Source: Businessweek

Like restaurants across the country - from Table 8 in Los Angeles to Liberty Bar in Hoboken, N.J. - Cole Durbin, owner of Padre’s Modern Mexican in Phoenix, Arizona, is offering up a Recession Happy Hour. But he has added a twist: Anyone who arrives at Padre’s with a foreclosure notice can have any drink on the menu.

Nobody had taken him up on his offer through its first six weeks. But Arizona ranks third on RealtyTrac’s list of leading foreclosure states.

Durbin’s happy-hour sales are booming, up 22% in the past two months, which Durbin says has kept the restaurant’s earnings even with 2007’s despite the cost of rice having skyrocketed 56% between March and May.

Padre’s isn’t done yet. It plans to roll out new promotions throughout the summer. Up next: free rides to and from the restaurant on Saturday nights for those who might be deterred by $4 gasoline.

A controversial billboard ad (seen on Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando, Florida) has a picture of the burning WTC towers with the text “Please Don’t Vote For A Democrat”.

The billboard comes a St. Cloud musician named Mike Meehan. The website contains a video of “The Republican Song”.

Here are the lyrics:

The Democrat secular progressive move,
political correctness is killing us too.
They want to take the money from the hard workin man,
and give it to the lazy folks that don’t give a damn.

Democrats and Liberals, shame on you,
don’t punish us all just to please a few,
Your holdin people back while we’re pickin up the slack,
and that’s why we can’t vote for a Democrat.
Oh no, a no, no, no, no, no, no…
Oh no, a no, no, no, no, no, nooo…
Yeah, your holding people back, while we’re pickin up the tax,
Oh no, no please don’t vote for a Democrat.

Now we’re trying to win a war and wipe out the terrorists,
We’re not fightin for oil we got plenty if we drill it.
But the liberals and the media are spreading their lies,
Get the hell out of our way and let our soldiers fight.

Republicans, we’re not perfect but we know the truth
We uphold the Constitution and the Golden Rule.
We believe a mans freedom is a God given right,
the USA is the beacon to the whole world in sight.

Our Constitution, Nation and God are under attack,
Oh no, please, oh no please, don’t vote for a Democrat.

An Orlando man has traded the naming rights to his unborn son for a $100 gas card.

Source: Local 6 (Orlando, Florida)

David Partin recently heard that local radio station 96.5 WHTQ (Classic Rock Station) was giving $100 worth of free gas to the listener who called in with the most interesting item to trade. Radio hosts Richard Dixon and J. Willoughby were quick to take Partin up on his offer.

When the baby is born this winter, he will be named Dixon and Willoughby Partin — with the “and” included. Partin’s girlfriend, Samantha, said at least her son will have an interesting story about how he got his name. Dixon and Willoughby plan to be at the hospital when the baby is born and will hand over the gas card when they see the official birth certificate.

“Hey, man, times are rough,” replied the 26-year-old landscaper from east Orlando. “I figure I’ll be able to drive around for a couple of weeks on that gas.”

After some of David’s friends heard about the deal, they started offering more to name his baby. Like $300. “With that,” he said, “we could get some diapers too.”

David and Samantha have officially put their child’s name up for bid on the open market. That’s right, corporate America. For the right price, there could be a real, live human being walking around Central Florida named Wal-Mart Partin. Who knows? You pregnant readers out there might one day send your own little ones to day care with baby Best Buy. Or, if the sponsor’s local, maybe little Lockheed Martin Partin.

Odd Culture finds this funny, because Mike Judge has already predicted this would happen. In Idiocracy, characters names include Dr. Lexus, Beef Supreme, and President Dwayne Ellasando Mountain Dew Herbert Comacho!

Here’s something from the LA Times:

“They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

The Place: WEED, CALIFORNIA

The federal government is telling the owner of a small brewery here that the pun he’s placed on caps of his Weed Ales crosses a line. “Try Legal Weed,” the caps joke.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says those three little words allude to marijuana use. Vaune Dillmann, owner of Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., says he was just trying to grab attention for his beers and this tough-luck place in the morning shadow of Mt. Shasta.

The Logo for Mount Shasta Brewing Company

The bureau’s bureaucrats have told Dillmann he needs to stop using the “Try Legal Weed” bottle caps. If he doesn’t, he could risk fines or sanctions. His worst fear: being forced out of business.

“This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face,” says Dillmann. “Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business.”

Besides, he said, the town itself was named for a man, not a plant. Abner Weed was a lumber baron who served as a state senator from these parts a century ago.

This Famous Photo’s Origins Now Revealed: The College is actually called College of the Siskiyous

Folks in Weed — population 3,000 — know whom they’re rooting for. “Government is keeping us safe from bottle caps,” mocked the headline above an editorial in the Record Searchlight newspaper of Redding, an hour’s drive south down Interstate 5. “Let’s get real,” the editorial concluded, “anyone old enough to legally buy a six-pack . . . is mature enough not to be dragged into a life of drug-addled debauchery by a message on the bottle cap.”

On the bottle caps in question, “Try Legal Weed” is surrounded by the slogan “A Friend in Weed Is a Friend Indeed.” To Dillmann’s supporters, that spells civic boosterism, not drug pushing. Weed has a tradition of exploiting the double-entendre of its name. A pithy placard on the way out of town announces “Temporarily Out of Weed.” Gas stations sell “High on Weed” T-shirts. (The town, after all, is at an elevation of 3,500 feet.)

Though the town is no counterculture haven, the metal entry arch downtown is something of a stoner stopover. Summer days find traveling pot aficionados playfully posing for snapshots under the archway’s sign, “WEED.”

Dillmann says the government treats Budweiser with kid gloves, despite the fact that “This Bud’s for You” also could be mistaken for marijuana slang. “They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

Food Network host Rachael Ray is a terrorist sympathizer.
Well, according to retard Michelle Malkin, anyway.

Rachael Ray Dunkin Donuts ad pulled over “jihad scarf”

Source: The Star (and many others)

A fashion faux pas by Rachael Ray led the Dunkin’ Donuts chain to pull an online ad starring the celebrity chef, and sparked a debate about the subtext of accessories. The domestic diva’s black and white scarf has drawn cries of outrage from some observers, who say it looks like the traditional garb worn by Arab men.

Terrorist! But thanks for the great food!

Critics say the accessory looks like a kaffiyeh, a type of scarf that they say now represents Muslim extremism. “The kaffiyeh … has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,” conservative commentator Michelle Malkin said in her Fox News column. “Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.”

The ad was pulled over the weekend. The company says it wanted to avoid any “misperception” about the scarf and its cultural meaning.

“Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East – by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm. To reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it,” says Amahl Bishara, a University of Chicago anthropology lecturer who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East.

From Boston.com:

Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: ‘‘It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.’’

From Feministe:

If you look at the scarf Rachael Ray is wearing in that picture, it doesn’t even remotely resemble the pattern traditionally associated with the keffiyeh, which resembles an interlocking net or a chain-link fence.

Arafat wearing the traditional keffiyeh

There are two problems in this case. One is that the right-wing zealots are trying to foist their own blanket meaning on a piece of clothing that has a long history as a national symbol. The other problem is that Malkin and Johnson are complaining about a symbol that has basically escaped and vanished, lost its meaning in the Land of Miscellaneous Consumer Scarves.

As if people’s fashion choices really did mean something, but the whole point of consumerism is that these kinds of meanings get sucked out and replaced with price tags.

OddCulture’s take: Malkin is the same person who said the puppy-over-the-cliff incident was a fake. Nuff said. Now, the real lesson to be taken from this is: Rachael Ray is hot.