The erotic “Fifty Shades of Grey”
apparently is too blue for the Brevard County Public Libraries system. The wildly popular first installment of a
titillating trilogy by British author E.L. James, “Fifty Shades” is parked atop
every best-seller list in the country, from Amazon to the New York Times. But the sadomasochistic saga won’t be found
any longer on Space Coast library shelves. All of a “handful” of copies were removed from
circulation earlier this week. “It’s quite simple — it doesn’t meet
our selection criteria,” said Cathy Schweinsberg, library services director. http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20120504/NEWS01/305040006/Sexy-tale-can-t-checked-out-Brevard-libraries?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1
Spanking,
sex and submission are raking in profits for erotic novel "Fifty Shades
of Grey", reinvigorating marriages and sparking anguished debates among
feminists, but there has been one unintended result of the novel - laughter. The best-selling book by British writer E.L.
James that has taken pop culture by storm also has become ripe for spoofs and
parodies, even as Hollywood is agog over who will play the leads in an upcoming
movie. Comedians, bloggers and political
satirists are having fun with the X-rated novel, dubbed "mommy porn,"
telling of wealthy hero Christian Grey and his sadomasochistic seduction of
naive young lover Anastasia Steele that is currently the third best-selling
book of 2012 on Amazon.com. One
satirical novel, "Fifty Shames of Earl Grey", has already been
snapped up by publishers and is headed for U.S. bookstores this summer. And as "Fifty Shades of Grey" topped
the New York Times best-seller list for a sixth week, talk show host Ellen
DeGeneres last week broadcast a spoof audio reading. DeGeneres used absurd paraphrases for the book's more
explicit terms and a kitchen spatula and bull whip as props in a clip that has
been viewed more than 800,000 times on YouTube. "Fifty Shames of Earl Grey" author Andrew Shaffer
said he wrote his parody novel in just 10 days. It stars a handsome, super wealthy count
called Earl Grey (after the British tea) who buys up businesses in his bid to
bring naive college student Anna into his world of naughty dialogue. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/entertainment-us-fiftyshades-humor-idUSBRE8401CP20120501
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Social
networking service Myspace has agreed to settle Federal Trade
Commission charges that it misrepresented its protection of users' personal
information. The settlement,
part of the FTC's ongoing
efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to
consumers, bars Myspace from future privacy misrepresentations,
requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for
regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years. The Myspace social network has millions of users who create
and customize online profiles containing substantial personalized content. Myspace assigns a persistent unique
identifier, called a "Friend ID," to each profile created on Myspace.
A user's profile publicly discloses his
or her age, gender, profile picture (if the user chooses to include one),
display name, and, by default, the user's full name. User profiles also may contain additional
information such as pictures, hobbies, interests, and lists of users'
friends. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/05/myspace.shtm
The Federal
Trade Commission is seeking a civil contempt ruling against the nation's
largest third-party billing company, alleging that it placed more than $70
million in bogus "cramming" charges on consumers' phone bills in
violation of a previous court order. The
FTC is asking a federal court to make the company pay more than $52.6 million,
the total amount that the company billed consumers and failed to refund. The FTC alleged that Billing
Services Group (BSG) placed charges on nearly 1.2 million telephone lines on
behalf of a serial phone crammer. The charges were supposedly for "enhanced
services," such as voicemail and streaming video, that consumers never
authorized or even knew about. "BSG
made it possible for con artists to steal people's hard-earned money by placing
charges on phone bills for services they never ordered or used," said
David Vladeck, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Under
previous federal court orders, BSG cannot profit from the fraud of others and
then deny responsibility for the harm they made possible." Billing aggregators act as intermediaries
between third-party vendors and the local phone companies by contracting to
have the local telephone companies collect charges for the vendors' services
from consumers. "Cramming" is
the placement of unauthorized charges on phone bills. In its contempt motion, the FTC said BSG failed
to investigate either the highly deceptive marketing for the services or
whether consumers even used them. BSG
kept billing for these services despite voluminous complaints from consumers
and even after major telephone companies refused to do so, the FTC's motion
stated. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/05/bsg.shtm
Vittoria Conn,
an employee of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP sued the law firm on May 10. Ms. Conn, a document specialist at Dewey,
says she and about 450 others will lose their jobs on May 11, according to a
lawsuit that alleges the troubled law firm failed to give notice to the
employees, as required by state and federal law. Ms. Conn said the firm announced the mass
layoff on May 7 and informed employees
that their last day was May 11. Her
lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, accuses Dewey of
violating a federal law that requires employers to give their employees 60 days
advance written notice of their termination. The lawsuit also alleges the firm broke a
state labor law that requires 90 days advance written notice.
A casting coordinator for The Avengers needed a string
quartet for a pivotal scene to be
filmed in Cleveland. A Google search
brought her to zinquartet.com. She liked
what she saw on the musicians' site and so did the film's director, Joss
Whedon. And that's how Toledo Symphony
members Merwin Siu, Jennifer Burns, Tim Zeithamel, and Renee Goubeaux managed
to score 30 seconds of screen time in the nearly 2 1/2-hour-long blockbuster. The
musicians appear as a string quartet at a museum party crashed by the film's
main villain, the evil god Loki. It was
the first film acting gig for the
Toledoans, though their roles weren't that much of a departure from real life.
Siu plays violin, Zeithamel and Burns play viola (she plays violin in the
movie), and Goubeaux plays cello. Their brief
appearance took 15 hours to film, from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. in one day. http://www.toledoblade.com/Music-Theater-Dance/2012/05/09/Toledo-Symphony-members-snare-screen-time-in-The-Avengers.html
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