Live from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., it’s actually a brilliantly choreographed stage production of the entire first level of Super Mario Brothers. I was compelled to share.
The lights in this building have been timed to replicate a game of tetris. Bored office workers have already begun planning Snood.
A four-foot tall Pillsbury Doughboy, which proudly watched over a New Hampshire supermarket for 20 years, has been kidnapped. And what a wild ride he’s been on; his captors have been chronicling his plight in a series of ransom notes and photos.
The Doughboy stood atop the dairy aisle at the Market Basket in Plaistow for decades. Employees considered him their store mascot. But, the store in Stateline Plaza is now closing, and the Doughboy’s captor claims to be a loyal customer trying to stop the shutdown.
SYDNEY, Australia – Prostitutes, strippers and lap dancers can claim tax deductions for adult toys and lingerie, officials said Friday, as the Australian Taxation Office issued a list of deductible items for the sex industry.
Condoms, lubricants, gels and oils are among a myriad of other items that these workers can claim against tax, according to a fact sheet issued on the office’s Web site.
While they cannot claim deductions for fitness classes that keep them in shape, the tax office ruled they can claim the cost of dance lessons.
“You can claim the cost of replacing or repairing things like equipment, adult novelties and other apparatus used in your work,” the office advises, under a section titled “tools of trade.”
“This is just another one of our occupational lists that we put together to help people,” a taxation office spokeswoman said on customary condition of anonymity.
TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey: We’re Not So Good With Slogans.
The state has jettisoned “Come See For Yourself,” its second attempt at a tagline in less than a year. It was the product of a statewide contest set up by then-acting Gov. Richard J. Codey last fall, after he rejected a consultant’s offering: “We’ll Win You Over.”
State tourism officials said legal issues led them to scrap the latest slogan, explaining that West Virginia and other states previously used “Come See For Yourself.”
“We are proceeding without the slogan. We will revisit the next steps at the end of the year,” Karen Wolfe, a spokeswoman for the state Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission, told The Press of Atlantic City for Saturday editions.
Codey, now state Senate president, dismissed “We’ll Win You Over” because he said it reminded him too much of when he was single and asked girls out on a date.
“Come See For Yourself” was the top choice among more than 11,000 telephone and online votes cast by residents for five finalist entries in the contest. Codey unveiled the slogan with great fanfare in January, saying the Garden State’s catch phrase “should hint at our true beauty.”
But at an annual tourism conference in Cape May County last month, the slogan was absent from all state promotional materials. The slogan is also missing from this year’s tourism television commercials, featuring a song by rocker Jon Bon Jovi.
Tourism officials said they won’t pick from any of the four other finalists: “Love at First Sight,” “The Real Deal,” “The Best Kept Secret” or “Expect the Unexpected.”
Ever since Stephen Colbert opened his mouth at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner and pointedly mocked Bush in front of Bush, online buzz on the fake newsman has reached scalding temperatures. The response started with a kind of did-he-really-do-that shock. Then it escalated into furious takes on whether Colbert was funny or not, why the mainstream media blew it off, and how the great blogosphere struck back—or just seized another opportunity to parade its own virtues.
There’s a boulder-coming-at-Indiana Jones quality to the story now. Searches on the eyebrow-raising comedian are up 5,625% this week and picking up speed. Trajectories for “Colbert speech” and “colbert video” are racing off the chart. And “The Colbert Report,” its fan site Colbert Nation, and the newly created ThankYouStephenColbert.org also launched upward in Buzz.
David Copperfield has added a new trick to his repertoire: faking out robbers.
Despite being possessed of a “large amount of cash,” the illusionist showed nothing but empty pockets to armed gunmen who targeted him and two female companions Sunday night in West Palm Beach, Florida, police said.
In the Palm Beach Post, Copperfield called his sleight of hand bit “reverse pickpocketing.”
Nifty or no, authorities recommend that viewers shouldn’t try Copperfield’s stunt at home. “Usually, the protocol is to give ‘em what you got, and not play games with them,” West Palm Beach Police spokesman Ted White said Wednesday.
