"Outdated machinery, gadgets and tools are also a common find. 'People who are keeping eight-tracks really have to get with the times,' List said.

Bet she says that about vinyl, too.

" 'She was knocked out of her shoes,' said Detective Mark R. Stambach of the Homicide Bureau. 'Beaten, and knocked out of her wig.' ... 'If he would've asked for my purse, I would've given it to him,' she said. 'All I had in there was my Bible and a little money for collection, but I would've given it to him. He didn't say a word.' "

Who could argue with that?

"WTC is a dedicated institution that offers training programs such as Restroom Design Course, Restroom Specialist Training Course and Ecological Sanitation Course.

"The Restroom Specialist Training Course is intended to redesign the restroom cleaner's tasks and bring it to a new professional level. The Ecological Sanitation Course is the first of many that will train much needed sanitation human resource to help alleviate the 2.6 billion people worldwide that do not have a toilet. Lastly, the Restroom Design will teach the finer points of designing a public restroom for those responsible."

Not ready to enroll in the World Toilet College? Be of good cheer. You can always attend September's World Toilet Expo in Moscow or the second World Toilet Expo & Forum in Bangkok between November 16 and 18.

The "Happy Toilet, Healthy Life"-themed event is practically guaranteed to offer "a stimulating platform for networking, sharing of ideas, and sourcing solutions and innovations for the improvement of toilets and hygiene standards." Don't miss the technical tour of Bangkok's toilet hotspots.

"Jameson's body was found, one arm outstretched, just inside the door of his trailer in Peaceful Acres Mobile Home Park.

"On the ground near his body was a litter of empty crushed and blackened beer cans.

" 'He fell asleep on the sofa and woke up a little too late," Whitten said."

For the record, Bill Jameson's final word appears to have been goddamn. Which seems remarkably restrained under the circumstances. So much for Peaceful Acres.

That last item isn't such a big deal. But it is amusing that one soccer player's lame attempt to score with a Swedish photographer was the top headline of a Swedish paper this morning (thanks for the English translation, DN). It seems that a player from Paraguay was smitten with a female photographer for Dagens Nyheter (the Daily News). She is part of a reporting team that briefly interviewed some team members and then covered a game between Denmark and Paraguay.

According to today's paper, FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cup, employs "team liaison officers" to help national teams with various tasks, including translating media interviews. After the Denmark-Paraguay match, Paraguay's liaison officer, Manuel Hoffmann, reportedly called the DN photographer at 1 am to say a soccer player wanted to meet her immediately "to get to know her a little better" (translation is mine).

This strikingly original line failed to work any magic for the player involved (although DN managed to squeeze out a fair number of column inches about it). The photographer went back to sleep but wondered the next day (along with her fellow reporter and at least one editor) why the hell an official FIFA employee would help a soccer player chase women. The liaison officer refused to comment on the record but supposedly told one reporter that it was hard to say no to a player when a whole gang of guys were standing around. (Maybe it seemed easier to dial than face a beating with a cleated shoe.)

In the Swedish article DN helpfully points out that players are supposed to behave "for the good of the game" and that FIFA's Article 7 bans gender discrimination (although it's unclear to me how this qualifies as gender discrimination).

It also mentions that two Chilean players got shipped home after a training match against Ireland because women visited their rooms after the match. Guess the Paraguayan player is damn lucky the photographer turned him down instead of going to his room with a camera and a tape recorder.

"Rats forced to swim in chilled water with no way to escape will normally become hopeless and float motionlessly. But when treated with prescription antidepressants, rats remain active longer, searching for an escape."

Apparently the poor rats who got high levels of Omega-3 oil in their diets also "stayed active and focused on escape." If I understand the research, that means we should be scarfing down copious amounts of salmon, herring and walnuts just in case we fall overboard during a cruise in icy waters.

That is the point, right?

You must be asking yourself, what would Older Americans Month be without a theme? Greatly diminished, that's obvious. 1993's late and lame observation had no theme at all. But this year, I'm happy to report, we celebrate "Choices for Independence" and only cynical wisecrackers would read too much into the press release's loving description of The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, Medicare Part D.

Catchy motifs from the past include "Aging: An Experience for a Lifetime" and "Aging: A Lifetime Opportunity," so maybe the theme-building gig finally got outsourced. I can't predict future themes but given how few people have big bankrolls for retirement, I can think of a few themes that might resonate, including "Aging: Makes Dealth Look Good" and "Cat Food: Tastier Than It Looks."

