Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

• This is my favorite way to fight unwanted emails and take a bite outta spam. Sorry McGruff. They quarantine suspicious email for perusal when you’re ready for a laugh.
• It’s darn effective.
• My spam is now under control. and I had spam from big-time spammers. In fact, someone wrote a book about them, Spam Kings. (It’s funny to read about all those spammers you feel you know personally from your inbox.)
• Check out this free spam filter .   Mxguarddog

The fabulous top-level domain sushi.com was up for bids at flippa.com. The buy it now was a cool ONE MILLION AND A HALF dollars. (A million only goes so far these days.)

It reaches the nice sum of $915,000 and IT DIDN’T SELL.

Must be nice. Would you turn down $915,000 for your domain name, no matter how top-of-its-category it was? I wouldn’t.

Check out the insane bidding. What’s more it took only 18 days to reach these blue-blood-nosebleed heights.

Sorry I wrote this. Now I crave tekka maki and sashimi.

While it is always good to wear sunscreen while outside — especially according to recent TV spots that say skin cancer is far and away the most common form of cancer — there’s a new market for pricey sunscreen. Tattoo wearers. After all, you chose a cool design, withstood the pain, and now the sun may fade out that hand-drawn artwork on your body. That just doesn’t seem right.

Enter Coppertone’s Tattoo Guard ™. It’s a full 50 SPF cream to protect that anchor emblazoned with your gf’s name or that adorable butterfly. So you can get a tan and still keep that tat looking fresh. What will marketers think of next??

Prince William gets that accolade because his parents’ wedding was a whopping 30 years ago — very last century.

The bride’s gown was far beyond those shown on Say Yes to the Dress, yet it didn’t have any Swarovski crystals on it to make her feel like a royal… Oh, wait now Kate Middleton is a royal. Just custom-designed lace, a diamond tiara, a sensible-length train carried by an adult — not a bevy of six-year olds as in Princess Diana’s case. (At one point, they just rolled it up and tossed into her coach, because everything is perfectly timed and did not allow for proper handling by the very young bridesmaids. )

Prince Williams wore the striking scarlet uniform of a colonel in the Irish Guards. He is commissioned in the Guards, the Army and the RAF. I think it was largely a fashion decision to look less somber next to his bride, in her much anticipated elaborate wedding dress. He served more time in the RAF and has only attained the honorary Irish Guard affiliation this year.

Of course, the whole historic event may all be designed by committees and cabals to suit current protocols.

There were several good moments: the groom’s difficulty placing that wedding band on her finger — again very modest and sensible. It’s maybe 3mm wide. I’ve seen the Duchess of Binghamton with gaudier rings. No need to overdo it with a diamond band, as her engagement ring was the groom’s mother’s — an 18-carat sapphire and diamond ring, easily big enough to look fake.

The Queen looked lovely in a springtime yellow dress with matching hat. There were two interesting queenly formalities shown in the broadcast. The Queen did not sing “God Save the Queen.” God save me? Really! (She doesn’t issue herself a passport, either.) And when the newlywed Duchess of Cambridge — and future queen herself — cursied before her, the Queen smiled.

P.S. I guessed the bride’s height. Much shorter than Prince William’s 6′ 3″, she is 5′ 10″.
viagra

There’s a new weight problem emerging in America: sleep eating. Apparently, the often-used sleeping medication Ambien (r) can cause the problem in susceptible people.

The story is chronicled in an article in The New York Timesthat tells of “emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug’s users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands,”

The patient eats food in the middle of the night and has no memory of the snacking.

But there are undeniable clues: a mouthful of peanut butter, Popsicle sticks and candy wrappers on the floor, crumbs in bed. More worrisome are the lit ovens and stoves found the next day. One woman taking the drug was discovered by her son frying bacon and eggs in her sleep, even though she was hampered by a body cast. “During the day, I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom by myself,” she said, according to the Times reporter.

