'Roids gone really bad, a dishonorable honor code and a Nazi-themed sex scandal

- As it turns out, there literally isn’t a single good thing in the world that you can’t get too much of. Even the will to win can be dangerous when taken to the extreme, as evidenced by the plight of former U.S. Olympic cyclist Tammy Thomas. This chick, and I use the term chick in the most liberal sense, damn near turned herself into a dude in order to satisfy her insatiable thirst to be the best in her/his sport. About six years ago, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was becoming suspicious of Thomas for using steroids, mostly because she had strangely began to resemble a burly middle linebacker more than she resembled a sleek, svelte female cyclist. Seriously, if you Google pictures of Thomas in competition, her biceps muscles are bigger than most guys’ necks. When a U.S.A.D.A. investigator paid Thomas a visit at her/his home in 2002, the investigator was on the receiving end of a revolting image that I doubt he’s been able to erase from his mind yet. Thomas answered the door in the midst of a shave - of her face. Yup, T. Thomas was busy shaving her goatee when the investigator knocked on her door. Right, because that’s normal. No one would suspect a woman of doping and using scores of illegal steroids when she’s rocking a goatee, chest hair and sporting a deep, husky, mannish voice. Hard to argue that you’re not juicing when you’re a woman exhibiting male physical traits that miraculously appeared when you were already an adult. Stories like this one are truly disturbing because you wonder how the pressure to succeed in any sport, let alone a peripheral one like cycling, can be so intense as to drive a woman to literally wreck her body and start to look like a man in order to win. Chris Evert was a great female tennis player and she had a legendary will to win, but I don’t ever remember her showing up for a match with a soul patch and speaking in a deep baritone. Take a long, hard look at your life and see if maybe you don’t want to make a few chances, Tammy Thomas. The federal perjury charges you’re currently facing should be the least of your worries, given the long-term effects your mountains of ‘roids are going to have on your body.

 

- San Antonio, Texas: Irony lives here. Students at the University of Texas at San Antonio will be providing today’s helping of ironic goodness and clearly they’ve been buying in bulk. A group of students at the school was charged with creating an honor code for the entire student body designed to address issues such as cheating, plagiarism and other topics relating to integrity and honesty. The end result was, um, not exactly honorable. In seeking to create an honor code to discourage cheating and plagiarism, the students writing said code decided that the best course was to blatantly plagiarize the honor code from another school and attempt to pass it off as their own. A quick Google search turned up a solid choice for the rip-off and the students of UTSA seized the day without giving proper credit to their source material. Amazingly, these Mensas didn’t even alter their copied honor code enough to throw school officials off their tracks and eventually their dishonest deed was discovered. Perhaps they were trying to prove a point, using irony to show how prevalent cheating and plagiarism are on college campuses nowadays and how easy the Internet has made it to commit such acts in relative anonymity. Either that or these students are a lazy bunch of slugs who wanted to hurry up and get this project done so they could hit the beer bong and get to working on their keg stands. In another heavy dose of irony, these tools may have the chance to become the first ones disciplined under the new, non-plagiarized honor code that someone else, someone with actual honor, integrity and intelligence comes up with…..

 

- Speaking of fraud and dishonesty…how does a $350 million international fraud scam sound to you? Great, right? Domestic fraud scams are just so tired, but an international one adds flavor to the situation. Lehman Brothers, an American investment firm, is alleging just that kind of international scam-ifcation, fingering LLT Bio-Pharma, a Japanese company that received said $350 million from Lehman Bros. in the form of a loan. LLT Bio-Pharma received more than a third of a million dollars in loans, then turned around and filed for bankruptcy, leaving investors stuck with millions of dollars in outstanding loans (not quite as outstanding as they used to be…BA-dum-CHEE!). Apparently trying to defraud a company out of that kind of money doesn’t make them very happy, because Lehman Brothers is looking to sue LLT Bio-Pharma for hundreds of millions of dollars. Oops! If you really want to boil this down, it’s a situation many of us have been in before. In place of a Japanese trading company, simply insert the name of that one friend who’s always asking you to float them a small loan because they’re short on cash. When you finally do give them money, you never hear from them again and they don’t return your phone calls. LLT Bio-Pharma is that needy friend and Lehman Brothers is you when you give them money. Unfortunately for LLT Bio-Pharma, changing their phone number and getting a new apartment isn’t going to get them out of this one, nor can they pawn their furniture or a family heirloom for the cash to pay off what they borrowed. Better fortune next time, boys….