"The Reaper knows there'll be a BIG party when it launches. And the Reaper knows that the cover will be plastered in the NY Post and other places. They will be diving headfirst into a shaky category that is experiencing its bumps -- even Forbes has quietly put itself up for an investor's stake.

"The Reaper knows that there'll be a big ad campaign to launch it and there'll be millions spent to promote the first two issues. The Reaper knows there'll be plenty of advertising in the first two or three issues from marketers who just want to ride the initial buzz wagon.

..."The Reaper knows that after the bloom is off the rose, people are going to wonder if another flashy business magazine is necessary. Will their target readers actually buy it from the newsstand once it hits issue three or four... or will the love affair die, like it did with Cargo?"

Magazine Death Pool is a good reminder that technology companies aren't the only ventures that go belly up with alarming frequency. My injured arms prevented me from clicking through the whole damn photo gallery but I didn't see mention of the last two mags I wrote for, Absolute New York (which won a photo award recently) and CMO, which went belly up within a few months of each other. (The editors at both magazines were a joy to work for and I miss them all. Sniff. CMO does live on as a website and who knows, it may return.) Other late, lamented mags were there, including FamilyPC, Yahoo Internet Life, the Industry Standard and Upside.

And now I understand why the bookstores I visited in New York last month were out of Budget Living. Oops!

I'm pretty sure that Axel Strom, a Swedish ham radio enthusiast, is either long gone or packed off to an old folks’ home. It's the best explanation for the sale of this engraved, two-color certificate, which was signed by the communications manager for the American Radio Relay League, George Hart, on October 1, 1968 in Newington, Connecticut. The purchase cost 25 crowns, about $3.50, money well spent for a thrilling souvenir of the days before Skype and before the Internet, when it was no small accomplishment to establish two-way non-telephone communication with radio fans in at least 100 different countries.

Even if Axel could know about my purchase, I doubt it would cheer him. It's bound to dismay my husband, once he notices, and my daughter, who will end up having to get rid of it eventually (along with everything else I own). But it cheers me up, for some odd reason. Axel may be gone but visible proof of his passion for amateur radio lives on. Along with the ARRL.

After several days of bed rest and effective if boring drugs, I'm back, temporarily at least, at the computer armed with three things: a headset, a voice-recognition program and a substitute-swear-word regimen created by my daughter (my pain-provoked outbursts didn't impress her much). I'm allowed to say ship, kit or cheddar but shit is officially off-limits. As it should be, since it's not included in the vocabulary of my program. (I'm going to try to teach it, but don't tell her.)

Anyway, late last night I stumbled upon the dark spawn of Jeff Bezos' community-building tactics: disturbing Amazon reviewers. These are reviewers who appear to be twisted, cranky or worse. I know tons of people have spent practically their entire lives analyzing Amazon and its citizen reviewers but not me. So I was unprepared for the amount of raw weirdness masquerading as chirpy reviews.

Today's featured reviewer uses her real name on Amazon, but it would be mean to include it here. Read the excerpts below and then judge for yourself: Is Reviewer X scary, sad or refreshingly feisty?

From review of Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science by M.G. Lord:

"This little book tells all about the unlikely beginnings of the JPL, going from science fiction to science fact. My son is a patsy for NASA and takes large groups of young people on tours at this Lab and they stay for days on end. He too will feel what it is to die young when they think he knows too much.

"Like Ms. Lord's grandfather whose door would not open, but two others escaped, before the train demolished the car and dragged him a long way down the track. Her father was only 46 when he died but he looks like an old man. That's what leaks from nuclear and atomic production will do for you. Maybe Jeff will last one more year. He's already having false heart attack symptoms."

Poor Jeff. His life can't be easy. From a review of An Unfinished Marriage by Joan Anderson:

"She feels that 'true learning comes from our own impulses' -- please! When will this person grow up? This book is her sequel. 'Every beginning is always a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.' If her marriage was so bad that she had to go to sea for a year, I wonder what Robin did while she was gone. He'd be a fool to languish in his new job, wondering where he had gone wrong; could be she was the person responsible for all the mess. She was like a peregrine falcon who scavenges off others or perhaps a green-winged teal, called a wigeon. She was not a normal woman, not forgiving and understanding. A man goes where his job is. Christine refused to follow Jeff to his job until she got pregnant. Joan was too old for that ploy."

From a review of the audio CD of High Plains Tango: A Novel by Robert James Waller:

"The Indian Flute Player, like son Jeff, charms the desert animals around the ceremonial fires. Carlisle fights city hall (if there be such in the western small towns) and this one is forever changed by one man. There is a triangle with a waitress in addition to the woman he calls a witch, which makes it decidely uneven. Carlisle, after all, is college educated, but like all men like to indulge in the lower-class women on occasion."

