I was listening to the radio this morning when they announced that IHOP was buying Applebee’s.  The only problem was that either the announcer didn’t enunciate or I didn’t hear the last part of the word and I thought they said Apple.

The idea of merging Apple and IHOP is kind of funny, though.  Can you imagine what the Apple stores would be like after the takeover?  And could you now get iTunes downloads with your Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity?

Ouch:

Real story here.  Inspired by Grouchy Old Cripple.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but a Boston Pops concert is not the sort of event you expect fisticuffs to break out.

Something else popped at the Boston Pops opening night concert – a fight broke out in the audience at Symphony Hall.

Television video of the fight Wednesday night showed two men struggling in the balcony – one with his shirt pulled off – as several people stood around them and the orchestra and singer-songwriter Ben Folds performed a medley from the movie “Gigi”.

Conductor Keith Lockhart briefly halted the performance while the men were escorted out.

Witnesses said they heard a scream from the balcony, and the sound of chairs falling, then a second scream as the fight escalated.

“The first time there was a scream, Keith looked up that way but he kept going,” audience member June MacIndoe told Boston’s WHDH-TV. “Then about a minute and a half later … there was a big scream and you could hear chairs falling over and you could see them up there, fists going.”

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t explain why the fight started.  I can just see these guys getting into it over something like viola vs cello.

Viola rules, dude!

No, screw you, cello rocks!

Viola!

Cello!

Viola guy throws a wild haymaker at Cello dude and now it’s ON…

I heard about this story on the radio this morning.

The Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans is expecting a stream of contributions during Mardi Gras.

The Catholic school has a bank of porta-potties for revelers seeking relief.

A one-time trip costs a buck and an all-day pass is five dollars.

Of course they couldn’t resist a few jokes (i.e. “a stream of contributions”), but this part at the end caught my attention:

While New Orleans maybe long on Mardi Gras fun, it’s short on places for a pit stop.

Author Julie Smith and her husband Lee own a house in the French Quarter. She says the locals know to tape up their mail slots during Mardi Gras, which runs through Tuesday.  (Emphasis added)

Holy cow!  I know people can get desperate, but that’s just way beyond any sort of civilized behavior. 

Instead of taping up my mail slot, I’d probably sit inside with a pellet pistol and give these miscreants something to think about the next day.

Or, if I wanted to be especially cruel, a water gun loaded with habanero juice. 

Take one Iranian-born rapper from Malmö, Sweden.  Add one Persian, Pakistani, Indian singer.  Take Snow’s Informer and redo the rap in Persian and the vocals in Hindi.  Blend well with some freaky spy-vs-spy stunts.

The result:  Chori Chori from Arash ft. Aneela

You can thank U-POP on XMRadio for bringing this to my attention.

A-licky-boom-boom-down! 

I just now got around to reading today’s Keller Citizen, and couldn’t help but notice the ad on page 14A.  It was too big for my scanner so I took the picture you see over to the left (click for monster size).

It appears that “Jeffrey” took out a full page ad to ask “Michele” to marry him.  The ad consists mainly of a poem, followed by the proposal (the poem begins “Like a delightful train wreck you careened into my life,” which was the impetus for the title of this item).

I hope, for Jeffrey’s sake, that A) Michele reads the Keller Citizen, and B) that she says yes.  He’s putting her on the spot in a hugely public way (although not nearly as bad as those guys who propose at sporting events). 

I also hope the Keller Citizen at least gives us a short blurb next week as to the outcome.  My curiosity has been piqued.

Here’s yet more proof of why it’s not smart to mix drunk idiots and guns.

A 47-year-old man who was shot in the head Wednesday night during an exchange about whether he could smoke inside a friend’s house died Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

Robert Williams was pronounced dead at 3:10 p.m. at John Peter Smith Hospital.

Margore Carter, 49, was arrested Thursday evening by members of the U.S. Marshal’s Task Force at a relative’s home in Arlington, police said. She faces a murder charge.
…
A witness said that “the suspect then jokingly stated that she had something that would make him go outside,” Boetcher said.

Carter went to her bedroom and returned with a gun, investigators said.

Acting Sgt. Mike Carroll said she first aimed the gun at a window near Williams and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked.

