Monday, June 09, 2008

The Real Deal is real broke, ways to see your dismal financial future and a corrupt government employee - shocker!

- Evander Holyfield has been telling everyone that he continues to box at age 45 and despite slurred speech and other signs that his time in the ring is taking a major toll on him because he wants to be a heavyweight champion once again. That’s the story he’s been selling, but the revelation that his 109-room, 54,000-square-foot mansion is being foreclosed upon seems to indicate otherwise. With the threat of having a pad with three kitchens, bowling alley, 17 bathrooms and a $10 million price tag ripped from him, the cynic might argue that Holyfield is boxing because he’s desperate for cash and not be he holds aspirations of being the champ once again. Adding to his financial woes are allegations by the mother of one of the nine children he has fathered saying that Holyfield has stopped making child-support payments and by a company claiming that he owes $500,000 for landscaping services. Holyfield was apparently supposed to pay that bill out of the purse for next fight but has yet to follow through. Maybe he can pawn off the gifts he receives on Father’s Day from each of his nine kids to help foot the bill….or maybe not, given the fact that he doesn’t appear too keen on paying the child support he owes to them. The home will now be put up for auction and if you’ve always dreamed of owning a home located on Evander Holyfield Highway, this could be the chance you’re seeking……

- Without having reviewed the teacher handbook for Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Ga., I can’t say for sure whether threatening to rip out a student’s eyeballs, kill a family and then throwing a chair are forbidden, but I can venture a guess. Based on the fact that Travis Heckstall, who was a science teacher at the school, has since resigned after allegedly committing said acts and threats, I’m going to go ahead and assume that doing any or all of them is a no-no. Heckstall being arrested after the chair-throwing incident may have put the exclamation point on his demise, but personally I’m torn between calling the threat to rip out the eyeballs of a student and the threat to kill a student’s family as the best facts here. I’m not a psychologist, but part of me suspects that Mr. Heckstall has a bit of an anger problem. I get that dealing with today’s high school students can be frustrating because a lot of them have attitude problems, but somewhere in between rebuking them and threatening to rip out their eyeballs or kill their family, there exists a happy medium. It’s called a detention or demerit, maybe even a suspension if the kid is really out of line. You have to know that making a death threat is going to cost you your job, T. And unless you’re wearing tights, oiling up your chest, sitting under a sun lamp and competing in a pro wrestling ring, throwing a chair is a bad, bad play. Might be tough to find another school district willing to bring you on after that one…..

- When your country is fighting wars on multiple fronts, including the most unjust, ill-advised, catastrophically idiotic war in modern history (thanks again, W.!), you’d hope that the country’s military is operating at the highest standards. You’d hope that they are keeping track of personnel, weapons, supplies and anything else needed to make the military machine hitting on all cylinders. In short, you’d hope that they’re not mistakenly strapping B-52 bombers with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles before flying it over American soil or mistakenly shipping four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads to Taiwan. Yet that’s what happened to the United States Air Force in recent months, leading Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to demand and receive the resignations of the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders. Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne are out after the two high-profile incidents that are both being attributed to what Gates has termed “a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear mission focus and performance.” Of course, Gates’ solution is the predictable governmental response to a situation like this: appoint a task force to investigate and give recommendations on how to fix the problem. Nothing like a good task force, getting together a bunch of bureaucrats in suits to hold meetings, hearings and waste a lot of time before offering up a bunch of useless, impractical suggestions that will never be implemented anyhow. Gotta love big government, solving problems in board rooms and meeting rooms instead of combating them directly…..

- Gee, wonder what kind of problems this could cause. An inspector for New York City’s cranes and derricks division has been arrested on charges of taking thousands of dollars in bribes and falsifying reports. James Delayo, an assistant chief inspector for the cranes and derricks division, allegedly accepted the bribes from a local crane company and according to the city’s Department of Investigation, he then tampered with crane licensing exams by providing answers to the tests to the crane company in question. Now what could possibly go wrong when you have people operating large, powerful cranes weighing several tons and able to lift ginormous amounts of weight high into the air, often in heavily populated areas and those people don’t know what they’re doing? Other than fatal accidents, property damage and serious injuries, I can't think of a single thing that could go bad when you have guys who only passed their crane operators exam because they were fed the answers working those big cranes. I guess when people talk about there being corruption at every level of government and in every branch of it, they’re not kidding….

- Great news for those of you planning your summer vacations! You can now get an advanced, digitally-enhanced look at how you’re about to get ripped off for an astonishingly large chunk of your life savings should you choose to visit Walt Disney World! Walt Disney announced late last week that it has completed a new 3-D Google Earth map project of its vast Florida empire that will now assist visitors as they plan out their trip to the world’s most overpriced amusement park. You can see the gate to the park where you will be gorged for in excess of $70 for tickets to one of Disney’s four theme parks, then scroll down to get a better look at the souvenir stand where you’ll fork over $35 for a ridiculously small stuffed Goofy that your kid has to have before finally zooming in on the concession stand where you will fork over $14.50 for a soft drink, small hamburger and fries. Included on the map are the four theme parks, Disney’s 22 hotels and objects as small as park benches. More than 100,000 photographs from eight different photographers were used in the project, which ended up with 1,500 composite images, embedded videos and photos, commentary and links to blogs and YouTube clips. So if you just can’t wait to get ripped off and blow your entire travel budget and then some at the happiest place on Earth, hop on over to the Disney web site and get started on your journey towards massive debt right now…..

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