Archives for June 2011

The taste of fried chicken is the best, but the calories and the fat grams are not worth it…or is it?  Regardless if the Colonel has removed the word “fried” from his tasty buckets of chicken, that stuff is not any healthier.   So here’s a healthier idea, and it’s cheap too.  Make a healthier friedless chicken using just a few ingredients.

Click on the photos to enlarge!

You’ll need the following:

2 skinless-boneless chicken breasts
2 cups plain non-fat yogurt
1 cup of crushed cornflakes cereal
Add Spice if desired

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F

Dip each chicken breasts in yogurt, until completely coated.

Roll the yogurt coated chicken onto the crushed cornflake crumbs and coat all sides.

Once coated, stare at the chicken for about 30 seconds, but do not eat just yet!

Place chicken onto a cookie sheet and bake the chicken in the oven for 60 minutes. (Do not flip)

Now it is ready to serve!

This recipe is under 250 calories per serving (compared to the almost 800 calories from a deep fried version with the skin) around 11 grams of fat (compared to around 40 grams) the sodium is just under 300 grams (compared to above 3000 grams).  You’ll have to check your actual ingredients nutrition labels for an accurate count, but this gives you a pretty clear idea on how much healthier this version is.  The recipe is so easy, it won’t take you much to make this and see if you like the taste as well.  This is just a fun recipe that you can make with someone you love!

Remember, if two young pups like Lily & Spike can make this, so can you!

Cook this!

Every morning when I log into the super secret Nude Hippo command center with the shielded password of n*u%d$e^h#I@p&p!0 (the 0 in place of a o really keeps the hackers out) so that I can communicate with you from my camouflaged command center (it looks just like a living room, you’d never spot it), I am greeted by a perky “Howdy, Bill McCormick” in the upper right hand corner of my screen. In other words I start every day by seeing a grammatically incorrect welcome message. I smile when I see it for the simple reason that the knowledge that the cybercosm can’t get the placement of a simple comma right proves there’s hope for humanity after all. Maybe not a lot, but I’ll cling to whatever flotsam I can find. Nevertheless, I am happily entertained by this each day.

Some might say I set the bar too low.

But on a day that finds airport geese about to be sacrificed to feed the homeless (really? they get foi gras and we get Mickey D’s?) and mutant Chinese cow clones being used to create faux human breast milk, it seems we should all try and find a little entertainment where we can.

And you’re in luck because today’s blog features as little entertainment as possible.

It seems that in Gloucester, England a group of college students decided the best way to get on their local rugby team was by having group sex on a public bus.

I know, I know, who among us hasn’t done the exact same thing?

British prosecutors said six university students boarded a bus dressed as characters from “Top Gun” and performed lewd sex acts while on the vehicle.

Gloucester Crown Court heard Friday Ryan Lissamore, 19, Oliver Graham, 21, Lewis Baker, 22, James Devlin, 20, Alex Bye, 20, and Daniel Hammond, 20, stripped off their clothes on the bus Sept. 20 and performed “unusual” sex acts including masturbation, The Sun reported Friday.

Prosecutors said witnesses included four 17-year-old girls.

The defendants are all University of Gloucestershire students who performed the stunt as part of initiation rituals for the rugby and soccer teams, the court heard.

“They were clearly drunk and many of them were tied together,” prosecutor Julian Kesner said. “What they were being asked to do on the bus by the more senior members of the clubs were acts of outraging public decency. The acts can be described as both revolting and disgusting.”

Baker, Devlin, Bye and Hammond pleaded guilty to committing obscene acts in front of the four teenage girls while Lissamore and Graham pleaded guilty to charges of outraging public decency.

All six students were ordered to perform community service and forced to pay prosecution costs. They were also banned from businesses selling alcohol for 160 days.

The students were asked to “perform?” Does the bus trip count against their time?

But maybe even that bit of whimsy is too much entertainment for you. Strange, I admit, but there may be a few among us here today who prefer life a little less graphic. Not to worry. We here at Nude Hippo strive for the mundane whenever possible and today’s no exception.

Reuters reports that Norwegian Cruise Lines is offering over 8,000 minutes of the most boring footage possible.

And it’s a huge hit in Europe.

