures had stolen Buchwald's idea and in 1992 awarded $900,000 to him and a partner.

The case dated to a 1983 Paramount contract for rights to Buchwald's story "King for a Day." The studio had dropped its option to make such a movie in 1985, three years before releasing "Coming to America" without credit to Buchwald.

Both stories involved an African prince who comes to America in search of a bride.

Paramount argued that the two stories were not that similar. After the judge ruled in Buchwald's favor, Paramount lawyers insisted in the trial's next phase that the film failed to produce any net profits. The case became a celebrated example of "Hollywood accounting."

The judge wound up awarding Buchwald and his partner far less than the millions they had sought, but the columnist said he was satisfied.

Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Oct. 25, 1925, Buchwald had a difficult childhood. He and his three sisters were sent to foster homes when their mother was institutionalized for mental illness. Their father, a drapery salesman, suffered Depression-era financial troubles and couldn't afford them.

At 17, Buchwald ran away to join the Marines and spent 3 1/2 years in the Pacific during World War II, attaining the rank of sergeant and spending much of his time editing a Corps newspaper.

After the war, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he became managing editor of the campus humor magazine and a columnist for the student paper. But he dropped out in 1948 and headed for Paris on a one-way ticket.

He married Ann McGarry, of Warren, Pa., in London on Oct. 12, 1952. The writer and one-time fashion coordinator for Neiman-Marcus later wrote a book with her husband. They adopted three children.

She died in 1994. In 2000, Buchwald published his first novel, "Stella In Heaven: Almost a Novel," about a widower who can communicate with his deceased wife.

Despite his successes, the perennial funny man said he battled depression in 1963 and 1987. He once joked about deciding not to commit suicide out of fear that The New York Times miss the story.

"You do get over it, and you get over it a better person," he once said of the illness.

Buchwald is survived by son Joel Buchwald, of Washington; daughters Jennifer Buchwald, of Roxbury, Mass.; and Connie Buchwald Marks, of Culpeper, Va.; sisters Edith Jaffe, of Bellevue, Wash., and Doris Kahme, of Delray Beach, Fla., and Monroe Township, N.J.; and five grandchildren.

A family spokeswoman said Buchwald would be interred at the Vineyard Haven Cemetery in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where his wife Ann is buried.

___

Philosophy of Sex

"I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy."
--Tom Clancy


"You know "that look" women get when they want sex? Me neither."
--Steve Martin


"Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand."
--Woody Allen


"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."
--Rodney Dangerfield

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL."
--Lynn Lavner


"Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist."
--Matt Barry

"Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope."
--George Burns


"Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant."
--George Burns


"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships."
--Sharon Stone


"My girlfriend always laughs during sex ---no matter what she's reading."
--Steve Jobs (Founder, Apple Computers)


"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch."
--Jack Nicholson


" Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is."
--Barbara Bush

"Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."
--Robin Williams


"Women complain about premenstrual syndrome, but I think of it as the only time of the month that I can be myself."
--Roseanne


"Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place."
--Billy Crystal


"According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful."
--Robert De Niro


"There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?"
--Dustin Hoffman


"There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men think, I know what I'm doing. Just show me somebody naked."
--Jerry Seinfeld


"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house."
--Rod Stewart


"See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time."
--Robin Williams

Photo-op- Hooters Bikini Contest

Beck Anyone?

See and hear him HERE.

Amsterdam to get statue to world's prostitutes

Amsterdam's red light district is reportedly to receive a bronze statue dedicated to prostitutes around the world.

According to the Dutch agency ANP, sculptress Els Rijerse made the statue at the request of a former prostitute Mariska Majoor, who a decade ago founded a centre on prostitution in the Dutch capital.

Majoor was quoted as saying by ANP that the statue would be a first of its kind and that it had received the blessing of the city authorities.

The statue represents a self-assured woman, her hands on her hips, looking sideways towards the sky, and standing on a doorstep, ANP said.

The precise place where the statue will be laid and its title have not yet been announced, it said.

N. Dakota Man Aims to Be 1st Hemp Farmer

State legislator David Monson began pushing the idea of growing industrial hemp in the United States a decade ago. Now his goal may be within reach - but first he needs to be fingerprinted.

Monson turned in an application Monday to the state Agriculture Department to become the nation's first licensed industrial hemp farmer. State Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said Monson provided fingerprints with his application, which will be used for a background check to prove he is not a criminal.

The farmer, school superintendent and lawmaker would like to start by growing 10 acres of the crop, and he spent part of his weekend staking out the field he wants to use.

"I'm starting to see that we maybe have a chance," Republican State Rep. Monson said. "For a while, it was getting really depressing."

Last month, the state Agriculture Department finished its work on rules farmers may use to grow industrial hemp, a cousin of marijuana that does not have the drug's hallucinogenic properties. The sturdy, fibrous plant is used to make an assortment of products, ranging from paper, rope and lotions to car panels, carpet backing and animal bedding.

Applicants must provide latitude and longitude coordinates for their proposed hemp fields, furnish fingerprints and pay at least $202 in fees, including $37 to cover the cost of criminal record checks.

Johnson said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration still must give its permission before Monson, or anyone else, may grow industrial hemp.

"That is going to be a major hurdle," Johnson said.

Another impediment is the DEA's annual registration fee of $2,293, which is nonrefundable even if the agency does not grant permission to grow industrial hemp. Processing the paperwork for Monson's license should take about a month, Johnson said.

A DEA spokesman has said North Dakota applications to grow industrial hemp will be reviewed, and Johnson said North Dakota's rules were developed with the agency's concerns in mind. Law enforcement officials fear industrial hemp can shield illicit marijuana, although hemp supporters say the concern is unfounded.

North Dakota is one of seven states that have authorized industrial hemp farming. The others are Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana and West Virginia, according to Vote Hemp, an industrial hemp advocacy organization based in Bedford, Mass.

California lawmakers approved legislation last year that set out rules for industrial hemp production, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. The law asserted that the federal government lacked authority to regulate industrial hemp as a drug.

In 2005, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced legislation to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana in federal drug laws. It never came to a vote.

Monson farms near Osnabrock, a Cavalier County community in North Dakota's northeastern corner. He is the assistant Republican majority leader in the North Dakota House and is the school superintendent in Edinburg, which has about 140 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

In 1997, during his second session in the Legislature, Monson successfully pushed a bill to require North Dakota State University to study industrial hemp as an alternative crop for the state's farmers.

Canada made it legal for farmers to grow the crop in March 1998. Last year, Canadian farmers planted 48,060 acres of hemp, government statistics say. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the provinces along North Dakota's northern border, were Canada's biggest hemp producers.

"I do know that industrial hemp grows really well 20 miles north of me," Monson said. "I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be a major crop for me, if this could go through."

Castro Reportedly in 'Grave' Condition

WHAT THE HELL KINDA MEDICAL TREATMENT IS HE RECIEVING OMG....???


Fidel Castro has had at least three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, and the Cuban leader faces "a very grave prognosis," a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday. A Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment.

"It's another lie and we are not going to talk about it. If anyone has to talk about Castro's illness, it's Havana," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of official policy.

The newspaper El Pais cited two unidentified sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis."

Cuba has released little information on Castro's condition since he temporarily ceded power in July to his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, until he could recover from emergency intestinal surgery.

El Pais' report, which could not immediately be confirmed, was a rare detailed description from a major media outlet about Castro's condition.

The report was not made public in Cuba, where the government runs the media and Cubans have become accustomed to very limited details about their ailing leader's health. Some criticized the unofficial reports by sources outside Cuba, saying they were speculative and likely false.

"If Fidel is exercising his right to keep everything concealed, well then, let him keep things concealed," said Ana Casas, who hadn't seen the El Pais report. "It's for his own good, so people don't talk such nonsense like they're doing in other countries."

The U.S. government had speculated that Castro could suffer from cancer _ a supposition denied by Garcia Sabrido. Some U.S. doctors believed Castro was suffering from diverticular disease, which can cause bleeding in the lower intestine, especially in people over 60. In severe cases, emergency surgery may be required.

That idea was supported by El Pais, which reported that its sources said Castro had suffered a bout of the disease.

"In the summer, the Cuban leader bled abundantly in the intestine," El Pais reported. "This adversity led him to the operating table, according to the medical sources. His condition, moreover, was aggravated because the infection spread and caused peritonitis, the inflammation of the membrane that covers the digestive organs."

The recovery from the first operation, in which part of his large intestine was extracted and the colon was connected to the rectum, did not go well, resulting in peritonitis, the report said.

A second operation to clean and drain the infected area was conducted. Doctors removed the remainder of Castro's large intestine and created an artificial anus. But this operation also failed, El Pais said.

The Cuban leader was then hit with inflammation of the bile duct. He developed a condition called cholecystitis, which is an inflammation of the gall bladder. El Pais said this condition has an 80 percent mortality rate.

A prosthetic device made in South Korea was implanted in the bile duct and failed, and was replaced with one made in Spain, the report said.

El Pais said that in December, when Garcia Sabrido visited, Castro had an abdominal wound that was leaking more than a pint of fluids a day, causing "a severe loss of nutrients." The Cuban leader was being fed intravenously, the report said.

Garcia Sabrido's secretary said he would not comment on the report.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the El Pais report appears to be "just sort of a roundup of previous health reports. We've got nothing new."

A statement attributed to Castro was released on Dec. 31, saying his recovery was "far from being a lost battle."

Cuban officials told visiting U.S. lawmakers last month that Castro does not have cancer or a terminal illness and will eventually return to public life, although it was not clear whether he would return to the same kind of absolute control as before.

Porn is OK in the Mission, but housing isn’t...

