"Cool Like Kielbasa": Leavenworth’s Got a Brand New Rap

And hot like a brawt: Leavenworth, WA, local ye olde favorite Christmas tourist trap is trying to bring in the young, YouTube-ing crowd with a hip-hop musical parody:

Featuring the town’s nutcracker mascot, Woody Goomsba, and local hootchie dancers in dirndles, the video is very, very strange, but has indubitably “reached out to a new audience,” which is the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce’s expressed intent. The video was released on Saturday, December 4, with no fanfare, but received 37,000 views on YouTube in the first 24 hours.

By contrast, Tumblr went down for 24 hours and there was much ado, indeed. According to Tumblr, the company had an unplanned issue during planned maintenance and a database cluster went down. Soon after, the world exploded. Fortunately, the start-up restarted, and the universe was able to reform and go on as if nothing of consequence had happened. Whew!

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The e-book wars continue, with Amazon now offering Kindle for the Web. The app lets readers use a web browser to read books! Amazing. The announcement came the day after Google announced the launch of Google eBookstore, which is also (obviously) platform-independent. Russ Grandinetti, Kindle Content VP, said that, “Kindle for the Web makes it possible for bookstores, authors, retailers, bloggers or other website owners to offer Kindle books on their websites and earn affiliate fees for doing so.” The news was announced at Google’s Chrome event, since Amazon’s Kindle for the Web will work on Chrome OS devices. Now that is keeping your enemies close.

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Speaking of enemies, Glenn Beck is currently No. 5, just ahead of Barack Obama, on Time’s Person of Year poll. Outpacing them both is Lady Gaga in third place, while accused rapist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is numero uno. Rounding out the list are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, tied at No. 4; Steve Jobs; Mark Zuckerberg; and me (along with millions of other “unemployed Americans”). Thanks for the props, America! It’s nice to beat out Mark Zuckerberg; now, if only he would give me a job.

Elizabeth Edwards, estranged wife of former Presidential candidate John Edwards and author of two NYT best-selling memoirs, passed away yesterday from breast cancer. Ms. Edwards was diagnosed in 2004 and is widely admired for the grace and humor with which she handled her multiple challenges. Broadway Books published Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers in September 2006; Crown Archetype released Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities in 2009. Resilience was reprinted this summer.

Remember the Cooks Source debacle? Judith Griggs hopes you don’t, but nothing ever dies on the internet. Griggs’ egregious plagiarism has won her Regret The Error‘s 2010 Error of the Year. To date, 160 Cooks Source articles have been fingered as partially or wholly plagiarized, and the magazine has ceased printing.

A much better type of immortality is that enjoyed by Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has been adapted into a four-hour drama by the BBC, starring Stephen Mangan. Howard Overman, writer of Misfits and Vexed, penned the script. Will BBC follow up with an adaptation of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul? Hopefully, only if Dirk Gently is as entertaining as it promises to be.

From BBC Four: “Dirk Gently operates his eponymous detective agency based on the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Perpetually broke, hopelessly chaotic and utterly infuriating, most people suspect Dirk is nothing more than a cheap conman. And they might be right–but nevertheless his methods, though unusual, do often produce surprising results.” Watch the clip: