Blogs

I'm listening to the radio at work, and I'm shocked. The 1-800-EastWest mortgage radio commercial now starts with "Ya know, Owen" coming from the woman, Jen.

Where's Jim? What happened to Jim? Did they break up? Did he get fired? Who is this Owen and what are HIS qualifications when it comes to knowledge about mortgages!

I don't like this one bit. I'm very upset.

Where the hell is JIM! Someone please help me!!!!

According to the March 14 edition of The Boston Courant, which I picked up at Jersey Street Liquors, the Rolling Stones will play two shows at Fenway this August. The paper doesn't have a website, so here's the text of the artcle.

Stones Slated for Local Concerts
by Jennifer L. Maiola
Managing Editor

The Boston Red Sox may soon get the satisfaction of bringing The Rolling Stones to Fenway Park for two concerts this August which will kick off the band's world tour.

I've been finding ants swarming around my kitchen for the past few days. Not any sort of harmful kind, but just the annoying tiny black ones. You know, particularly annoying because they do stuff like weave across the floor in a perfect squiggly line, parade around waving a crumb like a head on a stick, and so forth.

So this morning I found about 5000 ants in the cat food dish. One of the cats seems to find them sort of amusing and fun to paw at and the other cat is terrified of them. I emptied out the cat food dish, cleaned it thoroughly, and vacuumed up about 4999 ants (one went squiggling under the stove). Hey, they were alive when they got sucked up the hose, so that means I wasn't responsible for killing them. Well except for the one who marched one by one across my toe who I therefore had to smash. Sorry, Buddha.

Here is the scoop... Do you live in the Boston area? I am looking for submissions for either a busy mom, or a college student just entering the workforce (You could either be one or know one). We will be filming a segment for Channel 7 News (NBC) "The Style File".

We will help you turn your dressing routine from frumpy to foxy! We'll also help you go from drab winter to sunny spring! We will film in your home, in your closet and you will be given a makeover fit for a queen by two Hollywood style divas!

Please give me a couple paragraphs about yourself, or your friend, and tell us why you want to go from frumpy to foxy!

Cross-post from my blog.

The Boston Globe says the Red Sox are looking to buy the Town Taxi garage on Ipswich Street and the McDonalds and WBCN building on Boylston Street.

'We have tried to stay quiet about it," said Janet Marie Smith, the architect of the Red Sox's plans to remake Fenway Park. She and other Red Sox officials said there are no immediate plans for major changes to the properties, though the deals should allow the team to continue to shift offices out of the park to make room for fans. ''We have been looking for anything in the area that might help us with our space problems," she said. ''It surprised us it took three years to find a single property."

KING FM in Seattle (also has a 24-7 streaming station at king.org) is broadcasting music by female composers and/or female recording artists all month in honor of Women's History Month.

Unfortunately, they seem to think "women" is an adjective and keep referring to "music by women composers." I've e-mailed them and I just got a reply saying they'd fix this. Excellent.

A lot of other great things are going on today and throughout the month, both on-line and off. I'll spare myself the effort of googling and pasting, since there's so much going on, but just wanted to mention this.

This morning's Herald has a (300-point) headline reading BEATEN TO DEATH along with a picture of Dontell Jeffers, the little boy who recently died while in foster care.

I didn't get the, uh, opportunity to read the actual story, but I see in 3 other accounts of the story that all that is known now is that the boy died shortly after going into cardiac arrest while in the hospital and that relatives had raised questions of physical abuse after visiting with the child recently. No one's been charged with anything, no cause of death has been determined, and there's no mention of any other findings during the child's hospitalization.

Hi! I know this type of thing is better suited to the boston-online forums, but since they are suspended I thought I'd give it a shot here. Sorry if this is inappropriate for Universal Hub.

So I need to get my hands on some calf thymus, otherwise known as beef sweetbreads. I'm not going to cook it, although I found lots of recipes online. I need it for immunological research. [The thymus is one of the most important organs in the immune system.] Since I need to purify proteins from this stuff, it needs to be really FRESH. Definitely NOT frozen. Best case scenario: straight from the slaughterhouse.

Red Sox are on NESN tonight...

Last nights Fleet Center crowd welcomed back Antoine but chants "NO MEANS NO!" every time Kobe Bryant touches the ball.

Does anyone know of any websites where people post comments/questions relating to boston entertainment. I'm a party planner interested in starting a website/forum where people can go, who are looking to host private parties at Boston area locations/venues. Something besides craigslist.

To quote the Whos to Horton: "We are here we are here we are HERE!"

(Whos? More than one who, not whose. Is that right?)

Thanks Adam, for making West of 495 an official neighborhood. We like to think of ourselves as the Universal Hub Cul-de-Sac.

I got one of those new Dunkin Donuts cards as a gift.
The idea is that you go in, order your [weak] cup of coffee, and avoid having to deal with handing over and receiving any money. You just give 'em your card, they swipe it in the machine, and you leave with your order.

That's the idea their ads leave you with, anyway.

What happens when your card doesn't work? (Somehow it got demagnetized before you ever came into possession of it.)

You go in, order your coffee, hand 'em the card, tell them that the card doesn't work and they have to key in the numbers, and they try to swipe it anyway. Then they call the manager over and have a conversation in some non-English language, after which the employee punches in the numbers on the card, and if they manage to punch in the numbers correctly and remember the manager password (Set to '1234#' in every DD I've been to so far) on the first few tries, you leave with your [weak] cup of coffee having only annoyed the growing queue behind you slightly. If not, then you hand 'em the cash because you feel sorry for the sighing people in back of you, and you leave.

Wow, all this time I've had a 'blog' and didn't even know it.
(I don't live in Dedham anymore but Canton doesn't show up in Neighborhoods)

The newly energized Boston Celtics play the Shaq-less Fakers at home tonight. A win would put them 2 games above .500.

Antoine seems to be the Boston sports media darling du jour, in a city that has seen enough success to cut him some slack.

If you have a Yahoo account, you can go to their main page and download a coupon for a free ice cream, today, March 2, only. It's to celebrate their 10th birthday.

What I learned by doing this, is that there's a Dunkin Donuts-Baskin Robbins combo shop in Harvard off the 111 exit, something I didn't know. Mostly because I stopped going that way when we moved from Boxborough to Leominster 11 or so years ago.

Woo hoo! Free snacks!

(And I was going to pick Religion for an appropriate topic group because we buy stuff at DD religiously...)

Okay, so why is it that if I want to post, there's no neighborhood for those of us who don't live in "Boston", unless we happen to be in Billerica. I mean, no offense to them, but I've been talking about Leominster on the web since 1996. Does that count for nothing?

Also, Leominster is home to the National Plastics Museum, which has to be worth SOMETHING.

Adam old buddy old pal, can we get a "West of 495" or "Worcester County" neighborhood? Pretty please?

"Trash collection is on regular schedule with delays." ~City of Boston homepage

The alarmist snow closures are getting even more ridiculous. Today all of the transportation for a network of programs that provide services for people with disabilities was cancelled. The transportation company hires almost entirely salaried workers who get a paid "snow day" today.

This isn't the case for most of the people who are forced to stay home because of the transportation company's decision to shut down despite the roads being completely passable.

The employees with disabilities mostly do piecework. You know when you buy a package of 6 of something? If you bought it from a small, local company, the 6 items were probably counted out, placed in a bag, sealed, and packed for shipping by people with disabilities.

I just got a flyer thing about a meeting that looked roughly as follows:

TITLE (novelty font #1)

BLURB (novelty font #2)

BLURB (novelty font #3)

DATE AND TIME (novelty font #4)

PEOPLE TO CONTACT (novelty font #5)

Oh, I should also mention that each one of these fonts was a different color. That's not quite accurate actually. The title had each letter in a different color.

UMass Boston is a commuter school. Unfortunately, the UMB community carries an unnecessary chip on its shoulder because of its commuter status and less than pretty campus. And knowing that the professor who inspires you to produce better-than-your-best work would be happy elsewhere only adds to that chip.

UMB is a quality school. Virtually every instructor is a Ph.D. and a professor. Our new Campus Center looks like it belongs at BU or some other private school. It is also one of the most diverse public institutions in the nation. Look at the stats:

•Seventy-five (75%) percent of our population is composed of first-generation college students.

Okay, 700 different weather sources tell me that Leominster is going to get 11-15 inches of snow in the next 24 hours. (See: Weather.com)

I went to Accuweather on my phone (to their wireless site, pda.accuweather.com) and punched in the Zip code for Leominster (01453).

Their report?
Today - Snow early, then more snow late in the day, accumulating a coating to an inch.
Tuesday - Snow with little or no accumulation in the morning.

So am I missing something? And which one do you trust?

From the Worcester Telegram.

Headline: Student aid for higher ed on the decline while costs rise

Gov. Mitt Romney has proposed a small increase in funding for state campuses next year, but no separate increase for financial aid.

Thanks, Buddy! Maybe we'll get lucky and the price of text books and home heating costs will fall to offset the new fee hike!

Full Story

Headline: For a select few, tradition tops gender

The average percentage of women elected to city and town councils and boards of selectmen and aldermen in Massachusetts dropped from 20 percent in 2003 to 17 percent in 2004, said Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass-Boston.

http://www.boston.com/...for_a_select_few_tradition_tops_gender/

From a UMB press release:

“Our lab is very interested in measuring large-scale gene expression in stem cells, either adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells,” said Roderick Jensen, the Alton Brann Distinguished Professor of Physics, Biology, and Mathematics.

Full Story:

http://www.umb.edu/news/2005news/releases/february/stemcell.html