Twenty Third & Seventh

george michael is in trouble again. couldn't happen to a more deserving ponce! After all the shit he has given Boy George for being 'too gay' over the years I'd be happy to see his career destroyed.  There is, IMO, absolutely no excuse for public sex of this kind in this day and age.  As Boy so wisely observed-- 'can't he use a computer'?

why do banks take 48 hours to process a payment TO a credit card while they can deduct money instantaneously?

can anybody explain the difference between an incursion and an invasion? if a tank rolled into my neighborhood i think the semantics would become secondary.

we hear reports that visitor rooms at the Chelsea have gone up in price.  a correspondent writes:

they have now gone from $250.00 to $275.00  Man oh man.  They are pricing out all the people
who made that hotel what it was!  Pretty soon the only people staying there will be rich boring tourists or Britney Spears.

and we're inclined to agree.  Negotiate like a New Yorker is my advice, it worked in knocking the price down for us.  Just be prepared for a stark room!

Liza Minnelli playing a whacked-out masturbation therapist is a freaky thought

I am My Own Wife is headed my way in the original production.  This review from the .au press has a major spoiler- be careful.

Still depressed at the idea that CBGBs will be gone forever.  An example of what happens when one becomes a parody of one's self.

Second Life is an overwhelmingly expansive and conceptually dense virtual world allegedly taking the world by storm.  It's worth a look.  I suspect that I'm a bit too old to grasp the paradigm.

Of the 147 million Americans on the Internet, 12 million have blogs.

Clown Paranoia

This is too funny...

from: the Age

Organisers of a British rock festival have been forced to change its circus theme after a ticketholders told them they had a phobia of clowns.

The Bestival event on the Isle of Wight, off England's south coast, in early September was to have encouraged festival-goers to dress up in curly red wigs and oversized shoes.

Last year's Cowboys or Indians theme broke a world record for the biggest fancy dress party when 10,000 people turned up in disguise.

But organisers feared thousands of clowns in one place could spark mass panic in the psychedelic atmosphere of the festival, which is popular with so-called "nouveaux hippies", The Times reported today.

"We have had so many people with clown phobias contact us I am worried everyone might end up hiding in the woods," Rob da Bank, a BBC Radio One disc jockey who will "curate" the show, was quoted as saying.

Fear of clowns - or coulrophobia - has symptoms including shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, nausea, sweating and a sense of foreboding, The Times pointed out.

Heavy make-up and bulbous noses, plus negative childhood memories of the supposed funnymen and women, are thought to be the root cause.

Going Salon

Just as the phrase 'to go postal' starts to lose the lustre of immediacy, we have a potential replacement, going salon.  We love this story, a drunken hairdresser in a rage at the mere suggestion that his crimping skills aren't up to speed.  Never piss a hairdresser off, I say.

Salon wrecked in stylist's strop

A HOOLIGAN hairdresser, ticked off by his boss for his poor crimping skills, wrecked the salon during a drunken rage.

Nicky Cranston caused more than £20,000 damage when he smashed up McAuliffe's in Peterlee town centre during the late-night attack.

Durham Crown Court heard the 19-year-old flooded the first-floor shop – and pharmacist Savers below – by leaving taps running and ripping water heaters off the walls.

When salon manageress Maria Arnell went to open up the next day she was greeted by the police who had been called to probe the break-in.

Cranston told detectives and told them he had been at the shop on the night of the attack – but only to get a plaster after cutting his hand on a night out.

He later confessed to wrecking the salon in a text message to Mrs Arnell which read: "I have ruined everything. I am nothing, I realise that now."

Cranston, of Welland Close, Peterlee, admitted two charges of criminal damage in Upper Yoden Way, on November 5, last year.

He has a previous conviction for criminal damage.

Mitigating, Stuart Graham said: "While he had been told off during the course of this employment, this was not a grudge or revenge attack.

"He was very drunk that night and was genuinely shocked when he realised what he had done.

"He says he will never, ever, offend again."

Judge Tony Lancaster passed a 30 week sentence, suspended for 12 months, but Cranston must carry out 150 hours of community work and pay £500 compensation to the salon and £250 to Savers.

The judge told him: "You must learn to deal with your problems in an adult way, and not behave like an undisciplined child as you did on this occasion."

In Pictures

1.  Cloud of Suspicion.  I spotted this strange looking streak in the sky a few mornings ago.  At first glance, I took it to be a plane falling out of the sky. That I was looking toward the very busy flightpath reduces the rashness of this assumption but...  21ST CENTURY PARANOIA!!!!!!!!!!  The streak is nothing more than an unusually shaped cloud caught in the dawn light.