 

- Nobody loves a good theme party more than me. You find a good theme, not a lame, clichéd one, you’ve got yourself a great party. Dress up like characters from the ‘50s or a Quentin Tarrantino movie, whatever, it’s all good. However, the “Nazi concentration camp” theme is not among the acceptable choices, even if your “party” is really a sadomasochistic sex romp with five hookers. Because let’s face it, one, two, three or even four hookers is all right, but when you have five, that’s just tacky. So it pains me that I have to rip on Max Mosley, the British head of Formula One racing, for his creepy fetishes and sexual freakery. See, Mosley, whose father, Sir Oswald Mosley, was the founder of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler, was apparently caught on video with five women in an underground torture chamber engaging in Nazi-inspired sadomasochistic sex. Yes, the 67-year-old debonair lawyer is reported to have paid about $5,000 to play both guard and inmate in a Nazi-themed concentration camp scene. In the video, when the man believed to be Mosley enters the room, he’s greeted by a busty blond woman dressed as a prison guard who inspects his head for lice, strips off his clothes, bends him over and whips his bottom, while saying, “He's serving a life sentence now for crimes he committed before.” But does it end there? Oh no, that would be too tame and boring. After being whipped by a dominatrix, the man then dresses and speaks German with a woman in a Nazi uniform, helping her beat women dressed as prisoners. Later, he has sex with several of the women. Right, because who doesn’t have sex with women after beating them like prisoners of war? So now is it over? Of course not. After being whipped, beating women and hitting it with those same women, Mosley shares a cup of tea with the women afterward. That might actually be the most disturbing part of it, because while a lot of guys have sex with prostitutes, I’ve never heard of a john sitting down for a spot of team with those same hookers. Oddly, this development isn’t playing too well with many of the drivers in Formula One or with Jewish groups. Several F1 drivers and Jewish leaders have called for Mosley to resign as president of Federation International de l'Automobile. “I don't see how he can continue," former Formula One racing champion Stirling Moss said in an interview. “I suppose what goes on behind closed doors is his business, but when a thing comes out like this … it's an absolute shocker.” Either a shocker or the most disgusting mental image you can possibly have, one or the other. You never want to be the kind of person who restricts the freedom of others to pursue whatever may make them happy in life (provided it’s not harmful or detrimental to others), but this is a time when I’m making an exception. Dudes who are 67 years old and the president of major international organizations should not be taking part in Nazi-themed sadomasochistic orgies. That’s just a right you forfeit by calling yourself a human being, Max Mosley. But if you really are going to participate in those freak sessions, do yourself and the rest of us a favor and make sure the session isn’t caught on tape…..

 

- A duel on the high seas has ratcheted up the battle between Canada and the United States. Ok, so there’s really not a U.S.-Canada battle going on, but there is a showdown between the Canadian government and environmental activist groups looking to stand up against Canada’s annual seal hunt. A Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker literally had a run-in with a ship owned by the U.S.-based conservation group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The two sides are offering different stories about the collision, but what is known is that the two boats made contact with each other in the waters off of Canada’s east coast. A spokesman for Canada’s Fisheries Department claimed that the two vessels “grazed” twice, both times after the ship owned by the environmentalists initiated the contact. Predictably, the tree huggers are contending that the coast guard icebreaker rammed their vessel twice in waters about 40 miles north of Cape Breton. On one hand, you have to admire the chutzpah of the environmentalists, taking on a much larger vessel, but it’s impossible to say exactly what happened unless you were there. I do have to agree, though, that hunting seals is barbaric and detestable, so props to the Sea Shepherd’s Conservation Society for standing up against it. What are Canadians doing out hunting seals anyhow? Isn’t the NHL season still going on? Doesn’t that mean you Canucks should all be glued to your TVs, watching toothless dudes on skates chase a tiny rubber puck around a frozen pond? Or maybe you all ran out of round bacon and need something to eat? Either way, lay off the seals, Canada.