Merry Widow

Hollywood routinely influences fashion, of course, but rarely names it directly.One exception involves the strapless corset that actress and pin-up girl Lana Turner wore in a 1952 musical that won an Academy Award for Costume Design.The film was The Merry Widow, and the garment has been called that ever since.

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-odd-words-for-underwear/merry-widow.html#UF11M8aX4qgkMk8o.99

BOZO Criminal of the Day

Hey, What Are These Keys For?

Songs for today?

Thriller – Single Version – Michael Jackson

Mama Said – The Shirelles

Steppin’ Out With My Baby – Live Version – Tony Bennett

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini – Brian Hyland

In the Year 2525 – Zager and Evans

Don’s Big Dago – Live – Lenny Bruce

WORD of the Day

Scalawag

Definition: a mischievous and often morally corrupt person Examples: “The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we were deserters, and traitors, and scalawags; and when he drew rations for Company L from the commissary, he wouldn’t give us any.” – Jack London, The Road, 1907 “When times are good, the public generally prefers a scalawag. Clinton was the perfect president for the ’90s boom years. Warren Harding would have been a great fit with the boom of the ’20s. He drank. He played cards. He snuck out of the White House to go to girlie shows.” – Bill Bonner, The Market Oracle, December 20, 2011 About the Word: Also spelled scallywag, this term may originally have referred to an animal of very little value. After the Civil War, scalawag came to describe a white Southerner acting in support of reconstruction governments, often in pursuit of private gain; it was used to insult Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind. The origin of scalawag is unknown, but one theory suggests there’s a link to the Scottish scoloc, a first-born son given to the Church to educate.

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-charming-words-for-nasty-people/scalawag.html#odKKp3LmXdMjfitg.99

BOZO CRIMINAL of the Day

That’s What Happens When There’s No Laundromat Nearby

Welsh Rabbit

A dish that a vegetarian could safely order: melted cheese poured over toast or crackers. The name may have originated among the English as a dig against their neighbors, the Welsh. Rabbit was a much more expensive dish than cheese and toast, but if you were Welsh, that’s probably what you made do with. Since there is no rabbit at all in this dish, folk etymology created the variantWelsh rarebit, which upgrades it from a poor man’s dish to a purported delicacy. Photo: adactio from Flickr

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-surprising-food-words/welsh-rabbit.html#k3GfLfPCZr0sx70j.99

And It Wasn’t Even Valentine’s Day

AP Strange But True

Moved: 8/2/2012 07:41

OLYMPICS-MCDONALD’S

LONDON (AP) — When you’re competing in the Olympics, you want to try to maintain a healthy diet.

So, most athletes try hard to avoid the temptation of the free McDonald’s food inside the athletes village.

American swimmers Ricky Berens and Conor Dwyer couldn’t help themselves, though, after winning gold in the men’s 4-by-200 relay.

Dwyer says, “It was pretty bad. A couple quarter pounders, McFlurries, fries.” Berens tweeted a picture of their feast, which included Big Macs.

He says, “We eat so healthy all the time, so I felt pretty gross after that.” Dwyer said he still felt bad the next morning.

AVOIDING SPOILERS

NEW YORK (AP) — It used to be a lot easier.

If you wanted to watch the tape-delayed coverage of an Olympic event in prime time, even though it took place hours earlier, you just turned off the news for a few hours.

But that was in the days before social media, email, and text messages. These days, you might just have to lock yourself in a closet — without an Internet connection.

One Atlanta woman who wanted to wait until she got home to watch her favorite sport — fencing — had to avoid Facebook yesterday. And it’s too bad, because it was full of happy birthday messages for her. But Mandy Hauck didn’t want to risk finding out who won, and ruining the excitement of watching it as if it were live.

She also deleted her iPhone apps for CNN and ESPN. But she couldn’t stay away from social media completely. Her job in marketing requires her to spend her day on Twitter.

CYCLIST’S SIDEBURNS

LONDON (AP) — It isn’t hard for Bradley Wiggins to spot his fans.

The British Tour de France champ known for his scraggly sideburns, has inspired men, women, boys and girls to don sideburns of their own. They are taping fake hair to their cheeks in hopes of creating a winning karma for him.

They turned out by the thousands to cheer him on as he captured the gold medal yesterday in the Olympic time trial. It’s his fourth Olympic gold.

