U.S Lack the Courage to Attack Israel: Ahmadinejad

BRASILIA News Update: Visiting Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said that US and Israeli military threats against Iran were a thing of the past, and that, in any case, “they don’t have the courage” to attack Iran.

“The age of military attacks is over, now we’ve reached the time for dialogue and understanding. Weapons and threats are a thing of the past,” the Iranian told a joint press conference with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, closing his one-day visit.

Fielding a question on whether he feared an attack from Israel or the United States, Ahmadinejad said armed confrontation was no longer a possibility.

That’s clear “even for mentally challenged people,” he said with a smile.

Besides, he added, “those you mention (Israel and United States) don’t have the courage to attack Iran. They’re not even thinking about it.”

Ahmadinejad met for three hours with Lula to discuss Iran’s controversial nuclear program, over which Lula urged Teheran to find a “just solution” with Western powers.

Swamp Thing 1982

Latest News Updated, Swamp Thing 1982: Swamp Thing is a fictional character, a plant elemental in the DC Comics Universe. He first appeared in House of Secrets #92 (July 1971), and was created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson. The character is a humanoid mass of vegetable matter who fights to protect his swamp home, the environment in general, and humanity from various supernatural or terrorist threats.
The character found perhaps his greatest popularity during the 1980s and early ’90s. Outside of an extensive comic book history, the Swamp Thing property has inspired two theatrical films, a live-action television series, and a 5-part animated series among other media.

Swamp Thing’s expansion into media outside of comic books began with his first eponymous film in 1982. Directed by Wes Craven, it starred actor/stuntman Dick Durock as the title character. A sequel, The Return of Swamp Thing, was produced in 1989. This was much lower in budget and met with significantly less success than its predecessor.

The aforementioned film series rejected the popular Alan Moore revision of Swamp Thing’s origin and portrayed Swamp Thing with his original origin as a man turned into a plant-like entity. They also heavily featured Anton Arcane, who now became the man responsible for causing Alec Holland’s transformation into Swamp Thing.

The documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan Moore contains a psychedelic animation piece based on the “Love and Death” issue of Swamp Thing.

The 1982 film starred Louis Jordan, Adrienne Barbeau, Ray Wise, and Dick Durock (as Swamp Thing).  Directed by Wes Craven
Source: goremasterfx.wordpress.com

The Congress today had five minutes of worthwhile dialogue

Earlier today, GOP Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia introduced yet another amendment to deny all funding to ACORN.  Rep. Alan Grayson took the five minutes allotted to him to question Rep. Broun about this thing called “the Constitution” and, specifically, “bills of attainder,” which happen to be prohibited by the ”Constitution.”  What ensued is both hilarious and very worthwhile.  Every member of Congress should be subjected to questioning like this on a daily basis:

For those interested, my interview with Grayson several weeks ago about ACORN and bill

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The Congress today had five minutes of worthwhile dialogue

Shannon Brown

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The Lakers are a rock solid squad thick with talent and thin on major concerns. That doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting and potentially significant details to kick around. Lakers Point Guards We’ve hit on the whole Complacency Thing. Monday, we talked about the playing time issues in the front court. Among the guards, there’s an interesting dynamic as well, with Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar, and Shannon Brown jockeying for minutes. Meanwhile, all three can or will be free agents the end of the season (Brown has the right to opt out of the two year deal he signed this summer).
Fish has made it very clear he’d like to keep playing beyond this season. Like most young players, Farmar wants to start. Brown is looking to build on a strong end to last season and continue to solidify his place in the league. Individually, they’ll all be motivated to put up numbers. When we talked to Fish before camp started, he noted that it’s up to the three of them, with the vet taking a leadership role, to make sure nobody loses sight of the big picture:

“It’s a very interesting dynamic at that point guard position, because you have three different guys in three totally different situations. It’s going to be very important that all three of us understand- starting with me, being the veteran guy and the most experienced guy, in terms of making sure that although I understand this is my “contract year,” and I plan on playing beyond this year and want to continue to prove to myself and as well to other people that age is not this arbitrary thing that automatically means your performance has to decline. So I’m going to continue to push my performance, and those two guys will do the same thing. But there will always remain one commonality, and that’s that we’re on a championship caliber team. So myself, Jordan and Shannon will constantly have to fight with ourselves to keep that in mind, that even though we want to make sure we’re holding on to our standing as far as what we want to accomplish professionally and personally, still the ultimate goal is to win a championship, and that has to fit into that picture. If it doesn’t, especially because it’s the lead guard spot, it could make it very difficult for everyone else.”

Talking to Brown Monday at practice, he seems to have a solid handle on the issue, and a firm grasp of priorities. The relationship between the three of them, he says, is good:

“I think everybody knows what they have to do. Make the most of whatever minutes you get. Go out there, play hard, and let it fall where it may. Whether it be at the lead guard or the two guard, the parts are interchangeable anyway. We really don’t have a point guard. But it’s all about the team. you can’t win a championship without the team, anyway. We don’t have (any) point guard quarrels or nothing like that. We just go out there and try to play hard and try to make each other better.”

