Archives for April 2011

I have a Twitter account. You have a Twitter account. If you don’t, you know someone who does. If you don’t, why are you on the Internet?

I kid. You’re as welcome to prostitute Al Gore’s great invention to your heart’s content as any other miscreant who has access to a library computer.

Nevertheless, allow me to be the first to point out that Twitter’s completely useless. Of all the articles I’ve posted, not one has gotten has gotten a response. I’ll give you an example, if I post “The Catholic Church has a UFO in the Vatican, click here to find out more” you can hear crickets chirping as far away as Utah. If, however, I post “I like big boobs” I’ll get hundreds of responses ranging from pro-fake to pro-natural.

I’m a natural kind of guy in case you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday this year.

What it comes down to is the fact that Twitter followers don’t read. If they can’t fathom the whole thing in 140 characters or less, they don’t care. Thus, it becomes fun to follow @RichardRoeper, @SerenaWilliams, @VickyVette (a milf porn star I happen to know) or @Ochocinco and so on because it’s kind of cool to think you’re in the loop on their lives, but no one pays attention to anything non-celebrity related or intelligently written.

One side note, just because you follow someone on Twitter doesn’t mean you’re going to get any holiday cards from them. They’re not really your friend. If you can’t grasp that, get medical help.

As a counterpoint, anything I post with links on Facebook or MySpace (yes, the 3 people who still use My Space are still around) will get multiple responses and reposts when the article’s actually worth reading.

So it comes as no surprise to me that a group of birds have more followers on Twitter than most churches. As Helen A. S. Popkin, yes that’s her real name, reports, a flock of tomtits has their own Twitter page.

For as long as a lot of people who use the Internet can remember, nerds strived to combine beloved bacon and technology into something beyond the pedestrian clogging of our arteries. From the butch — but basically useless — BA-KA-47 to the dubious support of the bacon bra, all efforts are spectacular, but in the end, really pretty dumb.

Until now.

Voldemars Dudum, bird lover and writer at Latvian weekly magazine Ir, screwed unsalted bacon fat cubes (aka “suet”) to a keyboard hooked up to Twitter and set it up on a windowsill with a webcam, inviting the local Tomtits of Sarnate village to a winter-long tweet n’ eat.

Tomtit. What? Stop giggling. That’s an actual kind of a bird — in the family of the Australian Robin. The Tomtit is small, with a short bill but a big head — all the better to tweet with, my dear. They’re also illiterate, as these examples from the @hungry_birds Twitter stream reveal:

Apologies if this is actually Tomtit for, “had suet for breakfast … watching Glee tonight.”

Even if it is nonsense, it’s all good to the more than 3,000 followers of the @hungry_birds Twitter stream, as well as Dudum, who says, “Yes, one may say it is quite silly, but if you look at what people sometimes say on Twitter, then the tomtits’ messages are still OK.”

Unfortunately for would-be followers @hungry_birds and those who’d like to catch some live Tomtit suet cam are out of luck for the season. Spring has returned to Sarnate, and the birds, who haven’t tweeted since April 13, seem to have gone back to their insectivore ways.

Either that, or they’re trying to cut back on cholesterol.

Okay, I must applaud the use of bacon. Speaking as someone who has eaten bacon ice cream it’s hard for me to criticize this. But, let’s be blunt, this is just more proof that Twitter is the modern equivalent of the pet rock.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Little Billy and his witto Kitty Kat are getting married in a few days. The level of excitement my friends and I feel about this historical event can be measured in a thimble with plenty of room for a thumb left over. Whenever one of these fantasy weddings occurs the results are sadly predictable. How predictable, you ask? Well, yesterday one of those annoying entertainment shows on TV announced they were going to talk to four women who were flying to England to be part of the spectacle. I made a bet that all four would be between 35 and 45 years old and painfully white. In order, they were 36, 43, 39 and 42. All four were so pale they were almost transparent. And all four, much to the chagrin of men everywhere, opined about how it was going to be the most fantabulously gosh golly perfect wedding in the history of history. Cinderella got 9 mentions for comparison.

