Bad Memories

Britney Spears is having a boy. Her husband, former backup dancer Kevin Federline, likes the name "Vegas", but Britney--who is due in October--favors the names "London", "Preston", or even "London Preston". "Vegas", a friend told Star, brings back "too many bad memories of Kevin's party days there," not to mention her own ill-fated 55-hour Vegas marriage.

Brand Loyalty

Gauloise Brune, once famously smoked by the likes of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and novelist Albert Camus, moved its factory from Lille, France to the Spanish coastal town of Alicante. French smokers are beginning to turn to light cigarettes, while Gauloise is known for its strong, almost bitter flavor. The conservate daily Le Figaro lamented "the end of one of our greatest symobls of national identity."

Enough Is Enough

The family of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist, plans to launch a series of lawsuits to regain control of his image. Executed in 1967 in Bolivia, eight years after helping Fidel Castrol seize power in Cuba, today his image can be found on posters, Swatch watches, Zippo lighters, and even Brazilian lingerie.

Prima Donnas

"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," former first lady Barbara Bush said, "so this is working very well for them."

"We've got four houses, but in every one of them I end up sleeping in the cleaning cupboard or the corridors" confesses Madonna's husband Guy Ritchie, whose celebrity wife kicks him out of bed virtually every night because of his loud snoring.

Only In America

A mayoral candidate in Durham, N.C., is wooing young voters on the strength of her "hip-hop agenda." Jackie Wagstaff, 46, a member of Durham's school board, has taken to calling herself "J-Dub" and wearing orange Chuck Taylor sneakers to campaign rallies. If elected, Wagstaff promises to consult regularly with a "hip-Hop cabinet" of gang members and troubled teenagers. "Until we start to listen to them, " Wagstaff said, "all we're going to be doing is beating a dead horse."

American Scene

LOS ANGELES -- A woman is suing ABC's reality television show "Extreme Makeover" for unspecified damages, claiming its decision to cancel her appearance contributed to her sister's suicide.

Deleese Williams, 30, of Conroe, Texas, claims the producers subjected her to needless humiliation and goaded her sister, Kellie McGee, into insulting her appearance.

Miss Williams says a psychologist and numerous doctors told her she needed an "eye life, ears pulled back, chin implant and breast implants."

She also was told she needed dental surgery for a successful "makeover," the lawsuit said.

Just hours before the dental surgery was to take place, Miss Williams was told she was being dropped from the show because the recovery time wouldn't fit into the schedule, the lawsuit said.

Miss Williams said she returned to Texas devastated.  Four months later, her sister killed herself.

The Washington Times, Thursday, September 22, 2005.

They Dared Rob the Mob

NEW YORK CITY - In the annals of New York City crime, few undertakings were more ill-advised, foolhardy and just plain dangerous than the one that prosecutors say was chosen by Thomas and Rose Marie Uva, a young married couple from Queens.

The Uvas set out more than a dozen years ago to solve their financial difficulties in a most unusual fashion: walking into mob social clubs with an Uzi submachine gun and separating the Mafiosi within from their ill-gotten gains.

The crime spree was predictably short-lived. They were killed in 1992 in one of the more public executions in the recent history of organized crime in New York. On Christmas Eve, in broad daylight on a busy Queens thoroughfare, they were each shot several times in the head as they sat in a car at a traffic light.

Yesterday F.B.I. agents and police detectives arrested Dominick "Skinny Dom" Pizzonia, silver-haired at 63, and are looking into the role of another Gambino figure, Ronald "Ronnie One Arm" Trucchio. It is believed a third man drove the getaway car.

Federal prosecutors have said in court papers that John A. Gotti once boasted that his group, the Gambino family, was responsible for the hit, not the Bonannos, who had also claimed credit.

One former high-ranking mob figure, who became a government witness several years ago, said

"It's embarrassing if wise guys get held up."

Adapted from an article appearing in the The New York Times, September 23, 2005.

The Japanese Did It

Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, Idaho, states at his website that Japan's Yakuza mafia used a KGB-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina to strike America at a most vulnerable point. The artificially-created hurricane was a bid to avenge Japan for the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack, he says, and the technology will be wielded again to hit another U.S. metropolis.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

"She wants to eat everything and anything."

