'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Suggestion
Boobs
He's Been Busy!
The Worried Shrimp
Selected Sunday Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cool.
Been having some computer problems the last 4 days. First I started getting weird connection rates on my crappy dial-up. Then, wasn't able to get online at all.
The techs at ao-hell have been polite, but about as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
Currently, I can get online, for a few minutes at a time, then I'm offline, looking at Groucho (my wallpaper).
Granted, SBC is working on the phonelines, too. Don't know where this is heading, but, it's not fun on this side.
Did the familial obligation behind the Orange Curtain.
Way too much information to process for now.
Tonight, Sunday, CBS starts the night, as usual, with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH 3-hour block of 'Survivor: Pearl Islands', including the 'winner'.
NBC begins the night with the movie 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation', followed by a FRESH made-for-tv-movie 'Secret Santa'.
ABC opens the night with 'America's Funniest Home Videos', followed by a RERUN '10-8', then a RERUN 'Alias', followed by a
RERUN 'The Practice'.
The WB has the weekly RERUN 'Smallville', followed by a 2-hour RERUN 'Charmed',
Faux has 'Stupid Behavior Caught On Tape', followed by a FRESH 'King Of The Hill', then a FRESH 'Simpsons', followed by a
FRESH 'Bernie Mac', followed by a FRESH 'Malcolm', then a FRESH 'Arrested Development'.
UPN has the weekly RERUN 'Enterprise', followed by 'Stargate SG-1'.
A&E has a 2-hour 'Biography' (the big cheese o'the year) that repeats.
AMC offers the movie 'Colors', followed by the movie '48 Hrs', then the movie 'Smokey & The Bandit II'.
BBC -
[6pm] 'Monarch of the Glen' - Episode 6;
[7pm] 'Changing Rooms' - Weston Super Mare;
[7:30pm] 'Changing Rooms' - West Drayton;
[8pm] 'Faking It' - Emergency Control Operator to Live TV Studio Director;
[9pm] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[9:40pm] 'Coupling' - Gotcha;
[10:20pm] 'The Office' - Episode 3;
[11pm] 'Faking It' - Emergency Control Operator to Live TV Studio Director;
[12:40am] 'Coupling' - Gotcha;
[1:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 3;
[2am] 'Changing Rooms' - Weston Super Mare;
[2:30am] 'Changing Rooms' - West Drayton;
[3am] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[3:40am] 'Coupling' - Gotcha;
[4:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 3;
[5am] 'Faking It' - Emergency Control Operator to Live TV Studio Director; and
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Christmas In Rockefeller Center', 'Inside The Actor's Studio' (Cate Blanchett), 'Celebrity Poker Showdown', and the movie 'Man In The Moon'.
History has 'Bible Code', 'Nostradamus: 500 Years Later', 'Mail Call', and 'Tactical To Practical'.
SciFi has 'Battlestar Galactica' (part 1 of 2), then 'Battlestar Galactica' (part 2 of 2).
TCM:
[6:30am] 'A Kiss In The Dark' (1949);
[8am] 'A Family Affair' (1936);
[9:30am] 'MGM Parade Show #15' (1955);
[10am] 'In The Good Old Summertime' (1949);
[12pm] 'The Shop Around The Corner' (1940);
[2pm] 'A Christmas Carol' (1938);
[3:30pm] 'Rebecca' (1940);
[6pm] 'It Happened One Night' (1934);
[8pm] 'The Bells Of St. Mary's' (1945);
[10:15pm] 'Boys' Town' (1938);
[12am] 'The Kid' (1921) SILENT ;
[1am] 'Chaplin Today: The Kid' (2003);
[1:30am] '2010' (1984);
[3:30am] 'Logan's Run' (1976);
[5:30am] 'MGM Parade Show #15' (1955). (ALL TIMES EST)
U2 singer Bono waves to the public upon his arrival at Modena's Teatro Comunale, northern Italy, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2003 to attend the wedding of Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti and his longtime partner and producer Nicoletta Mantovani. Pavarotti married Mantovani in a song-filled, celebrity-studded ceremony. In the background is U2 guitarist The Edge, center, and his wife Morleigh Steinberg.
Photo by Marco Vasini
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
DirecTV In Talks, May Keep Channel on Air
Trio
Satellite broadcaster DirecTV is in negotiations with the owners of arts and culture channel Trio and has stopped advising subscribers that the channel may be dropped on Dec. 31, a spokesman said on Friday.
Trio, best known for documentaries and series like the TV rerun program "Brilliant but Canceled," is part of Vivendi Universal's Vivendi Universal Entertainment, which is being merged with General Electric Co.'s NBC to form NBC Universal.
DirecTV is a unit of Hughes Electronics Corp., but Australian mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd. is in the process of acquiring a controlling stake in the broadcaster.
Trio set up a Web site, Savetrio.com, urging its viewers to call DirecTV and express their support.
Trio
Sculptor Stephen Smith photographs his Wright flyer sculpture at the Wright Brothers National Memorial Saturday, Dec. 13, 2003, in Kill Devil Hills, N.C., during the First Flight Centennial to honor the Wright Brothers and 100-years of flight.
Photo by Bob Jordan
Wedding News
Mantovani - Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti married his longtime partner and producer Nicoletta Mantovani on Saturday in a song-filled, celebrity-studded ceremony held in the main theater of the tenor's hometown.
The couple's year-old daughter, Alice, was the official host of the wedding, and like her mother, wore a rose Armani dress, Pavarotti's publicist Terri Robson said.