Winning a title, particularly with a very talented and deep roster, requires sacrifice. A couple years ago, the Dodgers had a mix of veterans and young players that turned toxic as individual interests and egos began to clash. The Lakers aren’t in an identical situation, most importantly because they have a different class of veteran in the locker room, but it’s fair to say that in sports the motivation to do the right thing can sometimes get muddied when it conflicts with individual ambition and the payoffs that come with it. We saw how it can play out last year, when Lamar Odom initially balked at the notion of coming off the bench. He came around, and instead of a problem the Lakers were left with incredible strength and depth in the rotation and plenty of team harmony to boot as Odom’s sacrifice, as it were, became a symbol in the locker room of what championship teams do for each other.

I expect similar things from the three headed monster. Fisher makes a living at this sort of thing. His value to the Lakers and around the league is as much seen in this sort of leadership as it is in on-court numbers. Brown is a hard-working, tough player, no doubt working to establish his place in the league but still humble, coachable, and unlikely to rock the boat.

Farmar has the most potential to mess with team chemistry, and at this time last year I’d have been more worried. Certainly he’s displayed an… um… call it healthy confidence in his ability, chafing periodically at what he’s seen as too limited a role, but I was genuinely impressed with the attitude he showed down the stretch, through the playoffs, and heading into last offseason. It seemed to indicate a growing level of maturity, and an understanding that the best way to get what he wants is to shut up, work hard, and play well. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, while wondering what’ll happen if his PT shrinks precipitously. I still have some reservations. (My guess is he’d be shipped out if he fell from the rotation.)

It helps as well that the Lakers don’t rely on traditional point guard play, and that Brown can play the two as well (perhaps stepping on Sasha Vujacic’s minutes, but that’s another issue). Phil Jackson has oodles of practice in keeping a lid on this sort of thing, and it’s not exactly like Kobe Bryant is tolerant of shenanigans. Most importantly, on a winning team, players don’t generally make waves since success on the floor is the best antidote for dissension. This team is built to win.

But just like the questions of fourth quarter playing time, it’s an interesting dynamic likely get plenty of attention over the course of the season. Ultimately, there are only 48 minutes in a game, and all three are likely to have times when the minutes aren’t doled out in their ideal way during key years in their respective careers. On a different team, it could be a problem. Here, I’d be surprised.
Source: lakersblog.latimes.com

Secret Girlfriend

As much as we all love it, the internet can be a sad place. For all the bright colors and cheerful banner ads, you eventually have to realize that all the people interacting on the internet are, in real life, sitting down in front of a screen and typing, while the world zooms by around them.
Just kidding! LOL! Teh internet rulez!!1! Though it might not be improper to suggest that many netizens are in need of a little face to face interaction.

If Match.com seems like too much effort, web producers AtomicWedgieTV.com and Ross Novie have come up with the next best thing; made to order video text message from (seemingly) real girls, all of whom are cute, funny, and absolutely, positively wild about you, the viewer.

Secret Girlfriend is yet another exploration of the first-person confessional style web video, which may in fact be the internet’s first unique cinematic genre.

Each “episode” takes two minutes or less, and features one of several alluring girls talking to the viewer about their nonexistent relationship ( i.e. “It was so cute when you were dancing and your pants fell down”). The episodes are designed to be viewed via cellphone, and if watched in order, the document a relationship with each girl from meeting to breakup.

Of course this premise would all be for naught if the girls weren’t seriously attractive, and this is where Secret Girlfriend exceeds it’s lowest-common-denominator premise.  Each girl is in fact pretty engaging beyond mere beauty, and the producers have made sure to include “types” for every bent, including:

Sarah – cute, sweet, girl next door
Mandy – intense, artistic (i.e. crazy) girl
Topaz – aggressive, sultry Russian
Jackie – enthusiastic sex-addict
Katherine – it-girl starlet
Carmen – sassy tease

There’s also supposedly a smart scientist girl in there somewhere, but I didn’t see it on YouTube, where (just like a proper mail-order bride service) you can view several introductory videos.

The clips are equal parts ego-stroke and sketch comedy. Sure, Sarah is adorable, but as she recounts a meeting with your parents and she mentions the M-word, you get a sense it’s the beginning of the end. In one episode Carmen decides to send you a video strip-tease, but that pesky low-battery icon pops up at the worst possible moment:

There’s definitely a porny aspect, but it’s not as lurid as it sounds. If anything, it’s more like “emotion porn” or a “girlfriend experience.” These ladies don’t just want sex, they’re also eager to do all the little things the viewer might be lacking in their real life relationships, i.e. make heartfelt gifts and talk about fantasy football. They stimulate the intimacy of “ideal relationships”, not just the sexy parts.

