- Who steals a freaking hockey puck? Seriously, this is the United States, not Canada. No offense meant to my Canadian amigos, but I’m not implying that Canucks are more prone to theft. My point is simply that Canada cares about hockey the way the rest of the world - the U.S. excluded - cares about soccer and the way the U.S. cares about……well, watching reality TV shows and eating. So if I expected anyone to steal the puck used to score the game-winning goal in the deciding game of the previous year’s Stanley Cup Finals, it would be someone Canadian. And who knows, maybe the person who thieved the puck Blackhawks All-Star Patrick Kane scored the Stanley Cup winning goal with last year is Canadian. Perhaps some angry Canuck ventured south of the border to swipe the puck and reclaim some of his or her country’s hockey credibility. Year after year, the Cup is taken home by a team based in the U.S. while Canada’s six NHL teams come up short. Regardless, the puck in question has been missing ever since Kane scored in overtime to beat the Flyers in Game 6 at Philadelphia in June. For some odd reason, the FBI is now involved in the search for the puck and Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice admitted that the bureau is helping with the search. "The people who are doing this are doing it on their own time," he said. "They feel they are a part of history." They are assisting Chicago restaurateur Grant DePorter, CEO of Harry Caray's, who has been leading the search for the puck and has offered a $50,000 reward for its safe return. In all seriousness, the amount of hilarity involved in a bunch of off-duty FBI agents scouring the country, making phone calls and knocking on doors for a slab or rubber five inches in diameter is high on so many levels. It also makes you wonder if the person who stole is has already moved it on the historic-hockey-puck black market or they are just laying low until the heat dies down before they try to move it……….
- For anyone who has ever been on a Greyhound bus, this story will make a lot of sense. Without hammering the point too hard, Greyhound trips, especially if you’re traveling at night or in the early morning, tend to be populated with what could best be termed society’s riffraff, misfits, outcasts and kooks. Having once ridden on a Greyhound bus upon which I (and the rest of the bus) encountered a belligerent passenger who punctuated his exit from the bus by loudly and angrily proclaiming that he had just been released after a long stint in prison and was preparing to track down and visit vengeance upon those who put him there and held him down, I say this based on firsthand knowledge. With that in mind, I was not surprised in the least to hear that an armed man hijacked a Greyhound bus Thursday in North Carolina and took the passengers on a short, wild ride before being arrested. This particular incidence of kook-ery took place Thursday night in North Carolina, where a bus bound for Raleigh was hijacked by a gun-toting passenger who approached the driver and screamed at him to pull the bus over. The driver obliged and 33 of the passengers were allowed to get off the bus at that time, according to Vance County Sheriff Peter White. Whether he wanted to keep a couple of hostages around or if two passengers were too asleep and/or drunk to get off the bus, the hijacker than had the driver get the bus back on the road with those two remaining passengers and together, they journeyed onward to a nearby gas station where police were waiting. The suspect, identified as Jose Flores, had his evening ended with a Taser blast and was summarily arrested, said White. He faces a charge of one count of kidnapping and got to spend the night at the lovely Warren County jail. So far, authorities have been unable to determine why the hijacking occurred. Not to throw out crazy theories or anything, but given where and when this incident occurred and Flores’ actions, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the term “not guilty by reason of insanity” attached to the case at some point……….
- Oh……so close. World, we almost had Lauren Conrad back in our (reality television) lives. The former star of the network’s Laguna Beach and The Hills has largely been forgotten by the non-gossip-mag-reading sect since she left The Hills and the show folded after one season without her. In fairness, very few people give a rat’s ass about fashion and the public at large can't tell you when Paris fashion week or New York fashion week take place. Most of us are cool with buying decent-fitting clothes at Wal-Mart or Old Navy and not caring who designed them. As such, Conrad’s day job as a fashion designer just doesn’t captivate most people. Yet MTV announced last fall that it was reuniting with Lauren Conrad for another reality series, this one focused on her growing fashion line. At the time, it seemed like a perfect reunion of two sufficiently needy and co-dependent entities: the attention whore reality star and the network endlessly devoted to bringing the world the most lowbrow, lowest-common-denominator entertainment despite having the letters of its name stand for MUSIC TELEVISION. That reunion lasted a matter of months, just long enough for a pilot of the proposed new show to be filmed, shown to MTV executives and dismissed. “We decided not to go ahead with the show,” says David Janollari, executive vice president and head of programming for MTV. “She did do a pilot. There were talks about whether we could somehow manage to put together a special based on that footage but that’s also a big question mark based on her interest in that and the finances. We love her! We would love her on our network!” What could cause MTV to turn on a new Conrad-centric show? Apparently, it was too much of a documentary-style show and not enough of the glossy, superficial reality TV, drama-based crap that made The Hills and other gawd-awful MTV reality shows like Jersey Shore such ratings successes. “It was a great attempt but it just didn’t feel like a perfect fit for us now,” Janollari explained. In other words, people don’t watch MTV reality shows to see gritty, real portrayals of actual life or really, anything that doesn’t involve pretty people hitting the VIP area of clubs, having sex on camera or getting into fights with other cast members. So for the first time ever, it appears that MTV might actually have some type of standards for its reality shows. Not high ones and not standards based on quality and intelligence, but standards nonetheless…………
