- I know how truly sad all Iraqi citizens must be as this Thursday nears, but I say to all my Iraqi homies, hang in there and we’ll get through this together. Yes, it’s devastating to realize that the Blackwater era ends in Iraq on Thursday and another private security firm will take over the company's security services contract in Baghdad. It’s hard to say goodbye to someone who has brutally murdered your countrymen in cold blood, lied about its widespread abuse of force and been the subject of multiple international incidents during its time operating within your borders. There’s no easy way to say goodbye to a company that once killed 17 of your fellow citizens in a totally unjustifiable shootout, but take solace in the face that as you say farewell to Blackwater, you can say hello to Triple Canopy, a Herndon, Virginia-based company, that picks up the expiring contract of Blackwater Worldwide, which changed its name to XE a few months ago. Who knows, maybe Triple Canopy will even be kind enough to senselessly murder a few Iraqi citizens just for the heck of it, then lie and make you forget that Blackwater even left. Besides, if you want to blame someone for the departure of Blackwater/XE, blame the U.S. State Department, which decided not to renew XE's contract in January. Oh, and I suppose you can toss some blame in the direction of the Iraqi government, which refused to renew the firm's operating license because of a September 2007 shooting in which Baghdad says security guards employed by Blackwater killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Personally, I get all warm and fuzzy thinking back to the good old days when the State Department hired Blackwater for a multiyear assignment in Iraq, renewable annually, to protect American diplomats and other employees around the world. Who could have guessed that these trigger-happy bastards would both murder dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians AND inspire the central storyline for Season 8 of 24? I’d call that a win-win. Plus, who doesn’t get a kick out of Blackwater/XE issuing a statement boasting that, “No one under our protection has been killed or even seriously injured.” Way to pick only the facts that support your case and ignore the remaining 99.6 percent of the truth, Blackwater/XE. And hey, with many of the company’s employees expected to go to work for Triple Canopy, maybe that same irresponsible, murderous spirit will persist. The loss of this contract is a huge blow for Blackwater/XE itself, as it constituted between one third and half of its business. Still, it’s not nearly as big a loss as the Iraqi people are suffering in losing these fine Blackwater/XE employees from their everyday lives. After all, it’s not every day a foreign government is kind enough to send gun-toting whack jobs halfway around the world to commit senseless acts of violence in your country, good times……
- Stories of diners finding disgusting, misplaced items in their food or beverage at a restaurant is nothing new. They happen so frequently that they’re typically not worth discussing - unless they involved popular eatery TGI Friday's coming up with a brand new dish: the vegetable and viper medley. When you order a vegetable medley, you probably expect some corn, a few peas, a handful of carrots, maybe even some beans. What you don’t expect is to find a severed, decaying snake head mixed in with your greens. I’m guessing that Jack Pendleton of Clifton Park, N.Y. wasn’t expecting a snake head either when he headed down to his local T.G.I.F. for what he anticipated to be a nice meal. That changed once Pendleton hit the vegetable portion of his meal. “I started to feel nauseous when I recognized what it was and I realized I had been eating the vegetables where I'd found it,” Pendleton said of the small, gray piece of rotting snake head on his plate. Pendleton had gone to the restaurant Sunday night for dinner and ordered a chicken sandwich and a side of broccoli and string beans. Notice I said chicken, broccoli and beans - no serpentine matter requested. “I finish the sandwich, and I start digging into the veggies, and I see this gray shape,” Pendleton explained. “I thought it was a mushroom, 'cause sometimes you get a mushroom with the vegetables. And I'm turning it over with my fork, and I see this green patch on the bottom. And I'd never seen a green mushroom, so I continued to look at it a little more closely -- and I noticed this v-shaped mouth. It was clearly a reptile. I'm guessing it was a snake because of the shape.” Pendleton he waved the waiter over and explained to him what he had found, but this idiot had the audacity to laugh at him. The response changed when Pendleton showed him the snake head. The waiter "took maybe a second to recognize what it was -- and then he started to gag." The waiter than apologized and took the snake head away, followed by the manager appearing at Pendleton’s table “what seemed just like a few seconds later, just as white as a sheet.” Stating the obvious, the manager told Pendleton that in the five years that he's worked at the restaurant, he’d never seen anything like this. Really? Thanks for that, Captain Obvious. To Pendleton’s credit, his main focus was that the staff scour the kitchen and make sure that the rest of the snake wasn’t lurking in someone else’s dinner. Of course, that didn’t stop him from filing a complaint with the T.G.I. Friday's corporation. An official with the parent company, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, issued a statement saying, "We are taking this situation very seriously. We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation.” As for the snake head, it’s time for some CSI: Animal Kingdom on that slimy bugger. It’s being sent to an independent lab for testing. Pendleton says he’s satisfied with the way the situation has been handled, although all he got out of it was a comped meal. For some odd reason, dude isn’t looking to sue the pants off T.G.I. Friday’s for serving him a severed snake head for dinner. “I've had some friends say, 'You could have gotten a lawsuit out of this,'" he explains. "That's not anything I'm really interested in. It's the single most horrifying thing that's happened to me at a restaurant, but I don't have any long-term psychological damage or anything like that.” Bro, you’re missing the point. This is the United States of America and it is 2009. It doesn’t matter if you suffered any long-term psychological damage; sue first, ask questions never. If you can make a quick buck off someone else’s incompetence, you do it. Quit being noble, quit trying to act all dignified and forgiving and sue, dammit……..
