Brentwood International

Politics without buzzwords is like sports without clichés, math without numbers or Blago without bleeps. Tough to imagine, in other words, especially in such a game-changer of a campaign year in which buzzwords were flying like shoes.
A nickname for the former vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

A vacation from work or school that does not involve traveling.

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When Jill Bell noticed a dent on the hood of her car two winters ago, she thought it would be appropriate to paint a Band-Aid on the scrape.
After the painted bandage survived the ice and snow of winter, Bell decided that she wanted to repaint her car entirely - in nail polish.Over the next 13 months, from September 2007 to this past October, she completely covered her car in a quilt-like pattern – as a quilter, she found the multi-pattern paint job fitting, she said.
Bell said she collected between 100 to 250 bottles of nail polish, but did not have an exact idea as she simply used bottles from anyone she could get it from. And what was the reaction to the unconventional paint job? Bell said that while children seem to flock to her car, many adults giver her strange looks. "The only people who have said anything are the people that like it," Bell said.

Let's make an example out of two recent flicks: "High School Musical 3" and "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa." An early scene in each contains the same hideous grammar error -- the use of me where I belongs.

From "Madagascar":
"You and me are different, son."

From "High School Musical":
"Me and my dad built this tree house."

It's not English; it's Caveman (or "Cavemanglish," if you want to make a portmanteau out of it). Only two characters can get away with talking like that: Tarzan and Cookie Monster. Everyone else needs to know the difference between I and me.
There are just two little rules to remember when deciding between I, me and assorted other pronouns. Anyone can learn these.

Rule No. 1: I is the subject
Its official name is a nominative pronoun. All this really means is that it's standing in for your subject.

So, use I when the pronoun you need is working as the subject of a clause or a sentence. I built this tree house. My dad and I built this tree house.

Rule No. 2: Me is the object
It is an objective pronoun. It means it's standing in for your object.
So, use me when your pronoun works as an object in the sentence or clause. A pronoun can be the object in two ways:

• It can be the object of a verb. For example: The sushi (your subject) made (your verb) me (your object) sick. The movie gave Monica and me a fright.
• It can be the object of a preposition. For example: She sent the letter to (a preposition) me.

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Sorry Liz, but THIS is the real face of Cleopatra! From Elizabeth Taylor to Sophia Loren, there have been many faces of Cleopatra. But this might be the most realistic of them all. Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton believes the compute regenerated 3D image is the best likeness of the legendary beauty famed for her ability to beguile.Pieced together from images on ancient artefacts, including a ring dating from Cleopatra's reign 2,000 years ago, it is the culmination of more than a year of painstaking research.
The result is a beautiful young woman of mixed ethnicity - very different to the porcelain-skinned Westernised version portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1961 movie Cleopatra. She probably wasn't just completely European. You've got to remember that her family had actually lived in Egypt for 300 years by the time she came to power.' A statue of Cleopatra exhibited at the British Museum in 2001 portrayed her as plain, no more than 5ft tall and rather plump.

Born in Alexandra in 69BC, into a Macedonian Greek dynasty which had ruled Egypt for three centuries, Cleopatra acceded to the throne at 17. Three years later she seduced Julius Caesar, bearing him a son, Caesarion.
After Caesar was assassinated she courted Mark Antony before committing suicide on his death. Legend has it that she put an asp, a venomous serpent, to her breast.

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On Dec. 31 this year, your day will be just a second longer. Like the more well-known time adjustment, the leap year, a "leap second" is tacked on to clocks every so often to keep them correct.
Earth's trip around the sun — our year with all its seasons — is about 365.2422 days long, which we round to 365 to keep things simpler. But every four years, we add 0.2422 x 4 days (that's about one day) at the end of the month of February (extending it from 28 to 29 days) to fix the calendar. Likewise, a "leap second" is added on to our clocks every so often to keep them in synch with the somewhat unpredictable nature of our planet's rotation, the roughly 24-hour whirl that brings the sun into the sky each morning. In 1970, an international agreement established two timescales: one based on the rotation of the Earth and one based on atomic time. The problem is that the Earth is very gradually slowing down, continually throwing the two timescales out of synch, so every so often, a "leap second" has to be tacked on to the atomic clock.

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is the organization that monitors the difference in the two timescales and calls for leap seconds to be inserted or removed when necessary. Since 1972, leap seconds have been added at intervals varying from six months to seven years — the most recent was inserted on Dec. 31, 2005.

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This one was produced by Singapore jeweler Soo Kee Jewelery and was, at the time, the most expensive tree ever produced. Encrusted with 21,798 diamonds totaling 913 carats, 3,762 crystal beads and decorated with 456 lights., the tree is almost 20 foot tall and weighs over 7,000 pounds - Price - $1,005,000.00 The tree was on display in the Burgis Junction shopping Mall in Singapore.

Paul Nawrocki says he's beyond the point where he cares about humiliation. That's why he weekly takes a 90-minute train ride to New York, where he walks the streets wearing a sandwich board that advertises his plight: The former toy-industry executive needs a job. "Almost homeless," reads the sign. "Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager."Wearing a suit and tie under the sign, Nawrocki -- who was in the toy industry 36 years before being laid off in February -- stands on Manhattan corners for hours, hoping to pass resumes to interested passers-by. "When you're out of work and you face having nothing -- I mean, having no income -- pride doesn't mean anything," Nawrocki said. "You need to find work. I have to take care of my family."

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He's only 9, but this pint-sized pickup artist already knows plenty about pleasing the ladies. So much, in fact, that Alec Greven's dating primer, "How to Talk to Girls" - which began as a handwritten, $3 pamphlet sold at his school book fair - hit the shelves nationwide last week. the fourth-grader from Castle Rock, Colo., advises Lothario wannabes to stop showing off, go easy on the compliments to avoid looking desperate - and be wary of "pretty girls."
"It is easy to spot pretty girls because they have big earrings, fancy dresses and all the jewelry," he writes in Chapter Three.
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