Azonie's Blog

I knew she was going to be famous. lol

'$25,000 per day' for 'Ditzy Chick'
Teen beauty who had pageant meltdown now works as model for Donald Trump

Posted: September 19, 2007
9:25 p.m. Eastern

By Joe Kovacs

Ha ha ha, The really funny part is that he says he was embarrassed by the fact that his *unit* got stuck. I'm thinking that that was probably the LEAST embarrassing thing he's done in his acts. lolA DWARF performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.

Daniel Blackner, or Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.

The main part of his act was for him to appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member with a special apparatus.

The attachment broke before the performance and Mr Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.

He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and ... hospitalisation.

"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed A&E with a vacuum attached to me," Mr Blackner said.

"I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short-lived."

I don't care how good it tastes, 160.00 per lb is just crazy.

World's costliest ham triggers pork envy

By AMANDA RIVKIN, Associated Press WriterSat Aug 18, 2:20 PM ET

Spanish cuisine tickles the palate in a thousand ways: ugly but delicious creatures called goose barnacles; boiled octopus with a dash of olive oil and paprika; thick, mushy sausage made from pig's blood.

Spaniards are nothing if not dedicated eaters.

Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the world.

Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for just a slice.

The 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve (as this pricey pork will be known) won't be available until late 2008 and you must buy the whole ham or nothing at all. But that hasn't dissuaded gastronomic Web sites and blogs from buzzing with talk of the farm where it is being produced, likening it to a Mount Olympus of pork.

Its mastermind, Manuel Maldonado, 44, comes from a long line of ham producers in a country that's nuts about the stuff. In bars and restaurants, legs of ham hanging from the wall are as common as TV sets.

But Maldonado is taking the art of the ham to new heights, pampering his pigs with a free-range lifestyle and top-quality diet of acorns before slaughtering them, then curing the meat for two years — twice as long as his competitors.

It's that last step that Maldonado credits with creating a delicacy that justifies the heavenly price.

Maldonado had hoped to roll out his super-gourmet ham this year, but felt the first batch fell short of his ultra-demanding standards and did not put it up for sale. He hopes to do better this time and have it ready around Christmas 2008.

"This is the best ham in the world because it comes from the best pig in the world," Maldonado says of 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve, a reference to the year the pigs were slaughtered.

"It is the most important ham in Spain," adds Pedro Soley, a Barcelona connoisseur who is among the lucky few lining up to buy one. Indeed, this is a limited edition piece: Maldonado will produce just 80 to 100 legs.

And they are expected to be a world apart from Spain's more common Iberian ham — named for the breed of pig used — which is similar to Italian prosciutto, but a darker red and chewier.

For comparison, Italy's finest Prosciutto di Parma and Spain's top-grade Spanish acorn-fed Iberian ham — both savory, umami-rich meats usually served as ultra-thin slices — top out at $30 a pound.

With Spanish pigs bound for ham glory, diet is everything. The least expensive ham is made from pigs fed on grain, whereas mid-grade hams come from pigs raised on a combination of wheat and acorns.

Then there are Spain's poshest pigs, which feast exclusively on acorns, producing a rich flavor and oily texture that make the meat a delicacy. Spain's finest hams are not considered first-rate without an "acorn-fed" stamp on the label.

At least some foodies apparently haven't been put off by the price of Maldonado's work. One food blog, Directo al Paladar, called the cost of the ham "almost a gift," considering how it is made.

Maldonado has yet to set a price for customers who buy the 13-pound hams directly from him, but the food site Ibergour.com has a dozen for sale at $2,100 each, and is accepting $250 deposits.

Is it ridiculous to pay that for a piece of pig?

No, says Maldonado. A ham like this can be shared among 20 people, he notes, whereas a bottle of the finest wine going for the same amount goes down quickly among just a few.

For four generations, Maldonado's family has been making ham from high-quality hogs in this town of 5,000 in Spain's southwest Extremadura region.

Their herds of black Iberian beauties are kept on a handful of acorn-rich farms in the surrounding meadowlands, walking freely up to 6 miles daily without any swineherds to look after them.

