He's got rocks in his bread

A Massachusetts man definitely got more than he could chew when he took a bite of raisin bread he recently purchased from When Pigs Fly Bakery in Somerville.

Michael Snyder said he heard and felt a crunch while eating a slice of the bread. After spitting the bite into his hand, he reportedly found three or four small rock-like pieces --and not raisins-- in his bread.

Ron Siegel, co-owner of the bakery, told press that the rocks were traced back to a shipment of raisins they received from Hillcrest Foods, a food distributor, which linked them to a Chilean company where an older method of drying grapes is used. The method dries the grapes in between the rows of the vineyard, which allows for more contamination by small rocks and other foreign materials.

The bakery offered Snyder loaves of bread as a refund, but he ultimately received a check for $5. I think he should have at least held out for a bottle of wine from that rocky vineyard.

Fun with Google!

You might not think this sounds fun, but Google's got anaddicting "game" for you to try... one that sucked me in for a good hour last night.

The Google Image Labeler pairs you with another user to match labels in an attempt to earn points.

Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will:

• View the same set of images.
• Provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see.
• Receive points when your label matches your partner's label. The number of points will depend on how specific your label is.
• See more images until time runs out.

It's basically a photo/word association game that you play with someone you've never met.

The points mean nothing and the whole point of the activity is the betterment of Google's image search feature (tricky, tricky Google), but it's a fun way to kill time and learn that people all over the world think as simplistically as you do.

Give a try; you'll be addicted in no time!

Thanks, TJS!

Catch a falling star

If you've got some time between midnight tonight (Tuesday) and 4 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday), you know, instead of sleeping... grab a blanket and head outside: It's time for the Perseid meteor shower!

The meteor shower -- or a show of "falling stars" -- is one of the summer's most beautiful sites. The best time to watch is from moonset, at 1:57 a.m. until dawn, at 4:45 a.m.

NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said there should be plenty of meteors--maybe even one or two every minute. The numbers of meteors that you can see depends on the quality of your observing conditions. The best way to watch is by reclining in a sleeping bag (and coat) on a deck chair. Aim your gaze high overhead, in the east or northeast direction. Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, but seem to come from the direction of the constellation Perseus, the Superhero.

Because I barely made it through the workday, I more than likely will not be awake for this, but if anyone happens to see it/get a good picture, please share!

More Olympic fun

I know I said I wasn't too into the Olympics this year -- and that's still true. But my boyfriend and I did happen to catch Michael Phelps winning his first gold medal last night; Pretty exciting stuff, I must say.

Sometimes it almost doesn't seem fair how good Phelps is, and last night, it was almost like he was just competing against himself and his own world record. But check out the video below from the 2000 Olympics --this guy actually was only competing against himself after his two competitors disqualified themselves. Sorry to say it, but I think even I could have beaten this guy. He manages to almost double the record for this event, while still setting a personal best.

Still, you gotta love his -- and the announcers'-- enthusiasm... and the constant giggling that takes place in the background.

Please make it stop

Nowadays, I wouldn't bother posting about Tila Tequila. My adoration for her and her show skedaddled when she passed up Dani on the first season of "Shot at Love."

But I noticed that she's coming out with a new music album and the title had me doubled over in pain. The album, which Tila promises will be "the dopest album of the year," will be called "I HAVE TOURETTE'S!"

"PS-PLEASE REMEMBER THE TITLE OF THIS ALBUM SO YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED WITH OTHER STUFF THAT THE MEDIA TRIES TO PUT OUT OK???? MUAH! " she writes on her MySpace page, followed by a number of expletives, presumably in an attempt to show that she might actually have the disorder...? I don't know.

Does anyone else find that appalling? Or are you all just shaking your heads in disbelief that I can still be surprised by garbage like this?

And in other awful --but related-- news... MTV is currently casting for "A Shot at Love 3," only it looks like Tila will not be the subject of suitors' adoration this time around. Fill out an application here.

Tila's exclusion from the show might have something to do with her ass getting dumped at the end of season two, or the fact that she's got a new (and very rich) girlfriend. Courtney Semel, who is the heir of Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, looks like a bore, though-- Team Dani for life!

RELATED LINKS
One tequila, two tequila, three tequila - BORE
Can you handle another shot of 'Tequila'?
How to save a bi
Here's to a shot at shameless self promotion
Ordering up another round of "Shot"
Tequila making you sick?
That's A-stupid

Going to the chapel...

