cheesebikini?

March 2006 – Dunkin’ Donuts is acquired by the Carlyle Group and two other buyout firms. The Carlyle Group, headquartered on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill, pays George’s daddy for public speeches promoting Carlyle interests.

The firm has many strong ties to the Washington establishment as well as to the Bin Ladens and to powerful politicians and businesspeople in Asia and the Middle East.

Carlyle’s massive investments in a range of weapons firms, oil corporations and media companies ensure it handsome profits from U.S. military incursions in the Middle East.

June 2006 – Dunkin’ Donuts publicizes a new plan to “rapidly expand to nearly 15,000 US locations by 2020,” according to the Boston Globe.

July 2006 – George W. Bush’s handlers arrange a photo opp at a Virginia Dunkin’ Donuts, where George passes out Dunkin’ Donuts products to reporters and carefully poses with the Dunkin’ Donuts logo in plain view.

Unkind Donuts, indeed. Webloggers are writing about this; I’d say it’s time for the old-school media to point it out.

Arthur spotted this ad last week in a Stockholm subway station.

Just when I thought I could stop writing about flash mobs, more strange news emerges.

For the record: it seems I wasn’t the first person to use the words “flash” and “mob” together. Apparently “flash mob” was a name used in the 1800s to describe an Australian subculture of female prisoners, based on the term “flash language” for the jargon these women used. For whatever it’s worth, the 1800s Australian term “flash mob” referred to a segment of society, not an event, and had no other similarities to the modern “flash mob” term.

Details at Boing Boing and at Derek Lackaff’s weblog. (Note that the postcard image at the top of these entries was created in 2004, not in the 1800s.) More about the 1800s “flash mob” subculture in Tasmania here.

My dear friends Mie and Dav Yaginuma are parents as of 9:20 this morning. Tesla Rhea Yaginuma weighed in at 7 pounds. Welcome Tesla, and congratulations. You must have won the baby lottery to have these parents.

Above: Dav lactates in a demonstration of solidarity with Mie and love for Tesla. More photos: 1, 2. Details and even more photos: kokochi.com.

Tesla is healthy and beautiful, and her Mom’s happy and recovering well. They named her after Nikola Tesla. Experts confirmed that Tesla is not, as originally feared, the reincarnation of Kenneth Lay.

Update: Patrick Roddie took much better photos.