Estimated 51.1M Tune in for 'Friends'

An estimated 51.1 million people tuned in to watch Ross and Rachel get together on the final episode of "Friends," according to preliminary Nielsen Media Research ratings released Friday.

That was roughly two-thirds of the audience gathered by the "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" finales, but along the lines of what NBC had been predicting.

Thank God that show's off the air!

Not everyone was heartbroken to see it go, especially with the show's omnipresence during the past few weeks.

"Can I tell you something honestly?" Jon Stewart said on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" on Thursday. "I never watched that show — and I'm sick of it."

He's my new hero of the moment!

hmm... seems like there was something else I was going to blog. I can't remember now. I must be old or something. Or paranoid. Yes paranoid. I'm afraid to blog at work. Don't want to get fired for abuse of company resorces used to express my opinion which is different than that of the company... or something like that. Maybe they won't fire me, just take away my net access... which would mean I couldn't log my time, thus I wouldn't get paid and look like a slacker. They could fire me for that. Not logging my time as a slacker that is. Well, I have to get up early tomorrow so I better go.

Smile, You're on Candid Phone Camera
The Internet has made lapses in behavior more embarrassing
By Philipp Harper
Special to MSN
http://mobilemomentum.msn.com/article.aspx?aid=12

As if we needed help making fools of ourselves, the Internet has taken this all-too-human propensity and turbocharged it, magnifying our missteps and screw-ups in ways no one could have imagined just a few years ago. What once were quietly embarrassing events — you name it — now are given a public currency that mortifies.

Consider: Last year at one of the Midwest's tonier prep schools, a 14-year-old girl was persuaded by her older boyfriend (pressured, say her parents) to take sexually explicit photos of herself and then transmit them to him via the Internet. Boys being boys, the recipient of this misguided ardor e-mailed the snaps to a few of his close friends, who, boys being boys … well, you get the idea.

When officials at the school learned of this amour less-than-propre, they gave the boot to the young couple and to two additional male students whose viewing of the images could be confirmed. But if the carnage seems to have been limited, it really wasn't.

Word got out and there were front-page stories in the local newspaper. There followed, too, the inevitable lawsuits. As to the number of eyeballs (to use Net speak) captured by the images, the girl's mother asserts the photos made it into the great cyber river and were spread far and wide.

Yeah well, that's not the cell phone makers fault, or the internet's fault. Probably not the "older boyfriend's" or the 14 year old girls fault... Nope, i'm going to pin the blame directly on the parents. Why would anyone let their 14 year old daughter date an older guy who is obviously a bad influence on her? This story leads one to think that they are bad parents. If you don't raise your childeren in the way they should go, bad things will happen. It's never too late to start being a good parent, and hopefully they have.

How does that happen, you ask?

Enter the cell phone camera, a device that not so long ago could have existed only in the fecund imagination of Q, supreme gadgeteer and outfitter of James Bond and other denizens of Her Majesty's Secret Service. Easily concealed, innocuous looking — it's main purpose is not as a camera, after all — the cell phone camera is becoming known more for its misuse than use.

Yeah it's always the manufactuer's fault when something bad happens with their product. Come on! Give me a break! It's not the cell phone makers fault if someone takes a nudie pic with it, nor is it the cell phone's fault. The blame is to be placed on the person who takes the pic.

But make no mistake, the camera phone is also a handheld mischief maker, one that seems to have tickled the funny (or naughty) bones of countless users. Which would explain the proliferation of Web sites devoted to the embarrassing, risqué or often plain pornographic images captured by amateur auteurs.

Any Hollywood starlet who swings her legs out of a low-slung sports car, revealing a flash or more of lingerie in the process, can pretty much assume that a snapshot of her unmentionables will be posted somewhere on the Web before the sun again sinks into the Pacific. Ditto the college student who, in a rum-induced fit of joie de vivre, sheds her top (or worse) at some beachside bacchanal.

Hey, if that Hollywood starlet is dumb enought to flash her lingerie and unmentionables, its her own dumb fault if they show up on the internet!! Tip too all the Hollywood starlets out there... if you don't want me to see your boobies, don't dress so I can see them, even when you get out of a low-slung sports car. Same goes for anyone who's dumb enought to drink and strip. If you have a problem with drunk nude pics of you showing up online, stop drinking. If you don't drink, you don't get drunk. If you don't get drunk, you don't strip or are much harder to talk into stripping. If you don't strip, you can't be seen naked on line! Is it really that hard to understand?

Ultimately, the most effective policing will be done by the camera phone owners themselves, relying on common decency and teachings like the Golden Rule to guide their behavior.

Probably the only thing the author got correct in the story.

