- Was anyone still paying attention to Floyd Landis? I’m a huge sports fan, have at least a mild interest in cycling and know who Landis is and I checked out on his fight to regain his 2006 Tour de France title about a year ago. After capturing the title despite a difficult comeback from a major hip injury, Landis was almost immediately engulfed in a doping scandal because he tested positive for steroids during the race. Landis immediately began protesting his innocence and his representatives started attacking the motives and methods of those doing the testing and verifying the positive test result. He refused to surrender his title and until a court decision demanded that he do so, Landis wasn’t loosening his grip on the trophy. Even after early decisions in the appeal process went against him and it became clear that he wasn’t to win this battle and was wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, Landis and his crew forged ahead. Their crusade came to an end Monday when a three-person panel for the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the rulings of previous panels that Landis’ positive test was valid. In a 58-page decision, the panel admitted that the laboratory which administered the test used some “less than ideal laboratory practices, but not lies, forgery or cover-ups” as Landis’ attorneys had argued. The panel also wrote in its report that the experts who testified on Landis’ behalf “acted as advocates for the Appellant (Landis) than scientists assisting the Panel in its search for the truth.” Game, set, match. Not that anyone had any lingering doubts about your guilt, Floyd, but this should seal the deal. You’ve exhausted all of your options and have been unable to remove that scarlet C from your chest. You are now, and will forever be, a confirmed cheater….
- The summer TV season has literally turned into a giant pile of crap. No, that’s not some sort of sarcastic metaphor to lament the onslaught of bad reality shows and celebrity-themed talent shows. I literally mean that the History Channel aired a two-hour program titled All About Dung Monday night, all about the historical, medical, technological and evolutionary importance of excrement to the world. The show traveled to places like India, where a quarter of the world’s cows reside and thus a place where loads of crap are produced. You may not have known that one cow can produce 16 tons of crap a year, which can actually be turned into a fair amount of power. I actually love the History Channel and it’s becoming one of my favorite networks. I don’t care if that makes me a dork because I like learning about history, but the irony is that this program about crap is actually not nearly as crappy as shows like America’s Got Talent, Celebrity Circus and America’s Best Dance Crew hosted by A.C. Slater. On one hand, it tells you all you need to know about summer TV that a show about excrement is better than most other things on the air. On the other hand, knowledge and education are power, so props to the History Channel….
- The United States Supreme Court may have just completed a session and decided many cases of great import to the nation, but I may have a case for them to consider when their next session comes around. Meet an unidentified man from Santa Fe, N.M. who wanted to find an identity by changing his name to a phrase containing a popular four-letter obscenity: “F--- Censorship!” Surprisingly, a New Mexico appeals court on Friday ruled against the Los Alamos man in his quest to name himself after a curse word. The appeal came after a state district judge in Bernalillo County refused the initial request for the name change, but it was denied by Judge Nan Nash, who ruled that the proposed name change was “obscene, offensive and would not comport with common decency.” Sorry to say, I agree with the judge here. While I too subscribe to the idea of “F--- Censorship!”, it’s not a useable name for a human being. You want to name your website “F--- Censorship!”, fine. If you have a business or a racehorse you want to slam that moniker on, fine. But no one is calling you “F--- Censorship!” and no one should have to. Just curious, but what nickname can you convert that to? There’s not really anything to shorten it to. That being said, I do have a great new nickname for the guy who petitioned for this name to begin with: Moron.
- The animal rights honks at PETA are at it again. When they’re not raiding labs and setting free rabbits and mice, they’re sending angry, sarcastic faxes to people who they feel mistreat animals and are then attacked by animals. Now, they’re crusading against a Denver sports bar where they feel lobsters are being given a raw deal. At J.D.’s Bait Shop on Interstate 25 just outside of Denver, you can play pool, foosball, shuffleboard, darts and video games or “The Lobster Zone.” The game is similar to claw games where you try to snag cheap, cheesy stuffed animals from a glass cage using a metal claw arm, except in “The Lobster Zone,” you’re going for live lobsters. It costs $2 per try, and if you snag a lobster, the kitchen will cook it for you. “You have it with some fries and some slaw, and you are done,” said Dennis McCann, owner of the bar for the past 13 tears. Unfortunately, one of McCann’s customers took offense to the game and alerted the tools at PETA. A letter arrived last week from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, asking McCann to cease and desist “The Lobster Zone.” PETA also put out a news release: “JD's Lobster Zone machine turns torture and death into a game, pure and simple,” says PETA vice president Tracy Reiman. “Incarcerating lobsters in filthy tanks inside a boisterous club, making an abusive game out of their capture, and finally boiling them to death is every bit as reprehensible as tormenting cats, dogs, or any other animal.”
