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This is Gwyneth Paltrow, as she appeared at the UK premiere of Iron Man, and her outfit is problematic, says Style Spy:
But maybe that's just me....
I will say only that horrifying as it may sound, there is such a thing as too short a dress, and that a Google Image search for "judi dench in a rudi gernreich" produced no results.
It would never occur to me to flash a Google Maps Street View camera van.
On t'other hand, I can't do a blessed thing about their damned satellite.
I admit up front, as it were, that I had no idea why anyone would want a solar-powered bra:
Of course, to gather all this power, it's got to be exposed to sunlight, and now that Madonna's pushing 50, undergarments on the outside seem to be dreadfully passé.
Maybe a future enhancement will allow the wearer to discharge some of that accumulated electricity into that lowlife on the subway who's always trying to cop a feel.
Without making a fuss about it, Carl Icahn has piled up about 50 million shares of Yahoo!, about 3.6 percent of the company.
Now he's going to make a fuss: Icahn plans to nominate as many as ten directors to the Yahoo! board in an effort to prod the company into accepting a takeover bid.
Notes Paul Kedrosky:
I doubt this will be the mother of all proxy fights, but it ought to be interesting.
Addendum: MG Siegler at Venture Beat provides the appropriate artwork for the title.
Apparently there exist policies which insure against the failure of the market system:
I asked one investment banker what might cause half of North America’s top corporations to default. No ordinary economic recession or natural disaster short of an asteroid strike could do it: no hurricane, for example, and not even "the big one," a catastrophic earthquake devastating California. All he could think of was "a revolutionary Marxist government in Washington."
This would seem unlikely — even the leftiest of incoming Democrats are run-of-the-mill Marxists at best — but just the same, the premium has increased of late:
I'm not sure if I'm even going to be able to make much of a trip this year, but I have finally gotten around to setting aside the vacation time.
And it's not in July, for once.
More as things develop.
First it was the bloody dismemberment of CompUSA. Now comes the liquidation of PC Club, in comparably-dramatic fashion:
His brother took over the company, and shortly thereafter ~15 store were abruptly closed citing reasons of ineffectiveness. Of course many of these stores had yet to be open for 2-3 years. Those stores were in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, etc.
Roughly about a month ago, maybe a little more — the current president, the vice-president, and a couple of regional mgrs were "separated" from the company. Then came a massive reorganization in which HQ was restructured from the top down. It seemed as if the company was consolidating and preparing an effort to return to the old days of focusing on the "brick and mortar" business that it was founded on. In the weeks following, cost cutting measures were implemented and more staff rearranged and removed … including the heads of accounting and HR. Still, we were all reassured that this was being done for the good of the company.
Then come the inventory issues. All stores in the company are running short of product and the distribution center has no inventory on hand. We are told this is because new purchase accounts are being established and the lull is only temporary. District managers are plainly telling store managers as recent as yesterday that inventory problems should be taken care of soon and that we may just have to deal with it for a couple of more weeks. In the mean time, customers continues to ask if we're going out of business — resellers are openly pissed about not being able to get product.
Then there's today. And all of you already know what happened. Senior management disappeared and were unreachable by the company attorney during the "meeting of doom". We closed the store, made final deposits, got our stuff, and left.
PC Club built me a machine a few years back. (How few? It was recent enough to have Service Pack 2 for XP in place.) Apart from blowing up a video card on day two, which they fixed in a couple of hours, it's been pretty reliable.
(Via SEKOconcepts.)
News Item: Republicans will counter the Democratic push for change from the years of the Bush administration with their own pledge to deliver, drum roll please, "the change you deserve."
Top Ten political slogans rejected by the Republican Party before deciding on "the change you deserve":
- "Staff white people like"
- "We pick our losing candidates early"
- "Wingnut > Moonbat"
- "We put the 'Old' in 'Grand Old Party'"
- "Rule 6: No Clintons"
- "You deserve a tax break today"
- "Our babes are hotter than their babes"
- "Now 100% Berkeley-Free"
- "2 Centuries 1 Idea"
- "We're good bad, but we're not evil"
(Suggested by Michelle Malkin.)
