Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Man v. dissidents in London, idiots+guns+booze and James Harrison becomes the NFL's biggest whiner

- Oh no you didn’t, British Prime Minister David Cameron. You did not just threaten my new friends, the angry student protesters in London who have been wreaking havoc in the days leading up to and following the government's contentious decision to triple tuition at U.K. universities. Cameron, who recently had a spat with a member of an opposition party in Parliament in which the two of them traded quips built around Smiths song titles, vowed Friday that protesters who resorted to violence Thursday night will "feel the full force of the law," and blamed them for wreaking havoc in London the past few weeks. He blamed these brave dissidents for Thursday’s chaos on Parliament street and nearby areas and for attacking a car transporting Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. "I immediately rang the Prince of Wales," said Cameron, a reference to Prince Charles. "We need to learn the lesson of this incident," he said. Correct, sir. And that lesson is don’t piss off the commoners by jacking up the price of attending college to the point where many of them cannot afford it. Oh, and if you do hike tuition, then the lesson is to be prepared for a freaking riot to break out. Stop blaming these people for striking back and clashing with police in a showdown that left rubble strewn over London's Parliament square. By the way, the sight of police picking through the debris in the search for clues to the identities of those responsible for the violence was hilarious as well. “It is not the fault of the police," Cameron fumed. "It was the fault of those who tried to smash that car." An obvious target for Cameron’s misplaced rage is the National Union of Students even though on its Web site, the group condemns any forms of violence, including from the police. "Regarding many of the scenes that were witnessed yesterday, whilst it is clear that there were a small number of people involved who were inciting violence, many people were contained for a long period of time when attempting to take part in peaceful protest," the NUS said in a statement. "We are calling on the Metropolitan Police to have a full investigation into the clashes yesterday between protesters and the police and for it to look again at its tactics for policing demonstrations.” Personally, I want to thank the NUS or whichever group led the charge on this uprising, because the priceless photo of the royal couple, dressed in evening wear and sporting startled expressions on their faces as they sat in their Rolls-Royce before exiting for a Royal Variety Performance, was priceless. Besides, no one was hurt and the right to riot was exercised with impact, a win-win for all………


- Some things just fit perfectly together and always produce epic results. Peanut butter and jelly. Bubble wrap and opposable thumbs. Monkey feces and angry monkeys to throw said waste at people who taunt them in their cage at the zoo. And of course, morons with alcohol and firearms. Let’s all say a big Daily Blog hello to my new friend Bobby J. Fawcett of Clark County, Ohio, who was out hunting with a friend when he heard a noise in some nearby brush. Thinking with the clear, lucid mind of a man who is rocking a blood-alcohol level of .12, Fawcett opened fire with his shotgun, thinking that he was able to kill himself a squirrel that he could cook up later in the day for some squirrel stew. Unfortunately, Fawcett had somehow managed to confuse another man, who was out deer hunting with a squirrel. According to police, this poor kid was found suffering from buck pellet shots from a .20 gauge shotgun to his head and back and transported to Miami Valley Hospital by medical helicopter. It didn’t take long for the investigation to lead police straight to Fawcett, who admitted that he opened fire on the thicket without really seeing what he was shooting at. He told deputies that he and his hunting partner immediately called 911. Deputies immediately smelled an odor of alcohol on Fawcett and tested his blood alcohol concentration. He blew that .12, which puts him 50 percent over the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle and as such, probably means it’s a bad idea for you to operate a firearm as well. Look, I realize that hunting is boring as heck and being inebriated makes it more tolerable, but next time, try and find a more isolated area where the only person you can wrongly shoot is the idiot dumb enough to be the hunting partner for a drunk guy………