Worn out by a fast-paced life and faster-paced television shows but lack a vacation budget? Take a five-day cruise along Norway’s scenic fjords, all free and streamed live on Norwegian public television.

For 8,040 minutes straight — including all the boring bits — viewers can follow the Hurtigruten MMS Nordnorge cruise ship and its roughly 670 passengers and crew as the vessel steams north along Norway’s jagged coastline.

The “minute-by-minute” coverage started on Thursday and includes all on-board announcements and views from 11 cameras focusing on the spectacular fjords, boat traffic around the ship, officers on the bridge and the mostly elderly passengers strolling the decks and taking in the scenery.

“It is slow, it is very slow,” said Rune Moeklebust, the project manager for the show running on the NRK2 channel.

“It is the opposite to everything else on TV — that’s why it stands out and why, apparently, people want to watch.”
Preliminary viewing data is encouraging, Moeklebust told Reuters, with 1.3 million of Norway’s 4.9 million residents at least “stopping by” NRK2 between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the first day.

With a peak audience of 325,000 and some 160,000 glued to the broadcast for the entire 7-hour period, the “live documentary” grabbed more viewers than NRK2’s usual programing.

Passengers, mostly from Norway and Germany, booked tickets for the 1,460 nautical mile voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes, a Barents Sea port near the Russian border deep in the Arctic, without knowing they would be part of what NRK said is set to be the world’s longest uninterrupted live broadcast.

They were informed about the live-broadcasting plan by mail and in meetings after boarding in Bergen on Thursday.

“Some say it’s like watching paint dry but it’s so fun to sit in the master control room and mix the cameras,” said Moeklebust, adding that 22 NRK crew were aboard the vessel providing the non-stop coverage.

Moeklebust said the idea for the cruise livecast came after the success of his previous minute-by-minute coverage from a train making a 7-hour trip between Oslo and Bergen, which was viewed at least in part by 1.2 million people in 2009.

“That night we realized just how much people wanted to see TV like this and we started thinking about what would be the ultimate Norwegian voyage,” he said. “For many Norwegians, this is the most important trip of their lives… which tells the story of their coastline and shows its fantastic scenery.”

To follow the voyage live, click on: http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/direkte/nrk2/

Admit it, you clicked the link didn’t you?

However, for the ultimate entertainment experience you might wish to emulate one of our regular readers, Anne (not her real name). Two weeks ago she made it her stated goal to read every single article in the World News Center, starting with the oldest and working her way forward, and then provide me with an editorial review of each and every one.

I know, you’re on the edge of your seat in anticipation.

Yes, she actually accomplished her goal and, no, she doesn’t seem to need any long term therapy.

You’ll also be pleased to note that not one error she discovered, even the tautology, has been corrected. So you can recreate her experience at any time.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m proud of my errors, it’s just that I’m too damn lazy to deal with them.

Besides, it’s not as if the powers that be actually read any of the stuff I post. They think of me like a prostitute. They don’t pay me to show up and perform, they pay me to shut up and leave.

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

Have you ever noticed how insecure people automatically assume that you share their shortcomings? If they can’t kick a soccer ball then anyone who can must be a freak of nature and therefore must either be ignored, destroyed or granted magical powers. The same applies to the ancient alien enthusiasts. Since they are too stupid or incompetent to build a simple battery (I made one as a Boy Scout, it’s not that freaking hard) then anyone who did must have had extraterrestrial assistance. Or if some ancient Egyptian noticed that birds can fly and wondered why he couldn’t too, then he must be under the control of beings from Tau Ceti C. Or she, gender actually doesn’t matter here. What does matter is that people ignore the plausible to fill in their knowledge gaps with the wildly speculative. It’s how some people went from talking about legitimately crazy Nazis to UFOs crashing all over the planet with absolutely no steps in between.

Ignoring the obvious fact that any beings intelligent enough to navigate across billions of miles of space, avoid asteroid fields and gravity wells, not to mention the occasional black hole, would have the skill set necessary to NOT CRASH INTO A FREAKING PLANET, there’s still the lack of one single bit of even the most minute evidence available to support their claims. Little kids claiming that the dog ate their homework have more credibility.

It is with these people in mind that we discuss today’s topic.

Crop circles.