Last but not least from a review of Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss:

"My pet peeve is the noisy popcorn eater at the movie theaters. Since it would be counterproductive to complain to the manager, as the theaters get big bucks for those supersize containers of popcorn, I've had to just get up and leave. No one can enjoy a movie when the person sitting behind him continues to chomp on their popcorn without regard to the other moviegoers after a certain time. If I have a small popcorn which I can't consume during the loud previews, I save the rest to eat later in private. Not many people would be that thoughtful; they paid for it and they will eat it as they please. Manners has nothing to do with it -- it is their right."

Gentle reviewer, I beg you: just once, finish your popcorn. It might help.

Blithely ignore fact that previous efforts to cheer her up about Swedish winter ended in near disaster. In bold, evasive maneuver, pick up morning paper just before she reaches it and read aloud from article on weather. Shield page so wife cannot read potentially alarming headline: “March May Be Coldest Since 1942.”

Point out, helpfully, that there has been only 78 days of snow and ice on the ground in Stockholm this year, nothing like the record 149 days of snow and ice during the winter of 1969. Notice wife wincing. This, add quickly, means snow started falling much, much earlier in 1969, not that there is potentially eight more weeks of ice and snow destined for Stockholm this year.

Point out, helpfully, that the average temperature this month has been a piddling -6.4° Celsius, nowhere near the record-setting -9.6°C average of the especially chilly winter of 1942. Skip over parts of article that mention long underwear, cold front over the weekend, and effect of ice layer on overall temperatures. (No point in reminding wife that ice build-up at back entrance of apartment building makes it impossible to fully open building door.)

Put on thick parka over warm clothes and kiss distracted wife goodbye. As you leave apartment, notice wife gazing out the window. She has spotted seagulls on the roof of the building across the courtyard. They remind her of the seagulls in San Francisco and the East Bay. The birds have been missing for months, and now they're back.

Your wife smiles.

You can tell that the article was written outside of the United States, because the answer to the second question would be self evident: Why yes, I would like to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else. The United States is a hotbed of private little cliques, it’s blanketed with country clubs and other private organizations that are all about feeling superior whatever more noble objective their rules and regulations proclaim.

But such is not the Swedish way. Swedes may discriminate against people born in other countries or who bear foreign-sounding names but they do not, and cannot, think of themselves as any better than anyone else. At least, not publicly. That all Swedes are equal, or are supposed to be, is deeply embedded in this culture. That's fine by me. That's one of the many things I like about this country. But I can't be shocked, or scandalized, or even especially horrified by the discovery that a composer and writer named Alexander Bard has maintained a private listserv called the Elite list for the past 15 years that supposedly devotes itself to sex-and-drugs gossip and welcomes new members with an e-mail that claims “the lowest common denominator for the members of the Elite list is their physical and mental perfection, … self-confidence, and interest in leading electronic discussions with other beautiful and interesting people with a large and healthy self-confidence.”

(Are we surprised that the guy who launched a list celebrating beautiful people is bald? Maybe Elite was meant to be a confidence-booster.)

Can wonders how well-known journalists can participate in an e-mail list with people they may cover as part of their work, a perfectly reasonable question. Since this story was published on Wednesday, one journalist has lost a job over her membership and Can got a nasty, nasty anonymous SMS threatening to make his life hell forever (I'm thinking that Bard guy and/or his minions must have no sense of humor whatsoever.) Meanwhile, most of the actual Swedish cultural and business elite--the bosses anyway--have yawned collectively and claimed a private e-mail list is not exactly a threat to democracy.

No, the electronic threat to democracy is not the Elite list. According to some, that dubious honor belongs to the anonymous mud-slinging e-mails trashing the head of Sweden's Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt. It doesn't really matter what the messages claim, except that they claim he's doing something illegal and were sent to journalists, among others.

Reinfeldt has told reporters the e-mail campaign is an attempt to influence national elections. Turns out he's right. The party in power, the Social Democrats, ‘fessed up that an unnamed official is behind the campaign, which is against party rules, and a really bad thing, yadda yadda yadda. The Local website is dubbing it "Sweden's Watergate." According to Dagens Nyheter, this is the first time electronic mud-slinging has surfaced in a Swedish political campaign.