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco seems to have a particular fetish for finding obscure reasons to block new development and housing. But prohibiting porn? No way — that would be like stepping on someone’s thigh-high, leather boot-covered toes.

In that frequent act of reality arriving on the shores of San Francisco’s fantasy land, it was reported in The Examiner on Wednesday that an online fetish company purchased the landmark State Armory building at 14th and Mission streets as a site for producing kinky porn flicks. While that might not get many hot and bothered here in Sin City, it should serve as a reminder of the lunacy that’s been surrounding that historic site for decades.

But I will say this — after lying empty since the National Guard abandoned the stately brick fortress in 1971, it appears the armory is about to see some considerable action. Its new owner, Kink.com, is a burgeoning porn conglomerate, with a dizzying array of submissive and dominant-related hardcore Web sites, ranging from “Men in Pain’’ and “Hogtied’’ to “Water Bondage’’ and “Ultimate Surrender.’’

Yet it is developers, housing activists and commercial investors who have made the ultimate surrender over plans to make over the Moorish-influenced building. In the last 20 years, so many groups and entrepreneurs have tried — and failed — to take over the building that one local newspaper did a story talking about the armory’s “curse.’’ And the reason for the hex is that a list of nonprofit community groups have fought every proposal under the froth-inducing flag of blue-collar job displacement and gentrification.

If any argument deserves a ball gag, it’s the one that suggests a thriving commercial and housing development will somehow ruin a neighborhood’s character. But at the armory, the only thing that has thrived is the rhetoric dished up by groups such as the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, which led the backlash against dot-coms in San Francisco.

Back as far as 1980, Delancy Street, the national model for organizations trying to rehabilitate ex-cons through gainful employment, was interested in taking over the building. But community activists objected because Delancy Street wasn’t based in the Mission district. Not long after, several film companies became interested in the site, and August Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola’s brother, wanted to turn it into something like the Metreon, with shops and entertainment.

But there were always objections. Seven years ago, a Planning Commission meeting over a proposal to turn the building into a dot-com office complex for 600 workers resulted in a near-riot when the plan came up for a vote. Later, the developer offered to turn the building into a giant computer-server farm — an idea that was also rebuffed.

A few years ago, Supervisor Chris Daly and attorney Sue Hestor sought to rezone the area around the armory to keep it from being built out. And recently, a plan to build 169 condominiums ran into trouble with the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board over whether luxury housing was a good fit for the neighborhood.

The City hasn’t been able to build much-needed housing there and virtually every commercial enterprise proposed for the armory has been shot down. So to say there is irony in the fact that a porn production company is poised to turn a landmark into a rough, edgy movie palace would be a major understatement.

Kink.com founder and CEO Peter Acworth told reporters that “I am looking forward to an exciting restoration project and helping to revive San Francisco’s movie industry.’’

It should be some revival. The company’s Web site said Acworth left academia to devote his life to “subjecting beautiful, willing women to strict bondage.’’ But for the politically correct masses in San Francisco, please note that Kink

.com’s models “are never told to act or artificially struggle.’’

It’s too early to tell if their plans will turn out to be a struggle. Yet clearly company officials are pumped up about the prospects. Kink.com reported that the details of the historic block-long armory will be utilized for its films, from its “dungeonlike basements,’’ to its stone staircases and its drill court.

Is it a good idea to have a porn production company in a dense residential neighborhood? San Francisco, after all, is not Chatsworth, or any other nondescript community in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, porn’s undisputed capital.

But by city standards, it may be far less controversial than something truly objectionable — such as offices or high-rise condominiums.

Bandita's is HOT HOT HOT

Basically ya got your lesbian fantasy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid....woooowhoooo....

See the trailer HERE

Tattoo Sings

True Celebrity Fiction # 1

The Circus Rocks...!!!

Hold your WEE for a Wii Contest Death

US woman dies of water intoxication

A 28-year-old woman has died of water intoxication after taking part in a California radio station's water drinking contest.

She was in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" competition trying to win a Nintendo Wii video game system.

Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death".

Jennifer Strange's mother found her daughter's body at her home on Friday in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, California, after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain.

"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento.

"She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

Earlier Friday, Strange took part in a contest at radio station KDND 107.9 in which participants competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the toilet.

Initially, contestants were handed 220mL bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes.

"They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland, California.

"They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk."

Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles.

"My bladder couldn't handle it anymore," he added.

After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink.

"I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids."

John Geary, vice president and marketing manager for Entercom Sacramento, the station's owner, said station personnel were stunned when they heard of Strange's death.

"We are awaiting information that will help explain how this tragic event occurred," he said.

Male Camel toe

Bob Dylan bores me to tears -- Simon Cowell

HEY SIMON, WHERES YOUR MUSICAL TALENT?

Don't expect to see Bob Dylan joining the celebrities on "American Idol" anytime soon.

One of the show's judges, Simon Cowell, says he has never bought a Dylan record because he "bores me to tears."

The British pop impresario says in the February issue of Playboy that he would "plug my ears and run in the other direction" if he were to see a 21-year-old Dylan singing "Blowin' in the Wind."

Cowell, 47, is not known for holding back when it comes to issuing verdicts on the wannabe stars who flock to the top-rated talent show. Last season, he said a female contestant was so fat that the stage should be enlarged, and he suggested that another hopeful should shave his beard and wear a dress.

On the other hand, he told Playboy that inaugural champ Kelly Clarkson is "a young Aretha Franklin," and he much preferred her music to Dylan's.

R2-D2 Communication & Mobile Entertainment Systems

Nikko Home Electronics is offering a new approach to home electronics by putting the joy and heart back into technology driven products. Here's a look at their first two product offerings, sure to make all fanboys reading drool with envy.

R2-D2 M.E.S. ( Mobile Entertainment System )
Features include a built-in DVD/CD player, stereo speakers, integrated iPod dock, eleven R2-D2 sound effects and a full-function remote control built into a Millennium Falcon! The suggested retail price for this item will be close to $2500.00.

R2-D2 C.S. ( Communication System )
Also coming soon from Nikko is an R2-D2 Skype phone/motorized webcam. It features a replica of Anakin's Lightsaber from ROTS that contains the controls for the R2 and the Skype phone, a wireless webcam and a web interface to view the camera image and control R2. The suggested retail price for this item will be approx. $349.

For more information check out Nikko's R2-D2 Website.

James Brown's Family Plans Museum in SC

The children of late soul singer James Brown are planning to turn his home into a Graceland-like museum and build a mausoleum on the site for his body, an attorney for Brown said Friday.

The plans for the Beech Island site are being discussed by Brown's children, several close friends and the singer's trustees, said attorney Debri Opri, an attorney for Brown. The group wants to consult with Elvis Presley's family to see how they did Graceland, Opri said.

"Mr. Brown was a great fan and truly, truly cared about Elvis Presley," Opri said.

No attempt had been made to contact Presley's estate by late Friday, said Jack Soden, CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises. But he said it's not unusual for family members of deceased entertainers to contact the Presley estate.

"We've been happy to give the benefit of what we've learned to heirs," Soden said. Soden said Graceland "is very profitable," generating "millions in revenue." There are around 600,000 visitors each year, he said.

The Godfather of Soul died of heart failure Dec. 25 at age 73. The entertainer's body lies in a sealed casket in his home on Beech Island until his children choose his final resting place.

Family Feuds Dog Famous Folks in Death

James Brown has yet to rest in peace.

His embalmed body lies in a sealed casket at his South Carolina home while his family and attorneys argue over his estate and final resting place. Security guards maintain constant watch over the Godfather of Soul -- whose coffin sits in a temperature-controlled room -- while issues surrounding his estate are hashed out.

Such posthumous problems are nothing new. While burial battles like Brown's are rare, a whole host of family dramas have haunted famous folks well into the afterlife.

The unending eclectic list includes athletes, musicians, movie stars and other notable names.

"It's just the nature of families," said Joelle Drucker, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig in Los Angeles. "If you don't get along, if there's a prior marriage with children and conflicting interests, there's always going to be fighting. It tends to be the norm rather than the exception."

The family of baseball great Ted Williams started fighting immediately after his death in 2002. Williams' son, John Henry, said his dad wanted to be cryogenically frozen, but Williams' daughter from a previous marriage, Barbara Joyce Ferrell, insisted Williams wanted to be cremated, as indicated in his will. After he died, the Hall of Famer was decapitated and his head and body were frozen separately at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale. The legal fight over Williams' final fate continued more than two years after his death, when Ferrell dropped the case.

Cryonics also posed a problem for the family of Walt Disney. After his death in 1966, a British tabloid published a picture that supposedly showed Disney's head on ice, said Disney biographer and longtime Associated Press reporter Bob Thomas. But the photo was a fake, Thomas said.

Disney "was cremated and he's lying in Forest Lawn," he said. "The family abhorred this kind of nonsense."

Cremation isn't problem-free either. Four years after actor Peter Lawford's death, his ashes were removed from a crypt at a Los Angeles cemetery because his children reportedly refused to pay the funeral bills. The ashes were turned over to Lawford's fourth wife, who scattered them in the Pacific Ocean. Then one of Lawford's friends came forward, claiming he had already dumped most of Lawford's ashes into the ocean off the coast of Malibu four years earlier during a drunken party just after the actor's death.

Public figures usually establish their burial plans well ahead of time, said Ron Hast, publisher of Mortuary Management, a national monthly magazine for the funeral industry. Burials typically take place no more than seven days after death. Some religious traditions require even more timely interment.

He noted that President Ford's body was flown from California to Washington, D.C. to Michigan and was still buried within seven days.

But burial isn't enough to end some family feuds.