Why do men hate this? Because we never think about this crap. Get us a suit, a minister or priest and make sure there’s beer when everyone shuts up and we’re fine. Ah, who am I kidding? We can hit the drive thru chapel and call it a day. It’s not that men aren’t romantic, it’s just that we tend to be more private about it. We’ll buy you flowers (when we remember), take you to dinner, suffer through the occasional chick flick and we’ll love you forever, but we aren’t really thrilled by playing Barbie’s Biggest Dress Up Day.

Worse, as Molly Fergus reports, really stupid people lose their ever loving minds.

Prince William and his princess in waiting, Kate Middleton, have already received plenty of odd wedding gifts.

Now, with wedding bells set to ring in just four days, the hubbub surrounding the nuptials is growing curiouser and curiouser.

In Mexico City, a 19-year-old fasted for more than two weeks to score a trip to the royal wedding next weekend, AFP reports.

Estibalis Chavez camped outside of the British Embassy and refused to eat through much of February. Eventually, an anonymous donor offered to send her to the U.K. for the ceremony.

Chavez lost 17 pounds during the fast.

Extraterrestrials will also be on high alert during the ceremony, AOL News reports.

Retired Air Force major George Filer says it’s typical to see UFOs appear during important global events — sightings have been reported near Libya and Japan recently — so he expects onlookers to spot a few around Westminster Abbey on April 29.

Moreover, Filer told AOL News that extraterrestrial activity has been picking up in the U.K., citing UFO sightings recently over the British Channel.

One has to wonder if NASA is in on the outer space action.

The shuttle Endeavor’s final mission is scheduled for April 29 — the very same day that Will and Kate tie the knot, according to AFP.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations, said the royal nuptials were not a determining factor in when the shuttle would launch. Rather, the initial mission was scheduled for April 19, then postponed 10 days.
“I haven’t yet put on our manifest charts ‘wedding constraints’ so we did not factor that in,” he told the AFP.

Gerstenmaier better get in the game. What fun are truth and facts when he could have easily gone on TV and, time zones be darned, said “The staff here at NASA can think of no greater way to show how upset we are that the U.S. won the Revolutionary War than by spending billions of American taxpayers’ dollars of a rocket.”

NASA needs pub? That’d do it.

But, as polluted as weddings are becoming, less a public commitment of mutual love and more a grotesque spectacle of taffeta clad nightmares, it seems that another tradition is taking a hit. No longer accepting that some people want to have fun, Reuters is reporting that the Russian Orthodox Church completely misses the point and wants nightclubs to have books instead of booze.

Yeah, like any of us stand a chance of picking up a sober chick.

Russian revellers can now swap vodka and dancing for tea and reading at new “spiritual nightclubs” being set up by Orthodox Church, media said on Monday quoting a top religious official. In the latest suggestion by the increasingly powerful Church, youths will be able to “have the opportunity for serious dialogue, reading, unhurried conversation so they can have a cup of tea,” said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin.

“A nightclub does not have to be a place where debauchery, boozing and drug addiction reign,” said Chaplin, who added that the Church-inspired clubs will stay open till 5 a.m. like most of Russia’s drinking holes.

Endorsed by Russia’s leaders as the country’s main faith, the Orthodox Church has grown increasingly powerful since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991.

Its efforts to influence education and secular life have drawn criticism from rights groups and members of minority faiths. Russia’s 20 million Muslims make up a seventh of the country’s population.

Chaplin outraged feminists earlier this year when he said women should dress more modestly and refrain from walking down the street “painted like a clown.”

I don’t see the problem. Every party should have a clown. Besides, has he seen the wedding dress Kate’s going to be wearing? She’s going to look like a little kid dragging a goofy sheet behind her.

Oh well, it’s hump day, so now’s as good a time as any to get this party started.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

We all love our pets. Some more than others, but usually within limits. After all, our little critters are more akin to children than anything else. We care for them, nurture them, train them and promise to care for them.

Those are all good things.

