Radio is ruled by morons, Mexican mobsters lack originality and a special day for Major League Baseball

- The powers of petitions and protests are great things, and using them to fight wrongs and injustices in the world are a huge part of what makes free speech and rebellion so great. However, using those powers on a petition to have California Governor Ah-nold Schwarzenegger pardon Paris Hilton for her conviction on a probation violation doesn’t make you an outspoken dissident or a proponent of free speech, it makes you a dumbass. Trying to get a billionaire socialite skank out of a 45-day sentence because she not once but twice violation probation is about as big a waste of time as you can get. Paris should serve twice that much time in jail for wasting everyone in the world’s time by having to hear the nonstop gossip and coverage she gets because she’s famous without actually doing anything that should make her famous. She’s contributed nothing to the world at large (no, her multiple sex tapes don’t count) and yet she’s in the news nonstop. She’s made one terrible movie (House of Wax) that didn’t involve her taking her clothes off, so I’m with the Governator when he laughed off the petition to free Paris by saying he has more important matters to focus on.

- In what has become an annual tradition, Major League Baseball teams took part in a special promotion today, with players using pink bats (still standard wooden bats, just pink) and wearing pink wristbands to show support for breast cancer research on Mother’s Day. Teams do promotions for every game, but this is definitely a classy and great one, and props to all of the players using the pink bats and showing their support for an awesome cause.

- Skydiving is a dangerous activity and that’s part of the thrill. However, deaths involving skydivers typically happen when a parachute malfunctions and fails to open either partially or doesn’t open at all. Four intrepid thrill seekers in Marion, Mont. didn’t even get the chance to jump before their skydiving trip turned into a disaster. The plane the skydivers were planning on jumping out of crashed shortly after takeoff in a remote field (wait, isn't everything in Montana remote?), killing the four men and the pilot. That’s like going to bungee jump and getting killed because the ladder you climb up to the jump platform collapses or going whitewater rafting and being killed by a snake bite before you even make it to the water. It also doesn’t engender much faith in the potential success of a jump if the plane can't even make it up to jumping height before crashing. If disaster struck on what should be the easiest portion of the event, what kind of problems might have arisen once the plane was tens of thousands of feet above the earth?

- Godfather fans, they are indeed everywhere. At a military base in Veracruz, Mexico, some wacky Mexican gangstas left a severed head with a threatening note, with the “gift” intended as some sign of defiance by the organized crime sector in the area. The body that the head formerly belonged to was found shortly thereafter in a nearby neighborhood, but I really doubt the Mexican military is going to be badly shaken by this one. Let’s see……all manner of high-grade automatic weapons, tanks, bombs, grenades, planes, ships……yeah, I think they’ll be just fine. Organized crime has power and resources, no doubt, but if there’s one group I’m not going to directly challenge, it’s my country’s military. However, if you’re going to do so, you can do better than a severed head and a mean letter. The Godfather movies are a couple decades old, Mexican gangsters, so why don’t you use some of your ample financial resources to update your DVD library and perhaps catch the last few episodes of the Sopranos as well. If you’re going to base all of your intimidation tactics off of 20-year-old films, people are going to start thinking you have no imagination or originality.

- Why is it that the dumbest, most brain-dead morons in broadcasting are the ones who manage to land their own national show? Guys like Howard Stern and Don Imus became famous for acting like a-holes and saying insanely moronic things on air, and now Imus has been canned and Stern quarantined on satellite radio. Two other shock jocks on a New York-based show aired by CBS radio with Stern-like tendencies have just been given the heave-ho for a blatantly offensive skit rife with offensive stereotypes about Asians. Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay of The Dog House with JV and Elvis on WFNY-FM are the boneheads in question, and after their ill-advised skit they found their walking papers tacked to the brim of their urban sombreros, so to speak (a Seinfeld reference for you fans). I’d love to hear these guys explain how they thought this skit was going to be acceptable on air, especially after the uproar over Imus’ comments, which weren’t nearly as out of line and offensive as what Vandergrift and Lay said on air. Way to show your intelligence guys, your comedic talents obviously don’t extend beyond puerile, gimmicky and blatantly offensive material that most drunken frat dudes would find beneath them.