Reasons to love mercenaries, the Cleveland Browns are still a bunch of whiny babies and Amazon lies to all of us

- Where’s the problem here? That question is directed to the group of independent U.N. experts who expressed concern Friday over the increased use of mercenaries in Honduras. For a nation under the control of an illegitimate de facto president who has been in power since a military-led coup in June, what’s the big deal if a few hundred armed men want to channel their inner Hessian and fight for money within Honduras’s borders? According to this U.N. panel, 40 former Colombian paramilitaries have been hired to protect properties and individuals in Honduras since the June 28 coup that ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya and an additional 120 mercenaries from various Latin American countries had been contracted to support the government of illegitimate interim President Roberto Micheletti. "We urge the Honduran authorities to take all practical measures to prevent the use of mercenaries within its territory and to fully investigate allegations concerning their presence and activities," the U.N. panel said. Again, why? If these whack jobs are willing to put their lives on the line for money, so be it. Better a foreign mercenary come in and die in a fire fight than one of your own, right? Seriously, who doesn’t love mercenaries? “Will fight and kill for pay,” what a great motto. All the benefits and perks of having actual soldiers doing a job without any of the hassle of having to give a damn about what happens to them. If the mercenaries you hire are killed, just hire some more. Who cares if the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries is prohibited under the International Convention on the issue? Also, who cares if Honduras has signed that agreement, which they have. Don’t get me wrong, Micheletti is still a bogus tool who has no right to be presiding over Honduras, but that doesn’t mean I have to object to everything the guy does. While Zelaya remains holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, chaos is reigning in the streets and bringing in mercenaries should only add to the chaos. Television and radio stations are being unfairly shut down by the government, there are regular riots and protests and the interim government is throwing down ultimatums to the Brazilian government for when Zelaya’s situation must be resolved. Add the delegation from the Organization of American States that arrived in Honduras on Wednesday to meet separately with Zelaya and Micheletti and the simmering hatred between the two men and well, I suppose you could say that a few dozen mercenaries riding into town isn't exactly the biggest concern……………

- Waaaaaaaaahhhhh! Waaaaaaaahhhh! Yes, that’s the sound of infantile crying and whining you hear coming from Cleveland, where the Browns not only suck and are not only intent on trading away their best players for pennies on the dollar, but their coaches are busy b*tching about calls from games that happened a week ago. Despite the fact that his team is 0-4 and just might be the worst squad in the NFL, Browns defensive coordinator Rob Ryan is still bent about the end of last Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals in which Bengals kicker Shayne Graham ended the game with four seconds left in overtime by converting a 31-yard field goal. No one disputes that the kick was close to the upright, but the officials ruled it good and it gave the Bengals a 23-20 win. Five days after the fact, Ryan is still dredging up the kick without being prompted. "You can watch the tape," Ryan said Friday. "I'm not saying anything, but man, maybe the posts were crooked. Look at it." Never mind the fact that his team won the ugliest game in the NFL this season today, 6-3 over Buffalo, because what’s going to stick with me from the Browns from this past week is not a putrid win over an equally awful Buffalo team, but rather the incredibly immature and infinitesimal manner in which the Browns handled their loss last Sunday. I don’t care if the players on the field at the time of the kick, including cornerbacks Brandon McDonald and Eric Wright, both thought the kick was off the mark. "I don't want to get fined," Ryan said. "I pay enough money already on the house I don't even live in California. I don't want to make this a big story, but I was disappointed. Of course, I'm not expert. That's why I'm saying maybe somebody else should look at it." Right, but you don’t want to say anything. You’re not saying…..you’re just saying. Nonetheless, the league office isn't too worried about the Browns’ griping. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league feels the correct ruling was made. "The field judge standing right underneath the upright called it good and we have reviewed multiple video from different angles and have seen nothing to dispute that call," Aiello said. Clearly Ryan was looking for anyone to give him a chance to whine about the call, because the question that actually led to his whining had absolutely nothing to do with whether the field goal was good or not. As always, way to show your total lack of class and excellence, Cleveland Browns……….

