Hepatitis A Scare Gives New meaning to Crappy Celebrities

Ashton Kutcher's birthday party at the swank NYC club Socialista drew a big crowd of celebs -- including Demi Moore, Ivanka Trump and Bruce Willis. But city health officials worry that a bartender who contracted hepatitus A worked the night of the party and may have spread hepatitis A to the A-list patrons. (ABC News)

Word is that a bunch of A-list celebs including Madonna, Ivanka Trump, Bruce Willis, etc. attended a birthday party for Ashton Kutcher in NYC recently and were infested with the crap of a bartender who didn't see the merit in washing his hands before serving the public...

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4330347&page=1

Sad as it may be that a bunch of seemingly innocent celebs must now expel the toxin from their bodies, it is even more deplorable that ABC News.com can't get the correct spelling of the word HEPATITIS...

What the hell is hepatitus with a "U"?

Come on people at ABC News.com...unless one of your staff members was smeared with the same fecal matter as the celebs I don't see any excuse for the lack of attention to detail....

BREAKING NEWS....Two weeks later - Black dude's photo removed from Portfolio.com story about Gold Futures

Back on January 28th I first pointed out how the folks at Portfolio.com threw up an article on their site about gold futures and attached a mismatched photo of some random black dude to the article...

Well it took the slow-like-molasses staff two weeks to get their act together but I'm happy to report that the photo is gone...

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/ap/2008/02/12/gold-plummets-on-profit-taking

Nice job folks.

Remind me NOT to call you if I need something done right away...or if I need to have someone pay attention to detail immediately with lightning speed...

But if I need something done in a ridiculously slow and painful way consistent with the speed at which molasses move, you'll be number 1 on my speed dial :-)

It Really Sucks When Writers Can't Write (or Spell)...especially when they work for the New York Times

Take a look at the following phrase and then take a look at the caption below the photo....

News Analysis
Who Won the Writers Strike?

Monty Brinton/CBS

A scene from “The Amazing Race,” a reality show and ratings winner on CBS. During the writers’ guild strike, networks have relied even more heavily on such programming.

By DAVID CARR

Published: February 12, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/arts/television/12strike.html?ref=arts

Hopefully by now you have noticed the discrepancy between the caption and the headline...

Why is the plural possessive used in one place (with respect to the word "writers") and ignored in another?

This is really disappointing considering this is the New York Times...

Granted they've lost some of their luster as a result of the dude that wrote all of those fake war stories a few years ago and then passed them off as legitimate - much to the surprise of his supervisors, etc...

Nevertheless this is a major force in American news publishing...

What the hell dudes? Are you really that careless??

Don't you guys have a grammar manual handy? I mean come on - that is just ridiculous.

I'm not even a legitimate writer or reporter and I can do a quick 2.5 nanosecond duration Google search to research the rules of possessive plural and use of the apostrophe...

See? It's so easy...here you go: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html

Minimizing Hollywood...Bush, Blair, Brown, Merkel, Putin, Sarkozy and Ahmadinejad play Charades!!!

Today's journalistic blunder has been committed by CBS Marketwatch, a financial site.

The headline reads: "Progress reported in hollywood writers talks - report."

Last time I checked, conventional grammar rules indicated that proper names (that includes names of cities) should be capitalized.

Last time I checked Hollywood was a "city" although one could argue as to whether or not Los Angeles would truly qualify as a real "city" by modern standards.

You can check out the CBS Marketwatch site and the blunder for yourself:http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/progress-reported-hollywood-writers-talks/story.aspx?guid=%7B4D25A6B1-3B52-4D2D-92EA-2BA68F7162D5%7D

Until the melodrama pertaining to the current writers strike is sorted out however, there is absolutely no shortage of witty material out there...

If you want to laugh until you lose all control of your bladder, check this out:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/?storyID=13500

Rupert (Murdoch) LOVES Barack Obama...

Well, that might be a bit of a stretch but not really given the fact that the Murdoch-owned and historically conservative newspaper THE NEW YORK POST has come out in favor of Barack Obama...that is very significant on many levels indeed...

The troubling part is that there is a discrepancy between that which is reported on the Yahoo! News page and that which actually appears on the NY Post website...

It appears as though there's a bit of shadowy editing going on...

Let me show you what I'm talking about...

Here's a link to the Yahoo! News page that contains the story about the Post endorsement of Obama: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080131/ts_alt_afp/usvotedemocratsendorsement_080131170710

I would direct your attention to the following excerpted paragraph from the Yahoo! News story:

"For all his charisma and his eloquence, (Obama) sorely lacks seasoning. And on national security, his worldview is beyond naive -- blithely unware that America must defend itself against those sworn to destroy the nation.

For the sake of a comparison metric I now give you the link to the actual NY Post editorial page: http://www.nypost.com/seven/01302008/postopinion/editorials/post_endorses_barack_obama_813218.htm

And now the very paragraph that is quoted by Yahoo! News:

For all his charisma and his eloquence, the rookie senator sorely lacks seasoning: Regarding national security, his worldview is beyond naive; America must defend itself against those sworn to destroy the nation.

Did you notice something missing?

Where did the part about "blithely unware" go in the NY Post article?
Was it never included in the original story?
Did it get edited out of the NY Post story after the fact?
Is it merely a figment of Yahoo! News' imagination (in conjunction with the true source which in this case is AFP, Agence France Presse)?

This is a mystery to me...

I feel like this is a journalistic version of the age-old question about the chicken or the egg...

Maybe someone thought it was too critical to include the term "blithely unware" so they removed it? But that doesn't seem likely given the fact that the Post and its backers are conservatives so they wouldn't shy away from criticism of a Democrat...

By the way, in case you were not aware, the word "unware" is a real word...it is another spelling/usage of the word "unaware."

I Just didn't want you to think that I was slipping or anything like that :-)

Anyway peace out my homies...

Happy February 1st...by the way isn't tomorrow supposed to be Groundhog's Day?

I wonder what the little bugger is going to say...oh the mysterious randomness of this life.