Skip The New Years Eve Prostitute, WIN A PRIZE

You cannot make up some news...seems that South Korea has a new program out to disuede men and companies from frequenting prostitutes...skip the roll in the hay, WIN A PRIZE! Tickets to a movie...now there is and incentive! Does this mean Paris Hilton will find herself all alone for the New Year's toast...SHAME ON ME!

S Koreans offered prizes to shun prostitutes
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1818456.htm

The South Korean Government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.

The Ministry of Gender Equality is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.

"If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes," the ministry said in an Internet posting.

From Congressman John Hall Blog...Colbert Appearences

This story courtesy of the John Hall Blog...Jon Stewart needs to get his act together, and get John Hall on his Daily Show.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Keeping Track...The Colbert Report


For all those who are tracking important numbers on John Hall...he's appeared on the Colbert Report THREE times since being elected...this last one was a brief little flash of him in the audience while at Harvard. Of course, many of us are still waiting for John Hall's appearance on the Daily Show...sure someone out there has already offered to help John Hall write a book that will soar up the charts, so look for that event to come to a Cable TV near you soon. Sure once Jon sees this MAJOR press coverage that The Colbert Report is getting on this and other blogs, that he'll LEAP at the chance to feature John Hall prominently on The Daily Show, and that is truthiness.

Labels: Congressman John Hall, Democrats, Fighting 19th, politics, The Colbert Report, The Hill, Washington

Who Needs A Clue. Perez Hilton or Advertisers?

Good Money Going Down The Drain?

OK, I admit...I knew NOTHING about Perez Hilton until I heard this blogger was being SUED by someone for something...OH, I remember...stealing copious amounts of material from someone else who paid someone else to pester various assorted A list people to death hoping for some scandal big enough to grace the front pages of some GOSSIP RAG. You know the routine, Paris Hilton and Brittany running around Hollywood with no panties will be just fine.

I never gave the issue much thought, choosing instead to turn into the Daily Show, and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, and maintaining my various assorted politically oriented blogs...until this morning when I was checking on my blog statistics over on Ad Brite...IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when I found out that those who advertise on Washington Scandal have also advertised on Perez Hilton's blog! As we all do, I decided to do some COMPARISONS between Washington Scandal that has a lot of original political commentary, and Perez Hilton's blog.

Daily Traffic

Perez Hilton (some probably phooney, or from friends) 230
Washington Scandal 270

Daily Traffic Winner....WASHINGTON SCANDAL

Unique Visitors (This one is telling...someone is maybe running a scam?)

Perez Hilton 20
Washington Scandal 160

Hmmmm.....any one notice some oddity going on? Perez Hilton has only 20 Unique Visitors on this particular daily shot of statistics, but 230 site visits which translates to 11 page views per visitor! Would not take very many PALS to create and illusion now would it? What if those same visitors are also doing some extra clicking...not saying it is so, but musing outloud here.

Bottom line, Washington Scandal wins the Unique Visitors competition hands down.

Now, things get FUZZY from here on out, which is why maybe advertisers need to take a closer look at Perez Hilton's site.

With only 20 unique visitors a day, this blog has an incredible Alexa rank of 1,133!
Meanwhile, Washington Scandal with 160 unique visitors has an Alexa Rank of only 5,929,231. HELLO, someone needs a V-8! Let's now look at one more thing.

Perez Hilton is commanding $700.00 a week for 20 visitors a DAY! Now advertisers, if you do some basic math, you are paying this person who is being SUED $5.00 a visitor to his blog...unless you are selling doggy bags to Paris Hilton and her friends on a regular basis, that's a very pricy per visitor amount to be shelling out.

Now, the weekly rate for Washington Scandal on the other hand is currently $35.00 with a monthly rate of $150. Now, 160 UNIGUE VISITORS a day for seven days is 1120 UNIGUE VISITORS a week. In short, cost per visitor to advertise on Washington Scandal is around 3.1 CENTS.

The numbers tell the TALE! Think about it advertisers...do you really want to be giving Perez Hilton $5.00 a visitor? Or is this just one of those games the A list folks play? Is it actually Paris and her friends funding this farce of a blog? We will never know, but serious business people should know a joke when they see one.