- Say it with me, guys: W-H-I-P-P-E-D. Any dude who isn’t in a relationship or is in a crappy one loves calling their buddy whipped any time he says or does (or doesn’t do) something because it’s what his wife, fiancée or girlfriend tells him to do. Heck, most dudes also enjoy making the motion of cracking a whip and the accompanying sound effect to really top it off. So let’s all do exactly that in the general direction of Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, who recently suggested that his rock band could go soft because his songwriting style has changed since he began dating Kate Hudson. "I've been through a lot of personal changes, so some of the songwriting might be a bit more open and personal," he postulated. That’s fine, Matty. Your music should reflect your experiences and what’s going on in your life, so no issues there. But bro, you can have songwriting that is “more open and personal” without going soft. You don’t need to be sappy, cheesy and lovey-dovey just because you have a new girlfriend who you’re enamored with. Kate Hudson is hot and all, so no issues there either, but just don’t go all Bryan Adams on us or anything. Personally, I liked your revelation last week that you wanted to start a hemp farm. Now that, my friend, is cool. Growing your own hemp is a great idea, what with its multi-faceted nature of being smokeable, able to be made into clothes, jewelry or hats. To review, growing your own hemp, good idea. Becoming some soft, sappy love-song singer just because you have a hot new girlfriend, bad idea………


- James Harrison used to be a badass, right? He made one of the greatest defensive plays in Super Bowl history and had a well-deserved reputation for lighting up suckas who tried to come across the middle or knocking out quarterback not smart enough to get rid of the ball before he came barreling in on a blitz. Now? He’s just a whiny, pouting crybaby who believes that the world is out to get him. First, he threatened to retire when the NFL began its crackdown on violent hits and fines began coming his way on a weekly basis because a) he is the poster child for the very hits the league wants to do away with and b) he very publicly told the league, in essence, f*ck you and your new rules on violent hits, I ain’t changing. Now that he’s been fined four times this season for dangerous hits, you might think Harrison has plenty to whine about. Au contraire, my friend. Harrison has a new topic on which to whine and this time, it’s the league not disciplining someone else for allegedly going after him. Harrison believes Baltimore Ravens guard Chris Chester deliberately went after him while being called for a false-start penalty during an extra-point attempt Sunday and wants the league to find Chester just as it has fined him so many times. On the play, Chester lunged forward at the line of scrimmage, directly at Harrison’s legs. That’s an unusual approach on a field goal or extra point because on those types of plays, offensive linemen generally try to remain packed to avoid potential blocked kicks. Under Harrison’s conspiracy theory, that play is the perfect time to target him with a cheap shot because the resulting false start penalty is only a 5-yard infraction. "It was uncalled for and cheap," Harrison said Thursday, implying that Chester was attempting to injure him. He believes that Chester was seeking revenge for a play earlier in the same drive when Harrison ran over him in what the controversial linebacker claimed was a legal hit. Harrison, as per usual in his fines/penalties/persecution whining sprees, had plenty of support from his teammates. "That was pretty dirty," Steelers linebacker James Farrior said. "I think it was definitely planned and just one of the dirty things that they did in the game. But he [Harrison] was a smart guy. He didn't retaliate, and that's what I think they wanted him to do to get him out of the game. But he held it down pretty good." Riiiiiight. Either that or Harrison is just bitter and oversensitive after being fined a total of $125,000 for hits on the Browns' Mohamed Massaquoi, Titans quarterback Vince Young, Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. My advice to Harrison would be simply to shut his mouth, play football and learn to follow the rules, but it’s his money to throw away if he so chooses……….


- I’m always dubious of new scientific findings suggesting that man existed on Earth even earlier than previously believed. Every new find pushes the date earlier and earlier, to more and more absurd lengths. This time, a new review of research has postulated that a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. The supposed landmass, hidden beneath the Persian Gulf, would have been about the size of Great Britain at its alleged peak. That size began to shrink as water began to flood the area. According to a new study published in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, the last visible portion of the landmass would have disappeared about 8,000 years ago, at which point the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean. Lead researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in England, believes that his group’s findings could help settle the decades-old debate over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago thrown out over the years. Some scientists who had the chance to review the study before its publication theorized that its findings could mean that the area in question was the contact zone between moderns and Neanderthals. Combine that with recent evidence from the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome that suggests interbreeding and you have the ammunition for certain researchers to believe that we are part caveman. If the landmass Rose and his team studied existed in the form they believe it did, the area would have been a great oasis amidst the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by upwelling springs. With evidence of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago, Rose’s case has plenty of support. "Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight," Rose said. "These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world." So did this unique landmass full of life truly exist so early in time? We don’t know for sure, but now we have another piece of scientific evidence to suggest that everyone who had an idea on the topic before was wrong, yippee………..

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