After the pigs are butchered, they are cured in high-grade sea salts and refrigerated at 39 degrees. The salt is wiped off after about 12 days. Over the course of the next three months, the temperature is gradually raised to 68 degrees.

The hams then are brought into one of Maldonado's two warehouse-size cellars where they cure for two years, hanging on a series of interconnected hooks from floor to ceiling, like curtains.

Maldonado will only give a ham the top-grade seal if it passes his olfactory test after the curing process. He drives a small rod through the outer layer of fat and into the meat to see if he considers it up to snuff.

In his cellar, Maldonado drew one of the hams close and rubbed his thumbs gently against the smooth roundness of the ham's firm base.

"Ham provides us with life," he said with a smile.

___

http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/23115/strokes-of-
genius

personal website link.

http://philinthecircle.com/

Take the giant portrait he made of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a protest against nuclear proliferation. He applied 6,000 adhesive bandages on a plywood backdrop. Then, using a quart-sized bag of his own blood, he painted Kim's face on the exposed gauze. His sister-in-law, a doctor, helped him draw the 500ml he needed.

Hansen shrugs off the experience.

"Five hundred cc's of blood seems like a lot, but it's just nothing," he says from the basement of his brother's house outside St. Paul, Minnesota, where he currently lives and makes his art. "I don't even have scars on my arms anymore from it."

It's not the suffering that really distinguishes Hansen's work (after all, it's hard to top Van Gogh) but his style and method for displaying it. Hansen eschews galleries, preferring to take his art directly to the eyeballs rather than bringing the eyeballs to the art — through the Internet.

An art school dropout, Hansen works as an X-ray technician by day, spending all of his spare time and money on his art. But his work, and his method of presenting it, has given him a huge audience.

His breakthrough piece was a time-lapse video of a two-day project called "Influences." He painted 30 pictures on his own chest, one over the other, with each picture representing an influence in his life. When he was done, he peeled the quarter-inch thick layer of paint from his skin and cut out a silhouette of his own profile. The video was streamed more than a million times on the Web — a cyber art phenomenon in which both process and final piece were revealed.

Hansen often uses the technique of pointillism, in which the canvas is dabbed with tiny bits of color, rather than fluid brush strokes, to create a larger image.

But he gives pointillism a modern twist. You might call it "kinetic fragmentism" — pointillism in motion.

For instance, Hansen completed an on-camera piece of paint-dipped karate chops to reveal a portrait of martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

Hansen's Ku Klux Klan piece aims to provoke questions about religion.

His works often have a political stance. Several years ago, Hansen devised an image of President George W. Bush by hand-painting the names of 1,700 coalition soldiers killed from the beginning of the Iraq War until April 2005.

"They're dying for George Bush," he explains. "They're dying for an idea that he had and unfortunately it wasn't a clear idea."

Covering the entire back wall of his brother's basement is a 7 x 14 foot mural of the Ku Klux Klan, made up from thousands of verses copied from the bible and individually cut out. It's a companion piece to an image of civil rights hero Rosa Parks — also made from bible verses.

Hansen says the idea was to show the far-reaching influences of religion for both evil and good.

Hansen's commitment to his own brand of pointillism is most evident in a portrait of the so-called Green River killer, Gary Ridgeway.

He made the piece by drawing one-inch portraits of each of Ridgeway's 48 female victims in various shades of light and dark. He then photocopied the drawings and cut them out into 12,000 tiny squares which he arranged, one by one, to reveal the killer's face.

Hansen says it's about remembering the victims — women all connected by the misfortune of having crossed paths with Ridgeway. The project took four months.

The detail work has taken its toll. Hansen holds up his right hand to show me a twitch he says he's had since high school, when he was first introduced to pointillism and became obsessed with it.

Hansen created his self-portrait 'A Moment' over the course of six days, oven sitting cross-legged for up to 12 hours straight.

His latest project used the Internet to connect his viewers to the art being created. He created a ten-foot, spinning, circular canvas in his brother's garage, then moved in there himself. Taking a week off work, he spent six days straight living in front of his web cam, sleeping on the floor, eating takeout and encouraging people to call him or email him with a "moment" that changed their lives.

