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MP3: Cassettes Won’t Listen – Change

TMZ shares the saddening news.

Our thoughts go out to her friends & family.

Catch up on all your Golden Girls trivia here.

MP3: Je Suis France – Thank You For Being A Friend

Vogue reports: *After a long period of ill health, legendary couturier Yves Saint Laurent died at his Paris home last night, aged 71. The cause of his death has not been revealed. The designer retired from fashion officially in 2002, but his stellar career – which saw him take over haute couture at Christian Dior aged only 21, and give the world some its most iconic looks, such as feted Sixties tuxedo Le Smoking – was shadowed with long term depression & alcohol problems. He had become increasingly reclusive in his later years.*

MP3: Pele – Black Socks

Here’s more on the upsetting piece of news: *Congress has dropped legislation that would have expanded hate crime laws to include attacks on gays after it became clear the measure wouldn’t pass the House, aides said Thursday. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, was widely supported by Democrats and even some moderate Senate Republicans. But because it was attached to a major defense policy bill that would have authorized more money for the Iraq war, many anti-war Democrats said they would oppose it. “We don’t have the votes,” said one House Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because conference negotiations on the defense bill were ongoing. “We’re about 40 votes short, not four or six.” The development is a blow to civil rights groups which say that broadening federal laws are necessary to address a rise in crimes motivated by hate based upon a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The military bill is “the last clear chance this year for Congress to make a meaningful effort to stop hate crime violence,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Under current federal law, hate crimes include acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin. Federal prosecutors have jurisdiction only if the victim is engaged in a specific federally protected activity such as voting. Kennedy’s bill would have extended the category to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability. It also would give federal authorities greater leeway to participate in hate crime investigations, and allow them to step in if local authorities were unwilling or unable to act. The measure also would have provided $10 million over the next two years to help local law enforcement officials cover the cost of hate crime prosecutions. The bill is named for Matthew Shepard, a gay college freshman who died after he was beaten into a coma in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo. The Senate voted 60-39 in September to attach the bill as amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill. Nine Republicans broke ranks and sided with Democrats in support of the measure…*

Read the rest of the article at The Associated Press.

Learn what you can do to respond here.

MP3: Cat Power – Hate [alt link]

This all occurred in Matt MusicSlut’s apartment complex! The NY Daily News reports: *Forget the monsters under the bed. There really are slithery creatures lurking in the pipes. Nature’s call forced Nadege Brunacci, 38, to the dark bathroom in her Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, apartment in the wee hours of Monday morning. While washing her hands, she glanced back at the toilet to find a 7-foot-long python staring back at her. “I turned on the light and screamed, ‘Oh, my God!’” said the hiss-sterical restaurateur. “It still makes my heart race.” She slammed down the lid, put a heavy box on top of it and began calling city agencies. Most didn’t believe her, and the ones that did told her, “We don’t do snakes,” she said. Finally, the FDNY and her landlord came to the rescue. Plumbers had to tear apart the downstairs neighbor’s pipes to capture the serpent, which had retreated so that only its head poked through Brunacci’s toilet.

“I was anxious about it getting flushed and never coming out,” said Valerie Ross, 41, from whose apartment the snake was extricated. “I’m happy it’s out. Now I’m just unhappy about the holes in my pipes.” Nobody knows where the snake came from, or how it made its way up three stories of piping, but a first-floor tenant in the four-story Tiffany Place walkup reported seeing the creature slithering down the basement steps eight days earlier. Brunacci gave the snake to a friend who offered it a loving home and named it Nadege. City Health Department regulations prohibit keeping a python as a pet. The creature may be gone from her flat, but the shattering of an urban legend has forced Brunacci to keep her eyes peeled every time she uses the bathroom. “When I brush my teeth, I’m looking over my shoulder,” she said. And when she goes to the bathroom at night, she uses her daughter’s training toilet.*

MP3: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Underwater (You & Me)

Great news today from HRC: *In an historic step toward equality for GLBT Americans, the U.S. Senate voted to pass the Matthew Shepard Act, which updates and expands the federal hate crimes laws to include bias motivated violence based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, and disability, and provides new resources and tools to assist local law enforcement in prosecuting vicious crimes.

