The Smell Wire

www.themelwire.blogspot.com

Costume Party!

Bye Bye (Fire)Birdie!

GM To Cut Pontiac Brand

General Motors Corp. (GM) said Monday it will cut 21,000 hourly jobs and eliminate its Pontiac brand by the end of next year as part of a stepped-up restructuring plan.

The auto maker will also start an exchange offer for $27 billion of its unsecured public notes as the company looks to become viable, saying a successful exchange offer would allow it to stay out of bankruptcy court.

GM, which is surviving on federal loans, is racing to restructure by June 1 under close watch of the Obama administration.

"The objective here is not to just survive but to come up with an operating plan that will allow us to win," Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said Monday.

Potpourri For $100

Pretty soon, "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek may face his toughest contestant yet: an IBM supercomputer.

On Monday, the tech giant plans to announce that it'll be moving one of its Blue Gene machines to Los Angeles to appear on the popular game show, according to a report by the New York Times.

Computers have played, and sometimes beaten, humans at chess, but "Jeopardy!" requires a whole new skill level — the ability to think like a human, or at least understand how a human would think.

"The big goal is to get computers to be able to converse in human terms," one IBM researcher told the Times. "And we're not there yet."

To even the playing field, the computer will receive Trebek's questions — technically answers, according to the "Jeopardy!" format — as text messages, while humans will both read and hear them. But it won't be able to connect to the Internet for a lifeline.

A "Jeopardy!" producer said the computer's human opponents were still to be worked out, but that all-time champ Ken Jennings was definitely in the running.

I Don't Dig On Swine

Twenty new cases of swine flu were confirmed overnight in the United States, bringing the U.S. total to 40, Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said today. All of the cases were mild, and there has still been only one hospitalization, that of an Imperial County woman, he noted.

Hartl also said one case had been confirmed in Spain, marking the first time the swine flu had been seen in Europe. That case was also mild and was observed in a traveler returning from Mexico, he said. He also noted there have been "rumors of cases in other countries," but none of those have been confirmed to be swine flu.

Mexico has said it has so far suffered 103 deaths from influenza, but Hartl noted that only 26 of those have been confirmed as swine flu -- "far, far under the numbers that have been bandied about."

Because of the outbreaks, a meeting of the World Health Organization emergency committee was moved up from Tuesday to today. The committee, now in session, will consider raising the alert level from its current baseline of three to a higher level.

Raising it to Level 4 would mean that the outbreak has been restricted to one geographic area "where a containment effort might be successful with a local, concentrated effort," Hartl said. Raising it to Level 5 would mean that the outbreak has spread across continents and would require a greater effort.

President Obama this morning counseled against panic in the face of the outbreak. He said the growing infection rate is a matter of concern but "not a cause for alarm."

Killer Bea

Beatrice Arthur, the sharp-witted actress best known for her work on “The Golden Girls” and “Maude” died over the weekend of cancer, family spokesperson Dan Watt said, and declined to give further details.

She was 86.

Dear Jonny Ross,

Have fun....have too much fun!

If I didn't suck, I would be there.

Forever Yours,

-FMB-

Out With The Old (and disgusting...)

Singing sensation Susan Boyle -- whose dowdy image contrasted so greatly with her angelic voice that she became an instant Internet celebrity -- has gone in for a makeover.

Boyle, 47, had her graying, frizzy hair dyed chestnut brown and styled in what The Sun tabloid says was a 35-pound ($50) makeover. And instead of the old-fashioned dress she wore on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent," the Scottish singer was photographed wearing a stylish black leather jacket with what looked to be a Burberry scarf.

He Really Nailed It

A shocking X-ray shows how a man died with up to 30 nails fired into his skull by a high-powered nail gun.

Sydney, Australia, homicide squad detectives have released the graphic image as they make a fresh appeal for information about Chen Liu's murder.

The decomposed body of the 27-year-old, also known as Anthony Liu, was found dumped in the Georges River last November, wrapped in a domestic rug. He was bound with electrical wires and an extension cord and the carpet was neatly folded with each end tucked in and then bound with three strips of wire.

