"Las Vegas, Nev. — Jerome Spencer mops the floor in the men's bathroom at the Main Street Station Hotel and Casino. Behind Spencer is a piece of the Berlin Wall, which now serves as an anchor for a row of urinals."

17/2/00 - Gratuitous pig link:

"With the recent popularity of the films Babe and Gordy, not to mention the omnipresence of the Muppets' Miss Piggy, pigs have graduated from their long-suffering supporting roles in motion pictures to take the limelight. To ensure that we don't forget the pigs who put swine stars center stage, we present some pigs from film and television."

"This is Pippo. He's small. He's pink. He's a pig. He's under-appreciated."

The official page is pretty poor.

But there is a dark side to his story:

"The original story goes: [innocently enough]

Pippo lives in an apartment across the street from a park. He loves playing there with his friends, Risu the squirrel and the Robins. He is curious, full of life, and loves to think up new games and things to do.

Pippo cannot possibly befriend a bird that is not in a cage. The bird would see him coming, and fly away, leaving Pippo in tears in front of everyone at the park. Pippo cannot possibly live on his own in an apartment. What kind of credit check do these people do? Who would rent or sublet an apartment to a pig? Who would let a pig live by himself? I think the Animal Control Officers would have something to say about it. What if he burned himself while heating up some slop on the stove? Who would he call? Pigs have no fingers- they can't be expected to use the phone! 

I think there are too many holes in Sanrio's story."

"The Treasury Department recently issued a new $1 Sacajawea coin, which is only available at banks and Wal-Mart. What do you think about the government making Wal-Mart an exclusive outlet for U.S. currency?

"It seems appropriate, as Sacajawea was instrumental in opening up the West to competition-crushing retail chain stores."
George Giroux, Auto Mechanic"

"Sting boycotts Austria"

"NME, October 3, 1981 Charles Shaar Murray is less impressed with Ghost In the Machine. "O Sting, where is thy depth?" he protests, trashing an album which "combines a woolly sound with woolly thinking to minimum effect... dull music with worthy sentiments attached." Of the dense, smoothed-out new Police sound, Murray sarcastically observes: "They now sound like a cross between the Bee Gees and a reggaefied Yes, which I'm sure everyone will agree is one hell of an advance."

"Amid steadily rising oil prices that have boosted the cost of gasoline and slammed consumers dependent on home heating oil, the federal government is stepping in to help out. Meantime, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles are going unsold on dealer lots."

Or as Click and Clack have it:

"FORD: The customer came first in developing the all-new Ford Excursion.

TRANSLATION: We had about 50 million tons of extra sheet metal lying around.

FORD: It's designed to provide customers with a fresh new choice in the heavy-duty utility market.

TRANSLATION: Even we were shocked when we saw it. I think we can all agree, it's freakin' huge."

"I read an article today in the printed version of the New York Times about a large new Sports-Utility Vehicle called the Ford Excursion. It was a very interesting article to me and mentioned various sorely needed safety improvements. When I happened to read the same article on the web a bit later, I noticed that one paragraph had a very interesting modification : it had been edited to remove some details about just how dangerous the unmodified Excursion would have been in collision with a Ford Taurus."

12/2/00 - Our Music Director turns up on a CD cover!

It seems the photo was tucked into the L-M section of some encyclopaedias that were donated by his grandmother to the Salvation Army.

12/2/00 - Information on how they train dogs to detect bombs:

"...the British were the first to employ the talents of detection canines in WWI when they were trained to find land mines.  ("Good dog! No, wait . . . no, don't bring it TO ME!")."

This is the sort of story he is referring to:

"YET more taxpayers' cash went up in smoke yesterday - as Afghan jet asylum seekers were handed free FAGS."

"Tom Baker's original multicolored scarf was 13 1/2 ft. long in Season 12. However, between the filming of Sontaran Experiment and The Ark in Space (Sontaran was filmed before Ark), a section of blue-gray was removed on the beige/purple end of the scarf. Figure A shows the blue-gray area in Sontaran Experiment. Figure B shows the scarf with the blue-gray area removed, as seen in Ark In Space."

