As of this evening, the American flag at the McDonald’s on the corner of Power and McKellips is back at full-staff:

This despite the fact that another McDonald’s executive — the founder of the company’s presence in Japan — died of another heart problem. (No word on whether the Japanese flag is at half-staff on McDonald’s restaurants in Japan.)

Not that you care anymore. Hell, not that I care anymore. BrendanLoy.com: McDonald’s-flag-related news is so last week; now your #1 source for controversial-French-label-related news.

Labelgate update: Agence France-Presse reports that sales for bags with French text on the label proclaiming “We’re sorry our president is an idiot. We didn’t vote for him” have doubled, while the company producing them has received “varied reactions” — including “hate mail from a French citizen who thought the label was addressed to Jacques Chirac.” Ha!

The company itself declares, “Everyone seems to have a ‘president’ that they think is an idiot. Take your pick: Jacques Chirac, Bill Clinton, George Bush.” Company president Tom Bihn told AFP, “It depends on either your nationality, or the president you think is an idiot; you choose.”

Actually, it’s Bihn himself who was the original “idiot,” according to the company website:

The “secret” message began as an inside joke among seamstresses and staff at the Tom Bihn factory, and was apparently intended to poke fun at company’s founder and president, Tom Bihn.

Heh.

You can buy the various controversially-labeled products here. The infamous label is also now available in t-shirt form.

Just four brief items today, before I focus on eating…

1. Fark’s take on the Kerry medal controversy: “I did not have sex with those medals…er, ribbons, uh, woman.” Heh.

2. In a related story, the publisher has revealed that Bill Clinton’s memoirs are due out in late June. The new Harry Potter movie, due out June 4, will still be the most-anticipated event of the month, however.

3. Some blogger has screenshots (apparently real!) of Google’s Gmail. (Hat tip: Dane.)

4. Last but not least, it seems the outcome of the presidential election hinges on the Oct. 31 football game between Green Bay and Washington. (Hat tip: the John Kerry blog.) Well, all I can say is: GOOOOOO PACKERS!!!!

UPDATE: I can’t resist adding a fifth item for this story: a man in Mexico was so drunk, he slept through being run over by a train! The man was fine; the train’s undercarriage missed him by a few inches. He woke up much later, once paramedics were already on the scene.

“I counted only six beers,” a bewildered Lozano Lopez told local newspaper El Norte. “But who knows how many more there might have been. I don’t remember.”

Heh.

The official death toll from Thursday’s train disaster in North Korea is 154 and likely to rise. Reuters has photos, and the Independent has a description of what happened:

Eyewitnesses describes the explosion as a fireball like a nuclear bomb, which sent up a black mushroom-shaped cloud, flattened dozens of buildings, scattered debris for miles around, and left a crater 50ft deep. A Red Cross worker said the railway station and immediate surroundings were “obliterated” and hundreds of buildings up to three miles away were destroyed.

And then there’s this:

In the small community of North Korean defectors in Seoul, a story is circulating that Kim Jong Il, the North’s leader, narrowly avoided an assassination attempt by changing his schedule at the last moment. According to the rumours, residents of Ryongchon were not informed of his new schedule. Some 700 children were lined up on the platform to wave flags in greeting but were caught in a blast timed to kill him as his train went past.

Dude. It was a joke.

Nicholas Kristof: “I’ve argued often that gay marriage should be legal and that conservative Christians should show a tad more divine love for homosexuals. But there’s a corollary. If liberals demand that the Christian right show more tolerance for gays and lesbians, then liberals need to be more respectful of conservative Christians.”

Read the whole thing.

It hasn’t been a good day for photo editors. First, the New York Times ran a photo of Colorado Republican Senate candidate Pete Coors with a caption indicating he was a Ku Klux Klansman who killed a black sharecropper in Louisiana in 1966.

Then, we learned that a bunch of the controversial photos of Iraq war coffins are actually photos of Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew. (Matt Drudge has more.)

McDonald’s flag update!! As of this evening, when I got off the bus, the American flag at the McDonald’s on the corner of Power and McKellips was still at half-staff.

BrendanLoy.com: Hopefully at least your #2 or #3 source for McDonald’s-flag-related news.

Although details remain extremely sketchy, it appears the horrendous train collision in North Korea may be the worst train disaster in world history, in terms of the death toll.

(more…)

Do a Google search for waffles. Watch what happens. Can you say “Google bomb”? Heh.

In honor of Earth Day 2004, Kerry plans to announce that Bush sucks. Bush replies, “No, I don’t.” Environmentalists (and Christians!) retort, “Yes, you do.”

In other political news… The Treasury Department. The Bush-Cheney ‘04 re-election campaign. Compare and contrast.

Glenn Reynolds thinks the awful human tragedy in North Korea “sounds suspicious as well as dreadful.”

Contrary to previous reports, the Internet is not about to melt down. We think.

Minnesota students say, “I saw a gun.” School officials say, “Really? Where?” Students say, “Over there.” School officials send students home. Students 1, School Officials 0.

Today’s funny Photoshop contest from Fark: unlikely Star Trek book covers. Prepare for some good (i.e., bad) Borg puns…

A military chaplain writes to Andrew Sullivan with context and perspective on Fallujah. As usual, we report, you engage in comment flame-wars…. er, I mean, you decide.

And finally, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a classic example of a news-story lede that is totally straightforward, entirely factual… and that very clearly expresses an opinion:

On Sept. 11, 2001, the fourth hijacked plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field, the quick action of passengers possibly saving the U.S. Capitol from becoming a fireball. Now, two-and-a-half years later, Congress is readying its response.

Heh. No one can possibly object to anything in that paragraph — it is literally just a recitation of facts. Yet the underlying opinion (”What took them so long?”) couldn’t be clearer.

Media bias is fun, when it’s clever.

The AP reports:

As many as 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station near the Chinese border, South Korean media reported.

Jesus.

Another American-flag-related controversy…

UPDATE: The plot thickens. Drudge reports:

Hundreds of photos capturing flag-draped caskets carrying dead soldiers from Iraq have hit the Internet.

The Pentagon has moved to block any and all images of the dead arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home to the Defense Department’s largest mortuary.

But in the Internet Era, information and images flow without respect to government decree.

Dover handles most, if not all, military personnel killed overseas.

Early Thursday, hundreds of emotion-swirling photos were unleashed online.

The Washington Post provides context and perspective.