Not believing Tiger Woods, eletronic death sticks and the Chicago Bulls not exactly making friends but definitely influencing people

- Great, a casino in Connecticut has found a way to combine two of my least favorite things in the whole wide world. Gambling and cigarettes are both killers and drains on society in their own special way, so I suppose it makes some sort of sick karmic sense that Foxwoods Resort & Casino has found a way to marry the two and make money off of them - well, more than a casino already makes tons of money off suckers. The two entities came together in a product known as electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. These artificial death sticks are being marketed in Connecticut and are heavily featured at Foxwoods. E-death sticks just hit the market in Connecticut last month and although there are serious questions about their safety, consumers have begun to embrace the concept. Four retail outlets currently sell e-death sticks, which don't emit any smoke or tar. Loser smokers inhale a vapor of nicotine that's stored in a cartridge and manufacturers insist the device is safer than real cigarettes because it doesn't produce harmful chemicals. That isn’t enough to allay the concerns of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who admits he hasn't received any complaints about the e-cigarettes, but still questions the product’s safety. "As I have repeatedly urged, consumers and retailers, including tribal casinos, should be wary of electronic cigarettes, which remain unapproved by the FDA. The safety of electronic cigarettes remains questionable at best following a preliminary FDA analysis that found cancer-causing chemicals and an antifreeze ingredient in some of these devices. These devices may falsely appeal to young people as a healthier alternative to cigarettes, when in reality they may risk leading youth into smoking, while also delivering an alternative health threat. Any carcinogen in a cartridge should be avoided, even banned, when the full extent of the ingredients and dangers are unknown," Blumenthal said. Losers who just have to get their smoke on at Foxwoods or other public places and don’t want to stand with the other loser smokers in the smoker’s kiosk outside the door must pony up $129.95 for a deluxe e-death sticks kit, which compares unfavorably to the cost of a carton of cigarettes at the casino, which costs just over $100. Each refill of the cartridges costs almost $15 and equals one carton of cigarettes. So far, 35 units have been sold at Foxwoods and the company the manufacturers the electronic death sticks plans to expand its market by bringing the product to the Crystal Mall in Waterford next week. Hope it’s worth paying huge wads of cash to slowly but steadily kill yourselves, death stick lovers……….

- Neither side looked great in the divorce between the Chicago Bulls and former coach Vinny Del Negro, fired last week after the team’s playoff run ended with a first-round loss to Cleveland. Del Negro looked bad because he reportedly got into physical altercations with both his vice president of basketball operations, John Paxson, and his general manager, Gar Foreman, during the season. The team look bad because it had two executives who ended up in fights with the coach and axed a guy who led an overachieving team to the playoffs despite a slew of injuries during the season. Now that the dust has settled, Del Negro is a coaching free agent and the topic of very few conversations but the Bulls continue to take heat from those in and around the league. ESPN analyst and former NBA head coach Jeff Van Gundy recently ripped the Bulls for their handling of the Del Negro situation and now his brother, Ron Jeremy look-a-like and Orlando head coach Stan, is doing the same. Stan Van Jeremy, er, Van Gundy went on the record saying that he does not believe Del Negro was given the proper backing from the Bulls front office. "I was shocked by the coaching change," Van Gundy said following the Magic's shootaround on Monday morning. "I thought Vinny did a great, great job developing the young guys, and I think it will be very hard for anyone to come in and do a better job than he did. From midseason on, I don't think Vinny got much support from their organization." Asked if he thought his brother would consider taking the Bulls opening, Stan was doubtful. "I don't think he will coach again next season," he said. "I think there's other priorities in his life. I'd be surprised, in fact, I'd be very, very, surprised if he were back coaching next year." The real hammer can when Stan was asked if there is a specific candidate he feels the Bulls should consider as a good fit for their team. "Yeah," he said. "Vinny Del Negro." Thanks for weighing in on that one, Stan. Good of you to take time away from your team’s ass-kicking of the Hawks (although to be fair, Stan Van Gundy could have a) not showed up for the games, b) showed up drunk/stoned/OD’d or c) did Sodoku puzzles and word finds on the sideline during games and his team still would have pummeled the disinterested Hawks) to weigh in on other NBA matters………..

