- Dear Charles Barkley: I think we all get pretty excited about the prospect of sex and the dudes out there all like the idea of picking up a hot chick for said sex, but you might want to keep your libido in check enough to stay at or reasonably near the speed limit. In case you missed it, a lubed-up, drunken Barkley was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., early Wednesday after running a stop sign. After being pulled over, Barkley allegedly told the officer: "You want to know the truth? I was gonna drive around the corner and get a b--- j--" from a “hot” girl. Those gems come courtesy of the police report, filed after Barkley was pulled over in Scottsdale's Old Town area on New Year's Eve. He failed standard field sobriety tests after the officer smelled alcohol on him and was arrested. It should be pointed out that Barkley has not been disrespectful at any point here - well, other than being a selfish ass who put the lives of everyone he passed on the road that night in jeopardy by driving drunk in the first place - and that he’s not making excuses for his actions. "I am disappointed that I put myself in that situation," Barkley said. "The Scottsdale police were fantastic. Now it is a legal matter and I will not comment further until it is resolved." Scottsdale police characterized Barkley as "cordial and respectful" with officers during processing, saying that he went on telling them about the hottie on the passenger seat in his whip. Clearly not one to hold back, especially when inebriated, Barkley actually told
the officer at the police station that just one week ago the same woman had performed the same, um, sexual favor on him and that "it was the best one he had ever had in his life." Always good for a laugh, eh Chuck, even when you’re a lousy drunk driver? Oh, and to top it off, the Chuck-ster actually promised to get a civilian employee at the department's name tattooed "on my ass" if they could help get him out of the DUI charge. If what he’d done wasn’t so reprehensible, I might actually be laughing my ass off right now……
- Few things piss me off quite as much and as quickly as those who mistreat people with any sort of handicap or special needs. Whether it’s outright insensitivity or just careless neglect, if you can't muster the effort and character to treat people with special needs well, you are officially a piece of crap. Thus, I’d like you to meet a certified piece of crap, Linda Hockaday. Hockaday helps a bus driver for Outstanding Transport Inc., a New York City company. Seems that on New Year’s Eve, my girl L. Hockaday overlooked a 22-year-old special needs man on the bus she was working on, leaving this poor guy to spend the night alone in a freezing bus depot. Edwin Rivera, who has cerebral palsy, was left on a bus Wednesday night, with temperatures in the city dipping as low as 15 degrees before he was found early Thursday. Thankfully, Rivera survived without much trouble and was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was recovering over the weekend and getting back to normal. But when he was found on the bus, his sister, Leslie Rivera, said “his fingers were blue." I’d guess so. It would be tough enough for an able-bodied person to keep themselves warm under those conditions, let alone someone with cerebral palsy. Can’t say as I feel too bad about Hockaday facing charges of first- and second-degree reckless endangerment after being arraigned Friday. Oh, and did I mention that Hockaday actually knew that Rivera was asleep on the bus, but didn’t alert the driver to his presence because she didn't want to retrace the bus route and take Rivera home because she had to get to an appointment. Awesome, just awesome. Sorry the guy with cerebral palsy was inconveniencing you, L. Maybe next time he can just drive himself, right? What a total piece of crap this woman is, leaving a special needs individual to freeze half to death on a bus overnight because she didn’t want to spend a few extra minutes to take him home. Linda Hockaday should consider herself fortunate that she can only receive a maximum of seven years in prison, because she deserves worse. Not exactly the type of service you’d expect from a company that calls itself "New York City's leader in meeting the transportation needs for the elderly and for handicapped adults,” as Outstanding Transport Inc. does on its website. Either that or you employ insincere, self-centered, irresponsible asses who don’t give a damn about the people with special needs who ride your buses, one or the other……
- A couple of months ago, I brought you the chance to relocate the population of an entire island nation, Maldives, to your area. The people of Maldives, an island off the coast of Asia, are watching their homeland slowly sink into the ocean and erode away, so they need somewhere to go. If that wasn’t your cup of tea, maybe this will be: apparently the American government is looking for a place to ship people they’ve wrongfully imprisoned and tortured, er, um….“detained” at Guantanamo Bay and isn’t finding any takers. Australia just isn’t down with taking on Guantanamo detainees held by the United States, declining a request from the W. administration to open its doors to tortured, bitter, angry individuals who may or may not have an actual connection to organized terrorist groups. Why Australia's acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard decided that none of the potential relocatees met her country's "stringent national security and immigration criteria," I don’t know. Heck, this is the second time Australia has turned down such a request, having rejected a similar plea in early 2008 to resettle a small group of detainees. "We will consider any future requests on a case-by-case basis against these stringent criteria for both national security and immigration," said Gillard, who is acting prime minister while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is on vacation. Nice, so W. didn’t even