Officers with Strike Force Renfree, formed to investigate the murder, have revealed they believe he was shot dead elsewhere and driven to the river in his own blue 2005 Range Rover Sport 4WD.

Detective Inspector Mark Newham said yesterday that post-mortem examination results had showed Liu was shot repeatedly in the head up to 30 times with a high-powered nail gun.

Joshin' Ya

Police said a 23-year-old man is in stable condition after he pretended that he was falling off a bridge over the Minnesota River, then actually fell off the bridge.

Police got a call just before 5 a.m. Sunday from a 21-year-old man who said his friend fell off the Highway 77 bridge and into a marshy area about 30 feet below.

The caller said he was driving north when his friend, who he said had been drinking, told him to pull into the bridge's emergency lane so he could urinate.

The 23-year-old stood eventually climbed to the ledge of the bridge, then looked at his friend and pretended to fall. "He then in fact fell," reads a press release from the Bloomingtin Police Department.

Police from Bloomington and Eagan responded, and the Eagan Fire Department used a chair lift to retrieve the man. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center where was treated.

Something 'Off'

There's just something about this picture that I really don't like.....how about you?

Crazy Harry

Crazy Harry was a Muppet with an explosives fixation, who appeared in The Muppet Show and was performed by Jerry Nelson. He had scruffy hair, an uncombed beard and huge baggy eyes.

Early in season one, he played triangle with the pit band. He usually carried a plunger box which would activate a hidden charge, often to his victim's chagrin. Once he assisted Gonzo in a cannonball-catching act, but perhaps overdid it on the powder, which resulted in absurdly-stretched arms for Gonzo.

In episode #28 he provided the "Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta!" chorus of "Chanson D'amour", happily blowing the stage and performers to smithereens with his little plunger and cackling.

Harry also played solo backup for Jean Stapleton's performance of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", with a collection of plunger boxes providing explosions at the end of every verse of the song.

The Gift...

....of all gifts!

Oh....Donald!

A Brief History of Time

Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is "very ill" and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor.

Hawking, 67, is one of the world's most famous physicists and also a cosmologist, astronomer, and mathematician.

Wheelchair-bound Hawking is perhaps most famous for 'A Brief History of Time' which explored the origins of the universe in layman's terms, is considered a modern classic.

Hawking has Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS), which is usually fatal after three years. Hawking has survived for more than 40 years since his diagnosis.

Controversy? Really??

Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton was crowned Miss USA on Sunday, but the big story to come out of the normally politics-free telecast was Miss California's comments regarding gay marriage.

When asked by judge Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip blogger, whether she believed in gay marriage, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, tells FOXNews.com that he was "saddened" by Prejean's statement.

Today Is A Great Day

A Little Billy...For Your Bob

Two Is Better....

....for blogging from work.

Finger My Blog

Dog Magnet

Police say a Colorado woman wrapped her boyfriend's dog in packing tape and stuck the animal upside down to a refrigerator because he wouldn't get rid of it.

Abby Toll was arrested Tuesday after police say she got into a fight with her boyfriend. She was charged with felony cruelty, drug possession and other counts and is free on $12,500 bond. She has declined to comment.

Toll's 21-year-old boyfriend, Bryan Beck, faces lesser charges including a misdemeanor cruelty count.

Police say Toll, 20, used packing tape to bind the legs, snout and tail of Beck's dog, Rex, a Japanese breed called a Shiba Inu. She told police she stuck the dog to the refrigerator because she was angry Beck wanted to keep it.

Rex was taken to a shelter and will be put up for adoption.

Keepin' That Scholarship!

Many athletes receive scholarships while they sit the bench. Now it looks like a college football player will get one while he sits behind bars.

Glenn Winston, 19, has been "suspended indefinitely" from the Michigan State football team following two misdemeanor assault convictions, but coach Mark Dantonio said the running back will remain on athletic scholarship while he serves a six-month jail sentence in the case, according to the Detroit News.