Lawsuits continue to be filed years after Marlon Brando's 2004 death. The actor's former caregiver sued the executors of his estate in July claiming she was forced out of a house Brando bought for her. A former Brando business manager also sued the actor's estate in 2005, claiming sexual harassment and wrongful termination.

Ray Charles eternal rest was also dogged by lawsuits. Fights over child support and paternity issues continued for more than a year after he died in June of 2004.

Sometimes the arguments even begin while the prominent person is still alive. The family of 88-year-old evangelist Billy Graham is already at odds over where his final resting place will be. One son wants him buried near the family home in Montreat, N.C., while another wants Graham's grave located near the Charlotte evangelical center that bears his name.

Perhaps Graham will have the final vote.

Superhero Supplies

See it HERE.

Tears of a Clown....

African Lion Kisses, Hugs Woman

People in Cali, Colombia, are shocked to see the bond between a large African lion and a woman who saved it from abuse, involving long, affectionate kisses and hugs between the pair.

Ana Julia Torres, who runs the Villa Lorena animal shelter in Cali, fed and nursed Jupiter the African lion back to health years ago after it was found abused and emaciated in a traveling circus.

"It is amazing to see an animal like that be so sweet and affectionate," said Torres. "This hug is the most sincere one that I have received in my life." Torres, 47, said her work rehabilitating animals began more than a decade ago when a friend gave her an owl that had been kept as a pet.

Later, when she asked her students to bring their pets to school, she realized many families illegally kept wild fauna from Colombia's biologically diverse jungles in their homes. The number of animals under her care grew, and now Jupiter is among 800 recovering creatures at Villa Lorena, where Torres looks after, among others, burned peacocks, limbless flamengos, blind monkeys and mutilated elephants.

Most of the animals are caged, though some, like iguanas, roam freely around the grounds of the shelter, which are enclosed by a 13-foot wall. Torres said she relies on donations and her modest teacher's salary to run the shelter.

"We dedicate our lives to the care of these animals without one single peso from the state," Torres said. Torres said many of the animals were rejected as infants by their parents in the wild or found abandoned on the streets of Cali. Torres said because she opposes exhibiting animals in circuses, she decided to keep her shelter closed from the public.

A moment of ZEN...

We’re all fucked. It helps to remember that.
— George Carlin

and this guys "in charge"?

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." - George W Bush (See CNN transcript from 12/18/2000)

Robert Anton Wilson RIP

See his blog HERE.

Weird performance

A man. A woman. A lawsuit.

“Mackris v. O’Reilly” (http://www.mackrisvoreilly.com/home.html) is an oratorio for 31-piece chamber orchestra, 32-voice chorus and three soloists (soprano, tenor and baritone) set to the original court complaint filed against pundit, Bill O’Reilly, on October 13, 2004 and O’Reilly’s on-air settlement announcement given on October 29, 2004. The style of the piece is a traditional neo-baroque that makes the most of the oratorio format. Its 31 parts include seven chorales, two madrigals, three choruses (parts of the chorus matched up with components from the orchestra), four stand-alone recitatives, two instrumental entrances and numerous arias. All of these parts add up to a two-hour running time.

BILL O’REILLY SINGS!
The piece is a setting of the sexual harassment complaint lodged against Fox News pundit, Bill O’Reilly,
by staff producer, Andrea Mackris, in October 2004. It includes all memorable moments from the original complaint and more – paranoid rants, clumsy sexual innuendo, and the famous falafel fantasy. Composer
Igor Keller has produced this 31-part, concert-length work in the form of a baroque oratorio, in the style of
an updated Handel’s Messiah, for 28-piece chamber orchestra, 26-voice chorus and three soloists. It’s an oratorio for the 21st century

Shots fired over James Brown height

A man shot a friend when the two got into an argument over James Brown's height, police said.

Dan Gulley Jr. was charged with assault in the shooting of David James Brooks Jr., police said. Officers said the men were at a friend's home on Monday when, according to witnesses, the argument over the height of the late "Godfather of Soul" escalated, with Gulley, 70, shooting Brooks, 62, twice in the abdomen.

Brooks went to his car, got a gun and shot at Gulley but missed, then went to the police station, officers said.

Gulley also went to the station and told police he had shot Brooks. He remained in the Escambia County Jail on Wednesday.

Brooks was taken to a hospital, but information on his condition was not available.

The Mobile, Ala., Press-Register newspaper said officers did not believe alcohol was a factor in the argument.

Brown, who was known to wear lifts, died of heart failure Dec. 25 at age 73. Accounts of his height vary.

Wii Death

Get yours today HERE.

On a clear day and dry pavement?

Oh wait ...now it makes sense....

Yvonne De Carlo RIP

Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's "The Munsters," has died. She was 84.

De Carlo died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles, longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said Wednesday.

De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in B-movie desert adventures and Westerns, rose to more important roles in the 1950s. Later, she had a key role in a landmark Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim's "Follies."

But for TV viewers, she will always be known as Lily Munster in the 1964-1966 slapstick horror-movie spoof "The Munsters." The series (the name allegedly derived from "fun-monsters") offered a gallery of Universal Pictures grotesques, including Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, in a cobwebbed gothic setting.

Lily, vampire-like in a black gown, presided over the faux scary household and was a rock for her gentle but often bumbling husband, Herman, played by 6-foot-5-inch character actor Fred Gwynne (decked out as the Frankenstein monster).

While it lasted only two years, the series had a long life in syndication and resulted in two feature movies, "Munster Go Home!" (1966) and "The Munsters' Revenge" (1981, for TV).

At the series' end, De Carlo commented: "It meant security. It gave me a new, young audience I wouldn't have had otherwise. It made me 'hot' again, which I wasn't for a while."

"I think she will best remembered as the definitive Lily Munster. She was the vampire mom to millions of baby boomers. In that sense, she's iconic," Burns said Wednesday.

"But it would be a shame if that's the only way she is remembered. She was also one of the biggest beauty queens of the '40s and '50s, one of the most beautiful women in the world. This was one of the great glamour queens of Hollywood, one of the last ones."

De Carlo was able to sustain a long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. A longtime student of voice, she sang opera at the Hollywood Bowl. When movie roles became scarce, she ventured into stage musicals.

Her greatest stage triumph came on Broadway in 1971 with "Follies," which won the 1972 Tony award for best original musical score. She belted out Sondheim's showstopping number, "I'm Still Here," a former star's defiant recounting of the highs and lows of her life and career.

Much romance

Over the years, De Carlo augmented her stardom by shrewd use of publicity. Gossip columnists reported her dates with famous men. In her 1987 book, "Yvonne: An Autobiography," she listed 22 of her lovers, who included Howard Hughes, Burt Lancaster, Robert Stack, Robert Taylor, Billy Wilder, Aly Khan and an Iranian prince.

The Canadian-born De Carlo began her career with a parade of bit parts in films of the early 1940s, then emerged as a star in 1945 with "Salome -- Where She Danced," a routine movie about a dancer from Vienna who becomes a spy in the wild West.

She recalled her entrance in the film: "I came through these beaded curtains, wearing a Japanese kimono and a Japanese headpiece, and then performed a Siamese dance. Nobody seemed to know quite why."

Universal Pictures exploited her slightly exotic looks and a shape that looked ideal in a harem dress in such "sex-and-sand" programmers as "Song of Scheherazade," "Slave Girl," "Casbah" and "Desert Hawk."

The studio also employed her to add zest to Westerns, usually as a dance-hall girl or a gun-toting sharpshooter. Among the titles: "Frontier Gal," "Black Bart" (as Lola Montez), "River Lady," "Calamity Jane and Sam Bass" (as Calamity Jane) and "The Gal Who Took the West."

In 1956 she veered from her former image when Cecil B. DeMille chose her to play Sephora, wife to Charlton Heston's Moses in "The Ten Commandments." The following year she co-starred with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in "Band of Angels" as Gable's upper-class sweetheart who learns of her black forebears.

Among her later films: "McClintock" (starring John Wayne), "A Global Affair" (Bob Hope), "Hostile Guns" (George Montgomery), "The Power" (George Hamilton), "American Gothic" (Rod Steiger) and "Oscar" (Sylvester Stallone).

De Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 1, 1922 (some sources say 1924). Abandoned by her father, she was raised by her mother in poor circumstances. The girl took dancing lessons and dropped out of high school to work in night clubs and local theaters. She continued dancing in clubs when she and her mother moved to Los Angeles.

Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in 1942, and she adopted her middle name and her mother's middle name. Dropped by Paramount after 20 minor roles, she landed at Universal, which cast her as the B-picture version of the studio's sultry star Maria Montez.

In 1955, De Carlo married Bob Morgan, a topflight stunt man, and the marriage produced two sons, Bruce and Michael, as well as much-publicized separations and reconciliations.

During a stunt aboard a moving log train for "How the West Was Won," Morgan was thrown underneath the wheels. The accident cost him a leg, and for a time De Carlo abandoned her career to care for him. They later divorced.

In her late years, De Carlo lived in semiretirement near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara. Her son Michael died in 1997, and she suffered a stroke the following year.

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United States Redneck Special Forces Deployed

A new 500-man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF)

These CAROLINA boys will be dropped off into Iraq and have been given only the following facts about IRAQ.

1. The season opened today

2. There is no limit.

3. They taste just like chicken.

4. They don't like beer,pickups, country music or Jesus.

5. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon expects the problem in Iraq to be over by Friday.

SADDAM'S CAT

James Brown, resting at HOME with the AC on....?

The body of soul singer James Brown has yet to be buried as attorneys and his children work to settle issues surrounding his estate, including where he will be laid to rest.

For now, his body lies in a sealed casket in his home on Beech Island, said Charles Reid, manager of the C.A. Reid Funeral Home in Augusta, Georgia, which handled the services.

Brown died of heart failure December 25 at age 73.

