Coke: The New Black?

Coming next Monday, April 3 to a store near you is Coke’s latest foray into the seemingly limitless caffeinated beverage space.

It’s a carbonated “coffee–essence” drink, according to the Washington Post, and “will come in glass bottles with those familiar curves, 45 calories per 8–oz. serving and a middling amount of caffeine per 8 oz: 46 mg, compared with classic Coke’s 23 mg and coffee’s 80 mg.”

Bowling is for Everyone

Larry The Cable Guy’s Favorite TV Shows

1: Seinfeld…The greatest funniest show of all time. My fiance and I always make up our own Seinfeld trivia and I actually check into hotels under the name Bob Sacamano (kramers friend) and she yells “your so good looking” anytime someone sneezes. Im a seinfeld fanatic. I have seen every episode and still laugh like its the first time ive seen it.

2:The Andy Griffith show. Another one of te all time greats. Just like Seinfeld I never get tired of it. Barney Fife was the greatest character in TV history and ya can never get sick of Barney. I love the small town humor in that show and unlike most modern day sit coms this one will never die. The bad part abpout it though is that after barney Left it just wasn’t the same however there’s still no place like mayberry!

3 All in the family. Another one of my all time favorites. The cool thing was Archie was way right and Mike was way left and the characters that came in and out of the scene kept everything on an even keel. The bad part of this show is that America has lost its sence of humor and we’ll never have another show like it because Political Correct assholes cant take a joke anymore. Brilliant show and Im glad ill have it all on dvd. Now shut up, get out of my chair and get me a beer.

4: The Bob Newhart show. I have it on DVD and its another one of my favs. I didnt watch the 2nd one to much because I was always on the road stripping for rich females however the first one rocked. I do like how the 2nd one ended. It was the all time greatest end to any sit com ever. I never saw it that much but the ending made me wish I had. Ill get it when it comes out on DVD as well. But that first Newhart show was awesome. It made people say “whos alf” (I dont know what that means)

5:Green Acres. I lost my virginity to this show. If you ever pop on green acres with a girl in the room and she aint naked by the time arnold ziffle turns a western on his tv then you got a dud. This show was way before its time and the jokes were old style. Quick and short. If you think Green Acres was a stupid show then drag your uptight commie anti american ass to another country ’cause that show was sweeeet!

Celebrate Diversity

You can order the shirt HERE.

As day turns into night…

School children cheered as the first total eclipse in years plunged Ghana into daytime darkness Wednesday, a solar show sweeping northeast from Brazil to Mongolia.

As the heavens and Earth moved into rare alignment, all that could be seen of the sun were the rays of its corona – the usually invisible extended atmosphere of the sun that glowed a dull yellow for about three minutes, barely illuminating the west African nation.

Automatic street lights flickered on, authorities sounded whistles and schoolchildren burst into applause across Ghana’s capital, Accra. Many in the deeply religious country of Christians and Muslims said the phenomenon bolstered their faith.

“I believe it’s a wonderful work of God, despite all what the scientists say,” said Solomon Pomenya, a 52-year old doctor. “This tells me that God is a true engineer.”

The last such eclipse in November 2003 was best viewed from Antarctica, said Alex Young, a NASA scientist involved in solar research.

In Turkey’s Mediterranean town of Side, hundreds of people streamed down a main street, some carrying tripods, to an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Apollo, as market sellers hawked T-shirts and protective glasses.

Joaquim Boix traveled from Barcelona, Spain, to view the eclipse. He said he became addicted to eclipses after seeing one in Germany.

“It’s fantastic,” Boix said. “It’s the color, the metallic blue-green color on the skin of the people. The sky with the stars in the background. Usually you watch the stars in a black background … The background is blue. It’s a special feeling.”

An ancient Roman theater in Side, astronomers and scientists from NASA and the San Francisco-based Exploratorium science museum made last-minute preparations for a live broadcast. The theater, which had a capacity of 15,000 in ancient times, was expected to host 2,000 people.

“It’s one of those experiences that makes you feel like you’re part of the larger universe,” said NASA astronomer Janet Luhman.

Tens of thousands of tourists were expected along the Turkish Mediterranean coast, which NASA said would be the best spot to view the eclipse. Turks welcomed the tourism boost after a recent bird flu outbreak and protests over the caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

“It should happen more often,” said Hamza Bikmaz who was selling eclipse T-shirts outside the theater.

From Ghana to Libya and Syria, schools closed and streets emptied. West African governments scrambled to educate people about the dangers of looking at the eclipse without proper eye protection.

