Turning kids into punching bags, the Somali pirates roar back to life and another reason to hate FAT-ness

- Some people just have the innate ability to be good parents and some don’t. In between are those who can learn to be a good mom or dad and at the far, far, far end of the spectrum, there are morons like Lee Willie Dejesus of Homestead, Fla. Seems that Mr. Dejesus decided that the best way to spend some quality time with his 2-year-old son was teaching the tot to box - literally. Dejesus isn’t dissimilar to other dads who want their sons to learn to play sports and some fathers might even roughhouse with their kids, wrestling and throwing fake, no-force-behind-them punches. However, when that child is two years old and your idea of roughhousing is actual punches that pulverize the poor kid within inches of his life, that’s not only bad parenting, it’s a crime. Thus, Dejesus has admitted to the near-fatal beating of his son while teaching the child how to box and was arrested Tuesday and charged with aggravated child abuse and child neglect. According to the police report, the incident occurred Monday night when Dejesus was watching the child while his mother was at work. The evening took a near-fatal turn when Dejesus allegedly he put on boxing gloves and struck the child about 15 times on his face, head, torso and shoulders over a period of 15 minutes. Now, having to put on boxing gloves for any reason around a toddler should tip a person off to the fact that what they’re about to do is something that shouldn’t be done, but that hint sailed right over Dejesus’ head. He turned his son into a human punching bag and at one point, hit him so hard that the boy fell off the bed and struck his head on the tile floor. Then and only then did Dejesus clue into the fact that things had taken a terribly wrong turn and he called 911. The child, Willy Brown, was rushed to Children's Hospital where he underwent surgery for bleeding on the brain was on life support Wednesday and not expected to recover from his injuries. Ed Griffith, spokesman for the Miami-Dade state attorney's office, said the boy "may be brain dead," and the attorney's office expects to file first-degree murder charges against Dejesus as early as Friday. Included in the criminal complaint is a claim that Dejesus waited to call for medical help for as long as an hour after the boy became unresponsive - an hour! Even if you’re enough of an idiot to think you can make your 2-year-old your sparring partner, there is no way anyone can be dumb enough to wait an hour to call 911 after clubbing that child to the floor and seeing them whack their head on that hard, tile floor. Waiting to call 911 after the boy's lips become blue is asking for a murder charge, which Dejesus now has. Making matters worse, he tried to cover his tracks by lying and telling police that the boy was beaten by a babysitter before admitting he did the beating. He’s now spending his days at a pretrial booking facility on $50,000 bond on the aggravated abuse charge and $7,500 on the child neglect charge. Whatever fate awaits him, it’s sure to be not quite harsh enough………

- Having the egotistical, self-absorbed Kanye West step out of his little “all me, all the time” bubble to give attention to you, an average citizen with no claim to fame, would seem pretty cool - to most people. To Nottingham University student Steven Holmes, the experience started out exactly that way after West - a serial Tweeter - randomly selected Holmes as the one and only person he follows on Twitter. How very Kanye West of Kanye, to be so pompous that he couldn’t possibly need to follow anyone else and hear their thoughts on the world. Picking one random person to follow and expecting it to be some sort of honor they should cherish is as arrogant as can be, so of course that’s what West did. He began following Holmes and put out the word about it, leading to a flood of attention for the unsuspecting Brit, who is having a hard time dealing with all of the attention. Initially, he was excited about the experience, tweeting, "Holy [expletive] bro thx for following!" That joy and exuberance quickly turned to irritation and anger once others began following West’s example and media requests from around the world came flying in. “I didn’t want to talk to any of them,” Holmes whined. “Fame has never appealed to me. It’s vacuous.” Sounds awful philosophical and high-minded for someone with a Twitter account, no? “Before this weekend I thought it would be cool to have a celebrity following me on Twitter but now I think it’s really not worth it,” Holmes added. All right Holmes, it’s time for you to stop whining. Seriously bro, stop whining. That includes this next comment: “This has been completely surreal and I really have no desire for this attention i'm just a normal person,” which came in a subsequent Tweet. He later added that he will not be speaking with any other media outlets, which is a shame, given how well he seems to be handling all of this. Next time you pick a random loser to follow on Twitter, Kanye, pick someone who is a little less pretentious and irritable………