His will has yet to be filed, said Buddy Dallas, an attorney for the singer.

The room where Brown's body lies is being kept at a controlled temperature, and security guards keep watch, Reid said.

The funeral home delivered Brown's body after services December 30, Reid said.

Brown's home has been locked since hours after his death to protect his memorabilia, furnishing, clothes and other personal items, Dallas said.

"Just imagine what would have happened," Dallas said. "Items of James Brown would have left there like items off the shelves of Macy's in an after-Christmas sale."

The trustees for his will, along with Brown's children, will determine the burial site, Dallas said.

Tomi Rae Hynie, Brown's partner, said shortly after his death that she encountered locked gates as she tried to get into the home she says she shared with the singer and their 5-year-old son.

She wouldn't discuss the incident Tuesday, but her lawyer said Hynie should be granted access to the home. The attorney would not say whether Hynie would take legal action.

"The hope is that all parties can sit down and figure out what the problem is and what the challenges are," attorney Thornton Morris said. "And once we figure out what the challenges are we'll see if we can't resolve something that's a win for everybody."

Meanwhile, a woman who claims Brown raped her nearly 20 years ago said Tuesday she will continue her lawsuit.

Jacque Hollander has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her sexual harassment suit, which a lower court ruled last year she had waited too long to file.

A Supreme Court decision on whether to hear the case is pending.

She argues that the two-year statute of limitations in such cases does not provide equal protection to women.

"This has been a long road that ended tragically Christmas morning," Hollander said in a phone interview with the Associated Press.

"As a rape victim, I will never get to face him in court, and it hurts," she said. "But we are moving forward. We filed against his organization, as well as him. So now his organization stands in front of him."

In her lawsuit, Hollander said Brown raped her at gunpoint in 1988 while she was his publicist. She seeks $106 million in damages.

A federal appeals court tossed out Hollander's lawsuit in August.

"There was nothing to it 20 years ago and nothing to it 20 years later," Dallas said.

Apple becomes Consumer Electronics Company

NO COMPUTER ANNOUNCEMENTS AT ANNUAL MACWORLD EXPO KEYNOTE ADDRESS....

See the Video HERE.
i kill me hahahaha...

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday made the company's long- awaited jump into the mobile phone business, unveiling a gadget that's controlled by touch, plays music, surfs the Internet and runs the Macintosh computer operating system.

The iPhone, which starts at $499, will "reinvent" the telecommunications sector and "leapfrog" past the current generation of hard-to-use smart phones, Jobs said.

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," he said during his keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. "It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these."

Jobs also unveiled a TV set-top box that allows people to send video from their computers to their televisions.

Apple shares jumped 5 percent on the announcements.

Jobs demonstrated the phone's music capabilities by playing "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid," from the Beatles' "Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band," as the album's psychedelic album art graced a wide-screen monitor.

IPhone uses a patented touch-screen technology Apple is calling "multi-touch."

"We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with," Jobs said. "It works like magic. ... It's far more accurate than any touch display ever shipped. It ignores unintended touches. It's super smart."

The phone automatically synchs your media _ movies, music, photos _ through Apple's iTunes Music Store. The device also synchs e-mail content, Web bookmarks and nearly any type of digital content stored on your computer.

"It's just like an iPod," Jobs said, "charge and synch."

The phones, which will operate exclusively on AT&T Inc.'s Cingular wireless network, will start shipping in June. A 4-gigabyte model will cost $499, while an 8-gigabyte iPhone will be $599, Jobs said.

IPhone is less than a half-inch thin _ less than almost any phone on the market today. It comes with a 2-megapixel digital camera built into the back, as well as a slot for headphones and a SIM card.

In a demonstration Tuesday, Jobs slid his finger across the display to reveal a home screen and then scrolled through a list of songs.

To make a call, users can tap out the number on an onscreen keypad or scroll through their contacts and dial with a single touch.

Apple is also introducing what it calls "visual voicemail," so users can jump to the most important messages rather than have to listen to all of them in order.

The phone supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology and can detect location from Global Positioning System satellites. It also can send and display e-mail and text messages. Apple is partnering with Yahoo Inc. on Web-based e-mail and Google Inc. on maps.

With a few finger taps, Jobs demonstrated how to pull up a Google Maps site and find the closest Starbucks to the Moscone Center. He then prank-called the cafe and ordered 4,000 lattes to go before quickly hanging up.

Also Tuesday, Jobs said Apple will begin taking orders immediately for the $299 video box called Apple TV. It will ship next month.

The gadget is designed to bridge computers and television sets so users can more easily watch their downloaded movies on a big screen. A prototype of the gadget was displayed by Jobs in September when Apple announced it would sell TV shows and movies through its iTunes online store.

The product could be as revolutionary to digital movies as Apple's iPod music player was to digital music. Both devices liberate media from the computer, allowing people to enjoy digital files without being chained to a desktop or laptop.

"It's really, really easy to use," Jobs told the crowd at San Francisco's Moscone Center before demonstrating the system with a video clip of "The Good Shepherd." "It's got the processing horsepower to do the kinds of things we like to do."

Apple TV will come with a 40-gigabyte hard drive that stores up to 50 hours of video. It features an Intel Corp. microprocessor and can handle videos, photos and music streamed from up to five computers within the wireless range.

Jobs also said Apple has sold more than 2 billion songs on its popular iTunes music download service, catapulting the company into the top ranks of music sellers worldwide. Apple, which sells 58 songs per second, or 5 million songs a day, sells more songs than Amazon.com and ranks behind only Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target as a music retailer.

"We couldn't be happier with the growth rate of iTunes," Jobs said.

He said Apple will sell digital movies from Paramount. Apple has partnered with Disney for several months, offering about 100 movies on iTunes. With Paramount's selection, it will have 250 movies available for downloading on the site.

With Tuesday's launches, it remains to be seen whether the leading seller of digital music players can colonize an entirely new category of gadgets. Apple could use a megahit along the lines of its iconic iPod to divert investors' attention from the stock options-backdating scandal that has tainted its reputation.

The backdating of stock options, which has been widespread among Silicon Valley companies, involves pegging stock options to favorable grant dates in the past to boost the recipients' award. It isn't necessarily illegal, but securities laws require companies to properly disclose the practice in their accounting and settle any charges that may result.

In a December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said Jobs was aware of, or recommended the selection of, some favorable grant dates but he neither benefited financially from them nor "appreciated the accounting implications."

Apple shares were up $4.29 to $89.76 in midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $50.16 to $93.16.

"my WIFE and kids" ? hahaha

THE tension between "The View" creator Barbara Walters and co-host Rosie O'Donnell, sparked by O'Donnell's feud with Donald Trump, boiled over yesterday morning when the portly comic called Walters "a [bleeping] liar."

The fight started around 8:30 a.m. when Walters, back from a two-week vacation, walked into the hair and makeup room at ABC studios and tried to hug O'Donnell, whom she hired onto the popular show.

According to spies, O'Donnell recoiled from Walters' touch and yelled, "You kept me in the newspapers this whole time!"

Both "View" producer Bill Geddie and Walters tried to calm O'Donnell. Walters told her, "I did everything I could to squash the story" - prompting Rosie to scream, "You didn't call me for 10 goddamn days, and you didn't tell me what you were going to say on television!"

O'Donnell is fuming because Trump went on Larry King two weeks ago - after she had called Trump a "snake-oil salesman" - and said Walters told him she regretted hiring O'Donnell. Trump also blasted the comic as "a horrible human being and a loser."

During her vacation, Walters issued a carefully worded statement saying, "I'm sorry there is friction between Donald and Rosie. That said, I do not regret for one moment my choice to hire Rosie O'Donnell as the moderator of 'The View.' "

After O'Donnell's outburst at Walters yesterday, Geddie jumped in and told her, "You've crossed the line." O'Donnell retorted, "Cameras are now outside of my house where my wife and kids are." She turned to Walters and said, "You went all around this and never called [Trump] a liar. You never said, 'Donald is lying.' You never called him a liar."

When Walters tried to defend herself, O'Donnell erupted, "Are you looking me in the face and denying you didn't tell him you didn't say this? You're a [bleeping] liar."

Cindi Berger, a rep for both Walters and O'Donnell said, "Whatever happened in the hair and makeup room was hardly a squabble. It's business as usual, everyone has moved on."

Suzanne Somers' Home Destroyed

Suzanne Somers' home was one of four destroyed by a wind-driven wildfire that swept through an exclusive seaside neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

Firefighters were still at the scene watching for flareups Tuesday. In addition to those destroyed, four other houses were significantly damaged Monday, and one resident who was not identified was hospitalized for treatment of smoke inhalation.

"It's not a death in the family," Somers said Tuesday morning. "We'll rebuild, and I really think we'll learn something great from this. What else can you do with a tragedy but look for the opportunity to grow, spiritually and emotionally.

"It was a beautiful house. It was a beautiful place to live."

The 60-year-old actress and her husband, former game show host Alan Hamel, were out of town when the fire began, and a Hamel spokesman said the home was a total loss. Somers is best known for playing a ditsy blonde on the 1970s sitcom "Three's Company."

The burned properties were still smoldering Tuesday, and about 150 firefighters and arson investigators were on the scene.

The blaze had been fanned by Santa Ana wind as it raced through the celebrity enclave near Pepperdine University. "Red flag" fire danger warnings posted by the National Weather Service remained in effect for much of Southern California because of the strong wind and low humidity.

"I think they did a great job, the fire people. What can you do? It's terrible," said attorney George Roland, who also lost his home. Not much remained there Tuesday beyond a few trees and a pink front gate.

Fire officials did not identify the owners of the other destroyed houses, but actress Victoria Principal was among those who rushed out to hose down their homes after the fire was reported about 5 p.m. Monday.