If graduating from college, landing a full-time job, paying student loans and owning a car weren't enough to mark my journey into adulthood, today will.

Today, I will be attending Mike and Lisa's wedding--my first two friends to officially tie the knot. And they're certainly not the last. Boy, am I getting old...

Anyway, somewhat fittingly, I heard this on the radio last week: The "Should You Be Invited to My Wedding Test."

How many of your friends do you think would pass your test? And how many guest lists would you be kicked off if this test were issued as a right of passage?

Types of questions include:

• Name the city I live in now (If they're not smart enough to check out to return address for this answer, they don't deserve to come).
  
• Name my current employer.
  
• Do you know where my parents are and whether they are still alive? (Rule #16 - Always have an up-to-date family tree)

And for shots (open bar, yes) and giggles, check out this video below. Apparently it's become a big trend to spoof your "first dance" (more than likely amplified by the allure of YouTube), but this is one of the better ones I've seen. Enjoy! And congrats to Mike and Lisa!

Oh (8), babies!

It probably sounds fabricated, but two babies in neighboring states --both weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces-- were born at 8:08 a.m. on 8/8/08. No lie!

Hailey Jo Hauer, was born to Lindsay and Joe Hauer at Lake Region Hospital in Minnesota Friday (below, left). Over in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Xander Jace Rinike (below, right) was being born at the same exact time... and Xander is the eighth grandchild born to his mother's parents.

Both families and hospital staffs joked to local media about the extreme coincidence of the babies' birthdays, birth times and birth weights and said they considered playing the lottery and/or making eight their new lucky numbers.

RIP Bernie Mac

Breaking news: Comedian and actor Bernie Mac died this morning from complications from pneumonia. He was 50 years old.

Mac suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body's organs, but had said the condition went into remission in 2005. He recently was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia, which his publicist said was not related to the disease.

Mac had a stacked resume, including two movies and two television stints in post-production. He appeared in the "Ocean's" trilogy, "Transformers," "Bad Santa," "Don't Be a Menace...," and of course, "The Bernie Mac Show," for which he was twice nominated for an Emmy and once for a Golden Globe. He also penned a memoir about his childhood entitled, "Maybe You Never Cry Again."

Click here to read more.

Happy Olympics!

Today is 8/8/08, which means it's time for the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.


Sorry, everyone. I'm not super into these games, minus the soccer. In fact, I don't think I've really cared about the Olympics since the 1996 U.S. gymnastics team (you remember Kerri Strug, right?).

But don't let me get you down. Enjoy your shirtless Michael Phelps, USA's "Redeem Team" of basketball, smog-covered Beijing and 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage.

[click here to view a complete schedule of events] Yay America!

Actually, I'm much more interested in the bestial alternative to the Olympics: Animal Planet's 2008 Puppy Games. It's the most incredible show I've ever seen. Click here for a quick preview!

Any dirty old man's fantasy

Q: What's full of pom poms, spirit and beer residue?
A: The elevator at the University of Texas' Jester Hall.

Police and firefighters were called to the campus after 26 cheerleaders (aged 14-17) got themselves stuck in the elevator.

Apparently, the girls --who were attending Texas Cheer Camp-- were trying to see how many of them they could fit in there as a puerile little game. Only, the elevator descended one floor and the doors wouldn't open. After panicking for a bit, a few of the cheerleaders wiggled their cell phones out and called for help.

Signs posted in the elevator warns "No more than 15 people or 3,000 pounds."

Two girls were treated at the scene. One girl fainted and was taken the hospital. She dropped the metaphoric spirit stick on that one...and was probably cut from the squad.

Everyone's Favre-ite topic

Breaking news: Brett Favre has finally found a home. The Green Bay Packers officially traded the record-setting, retired-unretired quarterback to the New York Jets in an overnight deal.

The trade is extremely conditional, i.e. if Brett takes 50 percent of snaps this season, the Packers get a fourth-round draft pick. The conditions grow increasingly favorable for the Packers the better Brett does: If Brett takes 80 percent of snaps and the Jets make it to the Super Bowl, the pick becomes a first-round pick.

New York Jets # 4 Brett Favre jerseys are already available.

I'd like to think that now that this trade has gone down, all of the FAVRE lines on the bottom of ESPN will go away, but we all know that's not going to happen.

