Pageant queen loses crown for ‘eating too many tacos’

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The former Miss San Anontio has been stripped of her crown in preference of a more virtuous beauty.

Domonique Ramirez, a 17-year-old who was crowned Miss Antonio last year, sued the Miss San Antonio organization for stripping her of her crown — and lost. Her offense? Weight gain, tardiness and taking unsanctioned modeling jobs.

Wait, let’s go back to that first thing again.

The pageant’s president, Linda Woods, said Ramirez didn’t live up to her job as beauty queen partly because she gained weight from “eating too many tacos,” according to Reuters.

Part of Ramirez’s duties were to remain the same weight as she was on the day of her coronation: 129 pounds at 5’8″.

Now, the pageant’s First Runner-Up, Ashley Dixon, will be the reigning queen of San Antonio. The perks include a scholarship and the chance to compete in the Miss Texas pageant.

After the judge’s ruling, Woods said “In Miss Dixon we have a talented, mature young woman who will encourage and serve as a positive role model for our youth.”

It turns out weight gain makes someone a poor role model. This sounds all too familiar: A year ago, a New Zealand beauty queen lost her crown for the unforgivable offense of dyeing her hair brown.

But losing the Miss San Antonio crown has some benefits: at least now Ramirez can model at her leisure and eat as many tacos as she wants — which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Categories: General

Disney goes hipster

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All you gotta do is throw some Wayfarers on an animated character these days to start an internet meme. (Take my personal favorite, Hipster Dinosaurs: “This volcano used to have integrity.”)

But now in an infinite circle-of-Ouroboros-type-deal, the ultimate example of mainstream pop-culture — the Disney character — can now express his or her ambivalence toward mainstream pop-culture.

And you know how hipsters love irony.

More: Hell.Yes.Hipster.Disney

Categories: General

Yes, the King’s Speech was filmed on a gay porn set

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So, you’re sitting there watching this year’s Oscar favorite, The King’s Speech, and thinking to yourself: I’m pretty sure this looks familiar.

Right?

That’s because the set used for Lionel Logue’s London office was previously used to depict an entirely different kind of male relationship as the set of the gay porn flick Snookered.

Ok, so it’s not in my DVD collection, but somebody at QueerClick figured it out.

AV Club:

Movieline says it has received confirmation from single-named Snookered director Jonno that he indeed shot the film inside London’s 33 Portland Place—the same room used for The King’s Speech as well as Amy Winehouse’s video for “Rehab” (read more)

Categories: General

Schools use GPS trackers to stop class skipping

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Stay in school, kids. If you don’t, your school will find a way to make sure you do.

The Anaheim Union High School District is considering using GPS tracking devices to clamp down on notorious class-skippers. In a six-week test, 7th- and 8th-grade students with four or more unexcused absences from this school year were given the trackers, OC Weekly reports.

Five times a day, students are instructed to punch in a code that tracks their location: when they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunch, when they leave school and at 8 p.m. Students in the program also receive phone calls every morning to remind them to go to school — because I’m sure most kids skip school because they forgot all about it, right?

School officials insist this system doesn’t liken kids to criminals, but fosters a sense of responsibility in them. The six-week test cost about $18,000 and was funded by a state grant. If its results are favorable, Anaheim schools and others may adopt the program permanently.

Skipping class has always been a problem, but now sites like the Skip Class Calculator (aimed at university students but also useful for high school students) make the practice even more expected.

But GPS tracking hardly seems like a plausible solution. The program is very expensive — not to mention invasive. And it probably won’t take kids long to realize they can give their tracker to a friend who’s at school if they want to skip. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned roll call anyway?

Categories: General

Cat with world’s loudest purr? (Telegraph)

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Smokey, a gray, striped house cat, looks like an average kitty until she purrs, which is so loud that that her owners say it sounds like a lawnmower, hair dryer or a “Boeing 737 coming in to land.”

Literally.

British couple Ruth and Mark Adams say their cat purrs at a noise level of 80 decibels – or 92 decibels up close – which is much louder than the average cat’s purr of 25 decibels, The Telegraph in London reported.

The cat’s sounds – which includes a noise akin to “a dove stuck in her throat” – interferes with TV watching conversations, and has prompted the couple to submit an application for world’s loudest cat purr with the Guinness World Records.

“She even manages to purr while she eats. The only time she is quiet is when she is asleep,” Ruth Adams told the Telegraph.

“When I’m on the phone friends often ask what the loud noise is and they can’t believe it is coming from a cat.”

