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Tonight We Have a Fine ’07 Sprite

Soda WineI saw this on the soda dispenser at a BK yesterday and absolutely had to take a photo of it. Is this for real? This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. They are actually offering suggestions on which soda you should drink with which meal! I’d love to meet the person who actually uses this as a reference when choosing a drink.

Note to BK–you’ve already sold the drink. It doesn’t matter which one they choose. You aren’t going to make any extra money, and your suggestions aren’t going to add any enjoyment to anyone’s meal.

I love it when people do idiotic stuff like this.

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Some Shameless Pimping For WidgetBucks


Earn $$ with WidgetBucks!
I try to keep advertising to a minimum here for loyal readers by doing a few things. First of all, no ads in my RSS feed for subscribers, although there will be one at the end of this one as an example. Secondly, I only put adsense in the middle of older posts after they are archived and not very likely to be read by loyal readers. Thirdly, I try to keep ads unobtrusive (in the sidebar, end of posts) for my regular readers. Lastly, I try to keep them limited only to things I think my readers may actually be interested in.

So, mainly, I’m advertising to other bloggers. Because no one seemed interested (and it was pretty ugly), I’ve replaced the web hosting ad that was in the margin with a link to WidgetBucks (net gain of 0 ads). WidgetBucks is pay per click advertising that works pretty much like Adsense. Contextual ads show up on your site based on what you write, and you are paid for each click you receive. Just another ad network? Not really. They give you $25 just for signing up as a publisher! Also, you can get paid through PayPal, which is nice.

Honestly, ads don’t do very well on this site, but that’s okay. I have more fun with this site than any of my others that actually generate (very little) revenue. So the WidgetBucks link is not one of their ads, just an affiliate link to their site. That’s right–there’s something in it for me if you choose to go there and get $25 from them.

I’ve posted an actual WidgetBucks ad at the end of this post so you can see how it looks. I’ve been running them for a few days on a couple of my other sites, and they’ve done reasonably well, outperforming Adsense in some cases.

Oh, by the way, I’ve also added my latest del.icio.us bookmarks in the margin, if you are interested in what I’m reading outside of here.

Anyway, the ad is below (please don’t click it unless you are actually interested in what is shown). Of course, you can choose different colors, sizes, and styles.

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Barbie Cummings Trooper Indicted

The KNS tells us that former Tennessee State Trooper who received a favor from Knoxville based porn star Barbie Cummings will be prosecuted, even though the work she performed was pro bono…

James Randy Moss turned himself in to Wilson County authorities in Middle Tennessee this morning to face a sealed indictment on charges of official misconduct, tampering with evidence and official oppression.

I’m a little surprised that Barbie Cummings doesn’t still have her blog going, or if she does I can’t find it. She really could have made a big splash with this story if she’d played it right. I thought from the beginning it was just a clever stunt on her part to get her name out–no such thing as bad press, right?

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Naughty Pictures of Knox County Teacher Being Investigated

From the KNS:

School security chief Steve Griffin said this morning that his department scoured the web after they received information Friday relating to photographs of Inskip Elementary School teacher Melinda England.

Get ready for an onslaught of this. I predict that “nude teacher pictures” will be the new “doing it with the teacher” in 2008.

The fact is, lots of people have digital cameras, but not many people have common sense. Really, it’s bad enough to let someone else take and have pictures of you in compromising situations, but to post them yourself?

Forget about whether or not it is inappropriate–is this person smart enough to teach kids?

Some people don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe they are right. But if you are going to be employed by the public (schools) you have expect that they (the public) are going to judge you by the community’s accepted standards–right or wrong doesn’t come into play.

Maybe people will eventually catch on that you can’t do stuff like this and expect that it is going to be copasetic, because chances are we are pretty far away from parents thinking this is ok.

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What Will You Be For Halloween?

The question gets asked every year of everybody. If you’re like me, there are two basic rules–your costume has to be homemade, and you have to keep it a secret until Halloween. It seems the administration at Kohl Elementary School in Westminster, CO only have half of the equation down.

What they are going to be is definitely homemade, but unfortunately they let it slip to the Denver Post early this year. So what will they be?

Turds.

We’re still weeks from this glorious pagan celebration, but you can already hear the sound of the pinheads sucking the fun out of life.
…
Why can’t kids celebrate this spooky orgy of fun? Well, as one fourth-grade Kohl teacher puts it – and I paraphrase here – if even one child feels left out because of Halloween, we’ve all failed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call to all of the people who cheer when Christmas is attacked and banned because it is exclusionary or offensive to a few people. I’m sure included in that group are a few Pagans, to whom Halloween has some meaning beyond wearing really uncomrotable platic masks with rubber bands holding them to your head (remember those?) and eating teeth-rotting candy for two weeks.

Realistically, most kids either don’t know or don’t fully understand the deeper meaning behind either one of these holidays. To them it is just innocent and harmless fun. You may view that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your own religious beliefs, or lack of. But as a guy who doesn’t really care one way or the other, I can tell you this…

When you start squashing something that is innocent and harmless fun for kids, you are just a jerk.

If you don’t want it for your own kids, that’s your right. And honestly, I applaud the fact that you have some conviction and care enough about your kids to raise them the way you think is rght. But don’t ruin it for everybody else.

Now, what are you guys gonna be for Halloween?

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Free of DRM is Good Too

I’ve been talking about free here a lot over the past few days. Well, Amazon has launched an mp3 download site to compete with iTunes. Seems impossible, right? Not if you consider that Amazon’s downloads are DRM free. DRM is the code in songs downloaded through iTunes that allow you to only play the song through iTunes or on your iPod. Songs downloaded from Amazon can be played on any player.

