Ice Cream tip

WaDuke ice cream not pictured

Virginia Tech Men's Basketball coach Seth Greenberg reports that the Washington Duke Inn in Durham, NC has the best ice cream in the world, bar none. The Clarion Content has yet to try it, but we have to give Greenberg's opinion some credence. The widely traveled Coach Greenberg, a FDU graduate, has been on coaching staffs all over the country including: Columbia University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, the University of Miami, Cal State University at Long Beach, the University of South Florida and Virginia Tech.

We have to believe the man has tried ice cream in a lot of different cities and joints. And if he bothers, during an interview about his basketball team's prospects against mighty Duke next week, to throw a shout out to the locally known, WaDuke, as the best ice cream in the world, we think it is noteworthy.

We are going to give it a try. Stay tuned to this page for further updates.

Moving

The Clarion Content was surprised to read in this morning's LA Times that more people are moving out of the state of California than into it. It is our positively biased view towards the almost nation of California that makes that fact hard for us to swallow. When this was last happening in the 1990's, we made epic arguments that it wasn't only to be factually debunked.

What, you are leaving the temperate climes of the most cutting edge place in the country behind? What, have you been reading the Clarion Content's anti-recession shoutouts to the Dakotas? Unlikely.

The LA Times says the states that Californians are most frequently moving to Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Washington. It is primarily the cost of living and the economy that folks cite as reasons for leaving. California is an expensive place in the best of times, but when jobs are scarce and the economy is contracting it becomes a downright difficult combination of circumstances. Fear not Cali, your mini empire of 38 million is not going away, a mere 135,173 more people moved out of California than moved into it, a drop in the bucket. And California rates as one of the top four states for likelihood that natives reaching 18 there stay there, with more than 69% electing not to leave. The three states that rank ahead of CA for their residents who grew up there loving it enough that they are not leaving, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia.

Banker desserts

Hopefully you saw the British comedy clip we posted last week about the roots of the economic crisis. It was dry, acerbic, funny stuff. Here from the highly recommended Best of Craig's List is a little more fiery American response rooting for the bankers to get their just desserts. Ahh, comeuppance.

It is titled, "You reap what you sow: the greed of an archetypal Lehman douche."

"Most of you deserve this, you really, truly do. You chose this road because it was easy and because you’re stupid. This was and is the best you’ll ever do. You know who I’m talking about. I’m pointing the finger at you, you and you. And especially you. To all the overtanned Jersey douchebags with steroid addictions, to the smug Ivy League grads with dads in high places, to the good looking brain dead women that eschew Anne Taylor Loft for sales rack Brooks Brothers, and to the upwardly mobile black girls with fake hair and inappropriate-for-work Joyce Leslie outfits. Actually, scratch that. The black girls can stay.

Fuck all of you. You brought this upon yourselves. Your Alpha male bullshit begat this greed, your vile existence is truly at the core of this collapse. For all the times you and your drunk cronies threw up on the street outside Pacha, for all the times you made a scene on the 3:51 LIRR train to Babylon, for all the times you stood on the Path train, or the 6, iPod in hand, desperately trying not to touch anyone. You had it coming.

Is there some kind of code that says you MUST wear a blue shirt? Or is that some kind of unspoken bro ethos? Like, if you’re the dude in the white button down in Bryant Park, is no one gonna blow you? Or is conforming just that much easier, is conformity just a part of your DNA? Is that really the true reason why you’re so universally loathsome to anyone that’s not a part of that vile world?

Before the Bubble O’ Bullshit burst, you would laugh at me. You were the douche bags that felt superior, the ones who turned up their nose at their working-class roots, the ones who scoffed at their peers who worked at the Local Union. You were the ones who laughed at those that worked at non-profits and LIKED IT. “Art History? What are you going to do with a major in Art History?” Yeah, your finance major got you real fucking far. Maybe after this ship sails you’ll realize that aside from your rape trial, college didn’t teach you much of anything. Sorry bro, but in the real world, you can’t walk down the street, lacrosse stick in hand, and just get respect.