Crop circles first began appearing in the 1970s; which, coincidentally enough, was the same time that recreational drugs went from the cult underground into the mainstream. I’m sure those two events are unrelated.

In Krasnodar, Russia locals recently reported finding crop circles. Obviously the Russian educational system has gone thorugh a severe down turn since the days of Yuri Gagarin since the alleged circles (pictured below) all look like spilt milk.

In Indonesia a much prettier set of crop circles were found and immediately attributed to UFOs.

Human experience sometimes crashes into the dynamic cosmos of the unknown and the unexplained, casting doubts but leaving little in the way of explanation.

Such is the case with this crop circle that appeared in a rice field in Indonesia.

Although reports of crop circles have occurred down through time in many parts of the world, this is the second time one has been found in Indonesia and the very first crop circle ever to be seen in a rice field.

What does it mean? No one can really say, but the phenomenon has attracted thousands of spectators, especially following rumors that the circles might have been made by a UFO.

Officials from Indonesia’s space agency and well-respected astronomers believe the circles were sculpted by human hands and all agree that a UFO, like Mae West used to say about goodness, had nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, the 70-yard-wide crop circle is unsettling to say the very least. It resembles a flower with a very detailed and intricate pattern. Whatever it is or it isn’t, the circle has become such a popular phenomenon that police were forced to block off the area with yellow tape and villagers have started charging entrance fees!

The circle just appeared one morning in the middle of the rice paddies in Jogotirto village in the Sieman.

Who did it and why may never be known.

Still, the presence of this crop circle is enough to send a cold shiver up even the most conventional spine.

No, sorry, not even a tingle. Someone made a nice tourist attraction and will make a few bucks off of it, but that someone is neither little nor green.

The Associated Press recently reported on a much more logical explanation for a series of crop circles in Australia.

Stoned wallabies.

Wallabies snacking in Tasmania’s legally grown opium poppy fields are getting “high as a kite” and hopping around in circles, trampling the crops, a state official said.

Tasmania Attorney-General Lara Giddings told a budget hearing Wednesday that she had recently read about the kangaroo-like marsupials’ antics in a brief on the state’s large poppy industry. Tasmania is the world’s largest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.

“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” The Mercury newspaper quoted Giddings as telling the hearing. “Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”

But let’s say you don’t have any stoned wallabies around and you still want to make a crop circle. I know, it’s hard to believe but it could happen. Well, worry no more. The nice people at WikiHow have a nice, ten step, procedure for you to follow that even comes with legal advice in the event that some farmer decides to shoot your trespassing butt.

They also provide tips on how to make your crop circle look like it was flown in from Alpha Centauri.

For best results you should probably spend more time planning the crop circle than actually making it. By carefully planning the design, working out what equipment is needed, and discarding ideas that will be difficult or impossible to achieve, you can reduce the scope for embarrassing errors.

Use measurements scaled up from your design and a surveyors tapemeasure to subdivide your circle into parts, put posts on the points. Don’t try and guess stuff by eye as these circles usually fail.

Hold tapes or measuring ropes tight, slack tapes mean wobbly circles. Experienced circlemakers hold tape measure so tight it hurts. No pain, no accuracy!

Flatten during a dry period, to avoid churning up mud.

Walk sideways using edge of your foot to flatten corn AKA “sidestomping” when tolding tapes to do circles, this makes fatter lines easier to see.

Straight lines are created by two persons holding tape and one person “sidestomping” along the tape with it almost touching their belly.

Try to use the cover of night. Remember that ideally you should be finished by dawn, when you can take a picture of the pristine design before swarms of “croppies” come and trample all over it.

To leave a ‘weird’ crop circle of cosmic origins:

Bend some stalks around by exposing them to a blue light source for a few hours. Applying small amounts of natural gum or plaster will lock their new shape. Sadly this approach may not satisfy a detailed or scientific inspection.

Create swirled nests in the flattened areas by your clever weaving of stalks.

Also, melt some iron filings into droplets on site and sprinkle them around the flattened area to leave ‘meteorite particles’ and magnetized stalks.

Try varying the direction you flatten the corn, wavy lines or up a line then back a line. This creates amazing shiny lay patterns visible from the air.

So there you have it. The next time someone tells you that UFOs are responsible for crop circles or that you need a tinfoil hat to keep the aliens away, you may feel free to ask them not to procreate.