"By NCAA rules he's on scholarship," Dantonio was quoted as saying.

Winston was due at the Ingham County Jail Friday to start serving his time after pleading guilty last month to assaulting MSU hockey player A.J. Sturges in the fall, the paper reported.

Winston is expected to receive tutoring while in jail, according to the News.

With approval from his coach he could have his suspension lifted and be redshirted for his sophomore season upon completion of his sentence.

Twitter Dee And Twitter Dumb

Ashton Kutcher has beaten CNN.

The 31-year-old actor, best known for "That 70s Show" and for marrying actress Demi Moore, 15 years his senior, became the first Twitter user — http://twitter.com/aplusk — to garner more than one million "followers" late Thursday evening.

For the past few days, he'd been locked in a race with CNN's breaking news feed — http://twitter.com/cnnbrk — to become the first "Twitter millionaire."

But just before midnight Thursday — or the wee hours of Friday morning on the East Coast — Kutcher's account edged over the line as he, Moore and some friends broadcast a Web stream of themselves watching the Twitter numbers.

Kutcher, Moore and friends erupted in cheers as his account topped the mark, and he popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Kutcher earlier said he'd be donating 10,000 mosquito nets to the medical charity Malaria No More if he won. Just after his victory, he flashed a check made out to the charity for $100,000.

The video-game publisher Electronic Arts says the millionth follower, whoever he or she is, will become a character in the next version of "The Sims," as well as a copy of every game it publishes in 2009.

CNN on Tuesday declared it would match Kutcher's mosquito-net donation, win or lose.

Tree Lung

A Russian man who ingested a tiny seed turns out to have been carrying an inch-long fir seedling in his lung.

Artyom Sidorkin, 28, went to a hospital in his hometown in central Russia last week complaining of chest pain.Doctors x-rayed his chest and feared the worst when they spotted what they thought was a tumor.

Sidorkin was admitted to a cancer center but when the surgeon performed a biopsy, a few tender green needles poked out. Doctors think Sidorkin inhaled the seed and it somehow took root. They're preserving the surrounding lung tissue for further study.

Rocky Mountain High

Twins....Or Not

Mom Janet, 50, has spent almost $15,000 on plastic surgery in an attempt to look identical to her 28-year-old daughter.

"Seeing how attractive Jane is made me want to get my looks back," Janet told the Mail. "Now instead of mum and daughter we look more like twins. I had good genes and good skin, but I needed a helping hand to make me feel better about myself."

Last September she flew to Croatia to have plastic surgery on her nose and eyes. She also got breast implants and had her lips plumped.

After she added blonde hair extensions she said men would mistake her and Jane for sisters.

"People ask if I mind that she's transformed herself into me, but I couldn't be more proud," Jane told the Mail. "I'm the one who helps her with her hair and clothes, so it's down to me, too."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1170348/The-50-year-old-mother-spent-10-000-surgery-look-like-daughter.html

Ain't Madden At 'Cha

Say Good-bye to the 'Horse Trailer' and 'Turducken'...

John Madden, the burly former coach who has been one of pro football's most popular broadcast analysts for three decades, is calling it quits.

Madden worked for the past three seasons on NBC's Sunday night NFL game. His last telecast was the Super Bowl between Arizona and Pittsburgh.

"It's time," Madden said. "I'm 73 years old. My 50th wedding anniversary is this fall. I have two great sons and their families and their five grandchildren are at an age now when they know when I'm home and, more importantly, when I'm not."

Yankee Pride

A baseball fan is suing the NYPD for kicking him out of the old Yankee Stadium last summer because he tried to use the restroom during the playing of "God Bless America," lawyers said.

Bradford Campeau-Laurion, 30, a lifelong baseball fan, claimed he was the victim of religious and political discrimination on Aug. 26, 2008 when police officers booted him from the ballpark.

"New York's finest have no business arresting someone for trying to go to the bathroom at a politically incorrect moment," Lieberman said. "That is an abuse of authority and a violation of the constitutional principles that our country is founded on."