I hope that with this smashup comes your own social foreclosure. I hope all those dudes from my high school -- you know who I'm talking about -- the ones that never got good grades, the ones that never knew how to act like decent human beings, the date rapists, the juicers, the guidos, the Quinnipiac or Iona grads that never should have graduated yet somehow landed cushy Wall Street jobs -- receive the guerdon from the gods . I hope you’re evicted from your Upper East Side apartment, I hope your Denali gets repoed, I hope you can’t afford your bullshit Murray Hill lifestyle. I hope you truly get your comeuppance. Because it’s well fucking deserved and the Universe knows it. And what about me, you ask?

I’m laughing all the way to the nonexistent bank."

The Clarion Content says, "Whoa."

Truth is often said in jest

This comedy routine recorded in 2007, sounds all to real circa 2008, (save the racially insensitive humor.) It is a line that is frequently attributed to Shakespeare that, truth is often said in jest. Some speculate it dates to a courtly era when only the jester could point out certain things to the monarch aloud, publicly. This maxim continues to apply because humor is a natural human defense mechanism, what is indefensibly ridiculous or hard to believe is roundly mocked. This is very dry British comedy from the longest running TV show in the UK, "The South Bank Show."

Below George Parr appears on the fake talk show, "The Last Laugh."

Michael Franti

Playing his new song live in New York City.

"Barack Obama, yes we can!"



Special thanks to a New York City reader for sending this our way.

Cell Phone trick

Follow this link to a video of a fancy trick you and your friends can do with your cell phones.

Thanks to the Durham reader who sent this craziness our way. It wasn't Photoshopped? Right? Nah, there's no way.

Sad story

The Clarion Content is fond of the old saw, "The bus can come for ya any day." Meaning any given day can be one's last. We strive to follow the immortal words of Steven King's unforgettable character Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding, "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." Rarely is our inevitable mortality brought home so forcefully as it was by reading this tragic story this morning.

Three generations of a family and four people were wiped out in an instant, a mother, her baby, her other 15 month old daughter, and a grandmother. An F/A-18D Hornet fell from the sky over a residential neighborhood in San Diego. The house burned to the ground as did the thankfully unoccupied house next door. The young Naval Aviator flying the plane was ordered to fly to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar rather than attempt to return to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, after one of his engines failed. En route his other engine failed, he ejected and survived the crash.

What a sad story.

A hero in a bad scene

From the terrorist assault on Mumbai, perhaps you have already heard this story. Perhaps, you have read other stories of heroism from this dastardly terrorist attack. The Clarion Content read about a heroic nanny, Sandra Samuel.

She was in the Chabad House with two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg and six other people when the assault began. Only Sandra Samuel and Moshe Holtzberg made it out alive. When she was shot at early in the assault, she locked herself and fellow employee Zaki Hussein in a downstairs utility room. As Samuel described it there was screaming, hundreds of gunshots and periodic grenade blasts that shook the building. Conflicting reports say, as the gunmen went door to door looking for survivors, Sandra Samuel unlocked her door, eluded some gunmen and dared others to shoot her. All reports agree that she ran upstairs to find the boy's American and Israeli parents shot and the child crying over them. She picked him up and made another dash past the gunmen for the door.

Both, two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg and the boy's heroic nanny, Sandra Samuel are both recovering from the affair in Israel.

Venice under water

Follow this link to way better pictures

On no! Venice, Italy is experiencing its worst flooding in twenty years. The fourth highest tide in modern history surged into the city Monday. The pictures from the Daily Mail of England are hard to fathom. The debate in many media organs is whether or not Venice which is known to be sinking risks becoming uninhabited. The population in recent years has dwindled to 66,000 and a large percentage of those residents are elderly. The city is flooded several times a year. Residents this week say you can literally swim across St. Mark's Square. Yet the city receives as many as twenty million tourist visits a year according to the Daily Mail.