like a bird

last night when my mother came over to a deliver a fan to my apartment, my superintendent was hanging around outside with a parrot on his shoulder (as he is wont to do). so naturally we started talking about pet parrots, and my mother says, "parrots have very deep emotions. maybe deeper than humans."

i can buy that animals feel. but deeper than humans? really?

hercules hede of the day

From Greek mythology, Obama learned a lesson

pretty sweet lede of the day

Bush honors basketball champs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nice comeback, Kansas. Pretty sweet welcome back, too.

why i hate new people

stupidity:

Adam Leibsohn, a 27-year-old communications strategist who makes roughly $60,000 a year and pays $1,650 a month for his own apartment in the East Village, says the trick to squeaking by in the city is to swear off impulse purchases and credit cards . . . “It’s kind of a spartan lifestyle,” he says.

reality: Median income in New York City in 2005: $43,434

moqtada al-sadr cracks me up every time

from the washington post:

Moqtada, his friends said, has always been a prankster, in ways both innocuous and macabre. Once, he made a big show of offering a 7-Up to a student, who was then surprised to learn that Sadr had filled the bottle with water. In a more recent incident, he anonymously sent Shaibani, the aide, text messages threatening to kill him, only to reveal later with laughter that it was all a practical joke.

possibilities

Could an owl, not husband, have killed N. Carolina woman?

oversharing

maybe it's because i work for a blog that actually does important stuff, but i don't understand why shallow, self-obsessed blogs are so bothered by emily gould's nyt magazine article. is writing about yourself so much worse than writing about how you feel about celebrities?

grand theft auto dealership

US car dealer in free gun offer

commencement torture

i was pretty miffed that i had to listen to wolf blitzer at my GWU commencement. but apparently it could have been worse.

movies

i hope this comes to america soon

political lede of the day

Old friends recall Obama's years in LA, NY

The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog's head.

slow news day?

Trip to Cedar Point ends after student eats pot brownie

DETROIT - A high school trip to the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio was cut short for 200 students when one of them became ill after eating a brownie laced with marijuana, a district official said Thursday.

good news?

Aussie straps in beer, not child

tattoos i wont be getting

http://www.radaronline.com/photos/2008/05/no_regrets_bad_tattoos_david_cross_aviva_yael_pm_chen_01.php

recommended

chicken with pickled turnip in spicy sauce, at spicy & tasty in flushing.

science hede of the day

Great tits cope well with warming

gross lede of the day

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest -- dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

election lede of the day

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

seals maybe not as sweet as i thought

'Sex pest' seal attacks penguin

cultural commentary courtesy of the ap

Powdered cocaine not just for white yuppies any more

criminal mischief

Newlyweds jailed after brawl at Pittsburgh-area hotel

A newlywed couple spent the night in separate jail cells -- she in her wedding gown -- after police said they brawled with each other, then members of another wedding party, at a suburban Pittsburgh hotel . . .

Police arrived to find the dentist lying on the lobby floor and his bride, seemingly highly intoxicated, screaming.

of course

Roger Waters plays `Dark Side,' unleashes giant pig

hede of the day, british edition

Drunk Darth Vader's Jedi assault

penis headline of the week, take two

Florida moves to ban fake testicles on vehicles

cross-marketing

cnn is now selling t-shirts featuring its most inane headlines. hopefully the venture will inspire more great stories like this.

alleged lede of the day

Penis theft panic hits city...