- Hearing the tale of, four words come immediately to mind: I don’t believe you. A guy who is arrested at an airport in Pakistan with shoes that contained batteries, a circuit board and an on/off switch cannot possibly claim that he did not know the materials were in his shoes and expect anyone to believe him. The incident happened Monday and Mohammed’s explanation was that he had worn the same shoes while traveling from Muscat, Oman, where he worked as a construction supervisor, to Karachi, Pakistan, in February. No one is walking around with bombs for shoes and doesn’t know about it. Pretending that when that alarm sounded after your shoes were scanned on your way to board a Thai Airways flight to Muscat, you were totally surprised is both disingenuous and offensive. Investigators in Karachi arrested him and took him to a police station in Karachi. According to Haji Hassan of Karachi Airport, authorities have filed no formal charges against Mohammed but are continuing to investigate him. All that is known about Mohammed at this point is that he works as a civil engineer and that he claims to have just come from Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, an area where Taliban and militants have a presence, and that he lives in East Karachi. No word has been given on what the batteries and other materials were intended for or what connection, if any, Mohammed may have to any group or organization that would want to commit any sort of attack. Regardless of who he is connected to, where he has been or what sort of explanation he has for his incendiary kicks, the bottom line is that I don’t see how a person can select, put on and wear their shoes and have no idea whatsoever that they have been altered or rigged with electronic devices. That person is either lying or a bonafide moron, neither of which is anything to be excited about……….

- Whoa buddy, this is truly stunning news. Believe it or not, a reality TV personality is headed to jail. Granted, I’ve never heard of her or her show, but that doesn’t make Alexis Neiers any less of a reality television tool. Neiers, a cast member of the E! cable network’s "Pretty Wild" series, was sentenced to 180 days in jail Monday for her role in the "bling ring" burglaries of celebrity homes in the Hollywood area. She sobbed like a baby after entering a no-contest plea to a single felony charge of burglarizing the home of actor Orlando Bloom last July. A plea deal allowed her to avoid facing six years in prison for the burglary, so in that sense she got off fairly easy. The plea bargain was accepted by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza, who sentenced Neiers to a two-year suspended prison sentence, three years probation and restitution to be determined later. She will begin serving her 180 days in the county jail on June 24. She and her cohorts were caught by a security video camera carrying bags out of Bloom's Hollywood Hills home in the early morning hours of July 13. According to one of the suspects, the group used online gossip sites to figure out which celebrities would not be home at a given time and plotted their robberies accordingly. The same group also hit homes belonging to Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, although Neiers’ plea deal allowed her to avoid punishment for those incidents. When police executed a search warrant on Neiers’ home, they found property belonging to Lohan and actress Rachel Bilson. More than $3 million in stolen property was recovered from another alleged burglar, so this operation definitely had some success in its short lifespan. And in proving that reality TV has no standards or conscience whatsoever, E included the real-life drama in its story line for “Pretty Wild.” Enjoy your time in the hole, A. Neiers, I’m sure you won't at all be a target there…………

- Here’s the best thing about the aftermath of the Tiger Woods sex scandal: We can now doubt anything and everything he says and not feel guilty about refusing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. For example, after Woods withdrew from the Players Championship Sunday, citing a back or neck injury that may or may not be a bulging disk, the obvious question was what caused the injury. Talk quickly turned to whether his Nov. 27 car accident that sparked the now-infamous sex scandal was to blame. When he appeared in suburban Philadelphia to promote the July 1-4 AT&T National, Woods shot down those theories and claimed that he first felt the injury two weeks before the Masters in early April. According to Adulter-ick, he caused the injury by attempting to expedite his return from a four-month layoff from golf and rehabbing too intensely. He added that he has been undergoing physical therapy and taking anti-inflammatory medicine since then, but that the anti-inflammatory drugs have not helped. "I'm at a point now where I just can't go anymore," he said. "I want to practice, I want to play, I want to compete, but this is not allowing me to do the things that I need to do on my golf swing to hit the proper shots. I need to get to where I can do that again." To that end, he plans to have an MRI done when he returns to Orlando and until he knows more about the injury, his schedule is "up in the air." The injury means dealing with pain in the right side of his neck and also the accompanying back spasms. "It is really frustrating, there's no doubt, because I know what I'm capable of doing," Woods said. "I just need to get this thing healed up so that I can start working, start spending the time it takes to get better. I haven't been able to do that. I've only been able to work in spurts." All of that is well and good, but you’ll have to forgive me for having at least some doubt in my mind about whether Woods is being forthright about the cause of the injury. Having your wife try to bounce a nine iron off your grill, running barefoot from the house and crashing your SUV into a tree and fire hydrant could well lead to a neck injury and possibly a bulging disk. His track record in dealing with the resulting scandal as well as the behaviors that caused the scandal in the first place would lead most anyone to doubt his truthfulness on any subject from here on out. On top of that, Woods has that fib he told at Monday’s press conference about parting ways with Hank Haney, his swing coach since 2004. He said at Aronimink that he was working on his swing. "I talked to Hank about some of the stuff. We're still working on it," he said. "We have a lot of work to do. I can't make the movements that I made before because of the neck. I need to get healthy to play the proper way." That proved to be a lie, as the two have in fact parted ways and it became official today. Their parting may or may not be on amicable terms, but this is one more example of Woods telling half-truths, outright lies or running misdirection in vain attempts to control the world around him and others’ perceptions of who he is…………