A cupcake shop called 2 Cupcakes has opened inside Melt: A Sandwich Shop at 5056 E. Broadway Blvd. Cupcakes are currently available from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

I first heard of this outfit several months ago when I considered taking one of their cupcake-decorating classes, only to find out that they were booked up for months. You can find more information about those classes and more here and here.

UA students currently studying the epic poetry of Homer are holding Homerathon, a marathon reading of all 24 books of The Iliad.

Anyone who would like to read a passage is invited to show up at the event today to sign up.

Other activities at Homerathon include food, music and reading of passages of The Iliad in its original Greek form.

Homerathon began this morning at 7 a.m., and will continue through the night until tomorrow morning, April 21.

Any last-minute questions can be sent to [email protected].

Update with playlist and download at bottom of the post

• Photo Ryn Gargulinski
• White sheep are too easy to steal.

Orange sheep deter thieves—or at least that’s the hopes of one farmer who dyed his entire flock of 250 sheep a bright-orange hue.

That story and more are up this week on Rynski’s Shattered Reality radio show on Party934.com and FM 94.9 in Hudson Valley, N.Y.

Next show is Wednesday, Apriil 20 (today!), and every Wednesday online at Party934.com. Showtime is noon in Arizona, 3 p.m. EST.

Party 934 is a radio alternative for listeners sick of stations that play one song followed by 500 commercials.

This week’s theme is songs that mention boys and girls, and, oh boy, we have a fantastic lineup.

Thanks! to all who keep the song requests coming.

Taco Bell has settled the suit over whatever they put in those tacos, but only after changes to their marketing and product disclosure.

I find it suspicious that the company couldn't just have a laboratory look at a taco and say, "This is beef." This fact will not slow me down at the drive-through, but it is weird.

From FoodBusinessNews.net:

IRVINE, CALIF. — Taco Bell said Montgomery, Ala.-based Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C. law firm voluntarily has withdrawn its class action lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court Central District of California Southern Division, called into question the filling Taco Bell uses in its tacos. The lawsuit claimed the filling does not meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s standard to be labeled or advertised as beef.

Taco Bell, which is a division of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum! Brands, Inc. said no money or other value was exchanged between the parties, and Taco Bell is not making any changes to its products or advertising.

“This sets the record straight about the high quality of our seasoned beef and the integrity of our advertising,” said Greg Creed, chief executive officer, Taco Bell. “We are extremely proud of our food quality. We took great exception to the false claims made about our seasoned beef and wish the attorneys had contacted us before filing and publicizing a lawsuit that disparaged our brand. We hope the voluntary withdrawal of this lawsuit receives as much public attention as when it was filed so we may put the matter behind us and fully concentrate on serving our customers.”

Dee Miles of Beasley Allen said the law firm withdrew the lawsuit after Taco Bell made changes to its marketing and product disclosure.

“We accepted Taco Bell’s invitation to confer with company representatives and share information and ideas about the issues in the case,” Mr. Miles said. “As a result of the lawsuit, changes in marketing and product disclosure were made by the company, allowing us to dismiss the case.”

In response to the lawsuit, Taco Bell took out full-page ads in at least nine major newspapers, aired television spots and launched a YouTube campaign to proclaim its taco filling is 88% beef.

After Sunday's 60 Minutes piece, Greg Mortenson might have thought the worst of the accusations regarding his book Three Cups of Tea and his financial relationship with the Central Asia Institute were behind him, but apparently author Jon Krakauer still had quite a bit of damaging information up his sleeve, releasing a 71 page mini-book on the new site Byliner.com as a free PDF, which refers to Mortenson's books as "full of lies". However, Mortenson responded to many of the allegations on Outside Magazine's website, sort of blaming the inaccuracies in the book on the co-author.

Regardless, with Mortenson's publisher now reviewing the book's accuracy, this story may not go away for awhile.

Black Light Dinner Party "Older Together" from dreambear on Vimeo.

Black Light Dinner Party seem to be in the mold of synth-poppy/vaguely danceable acts of recent years like Passion Pit and Miike Snow, but it's a little hard to say, because so far the band has been a little cagey with promotional information. There's a list of who's in the group and one song, "Older Together", and that's it. It's actually sort of refreshing, although I might just think that because I love the song.

If you hear female moaning next time you dial an 1-800 number, you can thank PrimeTel Communications:

For years, teenagers across the U.S. could call a toll-free hotline if they had embarrassing questions about AIDS and safe sex. Dial the same number now and you get a recording of giggling women offering to talk dirty to you.

"We both have big appetites for sex," they purr. "Pinch us and poke us. Spank us and tease us. We love it all. ... Enter your credit card number now."

Those naughty misdials, and countless others like them, appear to be no accident.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that over the past 13 years, a little-known Philadelphia company called PrimeTel Communications has quietly gained control over nearly a quarter of all the 1-800 numbers in the U.S. and Canada, often by grabbing them the moment they are relinquished by previous users. As of March, it administered more 800 numbers than any other company, including Verizon and AT&T.

And many, if not most, of those 1.7 million numbers appear to be used for one thing: redirecting callers to a phone-sex service.