“For over a decade our community has worked tirelessly to ensure protections to combat violence motivated by hate and today we are the closest we have ever been to seeing that become a reality,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Congress has taken an historic step forward and moved our country closer to the realization that all Americans, including the GLBT community, are part of the fabric of our nation. The new leadership in Congress fully understands that for too long our community has been terrorized by hate violence. And today, the US Senate has sent a clear message to every corner of our country that we will no longer turn a blind eye to anti-gay violence in America.” The Senate in a bipartisan vote of 60 to 39 accepted cloture which ended debate on the bill and then moved to approve the Matthew Shepard Act by a voice vote — attaching it as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Defense Authorization bill.*

Read more about the act here.

MP3: The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed

AP reports: *Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84. Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word. Offstage, he was famously chatty. “Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop,” he once said. A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art. He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip. His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau inspired countless young performers—Michael Jackson borrowed his famous “moonwalk” from a Marceau sketch, “Walking Against the Wind.”

Marceau’s former assistant E. Vacca said on French radio that the peformer died Saturday in Paris, but gave no details. In one of Marceau’s most poignant and philosophical acts, “Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death,” Marceau wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes. He took his art to stages across the world, performing in Asia, Europe and the United States, his “second country,” where he first performed in 1955 and returned every two years. He performed for Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Tireless, Marceau took his art to Cuba for the first time in September 2005.

“France loses one of its most eminent ambassadors,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement. Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as “the master” with the rare gift of “being able to communicate with each and everyone beyond the barriers of language.” The son of a butcher, the mime was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, in Strasbourg, France. His father Charles, a baritone with a love of song, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy was captivated by the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers.*

Read the rest of the article here.

MP3: Sondre Lerche – Human Hands

Via KETV: *State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. He says it to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits. Chambers says senators periodically have offered bills prohibiting the filing of certain types of suits. He says his main objection is the constitution requires that the doors to the courthouse be open to all. Chambers said, “Thus anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody – even God.” Chambers said he decided to file this lawsuit after a suit was filed in early September in federal court against Lancaster County Judge Jeffre Cheuvront. He’s the judge who was hearing a sexual assault case, where the woman wants to use the words “rape and victim” during her testimony. Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is “Omnipresent”. In the lawsuit Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant (“Come out, come out, wherever you are”) has been unable to do so.” The suit also requests that the court given the “peculiar circumstances” of this case waive personal service. It says being Omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action. The lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”

It says God has caused, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.” The suit also says God has caused, “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.” Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant “will laugh” when calamity comes. Chambers asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment. He says as an alternative, he wants the judge to set a date for a hearing as “expeditiously” as possible and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.*

MP3: Cold War Kids – God, Make Up Your Mind

Via The Beaufort Gazette (based out of South Carolina): *A man who robbed a woman of her keys and cell phone took off her shoes and licked her toes, police said. Commander Kevin Casper called the attack “weird sexual behavior.” The 24-year-old woman was leaving work around 1 a.m. Saturday when the 27-year-old suspect approached her and demanded her keys and phone, authorities said. After that, he removed her shoes. The woman was not hurt, police said. Police arrested the man a few minutes later about four blocks away. The woman identified the suspect, and police were able to recover her keys and phone. The man was in custody, but it was not clear whether he had been formally charged.*

MP3: Chris Garneau – Blue Suede Shoes

Story via Gainesville Times: *Not every animal that assists a disabled person is a Seeing Eye dog. These days, there are dogs trained to help people with all kinds of disabilities. Sometimes the people are in wheelchairs and their condition is obvious. But some have hidden disabilities, and you would never guess that they need assistance. That’s the case with Gainesville resident John Ward. A former funeral home director, he has suffered from epilepsy since 1973, when he fell from a two-story building and fractured his skull. For the past eight years, Ward has been accompanied everywhere he goes by Mara, a certified service dog trained by Michigan-based Paws With A Cause.

“She can detect when I’m about to have a seizure, by sensing changes in my body chemistry,” Ward said. “She pokes me in the leg to let me know.” There is no way to prevent a seizure. But at least Ward can make sure he’s in a safe place when it happens. Then Mara does something that is quite extraordinary. She goes to the nearest person, attracts their attention and tries to persuade them to follow her back to Ward. If the first person does not respond, Mara is trained to go to the next person, and to keep trying until she finds someone who is willing to help. But it’s hard for many people to understand why someone with epilepsy would need a canine helper. Unlike the guide dog who wears a harness and pulls a blind person along, Mara’s role is not immediately apparent. This puts Ward in the position of constantly having to justify the dog’s presence. “I’ve sort of jokingly thought of putting on dark glasses (to pretend to be blind),” he says.*

MP3: Mogwai – Helps Both Ways