"I'm really interested in how all of our experiences build together to create whatever world we live in," he said before starting the project.

He got over 600 responses. People from all over the world, from the United Kingdom to Romania to Botswana, told him their personal moments: their first time acting on stage; the death of a parent without being about to say goodbye; seeing the rainforest destroyed.

Starting from the center of the canvas, Hansen then painted their words, working out to the edges until the image they had collectively created was a face — Hansen's own — bordered by four hands.

"There's always someone or something, maybe even ourselves, supporting us," Hansen tells me by phone, shortly after completing the piece. "But at the same time there is some experience... trying to push us down. And somehow, as we move through life, most people end up kind of staying in the center, in the middle through that experience."

Strangely, Hansen says the jitter in his hand that has plagued him for so many years went away while he was making the piece.

-See more of Hansen's work at his Web site. 

(PLEASE don't tell me that you are going to censor the word PENIS. It's grammatically correct and as far as I know NOT an obscene word) :-)

THE PENIS WANTS A RAISE
>
>  I, the Penis, hereby request a raise in salary for the following reasons:
>
>1-------- I do physical labor.
>
>  2.------- I work at great depths.
>
>3.------- I plunge head first into everything I do.
>
>4.------- I do not get weekends or public holidays off.
>
>  5.--------I work in a damp environment.
>
>  6. -------I work in a dark area that has poor ventilation.
>
>  7.------- I work in high temperatures.
>
>8. -------My work exposes me to diseases.
>
>  Reply:
>
>Dear Penis,
>
>After assessing your request, and considering the arguments you have
>raised, the management denies your request for the following reasons:
>
>1. You do not work 8 hours straight.
>
>2. You WORK IN SHORT SPURTS AND fall asleep after EACH brief work period.
>
>3. You do not always follow the orders of the management team.
>
>4. You do not stay in your designated area, and are often seen visiting
>other locations.
>
>5. You do not take initiative - you need to be pressured and stimulated in
>order to start working.
>
>6. You leave the workplace rather messy at the end of your shift.
>
>7. You don't always observe necessary safety re gulations, such as wearing
>the correct protective clothing.
>
>8. You will retire LONG before you are 65.
>
>  9. You are unable to work double shifts.
>
>10. You sometimes leave your designated work area before you have completed
>the assigned task.
>
>  11. And if that were not all, you have constantly been seen entering and
>exiting the workplace carrying two suspicious looking bags.
>
>Sincerely, The Management
>
>
>  Five reasons not to be a penis
>
>1. You're bald your whole life.
>2. You have a hole in your head.
>  3. Your neighbors are nuts.
>4. The guy behind you is an @#!$ hole and...
>5. Every time you get excited, you throw up and then faint
>
>

In what must be the most impressive sign of her vanity to date, the heiress has been spotted wearing a t-shirt featuring an Andy Warhol inspired print of her face.

The actress, who vowed to make time for "charity work" during her prison stay, was instead visited a day spa in Los Angeles.

The Simple Life star has also been spotted back on the Hollywood club scene.

Earlier this week she visited the exclusive club Les Deux with a group of girls, including her sister Nicky, and spent the night dancing and singing atop a couch.

An onlooker told American magazine People: "Paris was super happy and full of smiles. She was laughing, having fun, drinking, dancing, singing along to songs, talking to everyone and hugging all the girls at her table."

Just like old times.

A day earlier, while catching a screening of Michael Moore's health care documentary Sicko, she opted for a more demure look in a figure hugging green dress and towering Christian Louboutin shoes.

Still, she had one rather noticeable accessory – a coveted Apple iPhone.

I wonder what it is. 

 Seriously, have you ever thought about what our purpose is here on earth? Why we are here and what our end goal might be?

I have a theory but I would like to hear others unbiased thoughts first before I put my own thoughts out there. :-)

Anyone? Any ideas, thoughts?

