Dear Leslie:

I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I’ve “built my personal brand over the years.” I’m answering with this column.

The [...]]]>

Gene Weingarten is not amused, but in an amusing way:

Dear Leslie:

I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I’ve “built my personal brand over the years.” I’m answering with this column.

The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle.

via Gene Weingarten: How branding is ruining journalism – The Washington Post.

A Des Moines homeowner found messages in spray paint, some of them profane, around his house when he returned Wednesday afternoon.

Raymond Kling, 32, found messages like “Got ya,” and “U Lose,” and “Ugly couch,” written on the walls and doors, furniture and cabinets. The burglar spray painted clothes.

[more] via [...]]]>

Somebody enjoys their job:

A Des Moines homeowner found messages in spray paint, some of them profane, around his house when he returned Wednesday afternoon.

Raymond Kling, 32, found messages like “Got ya,” and “U Lose,” and “Ugly couch,” written on the walls and doors, furniture and cabinets. The burglar spray painted clothes.

[more] via Burglar scrawls messages in spray paint | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com.

Hoskinson has a prior conviction for robbery. On Oct. 9, 2007, Hoskinson stole $409 and beer from a Speedway. He was identified as the robber because he used his Speedy Rewards card at the gas pump before demanding money from the clerk.

via Convenience [...]]]>

Penny-wise, pound your head on a gas pump stupid:

via Convenience store clerks hit robber with broom | Zanesville Times Recorder | zanesvilletimesrecorder.com.

HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a [...]]]>

The furtive but fervent Taxonomic Liberation Front strikes again:

HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose and fled.

[more] via Man carrying dead weasel accused of assault.

COLUMBIA, Mo. | Public health officials in Columbia have asked an ice cream shop to cool it with the cicada-flavored ice cream that customers apparently can’t get enough of.

Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream sold out its only batch of the insect-filled snack within hours of its June 1 debut. Employees collected the [...]]]>

The Associated Press:

COLUMBIA, Mo. | Public health officials in Columbia have asked an ice cream shop to cool it with the cicada-flavored ice cream that customers apparently can’t get enough of.

Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream sold out its only batch of the insect-filled snack within hours of its June 1 debut. Employees collected the bountiful bugs in their backyards and removed most of the dead cicadas’ wings

[more] via www.kansascity.com | 06/07/2011 | Health officials nix cicada ice cream.

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of [...]]]>

Not in so many words, no:

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs.

via Actually, that’s not in the Bible – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” ended Wednesday, bringing despair to booksellers who relied on her book club, television programmers who needed her ratings, and religion scholars who for a decade have tried explaining how this child of poverty became the leader of a [...]]]>

Thanks for a twenty-five year long national tutorial in self-absorbed stupidity and materialism:

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” ended Wednesday, bringing despair to booksellers who relied on her book club, television programmers who needed her ratings, and religion scholars who for a decade have tried explaining how this child of poverty became the leader of a worldwide cult. They have worked just as hard to define that cult, which is at once Christian and pantheistic, African-American in origin but global in reach.

The scholars found conflicting sources of Ms. Winfrey’s spirituality. It began, but definitely does not end, with the black church of her youth. In her 2003 book, “Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery,” Eva Illouz, a sociologist, quotes Ms. Winfrey as saying: “Since I was three and a half, I’ve been coming up in the church speaking. I did all of the James Weldon Johnson sermons” — Mr. Johnson being the poet whose “God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse” was published in 1927. “I used to do them for churches all over the city of Nashville,” Ms. Winfrey said.

Dr. Illouz, who teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that elements of the black church, like its emotionality and focus on justice, “pervade ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ which has taken on the vocation of relieving a multiplicity of forms of suffering through the use of speech infused with the rhetorical style of black preachers.”

While respecting Ms. Winfrey’s use of her Christian heritage, Dr. Illouz ultimately concluded that the talk-show host might be something of a false prophet. That is because, she said, Ms. Winfrey and her cadre of self-help experts treated suffering as something beneficial. Ms. Winfrey turned the black church’s ethos of self-reliance in the face of suffering into an exaltation of suffering itself.

“By making all experiences of suffering into occasions to improve oneself,” Dr. Illouz wrote, “Oprah ends up — absurdly — making suffering into a desirable experience.”

[more] via The Church That Oprah Winfrey Built – NYTimes.com.

In this image released Wednesday May 18, 2011, by Arriva Trains Wales, showing an unidentified man as be attempts to board a train with a pony, for a journey from Wrexham to Holyhead, Wales, on Saturday May 14, 2011. The man attempted to buy a ticket for himself [...]]]>

In this image released Wednesday May 18, 2011, by Arriva Trains Wales, showing an unidentified man as be attempts to board a train with a pony, for a journey from Wrexham to Holyhead, Wales, on Saturday May 14, 2011. The man attempted to buy a ticket for himself and the pony before taking the animal into a lift to get to the train platform, but was stopped from boarding the train. The man left the station on foot and it is not known how he continued the journey of nearly 100 miles. (AP/Arriva Trains Wales)

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/18/man-attempts-board-train-pony/#ixzz1MldCVnvA

On a Sunday morning before her soccer practice, not long after my daughter’s tenth birthday, she and I sat down on the couch with our tablets and I taught her to respond to lawsuits on her own. I told her to read the first message.

“It says it’s in [...]]]>

Learning the Facts of Law 2.0:

On a Sunday morning before her soccer practice, not long after my daughter’s tenth birthday, she and I sat down on the couch with our tablets and I taught her to respond to lawsuits on her own. I told her to read the first message.

“It says it’s in French,” she said. “Do I translate?”

“Does it have a purple flag on it?”

“No,” she said.

“You don’t actually have to worry about it unless it has a purple flag.”

She hesitated. “Can I read it?” she asked.

“If you want to read it go ahead.”She switched the screen from French to English and read out the results: “’Notice from the Democratic Republic of Congo related to the actions of King Leopold II.’”

This was what I’d been avoiding. So much evil in the world and why did she need to know about all of it, at once? But for months she’d asked—begged—to answer her own suits. I’d told her to wait, to stop trying to grow up so fast, you’ll have your whole lifetime to get sued. Until finally she said: “When I’m ten? I can do it when I’m ten?” And I’d said, “sure, after you’re ten.” Somehow that had seemed far off. I had willed it to be far off.

“Honey,” I explained, “you’ll get a lot of those kinds. What happened is, a long time ago, the country Belgium took over this country Congo and killed a lot of people and made everyone slaves. The people who are descendants of those slaves, their government gave them the right to ask other people for damages.”

“I didn’t do anything. I thought you had to do something.”Where do you start? Litigation-flow tariff policy? Post-colonial genocide reparations microsuits? Is there a book somewhere, Telling Your Daughter About Nanolaw?

[more] via Nanolaw with Daughter Ftrain.com.

Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian:

A number of questions suggest themselves: can Gibson play comedy, of any tone or hue? Can he project an underlying sympathy or charm in his character? Can he make the Aussie-Michael-Caine accent funny or interesting in any way? Can Jodie Foster, as director, help him?

The answer in each [...]]]>

Hackrat with woodland creature.

Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian:

A number of questions suggest themselves: can Gibson play comedy, of any tone or hue? Can he project an underlying sympathy or charm in his character? Can he make the Aussie-Michael-Caine accent funny or interesting in any way? Can Jodie Foster, as director, help him?

The answer in each case is “No”, written in letters big enough to be seen from space.

via Cannes 2011 review: The Beaver | Film | guardian.co.uk.