In fact, you should demand it.

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

Don’t you love in life, when you stumble on something unique? Well, I did just that –and made a wonderful discovery! We’ve all had our fair share of caricatures done at amusement parks, or even on the streets of Chicago. Those sketches are always good for a laugh– or sometimes leave you appalled thinking, “Oh my God- I look like THAT?!?!” I don’t know about you, but if I have big ears I definitely don’t want them exaggerated in a caricature!

Needless to say, I’ve always wanted a more real-life illustration of myself… maybe something a little glamorous, too– but I’ve been hesitant, thinking an artist wouldn’t be able to capture what I was looking for. Then I stumbled on this amazing fashion illustrator right here in Chicago, Rosemary Fanti. She can draw ANYTHING…. from your pet, to live portraits at a wedding, to a sketch directly off a photograph, and the list goes on. Her reasonable rate makes it very affordable to look fabulous forever, on paper.

Here’s Rosemary to the left, sitting proudly by a piece of her work. By the way… I LOVE her hair. Only an artist could get away with looking so good in a hairstyle like that!! I know I couldn’t pull it off.

So, I hired this amazing woman to create a “logo” for me– yes I was nervous thinking, “how could she possible get it to look just like me, and make me look like a glamorous TV Host, too?!” I will admit, I was apprehensive, but I took a chance. I scoured her website, and realized there wasn’t a theme she couldn’t tackle . A nationally recognized fashion illustrator, Rosemary Fanti creates wedding, event, and fashion illustrations that are as vivid and alive as the people she illustrates. She will attend your event and create illustrations that are truly chic and fashionable. Within minutes, Rosemary will capture your guests on paper and present them with their custom illustration. How cool, right?!??! Rosemary also works from clients photography, at her art studio, to illustrate finely detailed portraits. That’s the option I went with…. I had to simply send her a few photos of my face, and she was able to master my features on paper. Well, I have to say she made me look way more glamorous than I am on a normal day, but that’s what I wanted:)!!

After receiving my 11″ by 14″ original of the illustration you see to the right… I marched down to JoAnn Fabric’s and hit up their custom framing section. Which, by the way, is 60% off!! Whoo-Whoo! I have never had something custom framed, and I quickly learned that it is an extensive process. First, I had to decide my budget, because things can get pretty pricey– fast. Then, I chose my matte & settled on a frame. I decided to do a double matte. A deep purple will sit on top showing 2 inches around the portrait, and about a quarter of an inch of black matte will peak-a-boo out from underneath the purple; giving it a little pop. I took a picture (to the left) of the ensemble I came up with at JoAnn’s…. what do you think?? I hope it turns out ok… as I mentioned prior, I have NEVER done custom framing before so I basically had no clue what I’m doing. The folks at JoAnn Fabric’s were really helpful though… thank God.

Whether it’s on the runway or walking down the aisle, Rosemary captures events in motion with her fabulous illustration. You can take your memories home instantly, and derive pleasure from them, forever.  Which is what I did! I’m so glad I discovered such a talented artist, right here in Chicago. Check her out on Facebook, or on her Official Website.  

Oh! This is so cool too…… I found this video on YouTube of Rosemary in her element, and doing what she does best– drawing! Take a second and check it out!

Driving from point A to point B is a time honored tradition. Not just in America, though we made it famous, but all over the world. Germany’s Autobahns allow you to get from one end of the country to the other at record speeds. If you’re ever there spend the extra bucks and rent a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. It will be the only time in your life you can open one all the way up and let it rip. However, as the map reading skills of people has been in steady decline and GPS has taken over the world, mankind has become very reliant on the words of others to lead him/her from point to point. And, as we all know, nothing bad can happen when you cede control of your decision making processes to a cybernetic being.

It also doesn’t help that some people are so incredibly dense as to defy description.

UPI is reporting that a trio of women drove their car off a boat ramp.

A trio of Washington state women said they were lucky to escape injury when their GPS device directed them to drive into the water.

The women said they were driving in Bellevue when the GPS instructed them to make a U-turn that took them down a boat ramp and into Mercer Slough, KIRO-TV, Seattle, reported Wednesday.

The women, who were visiting from out of town, received a ride back to the hotel from firefighters.

