- This shouldn’t be surprising when guys are creating giant rubber bands balls and thousands of people are hula-hooping in unison in an attempt to set world records and grab for some publicity, but would someone, anyone, please tell me why the hell we have a World Championship of Liars? Yes, that’s right, more than 300 losers gathered recently in Burlington, Wisconsin to see who could tell the best or biggest lie. What the criteria were, I don’t know, nor do I need to know. But if you want to know some particulars, here they are: some loser was declared the champion, while the other 299 losers, well, lost. They all wasted their time doing something lame in an attempt to get some glory, and now they can all go back to their normal lives and practicing for next year’s contest. Congratulations, idiots, for finding new and increasingly pointless ways to waste your time and energy.
- Residents of New Orleans have to be thrilled as they continue to go about rebuilding their still hurricane-ravaged city to find out that in addition to being a magnet for hurricanes, the Big Easy is also sinking and sliding right into the ocean. Now to be truthful, the sinking part of the equation has long been known, as evidenced by severely potholed streets and wobbly porches and floors in many buildings. But scientists researching the geography of the area now cheerfully report that New Orleans is also sliding laterally into the Gulf, meaning that sooner or later, water is going to be the demise of the city, either via natural disaster or simple geographical realities. What better incentive to rebuild your badly damaged city than the realization that eventually it’s going to slide or sink right into the ocean.
- Reason #53 to avoid flying on United Airlines: it was recently revealed that last fall, United employees, among them several pilots, reported seeing some type of UFO at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. These misguided souls claim the craft was saucer shaped, had no lights and hovered over the terminal for a bit before shooting up through the clouds. The FAA dismissed the claims as a weather phenomenon, but they may be ignoring the real culprit: one too many stops to the airport bar. A quick check of the blood-alcohol content for those same United employees might have shown some interesting numbers. A United supervisor even called the control tower, asking if they had seen a spinning, disc shaped object. What I’m going to want to see, actually, is a sobriety test for all United pilots and a mental health check before I board one of their planes. Whether they’re sauced or just delusional, I don’t want my pilot flipping out because he or she thinks they see a UFO as we prepare for landing. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, “Hey United employees, you might want to take a break, just stop talking for awhile, champ.”
- Two of the best, most exciting college football games I’ve seen, ever, have come in the past week and both were bowl games that had no bearing on the national title whatsoever. The Boise State win over Oklahoma was breathtaking, an unbelievable twisty, turny thriller that you just couldn’t stop watching, even if it was nearly 1 a.m. on the East Coast. Boise State, disrespected team from the WAC, BCS-crasher that no one felt belonged, rushing out to a 28-10 lead, then seeing Oklahoma rally to tie on a last-minute drive with a two point conversion try twice prolonged by penalty, then having Oklahoma return an interception for a touchdown less than 15 seconds later to go up 35-28…….hang on, almost done…..then to have Boise State win on a hook and lateral play with time running out to tie it, that alone was amazing. But then to have BSU give up a first play TD to Oklahoma in the first overtime, march down and have a former walk-on, wide receiver/running back hybrid throw a fourth down TD pass while their QB split out as a receiver, followed by the Statue of Liberty misdirection play for the winning two-point conversion in a 43-42 win…..it’s still exciting just to write about it, let alone watch it. It’s almost enough to make you forget about the 44-41 Texas Tech win in the Insight Bowl, but that game also is too good to forget. Tech rallied from a 31-point deficit, the biggest rally in any bowl game ever, and won in two overtimes. The collapse by their opponent, the Minnesota Golden Gophers, was enough to cost UM coach Glen Mason his job. What a bowl season, and oh yeah, we’re not even to the national championship game yet.
- Since our society loves projecting blame onto everyone but people who are responsible for their own choices…….researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that…..their football coach sucks. No, kidding, that problem has been addressed already. The researchers claim, actually, to have found that diet articles in magazines lead to eating disorders in teenage girls. No, they’re not referring to the pictures of ultra-thin models in those same magazines, although critics have beaten that blame horse nearly to death as well in trying to assign blame for eating disorders amongst young women. But this study suggests that articles about how to “get the perfect body” and similar headlines can then cause eating disorders and other unhealthy weight loss behavior in girls years down the road. Right, because it can't possibly be that they and their parents have failed to pay attention to and monitor possibly unhealthy eating habits and weight loss behavior. It couldn’t be because peers have teased them about their weight and it couldn’t possibly be because they actually are overweight. It may seem insensitive to be sarcastic about eating disorders; that’s not my beef. They are a real, significant problem. However, trying to assign blame to magazine articles a girl may have read four years ago is a misguided attempt to point the finger at someone else.
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