Principal's publicist, Alan Nierob, said her home wasn't damaged. "She covered her house with water," he said.

Victoria Pinero, co-owner of Little Angels Pet Services, which takes care of dogs and other animals, was housesitting at one of the homes destroyed in the blaze. She said she wasn't home at the time the fire erupted, but rushed back to save the owners' four dogs.

She said she found two dogs, but "we are still looking for the last two dogs. ... We did everything we could," she said, crying. "For these people, the dogs were basically their children."

The blaze burned near the Malibu Colony, one of the area's original beachfront neighborhoods, dating to the 1930s. The densely built stretch of luxury homes has been a favorite of celebrities over the years.

"Right now we cannot speculate about how this happened," Inspector Rick Dominguez said early Tuesday.

Residents of Malibu include Mel Gibson, Pierce Brosnan, Pamela Anderson, Barbra Streisand, Ted Danson, David Geffen, and Courteney Cox-Arquette.

Malibu has frequently been the scene of devastating fires. In 1993, hundreds of homes were lost and three people were killed. A 1996 fire injured 11 people and destroyed six homes.

Copyright 2007 by NBC4.tv

Scooby-Doo Creator dies...

LOS ANGELES -- In a career that spanned more than six decades, Iwao Takamoto assisted in the designs of some of the biggest animated features and television shows, including "Cinderella," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp" and "The Flintstones."

But it was Takamoto's creation of Scooby-Doo, the cowardly dog with an adventurous heart, that captivated audiences and endured for generations.

Takamoto died Monday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Warner Bros. spokesman Gary Miereanu said. He was 81.

Born in Los Angeles to parents who had emigrated from Japan, Takamoto graduated high school when World War II began. He and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where he learned the art of illustration from fellow internees.

Despite a lack of formal training, he landed an interview with Walt Disney Studios when he returned to Los Angeles and was hired as an apprentice.

Takamoto worked under the tutelage of Disney's "nine old men," the studio's team of legendary animators responsible for its biggest full-length films before moving to Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1961. There he worked on cartoons for television, including "Josie and the Pussy Cats," "The Great Grape Ape Show," "Harlem Globe Trotters" and "The Secret Squirrel Show."

Takamoto said he created Scooby-Doo after talking with a Great Dane breeder, and named him after Frank Sinatra's final phrase in "Strangers in the Night."

The breeder "showed me some pictures and talked about the important points of a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small chin and such," Takamoto said in a recent talk at Cartoon Network Studios.

"I decided to go the opposite and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such. Even his color is wrong."

Takamoto also created other famous cartoon dogs such as Astro from "The Jetsons" and Muttley, the mixed-breed that appeared in several Hanna-Barbera animations. He also directed the 1973 feature "Charlotte's Web."

Takamoto was survived by his wife, Barbara, son Michael and stepdaughter Leslie.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

Guitarist 'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow Dies

TRIBUTE TO PETE IS THE MUSIC YOU NOW HEAR.....

"Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, a steel guitar prodigy who rose to fame as one of the original members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, has died. He was 72.

Kleinow, who also worked in film as an award-winning animator and special effects artist, died Saturday at a Petaluma convalescent home near the skilled nursing facility where he had been living with Alzheimer's disease since last year, his daughter Anita Kleinow said.

During a musical career that spanned six decades, Kleinow helped define the country-rock genre in the late 1960s and 1970s by taking the instrument he had picked up as a teenager in South Bend, Ind., to California.

His prowess with the pedal steel guitar influenced a generation of rock-and-rollers, including the Eagles, the Steve Miller Band and Poco.

Besides co-founding the Burrito Brothers with the Byrds' Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons in 1968, he enjoyed a steady gig as a session musician, recording with such singer-songwriters as John Lennon, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell and bands as varied as the Bee Gees and Sly and the Family Stone.

Kleinow played and recorded regularly with Burrito Deluxe, a band he founded in 2000 following the rebirth of alt-country music and fronted until he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. His last recording with the group is scheduled to be released next month, said Brenda Cline, the band's manager.

Kleinow also won acclaim as an animator, special effects artist and director of commercials in television and film. His credits ranged from the original "Gumby" series - he wrote and performed the theme music as well as designed cartoons - and the relaunched "The Twilight Zone" to the movies "Under Siege,""Fearless" and "The Empire Strikes Back." He won an Emmy award in 1983 for his work on the miniseries, "The Winds of War."

Kleinow is survived by his wife of 54 years, Ernestine, his daughters Anita and Tammy, and three sons, Martin, Aaron and Cosmo.

Plans for a memorial service to be held in Joshua Tree later this month are pending.

The OJ Simpsons

What, Britney WORRY?

Alfred E. Neuman pops up in an unlikely spot on the cover of the February issue of Mad magazine, on sale Jan. 10. The issue also parodies Gap's Product Red campaign, the Nintendo Wii and the Diet Coke/Mentos video.

A moment of ZEN...

Those Wacky Japanese...

Elvis-Nixon Meeting Has Fans Shook Up

The meeting between two of the most improbable cultural icons of the 1970s lasted all of 30 minutes, but it has fascinated the nation for years.

A photo of a cloaked and bejeweled Elvis Presley solemnly shaking hands with a grim-faced President Nixon remains the No. 1 requested document from the National Archives, nearly four decades after the secret meeting took place on Dec. 21, 1970.

Now, on what would be the King's 72nd birthday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Birthplace is giving the curious public a good, long look at the relics of the coming together of The King and The President - and it's got Elvis fans all shook up.

The free exhibit Monday includes the outfit Elvis wore (a black velvet overcoat, a gold-plated belt and black leather boots); Nixon's outfit (a gray woolen suit, and size 11 1/2 black shoes); letters; and a World War II .45-caliber Colt revolver that Elvis gave to Nixon.

"The two of them together somehow is almost incomprehensible," said Bud Krogh, Nixon's former deputy counsel who set up the impromptu meeting that day 36 years ago. "The king of rock and the president of the United States shaking hands in the Oval Office doesn't compute for a lot of people."

The chain of events that led to the meeting began when a stretch limousine carrying Elvis pulled up outside the White House. One of his guards handed over a letter from Elvis addressed to Nixon requesting a meeting to discuss how the star could help Nixon fight drugs - including getting credentials as a "federal agent at large."

"I will be here as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent," Elvis wrote. "I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good."

The Secret Service agents alerted Krogh. A self-confessed Elvis fan, Krogh met with Elvis, decided he was sincere and scrambled to get him into a noon meeting with Nixon.

About 2 1/2 hours later, Elvis walked into the Oval Office wearing his flamboyant outfit, as well as sunglasses and two huge medallions. But when Elvis entered the Oval Office, Krogh recalls, he froze.

"I think he was just awed by where he found himself. I ended up having to help him walk across over to the president's desk," he said.

Elvis and Nixon talked for about 30 minutes, during which Elvis showed Nixon pictures of his daughter and a pair of cufflinks given to him by Spiro Agnew. He also showed Nixon police badges from around the country and asked again for a badge from the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Nixon agreed to give him the badge - but only after learning that the chief of the narcotics bureau had turned down the same request earlier that day and told him the only person who could overrule his decision was the president.

"Oh man, we were set up! But it was fun," said Krogh. "He said all the right words about trying to do the right thing and I took him at his word, but I think he clearly wanted to get a badge and he knew the only way he was going to get it."

At Elvis' request, the meeting remained secret for more than a year - until The Washington Post broke the story on Jan. 27, 1972.

Since then, the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace has more than made up for Elvis' ruse: T-shirts, cups, notepads and watches bearing the famous black-and-white photo remain the top-selling items at the museum's gift shop.

"We've known for years that that photograph is an icon image," said Sandy Quinn, the museum's assistant director. "It is The President and The King."

Instant noodle inventor dies at 96

Momofuku Ando, the founder-chairman of Nissin Food Products Co, who was widely known as the inventor of instant noodles, died of a heart failure this evening at a hospital in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, his family said. He was 96.

Born on March 5, 1910 in Taiwan, Ando initially ran clothing companies in Taipei and Osaka while he was a student at Ritsumeikan University. In 1948, he founded the precursor of Nissin, before introducing Chicken Ramen, the world's first instant noodle product, in 1958.

Ando was inspired to develop the instant noodle after coming upon a long line of people on a cold night shortly after World War II waiting to buy freshly made ramen at a black market food stall, according to Nissin. The experience convinced him that "Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat," it said.

In 1971, Nissin introduced the Cup Noodle, instant noodles in a waterproof styrofoam container that could be used to cook the noodles, ahead of his competitors.

Dubbed the Ramen King, Ando is credited with expanding Nissin into the No.1 company in the industry and was well-known for his dedication to his job.

Kei Kizugawa, head of the Kamigata Geino journal, said Ando was a great food product inventor whose accomplishment equals that of Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and known in Japan as the Father of Consumer Electronics.

"I believe generation after generation will talk about Chicken Ramen. I don't think there will ever be an instant noodle product that beats the taste of Chicken Ramen," Kizugawa said.

Ando became a chairman after handing over the presidency in 1981 to his eldest son, but came to double as the president again two years later after having a conflict over the company's policy, including development of new products.

In 1999, Ando opened the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda after posting his second son, Koki, as the president.

Ando retired from chairman's post in June 2005 to serve as founder-chairman.

In July 2005, Nissin introduced a vacuum packed instant noodle specially designed for Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to eat during the US space shuttle Discovery's mission.

Showcasing his Space Ram noodles in front of reporters, Ando said: "I'm happy I've realised my dream that noodles can go into space."

It's THE KING'S Birthday Week

In honor of Elvis Birthday Week, the music you are hearing are all either rehearsals or alternate takes....the tracks will play through Jan 13th....

