- If only more people had the courage and adventurous spirit of Josh Minney, the world would be much better off. Of course, if more people have the financial savvy of Josh Minney, the world would also be much more broke. Minney, a 22-year-old student at Northeastern University, traveled around the world, covering three continents and visiting places like Morocco, Rome and London. He finally reached the end of his trip in Rome and was ready to head home when he realized that he was facing a crucial problem: no money left. Yes, this dude managed to traverse the globe, see a variety of cultures, historical landmarks and experience enough amazing sights for a lifetime, but he was apparently having too much fun to stop and count how much cash he had left. Facing this problem, Minney did what any person under the age of 30 would do when faced with a similar quandary – he auctioned himself off on eBay. The winning bidder, Darlene Anderson, a psychic from Quincy, Mass., agreed to pay Minney’s travel expenses (about $950) to get back to America, and in return she will receive Minney’s services as a manual laborer for a week. In retrospect, as embarrassing as it may be to run out of money, not be able to get home and have to pimp yourself out for plane fare, if that’s what you have to do to be able to make a trip like the one this guy took, it’s worth it any day of the week.
- Bud Selig is most assuredly wishing he could have a take-back right about now. Yesterday at a press conference in Los Angeles, Selig had the audacity and sheer testicular fortitude to label his efforts in attending Barry Bonds’ games as Bonds tries to break Hank Aaron’s career home run record as “Herculean.” “Herculean”? I don’t freaking think so, you egomaniacal bastard. How exactly is getting on a private jet after being driven to the airport in a cushy vehicle by your driver, flying cross-country in that private jet without even having to go inside the airport terminal and deal with the normal hassles of air travel, landing in similarly comfy accommodations in California and being driven to the stadium where you sit in the luxury of the home team’s owner’s box stocked with any food or beverage you could want, how is all of this considered “Herculean”? Dude, that sounds like a lifestyle I would hear about on MTV’s Cribs, so why is it such an ordeal for you? If this was 1920 and you were Kennesaw Mountain Landis, baseball’s first-ever commish, maybe I’d hear that argument. Landis wouldn’t have had the benefit of airplanes, freeways, fast cars and luxury boxes. He would’ve had to take a train across the country for several days, so maybe, maybe you could call that Herculean. But having Bud stand there, stone-cold serious and try to sell a country of baseball fans on how much of a major effort he’s making to follow Bonds around………it makes me sick. Bud, you may not like Barry, you may wish you didn’t have to attend his games and see him break the game’s most hallowed record with the help (allegedly) of steroids, but your emotional discomfort does not qualify you for Herculean status. How can someone who is so well educated and in such a prominent position be so incredibly stupid and poorly spoken? This is something I’d expect to hear from a meathead jock, not from the commissioner of baseball.
- Continuing the trend of people orbiting around the traveling circus that is Barry Bonds……Joe Morgan is a dumbass and a Barry Bonds apologist, as evidenced by his act the past two nights (especially Tuesday night) in trying to play down the boos and heckling directed at B. Bonds at Dodger Stadium. In Bar-roid’s first at bat, Morgan flat-out lied to viewers by saying that the clearly audible, persistently loud booing was just the same level of booing Bar-roid normally gets at Dodger Stadium, where Bar-roid and the Giants are Public Enemy No. 1. Then in Bonds’ second at bat, Joe went with a new lie by saying that people were booing because Bar-roid was being intentionally walked and they wanted to see him have a chance to hit. No Joe, they were booing then for the same reason they booed Barry when he was in the on-deck circle, when he was in the outfield, when he fielded a ball, threw a ball or did so much as stick his ginormous, bloated head out of the visitors’ dugout: Fans hate Barry. You could blame Morgan’s act on homer-ism, as he once played for the Giants, you could blame it on the same sentiments that lead the NAACP to defend Mike Vick simply because both are black, but whatever defense you try to use, just know that it won’t work. Joe Morgan often takes contentious, hard-line stances during broadcasts and comes off looking like an ass, but this is a new low even for him. To lie, deny or purposely overlook what viewers could clearly see and hear and try to tell us that no, it’s not that bad is blatantly offensive. Even if you are trying to mitigate the black eye baseball is receiving because of the Bar-roid debacle, no one is naïve enough to allow an attempted snow job like Morgan tried to convince them that everything is hunky dory. Quit insulting us, Joe, and stop trying to apologize for a guy who has continually disgraced the game you claim to love.