Pavarotti, 68 and Mantovani, 34, have been living together since 1996, when their love story took gossip columns by storm. Mantovani had worked for Pavarotti during summers when she was a university student, and she now produces his Pavarotti & Friends concerts as well as other events.
The guest list included Sting and his wife, Trudy Styler, Bono and his family, designers Donatella Versace, Alberta Ferretti and Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, actress Gina Lollobrigida and Italian soccer star Alessandro Del Piero.
Mantovani - Pavarotti
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
New Orleans Bid Rejected
Grammy Museum
The city's bid to create a museum honoring the Grammy Awards has been rejected by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.
The Recording Academy sent representatives in November to hear a proposal from a group of elected officials, business leaders and musicians. Developer Pres Kabacoff said he was informed Friday that the academy wasn't interested.
The state had committed $9.9 million to the project, and the city had pledged $7.5 million over 10 years. The rest of the money was to have come from the sale of $70 million in bonds.
Grammy Museum
Bob Barker, host of the game show 'The Price is Right,' celebrates his 80th birthday in Los Angeles, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2003, during a taping of 'The Price is Right Million-Dollar Spectacular Primetime Special.' The hourlong special airs 8 p.m. Saturday on CBS.
Photo by Tony Esparza
Admit Privatizing Railways A Mistake
Tories
The Conservative party says the way it privatised the country's railways when it was in power in the early 1990s was a mistake.
David Willetts, the party's policy chief, said in an interview published on Saturday that the decision to separate responsibility for trains from the management of the track was ideologically driven and "wrong".
"Rail privatisation was a classic example of taking one model that had worked for one industry and wrongly applying it to different circumstances," Willetts said.
John Major's Conservative administration privatised British Rail's track, stations and signals as Railtrack in April 1994.
Tories
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Dated Winner Of Contest
Dennis Kucinich
US presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich had a first date with the winner of an online contest designed to find him a potential first lady.
Kucinich shared breakfast at a Concord, New Hampshire hotel restaurant with Gina Marie Santore, who prevailed from among 80 applicants in the contest sponsored by the political website PoliticsNH.com to help find him a wife.
PoliticNH.com launched a nationwide search to find a mate for Kucinich, a strict vegan who eats no meat or dairy products.
Winning the most votes from online voters was Santore, 33, a sheriff's aide from New Jersey.
Dennis Kucinich
Indian military police perform motorcycle skills during an exhibition in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta December 13, 2003. The Indian army organized the show to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Indian forces defeating Pakistan since both achieved independence in 1947.
Photo by Jayanta Shaw
Magnetic Field Weakens 10 Percent
Earth
The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet's poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said Thursday.
At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University.
Hundreds of years could pass before a flip-flopped field returned to where it was 780,000 years ago. But scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union cautioned that scenario is an unlikely one.
Instead, the weakening, measured since 1845, could represent little more than an "excursion," or lull, which can last for hundreds of years, said John Tarduno of the University of Rochester.
For more, Earth
**ADULT**
In Memory
Keiko
Keiko the killer whale, star of the "Free Willy" movies, has died at 27 of pneumonia in a Norwegian fjord, ending campaigners' hopes of returning the people-loving mammal to life in the wild.
The world's most famous orca, a magnet for tourists who spent most of his life in captivity, died about 15 months after turning up in Norwegian waters, officials said on Saturday.
Millions of dollars was spent on preparing the 30-foot animal for the wild after the 1993 movie "Free Willy" prompted a campaign for his release, but Keiko never rejoined killer whale company.
Margrete Seter, mayor of Halsa municipality in western Norway which has been Keiko's home since he surprisingly turned up there in September last year, said the giant mammal had been found floating on the surface of the sea late on Friday.
The Hollywood star, a big tourist draw in Halsa, had shown signs of lethargy and lack of appetite just before he died, said the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, which has headed the campaign to free Keiko.
Trainers had hoped to lure Keiko back into deep waters to readjust him to a life in the wild -- the life from which he was removed when he was only two years old. After spending most of his life in marine amusement parks in Canada and Mexico, the six-ton animal was flown back to Iceland in a U.S. Air Force jet in 1998.
Keiko showed up in western Norway -- the only nation in the world that still hunts whales commercially -- in September last year after swimming some 870 miles from Iceland. He had stayed in Taknes bay since last winter, monitored and fed by his handlers in an area sealed off to boat traffic.
"Rescuing Keiko from a cramped pool in Mexico and bringing him back to his home waters is the most spectacular effort ever launched for an animal," David Phillips, president and founder of the Keiko Foundation, said in a statement.
When he arrived in Norway pictures of the playful orca -- even allowing children to ride on his back -- went worldwide, sparking a new debate over Keiko's future.
Some pro-whaling activists in Norway reckoned there was no hope for Keiko in the wild and urged the United States to take him back to captivity.
Among Keiko's many supporters, French celebrity animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot wrote an open letter to Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit, begging her to help save Keiko.
An official at the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said sea mammals would normally be buried at sea but Norway might consider burying Keiko on land if his handlers wanted this.
"We will listen to their demands," Directorate spokesman Olav Lekve told Reuters. "We understand that Keiko is special."
The Keiko Foundation said Keiko had been the second oldest male orca whale in captivity.
Keiko
A diver dressed as Santa feeds a sea turtle at an aquarium in Beijing on Thursday. Christmas is becoming increasingly popular in China as the Chinese adopt more Western ideas and festivals.
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'The Osbournes'
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