Devastadora ola de violencia

BAGHDAD -- Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shi'ite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major US offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue.

The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the US military and the media.

Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday yesterday. The victims had been shot, knifed, garroted, or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their head. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound, and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shi'ite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

*Tomado de The Boston Globe

Gasean al Mini Shaq

Me despedí del Mini Shaq frente a una tienda en la Condesa, donde él se compró una pequeña botella de mezcal. Antes de que doblara la esquina alcancé a observar que le daba un buen trago. Me encogí de hombros y me encaminé hacia un Café de la zona. Al día siguiente nadie sabía nada del Mini Shaq y recibí llamadas desesperadas de algunas de sus admiradoras exigiéndome les revelara su ubicación. Me imaginé que estaba en el "Hotel Tijuana" de calzada de Tlapan, sin duda su favorito a últimos tiempos, pero me abstuve de responder. Finalmente pude contactarlo y me contó su triste historia.

- Estoy con una toalla humeda en la cara, chinga...

- Por qué... Qué pasó...

- Abordé el metro y vi a una chica bien buena y no pude contenerme, establecí contacto visual y estaba seguro de que la tenía amarrada, pero no. ´che Mezcal, me angaña. Total, me acerqué, le dije cual suponía yo que era su talla, la invité a "algún lado" y la tomé de una mano.

- ¿Terminaste en el Tijuana?

- Ni madres... la tipa opuso resitencia, sacó un botecito y me disparó gas pimienta. Joder, estoy que me lleva la chingada.

Lisa Loeb busca pareja*

Texas girl (minus big hair). Petite build, brown hair, hazel eyes. Singer-songwriter. I listen to Zeppelin but don't sound like them. I love to cook and eat, go to restaurants, grocery shop, read, travel and hike. I enjoy Chinese food, good conversation and long walks on the beach (ha, ha!).

Seek intelligent city guy (NYC or L.A.) between 30-45. Must be smart, funny, sensitive (not wimpy), adventurous and family oriented. Preferably Jewish. No diets, no fake hair. Healthy and active a plus. Must love cats.

*Se trata de un Reality Show que se transmite en E!

Bush y Bin Laden

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, The Washington Examiner newspaper reported Tuesday.

The al Qaeda leader had issued a taped diatribe against Bush the Friday before Americans went to the polls

Bush said there were "enormous amounts of discussion" inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called "an interesting entry by our enemy" into the presidential race.

Bush's comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book "Strategery" by Bill Sammon, a longtime White House correspondent.

"What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?" Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes.

"Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect.

"I thought it was going to help," Bush said.

"I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."

Premio Alfaguara

El Premio Alfaguara es uno de los más importantes del mundo, pero también de los que despierta más dudas respecto a las obras que lo han ganado. Hoy ya hay un nuevo ganador y se trata del peruano Santiago Roncagliolo por su obra Abril Rojo.

La hazaña de un sólo perro, el peor de todos, según su dueño

EMMAUS, Pa. - Marley did his best to live down to his reputation.

The 97-pound Labrador retriever crashed through screen doors with alarming regularity. He went berserk during thunderstorms, destroying everything in his path. He stole food off the dinner table, slobbered incessantly, drank from the toilet bowl, and ate bath towels, sponges, socks, used tissues, plastic toys, furniture, speaker covers, paychecks, even an expensive gold necklace.

He was incorrigible. And utterly lovable.

In a funny and poignant memoir, "Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog," first-time author John Grogan remembers his late pooch as an irrepressible force of nature and as a faithful companion who taught his human masters a thing or two about loyalty and unconditional love.

Released in October, "Marley" has quickly and quite unexpectedly become top dog in the publishing world. With 650,000 copies already in print, the book sits atop two best-seller lists, ahead of offerings from such heavyweights as David McCullough, Frank McCourt and Joan Didion.

Mr. Turner

Media legend Ted Turner will not run for re-election to the board of AOL-Time Warner. After Time Warner merged with America Online, Mr. Turner was stripped of his operating power, and his clout inside the company waned. But as long as he remained, his loyalists felt a certain pride in their irreverent leader, who once broke up a tense meeting by donning one of his Civil War uniforms and running up and down the halls waving a sword. He resigned as vice chairman of the company in 2003.

