- When a woman sets herself on fire at a large shopping mall, you ask yourself several questions: What method did she use to torch herself, a lighter, a match or one of those irritating instant torch thingies that never, ever work right the first time? Did she think ahead to wear a flammable material so as to make the fire burn quickly and intensely? And oh yeah, why the f**k would anyone set themselves on fire anywhere, let alone in a crowded, public place? Those questions remain to be answered after Cecilia Casals of North Miami Beach set herself on fire at the Mall of the Americas in Miami on Thursday. To say this chick has a troubled past would be the ultimate understatement; according to documents released by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office show, Casals was charged in February 2004 with attempted murder after trying to kill her boyfriend when she learned he had a wife in Cuba. Casals and her boyfriend were riding in a car in Hialeah when she pulled a knife from her purse, placed it on her boyfriend's neck and slashed him. He tried to defend himself, suffered cuts on his hands for his troubles and ultimately leapt from the car to run for help. It was at that point Casals attempted to run him over with the car, missing but doing some serious landscape damage in the effort. In other words, she’s slightly volatile and has a bit of an anger problem. She also has quite the criminal background, having been placed on two years' probation in April 2008 after a conviction for felony drug trafficking. That conviction came after Casals signed for a shipment containing more than $250,000 in prescription drugs. Oh, and there are answers for some of those questions I asked earlier. It seems that Casals walked into Savage Boutique at about 3 p.m. drenched in gasoline, lit herself on fire, then walked around engulfed in flames as shocked shoppers watched. Casals’ husband admitted that he didn’t know why she lit herself on fire, but the couple’s oldest daughter worked at Savage Boutique. Also, not everyone simply stood around watching her burn; three people were injured trying to rescue her. John Torres was one of those good Samaritans and he actually injured his hand as he broke open a glass case to grab the fire extinguisher. “It looked like a big fireball," said Torres. "I know she lost all her clothing.” In the aftermath of this bizarre incident, fire and police officials forced the mall to shut down for the remainder of the day. After the fire was out, Casals walked out of the mall and into the parking lot where firefighters found her with third-degree burns on more than 75 percent of her body. Still, no one knows exactly what caused her to do what she did, although she clearly sounds like a person in need of major psychological help…….
- Philadelphia fans are angry. That’s nothing new; these are people who have booed Santa Claus, booed Hall of Fame third baseman and baseball legend Mike Schmidt and cheered when Hall of Fame wide receiver and opposing player Michael Irvin lay motionless on the field after a devastating neck injury. However, this is a new kind of outrage, even for Philly fan. The vitriol being poured out by football fan and non-football fan alike is amazing in spite of the fact that we all knew and accepted the fact that there would be a major backlash for any team signing Michael Vick. A guy operates a dogfighting ring, kills dogs, goes to jail for two years and lies about it all along the way until he’s caught and there are bound to be a lot of groups and individuals angry at him. Animal rights groups were a given to protest and speak out against Vick whenever and wherever he signed, so the Philadelphia Eagles inking Vick to a two-year contract on Thursday merely provided a setting for the chaos. That chaos has included those animal rights activists buying billboards along the road leading to the Eagles’ stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, standing along the sides of the road near the stadium and the team’s training camp holding signs and giving countless TV interviews filled with as much vitriol as they can stuff into every answer. Newspapers chipped in with overreactive, hateful headlines like, “Hide Your Dogs,” helping to fan the flames of outrage. For everyone who is angry…..I get it. Like most of you, I love dogs and couldn’t bear to watch even two seconds of footage from an actual dog fight. Anyone who participates in such an enterprise is a certifiable scumbag and should go to jail, which Vick did. However, he served his time in prison and I think it was reasonably close to the length of time he should have been there. Would I have liked to see him behind bars for a couple more years? Sure, but now that he’s out, if an NFL team wants to sign him and allow him to play for them, that’s their choice. People have every right to hire a convicted criminal to work for them if they choose. This isn’t a day car center hiring a convicted child molester to work for them, which would obviously be completely wrong. This is a football team hiring a former dogfighting ring operator to play football, period. If Philly fans want to stop supporting their team because of this one signing, that is their choice just as it’s the team’s choice to sign Vick. Everyone has the right to decide how to act here, but those who are speaking out loudest against this signing seem to think that the Eagles don’t have that right……
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Of late, I’ve come to enjoy the prison editions of Riot Watch! the most. After all, it’s society’s outcasts turning their rage on one another and as long as prison authorities are smart and simply allow the convicts to riot in a sealed-off area until they’ve destroyed or burned everything in that area, no one but the cons gets hurt. For example, look at Friday’s two-hour prison riot in the northern Mexico state of Durango, where nineteen inmates were killed and dozens more were injured. Things got so out of hand that state and federal security forces were called in to quell the violence at the prison in Gomez Palacio town. If you have access to Mexican television (and who doesn’t?), you got to see footage of officers wearing bulletproof vests, storming the prison while crowds gathered outside. As any good inmate would do, some of the rioting cons threw sticks at the officers as they took a moment from burning things and beating on one another to shake their proverbial fists of rage at The Man. Of course, when it’s you throwing sticks versus officers armed with machine guns, the odds for the battle tend not to be in your favor. However, the bottom line here for riot lovers like me is that buildings and property were burned, things were destroyed and I got to see all the riot-y goodness. In the end, authorities regained control of the prison and the injured inmates were taken for treatment. Big ups to everyone who was a part of this great event, I hope to see you all rioting again very soon……..