In Togo, authorities imported hundreds of thousands of pairs of special glasses that consumers cleared rapidly from shelves in the capital, Lome. But villagers in the interior did not have access to the eyewear and officials called on them to stay home.

“Imagine if your hair was to stand up from static electricity, that’s kind of what the corona looks like all around the sun,” NASA’s Young said. But the corona’s light can burn eyes.

In Ghana people spent about $1 for “solar shades” – paper-rimmed glasses with dark plastic lenses that resemble eyewear used for 3-D movies.

The eclipse was expected to move on to Mongolia, where it will fade out with the sunset.

Superstition accompanied its path, as it has for generations.

One Indian paper advised pregnant women not to go outside during the eclipse to avoid having a blind baby or one with a cleft lip. Food cooked before the eclipse should be thrown out afterward because it will be impure and those who are holding a knife or ax during the eclipse will cut themselves, the Hindustan Times added.

In Turkey’s earthquake-prone Tokat province, residents set up tents outside despite assurances from scientists that there was no evidence of any link between eclipses and tremors.

In August 1999, an earthquake in northwestern Turkey killed some 17,000 people just six days after a solar eclipse.

Total eclipses are rare because they require the tilted orbits of the sun, moon and earth to line up exactly so that the moon obscures the sun completely. The next total eclipse will occur in 2008.

Japanese Weirdness

A collection of staged photos which appear to show see through clothing when in reality the images are actually screened on to the skirts, still a rather interesting project…

Houston at her Whits END…

TOP 20 WAYS TO TELL SOMEONE THEIR FLY IS UNZIPPED

20) The cucumber has left the salad.
19) I can see the gun of Navarone.
18) Someone tore down the wall, and your Pink Floyd is hanging out.
17) You’ve got Windows on your laptop.
16) Sailor Ned’s trying to take a little shore leave.
15) Your soldier isn’t so unknown now.
14) Quasimodo needs to go back in the tower and tend to his bells.
13) You need to bring your tray table to the upright and locked position.
12) Paging Mr. Johnson… Paging Mr. Johnson…
11) Your pod bay door is open, Hal.
10) Elvis Junior has LEFT the building!
9) Mini Me is making a break for the escape pod.
8) Ensign Hanes is reporting a hull breach on the lower deck, Sir!
7) The Buick is not all the way in the garage.
6) Dr. Kimble has escaped!
5) You’ve got your fly set for “Monica” instead of “Hillary.”
4) Our next guest is someone who needs no introduction…
3) You’ve got a security breach at Los Pantalones.
2) I’m talking about Shaft, can you dig it?

and The Number One Way to Tell Someone Their Fly Is Unzipped..

1) Men are From Mars, I Can See Your Penis.

Spring break at Wal-Mart

Skyler Bartels kept looking over his shoulder. It’s a habit he picked up living at the Windsor Heights Wal-Mart for three days.

Really living there. Eating, sleeping, checking out the DVDs, never leaving. The plan was to spend his entire spring break there. Under the radar.

Some kids go to Cancun. Skyler Bartels, a Drake University sophomore from Harvard, Neb., went to the garden and patio department.

The great experiment had been over for a few days, but Bartels was still in great-experiment mode. As we sat at a booth in the Subway sandwich shop toward the front of the store, he glanced at the friendly white-haired Wal-Mart greeters.

Were they onto him? Why were they staring? Bartels was still suffering from greeter phobia.

He was never out to get Wal-Mart, he explained. This wasn’t supposed to be an expose.

Bartels didn’t burst through the door stewing about low wages, poor working conditions or the way the big chain chews up Mom and Pop.

This was part sociology experiment, part school project. Bartels is a writing major. Maybe he’d put it all down on paper and pick up an independent study credit, or even sell it to somebody someday.

Maybe he’d move on to another Wal-Mart and produce a documentary, like the guy who ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month.

Bartels got the idea from a commercial. Was it true what those happy, shiny people were telling him: “Always low prices. Always”?

Could the biggest, most successful discount store in the world really meet his every need? Twenty-four hours a day? That’s what the TV spots were telling him.

“That was the goal,” he said. “To buy everything I needed at Wal-Mart.”

His father told him to go for it and offered to bankroll the project.

On Sunday, his girlfriend dropped him off at the front door and drove away. The game was on.

He didn’t tell Wal-Mart what he was doing, and it’s probably a good thing.

“We weren’t aware of this,” said corporate spokeswoman Sharon Weber, “but it’s not something we condone. We’re a retailer, not a hotel.”

