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Why is it that all the cool stuff releases in Japan? That’s all I could think of while reading this story about horror story laden toilet paper.

A Japanese company has gotten the bright idea to release toilet paper that will have a horror story printed on it. So, as you roll out the toilet paper, more of the story is available to read.

The first story that will appear on the rolls of toilet paper, is the novella written by Koji Suzuki. Who coincidentally wrote the horror story, “Ring”, which was widely popular in Japan. Before making its way to Hollywood for a movie make over.

Each roll will cost $2.20, and there’s no word yet if there will be an import option. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to read some Agatha Christie when dealing with constipation in the future.

[via: AOLNews]

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It’s times like these that the people who go out for lunch look pretty smart. The fridge is a unique aspect to office life. People store food in it, often forgetting that anything is in there. Also, the office fridge isn’t anyone’s ‘responsibility’. Both of these concepts can lead to serious mess contaminating the office fridge. Just take this story for example

In San Jose, California an office had to be evacuated due to someone cleaning out a moldy, and dirty refrigerator. The fire department, and hazmat team had to enter the office to take care of the situation.

What happened is that an office worker decided to clean out the fridge, that had become really bad off. Apparently, the chemicals that were used to clean up the mess fused with the mold and created an odor that caused the office to be nauseas. A total of 28 people had to be treated for nausea, and 7 people went to the hospital.

Let this be a lesson to make fridge upkeep a team project. That way you hopefully won’t have to deal with vomit inducing mold in the future.

[via: Yahoo]

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If you’ve ever read up on the Library of Congress, then you know the history that the historical archive holds. Some of the pieces of literature, and recordings that have made our country what it is today is housed inside its hallowed walls. Matt Raymond, of the Library of Congress reports on his blog that the LOC looks to be tearing those walls down.

Meaning, that the LOC now has its own YouTube channel. At present, there are 70 videos up. The topics vary from the first known moving image, to boxing cats, and so on. In fact, both of those videos are below for your viewing pleasure. And below those is a link to the LOC’s YouTube Channel.

Library of Congress YouTube Channel

Tags: News, Websites by JohnnyV - 2 Comments »

If you’ve been keeping up with the story of the ‘Sham-Wow Guy’, a.k.a Vince Offer Shlomi then you should know that its taken an interesting turn. For those who aren’t quite up on the story, I’ll start at the beginning…

If you’ve ever been up at late hours of the evening, you’ve undoubtedly seen the Sham-Wow or Slap-Chop infomercials. They feature an infomercial icon named, Vince Offer Shlomi. No joking, that’s his full name. Most know him because he’s one of the most annoying personalities to ever grace television.

So, why am I writing about him? It was reported earlier this week that Shlomi had been arrested. The official charge was, felony battery, because of a confrontation with a prostitute. According to Shlomi, he had propositioned her earlier that night and she accepted. They went back to his hotel room, where he laid the money down. The drama started, when they started to kiss. The prostitute, Sasha Harris, apparently bit Shlomi’s tongue and wouldn’t let go. That’s when Shlomi began punching Harris in the face so she would release her bite.

You’d think the story ends there, but it’s just the beginning. Apparently, this whole fiasco could be the doing of the ‘Church of Scientology’. Shlomi was a member of the Church of Scientology, when he began production of his movie, The Underground Comedy Movie. Yes, that film. The Church was upset by the film, and was looking to take him to court. Not just any court, but the court of Scientology. In an attempt to kick him out. Eventually, the charges were dropped. However, later on Shlomi would then bring about his own charges. He was wanting to expose the church for its cruel practices, and what not.

God, that’s the weirdest story I’ve had to type out.

So, was Shlomi’s incident just a typical, ‘hooker gone wrong’ tale, or was the Church of Scientology behind it all? Either way, it’s going to be along time before he annoys you at 2 in the morning.

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“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

We can credit Jack Torrence, Jack Nicholson’s character in the 1980 film The Shining for popularizing this proverb that dates as far back as the mid-1600s.

Americans continue to work more hours than their counterparts in other countries and as we are in the midst of a (finally!) government-acknowledged recession, it does not appear that in the near future that employers will be encouraging more vacation time, personal days, or working in a little “downtime” into our daily work schedule.

No worries some of us say!  Our lives are replete with a variety of great technological tools, by way of the internet, that allow us to never leave our desk to be entertained or “play.”  Social websites such as Facebook or MySpace offer an almost endless selection of “applications” for distraction from our stressful workday.  Yahoo! Games continues to offer games-arcade games, card games, board games, puzzle games…the list goes on and on.   Video sharing sites such as YouTube continue to bring us many laughs at the office with their quirky or sometimes scandulous videos.

Where am I going with this?  What do you do when these entertainment or play options are no longer allowed in the workplace?  I don’t see Mark from accounting carrying a Yahtzee game to the lunchroom for a quick roll of the dice or Marie challenging you to a game of paper football at her desk.

• What to you do to “relieve stress” during your workday via the internet?
• Do you only access these sites at work or at home as well?
• What is your opinion as to how this effects your productivity?

Tags: Fun, Games, Google, News, Social Networking, Technology, Websites by JD - No Comments »

The immediate response is one where skepticism plays anchor to hope: Could crowd-funding of real journalism work to actually, you know, save journalism?

Good ideas are always ruined by realities of humanity and this human reality involves not just money but bidding. It’s not just bidding, but it pulls from the masses instead of the elite. The only thing more corrupt than the elite is the masses.

At least the elite can be thrown over a cliff (or beneath a guillotine in one century) for misdeeds against the masses. But what happens when the masses are guilty? Does everybody just go home dodging accusatory fingers? Is a sacrificial lamb appointed?

Yikes, talk about a catch 22. But it will be fun to watch the experiment Spot.us is currently perpetrating in Northern California—David Cohn was able to talk the Knight Foundation out of $340,000 to give it a shot.

Before we get into how this crowd-funded journalism works, let’s address the present crisis. Media conglomerates own your news and with the help of the Internet and cable TV have created a 24-hour news cycle. While that’s been happening, traditional newspapers have been losing subscribers, money, and firing journalists. Bottom line: the watchdogs are employed by those they used to watch, and the formerly watched have pushed for more news in shorter time spans, which means less time and funding to investigate the flood of press releases in the inbox, often from PR/lobbying organizations hired by the formerly watched.

And then there’s blogging, good for the proletariat, bad for anybody actually looking for (expensive) truths. Investigative journalism, it is feared, is on the outs because nobody can afford it any more except those who’d rather nobody investigated at all.

Spot.us, then, thinks the answer is some good old-fashioned grassroots ingenuity, the kind that raised all that money for Barack Obama. Think the mayor is on the take from local contractors? Propose an investigation and donate $5 toward funding a report. If enough other people want that story investigated and are willing to fork over some cash to accomplish it, then you’ve got yourself an investigative reporter on the case.

Nobody guarantees he or she is a good reporter, but at least there’s somebody looking into it, right? And there’s that thing with the bidding: seems ripe for abuse, seems subject to similar problems we have today, as suddenly large sums of cash flow in toward particular stories in order to distract from certain other pesky stories.

But perhaps there’ll be a mechanism in place to control for rigs—and you know there’ll be attempts at rigging if this gets off the ground. But hey, it’s better than sitting on our citizen journalistic heels, right?

Tags: News by JasonLeeMiller - 1 Comment »