get shot down by the real prime minister, that guy went on vacation and left it up to his fill-in PM to turn down the request. Australia isn’t alone in its thinking, as Portugal is the only country that has agreed to take in freed prisoners so far. Not to be deterred, the U.S. State Department says it has been in touch with "dozens" of countries for years about resettling detainees eligible for transfer or release, especially given the fact that President-elect Barack Obama strongly supports closing down the oft-criticized detention facility. Another potential dumping spot, er, relocation destination for the detainees is Germany, which pledged in November to hold "intensive talks" with the Obama administration on taking in detainees. Gee, I wonder why no one planned ahead for this very situation when the Guantanamo facility opened in 2002 to house prisoners from Afghanistan….could it be because the ass clown in charge of our country at that time has the foresight of an ADD-addled 4-year-old on speed? Does anyone doubt that W. had no freaking clue what Guantanamo Bay would become when he opened it? Nothing like creating a hell hole that became the center of an international shit storm and leaving it for your successor to clean up. How very W. of you, W………
- Are you ready for some football, Minnesota? The answer would appear to be emphatically no, based on the lagging ticket sales for today's Wild Card playoff game between your team, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Philadelphia Eagles. It might be the first home playoff game for the Vikings since 2004, but that doesn’t mean football fans in the Land of 10,000 Lakes are excited about the prospect of seeing their team contend for a title. As of Friday afternoon, 3,100 tickets remained unsold and the NFL was set to impose its idiotic, greedy blackout policy for the game, meaning that local viewers would be unable to see their hometown team on TV because the game wasn’t sold old. Basically, it’s the NFL’s way to extort fans into paying exorbitant ticket prices to go see their local team rather than watching the game for free on TV. Right, wouldn’t want fans to be able to do that, NFL. But the fairness of the policy aside, the Vikings were able to negotiate an extra 24-hour window to sell the game out and avoid the blackout, with the NFL giving the team until 4:30 p.m. EST on Saturday to sell the to avoid a television blackout in local markets. It’s the second extension the league has given the Vikings, with the first one coming on Thursday when a whopping 8,000 tickets needed to be sold to avoid the first blackout since 1997. So why aren’t the tickets moving? Could be because the remaining tickets are priced $80, $120 and $160 apiece. Hard to justify shelling out that much for a seat, paying for gas to drive to the game, pay for parking in the neighborhood of $12-$15 with so many people struggling in a terrible economy. Then again, you can’t expect a greedy corporate entity like the NFL to be understanding and compassionate of the plight many of its fans are in……
- It may be a new year, but the international battle royale for the Arctic and its vast oil and natural gas resources rages on like 2008 never ended. Because an estimated recoverable 90 billion barrels of oil, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reside in the frozen region north of the Arctic Circle, a litany of countries are lining up to throw down. Among the contenders are Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland, all of which have a big stake in this fight. Already, this is shaping up to be the most important territorial dispute of this century, partially because of the resources at stake but moreso because of the extensive damage that recovering those recources could do to an already wounded and struggling environment. "The ecosystem that is there has been protected by thousands of years of ice. Even if there was no territorial dispute, the ice is going away," said oceanographer David Carlson, director of the International Polar Year's Program Office. The International Polar Year is a global scientific study centered on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009, so if anyone is qualified to speak about the situation in those regions, it would be them. And according to the IPY, Arctic sea ice is usually 9 feet thick, but it’s thickness has been decreasing at an alarming rate. "We've been seeing a retreat year after year," said Marika Holland, an oceanographer with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "The sea ice loss we observed in the summer of 2007 was shocking." It’s to the point that at various times throughout the year, there may actually be some areas of the Arctic where there is no sea ice at all. Sane, environmentally conscious and non-ass-hatted people out there would see this as a bad sign, but of course those countries itching to drill for oil and gas are drooling because less ice means easier drilling. That has eager, greedy diplomats, politicians and oil company executives throwing down over who has rights to the region. Fortunately, Antarctica has a treaty that prohibits territorial claims, but no such agreement exists for the Arctic. That means a free-for-all to destroy the environment, er, drill for oil and gas. Setting the parameters for the battle is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that countries are entitled to exclusive economic zones up to 200 miles from their shores. As you might expect when billions of dollars in resources are up for grabs, the involved nations are attempting to stretch those limits. The most ostentatious display came back in August 2007, when a Russian submarine planted an underwater flag 14,000 feet below the North Pole. But don’t expect other nations to concede the region to Russia; this has all-out brawl for years to come written all over it, with the only assured loser being the environment itself……
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