Exaggeration? There’s some audio on the Telegraph’s story you can click on here.

Categories: General

‘Kiss Controller’ lets you tongue bowl, with a partner

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Kiss Controller from Hye Yeon Nam on Vimeo.

For all of us who have ever wanted to kiss and bowl at the same time, the “Kiss Controller” is here.

It’s as simple as it sounds.

“Kiss Controller is an experimental project that allows users to control a bowling game by moving their tongues while kissing,” wrote inventor Hye Yeon Nam, a doctoral candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Unlike existing game input devices, Kiss Controller seeks to generate the emotional experience of a kinetic act while users play the game rather than control games with their body.”

The technical details may be a bit more off-putting: The “bowler” attaches a magnet to his or her tongue, the partner wears a headset that positions magnetic field sensors in front of his or her mouth, and tongues meet.

“As the user moves her tongue, this creates varying magnetic fields that are used to control games,” Nam wrote.

In bowling: “(T)he person who has the magnet on his/her tongue controls the direction and speed of the bowling ball for 20 seconds. The goals of this game are to guide the ball so that it maintains an average position in the center of the alley and to increase the speed of the ball by moving the tongue faster while kissing.”

But don’t go rushing out to buy a Kiss Controller. As Nam noted: “It has not yet been proposed in the game industry.”

Personally, I can think of better applications than bowling.

Hat tip to endgadget.

Categories: Sports

Justin Bieber’s haircut (with link to photos)

For more photos, click this image to load the TMZ gallery.

How many people can cut off their hair and sell it? Wait, I take that back. I guess anyone can try to sell their locks.

Perhaps the better question is how many people can cut off their hair and there are actually people who care to buy it?

The answer: Justin Bieber.

The teen pop sensation lost his infamous swoop this weekend in favor of spiky ‘do. (How 1994 of the Biebs. Maybe he wanted to honor his birth year?)

And like any teen starlet, JB told the world about his plans to lose his signature tresses with this Tweet:

“Thinking about getting a haircut … hmmmmmm”

A few hours later, he told fans everywhere just what he had done.

“Yeah so it’s true … i got a lil haircut … i like it … and we are giving all the hair cut to CHARITY to auction. Details coming soon.”

So, let’s regroup. A teenager cut his hair (and donated it to charity) and it made news — big news. One of the top Google searches today is about the lopping off of Bieber’s hair and I think I can hear the screams from girls everywhere who are Jonesing for a little Bieber hair to lay across their pillow.

Photos are here.

Categories: Viral

From Egypt to Wisconsin: Solidarity through pizza

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While you probably can’t precisely equate the overthrow of whole regimes in the Mideast to the budget standoff happening at the Wisconsin State Capitol, the two actions have some things in common, not the least of which is a mass occupation of public space.

And when that many people get together, they’re going to need to eat at some point. Apparently, someone in Egypt decided the folks in Madison, Wisc., need pizza.

Politico reports that Ian’s on State Street – part of a regional pizza chain – has received hundreds of donations for free pies for the Wisconsin protesters from all over the world, including Egypt. And yes, donors in the U.S. have chipped in, too.

The store began getting international orders last week and noted it on its Facebook page. That appears to have kicked off a flood of calls from overseas.

“I don’t think we started it,” said Ryan O’Connor, a sophomore at a local technical school who works the register at Ian’s. “We made a post to our Facebook page because of the volume of calls we already had been getting unprompted.”

O’Connor said Ian’s got its first call Thursday when a mother of a University of Wisconsin student called and offered to donate $200 to help feed the people her daughter told her had flooded the Capitol. Since then, the outpouring of money from all over the world has put the pizza-makers into overdrive.

The blackboard behind the counter lists the “countries donating” as “Korea, Finland, Egypt, Denmark, Australia, US, Canada, Germany, China, London, Netherlands, Turkey” and has the abbreviations for all 50 states listed below, with donating states circled. As of Sunday afternoon, 38 states had been marked as contributors.

As of Saturday, Politico says, Ian’s had delivered more than 300 pizzas to protesters and given away 1,057 slices. On Sunday, the shop had to quit answering its phones because it had maxed out its ability to cook pies.

Of course, not everyone agrees with the Wisconsin protesters, who are demanding changes in a bill that would strip collective bargaining rights from public employees. Ian’s has heard from people who want to post dissenting views on its Facebook wall.

Regardless, it’s a fascinating example of just how social media – and international long-distance calls – can shrink the world.

Categories: General