Bet it won’t be the last. So-called whisper campaigns have become a well-entrenched, if disturbing, part of political campaigns the world over. Today's lesson: You can run but you can't hide. The least endearing aspects of human nature will find you wherever you go.

(Yup, I'm on an extended cliché tear. Holler if I 've missed any.)

" 'We find or create truly unique pieces. So whether it's a concert T-shirt, cowboy boots, or a dog collar, each item is really a reflection of that individual or pet wearing that treasure," says Fauser. 'Our clients are people who want the exclusive, one-of-a-kind items that we find in vintage wear. And they certainly don't want anything less for their pet.'

"Fauser and Rockin' Rodeo co-owner Mary Ossanna would know: they've puppy loves of their own-Coco, Lucy, and Prada-who keep casually outfitted in custom collars made of antique leather. Like the finely aged leather belts, boots, and bags offered to Rockin' Rodeo's two-legged customers, the dog collars and leashes (priced between $80-450) can be further personalized with antique studding."

You can read more but doesn't the idea of personalized vintage collars with antique studding pretty much tell you everything you need to know about Los Angeles, pet owners, the innate lust for stuff humans are cursed with, plus late-stage capitalism in the United States?

"Once again, LG Mobile Phones is at the forefront of innovation in marketing efforts and initiatives. In particular, LG has entered two realms of marketing opportunity previously left untapped by mobile phone manufacturers.

"By aligning with superstar music producer Jermaine Dupri and Grammy nominated recording artist Mariah Carey, and developing 'LG Presents the Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri Post Grammy Celebration,' LG phones is intertwined with the entertainment industry on a level never before seen, with both performers and entertainment media.

"With their sponsorship of Cirque de Soleil's 'Delirium' tour, LG will have an intimate presence with the upwardly mobile, young professional audience that Cirque de Soleil performances tend to attract. These marketing initiatives have to potential to greatly expand LG's presence in key (and hard to reach) celebrity, young male and female demographics.

" 'LG Presents the Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri Post Grammy Celebration' was the hottest post-Grammy event in Hollywood. This exclusive event was attended by high-profile entertainers including Britney Spears, Anthony Keidis, Mischa Barton, Cedric the Entertainer, Carmen Electra and many more.

"All of these celebrities received their invitation on a video message featuring Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri, which was pre-loaded on a 'V' and sent to each individual. This opportunity offered LG the chance to supply product to the entertainment industry's most key influencers, with custom phones having been gifted to the two celebrity hosts (hi-res images of these one-of-a-kind 'V's by LG and the phone invitation are available upon request) in addition to the unique invitation.

"Another unique partnership that LG has forged during this process is with Red Engine Jeans, who have created a very tasteful co-branded jean that was included in the celebrity gift bags (images available.) Furthermore, LG's presence at this event--along with their entertainment devices like the 'V'--will give them exposure from entertainment media outlets that traditionally do not cover consumer products.

"Cirque de Soleil has long been one of the most surreal and mythical theater experiences available to audiences in North America. By signing on as one of three title sponsors, LG Mobile Phones will have the opportunity to generate greater brand awareness with the aspiring professional adults and sophisticated, affluent audience that attend Cirque performances. This 64 market tour allows LG to promote it's brand in cities and regions that are largely considered afterthoughts by mass marketing campaigns, essentially taking the form of a high-profile grassroots initiative."

Starting with the stool and moving clockwise, the designers are Mari Tosmin, Aap Piho, Ville Lausmäe, and Mari Rass.

I spoke to Kerli Valk, a third-year student, and demanded to know how the hell first-year students could crank out this kind of stuff in their first year. Valk seemed a bit bemused by my question and explained that the students spent their first semester working on a single project and the result was on display.

She also mentioned that there were 15 applicants for every opening in the four-year design program, which has a total of 40 students. So I'm guessing the people accepted into the program were pretty darn talented and experienced even before they set foot on school property.

The chair on the left is by Ketsia Suurväli, the chair on the right is by Irene Roos, and the circular wooden stool or sculpture (or toy--it was very popular with kids, Valk said) in the foreground is by Kertu Kaldaru.

The Stockholm Furniture Fair was the first time design students from the Estonian Academy of Arts has exhibited work outside of their country. I don't imagine it will be the last. I'll be honest--until now, I've never had the slightest desire to visit Estonia. But the work of these students makes me want to dash over immediately and see what else I've missed all these years.

I promised you a pic of the Save Our Souls design duo I blogged about recently. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson are standing against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. My apologies, SOS, for not making this pic smaller but I really wanted to show off your design. After all, who could resist this deceptively demure pattern of pink revolvers?