RELATED LINKS:
The week in sports, kind of...
Favre saying goodbye to Green Bay
SI honors Fav-ra

Inane things you can do, I (apparently) can't do better

Some of these may be questionable, but I thought maybe I'd stir up some controversy by posting AskMen.com's list of the Top 10 Things Only Men Can Do.

As a woman, I hesitate to say some of the things on the list made me laugh. It also made me think of Ron Burgundy's line, "I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science."

So without further ado... [click the links below for a more detailed account]

• 10. Go topless - well sometimes we'd prefer if you didn't...
  
• 9. Hold their liquor - Click this one. Totally true.
  
• 8. Manscape - Um, well, yeah. Duh.
  
• 7. Navigate spatially
  
• 6. Shave their heads
  
• 5. Play real sports - Don't even get me started on this one...
  
• 4. Fertilize eggs - Where, pray tell, are you finding these eggs?
  
• 3. Pee standing up - Yeah, true. Unfair.
  
• 2. F^%* things - Way to go, boys. Be proud.
  
• 1. Age well - I won't argue this one. George Clooney will still be hot when he's 85.
  

It's all in good fun, though, right? Any woman want to try her hand at creating a Top 10 Things Men Can't Do list? I'm sure we could come up with more than 10...

Afternoon delight at Starbs

Speaking of tanking economy (see below), Starbucks is trying to take itself off life support by offering a new promotion to help save company loyalists a few bucks.

The "Treat Receipt" program allows Starbucks customers to bring in their receipt from a purchase earlier in the day to receive any grande iced drink for $2 (beginning at 2 p.m.). The deal is good til Sept. 2

This is excellent news for people who are addicted to Starbucks enough to regularly purchase its overpriced drinks twice a day, but for the rest of us... Is this really going to push you to spend $4 on a small--sorry, "tall"--coffee at 8 a.m. just to get the reduced price Mocha Choca Latta Ya Ya in the afternoon? Mm, probably not. You'd essentially be paying $6 to get the latter.

Still, the company says it is responding to customer requests for nationwide promotions, and Starbucks fiends who can overlook the backward logic in this program will be happy to know that their morning receipt could save them $2.15 off a Mint Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino. Okay, well that one kind of sounds good enough to go for broke...

RELATED LINKS
Your barista today is: Ronald McDonald?

Where's the beef--err--cheese?

Sorry, McDonald's lovers: Our tanking economy strikes again and this time it's one of the fast food restaurant's staples that will be getting sliced.

McDonald's is reportedly taking steps to modify its double cheeseburger --the anchor of its Dollar Menu-- due to rising food costs, particularly in dairy.

Some restaurants are selling it with one slice of cheese instead of two, and billing it as a "double hamburger with cheese," according to McDonald's President Don Thomas. Others are offering a double hamburger without cheese. Some are selling the traditional double cheeseburger at prices ranging from $1.09 to $1.19.

If the double cheeseburger is removed from the Dollar Menu, Thomas said there will still be some sort of burger available for $1.

I personally could care less about this because I haven't eaten McDonald's since I was 8 years old and Happy Meals were like crack, but I know this is traumatizing news for some burger enthusiasts. But take a look at the nutrition facts - maybe they're doing you a favor.

Update: Bus beheading suspect in court

The man reportedly responsible for stabbing, decapitating and eating a sleeping 22-year-old on a Greyhound bus in Canada last week is asking to be killed, according to the Associated Press.

Vince Weiguang Li appeared in court Tuesday, declining to speak for the most part except to softly whisper, "Please kill me," to the judge. He is being charged with second degree murder for last week's attack, and has yet to enter a plea. Li is expected back in court Sept. 8.

The man had a plastic bag containing his victim's ear, nose and part of a mouth in his pocket when officers arrested him, Prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn said. The only response officers received from him was: "'I have to stay on the bus forever,'" she said.

Witnesses reported Li displayed the severed head to them while he was being contained on the bus. Audio of a police tape leaked on the Internet this weekend revealed an account of the man eating pieces of the body during the standoff.

RELATED LINKS
Update: Greyhound bus murder

Betrayed by the 'Bell'

Isn't it the best feeling when you're getting ready for work at 7 a.m., all the while knowing that you can put on TBS and see your friends from Bayside up to their old antics?

"Saved By the Bell" is probably one of the greatest shows of my adolescent life. There is not one episode I have not seen, one backstory I cannot describe in detail or one super corny line that I cannot recite.

But there were some things about the show -
particularly the real lives of its teen-now-adult stars - that I never really knew too much about... And thanks to Dustin "Screech" Diamond, that might soon be changing.