Dial 1-800-Chicago and instead of reaching a tourism hotline for the Windy City, you will hear a woman offering "one-on-one talk with a nasty girl" for $2.99 per minute. A similar thing happens if you punch in the initial digits of 1-800-Metallica, 1-800-Cadillac, 1-800-Minolta, 1-800-Cameras, 1-800-Worship or 1-800-Whirlpool.

All those numbers contain messages redirecting callers to erotic chat lines operated by National A-1 Advertising, a company that shares an office building with PrimeTel, has common ownership and lists many of the same people as executives or business contacts.

Many people who mistakenly dial a phone-sex line probably just get red-faced and hang up as quickly as possible. Others apparently respond to the come-on and supply their credit card number.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

NBC's Savannah Guthrie pwns Donald Trump on his understanding of Roe V. Wade. TPM has details:

Donald Trump is 100% pro-life. Except when it comes to the basis of Roe v. Wade which made abortion legal in the United States. That he agrees with, 100%.

In an interview with MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie, Trump was asked if he believes there's a right to privacy in the Constitution.

The question is an important one in the abortion debate. Pro-lifers say there absolutely is not a Constitutional right to privacy, which means Roe is a travesty and abortion should once again be permitted to be outlawed in the states that choose to do so. Pro-choicers strenuously disagree, stating that the right to privacy is guaranteed and is extended to a woman's choice to have an abortion or not, the central basis of Roe.

Trump apparently thinks he can split the difference, and appeared to have no understanding of the connection between the view of a right to privacy and the abortion debate.

"I guess there is, I guess there is," Trump said when Guthrie asked if there's a Constitutional right to privacy. "And why, just out of curiosity, why do you ask that question?"

Guthrie informed him of the connection to abortion, but Trump seemed surprised that the two went together:

"Well, that's a pretty strange way of getting to pro-life. I mean, it's a very unique way of asking about pro-life. What does that have to do with privacy? How are you equating pro-life with privacy?"

Organizers of the Tucson Culinary Festival announced recently that this year's event will feature chances to check out four distinct dining regions within the city. From the press release:

“Dine Around Tucson” a new event this year, will take place on Friday, Oct. 28, and will feature a geographical selection of dining “trails,” giving guests a unique opportunity to explore one of four distinct dining districts of Tucson in one fun evening.

This is a good idea. The Tucson Culinary Festival is a great event, and using it to showcase some of the city's great eateries in their natural habitats only makes it better.

The rest of the press release after the jump.

Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times (who it might be worth mentioning is seemingly not above working for a paper that receives a significant amount of revenue from concert promoters adversely affected by the Sound Strike) really is doubling down on his pro-Sound Strike rhetoric today, going after Salon's interview with Rialto booker Curtis McCrary:

[Full disclosure: I am an occasional freelancer for the Phoenix New Times, and I once worked in the same building as Lemons, but haven't really met him.]

Music fans are suffering according to Grant and McCrary. Well, bestill my aching liver. The pair should explain their alt-music angst to the Hispanic families that have fled Arizona because of Senate Bill 1070, or the kids whose parents don't come home at night because they were caught up in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-immigrant raids and sweeps. And then there are those who've suffered severe injury at the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Surely those who die of thirst crossing the Sonoran Desert will feel the agony of all those iPod-bearers who won't be able to see their fave indie acts while sipping on a delicious micro-brew.

Maybe the immigrant woman whose arm was broken while in MCSO custody will shed a tear for them. The undocumented lady who got her jaw busted during one of Arpaio's operations? Perhaps she could do a fundraiser for these lame-sters.

Sorry, I have little patience with all this petulant kvetching coming from folks whose main dilemma in life is figuring out which to do first: download a Kings of Leon album, or catch the latest gossip on the FB.

Is that really helpful? Knowing quite a few of the people in this city trying to ward off the boycott, they're far too busy actually working, trying to keep their businesses open and worrying about their employees to "catch the latest gossip the FB", but at this point, I guess this what it's come to. Instead of actually trying to figure out the most effective way to change government policy around here, let's just broadly characterize each other. Personally, I'll live if I miss shows by one band or another, I just think the boycott hurts the wrong people, people who didn't have anything to do with SB 1070.

Instead, Lemons gives Sound Strike organizer Javier Gonzalez a platform to throw the term "hater" around again and lump Cypress Hill not playing Arizona in with the larger economic boycott, so that it can seem like all the effort is worth it. What's most funny/sad/frustrating to me is when Gonzalez writes that he's been waiting around for Arizonans to call him about putting together benefit shows. From multiple conversations I've had with promoters here, those calls have been coming in since before the election last year, so maybe it's not that no one is trying to set up shows, but that the Sound Strike isn't seeing what's in it for them to make those concerts happen.

I'd love to see fewer border crossing deaths. I'd love to see a sane immigration policy. I'd like to think, however, that we'll get closer to those goals by doing something, instead of defining the artists' response as playing San Diego one day sooner and endangering the livelihood of Arizonans who also want Russell Pearce and his ilk to go away.