Besides the cops, the lawsuit names the Yankee Partnership, for a policy that restricts fan movement during the playing of "God Bless America."

Campeau-Laurion said his clash with cops began when he decided to use the bathroom at the start of the seventh-inning stretch. He got up and made his way down the aisle as the song began playing.

A police officer blocked his path and told him he couldn't leave during the song, the lawsuit alleges.Campeau-Laurion explained that he needed to use the restroom and was not concerned about "God Bless America." Then he attempted to walk past the officer.

Before Campeau-Laurion could take a step, the police officer grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back, the lawsuit claimed. A second officer twisted Campeau-Laurion's left arm behind his back, and the two officers marched him down several ramps to the stadium's exit with his arms pinned behind his back.

The encounter ended with one of the officers telling Campeau-Laurion to leave the country if he didn't like it.

The Truth Be Told

R.I.P. Harry.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/gameon/2009/04/harry-kalas-dies.html

Do The Bartman

As if the rain and cold weather threatening the Chicago Cubs' home opener against the Colorado Rockies weren't enough, there's another goat involved — a dead one this time.

Chicago police say they found the severed head of a goat outside Wrigley Field early Monday morning, about 12 hours before the scheduled game.

Officers said they were treating the incident as a prank, since the same thing happened last year.

Goat and sheep's heads are available at a number of ethnic butcher shops in Chicago.

The goats' heads are presumably a reference to the alleged "goat curse" placed on the Cubs in 1945 by tavern owner William Sianis after authorities would not allow him to bring his pet goat into Wrigley Field for a World Series game.

Fingered Into A Corner

Chris Kelly In Space

A Crown of Thorns

NGC 7049 sits in the southern constellation Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies, which provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within.

The halo, a ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy, is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049's.

It's Official...

There's no more reasons to watch Dancing With The Stars.

"I wasn't planning to come back this season because I wanted to focus on my music," Hough told us backstage after taking out the Top New Artist category. "But I went back and it’s been so much fun to dance with my good friend who happens to be my boyfriend." (She then motioned to her personal and professional partner, Chuck Wicks, who was patiently waiting to congratulate his leading lady.)

So are Hough's "Dancing" days done with for good now?

"I will be taking next season off," she confirmed, adding that she'll be busy touring and bringing out the "real" Julianne Hough.

Julianne Hough stole the Academy of Country Music Awards show in Sin City on Sunday night by showing off her flawless figure in a form-fitting gold gown by Zuhair Murad, but the super-svelte star insisted that she has no restrictions when it comes to diet.

So what is the real recipe behind the ballroom babe’s itty bitty body?

"Eat until you’re just full and keep working out," Hough responded.

Putting The Pot In Potter

A teenage star of the Harry Potter films has been arrested after cops found a cannabis farm worth more than $2,900 in his bedroom.

Drug squad officers swooped on 19-year-old Jamie Waylett — famed as bullying Hogwarts School pupil Vincent Crabbe in the wizard movies — after a tip-off. Police first stopped him in an Audi car and discovered eight bags of pot inside the vehicle.
Waylett and a pal in the vehicle, also 19, were held at the scene on suspicion of possession.

Cops then raided the home the actor shares with his mom Theresa, two brothers and a sister — and seized ten mature cannabis plants valued at about $2,900.

The plants were growing under powerful hydroponic lights beside the actor’s DJ decks and a PlayStation.

The Hand Of God?

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows.

So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.

And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second — as pulsars do — spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

A Monkey Named Ringo

A New Show!

"Cupid" is set in New York, the capital of the United States of Cynicism, and so our hero is right in the midst of the enemy. Calling himself Trevor Pierce, and renting a room upstairs from a nightclub, he needs to come up with 100 successful love matches before he can return to his Mt. Olympus home.

Tuesdays on ABC.

Done.

'Better Off Ted' lacks some key elements.....comedy being one of them.

I can't help but think that the show was actually made for George Clooney, Dave Chapelle and Tony Shalhoub....you can see the eerie resemblance here.

