GASP! The Barenaked Ladies Have a blog! I owe Page a beer for this link. Just add her to my growing “I Ow Beer To” list…

The 2003 Jefferson Muzzles go to…

McMaster Software Engineering 2003 Kipling Prank

Turn your Nokia cell phone in to a sex toy!

Indian ‘is world’s oldest mother’

A 65-year-old retired schoolteacher in India has given birth to a baby boy, and become the world’s oldest mother, according to press reports.

If the claim is fully verified, then Satyabhama Mahapatra, from Nayagarh in Orissa, would beat the previous record holder by two years.

The boy, reportedly healthy and weighing 3kilogrammes (6lb 8oz), was born by Caesarean section at a private home, according to the Times of India.

The baby was not conceived naturally, but is the combination of an egg from the woman’s 26-year-old niece, Veenarani Mahapatra, and the sperm of Veenarani’s husband.

Satyabhama and her husband have been married 50 years, but this is their first child.

The pregnancy was not uncomplicated, say the reports - Satyabhama was hospitalised for the final trimester of the pregnancy.

The procedure cost about 30,000 rupees ($630).

Dizamn! 65 and a first time mother? Wow.

And now I raid Yahoo! News:

Politeness Guidelines Spark Hate Mail

Woman Found Alive as Murder Trial Opens

Court Orders Brothel to Refund Sex Bill

U.S. Cleaning Business Wipes Freedom from Name

Tasty!

Speaking of doing something constructive while using the bathroom: April 15th is Poop For Peace Day

Why use a bodily function to protest the war you ask? Well, Everyone Poops and it is something that almost everyone, Republican or Democrat, black or white, liberal or conservative has to do at least once a day. In other words, you have to make a conscious effort and NOT poop to show that you are for this misguided war!

Damn, got us there.

Have you ever wanted to surf the net while on the john but were too worried about splashing on your laptop? I know I have! But now there’s the Internet Toilet Roll Browser! Now you can surf from every room of the house!

The Webbie Nominees have been announced. I’m not up for one, of course, but, really, what do I provide the internet other than regurgitated links for the half dozen or so folks who visit with any ammount of regularity?

Maybe I should start the J Awards.

Council votes in favour of ‘Hell’

A devil of a fuss is being made in a central Queensland city over whether its streetlights spell the word ‘hell’.

According to urban legend, Rockhampton’s streetlights spell out HELL when viewed with creative licence from the top of nearby Mount Archer.

A council committee put forward a proposal to consider spending up to $60,000 on more lights to add an `o’, turning “hell” into “hello”.

But a meeting of Rockhampton City Council overnight voted to take no further action on the matter due to the expense.

Counsellor John Broad challenged the proposal, saying he could not see hell in the lights and those who could had well-oiled imaginations.

He said spending thousands of dollars on new streetlights would be a dreadful waste of time and money.

“There’s no way in the world you can look down on those lights and clearly see the word hell marked out at all,” Mr Broad said.

“I bet you could look down on Brisbane or Sydney or Melbourne and spell out that word or whatever you want to - they’re parallel grids.”

Eight blocks of the town light up to spell BOOB too. Pretty bad ass if you ask me.

And now we’re seriously turning up the heat on Syria for possibly harboring not only Iraqi military leaders but Iraqi weapons of mass destructions as well. Huh. I can guarantee any military action against Syria in the near future will not be welcomed by the international community, let alone the middle east. Wanna make a possibly bad situation worse?

Sweet. I just aced my next to last econ quiz after reading only 5 of the chapter’s 20 pages. Whew! Okay, so that was bad of me, but still. It’s the first perfect score I’ve gotten in that class all semester AND I did better than the class average by almost 30%. Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Some bastard snatched Jsnotes.com at the beginning of this year for some crappy ass real estate financing business or some crap like that. They can’t even design a decent webpage! They usurp my name and for WHAT? CRAP! ARGH! Now I need to pick out a new domain name. Or get a .org or .net. I mean, I do need money first. Damnation!

Okay, so I said BAH to warblogging, but what am I about to do?

Secrets: Russia and Iraq

Russia provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with wide-ranging intelligence in the run-up to the war against Iraq, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The paper has cited what it says were secret files found in Baghdad.

The documents showed that Moscow provided Baghdad with lists of assassins available for “hits” in the West, details of arms deals with neighbouring countries, and intelligence on private conversations between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders, the Telegraph said.