Those who didn’t want to bother with making their own fake sideburns could just pick up a newspaper. Two rival tabloids, the Sun and the Daily Mirror, each turned their front pages into cut-outs of Wiggins’ facial hair.

The Sun even offered sideburns that were colored gold for the occasion.

YANKEES-SOTOMAYOR

NEW YORK (AP) — When she’s at the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor normally sits next to fellow justice Stephen Breyer.

But she switched benches yesterday, and sat next to “Bald Vinny” Milano.

For one day, she wasn’t just a Supreme Court justice — she was a Bleacher Creature, joining the group of die-hard New York Yankees fans who sit in the right-field stands and carry out a ritual in the first inning of every game. They conduct a “Roll Call” of the Yankees’ starting lineup, chanting the name of each player until that player acknowledges the cheers with a wave or salute.

The Yankees say Sotomayor moved to better seats once the Roll Call was over.

Sotomayor has been known to play an even bigger role in baseball. In 1995, as a federal judge, she issued an injunction that led to the end of a seven and a half-month strike by players.

BELARUS-TEDDY BEAR INVASION

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — It’s probably the first time in history that teddy bears have defeated generals.

In the former Soviet state of Belarus, two generals have been sacked — after a Swedish light plane intruded the country’s airspace and dropped hundreds of teddy bears carrying slogans supporting human rights and media freedom.

Officials in the authoritarian state weren’t laughing.

They actually denied the incident happened until last week, when President Alexander Lukashenko called a government meeting to scold authorities for allowing what he called a “provocation.”

NO MICRO-BREWERS

MILWAUKIE, Ore. (AP) — Milwaukie won’t be getting a baseball team.

You may think they already have one — the Brewers — but you’d be thinking of the Milwaukee in Wisconsin.

This one is in Oregon, and it’s spelled with an I-E at the end, not an E-E.

Officials in the Portland suburb were hoping to bring a Class-A team to town. The city was ready to spend $25 million to build a 4,000-seat stadium. It would have joined three other Oregon cities with Class-A teams.

And they could have had some fun with the team name. Maybe the Micro-Brewers?

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Jiggery-pokery

Definition: dishonest or suspicious activity; nonsense Example: “[Greece] flouted European Union rules on the limits to budget deficits; its national accounts were a moussaka of minced statistics, topped with a cheesy sauce of jiggery-pokery.” – Jeff Randall, The Telegraph, May 20, 2010 About the word: Jiggery-pokery is an alteration of joukery-pawkery. Both joukery and pawkeryare English regionalisms for “trickery.”

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-favorite-british-words-vol-1/jiggery-pokery.html#13DivqwEPKCC8jLD.99

BOZO Criminal of the Day

There’s No Place Like…Jail?
Bozo criminal for today comes from Wentworth, North Carolina, where bozo Rodney Warren was due to be released from jail after serving his time on a misdemeanor charge. When it came time to go, our bozo said he wasn’t leaving unless the cops gave him a ride to a motel. After they informed him the police department wasn’t running a taxi service, he again refused to leave. If he really wanted to stay, he got his wish. He’s still in jail, with new second degree trespassing charges against him.

A poor Chinese farmer has cycled 60,000 km across the world to London to “spread the Olympic spirit,” reports say.

Chen Guanming, 57, spent two years on his three-wheeled rickshaw travelling from China through floods and freezing temperatures in 16 countries to arrive at his destination earlier this month, BBC reports.

John Beeston of London said he spotted Guanming looking lost and downhearted in the city’s west end alongside his rickshaw. The farmer didn’t speak any English and “burst into life” when Beeston spoke to him in Mandarin.

“I’m a big fan of Olympic Games,” the humble man from Jiangsu province in eastern China said. “I wanted to come here because I wanted the whole world to support the Olympics and be part of it.”

His painstaking journey — supported by donations and delivering packages en route — took him through floods in Thailand, up 7,000-metre-high mountains in Tibet and bone chilling -30 C temperatures in Turkey.

He eventually arrived in London July 6 with dreams of attending the opening ceremonies.

“It’s like telling people that a Martian has landed in the garden,” Beeston told BBC News. “But, what he’s done isn’t dissimilar to what Marco Polo did and the Italians named an airport after him.”

Pilgarlic

Definition: a man looked upon with humorous contempt or mock pity About the Word: Originally pilled garlic (pilledmeans “peeled”), pilgarlic refers to “a bald head” or “a bald-headed man,” which it resembles. The mocking or humorous aspect followed.