"Behind the Bell," Diamond's planned tell-all book, promises to detail "sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying" during the SBTB days, according to New York Magazine.

And while this is probably the greatest idea ever --it's enough to make me sing, "I'm so exciiiited, I'm so exciiiited"-- a part of me wants to forever preserve the innocent images of Zack, Kelly, Jessie, Lisa, Slater and Screech hanging out by their lockers and sharing fries at The Max. I don't want to hear if Mark Paul Gosselaar was actually taking drugs; that would be way too Johnny Dakota of him.

...Plus, I really hate Dustin Diamond and think he's a huge douchebag that doesn't deserve to make money like he'll make off of this. Who knows if he'll even be telling the truth. The guy's got serious "angry typecast" syndrome and probably resents the rest of his castmates that went on to do something else with their lives, like not starring in 67 episodes of "Saved By the Bell: The New Class."

Getting 'saucy' at Subway

You usually learn in kindergarten what is and is not grounds to call 911, but one Florida man apparently didn't learn that lesson.

Police said that Reginald Peterson called 911 multiple times when he felt his sandwich order was not being properly prepared at his local Subway restaurant.

The first time he called was because employees did not put sauce on his spicy Italian sub. The second call to 911 was because police had not arrived in what the 42-year-old believed was appropriate response time.
Workers at the restaurant said Peterson became belligerent and yelled while they were fixing his order. They reportedly locked him out of the store when he left to call police the second time.

[UPDATE] See below for real audio from calls! I seriously cannot believe they entertained this for this long...



Officers responding to the scene said they tried to calm Peterson down and explain the proper use of 911. When he did not cooperate, he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.

'Dark' curse?

By now, you may have heard about Morgan Freeman's car accident that put him in the hospital last night.

CNN.com is reporting that Freeman, 71, was in serious condition but appears to be "in good spirits" after suffering a broken left upper arm, several other fractures and neck and shoulder injuries in the wreck.

Freeman, who could have surgery as early as Monday, was enjoying the recent success of the latest installment in the Batman series. This got me thinking...

*Does anyone else see a somewhat ominous trend falling over the stars of "The Dark Knight"?

Similar to Poltergeist, perhaps this big blockbuster is carrying some sort of curse.

We've seen the death of star Heath Ledger ala painkillers and sleeping pills shortly after the movie wrapped. (Sources say his role as the Joker was causing insomnia.) Then, Christian Bale has assault charges filed against him by his mother and sister days after the movie's premiere. Now, Morgan Freeman's car flips off the road and he lands in the hospital as the movie continues smashing all sorts of records?

RELATED LINKS
Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint...and a Chupa Chup
Coasting by
"WHY SO SERIOUS?"
Update: Heath Ledger death an accident
Update: Heath Ledger's death
BREAKING NEWS: Actor Heath Ledger found dead

I went to collage!

I may be a stickler for grammar and spelling, but it's my job. It might also be someone's job at this television station to make sure that they don't look like morons during their telecasts. High gas prices may be making kids dumber--according to this report--but what's their excuse?

Update: Greyhound bus murder

Depending on my schedule, I don't usually get a lot of posting done on the weekend, which is why I didn't end up writing about the man who decapitated a sleeping passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada Thursday; I figured it would be old news by the time I got to it tonight (Sunday).

But between Friday and now, I've broken the news of this story to at least four different people, so apparently word hadn't gotten out as much as I had thought and this begs a news brief.

The moral of a story is that a 40-year-old man, who witnesses said seemed completely normal entering the bus, repeatedly stabbed his seatmate on a ride from Manitoba Thursday. Some described him as robot-like, saying he exhibited no anger and no emotion while he decapitated the 22-year-old victim.

Now, more grisly details of the attack have been leaked, particularly a police tape describing how the attacker defiled and ate the victim's body. Yes, ate.

The video on LiveLeak.com does contain some violent images (nothing derived directly from the crime scene), but what's more disturbing is when a police officer --calling the attacker "Badger"-- says "Badger is the at back of the bus hacking off pieces...and eating it."

Listen for yourself. Pretty sick stuff.



For full details on the story, click here. To learn more about the victim and the family's response to the gruesome attacks, click here.

[UPDATE] A 31-year-old man in Santorini beheaded his girlfriend and her dog today after a heated argument, according to officials there. Click here to read more. Disgusting. What is wrong with these people?