- It was bound to happen. Plenty of pathetic losers treat
their dog or cat like a person, feed it better than they do their own children
and ass-hattedly refer to the animal as their child. Not enough tools give the
same preferential treatment to chickens. A New Hampshire farmer who is pathetic enough to
treat her chickens as part of the family is stepping in to fill that void.
Julie Baker has concocted a creative way to pamper her poultry and that way is
launching a website called “Pampered Poultry,” which – truthfully - sells
chicken diapers and saddles to protect against the “not so gentle gentleman
roosters.” Sadly, this might be the least-idiotic of the chicken clothing items
Baker sells. She also hawks clothing for poultry — brightly colored dresses with
bows, tailcoats and even a diaper with a bow tie attached. Because not all
chickens possess the self-discipline to work out and stay away from fatty
foods, the diapers come in a variety of sizes. According to Baker, her products
allow chicken owners to bring their pets inside the home without the mess. The
diapers function like a harness and are placed on the animal by slipping the
diaper over the chicken’s back and securing it. “When my daughter and I set out
to design and sell chicken diapers, it was born not so much out of a need to
literally pamper our poultry, but rather to share in the growing movement to
bring chickens from an agriculture sphere,” Baker explained in a post on her blog,
Farm Dreamer. “We wanted to be part of the “Backyard Chicken” movement.” The
odds of there actually being something known as the Backyard Chicken movement
seem slim, but trumped-up falsehoods are just part of the advertising game. Baker’s
fowl fashions range in price from around $10 to $21 depending on size……
- The Dude does not abide – not in a sequel, anyhow. One of
the ultimate cult-favorite films of the past 15 years will not be honored with
a second chapter, as the Coen Brothers have all but ruled out making a sequel to
“The Big Lebowski.” The film has spawned legions of fans, festivals at
which lovers of all things Lebowski dress in costumes from the movie and speak
the same lingo Jeff Bridges and his pals did in the 1998 release. Bridges
played "The Dude" and John Goodman co-starred as his friend Walter
Sobchak. As with any movie that remains popular years after its release (and
even with many that don’t), suggestions for a sequel have been prevalent over
the years. In fact, another of the film's stars, John Turturro, revealed in 2011 that he had an idea for a spin-off
film based on his character Jesus Quintana. Nothing became of that idea, but
last summer a hoax news story claiming Bridges and Goodman had signed up for a
sequel circulated online and had fans hyped for the idea of another “Lebowski”
movie. Ethan and Joel Coen didn’t offer much of a response then, but they are
saying something now. "I don't think it's going to happen. I just don’t
like sequels," Joel Coen said of a sequel during an appearance at the
Cannes Film Festival. "John Turturro, who wants it, talks to us
incessantly about doing a sequel about his character Jesus. He even has the
story worked out, which he's pitched to us a few times, but I can't really
remember it… No, I don't see it in our future,” Joel Coen added. That news is
not going to go over well with the diehards at Lebowski Fest, but they’ll just
get stoned and forget about it, so it’s no problem. Meanwhile, the Coen
Brothers' latest film, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a drama set on the 1960s
New York folk scene, premiered in Cannes to rave reviews. Just imagine the
reviews “The Big Lebowski 2” might receive……..
- Doesn’t Russian daredevil Valery Rozov know who rules his country with an iron
fist? He had better find out quickly because while claiming a world base
jumping record in a leap off the north face of Mount Everest in a special
wingsuit sound epic, such a feat could easily be seen as a personal affront to
thrill-seeking dictator Vladimir Putin. Rozov released video of the May 5 jump
on Wednesday and staged his stunt to mark the 60th anniversary of the first
ascent of the world's most famous mountain. In releasing the video, the
48-year-old Rozov also claimed the record for the world's highest-ever base
jump, at 7,220 meters above sea level. The video shows him clad in a special
wingsuit, gliding for a full a minute in the thin mountain air, reaching speeds
up to 125 mph, before landing on a glacier at 5,950 meters. His feat was
something of a corporate sellout, as it was sponsored by Red Bull, which posted
a statement on its website in conjunction with the video’s release. "Because
the cliff at the top was not very high, the initial moments of the leap in the
rarified high altitude air were the most critical phase," the post read. "Rozov
needed more time than usual in the thin air to transition from freefall to
flying." Planning the jump took a full two years and the climb from base
camp to the jump location took Rozov four days. He was assisted by a team of
four Sherpas in making the ascent. Rozov’s list of stunts includes more than 10,000
jumps, including jumping into an active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in
Russia's Fast East in 2009 and leaping from 6,420 meters from Shivling in the
Himalayas in a warmup for the Mount Everest leap. "Only when I got back
home did I see how hard it was for me both physically and
psychologically," Rozov said. Now try to imgine how tough it’s going to be
when Putin ships him off to a gulag for performing this stunt before the despot
could do it himself. Putin totally would have found time in between staging
fake tiger hunts and publicity stunts flying in a glider alongside endangered
birds…….