Yet, we also know that laws are written for a reason. Well, most of them. For example, it’s illegal to have sex with someone in the pre-natal delivery room in the hospital. Why? Because some idiot and their significant other decided that the best use for that semi-private room, after the water broke, was to entertain the staff and random passersby.

Some people just have to ruin it for the rest of us.

Nevertheless, not even when I wrote how weird Florida is did I realize how much I had woefully underestimated the, voting eligible, citizens of the Sunshine State. Ben Muessig tells us that the same state which is demanding Americans defend the sanctity of marriage is also the only state where beastiality is legal.

Oh, go ahead and click the link. It’s actually a cute music video you can sing along with your kids just before you spend years explaining it.

It’s the state of butterfly ballots, gator farms and oversized mice.

It’s the retirement hub discovered by a Spaniard rumored to have lost his life hunting for the legendary Fountain of Youth.

It’s the only place in America where the farther north you go, the farther south you get.

Florida is undeniably a quirky place. But among many journalists and news junkies, the Sunshine State has developed a reputation for being the state that generates the most weird news and the weirdest weird news.

How did a state once famous for its oranges and seniors turn into a hub for all things strange?

According to Florida resident and weird news legend Chuck Shepherd, Florida emerged as a weird news capital a little more than a decade ago.

Shepherd — credited with inventing weird news reporting in his widely syndicated “News of the Weird” column — said he knew Florida had come into its own in the late 1990s, when the San Francisco alternative newspaper SF Weekly featured a story on men who surgically remove their sexual organs; two of the paper’s three sources were Floridians.

Sylvia Mythen, AP
Welcome to Florida — the weirdest state in the nation. This odd photograph, taken Jan. 5 in Venice, shows an alligator that was somehow covered in orange paint or an orange substance, according to state wildlife officials. No, alligators can’t turn orange naturally. And yes, this is the kind of story journalists have come to expect from the Sunshine State.

“When a San Fran writer on sexual aberrations has to buy a ticket to the ‘F’ state to fill out his story, we have a winner,” he told AOL News.

Florida historian Gary Mormino agrees that the Sunshine State overtook California as “the new capital of weirdness” in the 1990s or 2000s.

“The rationale used to be that America tilted toward the west and all the nuts rolled to California,” said Mormino, a history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. “Now, perhaps, there’s been a tectonic shift and America tilts toward the southeast.”

For many Americans, that shift first became noticeable in 2000, when Florida bizarrely hurled itself onto the national stage in the aftermath of the contested presidential election.

In the years since, analysis of Associated Press stories has identified Florida as the nation’s strangest state, while popular websites like Gawker.com have turned the Sunshine State into a punchline.

Readers of Fark.com categorize news stories with descriptive tags, including “asinine,” “obvious,” “weird” and “interesting.” The only state honored with its own tag is Florida, a keyword on the site since 2001.

“Newest Florida bumper sticker: My honor student pistol-whipped me,” read one snarky headline assigned a Florida tag last month.

“Fark put it up, thinking it would be a temporary thing, but we quickly discovered that there were more than enough strange things happening in Florida to warrant the tag,” said Tony Deconinck, a Fark admin and AOL Weird News contributor. “Other states have odd stories come out of them, but no state can challenge Florida. It’s the heavyweight champion of weirdness.”

Here at AOL Weird News, journalists have written more weird news stories about Florida than any other state — and with pieces about a mom accused of driving her son’s getaway car, an orthodontist who repairs turtle shells, bags of stolen dildos, and a bikini brawl at a Burger King — it’s safe to say we’re doing it for good reason.

Though Florida only recently achieved recognition for producing so much weird news, the state has an odd history dating back centuries.

From Spanish colonization through American statehood, Florida played host to a variety of eccentric characters and strange happenings, like the “wreckers” who turned Key West into one of the continent’s wealthiest communities by legally plundering sinking ships and auctioning their cargo.

But according to Mormino, the Florida we know today — a “fast-paced and over-the-top” place that is, in many ways, the least southern state in the South — only emerged in the 1920s.