Ok, I agree with the premise of the story BUT and believe me this is a BIG But..Wouldn't you agree that the reason for more leisure time for the people earning less is the fact that they just aren't working as much?  I mean that's so obvious it could bite you in  the backside if it were a snake. Also, I'm thinking that the majority of those making less then 20,000.00 are probably being supplemented by Government aid in one form or another. So the incentive for them to work harder just isn't there.  

Mo' money, mo' problems?

Most of us believe more money equals more happiness, but we forget a few things. First of all, no matter how much money you make, you can always make more. There's no proven amount you can earn to declare yourself "happy" -- you'll end up chasing a higher salary year after year.

Even if you do reach a higher income level, earning more money doesn't necessarily mean more smiles -- in fact, it probably means more stress. We overlook the fact that earning more typically means working more. Working more means less time with family, friends, and for yourself. If you could earn double your income by working double the hours, would you?

Higher-income people tend to be tenser and devote more time to "obligatory" activities like work, shopping and childcare, according to a nationwide Bureau of Labor statistics survey on how people with varying income spend their time.

Men earning more than $100,000 per year spend 19.9 percent of their time on activities such as socializing or watching television, compared to 34.7 percent for men making less than $20,000, according to government statistics. Women making more than $100,000 spend 19.6 percent of their time on passive leisure, compared with 33.5 percent of those earning less than $20,000.

"In some cases, this focusing illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day)," the study says.

Essentially, money is not all that matters in a job or in life. So stop trying to keep pace with the Joneses -- it's what money can't buy that brings happiness.

I don't think it's a left OR right issue, I think it's a personal preference issue myself. However extreme it may be.

Ted Nugent: 'Live and let live' foreign idea to left

By Ted Nugent, Texas Wildman

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I like sizzling meat on the grill. Wild, huh? Anybody? Now, we all know ol' Nuge isn't by any stretch of the imagination a weirdo when it comes to an omnivorous diet.

Especially here in the great Republic of Texas, a smiling, drooling preference for succulent, protein-rich, nutritious backstrap over aromatic mesquite coals is as American and natural and right as Mom, apple pie and the flag. It's beautiful, really.

But a culture war rages against such universal, self-evident truths. It would be laughable if it were not so deranged. Some weirdos actually are on a crusade to outlaw the consumption of flesh.

I have musical touring associates who have been fired from their jobs with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney for sneaking a hamburger.

You heard that right. Fired for eating meat by an animal-rights maniac, hard-core vegan bass player.

The entire agenda of the gazillion-dollar-financed joke known as PETA literally is dedicated to outlawing meat.

Neither I, nor any hunter or meat eater on the planet, has any desire whatsoever to influence any vegetarian's choice of diet or to force them to eat meat. We are the friendly, tolerant Americans.

This is but one of many issues that represent the line drawn in the sand between liberals and conservatives.

Our own intrepid opinion editor at the Trib, my friend John Young, doesn't want to simply make the choice to be unarmed and helpless for himself. He has again recently insisted that you and I must also comply with his soulless condition of unarmed helplessness in "gun-free zones."

Nobody from our side wants to force anybody to have a gun or defend themselves. It is us, the conservatives, who are for individual choice.

Taxation, confiscationAs for the American left: One hears the words of Mao Tse-Tung come broiling out of the mouths of its heroes, when Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton et al unflinchingly push for "redistribution of wealth."

Central Texas' own Chet Edwards has the audacity to support taxing the after-tax life savings of American families following the death of a loved one.

The unfair, un-American, unconstitutional death tax literally destroys mom-and-pop businesses across the land. Think about it.

The wall that once symbolized communism is down, yet some still want to give it a shot. Dear God in heaven, help us.

Recently, Danny Glover, an otherwise fine actor, embarrassingly abused his uniquely American freedoms by siding with the communist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to finance what clearly appears to be an anti-American propaganda film. Nice.

Meanwhile, right there in that communist country, old Hugo is shutting down an entire media network for daring to challenge his heavy handed, corrupt, dictatorial policies.

This is a leader who has proudly sided with terrorist support groups, and Danny Glover gives him a big hug.

If a Venezuelan citizen were to do so with President Bush, I am confident that Chavez would not respect that individual's right to free expression.

