Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds dies

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The childhood friend of John Lennon's son who inspired the Beatles' psychedelic masterpiece "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has died aged 46 from the chronic disease Lupus.

Julian Lennon showed his father a drawing he had done of Lucy Vodden. The rest is music history...

Lucy Vodden was a classmate of Julian Lennon, who came home from school one day carrying a drawing of his 4-year-old classmate. "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds," he told his father.

Lennon seized on the image and embellished it in a song along with "newspaper taxis" and a "girl with kaleidoscope eyes."

The BBC later banned the track, which appeared on the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," for its supposed drug reference with the words of the song spelling out LSD.

Lennon always claimed though that the title was suggested by Julian, not from any wish to spell out LSD, the chemical name for the drug, acid, in code.

Julian Lennon lost touch with Vodden when he left Heath House nursery school, near his parents' home in Surrey following their divorce in 1968. But they were reunited in recent years when he heard she was suffering from the immune system disease and he lent his support to her.

Vodden's death was announced on Monday by St. Thomas Lupus Trust in London, where she had been treated for more than five years.

"Julian and (his mother) Cynthia are shocked and saddened by the loss of Lucy and their thoughts are with her husband and family today and always," the trust said on its Web site.

Angie Davidson, Campaign Director of the St. Thomas' Lupus Trust said "everyone at the Louise Coote Lupus Unit was dreadfully shocked by the death of Lucy, she was a great supporter of ours and a real fighter, it's so sad that she has finally lost the battle she fought so bravely for so long."

Vodden, who was a housewife from Surbiton, southwest of London, cherished her link to the Beatles, but did not especially like the song she inspired.

"I don't relate to the song, to that type of song," she told The Associated Press in June, according to the Web site, PopEater.

"As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school that I was the Lucy in the song and they said, 'No, it's not you, my parents said it's about drugs.' And I didn't know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself."

From A Friend: 'Your Flooding Pictures #1 - Photos - WSB Atlanta'

laurenabenn@gmail.com has sent you a link: "Your Flooding Pictures #1 - Photos - WSB Atlanta"

The link:
http://www.wsbtv.com/slideshow/20925552/detail.htmlindex.html?currentSlide=6&taf=atl

Message from laurenabenn@gmail.com: today on Interstate 75/85 at 285 in atlanta

Bill Maher's New Rule Health Care

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Bill Maher

New Rule: You Can't Complain About

Health Care Reform If You're Not Willing

to Reform Your Own Health

New Rule: You can't complain about health care reform if you're not willing to reform your own health. Unlike most liberals, I'm glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last week. Because judging from the photos, it's the first exercise they've gotten in years. Not counting, of course, all the Rascal scooters there, most of which aren't even for the disabled. They're just Americans who turned 60 and said, "Screw it, I'm done walking." These people are furious at the high cost of health care, so they blame illegals, who don't even get health care. News flash, Glenn Beck fans: the reason health care is so expensive is because you're all so unhealthy.

Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march, "How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!" Yes, because you're fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn't make it a crowd.

President Obama has identified all the problems with the health care system, but there's one tiny issue he refuses to tackle, and that's our actual health.

And since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol -- and alcohol actually serves a useful function in society in that it enables unattractive people to get laid, which is more than you can say for Skittles.

I'm not saying tax all soda, but certainly any single serving of soda larger than a baby is not unreasonable. If you don't know whether you burp it or it burps you, that's too big. We need to make taking care of ourselves an issue of patriotism. If you were someone who condemned Bush for not asking Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, the same must be said for Obama and health care.

President Arugula is not gonna tell Americans they're fat and lazy. No sin tax on food on Obama's watch. And at a time when it's important to set new standards for personal responsibility, he appointed a surgeon general, who is, I'm sorry, kind of fat. Certainly too heavy to be a surgeon general, it's a role model thing. It would be like appointing a Secretary of the Treasury who didn't pay his taxes. He did?

And get this: Surgeon General Benjamin had previously been a nutritional advisor to Burger King. The only advice a "health expert" should give Burger King is to stop selling food. The "nutritional advisor" job was described as, "promoting balanced diets and active lifestyle choices" -- and who better to do that than the folks who hand you meat and corn syrup through a car window? When you have a surgeon general who comes from Burger King, it's a message to lobbyists, and that message is, "Have it your way."

Lil Spanish Dance Orgy

facebook LA Benn 16 September 17:12 Lil Spanish Dance Orgy This disturbing video is linked on to my facebook. It borders kiddie porn and I don't feel 100% right posting this but here it goes http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=138400073&k=Z3MXY5W3VT6G6BD1SE3YTQP2T&oid=1154675438992 Something should be done to parents who aid in this behavior.

