- No matter how bad you think your Thanksgiving was, I can almost guarantee it wasn’t worse than the Thanksgiving of Jack Daniels (no, not that Jack Daniels) of Canton, Mass. While the worst part of your holiday may have been spending a day with relatives whose faces you’d like to punch, Daniels spent most of his Turkey Day in the hospital after being hit by a train late in the morning. Daniels was crossing the tracks at the Canton Junction Station about 11:20 a.m. Thursday when he was hit by a northbound Amtrak Acela train heading from New York to Boston which was speeding by at 90 mph. The collision is one that probably should have killed Daniels, but somehow he managed to survive with back injuries and a few other minor injuries that are not considered life-threatening. As you might expect, in the moments following the collisions, Daniels was in shock and didn’t even realize what had happened to him. “I said, 'Sir, you just got hit by a train.' He says, 'No, I didn't.' I go, 'Yes, you did,' and I put my arms around him ... and he goes, 'Where's my teeth?' and his back was ripped, all the way down,” witness Dave Fortin said. Actually, Daniels refused to lie down in the aftermath and was instead intent on finding his teeth, which had been knocked out during the accident (he is 61 years old, so there’s a decent chance he has false teeth, which would make sense). Once paramedics arrived on the scene, Daniels was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital with several non-life-threatening injuries. And why did the man try to cross the railroad tracks? To get to the other side…..for a cup of coffee. Yes, Daniels told onlookers he tried the dangerous crossing because he wanted to get a cup of coffee at a nearby shop. How much time did he have to make the crossing? Not much, according to MBTA Transit Police Sgt. Preston Horton. “It comes very, very fast. He probably had about a second, a second and a half, to make a decision," Horton said. He also went on to point out that the transit authority has signs, big yellow lines and other measures designed to warn and prevent people from crossing the tracks, yet individuals like Daniels still choose to trespass. So I’m glad to hear that Daniels survived this ordeal, but the fact is that this is all on him and you can’t really feel sorry for him because he knew full well the danger he was walking into by breaking the law and stepping out onto the train tracks with a train coming. What, you couldn’t wait one minute for the train to pass? Learn your lesson and don’t repeat this incident, J.D…….
- Bet Kanye West is glad he doesn’t live in Myanmar. West blasted our government for its response to Hurricane Katrina, leading to the infamous “W. hates black people” comment. Now, a well-known Burmese comic finds himself sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison this week, on top of the 45 he was already facing, for criticized the government of Myanmar’s response to the cyclone that struck the country in May. In the interviews, the comedian and activist known as Zarganar said the government was too slow in responding to a May cyclone that killed more than 84,000 people (not sure, but I don’t think he said that the country’s ruling military junta hates black people). Those comments were enough to prompt a court inside Myanmar's notorious Insein prison to sentence Zarganar to 14 more years behind bars on Thursday, bringing his total prison term to 59 years. It hasn’t been a stellar two weeks for him, as he was given a 45-year prison sentence last week after he was convicted on charges related to interviews he gave to foreign media outlets. All of this comes because Myanmar's military, which has held power since 1962, is a full of dictatorial ass hats who tolerate no dissent. The government regularly arrests artists and entertainers regarded as enemies of the regime, and it has been on the war path against dissenters since Buddhist monks led pro-democracy protests in September 2007. At present, the government holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up 75 percent from the nearly 1,200 it held in June 2007. The convictions against Zarganar convicted Thursday stem from charges of causing public alarm, a reference to his interviews with foreign media, and for communicating with exiled dissidents, among other charges. As with many entertainers, he has a stage name, Zarganar, and a real name, Maung Thura, but by any name he is among at least 100 people to be dicked over by one of the world worst, most oppressive governments and receive a sentence of two to 65 years in prison since early November. To top it off, many of the trials were held in closed sessions, often without defense lawyers or family present. In other words, they were trials so much as informative meetings to tell the accused not whether they had been found guilty but merely how long they were going away for. So no, I don’t think the government of Myanmar hates black people, I think it hates people in general, at least those with the heart and balls to speak out against its idiotic ways…..
