Sherri Talley:  “How do you spell whiskey?”  Sharon Fullilove:  “Just look at the bottle on your desk.” 7/17/09

“What kind of a halfway house doesn’t have any women?”  –Nick Caloway 7/21/09

“There will be no smiling, no laughing and no eating!” –Trey Lankford 7/30/09

“Little tape fairies are going to fly down from Heaven and edit your tape for you!”  –Corrie Cross 7/31/09

KTBS Photojournalist Casey Habich spied this transformer, Optimus John Deere, acting all unassuming on a farm in Claiborne Parish.

Moments after Habich snapped this shot, OJD transformed into an awesome farmbot with a real thick southern accent and began clearing the crops of nasty Deceptipests.

It was cool.

Carbonated milk?  Really? 

Coke is coming out with carbonated, fruit flavored milk in a drink called Vio.  It’s being tested now.

The drinks will reportedly sell for about $2.50 a bottle. 

This concept reminds me of when we were kids and used to mix up gross stuff in the kitchen when Mom was napping and dare each other to drink the evil concoction.

This is not difficult.  Coke + Milk = Gross.

Here’s more:  No chilling required.  Mmmm, nothing like hot, carbonated milk on a 100-degree day! 

One of Coke’s copywriters claims it tastes “like a birthday party for a polar bear.”

Dare you to try it!

I was frantically late to our weekly internet meeting.  I grabbed a spot at the conference table, slammed open my laptop, silenced my cell phone.

Then, I saw it.

It took up the whole screen.  Long blond hair, a bicycle and some rockin’ silver platform sandals.

What is Taylor Swift doing as my screensaver?  I wanted to shout it, especially since it was in big, plain view of several co-workers sitting behind me, who at this point, might have had serious concerns about my personal life.

Awkward.

WON’T.  CLICK.  OFF.

Fast forward to last night’s talk with my son about who owns the rights to a screensaver on a shared laptop.  When I asked him to remove Taylor, he had some suggestions for a replacement he thought would be more suited to my taste.

You can’t make this stuff up!  Behind the scenes.  Makeup.  Hair.  The moments before on-air.  Sharing the makeup room with 5 of your closest co-workers.  Trying to write, produce, interview on multiple platforms of media, hold conference calls, meetings, report, actually running from one task to the other, while applying makeup at your desk!  It’s the last thing on our minds, and yet, sometimes the most obvious point of judgement against us!

Biggest question from viewers:  Do you have someone who does your hair and makeup before you go on-air?  That would be a big NO.  Never have.  Here’s a sample of us slapping on makeup like we’re painting a wall prior to the news and even making major adjustments on the set.  We don’t have time for that sissy stuff.  Just thought you should know what’s behind a bad hair/makeup day.

Have you noticed how many waiters/waitpersons/waitrons at area restaurants are now using the same verbage to describe what’s on the menu?  At least four times recently, at different eateries, they’ve used the words, “It’s gonna be…” to tell me about the special.  

It goes like this:

“It’s gonna be served with an organic spinach risotto or a nice rice pilaf.” 

“The scallops are gonna be seared to perfection and served with a lemon, butter ginger sauce.”

Is there some central waitron dictionary of descriptions?  Do all of the waitstaff from competing restaurants gather after hours behind closed doors and craft their wait-speak?  Is there some insider book with secrets to how to describe specials?  Is it trendy and hip and will probably go away soon? 

“Everytime I see Sotomayor out of the corner of my eye, I see that red jacket and black hair and I think it’s Michael Jackson.”  –Clay Kirby 7/14/09

“Once your eye ball is deflated, there’s no goin’ back.” –Casey Habich 7/16/09

Ed Walsh: “Anyone here ever had gout?”  Clay Kirby: ”Is that the stuff in between tiles?” 7/16/09

“Crime Team Meteorologist Marcy Novak.” –Casey Habich 7/16/09

Today, the meanies at Apple shut down the ability for the rival Palm Pre to act as an iPod by disabling the iTunes sync feature on the Pre. 

Is that all they got? 

We still have our super cool full qwerty keyboard and multi-tasking and syncing capabilities the iPhone so can’t PREtend to reach out and touch!  Also, there’s the way Apple spells y’all like this:  ya’ll. 

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr (pronounced NOO’-mire, like NEW’man when Seinfeld says it ) said the update “disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre.”

I first started thinking about the plural-of-you-issue when I twittered in jest that Sprint’s new Palm Pre automates contractions in all words except y’all/ya’ll.  Here’s how that went down.

Now, upon further newsroom debate, thought and lack of more fun topics to tackle, I need resolution.

Could it be Sprint doesn’t know where the apostrophe goes?  What makes Apple so sure?  A local AT&T rep told me that before the new 3GS came out, the iPhone spelled the contraction of you all “y’all”, but a recent software update shifts the apostrophe and forces iPhone 3GS users to text “ya’ll”.  They could have at least consulted Ricky Bobby.  The Sony Ericsson also automates the text to “ya’ll”.  My computer tells me “ya’ll” is misspelled, but “y’all” is correct.

From what I gather, the contraction of you-all is “y’all”, and the shortened version of ya-all is “ya’ll”.  But who has ever said, “ya-all”?  That’s a quick way to get beat up.

As a random Southerner, I’m pulling for the eradication of “ya’ll” and the official use of “y’all”.  I think Sprint needs to go ahead and make that move and Apple needs to correct its automated contraction of “ya’ll”.

What are all y’all’s opinions?