Iraq and Russia also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to “obtain” visas for agents, and to exchange information on the activities of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the newspaper reported.

Share intelligence? What is Iraq going to learn that the Russians either can’t or don’t know already? I really don’t think this holds up.

The French: I’m Shocked, Shocked!

The French government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein?s regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests that?despite U.N. sanctions?the dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently.

Lt. Greg Holmes, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well.

U.S. soldiers who moved into one of Saddam?s sumptuous palaces found a treasure house of less-deadly French goodies. Sets of Baath Party-logo silverware were marked MADE IN FRANCE on the back. And the palace was littered with the French cigarette brands Gauloise and Gitane. There were even packages of white French underwear.

God forbid there be some sort of, oh, I don’t know, BLACK MARKET! Also, it’s been known that Syria and Jordan have been dealing with Iraq as well as many other countries who also deal with France. Just because there are French goods doesn’t mean France sent them over themselves. Sigh.

WHEW! My concern with the POWs was, well, what did the Iraqi regime have to gain by keeping them alive? Thank God they were found.

Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

Like any number of webloggers trying to make their mark with commentary on the war in Iraq, Sean-Paul Kelley knew geography and career experience didn’t favor him.

Kelley — the man behind the wildly popular site The Agonist — lives in Texas, worlds away from the war’s front lines. And his reporting résumé added up to a mere three weeks at a local paper. Still, for the last few weeks, he had managed to post several dozen war-related news items a day on his site.

Some of the information was attributed to news outlets and other sources, but much of it was unsourced, particularly the almost real-time combat information presumably gleaned from a string of high-level sources worldwide.

Kelley’s insightful window on the details of the war brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the The New York Times and on NBC’s Nightly News, Newsweek online and National Public Radio.

The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized — lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor.

“You got me, I admit it…. I made a mistake,” Kelley said. “It was stupid.”

My first thought it “Who?” I mean, I surf the web a hella lot and have never found this guy’s site or heard his name. Am I missing something? Or am I one of the few sane folks who think warblogging has gotten out of hand? Secondly, he’s not the only person to do this, I can almost guarantee that. Okay, well, maybe the taking credit for it is wrong, but MOST warbloggers simply post links to shit they find elsewhere. It’s not their’s. Hell, that’s pretty much the nature of metablogging, links to thinks elsewhere with maybe a little personal quip here and there to make it seem like you’re original (like I do!). If you just cite your sources, you’re fine, if you don’t, yeah, you suck.

My Homepage

Hello this is my home page and not my brother daniels one, cus he sux at html. I live in a trailer park in White rock Ariazona in atralier with my mom and my family. My mom doesn’t work and I go to school with my brother daniel (who sux at html).

Sweet, now I can figure out how to use chopsticks! Though, I personally think a fork is much better. You can get more food on it and throw it at people when they piss you off.

This eyebees thing looks interesting. Unfortunately, it’s a wee bit too much like “stepping into the Gap” for me. I might give it a try, though. (UPDATE: Actually, it’s kinda sweet. Join the J’s Notes swarm and see where other J’s Notes visitors are visiting.)

The 2003 Anti-Bloggies have been announced! Congrats to The Presurfer for winning “Most Updated”. I’d congrat the rest too, but Presurfer is the only winner that I’ve visited before.

Supposedly “On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation of a Plane Crashing into a Building”. Now, I’m very quickly turned off by the “Here’s another admission which destroys the government’s lie that it couldn’t possibly have foreseen the use of planes to ram buildings” line, but it’s still pretty interesting. I don’t think it destroys the “we didn’t foresee” argurment as it was all theoretical. The “didn’t foresee” is that they were unaware of a specific threat and were unprepared to handle the aftermath of such an attack, the latter being something that meeting was to help handle.

I want a deck of those Iraqi leader identification cards. That would rule. They’re on E-Bay for as low as 9 bucks. Sweet.

This week’s Saturday Slant

If asked to pick just one, what event of your childhood most shaped the person you are now?

Hands down, the divorce of my parents. I mean, how could that not shape me? Yes, the seperation occured when I was three and I think the divorce was finalized when I was five, but thanks to that I am who I am today. Whether or not I’m a better person than I would have been is speculation. But, because of the divorce, certain people had more influence on my upbringing than others, leading to me following certain paths that I might not have otherwise. It’s effected my family life, the way I interact with other people, how I react in my own personal relationship, all of that.

