Various News, Including Evil Tom Morris

Odd

The Evil Empire
So my friend Tom is up to no good, forging an evil radio empire.

After 10 years of uncertainty and hard work, "the time has come," said former Radiate FM General Manager Brennan Forsyth.

Radiate FM, the FIU student radio station, installed its translator on top of the Marine Biology building and began transmitting through its new signal, 96.9 FM on Feb. 28.

...

The translator, which sits 40 feet above the Marine Biology building, will broadcast within a 10 to 15 mile radius of BBC. Penton and the station's student engineer, Tom Morris, spent four days on top of the roof of the building, working in the rain and cold last week, and finished the transmitter on Feb. 28.

"We braved quite a wind chill up there. It was absolutely freezing by South Florida standards, anyone from up north would have laughed at us," Morris said.

...

Morris, who was heavily involved with installing the translator, is already looking to the future and even thinking about expanding the station more.

"If the FCC opened up translator applications again, I would love to get a translator up on the Pines Center," Morris said. If there's free spot on the dial, I'll do it."

From its inception 21 years ago, Morris' ambitious dream may not seem that far-fetched.

"Two years ago, we didn't even hear our radio station on either campus; now you can pick it up as far as the Key Largo," Jaross said.

We must stop this cancerous spread before it reaches actual civilization.

Tom Morris must DIE

Source: The Beacon (FIU Newspaper) Also, the URL for this site is WAY TOO LONG.

The Doors... Sorta
Actually a terrifying cover of Riders on the Storm. A very unfortunate cover.

Source: I Am TRex

Latin
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

"Whatever is said in Latin, sounds profound."

Source: The BBC (Other phrases available at this site too)

5 Dollar Gas
Granted, it's an anomaly. As yet.

James Willman seems to be a nice enough guy: polite, good-humored and hard-working, pumping gas seven days a week at the Amerigo Gas Station in the tiny Big Sur town of Gorda, about 35 miles north of Cambria.

But at least once a day, Willman said, someone pulls in and starts cursing him.

“They say all kinds of stuff—‘You ought to be shot,’ or ‘Where’s your mask?’ ” Willman said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I just work here.’ ”

The reason for consumer hostility is that the station is serving up what might be the costliest gas in the land.

This week, as crude oil flirted with $110 a barrel and gasoline prices surged nationwide, a gallon of regular at Amerigo was going for $5.20.

See this is a tiny town with a tiny gas station that has to run a diesel generator all day for power, so they gouge. Party because they have to, partly because, well, they can.

It's the American way.

Source: San Luis Obispo County

Spidey in the Attic
Cool picture.

Turnip Bomb
I swear, Indiana exists as a cautionary tale.

Terror came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, late last week as a suspicious package arrived at the offices of a local law firm in a move that seemed to presage a deadly bomb outrage slaughter campaign.

After a tense operation by robot and human bomb-disposal operatives, however, it was discovered that the infernal device was in fact - in the judgement of the local bomb squad - a potentially exploding turnip.

The threatening vegetable was despatched in a "bluish gift bag" contained within a box slightly smaller than a baseball, according to Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette reporter Abby Slutsky.

...

"I'm now on constant alert against this and other rooted vegetables," said Fort Wayne lawyer Mark GiaQuinta, to whom the package was addressed.

He theorised that the explosive-esque yet nourishing gift had been sent to him by a disgruntled individual against whom GiaQuinta had acted in court. This person, described by the attorney as "volatile", had perhaps been trying to send the message "you can't get blood from a turnip".

The man thinks he's funny, but he called in the bomb squad because someone left him a gift.

He's a serious paranoid whacko.

Source: The Register

Speaking of Bombs
Here's a nifty page on the disarming of a bomb in the Falklands via the awesome sounding 'Double Baldrick' manuever.

Source: South Atlatic Remote Territories Media Association

Get Bent
This lady needs psychological help, badly.

ASHLAND, Ky. (WSAZ) -- A mother says the straws she bought for her three-year-old daughter were shaped like a male sex organ.

Andrea Bailey says she went shopping at the Ashland Wal-Mart on Thursday, February 28th, and bought a package of fun straws for her three 3-year-old daughter, Ashlynn.

Bailey says Ashlynn came in and used one shaped like a heart. A couple others in the package, though, were shaped like something different.

“There are two of them that are shaped like the male private area,” said Bailey. “I called Wal-Mart and they very rude with me about it. They acted like I was lying, like I was making it all up. You know, I would never make something up like that, especially about my little girl. But, that's just how they treated me and it’s just not right.”

Ahh, conservative, paranoid scolds.

Is there nothing they cannot ruin?