*Tomado de The Wall Street Journal (las cursivas son mías, me hizo reír esa anécdota del señor Turner)

Los 20 empleos que no requieren de un título profesional, según The 300 Best Jobs That Don't Require a Four-Year Degree

Air traffic controller

Annual income: $102,030


Storage and distribution manager

Annual income: $66,600


Transportation manager

Annual income: $66,600


Police and detectives supervisor

Annual income: $64,430


Non-retail sales manager

Annual income: $59,300


Forest fire fighting and prevention supervisor

Annual income: $58,920


Municipal fire fighting and prevention supervisor

Annual income: $58,902


Real estate broker

Annual income: $58,720


Elevator installers and repairer

Annual income: $58,710


Sales representative

Annual income: $58,580


Dental hygienist

Annual income: $58,350


Radiation therapist

Annual income: $57,700


Nuclear medicine technologist

Annual income: $56,450


Child support, missing persons and unemployment insurance fraud investigator

Annual income: $53,900


Criminal investigators and special agent

Annual income: $53,990


Immigration and Customs inspector

Annual income: $53,990


Police detective

Annual Income: $53,990


Police identification and records officer

Annual income: $53,990


Commercial pilot

Annual income: $53,870


Talent director

Annual income: $52,840

"Simply menstruation"

South Park" TV cartoon episode showing a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary, described by Roman Catholics and New Zealand Muslims as tasteless, drew an audience six times normal, the broadcaster said Thursday. Hundreds of protesters prayed near a statue of the Virgin Mary in the northern city of Auckland Wednesday night as the TV network broadcast the comedy show. The program which dismayed Roman Catholics shows a statue of Mary bleeding, taken to be a miracle and investigated by Pope Benedict XVI, who dismisses it as simply menstruation. Titled Bloody Mary, the episode was previously aired in the United States and is available for download on the Web. It drew protests in New Zealand after TV Works -- a subsidiary of Canadian-owned Canwest International -- said it would air the program on its C4 network. The screening attracted 210,000 viewers to the youth channel, six times the usual audience.

A punto de los tiros, sigue el juego

Police blasted out a 20th story window and stormed a room at a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino Tuesday, arresting a suspected gunman who authorities say killed another man and shot at police and paramedics during a six-hour standoff.

No shots were fired in the final assault, and police denied initial reports that SWAT officers rappelled down Harrah's hotel-casino and crashed through the window during an assault on room 2036.

"We were forced to take out an outside window in our attempts to take him into custody," police Sgt. Chris Jones said. He described shattering the window on the 29-story Carnival tower as a tactical diversion.

Guests were evacuated from several nearby floors, but the casino remained open during the standoff.

Jim Hack, 31, a stockbroker from Phoenix, said he heard two gunshots about 12:30 a.m., opened his door and saw a man in his mid-30s bleeding in the hallway several rooms away.

"He was crying for help and he was having trouble breathing," said Hack, who said he closed his door and called security while the wounded man pleaded for someone to pull him into an adjacent room. Hack said police ordered him to evacuate about 1 a.m.

The gunman shot into the hallway as police and paramedics arrived during the initial hectic minutes after the victim was mortally wounded, Jones said, and the victim was conscious when police rescued him. He was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

Kim está de gran festejo

Tokio, Japón. (EFE) Corea del Norte celebró hoy con desfiles, bailes y doble ración de comida el 64 cumpleaños de su "querido líder", Kim Jong-il, sin olvidarse de las amenazas contra Estados Unidos por su hostilidad hacia el último "paraíso" estalinista del planeta.

Los medios de comunicación norcoreanos, recogidos por la prensa de Japón y Corea del Sur, hablaron de danzas sincronizadas, marchas multitudinarias, espectáculos de propaganda y raciones extra de comida en el "Día del Sol", como se denomina la festividad del cumpleaños del dictador.


Director de cine y ópera, experto piloto de aviones de combate (aunque para sus desplazamientos dentro y fuera del país use siempre el tren), ingeniero en electrónica e historiador, son algunos de los títulos que otorga a Kim Jong-ill la propaganda norcoreana.


Las malas lenguas, sobre todo japonesas y surcoreanas, en cambio lo describen como un hombre acomplejado, mujeriego (hoy la prensa nipona publicó la noticia de que tiene una quinta esposa) y obsesivo con la idea de que EEUU intenta derribarlo del trono comunista heredado de su padre, Kim Il-sung, el fundador de Corea del Norte.