PLANTATION, Florida -- Veterinarian Jon-Paul Carew had seen strange items in the stomachs of dogs, including kebab skewers and small utensils, but a 13-inch serrated knife in a 6-month-old puppy was a new one. The knife was removed last week from Elsie, whose owner, Jane Scarola, thinks one of her six other dogs somehow got the knife off a counter, then it eventually made its way to the puppy.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

Lost Tribe Converts

CHURACHANDPUR, India -- Rabbis from Israel have begun converting to orthodox Judaism about 9,000 members of an impoverished tribe here that is thought to be one of the 10 lost tribes of biblical Israel.

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that has been trying to locate descendants of lost Jewish tribes and bring them to Israel, believes that all Chins in Burma, Mizos in Mizoram, and Kukis in Manipur -- three prominent tribes of the region -- are descendants of Menashe, an ancient Jewish leader.

There are up to two million Bnei Menashes in the hilly regions of Burma and northeastern India.

After an Assyrian invasion around 722 B.C., Jewish tradition says, 10 tribes from Israel were enslaved in Assyria. Later the tribes fled Assyria and wandered through Afghanistan, Tibet, and China. Around A.D. 100, one group moved south from China and settled in northeastern India and Burma.

The conversions culminate an almost a decade-long investigation, which included DNA tests.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

Serious Mental Disorder

Specialists identified symptoms of shopping addiction in the 1990s. This mental and spiritual disorder is common mostly with women. Addiction to shopping has been shaping up as an epidemic lately. Researchers found out that about twenty percent of German women acknowledge their insuperable desire to buy something all the time. The addiction has conquered 40 percent of American women, whereas 52 percent of British females said they found shopping a lot more enjoyable than sex. There is no such statistic data as far as Russian women are concerned, although the passion for shopping has been developing in Russia steadily.

As reported in Pravda online English-version, September 23, 2005.

The Clinton Condom

Participants in one of the most scandalous adulteries in the modern history, ex-US president Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, suddenly became involved in the sexual life of the Chinese.

As China Daily newspaper reports, Chinese company Guangzhou Haojian used their names as trademarks for condoms.

Company’s representative Li Wenhua said that this was the first case of famous names registered as trademarks in China. According to Wenhua, the company does not pay for this as these are “just ordinary Western names” and their usage does not violate intellectual property.

“Clinton” condoms are produced for consumers with income higher than average and cost 29,8 yuan ($3,7) for a 10-pack. “Lewinsky” condoms are aimed at mass consumer. They are sold for 18,8 yuan ($2,3) for a pack.

Each pack contains a package insert with erotic images on one side and an X-rated joke on the other side.

Fun Reports, September 21, 2005.

Are You Obnoxious?

The courteous co-worker will not find himself described in the following statements. How many of them apply to you?

1. You make provocative statements to "foster dialogue" or needle others.
   
2. You often find yourself delivering a discourse consisting solely of buzzwords and catchphrases.
   
3. You make up nicknames for all your co-workers and refer to them only by these names. (e.g. "Good job, Chachi!"; "I'm going to have to disagree with you there, T-bone!")
   
4. Your office is completely decorated with your children's pictures and artwork.
   
5. You have plastered your cubicle with photos of yourself taken with famous people.
   
6. It is your trademark to recite rhyming or other cutesy messages as your voice mail greeting.
   
7. The questions you ask at meetings are preceded by long monologues of your views and accomplishments.
   
8. You routinely eat odoriferous lunches at your desk.
   
9. You bring in dishes that you tried to cook -- but didn't turn out quite right -- as "special treats" for your co-workers.
   
10. People seem tense -- even panic-stricken -- when they see you coming their way.
    
11. Others back away from you as you speak.
    
12. You send flurries of e-mails to the rest of the company telling them what you are doing. (e.g., "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the bathroom.")
    
13. You vigorously chew or pop your gum.
    
14. You wear strong perfume or cologne.
    
15. You assume your co-workers are fascinated by your personal problems and exploits.
    
16. You interrupt others while they are speaking or are deep in conversation.
    
17. You are moody and don't care who knows it.
    
18. You often give others assignments as they're walking out the door for lunch or to catch the train home.
    
19. You borrow staplers, scissors and tape from others' desks and forget to return them.
    
20. Your dialogue with others often end with the other person shouting, "You are so annoying!"
    

Source: http://www.careerbuilder.com/.

