Free Republic

Does your home reflect your single status including your attitudes towards it or are they formed from childhood and how your parents home was like. Is your home functional, decorative, needs attention and somewhat tired or well maintained and modern? If you had a partner do you think it would be different? Daveloneranger gave a few single spins on the topic. Would a guy who can “DIY” be somehow more attractive to a lady? If he was not a pratical person either around the house or with cars/bikes or other machines would that make him somehow less attractive, appealing or...

BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Dec. 31, 2000.) Today's topic for homeowners is: how to install a tile floor. Any home decorator will tell you that there is nothing quite like a tile floor for transforming an ordinary room into an ordinary room that has tile on the floor. But if you're like most homeowners, you think that laying tile is a job for the ''pros.'' Boy, are you ever stupid! Because the truth is that anybody can do it! All it takes is a little planning, the right materials and a Fire Rescue...

While Hillary Clinton attempts to storm the Oval Office, some of her less renowned sisters are busy liberating one of the few other remaining male strongholds: the hardware store. Strange as it sounds in a country still steeped in Tim Allen reruns, gals are becoming fix-it guys. And at least in some places tools are replacing brass-studded leather totes as the newest female life-style accessory. The home-improvement industry has always been a no-woman's land known for its drab aisles lined with nail bins and mysterious steel objects whose purpose was understood only by grunting guys in flannel shirts. Now it...

Rockwall man boasts of nuclear reactor, but no arrest made Thursday, January 10, 2008 By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News A 22-year-old Rockwall man's Internet boasts that he had made a mini-nuclear reactor in his garage resulted in a visit recently by federal authorities. Representatives with the FBI and the Texas Department of State Health Services' Radiation Control Program took away the man's science equipment on Friday – but not because he was doing anything dangerous or illegal. Rather, the man's parents, with whom he is living, asked that the equipment be removed, officials said. The man, who...

Cabbie pulls teeth out Oct 20 09:08 AM US/Eastern A man described how he pulled out seven of his own teeth because he was told to wait for an appointment to see an NHS dentist. Taxi driver Arthur Haupt used pliers and a technique he had learned in the army to carry out the DIY dentistry. He said he was forced in agony into taking the drastic action because he was given a three-week wait by staff at his local NHS dental surgery.

Transgendered person charged with practicing medicine without license 05:39 PM EDT on Friday, August 17, 2007 Reported by: Lindsey Roberts Suffolk Police have arrested a man and charged him with practicing medicine without a license. According to police, Francis Renee White, 36, of South Main Street, injected silicone into other transgendered people. Police say the shots, used to plump up lips, cheeks and breasts, were administered inside White's home. The injections were with the consent of the transgender customers, but the practice is illegal and very dangerous. "They did them in different places, but generally the face the buttocks or...

POP legend Sir Elton John wants the internet CLOSED DOWN. Never one to keep his opinions to himself, the Rocket Man has waded into cyberspace with all guns blazing. He claims it is destroying good music, saying: “The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. “Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. “It’s just a means to an end. “We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to...

Homeowners Margaret and Daniel Anderson were proud of the work they did to upgrade their basement -- until all the lights went out. Electricians investigated, and found a fire hazard: Some wires were loose, bare and crammed together so tightly that electrical boxes were getting singed. The Andersons ended up paying a handyman service $10,000 to tear out walls and finish the basement. "It was all wrong," says Ms. Anderson. "They just bailed us out." Remodel for Less Than $500 The recent do-it-yourself boom has led to a growing number of botched projects as ambitious homeowners get in over their...

The former home of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, who died in July, has attracted huge interest from potential buyers undeterred by the reclusive singer's patchy home improvement efforts. Dozens of people have viewed the 1930s house in Cambridge, England, which in the delicate words of the estate agent "provides an excellent opportunity for sympathetic improvement and updating." The walls are painted a patchwork of pink, orange, brown, blue, turquoise and lavender, while cheap wooden shelves cling precariously to the walls of every room. Barrett's decorating has done little to deter people from taking a look, with 40 viewings last...

DENVER, N.C. - A man taking a break from painting burned down his house after trying to snuff out a cigarette in a bowl of paint thinner. Stevie Spencer had put the bowl on his coffee table before taking a smoke break about 10 p.m. Saturday. "I forgot paint thinner was in the bowl," Spencer said. "I thought it was water." The fire from the paint thinner ignited some papers, Spencer said. He got his wife out of the house, then tried to extinguish the flames with a hose. Spencer suffered minor injuries. Fire Chief Jay Flynn said the house...