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-rare-and-amusing-insults-vol-2/pilgarlic.html#Rqu3G6U4vbjiGtkg.99

He Must Have Been Really Thirsty

Our new mascot isn’t Pedobear: Nestle

By QMI Agency

A photo of a man in a bear suit as part of a Kit Kat promotion has been compared to Pedobear. (HO)

Nestle has issued a statement to clarify that its new mascot isn’t Pedobear — the Internet symbol of pedophile behaviour — after publishing an image that resembles the notorious cartoon.

The move comes after the food company posted a photo to Instagram, a popular picture-sharing application, of a man in a bear costume drumming with two Kit-Kat bars.

Before long, folks were drawing comparisons between the costume and Pedobear, a cartoon image used to mock people who display a sexual interest in minors online.

“We produced this photo — of a real guy in a bear suit — to launch Instagram through our Facebook community,” a spokeswoman for the company told The Age newspaper.

“We had never heard of Pedobear,” she said. “But when the possibility of its similarity to the so-called ‘Pedobear’ was raised with us, we immediately removed it.”

Popularized by the 4chan — the message board from which many Internet phenomena originate — Pedobear is generally used to signal to moderators and users that someone has posted illegal porn, or to call someone out on their creepy behaviour.

In recent years, it has turned up in all sorts of unlikely places, usually by accident, including CP Distributor newspaper flyers, a Polish newspaper article about the 2010 Olympic mascots and an iPhone game called “Dancing Cuddle Bear.”

“Get it together,” wrote David Kiefaber on AdWeek.com. “If more companies would start hiring people under 35 again, we wouldn’t have to go through this every six months.”

Ailurophile

Definition: cat fancier; lover of cats About the Word: Ancient Egyptians loved cats and honored them by depicting gods and goddesses in feline form (for example, the goddess Bastet); still, the prefix ailur-(meaning “cat”) crept into English as a gift from the Greeks.

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-particular-kinds-of-lovers/ailurophile.html#pBlLcfXYMwfxWklX.99

Next Time Buy Your Own
Posted on July 24, 2012 by dave
Thanks to Bozo News Hawk Fred McKinney for sending in today’s report from Belleville, Illinois, where bozo Shannon White called 911 to report a problem. Or at least she considered it a problem. The cops might not agree. When asked what her emergency was, our bozo told the operator that her boyfriend was hogging all the beer and wouldn’t give her any. Uh, OK. She’s been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and false use of 911.

CANDIDATE NAME CHANGE

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Thomas Jefferson is running for Congress in Kansas. Of course, it’s not the Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence and was the third president. This Thomas Jefferson used to be Jack Talbert. He’s legally changed his name. Talbert-now-Jefferson says it’s a tribute to his idol. Jefferson tells the Topeka Capital-Journal he hopes to win some votes with his new name, too. Jefferson is the Libertarian candidate for Congress in Kansas’ 4th District.

NARRAGANSETT BEER-RETRO

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The “Jaws” beer is going retro. Remember the scene in Jaws, where Quint crushes a can of ‘Gansett with one hand to intimidate Hooper? Well, Narragansett Beer is reintroducing the design it used in the 1970s. It has a ship and a red diagonal stripe. But Rhode Island’s best-known beer says the retro look will be temporary.

SOLAR COOK

GREEN VALLEY, Ariz. (AP) — Marilou Johnstone has a bright idea — cooking with the sun. She calls herself a solar cooking nut. She bakes bread in a solar oven, simmers spaghetti sauce on a parabolic cooker and even smokes ribs. As for the smoking, she uses a magnifying glass like device to set wood chips on fire. But if you want fast — don’t try the solar method. Johnstone tells the Green Valley, Arizona, News that it takes about 15 minutes just to cook an egg.

BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS-STRIPPERS DETAINED

TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands (AP) — Four male strippers from Florida are finding they’re unwelcome in the British Virgin Islands. The Fort Lauderdale men are pleading guilty to illegal entry. But they contend a promoter had assured them that proper work permits had been arranged. Andre Baker, Reginald Billings, Asa Ambrister and Alesian Rolle had been hired to dance at a BVI hotel. They face up to $1,000 fine or a year in jail each. The male strippers are set to be sentenced today.

STATE POLICE-MOTORCYCLES

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan State Police are going German. Some motorcycle troopers will be riding BMWs instead of Harleys. Nine BMW R1200s have been bought to join the Harleys in the MSP’s fleet of 24 motorcycles. State police spokeswoman Shannon Banner says the beemers performed better in annual tests. The Detroit Free Press reports the BMWs are also a little cheaper than the American-made Harley-Davidsons.

