Junk drawer

Talking points

And three things you can’t:
1. The Olympics
2. Gmail Custom Time
3. Hillary in Bosnia

Quotes of the week

“I would prefer he became a nice Jewish doctor or lawyer rather than an arms dealer.”
– Michael Diveroli, father of Efraim Diveroli, an international arms dealer and owner of AEY, Inc., which has distributed arms and ammunition to the Afghan National Army through a contract with the U.S. government. Diveroli has been called to testify before Congress after it was found that his products were shoddy Chinese equipment from the 1960s.
ys, according to documents obtained by the Rocky Mountain News. Rogers has been suspended for 45 days after his colleague claimed he was “humiliated” by the event

“He was under some stress because of the Lenten season and Easter.”
– Frank Previte, a sergeant at the Lewiston Police Department in Ohio, explaining the three-day disappearance of New York-based pastor Craig Rhodenizer, who was found inside an Ohio strip club. Dancers there said he had been drinking and had received 3 or 4 private dances.

“If you’re going to stick it out, I’m going to hit it.”
– Bobby Rogers, a sheriff’s deputy from Denver, on why he slapped his colleague on the butt after he bent down over his desk to get his keys, according to documents obtained by the Rocky Mountain News. Rogers has been suspended for 45 days after his colleague claimed he was “humiliated” by the event.

Theme party Suggestion

Hallway hockey – The hockey team is headed to the Frozen Four for the first time since 2003. In order to prepare for the semifinals, you should find a suitable hallway and some devout hockey fans and play a combative game of knee-hockey. Divide yourselves up into the four teams, but make sure to stack Michigan with all the most aggressive players. Forbid people from calling penalties and encourage them to slash. Let the games begin.

Throwing this party? Let us know. TheStatement@umich.edu

YoutTube video of the week

Dear loser, it’s over – Deep inside most of us, there’s a host of suppressed memories of adolescence: middle-school crushes, embarrassing breakups and homecoming drama.

As much as we pretend these things never happened, they did, and that’s what makes this video so funny. Called “You Make Me Touch Your Hands For Stupid Reasons,” it’s a dramatic reading of a letter from a teenage girl to her ex-boyfriend, telling a story we all know too well.

It started when the writer’s former flame asked her out so they could go to the dance. The relationship went awry, as so many middle school flirtations do, because the guy accused her of cheating on him and called her a “slut.” So she breaks up with him.
But her jilted boyfriend just won’t leave her alone, so she writes him a letter to say she hates him.

The humor is in the reader’s delivery, an amalgam of Vincent Price’s dramatic flair and Strong Bad’s bluster. The reader mocks the letter’s poor grammar, punctuation and spelling, putting extra emphasis on needlessly capitalized words and speaking misspelled words (“bastert,” “jealouse”) phonetically.

With lines like “you make me touch your hands for stupid reasons you accidentally say you hugged me I will never like you again,” the line could be bad free verse written in a creative writing class.
Then again, it could be emo lyrics. Either way, it’s something the writer would rather cram deep down into her soul and forget forever.

– Gabe Nelson

See this and other YouTube videos of the week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily

Study of the week

Lack of Internet access causes anxiety

A majority of Americans experience some form of anxiety when they are deprived of Internet access or wireless for an extended period of time, according to a study published by Solutions Research Group.
The group interviewed 4,994 Americans aged 12 and older, asking several questions about internet usage and then rating the participants by considering factors like the intensity of their engagement with the media and their total time spent online.
The group concluded that 68 percent of people suffer from “Disconnect Anxiety,” a term the researchers coined. Forty-one percent of those affected are 12 to 24 years old, and 50 percent are 25 to 49 years old.
Four main reasons to explain this anxiety are safety, work, social and navigation, according to the study. For those who are anxious because of work, 63 percent of Blackberry users said they have used their phone in the bathroom. Thirty-seven percent reported that they use their laptops “frequently” in the bedroom.

– Brian Tengel

By the numbers

19 – Criminal counts Anibal Acevedo Vila, governor of Puerto Rico, is charged with because of a campaign finance scandal

20 – Years Acevedo could be incarcerated

500,000 – Campaign debt, in dollars, that Vila and his associates tried to illicitly pay off in the scandal