Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

This wins my vote for "lede of the year":

Ever wonder what the Seahawks' locker room tastes like after a big game?

Apparently, Jones Soda Co. thinks Seattle NFL fans want to know. The company started taking online pre-orders Thursday for a five-pack of sodas with flavors it says reflect the hard work of professional football players.

Clare Bowles, a spokeswoman for the Seattle-based company, said the four literally named flavors -- Dirt, Sports Cream, Perspiration and Natural Field Turf -- are "pretty lifelike."

"Perspiration Soda is kind of salty tasting," she said, with a slightly higher sodium content than the average soda, with a smooth, "stinky football sock" finish.

A sip of Sports Cream Soda conjures up the experience of rubbing ointment into an aching muscle, while Natural Field Turf Soda is like "playing tackle football, and you get tackled really hard, you're down on the ground and you get a little bit of the grass in your teeth," Bowles said.

The only sweet soda of the bunch, Sweet Victory, has a berry flavor.

Okay, I didn't think I hallucinated this, but upon rediscovering it, I can understand why people might think I did....

Fan death is an urban legend that originated in South Korea, but has since spread to other countries in the Far East. The belief is that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can result in the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. This belief also extends to air conditioners and the fans in cars. When the air conditioner or fan is on in a car, some people are apt to leave their car windows open a crack to avoid "fan death." Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.

Not directly ST related, but certainly some asshaberdashery afoot here. (Edit: see the comments for some really intriguing discussion. It's taken my mind in some pretty interesting directions. Or maybe that's just the Unisom talking. Still, I like it when I get to process more information like this; much more interesting than just parroting.) Remember the donations 6A was offering during the beginning of the permanent account sale?

EFF is the world’s leading advocate of freedom of speech on the web; RAINN is the United States' largest anti-sexual assault organization; Creative Commons is the global organization pioneering alternate licenses to traditional copyright in order to allow sharing, remixing and reusing content; and Witness works to use video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

If you decide to buy a permanent account during the first 36 hours of the sale, $25 of your purchase will shared with these organizations. Or, if you prefer, you'll have the option to earmark the donation from your purchase for only one of these groups. So you're in control of how much we donate and which organizations will benefit.

oulangi followed the money: All but one of these organizations has deep ties to Joi Ito, the President & CEO of Neoteny venture Capital group. You know, the people who put up the money to buy 6A. YOU people in other words. If you want to use us, your LJ customer base to raise money for your pet causes, fine. But at the VERY LEAST you should have acknowledges these links, instead of painting this as altruism on your parts. It's shady.

EFF - An organization that MAY well "advocate free speech on the web" (something 6A doesn't, but another argument, another time) BUT EFF has also been involved in court cases that have benefited Joi Ito's business/person. [1] [2]
RAINN - Real charity, needed work. Also awesome window dressing to lend this "charity drive" credibility?
Creative Commons - Which Joi Ito helped found, and sits on the board. [1]
WITNESS - which Joi Ito is on the board. [1]

I'm sorry, I didn't wake up today wanting to kick 6A in the teeth relentlessly. But damned if they didn't ask for it on this one. Thanks to indigoskynet for the pointer.

And for frivolty's sake.... ( How will I get suspended from LJ? )

I knew one day or another they'd run out of cool and ominous-sounding nicknames for drugs. I did not expect that day to come so soon.

A cheap, highly addictive drug known as "cheese heroin" has killed 21 teenagers in the Dallas area over the past two years, and authorities say they are hoping they can stop the fad before it spreads across the nation.

It's yet another Monty Python sketch come to life.

cleolinda's linkspam on Strikethrough 2007, chock-ful of information. The most disturbing aspects of the recent unwinding of the affair from this perspective:

-- that 6A was hesitant to act until its advertising was threatened
-- 6A allowed itself to essentially side with exterior interests rather than the LJ "community"
-- when 6A went after LJs/comms it deleted/suspended them instantly, in contradiction of the procedure set out in its own TOS
-- 6A's silence on the matter is, at the moment, deafening
-- today's it's incest; as at least one other user pointed out, the rationale given ("it's illegal") can cover plenty of other interests -- gay marriage, anyone?
-- ...have you seen what else WfI stands for? (Don't go to the site: malware/spyware and IP tracking ensues.)