PAINTED PIG PILFERED

GARDEN CITY, Mich. (AP) — Willie the pig is going to need some work. The sculpture of a plump porker was stolen last month in a Detroit suburb. Willie was found along a bike trail by a family, which took the pig home. They didn’t realize it was stolen until later and then called police. The Garden City Downtown Development Authority says the shiny, red sculpture is worth more than $6,000. Willie is missing three hooves and his snout. Officials are trying to determine if Willie can be fixed.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Random Word of the day

Crepehanger

Definition: killjoy; someone who takes a pessimistic view of things About the Word: Black crepe fabric was once an important part of mourning ritual. It was sewn into dresses and veils, wrapped in bands around hats and arms, and draped over doors. We can speculate that to those who started using this insult, a crepehangerwas a “killjoy” almost in a literal sense – the sort of person who took pleasure in a funeral.

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-rare-and-amusing-insults-vol-2/crepehanger.html#Pbf33PADZ9sDt33d.99

BOZO Criminal of the day.

He Should Have Stopped With “My Truck Was Stolen”
Thanks to Bozo News Hawk Howard Rost for sending in today’s report form Orchard Park, New York. It seems our unnamed bozo called the cops to report that his truck had been stolen. Nothing wrong with that. It was just that our bozo gave the cops a little too much information. He told them he had been smoking crack cocaine with a prostitute when he gave her $200 and the keys to his truck and told her to go get more drugs. That was the last he saw of her. He’s busted!

MATURE MEDICAL STUDENT

CLEVELAND (AP) — Bill Downing is a Harvard MBA and CEO. Now, he wants to add some more letters after his name — MD. Downing is heading to medical school at the age of 46. The Ohio businessman wants to be a doctor working in an urban setting. He tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer he feels the need to invest the rest of his active career in improving the inner city.

BEAR IN MALL

PITTSBURGH (AP) — It was more than some shoppers could “bear.” A Pittsburgh-area mall was evacuated after a bear decided do a little browsing, Authorities say a young black bear ambled across a parking lot, through doors and into Sears. According to local media, the 125-pound bear walked around the store for about 10 minutes. He also growled at some customers, then got stuck between double doors. Officers from the Pennsylvania Game Commission tranquilized the bear and took him away from the Pittsburgh Mills Mall.

JOHNSON CITY DRINK

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) — It’s a new Dew. Johnson City, Tennessee, is one of the places a new Mountain Dew is going to be test-marketed. It’s called Mountain Dew Johnson City Gold and will have a malt flavor. Tim Swecker is a local sales manager for Pepsi Beverages. He tells the Johnson City Press the new drink will be rolled out in about a month. He says it’s a great tribute to Johnson City. Swecker adds that many consider Johnson City to be the birthplace of Mountain Dew.

HEMINGWAY DAYS

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — Meet the new Papa. Greg Fawcett is the winner of the Ernest “Papa” Hemingway Look-Alike contest in Key West, Florida. The white-bearded, 64-year-old North Carolina investment banker was crowned over the weekend. The contest is a highlight of the annual Hemingway Days celebration in Key West. Fawcett admits he’s not much of writer. But he says he can fish, hunt and drink like Hemingway. Fawcett adds that “three out of four is pretty good.”

SOLAR CHALLENGE

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — It’s a car race that doesn’t use a drop of gas. The University of Michigan team wins the 2012 American Solar Challenge. It’s the seventh victory for the Ann Arbor team since the race began in 1990, and their fourth straight. The cars cover 1,650 miles, from Rochester, New York to St. Paul, Minnesota. Michigan’s car is called the Quantum and it looks like something out of science fiction. The car is wing-shaped and covered in solar cells. The driver sits in a cockpit.

THERAPY DOGS

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — Oliver is giving wet kisses to the residents of an Iowa nursing home. But the seniors citizens don’t mind. Oliver is a poodle mix owned by Karen Mohring. Oliver and Mohring’s other pooch Logan are certified therapy dogs. Mohring tells the Sioux City Journal it’s wonderful to see the joy on the seniors faces, after they’ve spent a few minutes with her dogs.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Brian Rosenthal gives a outstanding best man speech. He makes references to Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Iron Maiden, and of course Da Bears. Enjoy.