Scanner : new years eve

Caption This: Bill and Hillary Ring in the New Year

Emily Farris — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:51:00 GMT

While You Were Sleeping: Hugh Jackman and Cleopatra

Brian Fairbanks — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:08:00 GMT

If you're going to the inaugural, here's the schedule of public events.

Perhaps young men will soon benefit from the genital wart vaccine.

Hopefully, you avoided the Kathy Griffin train wreck on New Year's Eve... although, if you did, you missed this unforgettable insult:

The year in LOLCats.

The appointment of Roland Burris could create such a legal spectacle and clusterfuck that Democrats will have no choice but to stand down on the issue.

Heart attacks are down in Colorado, thanks to a recent smoking ban. On the downside, New Year's Eve in Aspen was ruined when a series of homemade bombs had to be detonated.

Heard about the four guys who gang raped a lesbian? Thankfully, they've been caught. (Here's hoping they get an eye-for-an-eye in prison.)

The Girl With the One Track Mind, the world's most famous sex blogger, celebrated the five-year anniversary of her site.

Hugh Jackman appears to be dropping out of the bizarre Catherine Zeta-Jones-led Cleopatra movie.

And Taylor Swift, whose album has been #1 for three weeks, passed the 2 million mark after seven weeks of sales.

Dumbest Person Ever? Pregnant Woman Gives Birth on Rollercoaster

Three Men Jump 12-Year-Old Girl, Beat Her Up, Call Her A Hooker... Then Arrest Her

Scanner Highs and Lows: An Orgy of Holiday Weirdness

Jack Kerouac's New Year's Resolutions

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Jack Kerouac is dead, so obviously these are what we call "vintage" rules to live by. (In fact, this coming year will mark the 40th Anniversary of the Beat Generation writer's death, which was due to cirrhosis of the liver.)

And while these chunks of wisdom, taken from his Belief and Technique in Modern Prose (or, at least, the style of rapid-fire modern prose he invented and brought down with him), are geared toward writers, they are words to live by in 2009-- so says us:

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

True, we don't understand half of what he says, but everyone can take a line or two and run with it. The man who once wrote "I want to marry my novels and have short stories for children" would have turned 86 this past year.

Via Wikipedia.

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New Year's Celebrations Lacking Balls

What Do Cubans Really Think of Cuba?

See You Next Year, Suckers!

Emily Farris — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:14:00 GMT

Tomorrow I, Scanner Emily, will take advantage of my ~~God~~ Rufus-given day off—well, my two Rufus-given days off—to drink too much and then recover from drinking too much (which may involve drinking too much again). However, there's no need to panic; as I've mentioned before, Scanner Brian needs to blog at least every other day to survive, so you'll be spending tomorrow with him. But when that lovemaking is all said and done, what will you do?

Do you plan to pay a ridiculous cover at some scene-y bar with the high hopes of having crazy New Year's bathroom sex? Or will you, like me, refuse to even step out the front door? Considering that The Ghost of New Years' Past has taken me on so many exciting adventures*, I'm happy to cozy up with a few close friends and more than a few bottles of bubbly. Perhaps it will still end in crazy bathroom sex. Wouldn't you want to have sex in this bathroom?

See you next year... when I'll hopefully tell you all about how the Kahlua ended up in the clawfoot tub.

*2001: On I-70 leaving the crappiest New Year's party ever
2002: Hugging a four-pack of Charmin on the D train, crying
2004: Getting punched in the vagina
2008: Passed out while the cat peed on me because I had closed off the litter box during my "party"

Related:

Hey You, Happy New Year

Back in Two and Two

Falling Will Always Be Funny, Reporter Eats It

Scanner Matt — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:24:00 GMT

Did you get any snow for the holidays? Did you slip on any frozen snow, make a weird gurgling noise and say, "Jeez, oh gosh!" while grabbing your crotch?

Mike Seidel, the guy from The Weather Channel did, while reporting for MSNBC this weekend.

This Year's Most Annoying Christmas Commercial

The 10 Most Awesome Characters at the 1925 Office Christmas Party

New Year's Celebrations Lacking Balls

Colleen Kane — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:46:00 GMT

Balls are historically controversial. Not everyone is a fan, and not everyone necessarily wants to see one sliding down a pole on New Year's Eve. Of course we are talking about balls like the famous one in Times Square that mark the turning of a new year. Why, what did you think we were talking about?

Anyhoozle, we were hoping that someone else had already compiled a list of weird and wacky shapes that get dropped at midnight on New Year's Eve, and luckily, TripAdvisor did, because we are lazy post-Christmas sluggards, fat with sugarplums and pie.

As you'll see on the following list, among the alternate shapes that are improvements on balls: pickles, sausages, and bologna.

1. Key West, Florida - Conch, drag queen and pirate

2. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania - marshmallow "peep"

3. Port Clinton, Ohio- fish

4. Mount Olive, North Carolina- pickles

5. Elmore, Ohio - sausages

6. Lebanon, Pennsylvania- bologna

7. New Orleans, Louisiana - gumbo pot

8. Easton, Maryland- crab

9. Plymouth, Wisconsin - cheese

10. Raleigh, North Carolina- acorn

Those are great and all, especially the Peep, but why? Read the explanations in the article.

Return of the Gay Balls

Obama's Dainty Balls

Image: newyearsdrop.blogspot.com

As If This Year Hasn't Dragged on Long Enough

Emily Farris — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:41:00 GMT

Are you anxiously awaiting the end of 2008, ready to embark on a new year? Did you get your heart broken? Are you broke? Will the symbolism of the ball dropping on the ~~hell~~ zoo that is Times' Square help you wipe your slate clean or encourage you to not clean your plate at every meal? If any or all of the above apply to you (and most do to us if you've been paying any attention to this blog for the last year), you're going to have to wait just a little bit longer than you expected to ring in the new year.

But just a bit...

The world's "official timekeepers" (what kind of geek do you have to be to get that job?) have added a leap second to December 31.

Apparently the Earth's spin on its axis is slowing due to "tides and other factors" (Global Warming, anyone?) and to keep everything all in order (the sun going down when we know it will, etc) an extra second will be added to 2008.

We imagine the team running the Times' Square extravaganza will adjust accordingly and begin the countdown a second later but wouldn't it be more appropriate, and official, to countdown to zero or something?

Five..

Four...

Three..

Two...

One...

Zero....

Happy New Year, now stick your tongue in my mouth!

[Yahoo!: Tick tock ... tick: Extra second added to 2008]