Don't Be Nervous...

Jersey Pride

Bail is set at $25,000 for a substitute teacher accused of being drunk in class in Manalapan.

School officials say fourth-grade students at Pine Brook Elementary School knew something was wrong when their substitute fell out of her chair, had trouble getting up and held her coffee mug tightly.

Students alerted the principal, who sent Mary Kaminski to the hospital Wednesday.

The 54-year-old is charged with possessing an alcoholic beverage on school property and child endangerment. Officials say the alcohol was in the mug.

Manalapan-Englishtown Regional schools Superintendent John Marciante Jr. tells the Asbury Park Press Kaminski recently had retired from another school district in New Jersey.

Just In Time For The Holiday!

"Now I'll Be Famous..."

Asshole.

"When he first came to live with us, he was in the fetal position and chewed his fingernails all the time," she said. But she said she thought he was improving, as he had gotten a job, a haircut and a girlfriend.

However, she said Hawkins and his girlfriend had broken up in the last couple of weeks, and he had taken it hard. Then he got fired from McDonald's on Wednesday.

But I thought you already were famous????

Shaun White???

or...

The Hanson Brothers???

Michelle Bruce.....Or Michael?

A transgender city council member lost a re-election bid in a runoff Tuesday after a lawsuit that claimed she tried to fool voters by running as a woman.

Michelle Bruce said that even though a judge dismissed the lawsuit the day before the vote, the suit served its intended purpose.

Bruce, 46, landed one of Riverdale's four council seats in 2003 after running unopposed. She was believed to be the state's first transgender politician. She has declined to say if she had surgery to change her gender.

Bruce captured 312 votes in the Nov. 6 election, not enough to avoid a runoff against Wayne Hall, who earned 202 votes. Third-place finisher Georgia Fuller, who collected 171 votes, filed a lawsuit.

The complaint, identifying Bruce as "Michael Bruce," claimed she misled voters by identifying herself as a female and asked a judge to rule the vote results invalid and order another general election.

Fuller's attorney, Mike King, said at the time the lawsuit was filed that the female name gave Bruce an "unfair advantage" because the town's voters tend to vote for females — particularly incumbents. King could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Dead In Bed

On December 4, 2007, Pimp C was found dead at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, California, after Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to a 911 call. They arrived to his sixth floor hotel room to find him dead in bed. This was three days after he performed with Too $hort at the House of Blues in Los Angeles.

R.I.P., Pimp C.

Our Boy Moose - Makin' The Rounds...

I Implore You...

God Zammit!!!

Thieves stole 17.6 tons of ham and bacon from a warehouse and left behind a message busting the owners' chops, police said Monday.

"Thanks," the crooks daubed on a wall of the Zammit Ham and Bacon curers warehouse in suburban Sydney. "Merry Christmas."

Police said the robbery occurred some time between late afternoon Saturday and dawn Sunday.

Owner Anthony Zammit said that when he arrived for work Monday he found a hole in a wall of the building where the thieves appeared to have entered. The stolen meat was worth up to $88,000, he said.

Zammit said he was offering a $4,420 reward for anyone who helped to recover the meat, and that his company would work overtime to make sure all its Christmas orders were filled.

Chimp Off The Old Block

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees, young chimpanzees at the age of 5 , have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

What's going on here? Even with six months of training, three students failed to catch up to the three young chimps, Matsuzawa said in an e-mail.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.
The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age.