- Attention PETA freaks: you’re not going to like what’s going on at the Round Barn Golf Club in Rochester, Ind. You all won't like it, but trust me when I say that the rest of us will - a lot. Round Barn Golf Club has been fighting a losing battle with as many as 1,000 Canada geese that spend the winter on its property. The geese makes a mess of the course, leaving droppings everywhere and tearing up the fairways and greens. The geese can also be problematic if they hang around once the weather warms up, getting in the way of players and making a nuisance of themselves. Officials at the golf course say they’re tried everything imaginable to drive the geese away, including starter pistols and air horns. Nothing has worked and now management has had just about enough of their fowl visitors. So what do you do to ward off pesky, messy birds that have worn out their welcome? Obviously, the next step is going to your city council and asking for permission to break out the guns and blast the crap out of the birds, which is just what the club did. And sure enough, the Rochester City Council has approved a plan to allow geese hunting at the course, effectively immediately. No longer will the geese damage the turf and make a mess on the grounds. The club will seek about five off-duty police officers to do the hunting during off-season, which I guess is fine. Personally I’m handing out rifles and shotguns to every golfer who pays greens fees and tees off, but that’s just me. Why wait until off-season? If there is even one goose on the grounds, you arm every golfer with a gun and make sure that goose is dead, dead, dead. Send a message now and maybe you won't have 1,000 geese to contend with once the off-season rolls around. I’m just trying to think proactively here and offend as many PETA ass hats as possible in the process, I do what I can…….
- Cows are typically good for one of two things on a farm: beef or milk. Either a cow is on its way to becoming hamburger or it’s providing the starting materials for the cheese to top that burger. That’s not the case on Shawn Saylor’s farm, some 90 minutes from Pittsburgh. His family has owned the dairy farm for nearly a century, but for the past three years the cows there have been pulling double duty. To combat rising energy costs, Saylor used his love of science to come up with an alternative energy source: manure from about 600 cows. “It's a pretty simple process. There's not really a lot to it," Saylor said. "Manure comes from the cows, and there's energy left in the manure.” It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but the basis of the idea is a process known as anaerobic digestion. Basically, manure is dropped into a 19,000-gallon tank, then moved into the digester, which is 16 feet deep and 70 feet in diameter. For 16 days, the manure is heated while the bacteria break down the organic matter in order to produce methane gas, which is burned in two engine generators to make electricity. The heat created by the generators keeps the digester hot, heats the buildings around the farm and helps provide hot water. There is enough electricity created by the process to power not only the farm but also a dozen neighboring homes and still have still left over, which Saylor sells back to the grid. So just how much does the poop power save Saylor? "In savings, there's $200,000 a year, in either extra income from sale of electricity or cost offsets," he said. “So you're talking about system project costs of over a million dollars to build the system but a payback of five years or less.” The system also has a nice side benefit of reducing the odor that would otherwise linger from the manure and choke the nostrils of anyone in the vicinity. "The farm used to get a lot of complaints from motorists, which is understandable. It used to stink a lot,” Saylor admitted. Now, the digesters reduce 98 percent of all odor. It seems like a story too good to be true, but the reality is that Saylor still has work to do. He intends to make his farm entirely self-sufficient by using waste vegetable oil to make biodiesel fuel. All of this has been made possible by a $600,000 grant from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection that helped Saylor get his project rolling in 2006 and now it’s turned into a truly amazing tale……
- Dammit, UCLA officials, you are a bunch of fun-hating tools and you’re ruining a good thing. For nearly a decade, UCLA students have staged the Undie Run three times a year as a way to relieve stress during finals week. As with all things good, goofy and innocent, The Man has to find a way to ruin the fun. Using the false pretense of safety concerns, UCLA administrators told student leaders Tuesday that the university will no longer allow the Undie Run. For those of you unfamiliar with this rollicking good time, the Undie Run involves students running through campus, many in their underwear, in the middle of the night at the end of the fall, winter and spring academic quarters (no point in doing it at the end of summer quarter, too few people around to participate). From its humble beginnings, the event has grown substantially and now regularly attracts 8,000 to 10,000 participants. But leave it to campus and law enforcement officials to fabricate all sorts of lies about how many of the runners have no affiliation with UCLA and are part of the problem with the event. Additionally, these ass-hatted administrators claim that despite repeated efforts on their part to minimize safety risks for students, limit property damage and keep non-affiliated people from joining in, the run has spiraled out of control. These same tools say that the most recent run, in June, was marred by numerous incidents of fighting and vandalism and one robbery, as well more than a dozen emergency medical calls answered by emergency medical services units, most of them alcohol-related. So people get a little lubed up and go out for a drunk run in their underwear, so what? And a fight or two among drunk students isn’t the end of the world either. “What started out as a UCLA student tradition to relieve stress during finals has turned into a free-for-all event attracting large numbers of people who are not affiliated with UCLA and who have demonstrated they have little consideration for the well-being of our students or the surrounding community," said UCLA Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students Robert Naples. "While we regret having to call off the run in the future, we must ensure the safety of our students and the community and also look after UCLA's relationships with our neighbors." Quit lying, R. You don’t hate having to end the fun, you relish the chance, you sick bastard. Way to stamp out one of the last vestiges of fun and joy these poor students have during one of the most stressful weeks of their year…….