- And the hits just keep on comin’ for the University of Georgia football team. Last offseason, the Bulldogs led the nation in players arrested and did so by scoring arrests in a wide range of criminal categories - attacking inanimate objects in hospital parking lots, underage drinking, etc. - and head coach Mark Richt became so tired of answering questions about his team’s knuckleheaded ways that he was openly hostile any time the subject came up. Hopefully that hostility has worn off, because it looks like Richt is about to have those same questions thrown his way once again. That’ll happen when you suspend two players for violating the school's substance abuse policy, and have another player who also violated team rules escape suspension only because he is being medically disqualified because of a lingering ankle injury. Junior tight end Bruce Figgins will miss the Bulldogs' first six games this season after failing a drug test for a second time, while sophomore defensive end Justin Houston, a projected starter on Georgia's defense, will miss the Bulldogs' first two games for failing his first drug test. Junior wide receiver Tony Wilson also faced discipline, but he is leaving the team because of an ankle injury suffered during spring practice. Maybe it’s best that Richt confirmed the suspensions in a statement released by the school Saturday instead of announcing them in person. "I'm very disappointed in the poor judgment of these players," Richt said in the news release. "They'll have to pay an appropriate price and I'm confident they will learn an important lesson from their mistake.” They will learn from their mistakes? How about you, coach? Will you learn from your mistakes? You know, the mistakes you seem to make every single year in recruiting classless, thuggish idiots with criminal tendencies to be a part of your program. Will you, Mark Richt, learn from you mistakes and start recruiting players who can stay out of jail, stay off the suspended list, stay eligible and not embarrass your program and university? Guys like Figgins, who has now been suspended twice, aren’t the sort of guys you want on your team. Then again, if Richt can't put a few more wins on the board and actually come out on top in a big game or two, he won't have to worry about who is on the roster at Georgia. He’ll find himself axed and someone else can recruit thugs, drug users and brain-dead tools to play for the Bulldogs……
- What the hey? Since when are hazing and underage drinking acceptable reasons to shut down a sorority? You are befuddling me with your bizarre ways, Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. The organization has shut down its chapter at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. after allegations of widespread hazing and underage drinking surfaced. This all began because some tattletale on the Longwood campus just couldn’t stand people having fun at the expense of others and called a national hazing hotline. Because of that call, the centuries-old founding chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha could be gone for good from Longwood University. Worse yet, this announcement came just two days before commencement, leaving students still belonging to Longwood's Greek community reeling. “I just went into shock because as a Greek, I could not imagine what would happen if my chapter was taken away. It's such a big part around here. I was in shock,” said Alpha Gamma Delta member Amanda Bolton. Oh, and don’t bother pointing out that this was actually the Alpha chapter's second chance at redemption - I’m hearing none of that nonsense. Nor do I care that these new allegations come less than two months after the group had just been reinstated following mid-March complaints of hazing and underage drinking. Where the Zeta Tau Alpha national organization sees members continuing to violate standards after being reinstated, I see a dogged commitment to the very activities that college should be about: getting drunk, having great parties and humiliating people for your own amusement. I’m sorry, but aren’t those the very principles our society is founded upon? Anyone? So not only do the Zeta Tau Alpha sisters have to deal with their sorority being shut down, they now must cope with all of the rumors floating around campus about their demise. The only glimmer of hope during this ugly time is that both Longwood University and the national Zeta Tau Alpha organization say they hope the chapter can return to campus at some point down the road. Just don’t bother bringing it back if you’re not going to allow them to haze and booze, because clearly these girls excel at both of those activities……
- It could be worse Miami Dolphins fans - much worse. As far as whoring out the name of your team’s stadium to a major corporation for a megabucks deal goes, ending up with LandShark Stadium as the name for your team’s home field isn’t so bad. It fits well in South Florida, where sharks and fishing are a big part of the culture. It isn’t awkward to say, it doesn’t sound like some type of disease and for people who aren’t familiar with the LandShark beer brand, it might just sound like a normal stadium name. For those of you who don’t know about LandShark, it’s owned by mellow musician Jimmy Buffett and is a co-project with Anheuser Busch. The announcement came on Friday and a billboard showing the new name and logo for the stadium are already up. Along with the name change, Dolphins fans will notice a whole new look to the stadium when the team hosts its first home game of the season on Sept. 21. The stadium will have a new Margaritaville-inspired area in honor of one of Buffett's most famous songs. Hopefully for Dolphin fans, the stadium will be devoid of those idiot Parrotheads, Buffet’s most hardcore fans who showed up in force when Buffett performed at an event at the newly dubbed LandShark Stadium on Friday. Buffett promoted the new alliance with new lyrics rewritten for Dolphins fans. So far, terms of the contract haven’t been made public, but I wonder how much the cost of naming rights for stadiums have gone down in these tough economic times. Perhaps that economic impact can be seen in the fact that the naming deal was struck only for this coming football season, meaning there is no guarantee that the stadium will still be called LandShark for the Super Bowl when it comes to Miami in 2010. So enjoy LandShark stadium while it lasts, Miami, because next season you might be stuck with an entirely crap-tastic corporate name on your stadium……good times……
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