Venezuela gives its citizens no right to free expression. Glover must be blinded by the trees in that forest.

Examine the agendas of the liberal "party of peace." Its members clearly don't believe you and I are smart enough or capable of making our own choices in life.

While conservatives "live and let live," the left arrogantly thinks it knows better than we do and will burden "we the people" with more government control until we are taxed to death.

Watch them. Listen, pay attention and blow whistles.

Educate your family, neighbors, friends, co-workers and hunting buddies on how dangerous such control is against the American Dream of individual pursuit of happiness.

Throw off the shackles of government-run slavery. Stand up for individual independence. Enough is enough.

Hey, Hugo and Hillary, leave me alone.

I say we ban all of her films from here on out. :-) We'll just call it freedom from Jolie.

Angelina Jolie's true colors came out Wednesday as she promoted a film about freedom of the press and then tried to censor all her interviews.

Jolie is touting press freedom these days, playing the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a new movie called "A Mighty Heart."

But Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to her own freedom of the press. Her lawyer required all journalists to sign a contract before talking to her, and Jolie instructed publicists at first to ban FOX News from the red carpet of her premiere.

Ironically, Wednesday night's premiere of the excellent Michael Winterbottom-directed film was meant to support an organization called Reporters Without Borders. Jolie, however, did everything she could to clamp down on the press and control it.

Reporters from most major media outlets balked Wednesday when they were presented with an agreement drawn up by Jolie's Hollywood lawyer Robert Offer. The contract closely dictated the terms of all interviews.

Reporters were asked to agree to "not ask Ms. Jolie any questions regarding her personal relationships. In the event Interviewer does ask Ms. Jolie any questions regarding her personal relationships, Ms. Jolie will have the right to immediately terminate the interview and leave."

The agreement also required that "the interview may only be used to promote the Picture. In no event may Interviewer or Media Outlet be entitled to run all or any portion of the interview in connection with any other story. ... The interview will not be used in a manner that is disparaging, demeaning, or derogatory to Ms. Jolie."

If that wasn't enough, Jolie also requires that if any of these things happen, "the tape of the interview will not be released to Interviewer." Such a violation, the signatory thus agrees, would "cause Jolie irreparable harm" and make it possible for her to sue the interviewer and seek a restraining order.

I am told that USA Today and the Associated Press were among those that canceled interviews, and eventually Jolie scotched all print interviews when she heard the reaction.

"I wouldn't sign it," a reporter for a major outlet said. "Who does she think she is?"

A call to Offer was apparently one that could be refused. He didn't return calls. An associate, Lindsay Strasberg, said, before hanging up: "You're a reporter? I can't talk to reporters. Goodbye."

So much for reporters without borders.

That's not all: Jolie told Paramount Pictures publicists to ban FOX News Channel and all FOX News affiliates from covering the "Mighty Heart" premiere on the red carpet. It was only with the intervention of mortified Paramount staff that an FNC camera crew was allowed to be present.

Apparently, no one told Jolie of the highly positive review FOX News had given "A Mighty Heart" from Cannes.

Jolie is famous by now for directing press and selling rights to her photos. She has long been in business with People magazine, orchestrating photo shoots of her children. The money, she says, goes to charity.

This column reported a year ago, on June 8, 2006, about how Jolie and Pitt were responsible for the expulsion of journalists in Namibia where the couple went to have their child, Shiloh. Their bodyguards regularly got into fights with local photographers hoping to make some money from the couple's colonial residency in their country.

After Shiloh was born, Jolie and Pitt gave a news conference, but limited it only to Namibian journalists. No reporters from neighboring countries were allowed.

The couple sat on the dais with Sam Nujoma, Namibia's first president, aka dictator, who ruled for 15 years.

In 2002, Nujoma abruptly appointed himself minister of information and broadcasting. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Nujoma has routinely attacked reporters from his country calling them "unpatriotic" and "the enemy."

During the time Pitt and Jolie were in the country, a former photographer for the Namibian, the daily newspaper, was arrested twice for trying to get a picture of the couple.