History Repeats Itself

In a conversation recorded in the Oval Office on September 10, 1965 at 2:36 in the afternoon, the day after Hurricane Betsy (a Category 4 storm) hit New Orleans, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana started President Lyndon B. Johnson off with a geography lesson:

"Mr. President, aside from the Great Lakes, the biggest lake in America is Lake Pontchartrain.  It is now drained dry.  That Hurricane Betsy picked up the lake and up and put it inside New Orleans and Jefferson parish."

After noting that his own house had been destroyed, he stated that his true concern was . .

". . my people -- oh, they're in tough shape . . If you want to go to Lousiana right now -- you lost that state last year . . . you could save yourself a campaign speech.  Just go there right now and say 'My God, this is horrible!  These federally-constructed levees that Hale Boggs and Russell Long built is the the only thing that saved 5,000 lives!"

When Johnson replied that he "had a hell of a two days" ahead on his schedule, Long went in for the kill:

"If you go there right now, Mr. President, they couldn't beat you if Eisenhower ran!"

President Lyndon Johnson then called his director of emergency planning, Buford Ellington, telling him that the people of Louisiana . .

". . feel like nobody cares about them, and they voted against us, and they feel like they're kind of on the outside." Johnson made clear: "I feel about them like a 17-year-old girl; I want them to know they're loved."

At 5:18 pm Air Force One took off from Andrews Air Force Base.

Upon arrival Johnson shouted his statement, as there was no power for the loudspeakers that had been set up:

"I am here because I wanted to see with my own eyes what the unhappy alliance of wind and water have done to this land and its people."

(adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, September 24, 2005)

In Line of Fire

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 -- Nine Americans were killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq in the last two days, military and diplomatic sources said Tuesday.  The dead included an embassy official and three security contractors killed Monday morning in a suicide car bombing in the northern city of Mosul.

Witnesses in Mosul said a lone driver smashed his red sedan into the second vehicle in a convoy of three sport-utility vehicles, triggering a fiery explosion.  Security forces immediately cordoned off the area and administered first aid, but the contractors and an assistant regional security officer, Stephen Eric Sullivan, had died instantly, according to a U.S. official in Baghdad.

Two others riding in the diplomatic convoy, which was leaving a U.S. embassy satellite office, suffered minor injuries.

Sullivan, whose job involved coordinating security and overseeing contractors, was the third American diplomat killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  Diplomatic security agent Edward J. Seitz died in October in a mortar attack on a U.S. base near Baghdad International Airport.  The following month, James Mollen, an American special adviuser to Iraq's Higher Education and Scientific Research Ministry, was shot to death near the capital's fortified Green Zone.

Adapted from a The Washington Post article appearing Wednesday, September 21, 2005.

"23 Skidoo!"

"23 skidoo", sometimes written as "23 skiddoo", is American slang popularized in the early 20th century. First appearing before World War I, it became popular in the Roaring Twenties

It generally refers to leaving quickly. One nuance of the phrase suggests being rushed out by someone else. Another is taking advantage of a propitious opportunity to leave, that is: "getting out while the getting is good."

Webster's New World Dictionary derives skiddoo (with two d's) as likely from skedaddle, meaning "to leave" with a sense of the imperative.

The "23" part of the phrase has a wide diversity of explanations. Among the best . .

1. New York City's Flatiron Building, on 23rd Street, is shaped as a triangle thereby causing frequent winds that would stir ladies' skirts, revealing ankles which, in the early years of the Twentieth Century, were seldom seen in public. Rogues would loiter around the Flatiron Building hoping for glimpses. Local constables, shooing such rogues away, were said to be giving them the 23 Skidoo.
   
2. An early 1900s Death Valley town had 23 saloons (basically tents many of them). A visit to all, going 23 skidoo, meant having a really good time.
   
3. Sydney Carton, the protagonist of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, is the 23rd person sent to the guillotine in a series of executions in a popular stage production of the book.

Wentworth and Flexner (Dictionary of American Slang) describe it as "perhaps the first truly national fad expression and one of the most popular fad expressions to appear in the U.S."

Adapted from Wikipedia.

See also