Watercooler Stories

Girl, 13, sends 14,528 texts in a month

SILVERADO CANYON, Calif., Jan. 12 (UPI) -- A California father says he discovered his 13-year-old daughter sent 484 text messages per day last month -- one message every 2 minutes of every waking hour.

Greg Hardesty of Silverado Canyon, Calif., told the New York Post his 440-page cell phone bill revealed his daughter Reina had sent an astonishing 14,528 text messages.

"First, I laughed. I thought, 'That's insane, that's impossible,'" said Hardesty, 45, a reporter for The Orange County Register. "And I immediately whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible."

Hardesty said Reina had messaged a core of "four obsessive texters," all girls between the ages of 12 and 13. Lucky for him, he was on an unlimited text messaging plan or his bill would have been $2,905 at a rate of 20 cents per message, the Post reported.

Hardesty told the newspaper he and his ex-wife have placed restrictions on Reina's cell-phone use, ruling she cannot text after dinner.

When it comes to texting, it appears Reina has much in common with a New Zealand teenager. It was reported last month that Hannah Brooke, 16, of Wellington frequently uses up the 6,000 messages she's allowed each month and borrows phones from friends to keep on texting.

World's oldest woman wants her privacy

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Los Angeles resident Gertrude Baines says she is sick of all the attention she has gotten since becoming the world's oldest person at age 114.

Baines said since 115-year-old Maria de Jesus of Portugal died Jan. 2 -- giving Baines the world's oldest person title -- she has been plagued with non-stop questions from reporters and curious people, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Baines, a Western Convalescent Hospital resident, said after four straight days of non-stop visits and questions, she was overwhelmed.

"I just want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head," she said.

Cynthia Thompson, who serves as Baines's caretaker, said most people who first meet the 114-year-old approach her with some misconceptions about how her many years of life have left her mental and physical acuity.

"They expect to find a shriveled up old lady sleeping in her bed," Thompson told the Times. "But that's not Ms. Baines."

'George the Lobster' released into sea

NEW YORK, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Longtime New York restaurant mascot George the Lobster is back in his natural element -- the waters of the Atlantic Ocean -- an animal rights group says.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Saturday its efforts to liberate George from his tank at City Crab and Seafood restaurant in Manhattan have been successful, with the 140-year-old crustacean set loose into the sea, CNN reported.

"We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace," PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement. "We hope that their kind gesture serves as an example that these intriguing animals don't deserve to be confined to tiny tanks or boiled alive."

The New York Daily News said George was driven in a special ice-lined cooler to Portsmouth, N.H., where a crustacean expert facilitated his transition back into the wild. The lobster was then driven to Maine and released in protected waters near Kennebunkport.

Guerrilla artist's Obama poster in museum

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- The National Portrait Gallery in Washington has acquired an image of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama created by an artist with a long police record.

Shepard Fairey's portrait of Obama became one of the most common images of the candidate during the 2008 presidential campaign and led to Fairey's being named "Icon Maker" of the year by Time magazine. The portrait is a mixed-media collage that ended up on T-shirts and hats along with posters and magazine covers, the British newspaper The Independent said.

"We all fell in love with it," said Carolyn Kinder Carr, the curator of the portrait gallery. "We always like portraits that reflect a particular moment in history, and we like the fact that it is an image that resides in popular culture."

Fairey, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, founded a studio specializing in "guerrilla marketing" and was best known until recently for his rock album covers -- including covers for Black Eyed Peas and Led Zeppelin. He has been arrested 14 times -- most recently during the Democratic Convention in Denver when he and some colleagues got picked up when their postering took them into what he called a "hot zone" of high security.