Enjoy....

2 Headed Girls Driving....

Woman's Bra Saves Her From Bullet

One woman discovered on New Year's Eve that her bra could do more than lift and support when a falling bullet was halted by the bra strap on her left shoulder.

Debbie Bingham, 46, an Atlanta resident visiting family in St. Petersburg, said her gold bra slowed the falling bullet during the holiday celebrations.

Her injuries may have been much more severe had it not been for her bra strap, said George Kajtsa, spokesman for the St. Petersburg Police Department.

Bingham says she was outside with her daughter and son, ringing in the New Year and viewing the local fireworks display when she felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder at 11:40 p.m.

It was Bingham's daughter, Solanda Bingham, 30, who first noticed the blood seeping through her mother's white shirt.

"We were sitting at the picnic table and listening to music and my mom said, 'Ow,'" the daughter said.

The daughter said she looked over and saw the blood and shouted "My mother's been shot. My mother's been shot."

The bullet was halfway inside of Bingham's bra, and the other half barely breaking the skin, Bingham later told WTSP-TV.

Someone had fired a gun into the air and as the .45-caliber bullet fell back to earth, Bingham was struck. Kajtsa described the wound as a "big scratch with bruising."

Bingham was taken to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg where she was given five stitches. The bullet was lodged into the bra tap was only removed when doctors intervened and cut the bullet from the strap.

St. Petersburg police are still searching for the shooter to determine if Bingham was the target of the gunfire or if she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kajtsa said.

Shooting a weapon inside the city limits is a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to one year in jail, Kajtsa said.

As for Bingham, she said she is just thankful for her bra.

"It was a very cheap bra. It wasn't very expensive, and I'd love to have a couple more of those bras," she told WTSP.

Vintage photo of dead horse raises questions

First of all, what's the deal with the top hat?

A vintage Sheboygan photo, taken before the turn of the 20th century, has sparked some conversation in the community since its inclusion in The Sheboygan Press' 2007 calendar.

The photo, which is inside the calendar's front cover, shows a scene at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue, looking north toward the Eighth Street bridge.

In the photo, a dead horse lies in the street, roped off with string tied to stakes in the dirt road. A man in a top hat, bow tie and jacket sits on top of the horse, and people in the background are standing still, looking toward the camera.

"I always just assumed it was taken as a joke or something like that," said Bill Wangemann, Sheboygan city historian. "I was never able to find out anything about it. What the story behind that (picture) is, I don't have the foggiest notion."

Past attempts by reporters at The Sheboygan Press to find out the circumstances of the photo were unsuccessful, and even local experts at the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center came up empty-handed when they looked for information.

A print of the photo was submitted to the Historical Research Center several years ago, said Kathy Jeske, but there was very little information attached.

"I don't think we have any idea," Jeske said. "There's no name on it, nothing."

The photo does say, on the back, that it was taken at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue, and that it's of a man sitting on a dead horse.

That last part might be redundant, but the photo clearly shows the entry to the Eighth Street Bridge and what is probably the Evergreen City Hotel and Saloon on the northeast corner of the intersection, near where the C. Reiss Coal building is now.

In the background is a brick and lime business and other unidentified buildings on the banks of the Sheboygan River.

Wangemann said he guesses the photo was taken between 1890 and 1900, judging by how the men are dressed and the dirt street.

Roger Prescher, 73, owner of the Charcoal Inn South, liked the photo so much he hung a framed copy in his restaurant several years ago, along with other photos of historic Sheboygan.

"We just wanted a little nostalgia," Prescher said. "I think it's kind of funny."

It's Boobie Time

NTSB Report

The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had covertly funded a multi-state project with auto makers where black box voice recorders were installed in 4-wheel drive pickup trucks and SUV's in an effort to understand the last 15 seconds of a fatal accident.

The Board was surprised to find the recorded last words of drivers in 48 of the 50 states were all the same: "Oh, SHIT!"

Only the states of Montana and North Dakota were different, where the final words were: "Hold my beer, I'm gonna try somethin'.

Dell for Porno

TV BATMOBILE from Mattel in 2007

Warner Bros. Consumer Products, DC Comics, and Mattel, Inc. recently announced the production of a line of Hot Wheels® die-cast cars inspired by the original Batmobile featured in the 1966 “Batman” television series. The original design by custom automotive legend, George Barris, was based on a futuristic 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car that was never put into production. George Barris’ iconic crime-fighting vehicle has since become an enduring symbol of the beloved Batman franchise. The launch of the Hot Wheels® Batmobile models commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first “Batman” television series.

“While the vehicle has been reinvented numerous times over the years in comic books, animated series and feature films, the TV Batmobile is still held in the highest regard with countless fans who will truly appreciate this exciting endeavor,” said Karen McTier, Executive Vice President of Domestic Licensing and Worldwide Marketing, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. There is no denying that Barris’ classic version of the Batmobile is world-renowned and the Hot Wheels® reproductions will be the first of their kind bringing one of television’s most recognized vehicles to a new generation of Batman fans and collectors alike.

Mattel will produce multiple scales of the Hot Wheels® Batmobile, including a 1:64th scale model that will appear on store shelves in spring 2007 as part of the Hot Wheels® basic car line. In fall 2007, there will be an additional 1:64th scale model introduced as well as a 1:43rd scale replica model and a 1:18th scale, which will have three tiers of detail and finish. The ultimate version, the Hot Wheels Elite™ special edition Batmobile, will have enough detail to delight even the most discriminating of Batmobile aficionados and die-cast collectors alike.

In order to re-create the stunning original the Hot Wheels® team headed up by Chief Designer Larry Wood, took precise measurements and also placed white powder all over the TV Batmobile to scan it for working on the design digitally. Then they made a 3-D image and cut the tooling from those images to insure an accurate reproduction.

“This is the car that every collector has been asking for,” said Geoff Walker, Vice President of Wheels Marketing, Mattel Brands. “This Batmobile is the version of the Caped Crusader’s car that everyone will instantly recognize. We’re thrilled at the opportunity to create the Hot Wheels® version of this iconic vehicle.”

George Barris himself had this to say, “We received thousands of letters asking when the TV Batmobile will be available, and are pleased that Hot Wheels® is bringing the original to life through different scales and detail. I take great pride in the vehicle’s design and know that the Hot Wheels® team will do it justice in capturing the details of the original. It is my honor to be a part of the 40-year history of the Batmobile and to have this most famous car released by Mattel for consumers.”

You Know your a REDNECK when...

1. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.

2. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.

3. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.

4. You burn your yard rather than mow it.

5. You think "The Nutcracker" is something you do off the high dive.

6. The Salvation Army declines your furniture.

7. You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.

8. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.

9. You come back from the dump with more than you took.

10. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.

11. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.

12.. Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list.

13. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.

14. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.

15. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.

16. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.

17. You have a rag for a gas cap.

18. Your house doesn't have curtains, but your truck does.

19. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean.

20. You can spit without opening your mouth.

21. You consider your license plate personalized Because your father made it.

22. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

23. You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.

24. The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.

25. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.

26. You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.

27. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvements.

28. You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.

29. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.

30. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

Still Evel....

CLEARWATER, Fla. — The crippled grandfather of extreme sports inhales deeply. He sits in his leather easy chair, mind clouded by meds, bones throbbing with arthritis. As he watches an NFL game, on which he has bet $1,000, the cantankerous stuntman clutches oxygen tubes supplying life to hardening lungs.

It is a shock to the senses, if not the sensibilities, to see ultra-cool Evel Knievel, 68, looking so feeble, so frayed around his graying daredevil edges, right down to his gnarled knuckles and wobbly gait.

His ravaged, 155-pound body isn't composed of original parts. He has a new liver and a replacement hip, and most recently doctors inserted a drug pump in his abdomen. It gives little reprieve from the excruciating pain in a fused spine mangled by hundreds of perilous, cringe-inducing motorcycle jumps from the 1960s and '70s.

"Ever see one of them before?" Evel asks, lifting a pajama top to reveal a pain-relief gizmo under his pale skin. "This sends morphine and synthetic heroin into my back 24 hours a day. It's awfully strong — it affects your thinking, your brain."

For years he cheated death, sometimes spectacularly so. Numerous crashes cemented his legend and all but guaranteed premature infirmity. These days, in what might be his last great gamble, Evel flies down the cosmic ramp of his final jump — the leap of faith.

While he has avoided the inevitable countless times, he no longer feels invincible. In fact, the bank robber-turned-international icon sounds apprehensive. After decades of hard jumps and harder living, including bouts with alcoholism, Evel tries to bridge the psychological chasm between mortality and eternity.

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Father-son daredevil team mends fences

He figures he will be judged not just as a cult-like figure, but also as Robert Craig Knievel, the temperamental show-biz performer from the wrong side of the tracks in Butte, Mont.

"I think about God a lot more than ever," he says, "though I used to ask him, 'Help me make a good jump.' I'm awfully tough to get along with, but I'll tell you what: I am a good person. I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation."

Suffering from the aftereffects of a stroke, Evel bets that a life of crime, fame and indulgence can be outweighed by his good works to those he inspired: children in burn wards, the downtrodden, soldiers.

"Veterans have told me that, for some reason, I made a difference in their lives, that they were headed for disaster," he says. "God, at least I have done something."

His hair is thinning, his face remarkably unmarked yet gaunt. Evel looks nothing like the handsome, devil-may-care Western buck with the swept-back mane, walking stick, flying cape and — to the chagrin of hardened bikers everywhere — the white leather jumpsuit, festooned with stars and stripes and inspired by Liberace.