Chocolate, Health Gift From The God's

Godiva, THE GOLD STANDARD

With Christmas just TWO DAYS AWAY, the time for making those last minute gift selections is upon those of us who love waiting till the proverbial last minute. This could be a serious problem for some, but not if you have Chocolate Lovers like me on your list! Does not matter what shape, light, dark or white, if it is chocolate, count me in! However, it has to be not just good chocolate, but GREAT CHOCOLATE...my own favorites are See's, Ester Prices and of course Godiva...sure there are others, but those are my own current favorites.

Reports show that chocolate is good for...well, JUST ABOUT EVERY THING. Your heart, your mood, even your blood pressure...so LAST MINUTE SHOPPERS, not to worry. Go to your nearest mall, and find the Godiva Display and load up a box for every one on your list, and two for yourself. As they say, "Chocolate is to DIE FOR", so give the gift everyone loves to consume.

Good News, Bad News...Super POT Found In Mexico

Seems there is a new SUPER POT being grown in Mexico...bigger harvests, herbicides cannot kill it, and it grows year around! Bad news...with Calderon cracking down on drug dealers in the countryside of Mexico, soldiers are burning fields of the stuff...of course, if America would simply legalize pot, the illicit importation of drugs into America (much of which supports terrorism) could be stopped. Another flip side...if America would legalize pot, many of us would simply GROW OUR OWN, which means the dealers are out of business, and corporate America would have a hard time cornering the market, which is probably why it remains illegal.

Hybrid marijuana plant found in Mexico
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061221/ap_on_sc/mexico_drugs

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago

LAZARO CARDENAS, Mexico - Soldiers trying to seize control of one Mexico's top drug-producing regions found the countryside teeming with a new hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year-round and cannot be killed with herbicides.

Soldiers fanned out across some of the new fields Tuesday, pulling up plants by the root and burning them, as helicopter gunships clattered overhead to give them cover from a raging drug war in the western state of Michoacan. The plants' roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.

"These plants have been genetically improved," he told a handful of journalists allowed to accompany soldiers on a daylong raid of some 70 marijuana fields. "Before we could cut the plant and destroy it, but this plant will come back to life unless it's taken out by the roots."

The new plants, known as "Colombians," mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.

The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.

Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields, though some discovered Tuesday had sophisticated irrigation systems with sprinklers, pumps and thousands of yards of tubing.

Time To Legalize Pot? It's America's Number One Crop!

Unlike Bill Clinton, this blogger did inhale, and has for years believed that pot should be legalized for personal use, with it's sale and distribution controlled by the government, much in the same fashion as alcohol is, though minus all the sin taxes associated with it. Perhaps the time has come for the government to realize their JUST SAY NO war on drugs is never going to work, just as Prohibition did not work so many decades ago. Despite the attempts to eradicate it's usage, Pot has become America's number one crop, beating out such favorites as Corn, Soy Beans and wheat, with estimated sales TOPPING $13.8 Billion.

Now, before a lot of you go jumping all over me for suggesting we LEGALIZE pot, and perhaps other drugs, consider this...the LARGEST CASH COW FOR TERRORISTS is the movement and sale of ILLEGAL DRUGS. You are not going to stop them from growing, harvesting and selling these illegal drugs, but if our drugs were HOME GROWN, we could CUT THEM OUT OF THE MARKET, wipe out their major source of funds...a few hundred serious fields of poppies and herb plants, and the Taliban is in deep shit as their sources for cash go dry. You cannot deny this reality, as it has been discussed on the news, commercials have been made suggesting we are supporting terrorists when we get high...well, people are going to get high even if the moral majority hates that reality. However, given a choice, they'd buy their bud locally.

Cash value of pot crops is highlighted in report
By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
6:21 PM PST, December 17, 2006



SACRAMENTO -- For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report to be released Monday by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the United States exceeds $35 billion -- far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay.

California is responsible for more than one-third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined -- and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states.

Up Skirt Photographer BANNED from Camera Use For ONE YEAR

Singapore is a tough place to live for a young man using his cell phone camera to catch skirt shots on an esculator! Dubbed as the Upskirt Voyeur, the young man in question got off without prison, but lost all rights to cameras for one year, and has to do 40 hours of community service work...maybe he could do counseling work at Victoria's Secrets!

No cameras for peeping Tom

SINGAPORE: A man arrested for secretly filming under a teenage girl's skirt was barred from using cameras for a year by a Singapore court, a paper said on Thursday.