“You had the wealthy building homes in Miami Beach,” Mormino said. “There were the ‘Tin Can Tourists’ — the respectable middle class and the working poor — coming to Florida for the first time in automobiles. That was the beginning of the alligator farms, ostrich farms; the start of the crazy tourist destinations.”

That’s also when a speculative real estate bubble inflated and burst, setting the bar, in many ways, for a culture of lax regulation that continues in Florida even today.

With a history of lenient divorce laws, it’s no surprise that Panama City, among other Florida communities, tops national charts as a divorce capital.

Meanwhile, Florida’s “homestead exemption” has long protected private property from creditors, making Florida a place where the bankrupt and highly indebted — including celebs like O.J. Simpson — have shielded their assets.

Florida has even advertised its bizarre legal loopholes with the iconic 1980s tourism slogan “Florida: The Rules Are Different Here.”

Indeed they are. (This is the state where lawmakers are still struggling to pass a bill that would make bestiality illegal.)

Thankfully for readers of weird news, the rules are also different when it comes to public records laws.

Will Greenlee, the reporter who maintains the Treasure Coast Newspapers’ “Off The Beat” blog, said it’s unclear whether Florida actually generates more weird news than other states — or if more weird news stories just happen to find their way into Florida newspapers.

“You may be hearing about it more (than in other states) because the open records laws are very liberal in Florida,” Greenlee said. “It’s easier to get access to police reports and things that might not be as accessible in other places.”

And that may be the only liberal thing in the entire state.

But, seriously, are you as amazed as I am that there’s opposition to this law? What the heck is happening down there? Cross dressing alligators? Swamp people needing that anaconda boogie?

Trust me people, you have many wonderful options that do not involve four legs. And if you can’t handle that, there’s still the furry option.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted up the first single and title track to the new record called Circuital from My Morning Jacket, which comes out on 31st May on ATO Records.

Today, they’ve put another track off of the record out there, entitled “Holdin’ On To Black Metal”.  The band continues to become more and more unpredictable, and this falsetto-drenched number might make you either love them or hate them.

It’s being reported that front man Jim James said this to the rest of the band before they recorded the track:

“I want it to sound like we’re Cuban or Cambodian kids, and we’re wearing berets and we’re walking through an alley and we stumble upon this band, and it explodes into this crazy sing-along”

Whatever that means.

My Morning Jacket – “Holdin’ On To Black Metal”:

Somewhere in the 80’s employers began getting very excited by playing “buzzword bingo.” Around the same time employees began caring less and less who they worked for as long as they got paid. After all, how many times can you sit through versions of this conversation without taking an automatic weapon to the office?

“Well, Rupert, it truly seems as though we’ve accredited the new paradigm by acquiring the synergy of the tertiary Hooterville marketing framework.”

“Why Waldo, proactive stances like yours are what make America great.”

Insert company’s theme music. Usually a really treacly bit of 70’s pop music that no one with an IQ above lint ever liked.

So why am I not surprised to run across, not one but, two examples of companies hiring people for jobs based on buzzwords and not references?

MSNBC is reporting that some random dude claimed to be a U.S. Army General and got a $175,000 a year gig.

Yeah, you and me? We’re doing it wrong.

A West Virginia man seeking a six-figure job with an Ohio company pretended to be a major general with the U.S. Army, listed the Army chief of staff as a reference on his resume and claimed to have professional relationships with current and former U.S. defense secretaries, federal authorities allege in documents filed in federal court.

A criminal complaint accuses Randall Thomas Keyser of Barboursville, W.Va., of wire fraud. He was arrested Thursday and has a detention hearing set for Tuesday in Akron. Court records show he was born in 1954.

An FBI agent alleges in an affidavit that Keyser defrauded an Akron construction company so he could get a $175,000 job for which he wasn’t qualified and get payment for travel expenses for an interview.

“It’s kind of outrageous,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Bulford told The Akron Beacon Journal. “Anybody who served our country and sees this I think will be outraged.”