That is rich. Tracy, you do realize that the lobsters are going to die, regardless. Know what else? The lobsters don’t have a damn clue what’s going on. They’re not sitting in that tank thinking, “Damn, this is so demeaning. I can’t believe they’re trivializing our death like this, turning it into a game. If only we could be killed humanely.” You think keeping them in a tank, fishing them out in the kitchen and cooking them is any better? Until I hear the lobster complaining, I’m going to assume there’s no problem. You can’t compare this to mistreating dogs and cats because in the United States, dogs and cats are pets and household animals. I have yet to see anyone in my neighborhood taking the pet lobster for a walk or playing with it on the front lawn. Fortunately for J.D.’s Bait Shop, it could soon be joined in the spotlight by the dozen other Denver-area restaurants. who also have the game. Better yet, the Lobster Zone reportedly is in more than 300 locations nationwide and it's been around for more than a decade. PETA managed to overlook them for that long, now they’re pissed? The truth is that lobsters' fates are sealed once they fall into human hands and they’re often boiled or cut apart while still alive. Yeah, but what’s cruel is allowing people to select their lobster by playing a game. Good thinking, PETA. That’s almost as moronic as you saying that there's no humane way to kill lobsters, so we really shouldn't eat them at all. Despite PETA’s hassling him, McCann says that as of now his Lobster Zone was still up and running. Better yet, now that PETA is on his case, he just might keep it. “I just hate like hell for somebody to tell me how to run my business,” he said. Attaboy, Dennis, stick it to the whack jobs at PETA. Now please excuse me while I put on my mink coat, coonskin cap and leather pants and go enjoy a nice, big juicy steak, a hamburger, a turkey sandwich and a plate of lobster….
- The team the ‘roids up together…..gets banned from the Summer Olympics together. Team unity did not serve the Bulgarian weightlifting team well last month when all 11 members of the squad - eight men, three women - were popped for steroid use after testing positive during a random test administered by their own national sports federation. Bulgaria's weightlifting federation will withdraw its team from the Beijing Olympics after all 11 of its lifters tested positive for a steroid. The athletes tested positive during out-of-competition tests conducted June 8-9, a federation statement said Friday. “As a result, the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation took a decision to withdraw its national weightlifting teams — men and women — from participation in the Olympics,” the statement said. Probably a good idea since they would have failed tests at the Olympics if they went. After all, weightlifting would be the sport that you would most readily assume was rampant with juicing because its essence is strength and being able to lift more weight more times. Heck, in neighboring Greece 11 weightlifters were suspended for two years earlier this month — also after testing positive for a steroid. If you’re wondering which of the Bulgarian lifters tested positive so you can drop them from your fantasy weightlifting team, the male athletes who tested positive included: Ivailo Filev, Demir Demirev, Mehmed Fikretov, Ivan Stoitsov, Georgi Markov, Ivan Markov, Alan Tsagaev, Velichko Cholakov and the women were Milka Maneva, Donka Mincheva and Gergana Kirilova.
Nice try by the Bulgarian weightlifting federation to cast plausible doubt on the positive tests by saying that it was “theoretically possible” that the substance could have been ingested accidentally as part of a food supplement or that the athletes’ food could have been spiked. Mmmhmmm….sure. That would be easier to believe if three Bulgarian lifters hadn’t been banned for doping ahead of the Athens Olympics in 2004. I’m going to go ahead and assume that this was no accident…..
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