I always thought "Open Salon" meant "free hair care products."

Or "free hookers."

Or both.


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User-generated content (UGC) is a catch phrase for the creative works (writing, photos, videos, etc.) that non-media professionals (ordinary people like you and me) are publishing in prominent places, using the facilities and infrastructure built for them by large media organizations.

So when an entre… Read full post »

This P!nk song is stuck in my head. Now it'll be stuck in yours, too. Na na na na na na na. [Video@P!nksPage] [YouTube]

So What!
Written by Shellback (Johan Karl Schuster), Max Martin and P!nk (Alecia Moore)

I guess I just lost my husband
I don't know where he went
So I'm gonna drink my
…

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The annual Black List--an index of the year's best-liked, not-yet-produced screenplays--is out. To compile it, more than 250 film executives were polled and each script had to be mentioned four times to warrant inclusion. For details, see Deadline Hollywood Daily.

"Sziasztok" is one of the few words I know in Magyar. When my wife's twentysomething children visited us from Budapest last summer, they often used this group greeting, roughly equivalent to "Howdy, y'all!"

Anita and Jenõ desperately wanted to see Las Vegas, even though August at our home… Read full post »

This is actually Part 2 of the posting entitled: "How to become my OS friend." For those of you who are keeping score.

Ladies, in order to give your OS avatar headshot thingie that extra SCHWING, just remember these tips:

1) When posing, wrap your hands behind your head, tilt your elbows back, and… Read full post »

Listen up. If you want to be my friend here on Open Salon, you must pay close attention to these three rules:

1) Do not write about how much you miss your dead cat. I hate dead cats. Live ones, too, for that matter.

2) Use a real-sounding name. I have never seen… Read full post »

1) Do a little photoshopping on the Editor's Pick doohickey.

2) Plop it into a posting entitled: "Editor's Pick... NOT!"

3) In a few hours, you'll have a couple of Editor's Picks, even if one of them is not your writing!

This posting was deemed inappropriate, unsuitable and generally incompatible with the high standards maintained by the OS front page.

In short, it sucked. Read full post »

It has become difficult to keep up with the meanings of all the new phrases and terms generated by modern technology. One of the most commonly used phrases on the world wide web (www) today is "Web 2.0." It seems like every web solutions company is using this phrase to sell… Read full post »

My wife's sister, Erzsébet (Elizabeth, or "Zsike"), has had a tough time over the last few years. First, there was the heart crisis that was finally solved by a pacemaker. A year later, there was the crisis when the pacemaker started to fail, solved by a second implantation. Then there was… Read full post »

According to this recent news report on Budapest's Channel 2, Santa Claus is having a hard time coping with the global economic crisis.

In fact, things are so bad that he has chosen to deliver gifts to only one person this year.

Guess who.

[Translation of the screenshot below: "Alan C. Baird, you l
…

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Saguaro decorations in Apache Junction (click image for 6-photo slideshow):

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Dr. Wicked's productivity tool is "a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you're fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are… Read full post »

[perception of life satisfaction and quality of life remains high among European citizens, low among Islamic terrorists]

Executive Summary: on November 19, 2008, Eurofound (the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, an EU policy organization) presented its "Seco… Read full post »

Live from San Francisco, as featured on CNN.

Update, December 7: the first set of puppies will soon be placed in new homes (maybe today), but now there's a SECOND set of kicsi kutyus cuteness, from West Chester, Pennsylvania!/

Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas" in early 1940, while sitting poolside at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. His comment: "I just wrote the best song I've ever written--hell, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"

Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters' version… Read full post »

Rachel Maddow, 35, is a Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in political science from Oxford. Her dissertation was on AIDS activism in prisons. During high school, she was a three-sport athlete who became the class valedictorian. At the last minute, she ditched the conventional preapproved graduation add/…

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Kutyaszar Fesztivál:

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The Dam Short Film Festival (see poster below) was founded in 2003 by Lee and Anita Lanier, to showcase films under 40 minutes in length.

The festival's home, Boulder City, Nevada, was originally founded as housing for the workers who were building Boulder Dam (now called Hoover Dam). The city (p… Read full post »

Mákos briós is the Hungarian version of a poppyseed brioche. It's very tasty, but if you look at one from the wrong angle, it appears to be... well, a dog turd.

Yesterday morning at 11am, a civic-minded performance-art group called NN decided to call attention to Budapest's growing canine-poop probl
…

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On the night of June 1, 2003, a Phoenix housewife named Stephenie Meyer had a dream. The dream was so vivid, she had to write it down... even though she had never written anything before. That dream eventually became a young-adult novel called Twilight. It spent a long time on the New
…

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 [The latest pain report.]

The Polish dominatrix (a/k/a my physical therapist, Yolanta) cranked my shoulder up to 146 degrees this morning, before I had to scream for mercy. So it's been a good day. But maybe that's just the Vicodin talking. ;-)

Then Yolanta wanted to hear the story of my lat…

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 by Adbusters:

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This arrived in my email yesterday. The website seems to be slammed right now...

Subj: HUNDREDS CLAIM CREDIT FOR NEW YORK TIMES SPOOF
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 3:56 PM
From: "New York Times Special Edition" special@nytimes-se.com
To: Alan C. Baird

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: writers@nytimes-se.
…

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