- Anyone who attends college even sporadically for even a couple of semesters has had a “cool” professor, someone who connected with the students, made their subject fun and opened up a lot of minds by presenting that subject in an interesting way. University of Massachusetts professor Lyle Craker is also a cool professor, but for an entirely different reason. Craker could quickly become the most popular faculty member in the history of American colleges and universities if he is successful in his quest to have the DEA to approve his application to grow marijuana for research purposes. Right now, the government holds a monopoly on growing pot for research, with its only sanctioned lab at the University of Mississippi (please don’t all of you stop reading now and go to the UM website to fill out an application). The DEA is reluctant to approve Craker’s application because the agency has concerns about marijuana falling into the hands of students. Right, because it’s so difficult for college students to get their hands on the chronic. I can’t tell you how often I hear college students complain, “Man, I just can’t find any pot anywhere on or around campus.” Oh wait, yes I can – never. Any college student who wants pot can get pot any time. I’m willing to say, though, that a lot of UMass students are rooting on Craker. He recently visited Washington to lobby outside the DEA offices for approval of his request, and if he is successful, I bet he’ll have lots of applications for student assistants and graduate assistants. He may even have to create a waiting list and demand that all of his GA’s bring their own munchies to the lab for “research” sessions………..
- A question for Fischer-Price: How is it that we’re in 2007 and I’m hearing about you recalling nearly a million toys because their surfaces are covered with lead paint? I repeat, it is 2007, or maybe I’m hallucinating? Lead paint was supposed to have gone the way of Zubaz pants (with the crazy zebra-stripe pattern), big hair and the Cory’s (Haim and Feldman) and their respective movie careers, i.e. things that were gone and forgotten when the 1980s came and went. Instead, 83 different products are being recalled, many of them featuring Sesame Street and Nickelodeon characters. Well, there was “Chicken Dance Elmo”, so why not “Toxic Health Hazard Elmo”? Not surprisingly, the defective toys were produced in China, a country that has given us a slew of health-related product safety issues in recent months, most notoriously the toxic toothpaste scare of this past spring. Why is it that China has such a tough time keeping toxic chemicals and ingredients out of products it produces? First, a chemical commonly used in antifreeze gets put into toothpaste and now lead paint used on children’s toys? Y’know, the Chinese food you get from your local Chinese restaurant may not be “authentic” Chinese food, but just to be safe, you might want to double check and make sure they’re not using any toxin-laden recipes from their home country………….
- If you want to see a prime example of what being pounded in the head over and over for two decades does to your mental capabilities and you want to pay $50 to do so, be sure to order the Evander Holyfield-Sultan Ibragimov WBC heavyweight title bout live from Moscow on October 13. Yes, the brain-damaged, speech impaired Holyfield has backed into yet another title fight, proving two things in the process. One, boxing is far too fragmented and has far too many different governing bodies and factions with their own titles to be taken seriously. Secondly, none of those governing organizations are worth a crap because if they were, a guy like Holyfield wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a boxing ring. As far back as 2000, you could readily discern that Holyfield had taken too many blows to the head simply by listening to him do an interview. His speech was (and still is) slowed, deliberate and slightly slurred and you could tell he was nowhere near as sharp or with it as he once was. Yet because boxing is so devoid of quality fighters, a name guy like Holyfield can still end up in a title fight when one of the original participants was forced to withdraw due to a stomach ailment. I won’t be among those watching this fight, partially because I have no desire to throw away my money on a lackluster fight and partially because I don’t want to see someone die in the ring, which is what will happen to my man E. Holyfield if he keeps fighting.
- The battle for the North Pole rages on, with Russia determined to firm up its claim to the oil-rich region beneath the Arctic Sea. A Russian expedition reached the North Pole Wednesday and scientists wasted no time in preparing two mini-submarines to go under the icy surface and plant pressured capsules containing tiny Russian flags on the sea floor. The gesture is mostly symbolic but is nevertheless intended to bolster Russia’s claims to ownership of the large deposits of natural gas and oil believed to be lying beneath the floor of the Arctic Sea. I feel compelled to warn the Russkies, because if there’s one thing for which America will create an elaborate lie weapons of mass destruction in order to promote and finance an unnecessary war and then refuse to end that war once it becomes clear it’s nothing more than a giant debacle, it’s oil. Um, er, I mean……..oh, never mind. I said it and I stand by it. W. sent us into Iraq for reasons oil and cash-related, so if Russia thinks it’s going to claim all that Arctic oil and gas for itself and not see our IQ-deficient leader respond, they are sorely mistaken.
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