South African John Liebenberg was arrested on municipal property during the Jolie-Pitt stay and pronounced guilty of trespassing. His passport and camera equipment were confiscated as well.

Treatment of the press is so bad in Namibia, in fact, that an organization called the National Society for Human Rights was formed several years ago to protect reporters' rights.

The NSHR, which is usually busy with more important matters, issued a statement on April 24 strongly condemning the deportation of foreign journalists from Namibia who wanted to cover the Pitt-Jolie visit.

"As the principal human rights monitoring and advocacy organization in this country, we strongly repudiate this unprecedented and blatant violation of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media," the statement read.

It's a little unclear how Mariane Pearl, whom Jolie plays in "A Mighty Heart," feels about her portrayer's position on freedom of press for some, but not all. On Wednesday, I spoke to Jeff Julliard, the editorial director of Reporters Without Borders in Paris.

"Paparazzi should be allowed to do their job," he said, adding that he condemned Jolie's banning of FOX News and actions taken on her behalf in Namibia.

JUNE 8--Facing trial in a bizarre tax avoidance scheme, actor Wesley Snipes claims that prosecutors used race as a factor in deciding to charge him with failure to file six years worth of IRS returns. In a motion to dismiss an eight-count indictment filed last October, Snipes argues that he is the victim of selective prosecution. Snipes points to the fact that his two "Caucasian" codefendants, Douglas Rosile and Eddie Kahn, have not been charged with failure to file tax returns, though investigators are aware that Kahn did not file returns for six years and that it was "possible" Rosile did not file for two years. Snipes, who was hit with six felonies for failing to file between 1999-2004, contends that the half-dozen counts were "impermissibly brought on the basis of Mr. Snipes' race" and should be "dismissed based on selective prosecution." Snipes, Rosile, and Kahn have been accused of attempting to defraud the government by claiming that the actor was immune to taxation based on the "861 argument." That claim, which has long been rejected by IRS officials, referd to a section of the federal tax code. Along with playing the race card, the Snipes motion, an excerpt of which you'll find below, claims that the celebrity was actually a victim of "unscrupulous tax advice," not a willing participant in a criminal conspiracy hatched by Rosile and Kahn. As such, a second motion notes, Snipes is mulling a lawsuit against his two codefendants "to recover the losses he suffered as a result of his reliance upon the advice given to him."

Just voicing some thoughts on things that annoy the HELL out of me.

#1 at the top of the list is...Fa Na Tics! Fanatics of any sort annoy the hell out of me. The reason being? Well they are..Fanatical. Fanatics of any sort are scary people. Whether they be fanatics about Abortion, religion or politcs etc. They are DANGEROUS people. Take for example that wingnut who got himself arrested earlier this week.. supposedly because he was espousing his conspiracy theories on the 911 attacks.  Maybe that's true but somehow I doubt it, the guy is a fanatic and is seen as such therefore he has zero credibility IMO.

#2 on my list is NOISE. We live in a VERY noisy society and nobody seems to friggin' care. Seriously. Do I really need to be hearing about some moron "singing" about beating up his b*tch on some jerks car stero from 14 blocks away? That's not even MUSIC for Gods sake.  I'd rather live on top of a land mine then listen to that crap go thumping by and rattling my windows TYVM.

Another noisy jerk that annoys the hell out of me is the ICE CREAM truck! Arrrrgh! How loud do those things crank anyway!  Trust me when I say that we can definitely do without them. I'd rather get my ice cream from a rabid walrus on steroids then the friggin' ice cream truck.

#3 of annoyances on my list are stupidly irritating commercials. Now mind you I very rarely watch t.v. but when I do I don't want to CONSTANTLY be inundated with information on lawyers looking to screw corporations out of all the money they can possibly get. I'm sure you've all seen them, it would be IMPOSSIBLE not to have seen them. The most famous ones are the phillips and assc. one. VERY annoying. Next are those Larry H. Parker ones then that New guy with the Weird hair...I can't remember his name but calls himself "The heavy Hitter". I'd like to hit him with something heavy alright.