- Hope you all are very happy with yourself, Wal-Mart shoppers in Valley Stream, New York. In the onrush of idiots that occurs every Friday after Thanksgiving, millions of maniacal, overzealous, frenzied a-holes who are willing to do anything and everything to one another, fellow shoppers and even themselves in order to save a few bucks on their Christmas shopping at the price of their dignity and self-respect storm their local mall, superstores, etc. They push, pull, grab, jostle, elbow and generally assault anyone who gets in their way, but at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, the throng of eager shoppers who bum-rushed the store when its doors opened at 5 a.m. took things to a disturbing new low. as the shoppers crammed into the store in a giant, rabid mass of humanity, a Wal-Mart employee was knocked to the ground and suffered an apparent heart attack. The man was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Not only that, four others were hurt in the stampede, one of them a 28-year-old pregnant woman. Thankfully she and her baby are fine, but the people involved in this debacle need to stop and take a long, hard look at themselves. Trampling people to death, causing a man to have a heart attack and running roughshod over a pregnant woman, all in the name of….what? A few dollars off an iPod nano? The best price on a George Foreman grill or Tickle Me Elmo? Yeah, because that’s worth someone dying and have an unborn child possibly suffer serious harm. Because of your idiotic actions, one man is dead and the store was closed to incoming shoppers following the incident. Thanks for reminding me why I steered clear of civilization, anything remotely resembling a store and specifically ass hats like you people on Friday…..
- Hmm, this is curious. Why would baseball legend Roger Clemens be asked to end his involvement with a charity golf tournament he has hosted for four years? What could prompt a charitable cause to tell one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball to take a hike and disassociate himself with an event specifically designed to raise money for it? Oh yeah, it’s because Clemens is a complete ‘roid-head, a man who was named in the Mitchell report as such and who went before Congress and made a total fool of himself trying to lie, er, defend his way out of the mess he’s made. So even though Clemens helped raise millions of dollars for charities associated with the event, the Giff Nielsen Day of Golf for Kids was held Nov. 11 at Houston's Shadow Hawk Golf Club without him. “Roger Clemens is no longer affiliated with the tournament," the organizers of the even said in a statement. “We decided we would go our separate ways until his off-field stuff is settled.” Um, good luck on that, because he’s “off-field stuff” will be settled right around the second week of never. But hey, we still have Clemens’ continued denials that he ever used performance-enhancing drugs since he was identified in former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell's report on drug use in baseball. Then again, we also have mountains of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, to say otherwise. Y’know, stuff like his former trainer, Brian McNamee, claiming he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. Oh, and there’s that tiny matter of federal prosecutors also looking into whether Clemens committed perjury when he testified under oath in front of a congressional committee that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. This is a whole lot of drama and smoke for a man who claims that the steroids fire currently burning down the legacy of his career doesn’t really exist…..
- Call me crazy and demanding, but if I’m going to pay $10 to go see a movie, I want more than 89 minutes of action and I want something better than a low-brow, lowest-common-denominator comedy. That’s what you’re getting if you go see Four Christmases, the holiday-themed flick starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. The two play a couple who makes a point of leaving town every Christmas to head somewhere tropical, only this year all flights out of town are canceled and their families spot them on TV in one of those oh, so predictable reports from news stations about holiday travel that show holiday travelers fighting the long lines at airports. With their plan to leave town foiled, they must instead put in a yuletide visit to each of their divorced parents. What I think is supposed to happen is lots of laughs courtesy of four separate visits to homes filled with nutty, oddball characters. What actually does happen is a string of lame jokes, bargain-basement humor and a lot of bad comedy movie clichés in a film whose only saving grace is that it isn’t long enough to fully torture you with its awfulness. While each nightmare household Vaughn and Witherspoon visit has a wacky flavor all its own, but none of them are actually that funny. You have many of the typical characters you’d expect to see in this type of movie, actors like Jon Favreau (as Vaughn's mohawked sociopath brother) and Mary Steenburgen (as Witherspoon's pious mother). Vaughn’s nerotic, overly talkative character doesn’t do much to move the plot along or keep things interesting, and just as you might suspect from the previews, this is a movie you can more than afford to miss. Light your money on fire and shove your head into a running washing machine, I can guarantee it’ll be more fun than paying to see this piece of crap…..
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