The 20-year-old Singaporean was arrested in November last year after he was caught filming under the 17-year-old girl's skirt with a digital camera and his camera phone on an escalator, the Straits Times daily reported.

Dubbed "the upskirt voyeur" by the paper, the man escaped a jail term but was sentenced to 40 hours of community service and ordered by the court to stay away from all types of cameras, including camera phones for a year.

At least eight men in Singapore -- including teachers, an engineer, and a doctor -- have been jailed for similar offences in the last year, the report said.

Profits ZOAR at Almost The News

As regular readers here know, we have been experiencing UNPRECEDENTED PROFIT GROWTH, profit that makes Google seem like a light weight. I know we were only talking nickles and dimes, but the percentage jumps were HUGE! Our new goal was to see those nickles and dimes turned into QUARTERS! Such a feat would be continued profit growth equal to about 400 PERCENT! Think of it, if we could push our meager earnings up to just FIFTY CENTS since our last discussion on profits, we would have seen a 400 PERCENT jump in profits in the past two weeks! Donald Trump would be sending his limo up here to Peekskill New York to bring me into THE CITY for lunch...we are talking MONSTER GROWTH.

Well, Donald Trump had best be sending his JET, or at the very least inviting me to be on his hit TV Show, "The Apprentice". I mean just my mentioning him and his show here on this blog is and endorsement of MASSIVE PROPORTIONS...forget Tiger Woods, the Porgie has just given the Donald a plug! Anyway, back to profits discussions. Forget quarters here folks, and forget that 400 percent GROWTH...we are talking record shattering performance here, profit growth never before seen in the entire history of MANKIND! We here at Almost The News have just approved an Ad Sense campaign that gives us profit growth of over TEN THOUSAND PERCENT! We have jumped past quarters, no fifty cent pieces, but serious real DOLLAR BILLS, and not just singles either! We have fives, tens, even a TWENTY DOLLAR BILL! MY GAWD, we have enough to BUY BEER AND FREAKING PIZZA!

IF this keeps up, we may be able to attract the quality players to this blog...that's right, I AM TALKING PABST BLUE RIBBON BEER as an advertiser, or imagine, could it be that BUDWEISER (My home town brew) would put and ad on our site...imagine that, a Budweiser LINK! Their Banner right there for all the world to see! Godiva, I have got to have Godiva! Imagine CRAFTSMAN...I could get some free POWER TOOLS, be just like Tim The Toolman! I'd give a free BANNER FOR LIFE to Tesla Motors if they could toss me one of their Roadsters...convertible only though! Martha Stewart, she's doing houses NOW...I could move out of my refrigerator BOX into a real HOME! She gets a BANNER AD, I get one of those homes she has built by someone else with her name on them! I'd not keep it though, would sell the home, and fulfill my dream of owning a DOUBLE WIDE in a first rate trailer park!

Big Fat DUBBIES At London Olympics?

Seems the sports Minister has said Cannibis should NOT be on the banned substance list for the athletes in the London Olympics! Can see the torch now! Big old three foot fattie smoldering up to light the torch! Cheech and Chong could run it into the stadium.

ALLOW ATHLETES TO USE CANNABIS, SAYS SPORTS MINISTER

December 13th, 2006


Athletes at the London Olympics should be not banned for taking recreational drugs, the Sports Minister said today.

Richard Caborn stunned MPs by suggesting cannabis should be removed from the list of banned substances for competitors.

Colbert SCORES BIG With Truthiness

Colbert's campaign to make Truthiness the WORD OF THE YEAR has paid some seriously big dividends...it happened! Merriam Webster's has stated that truthiness, based on an online survey best sums up the year 2006. Yet another feather in the bonnet of Colbert who some are pushing as the next President of the United States of America...who knows, it could happen.

'Truthiness' is the word of the year
POSTED: 10:48 a.m. EST, December 9, 2006
SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (AP) -- After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word -- if one can call it that -- best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

Colbert -- who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas" -- was pleased.

"Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

New Blog Launched-The Washington Clitorial

This one is GREAT folks...The Washington Clitorial is all about being in the pink in Washington, DC.

http://washingtonclitorial.blogspot.com/

Ann Coulter Move Over, The Washington Clitorial Is Here




As we prepare for the 110th Congress, and the coronation of Nancy (my husband shops for me) Pelosi, as Speakeress of The House it seems appropriate to create a tongue in cheek blog about and for women in Washington politics and the title Washington Rag sheet just seemed to much of a red state title, and we all know, Bush is out (or is that Cheney?) and Hilliary is in, so welcome to, "The Washington Clitorial" where the news and views are hopefully all in the pink.