“From the other witnesses’ statements, they all thought she was kind of playing around,” Carroll said. “She then walks up to him, puts it to his head and pulls the trigger, and it does go off.

“According to her, she was surprised.”

There are two things I don’t accept as excuses when it comes to ND’s:  a) It just went off; and, b) It was unloaded.  I *always* follow the rule that a gun is loaded unless I’m doing something that specifically calls for it to be unloaded (such as cleaning).  I even recheck if it’s left my hand since I last checked.

I can’t abide a shooter who, upon being called out for bad gun handling behavior, tries to excuse it by saying that it isn’t loaded.  It’s really not very hard to maintain safe habits, and excuses are rather poor comfort when your neighbor is lying dead on his floor, stuck down like a bolt from the blue by *your* “oops.” 

And the “it just went off” excuse is utter crapola.  Barring mechanical malfunction (which is very rare and still requires violation of the three rules to cause harm), guns require some kind of human input to fire.  As someone so eloquently stated somewhere that I can’t remember, “Keep your booger hook off the bang switch!”

Anyhow, this idiot (enhanced by alcohol), willfully violated all three rules, resulting in the death of another person.  Let’s hope she gets plenty of time in the gray-bar hotel to contemplate her errors.

Does anyone happen to know what drugs the people who are making Target’s TV ads are using?

They must be having some serious hallucinations, what with the dancing calculators (and other office supplies), fairies, etc.

Damn.  This situation reminds me a lot of the Lindsey Crumpton case:

ATLANTA – A lovesick teenage girl drove into an oncoming car in a suicide attempt that she counted down “8, 7, 6…” in a text message to the female classmate who spurned her, authorities said. The teenager survived but a woman in the other car — a mother of three — died.

Louise Egan Brunstad, 16, was charged Thursday with felony murder. Prosecutors said they intend to try her as an adult. If convicted, she faces an automatic life sentence.

“She was actually counting down her imminent threat: ‘Nine, eight, seven, six … I’m going to do it,’” said Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

Authorities said Brunstad rammed her family’s Mercedes-Benz head-on into a smaller Daewoo driven by 30-year-old Nancy Salado-Mayo, who was killed. Salado-Mayo’s middle child, Lesly, 6, was in a child safety seat and was treated for fractured ribs and other injuries.

Brunstad, who was treated for an ankle injury, had told friends she planned to kill herself after another female student at Holy Innocents Episcopal School refused to have sex with her, Howard said.

What a horribly stupid and selfish thing to do to someone.  I hope she gets the book thrown at her at trial.  Or perhaps she will spare everyone the trauma of a trial.  Those text messages would seem to be a clear indicator of intent to me.

For those who might be tempted to kill themselves, allow me to offer this bit of advice:  Leave everyone else out of it.  Walk into a lake or the ocean.  Go blow your brains out deep in the woods.  Whatever you do, don’t be a stupid, selfish coward by involving someone else in your permanent solution to a temporary problem.

It is to agonize over the clumsy, shameful and unembarrassed degeneration of popular English. A particularly unfortunate example is the debasement of the term “hero.” If a hero is some poor unfortunate who simply forgot to duck, how should we describe a real hero? As I see it, a true hero must not just suffer, he must accomplish something, at the imminent risk of his life. Audey Murphy was a hero. Sam Woodfill was a hero. Joe Foss is a hero. But these poor unfortunates who got caught on the wrong side of the bulkhead when the bomb went off were no more heroic than the deer that falls to my rifle.  emphasis added

I couldn’t help but be annoyed by a segment that ran on Fox 4 this morning, called “High School Heros,” because it turned out to be a sports piece about the current Colleyville high school quarterback:

COLLEYVILLE — The Colleyville Heritage Panthers lost several key players last year, including their star quarterback to Florida State. The new quarterback has stepped up in a big way. He is this week’s High School Hero.  emphasis added

Now I’ve known for some time that football is the “national religion of Texas,” but that doesn’t excuse this nonsense.  Being able to play football is not heroic in any way shape or form.  I’m sure this young man is a nice kid who plays well, but that doesn’t make him a hero.

If you’re going to run a story about “High School Heros” I’m expecting real heros, not some football nonsense.