- Shocker of all shockers, the NFL wants to implement HGH testing for players as part of the new collective bargaining agreement the league is in the process of negotiating with the players’ association. The league wants to include blood testing for human growth hormone and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in an interview this week that testing for the popular performance enhancer is about the "integrity" of the game. Goodell called the issue an "important" element of ongoing collective bargaining talks between owners and players, a revelation that was something less than shocking. Along with the possibility of increasing the regular season schedule from 16 to 18 games and implementing a rookie salary scale to curtail insanely escalating deals for high draft picks, HGH testing will be a massive part of the negotiations and when the work stoppage that so many around the sports world seem to believe is inevitable happens next summer, HGH testing could well be a big part of why. Personally, I always find the occurrence of a union of any kind arguing for the right of its members to cheat and break the rules offensive and absurd, so I tend to agree with Goodell when he says that he wants to add HGH testing to "ensure that we can take performance-enhancing substances out of the game." The players would counter that they want the same thing, but they don’t believe there is a reliable test on the market at this point for HGH. It’s a convenient excuse and one they can use in an attempt to delay testing indefinitely, but it makes them look like a bunch of cheaters fighting for their right to inject whatever they want into their bodies. The NFL has proposed having blood testing for HGH already the players' union has already come out against it, but Goodell isn’t backing down, saying, “It's about making sure that we're doing everything to protect our players and to protect the integrity of our game.” Now if the players can only clue into that message………

- Welcome back, Somali pirates, welcome back. You’ve been slacking off a bit lately, so I was fired up to hear that you opened fired on a ship in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday and seized it mid-afternoon. A distress call went out from the cargo ship, sending word of pirates firing upon the ship and boarding. The call was reported by European Naval Force Somalia -- Operation Atalanta, which dispatched helicopters to the MV Syria Star. When the ENFS team arrived, they found an abandoned skiff containing fuel and ammunition near the cargo ship. Unfortunately, it took a while for warships to arrive and by that time, the Syria Star and its cargo of sugar had reversed course and were heading southeast toward the Horn of Africa under the control of the pirates. Showing the bad attitude and lack of proper communication skills I’ve come to expect from the pirates I love and admire, these guys did not respond to radio contact and just kept forging onward. They also have 24 hostages in the form of a crew of 22 Syrians and two Egyptians on board the ship flagged to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Now, you could argue that the pirates were only able to heist the ship because EU NAVFOR Somalia failed in its primary tasks of escorting merchant vessels carrying humanitarian aid and protecting vulnerable ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean from pirate attacks. To be honest, that’s an incredibly narrow-minded point of view that fails to give these pirates even a fraction of the respect they deserve and demand. They know that 95 percent of European Union trade is shipped by sea and 20 percent of that cargo passes through the Gulf of Aden, so they plot and scheme accordingly. The pirates know that the vast majority of the time, owners of hijacked ships typically pay ransoms to pirates and when that happens, crews are typically released unharmed. It’s a win-win because the companies paying the ransoms can afford it, the pirates get the chance to use their specific skill set to make a living and for the kidnapped crews, it’s a chance to be part of a true pirate-y experience that they can use to impress chicks at the bar……….

- Yay, another reason to hate FAT-ness. Word has come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the ongoing surge in obesity rates in these here United States will eventually lead to an increase in cancer cases as well. With a stunning two-thirds of the adult population in the U.S. either overweight or obese and 26.7 percent of that number - some 72.5 million people - considered clinically obese. The CDC took note of those figures on account of it being their job and did plenty of research, which led them to the conclusion that there will likely be an increase in new cancer cases over the next several years. They based their conclusions on data from the American Institute for Cancer Research, so I feel fairly confident in rolling with them on this one. "There are 2.4 million more obese Americans this year, right now, than there were two years ago," said Susan Higginbotham, Director of Research at the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). "And we're concerned because this means more cancer cases in the future because of the strong link between obesity and certain types of cancer." According to the AICR’s latest research, the agency is projecting more than 103,000 new cancer cases caused by excess body fat in 2010 - 103,000! Caused by FAT! Of that disturbing total, 49 percent are projected to be endometrial cancers, followed by esophageal cancers at 35 percent and pancreatic cancers at 18 percent. Worse yet, those numbers are expected to increase over the next several years in response to the increased obesity rates. Now, the exact relationship between obesity and cancer has not been established, nor have researchers identified the exact physiological mechanisms that cause obesity to contribute to new cancer cases. Having said that, there is no denying that a relationship exists between the two and Higginbotham isn’t mincing words: “We are confident there is a strong association confirmed. This means there's really a need for action right now and it's never been more urgent. We emphasize preventing weight gain and maybe preventing future cancers.” Sound like enough of a reason to lay off the Big Macs and éclairs and hit the gym every now and then, America? Here’s hoping………