Dr. Carlos Schenck, a sleep disorders specialist in Minneapolis has found 32 people with the nighttime problem, all of whom have total amnesia of the nightime meals. One patient with the problem gained 100 pounds. Often the patients know they have an eating problem, but have no idea of the link between night eating and the sleep medication.

Ambien, or zolpidem, is a $2.2 billion seller in the U.S. alone, making it the best-selling sleeping medication in America. This has been helped by $130 million advertising budget in 2005. (We’ve all seen the tv commercials.) In other countries, the drug is sold under the brand names Stilnox and Stilnocht. When I recently heard an Ambien spot, I did notice any warning about the weight gain issue.

Now if they can just synthesize a drug with the opposite effect on weight, they will have a real winner.

Read the article the Times’ site. There’s an editorial or two, and letters as well.

Matt Drudge and others on the net claim the Today Show icon is heading to CBS to anchor the Evening News, a post once held by Walter Cronkite. Makes you a little queasy, doesn’t it?

The blog entry above claims CBS staffers are creating I hate Katie Couric t-shirts.

Luane Calvert, who brought a billboard to life in Times Square for CK One, has put on the world’s largest picnic in San Francisco, With free food for the first 500 attending, the picnic featured an almost 10,000 square foot red and white blanket. The festivities celebrate the opening of an Oakville Grocery in the city by the bay. Ms. Calvert’s company is Mixed Marketing.

There’s a peaceful town in England, Swaffham hometown of archeologist Howard Carter who discovered King Tut’s tomb, that’s had to put up with a lot from its most famous living citizen. He’s Michael Carroll, better known as the Lotto Lout, a petty criminal and long-term vandal, who has achieved the dream of a lifetime: he won 9.7 million pounds in the national lottery. At the time, that was $15 million, more than enough to finance his hooliganism. (He collected his prize wearing a house-arrest electronic ankle band!)

He has appeared in court more than thirty times in the last three years: for drug charges, vandalism of property including shooting ball bearings through shop windows, and generally being a huge nuisance. He is what the Brits call a chav: a person wearing gaudy jewelry and clothes and behaving in a corse, obnoxious manmner. Mr. Carroll must relish the term for he has painted “King of Chavs” on his Mercedes.

There are rumors that a chav reality show is in the works with Mr. Carroll as the star. Stay tuned.

Read more of the story in The New York Times.

Now that Martha Stewart is out and free of house arrest, she is retaking the media.

I’m more of a pessimist: I really thought her conviction would put her down for the count.

But she has a new TV talk show and of course — who’s more Donald than Mr. Trump? — The Apprentice Martha Stewart. (I heard about the show before it started and I was certain it was a joke.)

I’m glad she’s back as the kitchen CEO, but maybe not so much in our face? Please?

If the attorney general of California has his way, your “fries with that” may come with an unpleasant bit of copy: a cancer warning. That’s according to a New York Times article.

Bill Lockyer, the state’s AG, says that studies have proven that French fries and most fried potato products contain acrylamide, a known carcinogen. (Both chips and fries are already known for their saturated fat, trans fats and sodium levels.)

The chemical is not an additive, but forms when starches are subjected to high heat.

According to one survey firm, NPD Group, fries are the food most frequently eaten in restaurants. In fact, $7 billion a year are spent on fries and chips in the US. Therfore, the new California warning could change America’s eating habits.

Will there be scarey commercials urging kids to stop that nasty, smelly French fry habit. Will parents be urged to talk with their kids about the dangers of fried potatoes in any form?

Maybe not, but Lockyer has filed suit against McDonald’s, Burger King, Frito Lay anbd six other food companies to force them to include warning labels on their products. The label might say “This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer.”

The FDA opposes the labeling law on the grounds that the no one knows what the dangerous levels of acrylamide in food are. More studies are needed, according to the agency.

A food industry research group says that California is singling out junk food unecessarily, as other foods such as whole wheat toast, and black olives contain the substance. (Lower levels are in bread, crackers, and peanut butter.) By the California attorney general’s office counters that fried potato products contain higher levels and constitute a larger portion of an average America’s diet.