La fiesta de hoy sólo es superada por el aniversario del nacimiento de Kim Il-sung, el 15 de abril, quien murió de una parada cardiaca en 1994 y dejó así vía libre a su hijo para acceder al poder.


"El camarada Kim Jong-il es el símbolo de la victoria eterna de nuestro estilo de socialismo", afirmó hoy el mensaje de la Agencia Central de Noticias norcoreana (KCNA).

Lou Dobbs según el New York Times

Night after night, Lou Dobbs slides into his anchor chair, turns to the camera and becomes the sober and steady face of CNN...

...Mr. Dobbs has been speaking his mind more frequently about various subjects — including the outsourcing of American jobs — since he ended his long-running business program "Moneyline" and started his general-news program, "Lou Dobbs Tonight," in 2003. But he is touching particularly sensitive nerves these days as the debate over immigration legislation, currently under consideration in Congress, heats up around the country.

Many conservatives praise him for giving a rare national platform to people who fear that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, fueling violent crime and threatening national security. Critics deride him as anti-immigrant, racist and biased, charges he fiercely denies. One Democratic congressman was so incensed that he stood up on the House floor last year to denounce Mr. Dobbs's continuing series "Broken Borders" as a "broken record."

But Mr. Dobbs remains unapologetic. He says he has no interest in assuming the conventional role of the anchor who reports the news dispassionately. His mission, he says, is to tell American viewers the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial...

Tomado del NYT

Cheney en la mira

Luego de disparar contra un hombre accidentalmente, hacer un pésimo manejo informativo del incidente y que haya la posibilidad de que sea llamado por un Gran Juarado si el herido muere, Dick Cheney fue captado haciendo sus necesidades en la vía pública...



No, no es cierto, sólo bromeaba... Aunque bien esta foto pudiera ser de un colega del Mini Shaq que en sus tiempos libres aún toma su vieja cámara y capta imágenes compromotedoras bajo encargo de una investigadora tuerta que usualmente es contratada por cónyuges celosos.

Juntos al fin

Conan O'Brien, who endorsed Tarja Halonen because she resembles him, presented her a Valentine's gift Tuesday.

Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce

...García Porta (1954) es el mismo que en 1984, junto a Roberto Bolaño, obtuvo el Premio Ámbito Literario de Narrativa de la Editorial Anthropos; galardón que les permitió publicar la novela “Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce”. Un libro, hasta el momento, inencontrable para quienes admiran la obra de Bolaño, pero que durante la próximas semanas lo podrán adquirir en las librerías locales.

“Con el tiempo, la veo como una curiosidad. Se trata de una novela policíaca de la que se ha dicho que era un precedente de ‘Pulp Fiction’. El apéndice final -‘Manuscrito encontrado en una bala’-, me parece un precedente muy bueno de los actuales cuentos de Bolaño. La idea es publicar la novela junto con ‘Diario de bar’, el único cuento que logramos terminar juntos. También se publicará un texto que he escrito a modo de prólogo y que lleva por título ‘La escritura a cuatro manos’, en el que se explica cómo sucedió todo”, cuenta García Porta desde Barcelona, quien a principios de 1978, llegó a la casa de Bolaño en esa ciudad por medio de Xavier Sabater, fundador de la editorial llamada La Cloaca. “De ahí la broma tras el error tipográfico de un periódico que decía que había comenzado a escribir en La Cloaca y ahora lo hacía en El Alcantarillado (por El Acantilado)”, relata...

Tomado de La Nación

Un video para Pretty Girls Make Graves

...the winner will be given $1,000 in cold, hard cash and be flown out to New York all expenses paid to hang with the band and see them live in concert courtesy of Matador records...

Virginidad de regalo

Del blog de 360°, el programa de Anderson Cooper en CNN

You too can be a 40-year-old virgin

Someone told me that women are having their vaginas rejuvenated. That's right, rejuvenated and reconstructed and revirginized even. I thought they were kidding. But my producer and I looked into it, and sure enough, it's an emerging surgical trend.

Vaginal rejuvenation costs thousands of dollars and is done with a laser. It includes a variety of procedures, such as women getting their labia made smaller because it is uncomfortable for them to engage in physical activity or have intercourse, women getting their vaginal canal tightened as it was pre-baby delivery, and other women going one step further by getting their hymen (the gateway to the vaginal canal) tightened. This last procedure can, in a sense, make a woman a virgin again.

