Today would have been the 75th birthday of my beloved Grandma Zelda, who died of lung cancer -- after surviving breast cancer -- when I was in sixth grade. My grandmother was beautiful. She met my grandfather as a teenager. A strikingly handsome war hero, my grandfather was the man all the nice Jewish girls in Chicago wanted to land. From what I hear, Grandpa was quite the player until the day he met my grandmother, at which point none of the other girls stood a chance. He was bowled over by her beauty and her kindness, and they married soon after. I inherited the beauty, for sure. I don't know what happened to the kindness. Maybe my sister got that. My grandmother, in the short time I had her with me, taught me a lifetime's worth of lessons in living, loving and dying with grace and honesty and dignity. And I know she's spent every minute since her passing watching over me and guiding me. I felt her presence in my life starting the day after she died, and she's never left my side since. Grandma, I haven't had a cigarette in four months now. I know how happy that makes you. I love you, and I miss you. />Today would have been the 75th birthday of my beloved Grandma Zelda, who died of lung cancer -- after surviving breast cancer -- when I was in sixth grade. My grandmother was beautiful. She met my grandfather as a teenager. A strikingly handsome war hero, my grandfather was the man all the nice Jewish girls in Chicago wanted to land. From what I hear, Grandpa was quite the player until the day he met my grandmother, at which point none of the other girls stood a chance. He was bowled over by...

Check out this dude flying 1500 feet over the Royal Gorge near Cañon City today using a jet pack. The gorge is said to be 1,025 feet deep. He did not use a just-in-case parachute. The jet pack is manufactured by Denver-based Jet P.I., based on a model developed in the '60s for military use. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! I know what I want for Hannukah!!!! Leo and I are so done with cars. It's gonna be all jet packs all the time for us! /> Check out this dude flying 1500 feet over the Royal Gorge near Cañon City today using a jet pack. The gorge is said to be 1,025 feet deep. He did not use a just-in-case parachute. The jet pack is manufactured by Denver-based Jet P.I., based on a model developed in the '60s for military use. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! I know what I want for Hannukah!!!! Leo and I are so done with cars. It's gonna be all jet packs all the time for us!...

Apparently the worldwide economy is so damn shitty that the Russians can't even sell their vodka. TRAGEDY. With retailers struggling to find credit and ordinary Russians being forced to change their spending, a vast lake of undrunk vodka is accumulating in distilleries across Russia. Official statistics indicate a collapse in demand for vodka over the past two months. November inventories of unsold vodka stock have risen to 82 million litres, a 600 per cent increase from 2007, accord...

You can listen to the whole thing here for free and without breaking any laws. It's all the same tracks from the leak earlier, except "Blur" and "My Baby" were not on the leak. Go check it out and tell me what you think! Update: You know, I just realized, one of my favorite tracks from the leak was called "Phonography," and it doesn't appear to be on the final album. Booooo for that! Second update: Dude, "Amnesia" didn't make it either. Rough cut of the album was better than the final cut. Total bullshit. />You can listen to the whole thing here for free and without breaking any laws. It's all the same tracks from the leak earlier, except "Blur" and "My Baby" were not on the leak. Go check it out and tell me what you think! Update: You know, I just realized, one of my favorite tracks from the leak was called "Phonography," and it doesn't appear to be on the final album. Booooo for that! Second update: Dude, "Amnesia" didn't make it either. Rough cut of the album was better than the final cut. Total ...