Obama calls Kanye a Jackss

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20 bucks says the next Kanye single mentions Obama

(Reuters/Corbis/Gary Hershorn)

Barack Obama has "finally found an issue that could unite both Democrats and Republicans," said Katie Connolly in Newsweek. In an off-the-record portion of an interview with CNBC, the president was asked to comment on hip-hop star Kanye West's outburst at MTV's Video Music Awards. The response wasn't aired, but ABC reporter Terry Moran said on Twitter that Obama calls Kanye "a jackass" for barging on stage and interrupting an acceptance speech. (watch Kanye West interrupt country singer Taylor Swift at the VMAs)

I knew Obama "had his good points," said Allahpundit in Hot Air. "What I don't know is why he'd insist on keeping this off the record." The only reason the general public heard about the president's comment at all was that ABC's Terry Moran prematurely tweeted something that turned out to be from the off-the-record part of the interview.

"This is exactly the kind of human, non-Spock-like outburst Obama needs to do much more of to better connect with the vast majority of the American people," said Trey Ellis in The Huffington Post. But Kanye West is an easy target -- nobody is going to argue when Obama calls Kanye a jackass. What the president needs is to be just as candid about everybody from Joe Wilson to Wall Street cheaters -- "the first step is to call them a bunch of jackasses."

Real Quick Like

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Lisa Jaeggi is running for best New Artist of the Year in the New York Press Magazine. To win You Must VOTE!!!!

http://nypress.com/flex-126-new-music-competition.html

check her out on LaChaBenn.com by searching her name in the box at the top left. You like her, you know you do.
GO LISA!

Are you ready for the release?
GAMETIME BABY!

Pray that this SYR overtime doesn't go as long as SYR basketball overtimes.

Call me the yes man

I went camping this week just like the good ole days. Last minute decisions, shoty packing job, low on cash.
I won't go into the trip but Sarah said something "the mayan calendar says the world is gonna end in 2012."
That got me thinking-what if it does, I shouldn't let any chance go by.
Fast Forward.

I get a call at 4:30. I don't know who it is- 'maybe...' I thought for a second. I let it ring. I answer.
"Lauuurrreeenn!".
I have no clue who it is.
"Lauuuurrrreeeenn what are you doing tonight?"
I say, "Who is this?"
"Lauuuurrrreeeenn what are you doing tonight?"
"Yo man I don't know who this -"
"Lauuuurrrreeeenn what are you doing tonight? Its Toooommommy! You wantta do security?"
Now I'm thinking 'WTF?'. "Tommy how did you get my number?"
"Don't worry about it you've worked security before right?"
'I've never worked security before, hell I weigh 140 with weights in my pocket'.
"Yea sure Tommy I've worked security..."
"Alright," he says, he believes me! "Be at D.C. Star by 9."
"Okay Tommy"
'Uhhh what am I thinking?!?!'

Didn't ask how much, didn't ask him when it ends, just going with the flow.

I really hope I don't get my ass kicked

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

I'm leaving my melons on the land. Watermelon Juice: The New Fuel?

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Watermelon Juice: The New Fuel?

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

 

Aug. 26, 2009 -- A staple of backyard barbecues and summer time snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a new study, leftover watermelons from farms' harvests could be converted into up to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million gallons) of clean, renewable ethanol fuel every year destined for your car, truck, or airplane's gas tank.

Agriculturally, watermelon is a peculiar fruit -- each year farmers across the country leave between 20 and 40 percent of their crop to rot on the ground. These are the ugly ducklings of the lot; though perfectly fine on the inside, the misshapen or blemished melons simply won't sell at the grocery store.

"If a crow lands on a melon, takes two pecks at the rind, and then flies away, it's no good," Wayne Fish of the United States Department of Agriculture in Lane, Oklahoma said. "I had farmers telling me, 'I'm leaving one-fifth of my melons on the land. Is there anything I can do with them?'"

Across the United States, he estimated that 360,000 tons of watermelons spoil in fields every year.

Some local growers wondered whether the waste melons could be turned into ethanol, the clean-burning fuel derived from plant sugars. In a series of new experiments published yesterday in the journalBiotechnology for Biofuels, Fish and a team of researchers showed that they can.

What's more, watermelon juice may turn out to be the perfect way to optimize industrial-scale production of ethanol from corn, molasses and sugar cane.

Watermelon juice is about 10 percent sugar by volume, about half the concentration that manufacturers consider right for producing ethanol. But it's chock full of amino acids that provide a crucial source of nitrogen for yeast to feed on during fermentation.

On its own, the team calculated they could make about 2.5 million gallons of ethanol each year from waste melons, a drop in the bucket of an industry that last year produced 9 billion gallons from corn and other feedstock in the United States alone.

But both corn and molasses require lots of water, and sometimes nitrogen supplements to prepare for fermentation. The team suggests that watermelon juice from reject melons could drastically cut down on water usage, supply needed nitrogen, and even add some sugar to the mix, cutting the amount of corn or molasses by up to 15 percent.

"This is not going to replace corn. In that sense it will remain a niche source of biofuel," said Jim Rausch, president of the College Station, Texas-based company Common Sense Agriculture, LLC, which is developing a prototype watermelon juice-to-ethanol processing plant.

"But unlike algae biodiesel or cellulosic ethanol, it's a right now thing. There's no new technology that needs to be developed to make it economical."