A Drake law professor gave Bartels some advice: The store is private property. If they ask you to leave, go quickly and quietly.

Bartels walked into the big box wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. He had his cell phone in case of emergency, his heart medicine, his bank card, two forms of identification, and nothing else.

He spent the first afternoon watching “Chicken Little,” the animated Disney film. He watched it all. Deleted scenes, interviews, outtakes. Everything.

“They had it on a continuous loop the whole time I was there,” he said. “I’d pass through the department and say, ‘Oh, it’s about halfway through’ or, ‘I like this part. I think I’ll watch it again.’ “

Bartels decided not to buy anything he couldn’t carry around the store. He ended up with a jacket (for storage space), a note pad, some pencils, an electronic voice recorder, a three-pack of underwear, a comb, a toothbrush and some toothpaste.

He lived off energy drinks, doughnuts, yogurt and Subway sandwiches.

He figures he slept four hours out of the 41 in captivity. He’d catch a few minutes whenever he could – in a Subway booth or a restroom stall, which isn’t recommended, especially with the night stockers bursting in every five minutes.

“I got to the point,” he said, “where I was adept at falling asleep on the toilet seat, which sounds kind of weird.”

The best place for dozing was lawn and garden, where the lights weren’t so bright. Nobody worked there between 2 and 4 a.m. Bartels found a lawn chair, kicked back and wondered how life could be better.

Life would be perfect, he discovered, without the worker who showed up before dawn to stock plants. Bartels hopped up and pretended to be looking for home patio furniture.

That 1 to 4 a.m. shift was the daily low point. Subway was closed. Bartels was often the only Wal-Mart shopper, which made it harder to blend into the cosmetics and sporting goods.

“It’s just me and the stockers then,” he said, “and every once in a while somebody who needs a Swiffer at 2 in the morning.”

He was sitting on the floor reading a magazine at 3 a.m. when a man, shivering from the cold, walked in, bought an atlas and left. “You’d see a lot of people reading,” Bartels said. “Cosmopolitan was a huge favorite. But nobody ever checked the magazine section. I never saw anybody stocking books or magazines.”

He found it strange the way the same two guys kept showing up in the middle of the night to buy movies.

“They looked like ‘ Devil’s Rejects ‘ kind of guys. But they ended up buying stuff like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ “

Bartels was playing a boxing video game at 1 a.m. when a man appeared out of nowhere, giving him pointers, teaching him how to throw a left jab and a right “steamliner.”

Steamliner?

“Yeah, I still don’t know what that is.”

He met some interesting people during normal hours, too. There was the military recruiter who told him he had what it takes.

I looked at Bartels. Long hair, scruffy college-kid beard, slender build. Pleasant, laid-back demeanor. I had to know. What does it take?

“He said I had good posture and didn’t look sad.”

Bartels ran into a nun, Sister Mary Sue, who was fun and energetic and looked the opposite of sad.

He saw some strange sights. He followed two birds who swooped into the produce section and swiped some grapes. He named them Laurel and Hardy.

“One sat on the grapes, and the other pulled them off,” Bartels said, insisting he wasn’t hallucinating.

By Tuesday morning, not even halfway through the great experiment, the store was on to him.

“I noticed the greeters pointing at me,” he said. “Somebody got on the intercom and announced a meeting of the department managers. One of the shift managers came up to me and asked, very politely, if I needed anything. I could have told him where everything was.”

His debit account was frozen. He was exhausted and paranoid. Game over. His med-student brother picked him up and took him away.

Bartels now regrets the early exit.

“I should have stuck it out, at least to see what the meeting was about. It never got tedious at all, which was surprising. But isn’t that how it works in real life? Don’t we do pretty much the same thing every day?”

Like real life, you can’t get everything at Wal-Mart (new slogan: Not a Hotel). Bartels couldn’t get a shower or a bed. He couldn’t find one of those miniature bottles of shampoo.

Most of the creature comforts were covered, though. When he wanted to get his hair washed, he made an appointment at the Wal-Mart hair salon.

Real life or not, for a few days this was home. And Bartels figured he might as well treat it like home. When he had nothing better to do, he roamed the aisles, putting away items that were out of place.

“It was a good way to keep busy,” he said. “It took a whole lot of time, and if somebody came up and yelled at me, at least I was being productive and beneficial to the store.”

Bartels got to feeling so productive and beneficial, he even filled out a job application.

“I wasn’t sure how to answer some of the questions,” he said. ” ‘Where can we reach you?’ That was a tough one. The electronics department?”