This woman probably gets upset at missiles, speedboats and launches of the space shuttle too.

Whaaaaaacko.

Source: WSAZ.com (check it out for yourself if you like)

Swastika Update
So once again, we have a controversy over a building whose wings form a swastika from the air.

Sigh.

DECATUR, Ala. (AP) -- From the ground, the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home looks like any other building. But fly over in an airplane, and the outline is unmistakable: It's one big swastika.

Prompted by complaints from a Jewish activist, the agency that owns the government-funded building is planning to alter its shape to disguise the Nazi symbol. The move comes just a few years after a $1 million design modification meant to quiet similar complaints from a U.S. senator.

Naturally, the shape of the building is the sole, overriding concern here.

"The difficulty is there are a limited number of options for fixing a building that has been there for some time," said Mike Giles, counsel for the Methodist Homes Corp. of Alabama and Northwest Florida. "We have to come up with a way to fix an appearance that we want solved and not hurt our residents."

Wesley Acres provides government-subsidized housing for 117 low-income people ages 62 and above. Most have no reason to suspect their hallways take on a sinister shape.

The one-story building, designed in the mid-1970s and completed in 1980, underwent a $1 million alteration in 2001 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development following complaints by Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin, who has since died. But the addition of two wings did little to hide the offensive shape, and in some ways accentuates it.

Options for the new renovations include the addition of covered porches or other outdoor areas.

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

It's the same guy? The same guy made the complaints?

Is this all he does?

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

Segol calls the Alabama retirement home a "sister swastika" to the building in California and says they were both part of a tangled, government-funded conspiracy to honor Nazis.

Segol claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after World War II and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.

Methodist Homes' Giles said Segol's conspiracy claims are ridiculous. The building was originally designed to be much larger, he said, and cutbacks resulted in a shape that resembled the four-armed swastika used as the symbol of German Nazis during World War II.

"It was certainly not intentional," Giles said.

IT IS! IT'S ALL HE DOES! He looks for reasons to get upset from Google Earth!

The shape of the retirement center is evident in satellite photos available on the Internet. But it is located in a residential section in a city with few tall buildings, and many in Decatur have no idea Wesley Acres resembles a swastika.

Giles said any changes to the building must be relatively inexpensive since the agency lacks money for an elaborate solution. Planners are considering modifications, he said, "so that from the air it takes your eye away from what was originally there."

Yes, the low-income housing people have to spend money that would otherwise be available to shelter poor old folks to install shrubbery because some idiot with a computer and time on his hands is all atwitter.

I hate conspiracy theorists.

Source: The Associated Press

So a Woman With a Grenade Walks Into a Police Station..
At least it wasn't in Indiana.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - The police department was briefly evacuated after a woman decided she should bring in a hand grenade she found.

The unidentified woman handed it to an officer Thursday after finding it while cleaning out a relative's belongings. The officer immediately took it outside the building and police cleared the building until the bomb squad took it away and detonated it about an hour later.

The grenade appeared to be live.

"When we countercharged it, it went boom," bomb squad supervisor Lt. James Brandon told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Source: My Way News

I Hate Schools
They always have to make themselves look dumb.

A 15-year-old girl who stopped an out-of-control school bus she was riding on was handed a Saturday detention instead because she was skipping school.

Marina High School student Amanda Rouse was on a bus with 40 elementary school students Wednesday morning when the driver fell out of her seat after a turn and hit her head.

Rouse jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured.

She said had asked the bus driver for a ride because she felt sick at school.

Of course, idiots like this don't help matters.

"She is in trouble with school because she made the wrong decision," said Rouse's grandmother, Sally Correll. "But I can't help but believe that she was where God wanted her to be."

Yes, God wanted her to play hooky to avoid an accident.

Why didn't he just make the bus driver better at their job?

Source: AZ Central

See My Vest
Well, ok, not mine.

Not yet.

A vest that enables video gamers to feel the impact when their characters are shot in-game is raising fears that young people are being desensitized to violence.

The 3rdSpace gaming vest, invented by a Seattle surgeon, includes eight air pistons over vital spots and may be the most sophisticated offering yet in a series of such devices that have been intended to enhance the sensory experience of gaming.

Gamers' reactions have ranged from mildly interested to highly enthusiastic, but anti-gun campaigners in Britain, where the device has recently become available, are alarmed. One activist told Channel 4 News that people keep asking her "Why are our kids out in the street killing each other on a weekly basis?" and warned that it's because "We feed them a diet of violence."

Please...please shut the hell up.

It.

Is.

A.

Toy.

You.

Whackjob.

I do sort of wonder about the long-term health effects of having air pistons hitting you in the chest though.

Source: Raw Story