The kid is reportedly working on a follow-up single, but it’s not going to be a rehash of her earlier work. No, the new single is going to be a major stylistic shift. Something a little like the last big song to feature a washing machine…

Either that, or she’ll play the theme from “Banana Splits” on a microwave.

via StrikeGently

Bronson Pinchot brings sexy back to Balkitown: “I just found some bird-vomit-colored wood. It’s original painted wainscoting from about 1825. There’s a lot to do something with. Would I have picked that color? No. I wouldn’t have said, ‘Dear God, let me find some bird-crap-colored wood.’ But there’s so much of it, and it’s so nice, I will put other material around it.” [Slate]

But what color wood would it make?:  “The Ecobot-III… has managed to succeed in the laboratory by being able to collect its own food and water and poop in a litter tray. As such, it has potential for being a long-lived self-sustaining robot, unlike its disposable predecessors.” [Geekosystem]

Phil Mickelson’s ball:
Commentator 1: “That’s one of the most unusual things I’ve ever seen – it’s up the leg of the shorts.”
Commentator 2: “I was afraid of what you might say.”
Commentator 1: “Well, yeah.”

[Bits and Pieces]

What’s that line in the Maya Angelou poem? “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.” Hatefulness – or, at least, the word “hatefulness” – didn’t kill anyone during the great False National Emergency of February 20, 1971, but it sure did scare the crap out of people in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“Hatefulness” was the daily code word for the Emergency Broadcast System, set up in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis so authorities could get information out fast during a national emergency. Each day EBS would send out a message to participating TV and radio stations via teletypes and wire machines indicating that everything was either kosher or life as we knew it was about to be obliterated in an atomic firestorm. The broadcasters could tell even-steven from eve of destruction by checking the EBS wire’s authentication message against a set of codes sent out at the start of each month.If the messages matched, broadcasters were to stop normal operations and go into a kind of standby mode until authorities sent further instructions, like “stand by for a message from the president,” or “proceed to your local civil defense shelter,” or “you guys remember that Country Joe and the Fish song? Well, they’re right – there ain’t no time to wonder why/whoopee, we’re all gonna die.”

The authentication code for February 20th, 1971 was “hatefulness” – kind of a creepy word choice, given its purpose – and that was the word at the top of the morning EBS message.

Teletypes printed messages at the ultra-fast rate of about 6 characters a second, so you can imagine what it must have been like to get this message, to match up the authentication codes and then to follow along as the wire spelled out… slowly… exactly how little time you had left on earth.

Still, there was a job to do, and dutiful broadcasters like this fellow at WOWO-AM in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to the airwaves to warn Americans that the government had declared a national emergency and it was unlikely that anyone in the the Fort Wayne area would be alive to hear the end of the Partridge Family’s hit “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted?”

This broadcast and other reports about the day’s events illustrates just how much could go wrong under the EBS procedures of the day, starting with EBS control inadvertently sending out the “end times” message and subsequently freaking out Fort Wayne’s AM radio listeners, who responded by flooding the station with calls to find out what the heck was going on. Actually, relatively few stations actually broke into their programming at all- a lot of stations had no idea what to do with the message, and many of those that did know what to do dismissed the alert as a mistake. The civil defense people quickly sent out another message canceling the alert (authentication code: “impish” – no one was laughing, though) and later began retooling the EBS alert process from scratch, doing away with the code words and, probably, the dude who sent out the false alarm. Fort Wayne returned to normal, though it’s said local clothing merchants had a lot of new customers on February 21st, owing to all the soiled pants.

One final note: one of the primary functions of EBS was to give the president quick access to the nation’s entire broadcast system, so he could speak to the whole country at once. But as the government started wising up to the power of mass media, they realized even the Commander in Chief might not be the most reassuring voice during a nuclear crisis. Who was, you ask? Entertainment impresario Arthur Godfrey, of course! The feds had Godfrey record a message along the lines of “yes, the country is being nuked, but try not to panic.” Researchers have confirmed there was such a message, though they haven’t yet found a copy. Still, it’s good to know that midnight on the Doomsday Clock just means it’s Arthur Godfrey Time.

via My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning

via Bits and Pieces

Wha?

Andersen sold cocaine to a fellow nightclubber as he was dressed as the Hulk, which, as Andersen’s own defense pointed out, couldn’t have made him more conspicuous. At his hearing, Andersen admitted to the charge of supplying cocaine, and to another charge of possessing marijuana. Defender Shane Crawford unintentionally humorously added, “This was a serious lapse on his part, a serious lapse and aside from the comedic element, his dress, he couldn’t have stood out more to police.”

True, though unlike some costumed criminality we’ve heard about lately, dressing as the Hulk at least suggests some kind of deviation from the social norm.

The takeaway here is, of course, stay away from drugs, or at the very least, when around drugs, don’t do anything that will cause your own defense attorney to refer to “the comedic element” of your illegality. Otherwise you’ll have no defense except this one:

Do you suppose this is what Nick Nolte would look like after a burst of intense gamma radiation?

via Bits and Pieces

This week’s Words Can Hurt nominees:

Here’s hoping Ancient Babylon had hecklers: “The deflowered (girl) did not become pregnant. The undeflowered (girl) became pregnant (-What is it?)” “Auxiliary forces.” What? [Discover]

I’d like to buy a vowel – no, make that a half dozen margaritas: Pat Sajak on the restaurant/bar next to NBC studios in Burbank: “They served great margaritas, so Vanna and I would go across and have two or three or six, and then come and do the last shows and have trouble recognizing the alphabet.” But was he drunk in the A-Team episode where Murdock wins on Wheel of Fortune? [Warming Glow]

I’ll take the stairs, thanks: “A Chicago man found himself trapped in an elevator between the 21st and 22nd floors of the massive 49 floor condo development near Millenium Park. Fortunately, he was quickly rescued by a firefighter and ushered into the building’s second elevator. Unfortunately, once inside, both rescuer and rescuee found that they were trapped once again.”  [Geekosystem]