Archive for the 'Kickers' Category

Another Michael Phelps story

Yes I am getting a little sick and tired of hearing about Michael Phelps 24 hours a day, but once again The Onion comes through…

Michael Phelps Returns To His Tank At Sea World:

ORLANDO—Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist and SeaWorld main attraction Michael Phelps returned to his seven-million-gallon water tank Wednesday to resume his normal schedule of performing in six shows a day for marine park crowds every day of the week.

Phelps, the 6′4″, 200-pound aquatic mammal, and the first ever SeaWorld swimmer to be raised in captivity by foster swimmers (Mark Spitz and Dara Torres), was recaptured by trainer Bob Bowman in a hoop net baited with an entire Dutch apple pie following Phelps’ final Olympic event last Sunday. Phelps was then tethered to the rudder of a container ship bound for St. Petersburg, guided down local waterways, and introduced back into his home habitat, the tank in SeaWorld’s 5,500 seat stadium, known to park officials and visitors alike as “Phelps’ Happy Harbor.”

“Michael seemed really excited to be back,” said Bowman, adding that the male swimmer became playful upon entering his tank, breaching the water and sounding repeatedly. “He just started swimming freestyle and backstroke, and only stopped to slide belly first onto the tank’s platform so he could be fed dozens of fried egg sandwiches.”

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Things Not to Say in a Facebook Status Update

From Wired:

  1. Rockin’ Freebird!
  2. Rubbing cream on that thing I noticed last weekend. Doesn’t seem to be working.
  3. Buying DC Universe Classics Wave 5 the Atom at Wal-Mart! Build-a-figure Metallo is complete!
  4. Feeling trapped in this male body.
  5. Jesus, I’m lonely.
  6. D’oh! Accidentally trimmed my pickin’ nail.
  7. Watching The Notebook again.
  8. Quick! Does anyone know the age of consent in Kentucky?
  9. Just came up with a new emoticon for sanguine [:<≠>
  10. Thinking about maybe talking to someone.
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Breaking up is easy to do

Recently there have been stories about people breaking up by text message. Heck, there have even been stories of people who have been fired by email. But I think our quest to have as little interaction with people as possible may have gone a little too far. Now you can leave someone an unhappy voice mail without even having to face the possibility that the person might answer the phone:

The technology, called Slydial, lets callers dial a mobile phone but avoid an unwanted conversation — or unwanted intimacy — on the other end. The incoming call goes undetected by the recipient, who simply receives the traditional blinking light or ping that indicates that a voice mail message has been received.

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Wendy Portillo: Monster

Kindergarten teacher let classmates vote student out of class:

— Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.

It’s bad enough that she did that to a five year old, but a five year old who might be autistic??

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Twittering to freedom

At least now when someone asks me why I’m on Twitter I have a valid reason… you just never know when you might suddenly find yourself in an Egyptian prison.

Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail:

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. “Arrested.”

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted that he was being held.

I wonder if being in an Egyptian prison is anything like the experience you can expect in a Turkish prison.

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Reason #12 I don’t envy Wesley Snipes

Snipes Gets Maximum Sentence: 36 Months

Wesley Snipes was sentenced to 36 months in prison Thursday, the maximum sentence allowed.

Snipes was convicted of three misdemeanor charges for not filing his taxes.

UPDATE: Fark.com had the single greatest headline for this story: “Wesley Snipes sentenced to 3 years in prison. 1 for each Blade movie.”

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And so it was that God smited Pittsburgh

Since this didn’t happen to my house… and no one was hurt, I can just marvel at the awesomeness that there is a slim chance that a meteor blew up someone’s house.

Did a meteorite make mincemeat of North Side abodes? Theories abound:

We still don’t know with certainty what set off the explosion at a North Side home last week. At a news conference yesterday, Detective Michael Burns of the city’s arson unit said an illegal drug lab has been ruled out, which leaves investigators to believe natural gas was the cause.

The blast came from the kitchen of 845 Lovitt Way, Detective Burns said. Police are checking gas appliances pulled from its wreckage. An Equitable Gas spokesman said no leak was detected, but an “extraordinary amount of gas passed through the meter” days before the explosion, which brought down an adjacent house, too.

Matt Grebner, a Spring Hill resident, wasn’t buying that.

“Stove creates sonic shock wave?” he asked sarcastically. “That’d be a first.”

He says his house shook as he heard a boom Friday morning, more than a half-mile away from the site of what are now the ruins of two rowhouses. He went outside to see if something had hit his house, and when he found nothing, he realized it was a sonic boom and began thinking of the possibility of a meteorite.

Since both Chicago and Peshtigo, Wisconsin had massive fires on the same night back in 1871, there has been a theory floating around for a while now that both might have been started by a meteor shower. That’s a lot less quaint then saying that a cow kicked over a lamp, and since the O’Leary family you also couldn’t blame the fire on the Irish… so obviously the theory has met with a tremendous amount of skepticism.

So this wouldn’t be the first time… of course they go on to say that it probably wasn’t a meteor, but I’m sure that won’t stop people from sending me emails about how irresponsible I am for not having meteorite insurance.

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