These are clearly women who are still baffled by how the letters appear on Wheel of Fortune. Boat ramps, unlike highways, are relatively finite things. Anyone’s who’s ever been fishing can tell you that they clearly aren’t roads. Even with the wrong directions, how could they not notice the giant freaking puddle? Seriously, Mercer Slough is wider than the Des Plains River at several points. Bonus, since it’s a nature preserve, all of its boat docks are those little wooden ones that you see in Huck Finn reenactments.

I think a nice game of “hide the keys” is in order for these lasses.

But, okay, say you do end up with your car in the water. Who do you call? Well, no one obviously, you let your GPS figure all that tough stuff out for you. After all, we wouldn’t want to tax your tiny mind now would we? As the Telegraph UK reports, that’s exactly what happened in Wales and is why the Coast Guard spent 3 hours looking for a BMW miles from shore.

Coastguards launched the lifeboat after picking up an emergency signal four miles out at sea off the Welsh coast.

But after a three hour search operation the signal was traced to an anti-theft tracking device fitted to a BMW safely parked on the car ferry from Dublin to Liverpool.

Coastguard spokesman Mark Craddock said: “We were called by police to say a tracking device signal had been detected four miles out at sea.

“There had been a signal and then it had gone so we feared a boat could have sunk – we had to treat it as the worst possible scenario.”

But after three-hour search in the darkness the crew of the Anglesey-based Moelfre lifeboat failed to find a sailor in trouble. And coastguards realised the emergency signal came from the exact position of a P&O Dublin to Liverpool car ferry.

They discovered it was an Emergency Telematics signal from a GPS system fitted as standard into new BMW and Volvo vehicles.

Mr Craddock said: “We investigated where this signal may have come from and worked out that a Dublin to Liverpool vessel would have been at that approximate location at the time the signal was emitted.

“We now believe the Emergency Telematics signal came from a vehicle on the ferry, the European Endeavour, and was then switched off again.

“The devices go off if the car is stolen or can be triggered if the airbag goes off or can be set off by the driver if they have broken down.”

Coastguards said it was the first time a rescue mission had been launched because of an anti-theft device fitted to a car safely parked on a ferry.

Mr Craddock, watch manager at Holyhead Coastguard, added: “This is a new problem for us but with more vehicles having these devices fitted it could become an issue.

“On this occasion it wasted the time and fuel of a lifeboat crew for nearly three hours.”

Passengers on the P&O ferry were asked to check their GPS systems when they disembarked at Liverpool.

Dave Massey, of Moelfre Lifeboat said: “Every call we receive has to be treated as a worst case scenario.

“We were at the location where the signal was detected within 25 minutes and conducted a major search of the vicinity.
“This incident was logged as a false alarm with good intention.”

Since both Volvo and BMW ship cars to the US, can you imagine the fun to be had if those suckers went off in the middle of the Atlantic?

I’ll be honest, every car I’ve ever driven with GPS found the unit turned off before the key hit the ignition. The one time I did use it, to get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a rainstorm, I ended up on a wharf. However, I did not drive into the water. Instead I tried this nutty idea. I turned around, went to a gas station and asked directions.

Got there just fine and picked up a pack of smokes to boot.

You may be wondering if there’s any use for those silly devices at all. I can think of one. They should be implanted in engagement rings. Reuters reports that a man had a very romantic, if incredibly dumb, idea and it went very wrong.

It is the one moment every man wants to get right — and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong.

The luckless 28 year-old’s dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air.

Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question.

But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring — and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend — sailing away over the rooftops.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Sun newspaper.

“I just watched as it went further and further into the air.

“I felt like such a plonker. It cost a fortune and I knew my girlfriend would kill me.”

Hajji spent two hours in his car trying to chase and find the balloon, without success.

“I thought I would give Leanne a pin so I could literally pop the question,” he said.

“But I had to tell her the story — she went absolutely mad. Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring.”

He is hoping the ring will still turn up.

“It would be amazing if someone found it,” he added.

First off I hope none of you ever feel like a plonker. I don’t know what it is but I’m sure it will cost you your job. Secondly, some advice for the poor Mr. Hajji; dump the b***h. If she’s so self centered as to not even see the humor in this situation you’re in for a life of pain.

No, you don’t need a second opinion.

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