Hmm... lots of crap to blog tonight. I'll start with this:




I found her on the msn.com web page. Some silly story about how to lose pounds by drinking juice, or something like that. I didn't read the story. How could I? As soon as I saw her I was smitten (anyone know if I spelled that right?). No, not love at first sight. I don't believe in that crap. Now if you want to say lust at first sight or infatuation at first sight, hubba hubba, hello juice girl! I've got no clue what the rest of her looks like, but her face is mighty nice to look at. I also love the "face" she is making... her eyes looking slyishly away from the bottle of juice which is in the corner of her mouth, which has a very slight smile :) MMmm.... i'm gonna go get me some juice right now! *gets glass of juice*

It's the economy stupid!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's employment outlook brightened on Thursday after the government said jobless claims dropped last week to their lowest since 2000, bolstering expectations for strong numbers in the April jobs report.

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/63342|top|05-06-2004::12:24|reuters.html

Bush pauses to comfort teen

'This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11'

By Kristina Goetz
The Cincinnati Enquirer


During his visit to the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, President Bush stops to hug Ashley Faulkner, who lost her mom in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Photo by Lynn Faulkner
In a moment largely unnoticed by the throngs of people in Lebanon waiting for autographs from the president of the United States, George W. Bush stopped to hold a teenager's head close to his heart.

Lynn Faulkner, his daughter, Ashley, and their neighbor, Linda Prince, eagerly waited to shake the president's hand Tuesday at the Golden Lamb Inn. He worked the line at a steady campaign pace, smiling, nodding and signing autographs until Prince spoke:

"This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11."

Bush stopped and turned back.

"He changed from being the leader of the free world to being a father, a husband and a man," Faulkner said. "He looked right at her and said, 'How are you doing?' He reached out with his hand and pulled her into his chest."

Faulkner snapped one frame with his camera.

"I could hear her say, 'I'm OK,' " he said. "That's more emotion than she has shown in 21/2 years. Then he said, 'I can see you have a father who loves you very much.' "

"And I said, 'I do, Mr. President, but I miss her mother every day.' It was a special moment."

Special for Lynn Faulkner because the Golden Lamb was the place he and his wife, Wendy Faulkner, celebrated their anniversary every year until she died in the south tower of the World Trade Center, where she had traveled for business.

The day was also special for Ashley, a 15-year-old Mason High School student, because the visit was reminiscent of a trip she took four years ago with her mother and Prince. They spent all afternoon in the rain waiting to see Bush on the campaign trail. Ashley remembers holding her mother's hand, eating Triscuits she packed and bringing along a book in case she got bored.

But this time was different. She understood what the president was saying, and she got close enough to see him face to face.

"The way he was holding me, with my head against his chest, it felt like he was trying to protect me," Ashley said. "I thought, 'Here is the most powerful guy in the world, and he wants to make sure I'm safe.' I definitely had a couple of tears in my eyes, which is pretty unusual for me."

The photo has been circulating across the country, Faulkner said. Relatives have passed it on to friends, bosses and acquaintances. As they tell the story, they also share in Wendy Faulkner's legacy, which her family continues through the Wendy Faulkner Memorial Children's Foundation.

"I'm a pretty cynical and jaded guy at this point in my life," Faulkner said of the moment with the president. "But this was the real deal. I was really impressed. It was genuine and from the heart."

I love it when things on the net get screwed up. Like the caption on for the pic above. I mean come on, doesn't anyone check these things out before posting them for the world to see and laught at? Maybe it wouldn't be so funny to me if it was an amiture page... kinda like this here InabeanBlog, but it's not.

More Later

Being Ted Rall

Also, here is a link to the Cox & Forkum main page.

Groovy! Now I can give someone the gift of Gmail! Who wants to join the New World Order with me?

Is Natalie Portman really a vegetarian? This page says so! How disappointing. How depressing. How (fill in the blank). I guess I'm going to have to find a new hollywood hottie that I don't stand a chance with. I gots to have a girl who eats mean. That's probably why I prefer real girls, my friends for example, to surgically enhanced unrealistic beautiful people. Never-the-less Natalie Portman is still quite good looking. But looks will go away, so any kind of permanent relationship should never be base only on or even mostly on looks.

********** We interrupt This Blathering Blog Post To Bring The following Breaking News!************
I just ran the blogger.com spell checker... and it found a mistake... "that'd" which it suggested should be "teat" When really what I meant was "that's"
********** Now back to your regularly scheduled blathering*********

...What was I droning on about before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yeah, real girls are better than the hollywood hotties we see on tv and in the movies.

********** We interrupt This Blathering Blog Post To Bring The following Breaking News!************
Blogger.com's very own spell checker doesn't reconize the work "blog"
********** Now back to your regularly scheduled blathering*********