- Very freaking magnanimous of you, China! Allowing individual computer users in China to choose whether to install a controversial content filtering system is very big of you. After threatening to force computer companies to install its Green Dam-Youth Escort software on every computer sold in China, the government is backpedaling by saying that while the system will be installed on computers in any public place, individual users can choose whether or not to voluntarily submit to censorship. Thanks to China's minister of Industry and Information Technology, Minister Li Yizhong, for that announcement. The government would have everyone believe that the software is solely to protect young online users from pornography. While I don’t doubt that taking an anti-porn stance is something the Chinese government is all for, don’t tell me that filtering out anything that might inspire even the slightest anti-government, anti-Communist sentiment in its citizens isn’t the primary aim. Minister Li Yizhong also said that his ministry was still working to upgrade the Green Dam software. "Installation is intended to block violent and pornographic content on the Internet to protect children," Li lied. "Any move to politicize the issue or to attack China's Internet management system is irresponsible and not in line with reality.” Perhaps the revised stance on this issue had something to do with the fact that businesses and computer users complained that the software left computers open to cyber attacks. Even if this is a relatively hollow and forced gesture, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank those who helped bring it about. That would include the multiple trade groups who sent a letter directly to Premier Wen Jiabao just over a month ago. It would not include Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., which produced Green Dam and “coincidentally” happens to have ties to China's military and security ministry. What I love about that angle is that Jinhui officials allegedly received thousands of angry calls after the announcement that it’s software would be mandatory in China and among those calls were dozens of death threats. Nice work, China, phoning in death threats to resolve a problem is always cool in my book! Really, there are no losers in this situation. Everyone wins because at the very worst, you’ve gotten plenty of entertainment out of watching the Chinese government make an ass out of itself yet again, good times………
- We have a blight on our society, America, and her name is Megan Hauserman. If you’re sitting there asking yourself who the hell Megan Hauserman is, allow me to fill you in. She is the personification of a nightmare scenario that has been building for some time now, ever since the advent of reality television. In short, a bunch of no-talent attention whores who are also aspiring actors with no useful skills in the real word come a flockin’ any time a reality show holds auditions. You have enough of those shows, which America certainly has by this point, and you’re going to end up with someone like Megan Hauserman. Hauserman, a vapid, ditzy, empty-headed blond skank with no discernable soul, has appeared on not one, not two, but five freaking low-rent, low-class reality shows. She started out on the bottom tier as one of the hollow-headed tramps on the CW’s Beauty and the Geek. Building on the momentum of that major career achievement, she springboarded into not one, but two reality dating shows based on aging, has-been rocker Bret Michaels of Poison fame: Rock of Love and Rock of Love: Charm School. But just to prove the versatility of her vapidity, Hauserman ventured outside of the reality dating arena to take part in some network’s (don’t know, don’t care to look it up) reality soul-selling competition I Love Money. After stringing together those four shows, VH1 was clearly convinced that Megan Hauserman had what it took to front her own bottom-scraping, IQ-deprived reality series and so they handed her Megan Wants a Millionaire, a show currently running and in which this blond bimbo gets to pick from rich guys of various ages and professions in the alleged hopes of finding the love of her life. Right, because finding love on reality TV wasn’t enough of a farce as it was, let’s add that further bastardizing factor of making that love match based on money. Nothing screams true love quite like finding your soul mate on a reality show for which he was selected based solely on the size of his bank account. I don’t say this often, America, but if you watch this show for even a single second, I will hear about it, I will come and find you and I will beat you with a rusty garden hoe until you are dead, dead, dead………
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