DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

[T]he state of Illinois whipped out a lawsuit against the Dave Matthews Band and its tour bus driver Stefan Wohl, accusing them of violating state water pollution and public nuisance laws for allegedly dumping human waste from a bus into the Chicago River onto the upper deck of a boat filled with tourists.

More than 100 people on tour boat were splattered with the foul waste dumped from the bridge. Some of the passengers suffered nausea and vomiting, and five entered a local hospital for tests.

Befouled victims were somewhat appeased when the Matthews Band invited them to enjoy private booths at an upcoming concert.

The #2 link in a google search for “Hummer H2” is FUH2 — 1167 user-submitted photos of people giving the official “Hummer H2 salute” to neighborhood passenger-tanks.

The #9 link is the Sierra Club’s satirical HummerDinger site, the best bit of which is this Onion-inspired headline:

Hummer 2 wins “Worst Idea Ever” award
Narrowly beats out acid-wash jeans and Vanilla Ice to gain coveted prize

Wordplay from the Wikipedia: bacronyms, retronyms, fake etymologies.

(Obligatory link to the quintessential source of linguistic fun for culture hackers: the jargon file.)

We already knew that the patent system is fucked, but this is just sad.

Clear Channel … announced that it had acquired a U.S. patent covering a system of creating digital recordings of live performances. Essentially, the patent’s “Event Recording System” is a convoluted and fairly vague description of off-the-shelf stuff you could pick up at any Guitar Center…
Clear Channel has interpreted this patent to infer that it now owns the exclusive rights to all live performance recordings sold at any venue on the day of show, thus creating a virtual monopoly on the process.

Here’s the patent: U.S. Patent #6,614,729: System and method of creating digital recordings of live performances

(Hearty thanks to Chuck for keeping us in mind as he’s killing company time reading Mix Magazine)

Foodies and fans of Kitchen Confidential should check out a pair of articles in today’s Chronicle food section:

• Economics of running a restaurant: Tireless chefs do double duty as bean counters
• From soup to nuts in saga of one S.F. dining hot spot

The amount of work restaurant owners do for tiny profit margins (roughly 4%) is astounding.