I checked out their catalog last night, and it is pretty extensive. Not only that, but you can also download complete albums there at a discount, not to mention the fact that you don’t have to pay shipping and get the song immediately.

You’ll need to install Amazon’s download manager, but it’s quick and easy!

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Vanessa Hudgens, Nude Photos, and Total Jackasses

What are these people thinking? And I’m not necessarily talking only about the minor celebrities or local news people who have sex tapes or nude photos out there floating around. It shouldn’t be too much of a leap to think that we will only hear about a very small percentage of the ones that exist. Let’s face it, with digital cameras and digital video cameras easily accessible to everyone these days, it only follows that there are a countless compromising photos and videos in existence. Some of them are bound to be of celebrities people someone somewhere may have heard of.

And really, who cares?

Before Paris Hilton made this the “in thing”, I knew a guy (friend of a friend) who had some topless photos of a (super hot) high profile girl. He threatened to release them in the media, and it eventually let to her becoming much lower profile. To this day I don’t understand why he did it. Obviously, it was an attempt to embarrass her and get back in her in some way, but it made him look sort of pathetic in my eyes. I think if he’d thought it through he may have realized that would be the outcome–maybe not.

The funny thing is, I don’t think any less of her for her having the photos taken other than her poor judgment in who she let photograph her. He’s the one that came out looking like the lesser person, at least in my eyes.

I pretty much feel the same way about the Vanessa Hudgens photos. Of course, I was forced to look at them in order to properly research this post. If you haven’t seen them yet, I wouldn’t bother. They are not that big of a deal.

But the guy who released these is a complete jackass. I don’t know how much he got paid, but I doubt it was enough to buy back his word, which I’m sure he gave her that he would never let anyone else see them.

Then there is the other price he has to pay–I wish him luck in finding another girl who will let him take dirty pictures of her.

Nice move, moron.

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It’s That Time of Year Again

Local people will hate me for writing this, and most non-locals won’t get why it’s a big deal.

It is really sad funny, but I didn’t know that football season started today until about 30 minutes before the UT game. This is what is considered the real football season around here by the way, not the NFL. I’m risking my status as a Knoxville resident by admitting that I wasn’t really aware and don’t care that much about UT football.

Now for the fun part. The start of football season means that it’s time to start listening to sports talk radio again. See, I’m not really a football fan, but I’m a huge “Members of the Knoxville Chapter of Mensa talking about football on the radio” fan. It’s hard to believe the entertainment they provide is actually free.

I just checked the scores and saw that the Vols lost, so it should be good this week of radio. The chicken littles will be out en masse, not realizing that win or lose, they still have to go to work on Monday. I’ve never understood how people can get so emotionally invested in something over which they have no control. Maybe that’s it? The fact that they don’t have control is what makes them freak out over it? Dunno.

Anyway, here’s a quick stab in the dark of some things we may here this week:
“Phil Fulmer should be fired”
“I don’t understand why they ran _____ on that 2nd and 4 during the 3rd quarter”
“How many games does Phil have to win this year to keep his job?”
“Let’s just hope Cal wins out.”
“If Fulmer gets fired or resigns, who should we go after as a coach?”
“I just want to say GO VOLS! I’ll hang up and listen to your comments.”
“If the NFL comes after Phil, what are the chances of him leaving?”

See a common theme here? Tennessee fans do love them a good coach firing!!!

***UPDATE***
As sure as the sun rises. The first comment on the article in the KNS I linked to:
“it just goes to show that we pay top dollar to overrated coaches (phill fulmer mostly)”

I love this time of year! It’s better than Christmas and Arbor Day combined!!!

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Monday Morning Potpourri

Hurricane Dean…this is getting pretty scary for the folks in Mexico as it looks like it is picking up. I have a friend who really geeks out over hurricanes, and I’ve been encouraging him to start blogging on them. I know he reads this (sometimes), so I’m calling him out publicly now. START!

Overheard on the radio this morning…
“If Shakespeare, Socrates, and Galileo were alive today they’d all own adult bookstores.”

I also heard an oldie but a goodie…
“Is that possible–to time travel speed?”
–Britney Spears

[youtube WoQgTI_0h8s]

My jaw hurts, but that doesn’t make me ugly.

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David Lee Roth Touring With Van Halen Again

It was announced yesterday that the tour will start this fall.

The lastest twist is that founding bassist Michael Anthony has been given the boot, and Van Halen’s teenage son, Wolfgang, has replaced him.

Hmmm. I doubt that statement is entirely true. My guess is that because Eddie Van Halen is such a jerk, Sammy Hagar wouldn’t tour with them again. Sammy and Michael Anthony are still good friends, and Mike probably sees that Ed is a jerk now too and doesn’t want to deal with him.

That leaves Ed and Alex in a bind. They hate David Lee Roth, but they can’t make any money with any singers other than DLR or Sammy. Since Sammy won’t have anything to do with them, they have to put up with DLR, and since Mike won’t have anything to do with them, they have to have Wolfgang play bass.

Dave? He doesn’t care. It’s a chance for him to get on stage and say, “Look at all the people here tonight!” a few more times. He’s probably chomping at the bit to get out on the road and annoy Ed nightly, and I don’t blame him. If I were him, I’d do the same thing just out of spite.

Of all the guys who’ve been in this band, Sammy and Mike are the only ones I’d ever want to hang out with. Dave would be fun to hang out with for a weekend bender, but he’d get on your nerves so bad after a couple of days that you’d have to get away…kind of like being in Vegas for more than a few days. He has, however, done a great job building that reputation and marketing himself.

I’d be surprised if this tour lasts more than a few dates. Look for it to be cancelled because of Eddie’s health.