- Just like the iPhone, the Amazon Kindle (on which you can subscribe to and read this very blog, ironically) has long been extremely overpriced, in my opinion. The Kindle debuted in 2007 at $399 and started this year at $359, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his stool pigeons cut the price again in July and apparently that price cut wasn’t enough to sell enough Kindles because Amazon is cutting the price again, dropping the cost another $40 to make the current price $259. Why anyone would pay $259 for an electronic-book reader is beyond me, especially since there are so many other, cheaper ways to read. In addition to the price cut, Bezos also announced the launch of an international version of Kindle in hopes of spurring more sales and keeping it ahead of a growing field of competitors. If you believe the BS that Amazon is selling, the company is cutting prices because it is making and selling so many Kindles. Uh-huh, sure. It has nothing to do with a flood of competing products hitting the market, including Sony’s $199 "Pocket Edition" e-reader and larger $299 touch-screen model, the $400 e-reader IREX Technologies plans to release this fall and Plastic Logic Ltd.’s soon-to-be-released electronic reading device with wireless capabilities. It may well be Amazon's best-selling product, as Bezos claims, but Amazon has not disclosed sales figures and for that reason, it’s impossible to say for sure how popular it really is. Sure, it features a 6-inch screen that displays shades of gray, room to store 1,500 books and the ability to download books wirelessly, but that doesn’t mean it’s selling like hotcakes. More than likely, Amazon is panicking because e-reader sales will total an estimated 3 million this year and competitors are looking to muscle in on its action. Just know that e-books accounted for just 1.6 percent of all book sales in the first half of this year, although experts say that the market should continue to grow steadily. Whatever you do, don’t believe that Amazon is cutting the cost of the Kindle out of the goodness of its heart or because it’s selling so many of them that it just doesn’t need to charge the price it once asked for the device. Thanks for the lying, Amazon……………

- Baseball and softball might be out as sports for the next two Summer Olympics, but I think we can all agree that we’re totally pumped about the addition of rugby and golf as official Olympic sports for the 2016 Olympic program. Those additions were made on Friday in a majority vote of the IOC membership, with golf gaining admission by a vote of 63-27 and rugby passing with an 81-8 vote. The vote came after the IOC's 15-member executive committee nominated golf and rugby from a list that included squash, karate, roller sports and the re-inclusion of baseball and softball. Like other sports such as basketball and baseball, Olympic golf will open the door for professional athletes like Tiger Woods to participate. Woods has already expressed excitement about the possibility of playing in the Olympics if golf were included, so you know he’ll be down. Still, the prospect of adding Woods to the mix wasn’t enough to make golf a slam-dunk for inclusion when it came time to vote. Rugby was actually seen as much more of a sure thing prior to voting even though both sports ultimately made the cut. In fact, golf was rejected when it applied for addition to the 2012 program four years ago and received the fewest votes of any sport at that point. Rugby gained points for agreeing to abandon its prestigious world cup during Olympic years, leading some committee members to speculate that golfers would view an Olympic medal as less prestigious than a Masters or U.S. Open title. Ummm, pretty much. Golf is all about history and legacy and you can’t just start it up as an Olympic sport and expect to shoot right past tournaments with decades of history and legend. Still, bringing in the big names like Woods, Mickelson, etc. proved to be enough and when the 2016 Games roll around (in Rio, thank God, and not in the U.S.), golfers will be teeing it up. Part of me wonders what sort of bribes, er, um, convincing pitch that the sport’s supporters made to the IOC. In the old days of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, a bribe of fitness equipment, Pepperidge farm mint Milano cookies and hookers would get the job done, but I don’t know if those things also trip current president Jacques Rogge’s trigger. Michelle Wie also spoke to the IOC to make the pitch for golf at the Olympics, although sending one of the most overrated, overhyped and underwhelming female golfers we’ve ever seen may not have been the most beneficial thing for the cause….but I digress. The bottom line is that golf is now an Olympic sport….in six years………..

- What follows is a bizarre tale of two things that I’ve just never managed to get with even though both are extremely popular in American culture and even internationally. For one, The Simpsons has somehow managed to survive as an adult-focused cartoon for some 20 years, during which I have watched exactly zero minutes of zero episodes of the show. It’s not appealing or interesting to me to see cartoon caricatures of people in basically an animated version of a sitcom, so to speak. If I’m going to watch cartoons, I want them to be silly, juvenile and a whole lot like Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. The second component of this equation is Playboy magazine, wherein skanks take their clothes off for money and millions of dudes pay money for said magazine so they can get their thrills from looking at said skanks sans clothing. To me, skin mags, strip clubs and the like are pathetic because if you have to pay to see a woman without her clothes on, you are a loser. Add all of that up and you can probably surmise how I feel about blue-haired Marge Simpson of The Simpsons appearing on the cover of the November issue of Playboy. Whoever ghost-writes Hugh Hefner’s Twitter feed while he’s pounding Viagra and sleeping with multiple blond bimbos mentioned back in August that Simpson will appear in a three-page pictorial, which will also feature an interview and data sheet. Yes, an interview and data sheet for a cartoon character who doesn’t really exist. The spread will celebrate The Simpsons 20th anniversary, to which I have to ask: If something is appropriately celebrated by someone associated with it appearing in a skin mag, then is it really worth celebrating in the first place? Let’s go with no. For the losers who don’t find the prospect of a yellow-skinned cartoon character in your Playboy appealing, er, read the magazine only for the articles, there will still be the traditional Playmate of the month. Or you can stop being a pathetic loser, step your game up and find a woman willing to take off her clothes for you not because she’s being paid but because she wants to for you…………