Kinda Funny

Via Today's Papers, from an article of the same title by Edward Wyatt in the NY Times:

O. J. Simpson, who was acquitted 11 years ago in the 1994 death of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman has written a book and will appear on television telling "how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible," his publisher and the Fox television network said on Tuesday.

Mr. Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges, but a civil court found him responsible for the deaths, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in restitution to the families. Only a part of the amount has been paid, and relatives of the victims have continued to pursue their claims. It is not clear how much, if any, of the royalties on the sale of the book will go to the victims' families. A Regan representative and a spokeswoman for Fox declined to comment beyond the news release.

At least one other network said it had passed on the chance to bid on the TV special because it thought the content was of questionable taste. Rebecca Marks, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal Television, said the network passed because "from an advertising point of view, from a public relations point of view, everything, it was impossible." The TV special will be on Fox during the final week of the November sweeps, the period when local network affiliates measure viewership in order to determine what rates they can charge for advertising.

Via Phil Wilson's Blog. Here are some YouTube videos worth watching. The Kiwi video is all over the net, and the other two are also enjoyable.

Via The Writer's Almanac, from Fever by Ron Koertge:

Cinderella's Diary I miss my stepmother. What a thing to say but it's true. The prince is so boring: four hours to dress and then the cheering throngs. Again. The page who holds the door is cute enough to eat. Where is he once Mr. Charming kisses my forehead goodnight? Every morning I gaze out a casement window at the hunters, dark men with blood on their boots who joke and mount, their black trousers straining, rough beards, callused hands, selfish, abrupt ... Oh, dear diary-I am lost in ever after: Those insufferable birds, someone in every room with a lute, the queen calling me to look at another painting of her son, this time holding the transparent slipper I wish I'd never seen.

Via Today's Papers, from an article of the same title by Damien Cave in the NY Times:

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery. Under the rule being considered by the city's Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent. Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

Via Boing Boing:

Artist Michael Gross flooded a London church-turned-gallery with water. The "lake" hides a system of mechanically-moving steps that enable visitors to walk on water. The installation, titled Bridge, is up until October 29 at Dilston Grove.

From the gallery's description:

Each step emerges one step in front of you and disappears back underneath behind you as you go. This ‘bridge' is purely mechanical, the weight of the person on it depresses each step a little, this force activates a submerged mechanism which raises the next step.