And WHY do we have to be subjected to those Express flooring commercials? That blond woman with the big red mouth has got to be the most irritating person in the known world today.

And don't get me started on the CaveMan Geico commercials. I'd much rather listen to a gecko with a british accent then put up with another caveman commercial. At least the gecko is cute.

Ooooh I just remembered another thing that annoys the living hell out of me and THIS one should actually be at the TOP of my list.

#4 An overly sensitive society. Yes we have become a nation of whiny ass crybabies who @#!$ and moan at the drop of a pin or I should say at the sight of a dollar sign. People have become overly sensitive anymore and it's all because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. That's right if somebody calls someone the silliest name anymore it's reason to sue. If someone doesn't like the type of art that you have in your home and thinks it's offensive you just may lose your friend. If someone doesn't like the way history has been written because it's "too violent" then let's re-write it because heaven knows we don't want to offend anyone. Oh and while we're at it let's just stop having winning sides in sports because the poor little losing team might be scarred for life.

Oh and let's not forget the atheists who piss and moan because they saw a plaque with the Ten Commandments on it and felt sure that they would go blind at any minute, therefore they HAVE to be removed.

Or the religious fanatics who think Naked statutes should be covered up because Lord knows no one's ever seen the human form naked before.

The world is getting nuttier and no one gives a crap, we all have our own little agendas, our own little world that we live in and no one around us matters. We are the only guy on the road and it belongs to us. That's the attitude of our society today and frankly I'm sick of it.

This is what I just sent to everyone in my address book.

Guess what! Today I received in my email another one of those FW:FW:FW: If you're my friend you'll send this back to me type of an email. You
know the kind, the one where it says something like "I thought of you
today" or "I chose you" or "bla bla bla" And then they usually go on to
say something cutesy wootsey and have a bunch of cute frogs or bunnies
or some other cute #$%^. We know why these are all sent right? I mean
it's to make the person you're sending it to feel Oh so SPECIAL, well
they along with the other FIFTY people in your address book that is.
  
  Have you noticed that I hardly ever send these things back? The few
times that I do it's just so I don't hurt someone's feelings. I don't
really feel all warm and fuzzy sending those things back. Why, You might
ask? Well I'll tell you why.
  
  Sending someone an email with forty eleven FWs on it does NOT mean
that you are thinking of them, it does NOT mean that you chose them, it
does not mean that they are your friend and you miss them, it does not
mean that you WISH you could hear from them a little more often then you
do. All it means is that you clicked on every email address in your
address book and hit the forward button. Where's the warm and fuzzy in
that? It takes ZERO effort to do that.
  
  Here is MY rendition of what a TRUE friend is. A TRUE friend is
someone who is there for you when you're feeling down and you just KNOW that
when you call that person they will listen no matter what.
  
  A TRUE friend will be there to help you whenever you need it.
  
  A TRUE friend will buy you lunch when you can't afford it.
  
  A TRUE friend KNOWS your secrets and NEVER tells them.
  
  A TRUE friend doesn't CARE if you have secrets.
  
  A TRUE friend hurts when YOU hurt.
  
  A TRUE friend is reciprocal.
  
  A TRUE friend doesn't get their feelings hurt if you don't send one
of those FWs back to them Because a TRUE friend accepts you for how you
are.
  
  There are a TON of explanations for what defines a TRUE friend and it
isn't one of those emails with a ton of FWs in front of it so if you
never get one of those back from me?..Well now you know why.
  
  Last but not least, a TRUE friend will take the time to send you a
REAL email to let you know what is going on in their lives or to find out
what is going on in yours.
  
  Friendship is NOT defined by how many people in your email address
book sends a generic email back to you.
  
  One more thing, this is NOT directed at any one person so don't go
taking it too personal, I am sending it to a TON of people that none of
you will see because they are being bcc'd.
  
  I love you all, think of you all as my friends, family etc. but you
have got to STOP the MADNESS.
  
  Now be TRUE friends and send ME a REAL and INFORMATIVE
  email and I'll do the same.

I figure by tomorrow I'll have a pretty good idea of how many friends I have left.  ;-)