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

tpmsnackerman

spencer made a surprise appearance at tpm today bearing pepperidge farm cookies. normally the only thing i love more than former coworkers is free food, but for some vaguely godly reason i'm keeping passover so instead i just feel bitter and hungry. i didn't even know black and white milanos existed.

best show ever?

i've tried really hard to like gossip girl. i should like gossip girl -- i'm too self-conscious to read trashy teen novels on the train, but a fourteen-year-old girl caught me reading something called "Bratfest at Tiffany's" over her shoulder on a plane last month. a show i can privately and lazily watch from my couch.

so it's disappointing to me that the show is so bad. it's not that its trashy. it's not trashy enough, and not smart enough either. there are too many old people and too many lectures on class consciousness from a 17-year-old who lives in a loft in williamsburg. i got more dirt about upper east side private school kids from taking driver's ed at dalton. sure, i'll watch it if it's on, but i'll watch pretty much anything but keeping up with the kardashians. so new york magazine must be less discerning than i thought, or they're lying to attract more CW ads.

the young and the restless (cougars)

Young, Restless Cougars Roaming Eastward
CHICAGO, April 16 -- "Go east, young cougar!"

pirates!

in somalia, and now in a map.

recommended

soul fixins, for surprisingly delicious soul food in the flower district. taking their cue from greenspan and mccain, they now have a recession special. who says economic downturns are all bad?

sexual non-sequiter lede of the day

If there were any doubt before, Barack Obama wants to serve two terms as president. And, please, don't mind that buzzing on his hip, he only has good intentions.

sheldon silver screws me over again

not good

audacious

Mich. thief slithers away with snake

LANSING, Mich. - A woman stole a boa constrictor from a pet store by slipping the snake down her pants, the owner said. The animal was stolen Thursday afternoon from Preuss Animal House in Lansing.

"I am far less concerned for the person than for the snake," owner Rick Preuss said. The 20-inch snake was worth $174.

Jayzun Boget, assistant manager of Preuss' reptile department, called the heist "audacious."

freezing to death doesn't sound humane

Kill-a-toad day? Australia area considers
Animal group OKs idea — as long as it's humane, like death by freezing

money crunch

a chipotle burrito is now $8.25 (with tax) in manhattan. usually when people complain about the cost of living in new york and say it's impossible to live on less than a million dollars a year i usually argue that it's their own problem. just because $5 coffee and $15 drinks exist doesn't mean you have to buy them, just like you don't have to live in manhattan or eat at fancy restaurants or hire luxury minivan taxis for your children. those aren't things that make it impossible to be "rich" in new york without a seven-figure salary. they're things only rich people should even think about. it's newcomers who think these kind of prices are routine that drive up costs for everyone else. but everyone deserves affordable burritos, and finding a reasonably priced lunch around my office is getting increasingly difficult . . .

headline of the day

'Vampire' hotel bomber from California dies after growing ill in Bolivian prison

the top rung

this story just confirms what i've always known: in new york, private high schools are for people not smart enough to get into competitive public schools. private school graduates i met never seem to have heard about this, so for a while i wondered if it was a lie spread at hunter to make us accept the permanent presence of asbestos in our fourth floor hallway. but now i'm pretty sure it's true.

beware

i think the northside is the safer part of chicago, but maybe not anymore

good news or bad news?

Report: 3 more babies left at baby drop-off in southern Japan

not recommended

Funny Games, unless you really like horror movies AND think you deserve to be punished for it

no one knows

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why

lede of the day

The professionally coy American intelligence agencies may be getting ready to show a little ankle.

smoking

yesterday i saw a subway ad that said something like, "lung cancer doesn't care if you're famous." is this the first anti-smoking ad directed at celebrities? does anyone famous ever get on the f train at 23rd street? maybe ethan hawke

best headline of the election

anything makes sense when you add a question mark. example:

Obama: First Female President?

sad and true

this onion article is disturbingly similar to a conversation i had last week

the new mode

" i got the title of this poem when i was drunk and text messaged it to myself" - guy reading at kgb bar last night

lindsay lohan eats?

in my epic list of unfortunate things that happened to my hometown over the past decade, this will probably fall somewhere at the bottom.

blog

whenever i tell people i work for a blog but don't have my own blog, they look at me like i'm a used car salesman who bikes to work. so now i have a blog. i'm not sure if i'll ever update it or if anyone will ever read it, but at least i have something to reference at parties and job interviews.