- Is everyone excited? Check that. Is anyone – anyone who doesn’t
work for Microsfot – excited about the leak of several screenshots of a prerelease build of
Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8.1 update? Updating the world’s worst
operating system is generally not a reason for excitement, but there is a minor
amount of buzz over the screen shots because they indicate that the Start
button really is coming back. The screen shot of the Windows 8.1 desktop
featured a new-look Start button in the left-hand corner of the taskbar, right
where Windows 7 users expected to find it. The botton is adorned with the
redesigned, monochrome Windows logo, rather than the now-old-school
multicolored orb. When a user moves the mouse over it, the logo changes color
to indicate its functionality. Its purpose is launching the Windows 8 Start
Screen…..and that’s all. It won't pop up the old-style Start Menu, just provide
a new way to get to the new launcher UI, in addition to the button on the
Charms bar, the Windows key on your keyboard and the dedicated Windows buttons
found on many Win8 fondleslabs. Along with this slight tweak, the system will
also feature the primary Start Screen with its Live Tiles and the option to set
the default Start Screen to the "All Apps" view. The All Apps view
will also be configurable so that users can group their icons by usage, which
is a cheap substitute for a Windows 7–style Start Menu in the form of a
full-screen view. The last useful tidbit surrounding the new Start button is
that it will reportedly also be usable from within Windows Store apps and from
the Start Screen itself, but will only be visible if the user moves the mouse
cursor to the lower left-hand corner of the screen. For those users who aren't big
fans of the button, Microsoft will also provide the option to get rid of it all
together……..
- Fired National Hockey League coaches are a plentiful
commodity. Coaches are fired a few games into the season, halfway through the
season, three-fourths of the way through the season and after the season ends.
They are fired on a boat, in a moat, beside goat and carrying a tote (bag).
Despite those facts, it’s still jarring when a team lets a coaching superstar
like John Tortorella go. Tortorella,
who won a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004, is out as coach of
the New York Rangers and with him, the best sound bytes anywhere in the NHL are
now homeless. The Rangers announced Tortorella’s dismissal on Wednesday, a mere
four days after the team was bounced from the second round of the Stanley Cup
playoffs. Firing a man who routinely dropped profanities during in-game
television interviews, belittled and shouted down reporters in postgame press
conferences and was likely to explode in a fit of rage at any given moment is
awful, but firing him in New York is worse. Giving a combustible coach like
Tortorella the platform he had coaching in the biggest media market in America
is a gift to all sports fans, just as firing him after his team lost its
playoff series in five games deprives those same fans of the joy of a witty
Tortorella putdown after a tough loss. Sure, expectations were high this season
after the Rangers reached the Eastern Conference finals last season, but this
was a lockout-shortened season in which teams did not have enough time to
prepare for a condensed, 48-game schedule. Rangers team president and general
manager Glen Sather refused to go into detail about the reasons Tortorella was
let go during a conference call Wednesday, but admitted that Tortorella was
"shocked" to hear the news. "It wasn't one thing," Sather
said evasively. "I think I made the right decision so we can move forward
in another direction.” Coaches who aren't 75 years old and have a Stanley Cup
win on their résumé usually find new jobs, but Tortorella’s verbal meltdowns
just won't have the same impact in Columbus, Calgary or Winnipeg next season…….
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