- Wow. It is the perfect word to describe a week of riots and uprisings that have stretched across the Middle East and now, beyond. Not only are Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen in the throes or aftershocks of major riots to oust their current leaders, but that spirit of dissidence has sparked up in Sri Lanka, where government and opposition activists clashed in the economic capital of Colombo as the country marked its national day. Unlike the riots in, say Egypt, the goal in Sri Lanka is to get people out of prison as opposed to out of power. The rioters were seeking the freedom of jailed opposition leader and former army chief Sarath Fonseka. Police in Colombo say violence erupted near the country's main prison as opposition protestors marched to press for the release of Fonseka, who is serving a 30-month jail term. The protest had some heavy hitters in its midst, including an opposition MP, and several protestors sustained injuries in the clash with police. Protestors did a fair amount of damage on their own, smashing vehicle windows along their route. “The two groups fought as the protest march went past a religious ceremony organized by some government lawmakers,” police deputy inspector general Anura Senanayake said. The opposing point of view came from the main opposition United National Party, which said the violence against its supporters was an attack on freedom of expression and a "black mark" on the country's independence day. "Is this democracy?" opposition MP Ravi Karunanayake asked rhetorically. "The government is responsible." As a lover of riots and protests of all shapes and sizes…….no, it doesn’t sound like democracy. Beating protestors with sticks and sharp metal objects rarely does. Ironically, President Mahinda Rajapakse marked the national day by freeing 1,669 convicts, but it was the release of one man - Fonseka - that angered the masses. As the uprising gripped Colombo, the president was delivering an address to the nation from the southern town of Kataragama. He focused on economic issues in the talk and promised to press ahead with infrastructure projects and double per capita income to more than $4,000 in the next few years, but the opposition campaign demanding Fonseka's release was nowhere to be found in the speech. Fonseka remains a cult hero among opposition members for leading troops to crush Tamil Tiger rebels and end the island's 37-year separatist war in May 2009. He and Rajapakse argued over who should receive credit for the victory and ran against one another in the January 2010 presidential election. Fonseka lost the election, was arrested two weeks later and later found guilty by a military court of irregularities when he was army chief. But while something of a bummer for Fonseka and his followers, his presence in jail inspired one more riot in a week filled with them and that is indeed a blessing for us all………
- Depending on how you look at it, the men of India are either setting a great example for their ladies or failing to show the proper amount of empathy for them. Personally, I believe that Indian men are making progress, raising the bar and doing the right thing by controlling their weight better. According to a study comparing BMI increase in 199 countries that was published in the British medical journal, Lancet, on Friday, just 4.4 million men were found to be obese, while. 8 million women in India were obese. Compared to similar data from 1980, when 1.3 percent of Indian women were obese, the 2.5 percent found to be obese for this study represents nearly a 100 percent increase. Over the same time period, the percentage of Indian men who were obese remained the same. For the record, a body mass index of 18.5-25 is considered healthy, anything over 25 is deemed overweight and a BMI of 30 kg/m2 is considered obese. The numbers aren’t better for the ladies when the scope is expanded globally, as 9.8 percent of men and 13.8 percent of women were obese as compared to 4.8 percent for men and 7.9 percent for women in 1980. Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study from School of Public Health at Imperial College, London, put the study’s findings in perspective. "This means that over 1 in 10 adults aged 20 and above were obese globally. That's over half a billion people (205 million men and 297 million adult women were obese). In absolute numbers, while the number of obese men in India increased from 2.3 million to 4.4 million between 1980-2008, the number increased from 2.1 million to 8 million among women during the same period. Globally, female BMI increased by 0.5 kg/m2 per decade and .4 kg/m2 per decade for men between 1980 and 2008. In Indian women, BMI increased by 0.3 kg/m2 per decade and in men, it was zero." In other words, the world is FAT and it’s getting worse. We all know the many risk factors and problems caused by obesity: cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, certain cancers and musculoskeletal disorders, which lead to nearly three million deaths every year worldwide. That doesn’t even include the healthcare costs for ailments brought on by excess weight and the everyday aches and pains of FAT people who put too much strain on their joints, tendons and ligaments. Which countries are doing the best job of controlling their weight? Female BMI was lowest in Bangladesh (20.5 kg/m2) and male BMI in Congo (19.9 kg/m2). And surprise, surprise, who is the FAT-test of them all? That’s right, the freaking United States! Say it with me, everyone: U.S.A! U.S.A! Be proud……….
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