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Showing posts from August 3, 2003
In my continuing rant about telemarkers, it's interesting to see that despite unemployment being at an all-time high in Norway, nobody is taking any of the 160 telemarketing jobs that are available. "Telemarketers may be unpopular, but it still comes as a surprise that the job is so unwanted during tough economic times", said firms IqTele and Centerpoint. There's a good reason people aren't taking those jobs, chaps. It's because your companies are the rabid placenta of an unwanted wolf bitch. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your underpants!
Errr... TILT Must....not......spend.....all......money......here........ euromusicworld.com
In other news, J-Lo denied today that she was splitting up with Ben Affleck. I guess they've split up then.
Wow. The heatwave continues in Europe. The hottest ever day in England was back in 1990, when temperatures hit 37.1°C (98.8 in out-of-date Farenheit). The met' office reckons they could touch 38°C tomorrow breaking this all-time high. All that with 40% humidity and not an air conditioner in the country. It's weird, but having lived in SLC for some time, the concept of near 100°F temperatures brings on the response "if only it were that cool".
Bizarre headline of the day : "The Bush administration is engaged in a secret dialogue with Iran to try to persuade Iran to hand over top al-Qaida operatives, U.S. officials told NBC News." Erm. If it's secret, why are they telling NBC ?
And in a real "well who'd have believed it" story, sunscreen causes cancer. Seriously. A study, published in the US Journal of the National Cancer Institute, says that people who wore higher factor sunscreens tended to stay out much longer, because they felt protected from the risk of sunburn. And a British biochemist has suggested that the cocktail of chemicals involved in sunscreens could be converted into "free radical" molecules, which could cause cell damage and lead to cancer. Yoink.
This is priceless. Remember the thing a couple of weeks ago about Metallica suing a band for the use of the E and F chords? It was an extremely well put-together hoax, grafted onto the MTV website by hackers working for the band. They generated unheard-of publicity and made Metallica look like arses (which they are, of course, so bonus points there). From the Guardian's story: Announcing the band's decision to sue the obscure Canadian outfit Unfaith, the drummer Lars Ulrich said: "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music." It was a classic David and Goliath story - obscure, unsigned band picked on by rich rockers - and it was widely reported. As Unfaith singer/songwriter Erik Ashley explains: "Within minutes, literally hundreds of message boards lit up, including those of legitimate music news sources."
The figures are in for the opening weekend of 'Gigli'. This is the movie with J-Lo's all-too fat arse, and Ben Affleck. The septics are pronouncing it "Giggly" instead of "Zhee-glee", and it raked in a massive $3.8M over three days. Compare that to the $90-something million that the Matrix sequel took in. So just how poorly did this pile of Gigli do? Worse than Glitter, and that's saying something. At about $7.50 a ticket, $3.8 million represents about 506,666 tickets. Since it opened in 2,215 theaters and perhaps 5,000 screens with 16 showings over three days, some quick division indicates that at the average screening fewer than six people attended. Six. Reviews aren't kind. I found one NY review that said the film was a "hopelessly misconceived exercise in celebrity self-worship that is enervated, torpid, slack, dreary and, oh yes, nasty, brutish and long." That good, eh? I guess the six people in each show must have had trou
And in the "removing yourself from the gene pool" category of amusing stories (could be from the 'Americans reinforcing the worldwide belief that they're stupid' file): Thirty percent of teens surveyed don't wear seatbelts because they wrinkle clothing. Guess they'll look real purdy for the coroner. Here's the story.
Dear God the telemarketers are getting desperate. They're panicing because of the October 1st deadline for the national do-not-call registry. According to one report "Marketing officials said consumers may see more promotions in shopping malls, including contests and fliers, as companies try to reach those customers who don't want to receive telephone solicitations at home." What? What make these idiot companies think that if we don't want telephone calls at home, we're going to pick up stupid fliers in shopping malls? Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick! Listen you telemarketing idiots. We don't want your calls. We don't want your products. We won't buy your products. If you start sending door-to-door salesmen, expect an increase in the number of assaults on your staff. Your claims that you sell $103billion in products via telemarketing, per year, are unfounded drivel. You know nobody buys your crap. You know you're all the scum at the bott