Links For Hard to Find Christmas Gifts

Looking for that hard to find Christmas Gift, can't find the link to your favorite MUST HAVE gifts? Have no fear, Almost the News has the LINKS FOR YOU!

Here is a list of hard to find Christmas gifts....
Peeping Maxwell Night Vision Goggles
My Little Pony Glue Factory
Bump 'em..Hump 'em Robots
Play Do Bling Factory
Road Kill Racoon with Action Maggots
Easy Bake Meth Lab
Lawn Dart Tag
Honka Trucks for White Trash Kids
Rubic's Pube
Mary-Kate's Binge and Purge Game
Shiite Pet
Junior Electrician Home Appliance Repair Kit
Hollywood Clue

Fire Up Your Car With BLUBBER DIESEL

If you thought you'd heard it all, THINK AGAIN...how about body fat being converted to bio-diesel? That's RIGHT, your body fat converted into petrol as fat from liposuction is converted into fuel...this gives a whole new meaning to the term, "I've GOT GAS!" Now all we need is someone out there building us a blubber mobile, and we can have Fatman and Robin.


Fortune in fat
A Norwegian businessman is looking to earn money on the fat of the land, and create fuel in the USA

Lauri Venøy wants to use the product created from liposuction to develop bio-diesel.

Bio-diesel can be produced from plant oils and/or animal fat, and the Norwegian sees the scheme as a renewable energy source, newspaper Dagens Nærinsgliv reports.

More than sixty percent of Americans are overweight and the Norwegian's firm in Miami, Florida is in the process of signing an agreement with US hospital giant Jackson Memorial. This deal would give Venøy & Co. around 11,500 liters of human fat a week from liposuction operations, which is enough to produce about 10,000 liters of bio-diesel.

"Maybe we should urge people to eat more so we can create more raw material for fuel," Venøy said.

In Norway bio-diesel is primarily produced from fish oils and used fryer fat.

Some Folks Have No Sense of Humor...Pornaments Gone From Spencer Gifts

If Spencer's Gifts reads this blog entry, I would LOVE TO HAVE A SET OF THE ORNAMENTS in this article. Seems some holier than thou crusader for all things pure and right has succeeded in intimidating Spencer's Gifts into removing "Clinton White House" like pornographic ornaments from their stores and their website. It's simple...if you do not like the ornaments, do not buy them! In the mean time, for those of us who have a sense of humor, who enjoy a bit of sexual frivolity, leaves us to our own devices, let us buy humping Santa's, or sexy Snow Women!

Maybe it is time for some of these DAMN CHRISTIANS to take responsibility for their own lives, and their own children, rather than trying to stop the rest of us from living and enjoying our lives. If you don't want your children seeing NAKED SNOW MEN, keep them the hell out of Spencer's Gifts! If you don't want your children seeing Penthouse, then keep it in a better hiding place than under your bed. We were born naked, and there is nothing wrong with adults buying the gag gift of naked Christmas ornaments. Wondering here if the moron Thompson will now try to close down my blog?

HOLIDAY BLUES
Spencer Gifts blinks in battle over 'pornaments'
Products disappear from website when criminal complaint sought

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: December 8, 2006
5:00 p.m. Eastern



© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com



A photograph of a "pornament" that News4Jax.com fogged in order to be able to show it on television

Pornographic ornaments, apparently similar to those used in the Clinton White House, have disappeared from a novelty company's website, and are being pulled from its stores, after a Miami, Fla., lawyer warned the company that displaying those items where children can see them is illegal in many states.

The "pornaments," featuring various snowman, elf and Santa characters in sexually explicit poses, no longer are available on the website of Spencer Gifts, and Florida lawyer Jack Thompson told WND that he's working to make sure the company faces criminal charges in any state where they continue to appear in stores and where state laws are similar to Florida's.

The "pornaments" graphically depict anal intercourse between a snowman and a bare-breasted "snowwoman," sexual intercourse between reindeer, a naked elf with a gigantic, erect penis, a bare-breasted female elf, and so on, Thompson reported in a letter to authorities.