I've suggested that the ongoing Seattle vs. Oklahoma City wars might be good theater, if nothing else; it hadn't occurred to me that what we're seeing might simply be a deeply dysfunctional business plan, and we're the enablers:
Playing off the feelings of inadequacy in Oklahoma City (and that is not intended [as] an insult at all; it is clear from their language that they want the NBA so they might be elevated to a "major league city"), Stern has managed to create a sense of urgency in both cities, to the point where a total approaching half a billion dollars is being proposed to reconstruct existing arenas.
When I wrote about this last year, my argument was that the whole debate was upside-down, and that rather than having the cities chase the NBA, it should be the NBA chasing the cities. Let's face it, the NBA needs markets more than the markets need the NBA.
After all, do you think people in Las Vegas or St. Louis woke up this morning and cursed themselves for not having an NBA team? Do you believe residents of Memphis are patting themselves on the back with glee that they don't live in a hellhole like San Diego, a city barren of NBA basketball?
Given the Griz' attendance, I'm sure there are residents of Memphis who think, "What? We have an NBA team?"
I do like the idea of an inverted perspective, but David Stern still has scarcity on his side: artificially created to be sure, but still scarcity. And if playing one town against another turns out to work, it's prudent to assume he'll keep doing it until such time as it stops working.
I can't speak for anyone else in the local Sonics Thunderbirds Barons fan base, but I think things would have gone much more easily if Clay Bennett had written a check to the NBA and Stern had decreed, "For a new team shall be yours, and we shall add another one to the East for balance." As though the East would ever be balanced. And the Sonics? They'd be in Seattle, as they'd been for four decades.
Meanwhile, if anyone comes up with an explanation of why David Stern is so resistant to expansion, I'd like to hear it.
Clear Channel goes private; speculation is rampant that their stations will finally have deeper music libraries than your local ice-cream truck (Linked to this.)
Speaking of drugs, I'm coming through the intersection at 50th and May, something I've done, oh, a thousand times before, and there's a new sign up at Walgreen's: WE ARE NOW A COMPOUNDING PHARMACY.
And sure enough, across the intersection was the embryonic form of another pharmacy. Eventually, assuming nothing happens to interfere, there will be nothing but pharmacies for two or three blocks.
Oh, and the pool hall. They're not going anywhere.
Dear Mail-Order Pharmacy:
I placed a refill order from your Web site — which means, I shouldn't have to point out, that you've filled this prescription at least once already — and paid for it with a Visa card, which means you're not waiting on your money.
Did it occur to you that calling me on the phone half an hour after the order was placed to try to talk me into some cheaper drug was incredibly frakking stupid? It certainly occurred to me. "How I can save up to $500 a year," my ass. I paid your absurd five-times-the-price-of-generic copay because this stuff works and there are no generics. Simple as that. Ninety days from now, I'll be happily paying six times the price, just so I don't get any more phone calls from you addlepated schmucks.
In the meantime, three words you should learn: "dispense as written."
My ballot at 5:55 pm was the 206th to be cast in my precinct, which suggests that turnout will be something less than huge: in fact, I got all the way home before I realized Oh, crap, there's an election today and set out for the polling place, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people have memories at least as short as mine.
Forget those old-fashioned gas pumps. These are better:
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most pumps go up to 3.99?
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it's more expensive? Is it any more expensive?
Nigel: Well, it's one dollar more, isn't it? It's not 3.99. You see, most blokes, you know, will be pumping at 3.99. You're on 3.99 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 3.99 on your credit card. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty: I don't know.
Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to 4.99.
Nigel: 4.99. Exactly. One dollar.
