Scrivener.net

Monday, August 23, 2004

Olympic coverge, from the shoulders up only.

BBC Olympics presenter Sharron Davies says she's bemused by a row centring on her nipples.

It's reported that the BBC has ordered cameramen to shoot Davies her from the shoulders up during broadcasts from the Olympic pool. The Daily Mirror says the BBC received a handful of complaints from viewers who said the 41-year-old's prominent nipples had diverted attention from the action in the pool....

"People are talking as if we don't have nipples, for God's sake," says the past Olympic silver medallist... full story (illustrated!)



Tuesday, August 03, 2004

"This land is our land ... Your song is my song..."

If you are the last person on the 'net not to have seen the This Land parody at JibJab.com, you should, it's funny.

The copyright threats over it are just as absurd, not as funny, but quite ironic. For one thing, as Jesse Walker points out relating the story at Reason, Woodie Guthrie wrote the song exactly to protest such property rights, including in it such lyrics as...

As I went rumbling that dusty highway
I saw a sign that said "private property"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
This side was made for you and me

... and elsewhere used as a copyright notice...

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Walker notes in a follow-up that Guthrie fully lived up to this philosophy himself in this case, taking the tune for This Land virtually note-for-note from the song When the World's on Fire, which had been recorded ten years earlier by country legends, The Carter Family.

PS: The archives at JibJab have contain some amusing things as well.


Monday, August 02, 2004

GOP's got babes!

I mean besides Ann Coulter. Who'd have thunk it?

Heather Locklear, I hardly knew ye' without a helmet on. And speaking of babes wearing helmets...


"Be all you can be, and then some -- thanks to the surgeons in the US Army."

"The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free.

"The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, 'the surgeons have to have someone to practice on'." Reuters

Well yeah, we wouldn't want the Army sending medics into combat to look after the wounded without being experienced in performing breast enlargements.

Medic! Medic! Get the fat out! We need a liposuction over here!!


Sunday, August 01, 2004

"The world’s oldest penis. If there is another one, I don’t know it.”

At 425 million years, well, yeah...

Did you ever have the thought that maybe a half billion years from now some alien race will get all excited about examining your fossilized colon?