Those are similar, he said, to the ones former FBI Agent Gary Aldrich described in his book, "Unlimited Access," about security lapses during the Clinton tenure in the White House. That book recounts the placement of pornographic tree ornaments on the official Clinton White House tree, Thompson said.

Prime Time Highway Robbery....Reality Commercials

Reality TV has become and America staple...especially since it is a CHEAP WAY for producers to put a show before the viewing public...now we have ad agencies and companies wanting to get in on the deal, by offering view produced commercials...they get hundreds if not thousands of view submitted videos, advertise their product under the guise of VOTING (FREE ADVERTISING), then chose one lucky entrant as the WINNER. Winner gets a prise, advertisers have saved a fortune! As hard as it may be, home video makers have got to stop giving their work away, and the viewers of these video have to stop letting advertisers get something for nothing.

Testing Yourself Online and, Maybe, on the Set
By STUART ELLIOTT

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/technology/07adco.html

This blogger has STRIPPED out the avertisers links in this article from the NY Times.

THE promotional contest, a Madison Avenue mainstay, is being freshened for a new generation through an increasingly popular marketing tactic known as user-generated content.

Advertisers like Chipotle, Converse, General Motors and MasterCard have been gaining attention by inviting consumers to use the new video technologies to create commercials.

For instance, more than 1,000 entries have been submitted to the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo in a “Crash the Super Bowl” contest to create a commercial for Doritos snack chips. The winning spot is scheduled to appear during Super Bowl XLI on Feb. 4.

Not only are advertisers wooing consumers into creating commercials, so too are the television networks that run them. The CW network is teaming with one advertiser, the Sunkist line of sodas sold by Cadbury Schweppes, to ask viewers of the series “One Tree Hill” to create video entries in a contest with an unusual grand prize: a role in an episode for the creator of the winning spot, filmed on location in the winner’s hometown.

The entrants are being asked to upload their video clips to a special Web site (cwtv.com/sunkist). In a wrinkle that is typical of promotions involving user-generated content, consumers, whether or not they enter the contest, will be able to vote online for their favorite submissions.

“This is 360-degree marketing,” said Bill Morningstar, executive vice president for national sales at CW, owned by CBS and Time Warner. “It starts on air, extends online and has the ultimate grass-roots layer, the show coming to the hometown.”

FARTS CREATE Homeland Security Scare, GROUND PLANE...

You CANNOT MAKE NEWS LIKE THIS UP...seems that high flying farts caused a security scare, forcing a plane to make an EMERGENCY landing in Nashville. Seems a woman wanted to hide the odor of her melodious sounds and lit up a match to cover the smell...it did not work, and when passengers complained about the sulfur smell an emergency landing was ordered...the GUILTY FARTER was not charged, but could not return to the plane which continued on to Dallas.

Flatulence Forces Plane to Land
By Associated Press

December 5, 2006, 9:12 PM EST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.

An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a "body odor," Lowrance said. She had an unspecified medical condition, authorities said.

"It's humorous in a way but you feel sorry for the individual, as well," she said. "It's unusual that someone would go to those measures to cover it up."

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

Reuter's, Yahoo, Google, CNN and Others Want Your News Photos

OMFG....you could be a REPORTER! You've seen the adds on CNN encouraging you to become a citizen REPORTER! Others are quickly joining suit, encouraging you to send them what you have, offering you the chance to be a CITIZEN REPORTER, see your proverbial name in lights as it were. Tomorrow, both Yahoo and Reuters are going to begin featuring lots of these citizen pictures, making us members of the general public their stringers...JUST ONE PROBLEM, and you folks are falling right into their trap....THEY ARE NOT PAYING YOU FOR YOUR PHOTO! WAKE UP FOLKS...newspapers, news channels and other sources WILL PAY FOR THESE PICS, but would prefer to GET THEM FOR FREE. Sure, maybe it is cool to have your 30 seconds of fame, live the thrill of seeing your photograph on the evening news, but then WHAT?

Citizens need to tell these folks that our work has VALUE, and if they want it, they have to PAY FOR IT.

Have Camera Phone? Yahoo and Reuters Want You to Work for Their News Service
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/technology/04yahoo.html

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: December 4, 2006

Hoping to turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists, Yahoo and Reuters are introducing a new effort to showcase photographs and video of news events submitted by the public.