- The idea of a “Seinfeld” reunion has been shot down for years by cast members and most vocally by writer Larry David, who crafted the show’s brilliant comedy along with Jerry Seinfeld. But David is changing his tune a bit and has warmed to the idea of reuniting the crew from his old show on his current one, HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Why the change? “I always said no. We would never do that, it’s a lame idea. And then I thought it might be very funny to do that on ‘Curb.’ And I kept thinking about it, and started to think of different scenarios. I called Jerry, and Jerry was game. I called the others, and we did it,” David explained. The obvious question is what circumstances and storyline will bring Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine back together and David isn’t willing to give that information up just yet. “That’s a very good question, and that will be answered in one of the episodes,” David said. “That’s a big thing, because I would never do that, so there was a compelling reason why I decided to do it.” Viewers will be able see David and Seinfeld writing the episode, aspects of the read-through, parts of rehearsals and the show-within-the-show being filmed. “You’ll get an idea of what happened [to the characters] 11 years later,” David said. “You won’t see a show from beginning to end, but you’ll see parts of it.” Because cast members will also be playing themselves on “Curb,” David was asked whether the debacle of Michael Richards’ incident of racist behavior during a comedy club performance a couple years ago will be addressed and he admitted that it may be. Whatever this reunion ends up looking like, it will take place in “Curb’s” season finale, which could be expanded into a one-hour episode. Now if only I got HBO…………
- This hits close to home because I’ve lived most of my life with the city of Cleveland as the nearest place with a major professional sports franchise. Seeing the Cleveland Indians hold a fire sale and ship off their most valuable players is nothing new, but the latest edition of “everything must go” may be the most singularly offensive and awful that I’ve ever witnessed. Shipping off the reigning American League Cy Young winner for the second year in a row (Cliff Lee), a perennial all-star catcher in Victor Martinez, the team’s starting first (Ryan Garko) and third (Mark DeRosa) basemen is hard to swallow under the best of circumstances, but these are far from the best circumstances. The problem here, specifically in the case of the Lee and Martinez trades, is that the Indians basically got f***ed over by their trading partners, so much so that I believe the first words opposing general managers spoke to Indians GM Mark Shapiro upon starting negotiations were, “Bend over.” In the Lee trade, the Indians got a poo-poo platter of players that included neither of the two elite prospects the Toronto Blue Jays had demanded from Philadelphia when the Phillies wanted the Jays’ ace pitcher Roy Halladay. That deal never happened because Toronto insisted on J.A. Happ and/or Kyle Drabek, considered the Phillies’ two top pitching prospects. Because Toronto wanted both of them for Halladay, a past Cy Young winner, it would make sense that the Indians could demand at least one of htem for their own Cy winner, right? Nope. Instead of Happ and/or Drabek, the Indians traded Lee for Carlos Carrasco, Jason Knapp, infielder Jason Donald, and catcher Lou Marson - yes, THAT Lou Marson. Combined, Carrasco and Knapp have posted a combined 8-16 record at the minor league level this season with a tandem E.R.A. north of 4.60. As for Donald and Marson….their combined stats boast a grand total of two home runs and a batting average of around .250. Well done, Shapiro, well done. Had this sad saga ended there, Cleveland fans would have had plenty to be pissed about. But the very next day, the Tribe shipped away its best position player for….yup, another poo-poo platter. Early trade rumors had Boston shipping top pitching prospect Clay Bucholz to Cleveland as part of a package to land Martinez. A good negotiator would have held out for Bucholz because the Indians didn’t have to trade Martinez, who they would owe a mere $7 million if they were to pick up his 2010 contract option. Notice I said that’s what a good negotiator would do, but Mark Shapiro is no such thing. He accepted an offer of Justin Masterson, Nick Hagadone, and Bryan Price instead, landing a so-so prospect who has some major league experience and two pitchers at the Single-A level. The sunniest forecasts have the acquired players from these two deals possibly making the Indians competitive again by 2012, good times! Still, what’s to say that the Indians don’t simply trade these guys away if they ever become elite players and simply continuing this sick cycle? The only real solace for Indians fans is that they can look two hours to the east and see that the Pittsburgh Pirates held an even bigger and more indefensible fire sale. Oh, and at least the Indians won't be able to trade away the reigning Cy Young winner next year….because they won't have him……….
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