Keyser’s attorney, George Pappas, said Saturday he had no comment.

Court documents do not name the company; the Beacon Journal identified it as Tri-C Construction.

Keyser contacted the company in mid-March after it announced a job opening online, the affidavit said. Through phone calls, meetings and e-mail from a private, non-government account that included the image of the Department of Defense seal, Keyser convinced company officials his military background was real, the affidavit said. He submitted a resume indicating he’d served in several wars and had supervised 17 multimillion-dollar construction projects around the world.

He appeared in military uniform at one meeting, Tri-C president Randy Clarahan told the newspaper. The company also received calls from people identifying themselves as Gen. George Casey, then Army chief of staff, and Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff, the affidavit said.

The company became suspicious and contacted the FBI.

Really? A retired general from the Army was looking for a construction gig? That wasn’t their first clue? Third? Jiminy Christmas, was it even in the top 10?

I think I’ll call them and tell them I was a gymnast. That should be good for $100,000 or so.

This next story is kind of sad. It seems that an illegal immigrant trying to make a new life for himself took a job as a cop in Alaska under an assumed name and, according to all reports, was very good at it. Until, that is, as Rachel D’oro reports, someone figured out what happened.

For years, the man known as Rafael Espinoza was widely respected as an exemplary police officer who was popular among his peers in Alaska’s largest city.

All that ended this week when authorities discovered he was really Mexican national Rafael Mora-Lopez, who was in the U.S. illegally and stole another man’s identity, officials charged.

“His reputation here is one of a hard-working officer, one who was very professional,” Anchorage Police Chief Mark Mew said Friday at a news conference announcing Mora-Lopez’s arrest. “The problem, obviously, is he is not Rafael Espinoza.”

Soon after the announcement, Mora-Lopez appeared in U.S. District Court in Anchorage and pleaded not guilty to a charge of passport fraud, which carries a maximum 10-year sentence. At his arraignment, Mora-Lopez told a federal magistrate he is 47, even though officials listed his age as 51.

His attorney, Alan Dayan, declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Federal agents processing a renewal request for his passport discovered the alleged fraud. He was arrested Thursday after authorities searched his home and found documents confirming his true identity, officials said.

Mora-Lopez had been employed as an Anchorage police officer since 2005 under the assumed name. Police and federal prosecutors said he doesn’t have a criminal record.

“We have no evidence that this individual had at the time been anything other than a good police officer,” Karen Loeffler, U.S. Attorney in Alaska said.

The real Rafael Espinoza is a U.S. citizen who lives outside Alaska.

He had passed the polygraph, background check

Officials said it’s too soon to gauge implications of the case, such as any fallout over Mora-Lopez’s court testimony in past criminal trials. Authorities released limited details, saying the case was still unfolding.

Mew said the department conducted a pre-employment criminal background check on Mora-Lopez and he also passed a polygraph test. A national fingerprint check also turned up empty.

The arrest was a “bitter pill to swallow” for many in the police department, Mew said.

There are no immediate plans to file state charges, said John Skidmore, a state attorney. He and other officials stressed that the case was still under investigation.

“At this time, we have no reason to believe, from what we know so far, that this gentleman or this officer’s good work for APD has in any way been compromised or questioned,” Skidmore said.

U.S. Magistrate John D. Roberts set bond at $50,000, and ordered Mora-Lopez to home-confinement and electronic monitoring. His defense attorney told the magistrate that Mora-Lopez has a wife and child in Alaska and has close ties to Anchorage, where he has lived since the late 1980s.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Dayan said.

The wife could not be reached by phone for comment Friday.

The passport fraud case is similar to one involving a Mexican national who took the identity of a dead cousin who was a U.S. citizen in order to become a Milwaukee police officer. Oscar Ayala-Cornejo was deported to Mexico in 2007.

Without taking a stand one way or the other on the quagmire of immigration policy, this kind of stuff is going to happen more often until someone, somewhere, figures out a way to make our borders a reasonable place to visit.

Of course, checking a reference or two might have helped too.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!