"Bailout"

The Domino's pizza chain has given away nearly 11,000 free pizzas because of a never-used promotion that a Web customer stumbled upon. Tim McIntyre, spokesman for Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino's, said Wednesday that the company had prepared an Internet coupon for an ad campaign that was considered in December but never activated.

McIntyre said somebody discovered that the code word "bailout" was good for a free medium pizza ordered online. The information quickly spread Monday night on the Web, until the code was deactivated Tuesday morning.

The owner of 14 Domino's locations in the Cincinnati area says his stores gave away more than 600 pies. Owner John Glass told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Domino's promised to reimburse him for the pizzas.

Goodbye To An Old Friend (That We All Grew Tired Of Years Ago...)

E.R. bites the dust tonight....

Sometimes, a series manages to wrap up in a satisfying, sensible manner, providing a sense of elegant closure to a well-told tale.

"MASH" did it by ending the Korean War and saying good-bye to each cast member individually.

"Cheers" did it by bringing Diane back for the last few episodes so she and Sam could find some closure to their relationship.

And then, there are finales like these ten, which did everything wrong:

http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,6932,00.html

It's 3am - I Must Be Lonely

Someone has thrown a baby's car seat through the rear window of octuplet mother Nadya Suleman's minivan.

Police in La Habra, Calif., say the octuplets' nannies saw the seat lodged in the shattered window of the family's gray 2005 Toyota Sienna when they arrived to work Wednesday morning at Suleman's home.

Lt. Fred Wiste says a night nanny heard a noise, looked out a window and saw a white cargo van speeding away around 3 a.m, but did not call police or go outside to investigate.

The Unemployment Olympics

Who hasn't secretly wished he could pin the blame on his boss? Or slam office equipment against the pavement? Dozens of unemployed people got the chance to do exactly that during the tongue-in-cheek Unemployment Olympics on Tuesday. In a twist on the classic game Pin the Tail on the Donkey, participants pulled a hat over their eyes and spun around before using a pushpin to attempt to Pin the Blame on the Boss.

Those who missed the target sometimes hit some of the other options scrawled on the colorful sign: The War, ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages), Consumer Spending, The FED and The Economy.

The Manhattan event, organized by a laid-off computer programmer, was decidedly low-tech, with most games arranged with the help of cardboard, children's paint and chalk.

Competitors also played a game of Office-Phone Skee-Ball, hurling a black phone toward chalk goal marks on the pavement. A group of schoolchildren from nearby cheered them on.

The gaiety of the event was enough to make Maria Tapia smile, a welcome relief from the anxiety that accompanied her layoff in January from a job as a finance executive's personal assistant.

The organizer, Nick Goddard, said that sort of reversal was pretty much his aim: "Just to get unemployed people psyched that they're unemployed," he said.

Mr. Don Key

If you get a message to call a "Mr. Don Key" on Wednesday, the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines is one step ahead of you. The zoo, in an effort to stop the numerous prank calls it typically gets on April Fools' Day, has set up four hotlines for pranksters looking to dupe others. Numbers have been set up for such April Fools standbys as "Mr. Albert Ross," "Mr. C. Lyon," "Ms. Anna Conda," and the aforementioned "Mr. Don Key."

Each number has a prerecorded message letting callers know they'd been fooled.

Marketing director Ryan Bickel says the lines are a proactive attempt to stop the zoo's switchboard from getting flooded with prank calls without dampening the mood of the day.

No Wygle Room

Authorities in Ohio say a man has been charged with drunken driving after crashing his motorized bar stool. Police in Newark, 30 miles east of Columbus, say when they responded to a report of a crash with injuries on March 4, they found a man who had wrecked a bar stool powered by a deconstructed lawn mower.

Twenty-eight-year Kile Wygle was hospitalized for minor injuries. Police say he was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated after he told an officer at the hospital that he had consumed 15 beers. Wygle told police his motorized bar stool can go up to 38 mph.

Wygle has pleaded not guilty and has requested a jury trial.