- I’d love to have famed World Wrestling Entertainment announcer Jim Ross announcing a Seattle Mariners game this week, if for no other reason than to hear good ol’ J.R. scream, “My gawd! My gawd! The carnage! There are bodies everywhere! There is blood everywhere! My gawd!” It really has been a carnage-filled week for the Mariners, with general manager Bill Bavasi fired Monday for being the architect for one of the worst teams in baseball and manager John McLaren following him out the door three days later. The M’s were projected by many to contend for the AL West title and possibly make it to the World Series, but their lackluster start has basically rendered the entire second half of the season pointless. Back on June 4, their ineptitude inspired McLaren to go on one of the most overrated managerial rants of all time, spewing a monologue of clichés punctuated by f-bombs and other profanities that basically expressed his frustration at being the manager of a sucky team. Now that terrible team isn’t McLaren’s concern; he was fired Thursday and replaced by bench coach Jim Riggleman, who will preside as the team’s interim manager for the remainder of the season. Yes, quite a week in the Emerald City, unless of course you’re a fan of winning baseball…
- Here’s proof positive that you can’t keep a good cocaine-producing country down. Despite “record” U.S.-backed efforts to stamp out the production of the coca plant in Colombia and eliminate a vital ingredient in the process of bringing cocaine to the United States, Colombian peasants actually devoted 27 percent more land to growing coca plants in 2007. Furthermore, the overall production of cocaine from the country went up from 984 metric tons to 994 last year, pushing Colombia close to that elusive 1,000-metic-ton mark. The United Nations called the increase in land usage for the purpose of coca growing “a surprise and a shock,” but I choose to call it something different: the entrepreneurial spirit at work. You have hard-working Colombian peasants trying to grow their biggest cash crop and The Man is on their ass, hounding them and trying to put them out of business just because the product chiefly made from their crop happens to be an illegal narcotic. But these peasants don’t fold up shop and go home; they move their operations to smaller plots in more remote regions of the country. These plots produce less coca, but that only means more and harder work for these peasants. I don’t hear them complaining, nor would I understand them if I did because to be honest, I forgot 97 percent of the Spanish I learned in high school the instant class ended. Still, the entrepreneurial spirit of these peasants demands your respect, dammit, because you can't, no you can’t keep a good cocaine-producing nation down….
- I’ve never been a guy with big, long lists of goals and ambitions for his life. I choose to take life more as it comes and do my best with where I’m at. That being said, one of the specific goals I do have for my life is to never, ever have my name associated with the words “multimillion-dollar body parts scheme.” It’s a goal I am currently reaching with astonishing proficiency, but sadly Christopher Aldorasi, 36, isn’t quite as successful at this pursuit. Aldorasi was convicted in April for his role in a scheme to secretly cut up corpses and sell off the dismembered parts. He apparently did the cutting, which earned him a conviction on 20 counts, including enterprise corruption, grand larceny and reckless endangerment. For those crimes, Aldorasi will spend the next nine to 27 years in prison, which isn’t long enough. If you’re sick enough to bust out a saw and take apart corpses (including the corpse of former Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke) and be okay with it, you are not a person we need as a part of our society. Go to jail, stay far, far away from the rest of us and see if you can’t grow a conscience while you’re in the slam, C.
- You can go ahead and start the countdown to the first official therapy session for Jamie Lynn Spears’ new baby. The tot was born Thursday morning at a hospital in southern Mississippi to the 17-year-old Spears, who named her new daughter Maddie Briann. The father is Casey Aldridge, a 19-year-old pipe layer (actually, that’s what got him into this predicament in the first place) and I’m sure that being born to two teenagers and a member of the uber-insane Spears family won't hurt little Maddie Briann at all. After all, whose mother doesn’t announce her pregnancy in OK! Magazine and have that pregnancy derail their career as a child actress? And whose parents don’t earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling their first baby pictures to some trashy publication? Not that you’re not off to a smashing start as a parent, Jamie Lynn, but just to be safe, don’t take any parenting tips from your big sister. In fact, ask her everything she’s done as a mom and then do the exact opposite at all times, that should be safe….
- Been considering that elusive trip to the moon but just can't find the time or motivation to go? May I suggest the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition by the Internet’s most popular search engine that will award $20 million to the first privately funded team to land a rover on the moon, have it travel the surface for 500 meters or more and send back pictures, data and video. The feat must be accomplished by December 31, 2012 to claim the $20 million prize. After that, the amount drops to $15 million and after 2014, it goes away altogether. The contest is the brainchild of Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. “We believe that space should be open to anyone and everyone, especially those people who want to go,” said Becky Ramsey of the X Prize Foundation. It’s a nice concept, but I have to wonder who the hell actually has the time and resources for this? And wouldn’t it cost more than $20 million to win this competition? Who has a functional space shuttle handy, plus a lunar rover with video and photo capabilities? Plus, with the cost of fuel these days I would have to imagine that this would be cost-restrictive and that you’d spend more money to successfully complete the mission than you would win. I’m going to go ahead and stay Earth-based, but best of success to anyone out there who wants to chase this brass ring.
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