- Aaaaaand the Guinness Book of World records continues to inspire asinine feats by complete morons. It’s been happening since……well, whenever the book was first published and the trend continues to this day, with the last example being a group of tools in Fremont, Neb. who decided that combining their total lack of self-respect and worthwhile pursuits in life with canned meat products in one giant orgy of stupidity. The end result was an attempt to make the world’s largest open-faced sandwich, using an ingredient made by Fremont’s largest employer - SPAM. As part of its John C. Fremont Days festival, named for a famed Civil War general, the town collected 1,400 pounds of the canned meat-like substance that can also double as spackle and then had to bake a bread slice big enough for all that SPAM. "We actually will heat this box up to 325 degrees, with the amount of heat we have in there. And within a couple hours, the bread should be cooked,” said Scott Getzschman, president of Getzschman Heating and Sheet Metal. Volunteers showed up early on Saturday to waste their day, er, be part of the effort. Organizer Don Cunningham and his hapless helpers did their best to ensure that everyone remained focused and on task. "They want everything validated, documented. It's got to be done right. And that's a challenge because every step along the way, it's got to be right,” Cunningham said. The primary focus of the event being to break a world record, Cunningham and Co. had to be sure they kept a close eye on the weight of their ginormous sando so they didn’t waste an entire day baking and making a huge SPAM-wich that not only was ridiculous but also didn’t break a world record. The Nebraska State Patrol jumped in to help as well, weighing the sandwich on a certified scale. Those who took part in the event also wanted to salute SPAM for its role in their town and its history. “SPAM kept our World War II soldiers fed. We have soldiers who I've talked to here in town that tell me that's all they ate. And it was good,” Cunningham said. Wow……there was a time when SPAM was good? In the end, the effort was a success (in some sad, warped way) as Fremont’s SPAM-wich weighed in at 1,652 pounds, well above the record set last year in North Carolina. Now, it’s up to the good folks at Guinness to validate the record and the patheticness of everyone who had a hand in setting it…………
- Dorks, life must be very exciting for you right now. Having the chance to prove your loser-dom by camping outside theaters in anticipation of the final Harry Potter film is the opportunity of a lifetime for a loser, something hundreds of people proved by lining up a week ago outside New York City’s Lincoln Center for the mere opportunity to catch a glimpse of the film’s stars as they attend the New York premiere of the final Harry Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two." That’s right, these ass hats aren’t even lining up for the right to be the first to buy tickets for the initial midnight showing of the film; they merely want to watch a bunch of famous people they don’t know (and will never know) walk down the red carpet into a theater where they will watch the film. The crowd of tools who began lining up a full week before the premiere and thus proved that they have neither lives and pride nor friends came from all five of the city’s boroughs and as far away as Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. Inexplicably, one of the film’s stars, actor Tom Felton, encourages these buffoons by delivering pizza to them. Tom, we all know that you do not, under any circumstances, feed the animals. Allow them to starve and maybe they’ll get a clue and go home. In the end, the first 200 to line up for the “competition” will be allowed to stand near the red carpet as the stars walk down it. It’s almost pathetic enough to make the SPAM-wich creators in Nebraska seem cool by comparison…………
- Oh no you didn’t, Israeli parliament. You did NOT just pass a controversial law that will punish any Israeli individual or organization boycotting West Bank settlements. You definitely did not blow right through several attempts to delay debate on the bill and pass it by a 47-36 margin. Oh wait……you did do those things? Well, now it’s on. Rights groups immediately blasted the legislation as stifling freedom of speech and ruining Israeli democracy. Prior to the bill’s passage, several efforts were undertaken encouraging boycotts of institutions or individuals linked to Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Under international law, those settlements are illegal despite Israel’s protestations. The issue short-circuited recent peace talks with the Palestinians, who want the West Bank as part of a future state. A recent pledge by Israeli academics and artists to boycott the West Bank settlement of Ariel infuriated settlers and their influential political patrons further and Israeli developers also agreed not to use products or services from settlements when they signed on to help build a new modern Palestinian city, north of Ramallah. The new law would allow the