Discovery's astronauts had misgivings about the risky spacewalk mission to the shuttle's fragile belly but agreed to try the repair because it seemed relatively easy to do, crewmembers said on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Steve Robinson will make space history when he ventures out to Discovery's smooth underside to try to remove two loose fiber strips sticking out from between the crucial heat-resistant tiles. "Like most kinds of repairs, it's conceptually very simple, but it has to be done very, very carefully," Robinson said during a news conference from space on NASA's first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster. The...

Joe Radzierez wasn't hot for David Hasselhoff when "Knight Rider" hit the small screen in 1982. Radzierez was panting for the car. The Henryville man was 18 when "Knight Rider" debuted. Immediately, he was a fan. Not so much of the show. Oh, no -- for Radzierez, it was all about the car. Then and there he decided he must have KITT. "I was a man on a mission," he said. KITT (which stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand) was the cool ride of Michael Knight (played by Hasselhoff). Eight years after the fateful moment when he knew he must...

Want a Mac in your living room? How about your car? Apple’s tiny and affordable Mini does it all...

To: U.S. Congress This is a petition to amend The Preamble to the Bill of Rights. My reason for initiating this action is to once and for all affirm a fact that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. We are all too familiar with the spate of frivolous law suits in this country. With the strident voices demanding rights at every turn and asserting that almost anything and everything is a violation of their rights and with no less than the epitome of a good idea gone bad, the ACLU, chorusing along with such anarchists. The reality of fact that...

The irony of “conservative punk,” or ConPunk as it’s uncommonly known, is not lost on yours truly. According to my thesaurus, “conformist” is a synonym of “conservative.” We’ve heard enough about Punkvoter.com and Rock against Bush in the past year to be swayed into thinking that punk rock – the few remaining bones of punk rock’s corpse not already sold to television commercials – is decidedly liberal. But punk rock’s history is steeped in conservative politics; it should come as no surprise that there’s been a rise in conservative punk in recent years. To those who choose not to take...

A Statement of our Mission At Conservative punk, our mission is threefold: 1. To inform today's youth that identify themselves with the punk scene with the facts, rather than rumor and conspiracy theory. 2. To encourage today's youth to register to vote and become engaged in politics. 3. To encourage youth voters to draw there own conclusions rather than indoctrinate them into a certain way of thinking. Punk music has been, and still is, one of the most heavy-handed genres of music there is. Unfortunately the topics of such heavy-handed songs are almost always seeped in left wing propaganda, bumper...

George W Bush: Punk icon? By Damian Fowler BBC reporter in New York It sounds unlikely, but there is a surprising new subculture emerging in the United States: Republican punk rockers. In his knee-high Dr Martens and with his head shaved, Michale Graves is the Bush-friendly face of punk rock. He is the front man for the band Gotham Road, which has just kicked off its US tour. On stage he belts out angry, obscure lyrics, but offstage he is also known for his conservative rants and raves. "The leftist radical agenda seems to be resonating loudly from within pop...

Pearl Jam doesn't play the corporate game. Or so the hugely successful Seattle-based rock music group would have you believe. The band's origins are in that city's anti-corporate, grunge rock movement. Fronted by singer-songwriter Eddie Vedder, the band's street credibility was reinforced by a lengthy, late 1990s feud with Ticketmaster, which the band boycotted in an effort to keep ticket prices down for its fans. But last week, a Delray Beach, Fla., music entrepreneur, Shep Alster, challenged Pearl Jam's populist image in Palm Beach Circuit Court. He is suing the band and its business consultant, Peter McQuaid, contending that they...

Concert CDs sold on the spot by a radio giant New York Times News Service Clear Channel Communications, the radio broadcasting and concert promotion giant, plans to introduce on Monday a venture that will sell live recordings on compact disc within five minutes of a show's conclusion. The venture, Instant Live, will enable a band's still-sweating fans to leave with a musical souvenir instead of, say, a pricey T-shirt or a glossy program. Although initially modest, involving only small-audience clubs and theaters in the Boston area, the venture could eventually extend beyond radio and concerts into music distribution. And that...

<p>It's never been easier to build your own PC.</p> <p>People from all walks of life do it. Accountants, students, housewives, and engineers build their own PCs. I had a memorable conversation with a cab driver at the last Fall Comdex (see Is DIY Dead? (Redux)) about building PCs. Components are easy to install, connection standards are robust, and operating systems are easier to set up--even Linux is easier to install than, say, Windows 3.0.</p>