"So Don't Stop Believin' and Keep on Clicking for details of my plan to persuade Journey to cross the Atlantic at long last and play on British soil"

"An air and sea search failed to find any trace of the 27-year-old Asda bakery worker, who sometimes swam home across Southampton Water after a night at the casino, police said."

"Families packed the Millennium Dome largely oblivious to crowds of leather-clad homosexuals who converged on the attraction for an unofficial Gay Day."

12/2/00 - The John Travolta article is online.

9/2/00 - And back to the article I was reading in Mean, an offshoot of the Baader-Meinhof / R.A.F. phenomenon, the Sozialististisches Patienten Kollektiv or SPK:

"The SPK was the strange product of a therapy-group at Heidelberg University. Dr. Wolfgang Huber, a psychiatrist at the university's clinic, believed that his patients' mental disorders stemmed from Capitalism, and the only cure was a Marxist society."

Their most famous story, a tribute to the 'late' Adam Rich.

Another story, their attempt to be the first to celebrate the Millennium.

And reminiscences from Ted Rall:

"Might may have had only 30,000 readers, but they were the RIGHT 30,000 readers."

9/2/00 - The issue of Mean I have has several good articles, unfortunately the best stuff is not online.  I think you get the gist of the John Travolta article though:

"Former Spy contributor Mark Ebner explains why the gluttonous, greedy John Travolta--soon to star as a 10-foot-tall alien in a film adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's lousy sci-fi epic Battlefield Earth--is an especially gross example of Hollywood's current downward spiral."

9/2/00 - Partly due to the hostage situation in England, and also because of an article I read in Mean magazine I decided to find out exactly where the term 'Stockholm Syndrome' came from.  (I feel like a contestant on 'Who Wants To B A Millionaire' explaining all my motivation for deciding that, yes, snow is white!)

This site starts well:

"At 10:15  A.M. on  Thursday, August 23rd, 1973 the "Sveriges Kreditbank" of  Stockholm, Sweden  was rocked  by sub-machine gun fire.(1)   "The party  has just  begun," announced  a 32 year old prison escapee  named Jan-Erik  Olsson.    "The  party,"  indeed, continued for  some 131 hours, or five and a half days, as Olsson held four  of the  bank's employees  hostage in  an 11 by 47 foot vault until late in the evening of August 28th."

"The Stockholm  Syndrome may  be the key to understanding the success of  the New  World  Order  in  undermining  the  Catholic Church..."

"This [the Stockholm Syndrome] was particularly well illustrated in the dramatic and poignant case of Gerard Vaders. Vaders was a journalist who was one of many hostages taken captive aboard a train bound from Groningen to Amsterdam in December of 1975 by seven members of the Free South Moluccan Youth Movement. The terrorists killed the train engineer and executed two hostages in the course of the twelve day siege. The Moluccans had announced that they would carry out regular executions, but clearly they did not have the heart for it. Nevertheless, at one point Vaders himself was marked for execution; the only thing that prevented the Moluccans from carrying it out was Vaders’ “last testimonial”. He had received permission to give a message for his family to one of the other hostages; in the course of this talk, he freely discussed his weaknesses, his failures, his family difficulties. The Moluccans evidently felt empathy for him, perceiving him as a human being rather than a pawn, and decided not to kill him. The tragic aftermath was that they then quickly executed another man in his stead."

9/2/00 - There is a God:  (via TV Barn)

"Martha Stewart ordered to pay more than $200,000 in back taxes"

Another Seinfeld-connected link, the lead singer of 'Foghat' has died.

9/2/00 - I don't know what they'll do now that Steve Forbes has dropped out:  [warning: Real Audio]  (via email)

"We don't need no John McCain
We don't need no Alan Keyes
Hey! Bush! Leave that crack alone!
All in all it's just another vote for Steve Forbes"

9/2/00 - Gratuitous pig link:

"...One day, along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry in both a physical and ideological sense..."

8/2/00 - Bitch magazine can't get incorporated because of its name.  (via Wire Mommy)

8/2/00 - Stephin Merrit will appear on Fresh Air on February 14th.  Valentines Day, 69 Love Songs etc. etc.

8/2/00 - Yay! Someone reads me enough to put me on their front page.  Thank you Footprints.