Category: Defies a category!

Recycler Traded Cans for Booze?
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Los Angeles recycler that catered to homeless alcoholics by exchanging the bottles and cans they dug out of people’s trash for coupons for a nearby liquor store has been shut down as a nuisance, city officials said on Friday.
Neighbors had complained since 1997 about the transients who loitered around the recycling center, K&C Recycling, saying they were urinating in public, digging through dumpsters and taking drugs, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo said.
“The story here sounds like fiction, but it is fact,” Delgadillo said. “The concept of protecting the environment became hideously distorted as transients were given coupons for a liquor store instead of money for their cans and bottles.”
Authorities initially had some trouble shutting down the site because no Los Angeles city ordinance prohibits exchanging recyclable items for coupons. “It’s okay to give out coupons but they were only for use at the liquor store,” Eric Moses, a spokesman for Delgadillo, said. “The allegation is that they weren’t buying Ho-Hos (packaged snacks), they were buying 40 ouncers.”
The neighborhood prosecutor researched the city ordinance regulating recycling centers and found that the center had not been issued a local permit, Delgadillo said.
Residents testified at public hearings and signed declarations about the activities that took place around the recycling center, and got the center’s license revoked.

Celebrities Gum It Up
It’s considered rude, adolescent and low-class, but celebrities seem to have no shame about chomping on gum in public.
Britney Spears, Drew Barrymore, Sharon Osbourne and the “stars” of Joe Millionaire and The Bachelorette all seem to have very little compunction about chewing with their mouths open, even when the cameras are rolling.
“I saw it everywhere and thought it was gross and tacky,” said New York Post editor Maureen Callahan, who recently featured a collage of celebrity chewers in the paper’s Sunday section.
Callahan caught Barrymore gumming it up at the premiere of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Osbourne masticating during L.A.’s Fashion Week.
But Spears, whose wad of gum is as ubiquitous as her newsboy cap and bared navel, is the “worst offender,” Callahan said.
“At The Recruit premiere with Colin Farrell, she wasn’t even chewing with her mouth closed,” she said.
The Louisiana lass has†also been photographed†blowing big blue bubbles and spitting an already-been-chewed gob out a car window.
Gum has hit the reality circuit, too. Viewers of Joe Millionaire saw competitors for Evan Marriott’s heart chomping before on camera √≥‚Ćnot to mention smoking cigarettes and cursing.
And Bachelorette winner Ryan Sutter had no qualms about showing the world how he keeps his breath fresh for Trista Rehn.‚ĆHe chewed away on camera as he got ready for the couple’s final TV date.
The trend could be due to the rising popularity of gum. Wrigley’s spokesman Chris Perille said business in the U.S. has been “very positive” over the last couple of years.
“There has been more energy and activity in the past year or two,” he said. “The growth rate in Wrigley’s volume was 5 percent in 2001 and 9 percent in 2002. Roughly half the population chews gum on a regular basis.”
Perille also asserted that gum’s reputation for being tacky has changed over the past few generations. “People have grown up with it. They recognize the benefits and know the product can be used discreetly in a number of settings,” he said.
These benefits include tooth-cleaning and whitening, breath-freshening, appetite-suppressing and tension-easing, Perille said.
Etiquette expert Lesley Carlin, co-author of Things You Need to Be Told: A Handbook for Polite Behavior in a Tacky, Rude World!, agreed that gum has become acceptable √≥ as long as it’s used quietly.
“It’s‚ĆOK if you can do it without attracting attention to yourself,” she said.
In fact,‚Ćit may even be hip to chew gum now √≥ or so Wrigley’s ads would like us to believe.
Orbit gum commercials are narrated by the attractive British spokesmodel “Vanessa,” and have a “tongue-in-cheek, almost mod approach,” Perille said. Big Red advertising targets the “social sirens,” which Perille defines as club kids. And print ads for Eclipse gum feature the hip-hop saying “fa shizzle,” which means “for sure.”
“There’s been a concerted effort to make sure ads are edgier, with more use of humor,” Perille said.
Elycia Rubin, fashion director for E! network, said stars like Spears and Barrymore chew gum not carelessly but deliberately, to show they’re “sassy and fun.”
“They do it because they have a sense of humor and an edge,” she said.‚Ć”They’re like your best girlfriend having fun.”
But Callahan said she doesn’t think most stars in sticky situations are even conscious of their bovine behavior.
“It’s a thing that everybody does, but most people are not in a position to be constantly photographed,” she said. “They forget they shouldn’t be talking and chewing at the same time.”
Carlin agreed that there are times and places for gum, but the red carpet is not one of them.
“Have an Altoid,” she said.

Man Complains Bad Rope Spoiled His Suicide
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – A Romanian man plans to complain to consumer authorities about the poor quality of a rope he used in a failed attempt to hang himself, Romanian papers reported Thursday.
“You can’t even die in this country,” 45-year-old Victor Dodoi was quoted as saying in the daily Adevarul.
The newspaper said Dodoi’s relatives found him hanging from a tree in his garden and managed to cut the rope with a knife. He was taken by horse-drawn cart and then by ambulance to a hospital in the northern town of Botosani.
Dodoi said he would file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Authority about the quality of the rope, which was easily cut, as soon as he is released.

‘Sexist’ Thong Ad Withdrawn

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s tourist board has temporarily withdrawn an ad showing a woman’s half-naked bottom marked by the suntan outline of a thong with the slogan “Spain marks,” after a deluge of complaints that it was sexist.
The ad was pulled after protests by political and women’s groups, a spokeswoman for the tourist board Turespana said. A meeting of regional government and tourist authorities will decide whether the poster should be banned altogether.
“We asked the Women’s Institute what they thought, and they said it was positive, not sexist. In fact, there is also a version in which a man appears, so it is a balanced campaign,” the Turespana spokeswoman said.
Spain’s Women’s Institute is a department of the Social Affairs Ministry. But other women’s’ groups were not impressed.
“This resorts to the figure of a semi-naked woman as a tourist attraction, which is pitiful and it seems like we’re taking a step backwards,” said Micaela Navarro, responsible for equality issues at the main opposition Socialist party.
Tourism is Spain’s biggest industry, accounting for more than one tenth of its economy. The “Spain marks” campaign has already been launched internationally, with a series of different photographs deemed to cause less offence.

?!?!?

Britain’s Jedis Become a Force to Be Counted
LONDON (Reuters) – It’s official — “Star Wars” has created almost 400,000 Jedis in Britain.
Over 390,000 people wrote “Jedi” on their 2001 census form, more than those who registered their faith as Jewish, Buddhist or Sikh in the optional question on religion, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday.
The Jedis declared their belief after a campaign on the Internet asked people to “do it because you love Star Wars” or “just to annoy people.”
“Star Wars devotees stated their faith as ‘Jedi’ in the mistaken belief that if 10,000 did so it would be recognized as an official religion,” a spokesman for the ONS said.
The census question on religion offered a series of tick-boxes for the major religions in the UK, including a free space for “any other religion.”
In the films, the Jedi knights are a noble order of protectors unified by their belief in a universal power called the Force.

This Is Not Me
Okay, here’s one for the books: Rent My Chest.
Seriously, this is not me!

Wanna Groove On My Hackey Sack Vibe?
Are you a hipster?

Make your mark!