Evel was a gritty caricature of a superhero whose outfit was as ostentatious as his act was audacious. For decades, he was lampooned in pop culture, but there is no doubt the charismatic showman had a definable aura and mass appeal.

Men admired him. Their sons wanted to be like him. Women just wanted him. (And according to Evel, thousands got their wish.)

Tending the Evel legend

The swagger has been reduced to a struggle simply to get up in the morning and get to the phone. He is a stickler about extending the Evel legend, preserving the Evel persona and creating new business, long after the end of his lucrative stuntman paydays and afternoons of high-stakes golf in which he would bet up to $100,000.

In true Knievelian style, he is determined to stave off the effects of pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that involves scarring of the lungs for which there is no cure.

"God," Evel says, "never made a tougher son of a bitch than me."

Nor a more skilled self-promoter, a man who unintentionally spawned a phrase for the generations: "Who do you think you are — Evel Knievel?"

There is only one Evel, and he knows it. He retains a sense of self-importance as expansive as Idaho's Snake River Canyon, the site of his famously failed hurtle 32 years ago. He retains tightfisted control of everything, and everyone, around him. He can be charming and pseudo-gruff. It might be a photographer ("I don't smile. Kiss my ass.") or a buddy talking point spreads ("You can take your newspaper 'line' and shove it — how's that?").

Last month, Evel sued Kanye West and AOL over the rapper's use of his trademark name and likeness in a music video that parodied the Snake River Canyon jump. Two years ago, a judge ruled the cult hero could not hold ESPN liable for publishing a photo of him with two women and the caption: "You're never too old to be a pimp."

He battled the IRS and Montana over allegedly unpaid taxes; survived abandonment by his parents, who left him with grandparents at 6 months old; endured jail, bankruptcy and divorce — he even ran over a Hells Angel. He continues to fight today … to live a little longer, for better deals, for the affection and respect of friends and family.

"All (my grandmother) wanted was to talk with me and to rub her feet. I just hate myself for not spending (more) time with her and telling her 'I love you' one more time," Evel says. "The saddest thing is when a guy is paying so much attention to the world and everything going by that he can't take the time for his own mother," which is what he considered his grandmother.

Last summer, he and his youngest son, Robbie, 44, who traced his dad's professional footsteps, appeared back home at Evel Knievel Days after years of feuding. The father's on-again, off-again relationship with his son bears the emotional scars of a lifetime because, as Robbie says, "I'm the only one in the family who stood up to him."

Now, he says, "My dad realizes love is everything. To do what he's doing now — to have a talk with God and be loving to his family — I love him to death for it. God loves Evel. Figure that one out."

"I love Robbie," Evel says.

Kelly, Evel's oldest son, owns a construction firm in Las Vegas. (In 1995, Kelly's telemarketing company was sued by Missouri for targeting senior citizens with high-pressure calls. He agreed to stop the calls, and the company paid $150,000 in restitution.)

Evel's family includes daughters Alicia and Tracey, 11 grandchildren and ex-wives Linda Knievel and Krystal Kennedy, 37, the former Florida State golfer who remains his caregiver and companion despite their brief, troubled marriage.

He says he thinks often about his creator and prays for forgiveness.

"If there is a heaven, I don't know anything else I can do to get there — and neither do you," he says. "There are some personal things that I would never do again. … God made us. He's in charge of everything, right? If he didn't like us, why didn't he change us?

"Hey, I faced every challenge that came along. I just did everything. I have no regrets."

Driven to be the best ever

A longtime friend, Jack Ferriter, 72, says he regularly traveled cross-country with Evel and Linda and remembers their animated discussions involving the spiritual.

"She always was trying to promote (him) being a nice guy and to straighten up his act, preaching to him about heaven," Ferriter says. "He would say, 'Linda, I'm not so sure I'm interested in heaven (unless) they've got beautiful women up there and golf courses.' She was a Holy Roller, and he resented it."

The cruel irony for the Knievel clan is watching its willful patriarch slowly waste away. At his madcap zenith, Evel could have met his demise on any of his failed motorized leaps over rattlesnakes, cars, water fountains or double-decker buses.

"He never wanted anyone to surpass him," Robbie says. "For years, it seemed like my dad was pushing me off, like I was his competitor. He just never wanted to move over. I could never fill his shoes, anyway. It's like being Elvis' daughter or Muhammad Ali's son."

With age and debilitating injury, Evel eventually became quite the uneasy rider. He formally retired in 1981. During his wild and woolly years, he broke nearly 40 bones, including his back seven times.

He was in a coma for weeks in 1968 when he crashed after jumping over the fountain at Caesars Palace. The $3 million, closed-circuit TV caper propelled his popularity and fueled record audiences for ABC's Wide World of Sports, where Evel and his act became a fixture.

The old daredevil's crashes are now positively pedestrian: slipping in a Jacuzzi, falling on a golf course. The last time he rode a motorcycle, a few years ago at a mall appearance, he snapped his left ankle. "It's no laughing matter when they put me under the gas," Evel says. "I gave at the office already."

A fortune won and lost

Back in the '70s, promoter Billy Rundle recalls Evel telling adoring fans of his next planned exploit: "I am going to jump from an airplane from 40,000 feet without a parachute and land in a haystack." Offstage, Rundle asked him about his sincerity. "I'm serious — you can bet on which haystack I'm going to land on," Evel said. Rundle remembers thinking, "This guy's crazy."

Marketing risk is what he did for a living. One of the all-time self-promoters, Evel still loves being in the entrepreneurial mix. One potential venture is the Knievel Motorcycle Co., to be based out of Pittsburgh, 30 years after his last major show, a flopped practice run over a tank of sharks in Chicago.

The phone rings. It's a memorabilia dealer. "You want me to sign 1,500 pictures? How much you gonna pay me?" Evel asks. "You're going to pay me $30,000? Well, I'd rather you come in December. I might be dead in January."

His popular stunt cycle toy was reintroduced in 2005 after, he says, various Knievel toys grossed $300 million. He says he earned $30 million over his peak years but lavish spending — big-boy toys included yachts and Ferraris — whittled much of it. In his modest condo, he shows off his latest version of the cycle, an Evel bobble-head and a bottle of Evel hot sauce.

"I was the first one to ever do a wheelie on a motorcycle while standing on a seat — ever," he says.

Today's Gen-X motorcycle performers don't conduct themselves properly, he says. "One kid looked at the camera and stuck out his tongue and made a goofy face. A young man's brain is no more developed than his body. They say with age comes wisdom, right?"

Maybe. It didn't help when Evel imbibed long after his doctors told him to quit, before his liver transplant seven years ago. At the time, doctors told him he had less than six months to live. (For years, his favorite cocktail was a "Montana Mary," a scorching blend of Wild Turkey, beer and tomato juice.)

Perhaps his vices can be traced to a hardscrabble youth, when he frequently ran afoul of the law. Fame and prosperity often were tough to handle, he says.

"You feel important when you're not," he says. "That's the point I reached. I actually had a talk with myself years ago (after) I punched a maitre d' in the puss. I said to myself, 'Who do you think you are?' "

The quest to uncover value and meaning from his earthly existence has greater urgency these days. Evel takes a notepad off a chair-side table and begins to read something that sounds like a eulogy, which friends say he has written.

"I hope I have lived a life that matters … I am ready to leave my loved ones …

"My wealth, my fame will amount to naught … My grudges, frustrations, resentments and jealousies will finally disappear."

Evel glances at his visitor, who asks him if he ever thought life on Earth might be heaven, after all.

"No," he says, staring death in the face with a weary smile. "God wouldn't do that to us."

A Note from Britney Spears....

Dear Fans,

It has been a while since I've addressed you personally here on my official website. The last couple of years have been quite a ride for me, the media has criticized my every move and printed a skewed perception of who I really am as a human being. Behind every decision I have made in my public life there always seems to be an apparent contradiction. I have come to terms with that which is why I usually don't pay much attention to it.

The last couple of years have been very enlightening for me and now that I've had the time to be "me," I've been able to sit down and think about where I want to go with myself as an entertainer with absolutely no strings attached. I am now more mature and feel like I am finally "free." I've been working so hard on this new album and I can't wait for you all to hear it and to go on tour again! I would like to exclusively tell you that I am working hard to release the new album sometime later this year, but the date is of course not certain yet. I look forward to coming back this year bigger and better than ever, and to also reaching out to my fans on a more personal level. I noticed today that one of my biggest fansites is shutting down soon and I want you all to know that I do understand all the reasons that went behind making that decision, and I am sad to see it closing. If I were you I'd be unhappy too if I had to read what I've been reading every day. But trust me, I get it. I know I've been far from perfect and the media has had a lot of fun exaggerating my every move, but I want you all to know that I love my fans so much, and I appreciate everything you have done for me, so Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Love,
Britney

Marijuana Fights Alzheimer's

The active ingredient of marijuana could be considerably better at suppressing the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins that is a hallmark of Alzheimer's than any currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of the disease.

Scientists report the finding in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

About 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease, which gradually destroys memory. As more people survive into old age, cases of Alzheimer’s disease are expected to triple over the next 50 years. There is no known cure.

The researchers looked at THC, the compound inside marijuana responsible for its action on the brain. Computer models suggested THC might inhibit an enzyme with the tongue-twisting name of acetylcholinesterase (also called AChE) that is linked with Alzheimer's.

AChE is known to help accelerate the formation of abnormal protein clumps in the brain known as amyloid plaques during Alzheimer's. This enzyme also helps break down the brain chemical acetylcholine, which is linked to memory and learning. Acetylcholine levels are reduced during Alzheimer's.

In lab experiments, the scientists found THC was significantly better at disrupting the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins. THC could completely prevent AChE from forming amyloid plaques, while two drugs approved for use against Alzheimer's, donepezil and tacrine, reduced clumping by only 22 and 7 percent, respectively, at twice the concentration of THC used in the tests.