Copperfield’s companions, meanwhile, did as told. The women, identified in the Post as the entertainer’s assistants, handed over cash (both U.S. dollars and Euros), keys, plane tickets, a cell phone and a passport, the police report said. The 911 emergency call placed by Cathy Daly, one of the assistants, indicated the purloined passport belonged to Copperfield.
No one was injured in the incident, which occurred about 11:30 p.m. Sunday near Kravis Center, where Copperfield had played six shows over the weekend.
Copperfield and the women were walking when four young men, two of them wielding guns, jumped out of a 2000 Chevrolet Malibu and confronted the group, the police report said.
“I had a gun pointed at my head from six inches away,” Copperfield said in the Post.
An 18-year-old man and three unidentified teenage boys were arrested for the shakedown within minutes. All were booked on suspicion of armed robbery. It was believed the four remained in custody Wednesday.
Copperfield, 49, and referred to exclusively in the police report as David Kotkin, his given name, has not missed a tour date since the unscripted drama. He is scheduled to take the stage Wednesday night in Orlando.
Arguably best known for making the Statue of Liberty disappear, at least for the purposes of a TV special, Copperfield is also noted for making fiancee Claudia Schiffer disappear. (The magician and the model ended their lengthy engagement in 1999.)
RENO, Nev. – Four bus loads of students from O’Brien Middle School made the four-hour trip to Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, Calif., only to find the amusement park’s gates locked Monday. The school-sponsored trip was supposed to reward top students.
“It was pretty much a fiasco,” said Washoe County School District spokesman Steve Mulvenon. “They ended up wasting a day that those kids could have better spent in class or doing what they were going to do at the park.”
School officials said the $50 fee will be refunded, and the tour company that arranged the trip has agreed to pay for the next one. “The tour company neglected to check the schedule,” Mulvenon said.
“It is just a bummer for the kids,” said parent Jeff Wood. “Now, they will have to wait another month to go and a lot of the kids might not be able to go then.”
Principal Scott Grange said the school was even given printed tickets with Monday’s date on them.
“But shame on us for not checking,” he said.
BOGOTA, Colombia – Watch out Fido, your days on the force may be numbered. Police in Colombia are training Lola and Espejo, two whiskered, red-eyed rats, to sniff out bombs and land mines.
The rodents are part of an experimental six-rat squadron that police are preparing for dangerous missions to defuse the more than 100,000 land mines that litter Colombia’s countryside after four decades of war between the government and leftist rebels.
Unlike dogs, rats weighing less than half a pound each and “don’t trigger any explosions when they walk on a mine,” said Col. Javier Cifuentes, director of the Sibate police academy, where basic training is taking place.
To earn their stripes, the rats have spent the past year undergoing a daily training regimen in which they are placed in a maze with C-4 explosives and other bomb-making materials. When they detect the target, they’re rewarded with a cracker.
Trainers estimate it could be six months before the rats are pressed into active duty.
Cifuentes said he believes Colombia is the first country to use rats to conduct police work, though larger rodents are being employed for similar purposes in Sudan, he said.
BERLIN – A retiree in northern Germany flushed some 30,000 marks (euro15,300, US$18,900) down the toilet, believing the old bank notes were worthless, police said.
Officials were alerted by a blocked pipe in the northern city of Kiel. A cleaning company employee extracted soggy bundles of bank notes, but more money got away as the water started flowing again.
Investigators then discovered that the retiree had reported a blocked pipe at his house the same day. They visited the “slightly bewildered” man at his apartment and he confirmed that he had flushed the money away, a police statement issued late Wednesday said.
The 64-year-old “was of the opinion that mark notes no longer had any value,” it added. He still had another 30,000 marks at the apartment, as well as euro14,000 (US$17,300) in euro bills.
Police accompanied the retiree to a bank, where he deposited the money.
Euro notes and coins replaced 12 national currencies in 2002. Europeans can still exchange the old money at their central banks.