I'm not an RPer, and I don't discuss gloriously illegal things on my LJ because, well, I'm not an idiot. (Imbecile? Maybe. Depends on the day.) So this doesn't affect me on its most basic level. But it is eroding my f-list and my f-list's enthusiasm for LJ, and that's pissing me off.

I've backed up my LJ and am worried -- the community is my sole reason for posting here on LJ; lose it, and there's really no reason to stay. The sad thing is I was seriously considering opting for a permanent account, and I don't think that's going to happen now. warren_ellis is gone, now, and I wouldn't blame anyone else for leaving.

Jesus, how idiotic do you have to be to take such a simple idea like "Pedophiles are bad!" and somehow screw that up in the implementation?

US citizens who apply for a job will need prior approval from Department of Homeland Security under the terms immigration bill passed by the Senate this week.

Has anyone who's been charting post-9/11 America tracked the point where we crossed "hysteria" and entered "comedy"?

A couple of dozen Gig Harbor High School students are demonstrating outside the school today to protest the use of a surveillance camera to catch two girls kissing.

One student reporting the demonstration for the school paper, Amber Critchley, says they are saying the school shouldn't have interfered and that sexual orientation shouldn't matter.

Principal Greg Schellenberg says the protest is a disruption but classes are continuing.

...He says the school does not target gay and lesbian students.

Oh, no chilling effects here at all. Idiots.

In other news, rest in peace, Herbert Kornfeld. The H-Dog lives on.

Every once in a while, when I fear for my sanity, someone reassures me that I could be much, much worse:

A part-time Boston University student who hosts a popular video game review show on an MTV Web site allegedly sent an e-mail threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend and recreate the Virginia Tech bloodshed at her school, according to a Boston police report obtained by the Herald.

"(I)'m gonna (expletive) bring a gun to your school and kill you and K (another female student) and everybody you love. It's gonna be VT all over again," 20-year-old Andrew Rosenblum allegedly wrote in an e-mail to the victim just hours after 32 people were gunned at Virginia Tech.

"Seriously I'm just that demented," Rosenblum wrote, according to a BPD report. He ended the message with a threat to commit homicide and suicide: "killing people can change people's lives forever. (T)he best is in the end when I pull the trigger on myself, too."

Okay, this time we can blame MTV.

Extra points to the Herald for dropping a mention of the guy's height (5'5") into the story for absolutely no reason.

Friday: Authorities say a 6-year-old boy who collapsed on a Harrison County school bus died from an abscess where two teeth had been removed from his lower jaw.

Coroner Gary Hargrove says Alexander "Alex" Callender went into shock from the infection and his body shut down. Callender collapsed on the bus after leaving Lizana Elementary School Thursday.

Saturday: The death of a Prince George's County boy this week from an infection that started with an abscessed tooth has spurred lawmakers to demand better dental care for poor children and has prompted a deluge of calls to local dentists for advice and appointments.

Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old homeless child, died Sunday in a District hospital after an infection from a molar spread to his brain.

Seriously, what the hell, America? When did we become the lesser-developed country? How is this at all acceptable?

(And sorry to be so depressing today. I'm not even bringing up BSG until tomorrow.)

A 15-year-old girl who had the hiccups for more than five weeks finally got relief.

After trying countless remedies and attracting national media attention, Jennifer Mee said her hiccups suddenly stopped around 5 p.m. Wednesday.

No one is certain exactly why she was able to breathe freely again. This week, she has been to an infectious disease specialist, a neurologist, a chiropractor, a hypnotist and an acupuncturist. She also tried a patented device that is designed to stop hiccups.

She lasted a month longer than I would've without stepping in front of a bus. Kudos.