It’s made me into this.

And I kinda like where I am, so I can’t complain too much, but there’s always that ‘what if’.

I’m trying really hard to avoid warblogging now. I mean, it was something I wanted to do almost from day one. Really, you can get anything I post here anywhere else. Even my opinion. I don’t want to flood you all with the same old shit that everyone else is saying. Most of the time I just do it, but from here on out I’m going to make a concentrated effort to avoid warblogging. I need to get back to my roots here, find fun, stupid links and keep tossing them out, stuff you don’t find everywhere else.

Of course, with a bit of me here and there.

Again, apologies for my lack of net access, hopefully it will be fixed by the end of the month. Mainly because I have internet classes I need to take this summer.

Twenty Questions - Sunday 13th April 2003: Pot Pourri

1. What is the furthest you’ve ever travelled? I was in Germany for a year when I was three.

2. Which meal is the one you cook best? Fish sticks.

3. Where do you buy most of your clothes? Wherever’s cheapest.

4. What is your home town famous for? Too much Civil War stuff.

5. What was your best subject at school? Math. Have no idea why.

6. What sort of music would you never listen to? Easy Listening. I hate Yanni and Tesh. Ugh.

7. Is there anything you would never eat? Cat.

8. How many languages can you speak? What are they? One. Americanized English.

9. Which sport do you like playing or watching the most? Toss up between baseball and football.

10. Can you play a musical instrument? Which one(s)? I can play the guitar. I’m not too bad at it, but could be better.

11. What is the worst illness/injury you’ve ever had? I had food poisoning a couple years back. That sucked.

12. Which blogging tool do you prefer? Blogger and w.bloggar.

13. What was the last charity you gave to? Uh… I don’t recall, but I gave a homeless guy five bucks earlier this week.

14. How many romantic relationships have you had? one. I’m still in it.

15. Where was the last restaurant you visited? Subway.

16. Have you ever seen a band live? Which one? Geez, lots. Just saw Ben Folds last weekend, before that saw Beck and I’ve seen Rusted Root, Ben Folds Five, Guster (crap, but they played before BFF), um, who else…. Went to Warped Tour that had Green Day and Mighty Mighty Bosstones among many others. And Dan Bern a few times.

17. Which famous person would you like to meet? Why? The Pope. Because he’s the Pope.

18. Have you ever been on television? Yep, though it was a while back and I don’t remember what for.

19. Have you ever stayed overnight in hospital? Nope, I’ve been pretty lucky in that respect.

20. What is your ultimate ambition? To graduate from college, get a good job, and be happy in life.

And next time you hear you neighborhood friendly music industry rep crying about the slump in sales, give him the finger and this link:

Independents’ day

What record industry slump? Independent labels say business has never been better.

Eight years ago, Nan Warshaw, Rob Miller, and their Chicago friends were lamenting the dearth of “new and exciting music - music that ignited their passion the way punk and alternative rock had before big record labels and Gap commercials co-opted their sounds.

Then they began noticing that several area bands were putting Hank Williams twists on their Nirvana and Elvis Costello influences. So they decided, for kicks, to put out a compilation album of “insurgent country.” Warshaw and Miller anted up a few grand apiece.

“We had no expectation that this was going to become a business,” Ms. Warshaw says. “The first few years, we’d put out a record and when it broke even, we would say, ‘Oh, what record should we do next?’ ”

But 3-1/2 years after it first started, Bloodshot Records finally hired its first paid employee. Today, it’s a popular and healthy independent label, one of many operating outside the grip of the five mega-majors: Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment, EMI Group, and Warner Music Group.

While executives at those labels wail about the industry’s imminent collapse, indie labels and artists are singing a much happier tune. Profits are up - in some cases by 50 to 100 percent. That’s in contrast to overall album sales, which dropped about 11 percent in 2002.

Crap on a stick! Rep. Jose Serrano of New York proposed a Constitutional amendment repealing the twenty second amendment back in January. You know, the one that limits presidents to two terms. What kind of nut case does this? Wasn’t term limits a big movement not too long ago?

Wait. New York? Maybe Hillary put him up to it so Bill could get a third term! I mean, who else in the Democratic party has the popularity to defeat Bush? Though, wait, that theory’s destroyed by the fact that any Constitutional amendment wouldn’t take effect until after the 2004 elections given all the hoops it has to jump through.