Marty: Why don't you just make 3.99 the highest and make 3.99 be the top number?
Nigel: [pause] These go to 4.99.
Geez. Imagine the delight when they go to 11.
(Thanks, Ash.)
And seen at Autoblog, an hour and a half later:
To recap: The Japanese are already doing 8-speed automatics, and the Germans will follow; the Americans are just now getting around to disposing of 4-speed automatics.
This isn't entirely fair to the General — Toyota still sells econoboxes in the States with only four cogs — but this doesn't help Detroit's image as technological laggards.
Dash it all, Princess Sparkle Pony, why must you put these images into my head?
Still, Sean Gleeson's imagination is way better than mine.
There are five of them, and four of them look pretty good.
Propositions II through V inclusive would pay for courthouse renovation ($10.5 million), improvement of record-retention facilities ($5.75 million), a new facility for the OSU Extension Service ($7.25 million), and flood control ($6 million).
This leaves Proposition I ($55 million), to fund the acquisition of the General Motors assembly plant on Oklahoma City's southeast side, which would then be leased to Tinker Air Force Base. The most obvious beneficiary of this move is General Motors, who could close the books on the facility and, perhaps more important, quit writing annual checks to the county for property tax. Does Tinker need the extra space? And what's with this bit in the ballot language about "including but not limited to the acquisition of the land and building currently owned by General Motors"? Something about this doesn't quite pass the smell test. The $15 a year certainly won't break me, though.
Update: The county batted .600 this time around: I, II and V passed, III and IV failed.
Not for a long time, I suspect: ThingsYoungerThanMcCain.com includes, among other things, Helvetica, FM radio, and Keith Richards.
(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)
I haven't read Bartels' book either, but he's discussing it at TPMCafe, and he brings up this point:
Not to mention our friends on K Street.
Still, there's something askew here, and I think it's this: the theory, says Bartels, insists that "Democrats and Republicans alike must move to the center in order to get elected," which more often than not turns out to be true, but once they're elected they tend to slide sideways, Democrats leftward, Republicans to the right. This suggests that if anyone is being disenfranchised, it's those in the political center. Then again, the exact location of the center itself is arguable.
Trini reports that no, she did not donate to the food drive this past weekend, because apparently all the notifications sent to her neighborhood were in Spanish, which may have simplified matters for the letter carriers but didn't do a thing for actual speakers of English in the neighborhood.
Not that they're going to send them out in German for her or anything, but still, she was a bit vexed at being left out of the process, and at the assumption that because she lives at such-and-such an address (she's on the south side, between 44th and 59th) she must be Hispanic. Jaime Crow is supposed to be dead, guys.
No more couture for Hillary Clinton, reports the Times:
I'll believe this when I see John Edwards at Supercuts.
Yes, buoys and gulls, it's time for another romp through the Site Meter detritus to find search strings that make you go "Hmmm." Hmmm....
bank of america employees wear pantyhose: Probably just the women, and who cares anyway?
men wearing male undergarments: Possibly even at Bank of America.
natureal mail inhansment: From those wonderful folks who brought you V14gr@.
sunday drive oklahoma: Generally great fun, but watch out for those Sunday drivers.
eine kleine nachtmusik i can't get no satisfaction: Perhaps Tagesmusik might be more satisfying?
revolver ocelot wtf seriously: Everybody run, the damn lolcat's got a gun.
how to sunbath nude without getting burned: Yes, children, there are parts of this world where sunblock is unknown.
i need a girl for a amc matador eagle sedan: I don't think so. I've seen lots of people driving AMC sedans and none of them ever have girls.
Why Does Conventional Wisdom Persist: It saves you the trouble of doing your own research.
Poptarts Destroying a City: Geez, they'll say anything to get a health-care bill passed.
lot less fake ass chinese oreo wafers: Yeah, but have they ever destroyed a city, like Pop Tarts?
too much crap to clean up: True enough. Back next week with more of these.