"We're not advocating smoking dope, but if we can make analogues of THC, it could play a role in treating Alzheimer's," researcher Kim Janda, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., told LiveScience. "It would be nice to do more animal studies along these lines."

Past research on human brain tissues and experiments with rats have suggested that synthetic analogues of THC can reduce the inflammation and prevent the mental decline associated with Alzheimer's disease.

However, marijuana is not necessarily good for the mind. Prior investigations have shown that years of heavy marijuana use, consisting of four or more joints a week, can impair memory, decision making, and the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.

and the food tastes like....?

Keith Richards playing baseball sorta...

JJ Cale & Eric Clapton - The Road To Escondido

Hear the whole record streaming HERE.

Del Reeves Dead at 73

Del Reeves, the Grand Ole Opry star who delighted audiences for decades with his full-throated vocals and comic impressions of fellow artists, died Monday (Jan. 1) at his home in Centerville, Tenn. He was 73. The cause of death has not been announced.

A fixture on the charts throughout the 1960s and '70s, Reeves made his first big splash in 1965 with the whimsical "Girl on the Billboard," his only No. 1. He followed it with the equally leering "The Belles of Southern Bell" and "Women Do Funny Things to Me." His other major hits included "A Dime at Time," "Looking at the World Through a Windshield," "Good Time Charlie's" (which also provided him the name of his band), "Be Glad" and "The Philadelphia Fillies."

Franklin Delano Reeves was born July 14, 1933, in Sparta, N.C. He learned to play the guitar at an early age and had his own radio show by the time he was 12. After a brief period at Appalachia State College in Boone, N.C., he joined the U.S. Air Force, a move that took him to Travis Air Force Base in California.

It was in California that Reeves got his professional start in music, first by appearing on a local TV show and then by recording a series of singles for Capitol Records, none of which charted. However, Reeves showed early promise as a songwriter. His "Sing a Little Song of Heartache," became a No. 3 hit in 1963 for Rose Maddox, and he also had other songs recorded by Carl Smith, Roy Drusky and others. Reeves penned his own 1963 charter, "The Only Girl I Can't Forget."

In 1961, Reeves signed to Decca Records. This union yielded him his first charted single, "Be Quiet Mind," which rolled to No. 9. Following very brief stops at Reprise and Columbia Records, Reeves settled in at United Artists in 1965 and stayed there for the next 13 years.

Encouraged by songwriter Hank Cochran, the tall, gangly Reeves moved to Nashville in 1962 and became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1966. A talented mimic, he enlivened his shows with physical and vocal impressions of performers as disparate as Little Jimmy Dickens and Johnny Cash.

Reeves appeared in eight movies, including Sam Whiskey, a 1969 film starring Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson and Ossie Davis. Other titles conveyed their dramatic standing, including Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar, Forty-Acre Feud, Gold Guitar and Cotton Pickin' Chickenpickers. Reeves also established his own syndicated TV series, The Del Reeves Country Carnival, which ran for four years in the early '70s.

After "The Philadelphia Fillies," which peaked at No. 9 in 1971, Reeves never had another Top 20 record, but he did continue to chart sporadically into the 1980s on the Koala label. His last charted single came in 1986 with "The Second Time Around" on Playback Records.

Reeves had a hand in launching the careers of two younger stars. Lee Greenwood first gained wide exposure playing in his band, and Billy Ray Cyrus relied on Reeves to make Nashville contacts for him when he was seeking his first record contract.

Reeves made his last Grand Ole Opry appearance in August 2002. He is survived by his wife, Ellen, and daughters Anne, Kari and Bethany. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Pelosi Fever

The most powerful woman in AMERICA?

The New Democratic Military

"topless" New Year's Eve shock

A troupe of dancers in skin-colored body suits had Japanese national broadcaster NHK apologizing to viewers of its New Year's Eve music special for what seemed to be a full-scale Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunction.

The dancers, who all appeared to be topless and wore skimpy bikini-style bottoms and feathered head-dresses, covered the stage during a performance by singer DJ OZMA, prompting about 250 viewers to phone in and complain.

"The dancers were wearing body suits, but we apologize for any misunderstanding," a presenter announced toward the end of the 57th annual "Red and White Song Contest".

"I guess it looked a bit too real," local media quoted the singer as telling reporters after the show, which regularly tops viewer ratings on New Year's Eve in Japan.

See it HERE.

They all look ALIKE...

India man appears at own funeral, alive

A confused Umkdait, India, man showed up at his own funeral after family members mistakenly identified a body as his.

Frankie Synnah had been reported missing by his wife, Bold Kharjana, after he lost contact with his family Dec. 27, the Press Trust of India reported Sunday.

Nongmyngsong police told the family a man similar to Synnah's description was in the morgue of the Civil Hospital, and the man's brother and nephew identified the body as Synnah's.

However, the real Frankie Synnah had traveled to Guwahati for work and was staying with a friend. He told police he had attempted to contact his wife after arriving in Guwahati, but was unable to reach her by phone.

Kharjana said Synnah's unexpected arrival at the service made her "the happiest person in the world."

The family returned the unidentified hospital to the morgue.

Mannequin Fetishist could get life...

A man who has a history of smashing windows to indulge his fetish for female mannequins could draw a long prison term for his latest arrest. Ronald A. Dotson, 39, of Detroit faces up to life in prison if convicted of a charge of attempted breaking and entering at a cleaning-supply company in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.

The potential life sentence is because prosecutors charged him as a habitual offender. Authorities say he has at least six convictions for breaking and entering and a stint in state prison over the last 13 years.

Ferndale District Judge Joseph Longo ordered Dotson to stand trial following a preliminary examination on Thursday, The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak reported. The judge ordered him jailed unless he posts a $15,000 bond.

Dotson was arrested Oct. 9 after police say he smashed a window at a cleaning-supply company to get at a female mannequin dressed in a black and white French maid's uniform. He had been out of prison for less than a week.

Dotson was arrested in Ferndale in July 2000 and later convicted for breaking and entering at a women's clothing shop to get at a mannequin in a pink dress with bobbed hair.

Ferndale police also arrested Dotson in 1993 after finding him in an alley behind a woman's store with three lingerie-clad mannequins. He also has similar convictions in Detroit and suburban Oak Park.

Segway creator unveils next act

Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity. Those figures add up to a big problem for the world—and an equally big opportunity for entrepreneurs.

To solve the problem, he's invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.

"Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water," says Kamen. "The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns."
Light in the darkness

Kamen is not alone in his quest. He's been joined by Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameen Phone, the largest cell phone company in Bangladesh. Last year, Quadir took prototypes of Kamen's power machines to two villages in his home country for a six-month field trial. That trial, which ended last September, sold Quadir on the technology.

So much so in fact that Quadir's startup, Cambridge, Mass.-based Emergence Energy, is negotiating with Kamen's Deka Research and Development to license the technology. Quadir then hopes to raise $30 million in venture capital to start producing the power machines. (With the exception of the Segway, which Kamen's own company sold, Kamen has typically licensed his inventions to others.)

The electric generator is powered by an easily-obtained local fuel: cow dung. Each machine continuously outputs a kilowatt of electricity. That may not sound like much, but it is enough to light 70 energy-efficient bulbs. As Kamen puts it, "If you judiciously use a kilowatt, each villager can have a nighttime."

A satellite picture of the earth at night shows swaths of darkness across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times.
Entrepreneurial power

The real invention here, though, may be the economic model that Kamen and Quadir hope to use to distribute the machines. It is fashioned after Grameen Phone's business, where village entrepreneurs (mostly women) are given micro-loans to purchase a cell phone and service. The women, in turn, charge other villagers to make calls.

"We have 200,000 rural entrepreneurs who are selling telephone services in their communities," notes Quadir. "The vision is to replicate that with electricity."

During the test in Bangladesh, Kamen's Stirling machines created three entrepreneurs in each village: one to run the machine and sell the electricity, one to collect dung from local farmers and sell it to the first entrepreneur, and a third to lease out light bulbs (and presumably, in the future, other appliances) to the villagers.

Kamen thinks the same approach can work with his water-cleaning machine, which he calls the Slingshot. While the Slingshot wasn't part of Quadir's trial in Bangladesh, Kamen thinks it can be distributed the same way. "In the 21st century, water will be delivered by an entrepreneur," he predicts.

The Slingshot works by taking in contaminated water – even raw sewage -- and separating out the clean water by vaporizing it. It then shoots the remaining sludge back out a plastic tube. Kamen thinks it could be paired with the power machine and run off the other machine's waste heat.

Compared to building big power and water plants, Kamen's approach has the virtue of simplicity. He even created an instruction sheet to go with each Slingshot. It contains one step: Just add water, any water. Step two might be: add an entrepreneur.

"Not required are engineers, pipelines, epidemiologists, or microbiologists," says Kamen. "You don't need any -ologists. You don't need any building permits, bribery, or bureaucracies."
The price of freedom

Still, even if some of the technical challenges have been solved ("I know the technology works and I'd fall on my sword to prove it," insists Kamen), the economic challenges still loom.

Kamen's goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That's a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build.

Quadir is going to try and see if the machines can be produced economically by a factory in Bangladesh. If the numbers work out, not only does he think that distributing them in a decentralized fashion will be good business -- he also thinks it will be good public policy. Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place, because then you would create 500,000 entrepreneurs.

"Isn't that better for democracy?" Quadir asks. "We see a shortage of democracy in the world, and we are surprised. If you strengthen the economic hands of people, you will foster real democracy."

Lights, water, freedom. Now that's entrepreneurial.

Happy New Year 2007