In many instances, the women who get this surgery need it for medical reasons. But not all. Some women do this as a gift to their husband or significant other.

I interviewed one couple for this story who has been married 18 years and has two children. The wife recently had her hymen replaced as an anniversary gift for her husband. We also talked with the doctor who did the surgery and even got to be in the operating room during another woman's surgery.

You can see the video (the PG version) tonight, February 14th, Valentine's Day. These women say it's the perfect gift. But beware, it isn't cheap.

La imagen lo dice todo:

Murió el papá de Tiburón

Peter Benchley, author of the bestselling book Jaws which became a blockbuster film, has died at his US home aged 65.

HBO wants its programming to be off-limits for DVRs

HBO has joined the fray with a recent FCC filing in which it argues that its video-on-demand programming-and all "Subscription Video On Demand" services-should fall into the category of "Copy Never." In a broadcast-flagged world, that translate into consumers not being able to record on-demand broadcasts by HBO. No TiVo, no VCR, no video capturing on your PC, no nada.

De bellezas a bellezas

A cat is inspected at an international feline beauty contest in Brussels...

Flores rotas

Don Johnston: Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it.

Univisión considera ponerse a la venta

Nueva York- Univisión, el mayor grupo de comunicación de EE UU en español, emitió ayer un comunicado en el que reconocía públicamente que «está explorando diferentes alternativas estratégicas» con objeto de realzar el valor de la compañía. Entre estas alternativas, se incluye la captación de recursos a través de la venta de acciones de la empresa, o la compra de otras compañías. También se estudia la «fusión o venta de la empresa a otra entidad». Los grupos News Corporation, de Robert Murdoch, Time Warner y CBS, podrían estar interesados en la compra de Univisión, ya que de esta manera entrarían en un mercado, el hispano, que acumula un poder de compra de 480.000 millones de dólares al año.
La noticia, que fue adelantada el miércoles por «The New York Times», provocó que los títulos del grupo se revalorizarán más de un 10 por ciento en la bolsa de Nueva York

Desde el aire

Un ex piloto de helicóptero que sobrevoló por varios años la Ciudad de México aprovechó las fotos que tomó desde las alturas para publicarlas en un sitio-web. Esta capturó uno de los exclusivos desarrollos habitacionales en la zona de Interlomas.

La crudeza del destino y la ignorancia

"Atlas" (William T. Vollman) incluye muchos pasajes de prostitutas y burdeles, sobre todo en sitios como Camboya y Tailandia. El VIH y el sida son elementos importantes en la revision de esos sitios e incluso hay un pasaje francamente aterrador en el que una prostituta tiene relaciones con su amado. Justo cuando el hombre eyacula, ella le pide que le diga que la ama. Él lo hace y a continuación la mujer dice que le cree y que sabe bien que el es el hombre de su vida porque al amarla se había condenado a morir ya que los dos individuos con los que tuvo sexo previamente tienen sida.

Usualmente uno puede creer que por ignorancia las prostitutas asiáticas contraen el virus, pero más que eso, durante "Atlas" parece que ellas tristemente se entregan a su destino y se sacrifican. ¿Qué más podían esperar si son prostitutas y no hay otro medio para vivir? En cambio --paradójicamente-- Vollman también presenta una postal de Los Angeles en la que unas junkies que tienen sexo en condiciones insalubres para poder comprar drogas no se inmutan al decir que el sida sólo les da a los homosexuales y que la heroína no es adictiva. Esto no en Phnom Pehn, sino en Los Angeles.

Camorreros felices

Así festejaron Los Camorreros después de una tocada.

Camorreros

BJ desempolvó algunas de esas viejas fotos de Los Camorreros. Todavía se ve al primer vocalista, quien sólo gracias a su apariencia garantizó más de una groupie por concierto. Esta foto fue tomada justo segundos antes de que varios policías entraran a la mala al lugar. Estuvieron a punto de derribar la puerta de la bogeda a punta de macanazos.

Mets sin Piazza

Prácticamente no recuerdo a los Mets de Nueva York sin Mike Piazza y ahora será difícil reconocerlos sin su emblema de los últimos siete años. Piazza finalizó su época con el equipo neoyorkino y ahora inicia una nueva etapa, ya al final de su carrera en San Diego. Con los Mets a Piazza casi siempre le fue bien (excepto a la defensiva) y el fue fundamental para las pocas temporadas buenas recientes del equipo del Shea. Se le extrañará.