This series has been a hit for Atomic Wedgie TV (and their parent company Freemantle Media). Comedy Central recently ordered a pilot for possible broadcast. Details on the plot are vague, the pitch only described as ““a twentysomething guy and his slacker friends, living the dream in the pursuit of sex, beer and more sex,” but I assume the girls will show up in there somewhere.
The most interesting thing about this project is that the pilot is set to be only 11 minutes, a la cable cartoon shows which feature two episodes per half hour. As we ADD-riddled Gen Yers reach adulthood, could this be a new model for sitcoms?  Time will tell.
One more thing. Since every good series needs a spinoff, Atomic Wedgie TV has already launched the next natural step in the series – Secret Boyfriend. There’s only one dude up on the site so far, a strapping yet dapper Australian straight out of a Richard Curtis romcom. Contrasting the attitude of the fantasy boys with the fantasy girlsi is a New Media / Gender Studies Term Paper waiting to happen.
Source: tilzy.tv

TFLN, Texts From Last Night

Texts From Last Night (TFLN) was founded in February 2009 by two friends for reasons that may or may not include: the tendency to press send more easily as the night turns to morning, friends social habits, Kwame Kilpatrick, exes, law school, closing down bars and leaving tabs open, general debauchery and/or a common disgust for all the negativity surrounding the “sexting” phenomenon.
We prefer texts, not conversations. We reserve the right to take portions of conversations to post without posting the entire thing. It’s not because the entire thing isn’t funny, but the funniest texts are those we can all relate to, so without the context of the conversation they really become funny.

Our goal is to create a site that was revealing in nature while concealing the identity of everyone involved. This is why we only ask for an area code to accompany your text messages.

We don’t want any texts that are offensive to the point of being viciously personal, racist, exceedingly profane, violent or “too” graphic in nature. It’s a very hard thing to judge, but we’ll do our best.

For more, check out our Terms of Service for full details of our legal policy. If you don’t feel like it, just know that TFLN, our advertisers and anyone who promotes with us is doing so purely for entertainment purposes. In other words, we’re not your parents, your employer or your probation officer. In fact, they probably sent their texts in too.
Source: textsfromlastnight.com

9 12 March on Washington

It was more than tens of thousands yesterday in Washington D.C. for the 9/12 Project Tea Party march and rally. Joe from Milwaukee Wisconsin, Sarah from Grand Rapids Michigan, John from Austin Texas, Jan and Michael from Syracuse New York State, the McCafferty family from Palm Beach Florida and hundreds of thousands of people from all over America had one thing in common on Saturday 9/12; they came to their nation’s capital to peacefully protest the direction the nation is taking.
People gathered in Freedom Plaza near the White House to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol grounds. The march had been originally been scheduled to start around 11 am but got under way hours early due to the sheer number of people flooding out of buses and metro stations all over D.C.
The mood, despite the protest topics of out of control government spending; health care ‘reform’, loss of freedom and liberty, lower taxes, smaller government and the First, Second and Tenth Amendments was upbeat and cheerful. Complete strangers struck up conversations sparked by remarking on each other’s homemade signs and t-shirts or a simple ‘where are you from?’ Those people who were crammed into the Metro (if they could get on complete a train after purchasing their Metro Day Pass complete with a photo celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama back in January) were simply forced to get to know the people less than inches from them. They all had one thing in common; a message to deliver in person to the government to ‘Listen’, to tell Congress they ‘will not be ignored’ and that they ‘have had enough’.

Crowd estimates vary as they always do. The media are generally reporting there were tens of thousands, mostly from AP wire reports. This is inaccurate as there were hundreds of thousands in central D.C. as those who attended can attest. Interestingly, officials including the Park Police have declined to give an estimate.

Source: examiner.com

Harmans 12 Songs for Priyanka Chopra

Mumbai: Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra are good friends, of course! But they must be better friends than they or the world realises. A little birdie tells us that even their idea of romance is similar.. uh, did we say similar? Sorry, we meant identical!
Recently, someone asked Harman the most romantic thing he had ever done for ‘someone’ and his reply was, “Well, I once made.

A cd with 12 of my favourite songs and I did a voiceover before each song.” So what, you wonder? Well, there’s a sequel to this little love confession.

The same friend, also known to Pranks (that’s her latest nickname!), asked her the same question. And, Priyanka goes.

“I don’t know about the most romantic thing I’ve ever done, but the most romantic thing that somebody ever did for me was … ” And, yes, you guess right it was the cd compilation of 12 songs.

Now, we don’t know if the actors are in sync to promote their upcoming film What’s Your Rashi?, based on the 12 sun signs, but it sure tells us that they’ve got each other on their minds! So, are they together or aren’t they? Just tell us, guys!