Starting tomorrow, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Reuters said that it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

“There is an ongoing demand for interesting and iconic images,” said Chris Ahearn, the president of the Reuters media group. He said the agency had always bought newsworthy pictures from individuals and part-time contributors known as stringers.

“This is looking out and saying, ‘What if everybody in the world were my stringers?’ ” Mr. Ahearn said. How about PAYING THOSE STRINGERS YOU CHEAP BASTARD.

The project is among the most ambitious efforts in what has become known as citizen journalism, attempts by bloggers, start-up local news sites and by global news organizations like CNN and the BBC to see if readers can also become reporters. Reporters WITHOUT PAY should be added here.

How About A Cow For Christmas?

Christmas is the time for giving, a time to think about someone other than self, the one time of the year when people seem in the mood to be generous of spirit and heart. How many of us take a moment to toss our spare change into the Red Buckets of the Salvation Army on our way into our out of the Mall? If you are not, then SHAME ON YOU.

This year, how about giving someone on your gift list a gift that keeps on giving to someone they do not even know? I'd like to introduct you to OXFAM's where you can shop for numerous charitable gifts to help those in need. A big fan favorite is a cow for only $75, or how about helping to start a villiage savings account? These are but two of the wonderful Humanity Gifts you can find on this wonderful site, and it's my hope that a few of you will click over to give them a hello, and hopefully be moved to make a purchase or two.

Paris Hilton Quits Billboard Awards...uhhh...Who Cares?

If I were to create a list of the top ten women with whom I'd love to share dinner with, a list of fantasy dates, Paris Hilton would not make the list...in fact, if I were to make the list larger, say 1,000 women, she would still fall short of making the cut. She's brash, she's trash, and her antics are...well, distasteful and rude. Here is a young woman that has been given anything and everything a person could hope for in life...fame, fortune, a modicum of good looks, and from this writer's perspective she is doing NOTHING remarkable with these gifts she has received.

So, it it with some humor I read today that she's BACKING out of her appearance at the Billboard Awards because she finds some of the jokes portray some of her friends in a BAD LIGHT...WELL EXCUSE ME, maybe then Paris needs to GET A CLUE. I do not keep tabs on her, but I could recount one sad news story after another about her and her friends. Seem to recall the story about her STUFF found in an abandoned storage facility and her suing to get it back, there was the story about her and her friends hitting a car and driving off after a night of party at some club, or her latest antics with Brittany, the two of them showing up at clubs without their panties on. With these kinds of news stories, how can Paris be upset at a few jokes that might portray her friends in a negative light...does the truth hurt? I only hope that one day she wakes up, realizes what she's been gifted with, starts doing some good in this world, instead of thinking everything in the world revolves around her.

Hilton Quits Billboard Awards Over Jokes

( Does Truth Hurt Paris? )

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 3, 2006; 2:12 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/02/AR2006120200533.html

LOS ANGELES -- Paris Hilton won't joke about her peeps. The hotel heiress canceled an appearance at next week's Billboard Music Awards because she didn't like the jokes written for her, according to a spokesman.

"It is my understanding that some satirical references ridiculed some of her peers," her spokesman, Elliot Mintz, said in a statement. "Paris did not want to say anything that could appear hurtful or embarrassing about people she knows."

No Tongue in Cheek...We miss you Dinero Boo

SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN:

It is with a heavy heart that I interupt our fun on this blog...no jokes today, no fun, no product previews. Instead, today I honor my/our beloved Dinero Boo, the best cat, the best feline friend a family could ever have.

Dinero Boo October 11th, 1995-December 2nd, 2006

NEWS FLASH...Calling ALL BLOGGERS To Help a Soldier's Mom

I know this is usually a silly, funny blog, but I interupt here with and important call for all bloggers to reach out to an American Soldier's Mom who has just found out he has been hit by and IED in Iraq...

Friday, December 1, 2006

Reach Out NOW To an Iraq Soldier Mom! Her SON Has BEEN HIT With and IED



NEWS FLASH...Just in from Gather.

I am a member on www.gather.com a site for people to meet and share their thoughts, argue politics, and make new friends. One of these new friends could USE SOME FRIENDLY WORDS and prayers. If you read this, pass the link along, and click on THIS LINK to read her post, which I am posting below, and to leave her words of strength. This post is being put up in all my blogs, hope you will include it in yours...the Mother of a soldier needs our strength.

Porgie Tirebiter

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976851052

he was hit
by adele L.
December 01, 2006 12:07 AM EST
I got a phone call at midnight, from my daughter, telling me my son was hit and injured in Iraq. I was sound asleep. I heard ,Wayland had been hit by an IUD. ?????? What I don't understand, I said. She continued to try to explain it to me. I finally woke up enough to understand what she was saying ..... my son was hurt.
He was hit by an IED.

He is in Germany now in a hospital.

He was in a vehicle and was tossled around.

more to come.............

Amish Airlines...No Words Necessary

Hot, Sexy, Sizzling and GREEN

Here at Almost the News, we like GREEN COMPANIES, and on occasion try to give a green group or green product a plug, such as our piece on the Ecobabes efforts to raise funds to fight Global Warming by selling calendars. Which by the way, for those of you looking for a great Christmas gift, there are only 5000 of these rare treats. Another project that I've personally been following, and am very excited about is the Tesla Motor Company's entry into the environmentally friendly automobile category.

On an early blog I abandoned, this sexy car was featured a few times, and thought now was a good time to introduce my readers to it again. This is not your father's electric car, it's bold sleek styling flat out beautiful to behold, and the convertible is to die for. Earlier this year they offered up a limited edition of 100 cars that sold out so fast they had to offer up another 100 for those car aficionado's that can afford this luxury GREEN CAR...yes, sadly they are not cheap with a price tag right around $100,000. That being said, if Santa Claus is reading this article, I would not mind finding one under my Christmas Tree.

At the other end of the spectrum is one of the UGLIEST entries into the Green Car race I have ever seen, but then what can we expect, it's from HUMMER.

Need Christmas Shopping Time? PLAY HOOKIE

We all know the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season...cookies to be baked, dinners to be planned, decorating our homes inside and out, and of course SHOPPING...lots and lots of shopping and it all has to be done by Christmas Eve, squeezed in between Christmas Parties and drinking some serious Holiday Cheer. Looking at all these responsibilities and duties falling on the average American worker, what is and employee supposed to do?

PLAY HOOKIE...That's right, call in sick, fake a cough, whisper hoarsely into the phone that you ARE DYING! Not to worry, every one (almost) is doing it. What choice do we have? Let's be serious, our children, friends and family are counting on us to deliver the goods on Christmas, and sometimes getting those hard to find toys and gifts require some serious standing on line time. So, feeling pressured, need a few additional hours to take care of the real business of the season...TAKE THE DAY OFF, use up one of your sick days, tell them one of your children is vomiting all over the living room rug.

Holiday season rings in the phony absences
POSTED: 11:43 a.m. EST, November 29, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/11/29/work.sick.reut/index.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- One in three workers has called in sick when they're not in the past year, and the end-of-year holiday season brings a rash of phony absences, experts and studies say.

Harried workers are juggling shopping, holiday preparations and family obligations this time of year, on top of perhaps having run out of the year's legitimate vacation days, they say. And the mornings after holiday parties don't help.

"We do know just anecdotally in dealing with employers that there certainly is a higher rate ... associated with holidays, catching up on shopping, or spending time with family and friends," said Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com, which conducts an annual survey of employee absenteeism. "You do see a higher incidence."

The firm's survey, released this week, showed that 32 percent of workers said they called in sick when they felt fine at least once in the last year, and one in 10 said they did so three times or more.

Women were more likely to take a sick day when they are not sick than men, by 37 to 26 percent, the survey said.

Bush Maliki Press Conference

OK, for all you LAZY folks that did not STAY UP for this exciting event, going to give you the low down on the Bush/Maliki Press Conference held in the middle of the night...PAY ATTENTION DAMMIT.

BLah, blah, blah, blah, Killing Innocent People, blah, blah

Accelerate, accelerate, yeah, accelerate, Right man for the job, accelerate.

Freedom Building, Democracy,,,,,,, accelerate, unify.

No graceful withdraw. (verse Cut and Run...is this bipartisanship in action?)

Blah, blah, unify, killing innocent people, terrorist

Iran, isolation

Respect our borders, stay out of our internal affairs

accelerate, accelerate, unify, accelerate

no trilateral talk was planned...denial

duck, duck, duck....accelerate, accelerate, unify, Sadr, Sadr, duck, duck, duck

accelerate, accelerate, right man for job