government or offended citizens to slap those who sponsor a "geographically based boycott" - which includes any part of the Jewish state or its settlements - with a lawsuit for damages in a civil court. Worse still (yes, worse than stifling the protest spirit that makes the world go ‘round), the petitioner is not required to prove that "economic, cultural or academic damage" was caused, only that it could reasonably be expected from the move. "The State of Israel has for years been dealing with boycotts from Arab nations, but now we are talking about a homegrown boycott," said the author of the legislation, lawmaker, Zeev Elvin, said while somehow managing not to burst into a giant fireball of hypocrisy. "It is time to put an end to this travesty. If the State of Israel does not protect itself, we will have no moral right to ask our allies for protection from such boycotts." Protect yourself? By stifling boycotts and protests, which are legitimate, democratic forms of dissidence? How very progressive of you, Israel. Activists responded to the bill’s passage in appropriate fashion, holding a noisy demonstration outside the Justice Ministry while carrying banners which read "the boycott law boycotts democracy." There are also plans to challenge the legislation in Israel's Supreme Court, which should be a rollicking good time. It’s freaking go time and the sh*t is definitely about to hit the Middle East fan on this one…………
- The fallout from being a dishonest, shady and soon-to-be-smacked-by-the-NCAA football program is beginning to reach the campus of Ohio State and things could quickly snowball from this point. With the Buckeyes embroiled in a scandal brought on under the (lack of) leadership from former coach Jim Tressel and players who arrived on campus with their hands out and welcoming all offers of illegal benefits from anyone offering, recruits and potential recruits are looking at the Big Ten’s gold standard program in a different light. Take, for example, prized recruit Kyle Kalis of St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio. Kalis, a prized offensive line recruit for OSU’s 2012 recruiting class, switched his commitment from Ohio State to rival Michigan last weekend and wasn’t shy about why he was going north of the border. "I can't go there (Ohio State) and take penalties for something I never did," Kalis said, alluding to the NCAA’s impending discipline on the Buckeyes. "Ohio State is a great program. I'm just not sure how long it will take them to recover. I want a solid, grounded coaching staff with a safe environment. Where there aren't such tough questions." Those questions include a potential postseason ban, scholarship reductions that could further weaken the program and uncertainty at the head coaching position, where interim coach Luke Fickell could be a one-and-done wonder if the school can land a bigger name after this season. "When I de-committed to (Ohio State coach) Luke Fickell I called him and told him and he understood where I'm coming from," Kalis said. "With the turmoil and uncertainty I just couldn't." Kalis, who is listed at 6-foot-5 and 306 pounds and is considered one of the nation's top offensive line recruits, admitted to being an Ohio State fan and receiving "constant stress and anxiety" from the community about his decision. In the end, he visited Michigan last weekend and placed a call to UM coach Brady Hoke from the "M" logo at the middle of the field at Michigan Stadium to announce his decision. He said after making the choice he believed that as many as eight or nine other Ohio recruits could follow in his footsteps and go to play for a program based in a state whose name most Ohioans can’t bring themselves to utter…………
- Skanks and sluts of the world, this is not good news for you. According to a report presented Monday at a conference in Quebec City, Canada, a new, untreatable strain of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea has been discovered in Japan. An international team of infectious disease experts has christened the strain H041 and cited it is resistant to all known forms of antibiotics. The proclamation comes just three days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that U.S. gonorrhea samples had being showing new signs of drug resistance as well. So far, drugs have remained effective in almost all U.S. cases, but the CDC conceded that analysis of bacteria samples taken from 2000 to 2010 showed that the gonorrhea bug was becoming less and less susceptible to the frontline drugs, cephalosporins, as the years went by. "This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery," Dr. Magnus Unemo said in a statement about H041. Unemo, who works for the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, partnered with Japanese colleagues to characterize the new H041 multidrug-resistant gonorrhea strain. He called the multidrug resistance "predictable" because most gonorrhea strains worldwide are already resistant to at least one major class of antibiotics. Typically, when a colony of bacteria first comes in contact with antibiotics, the antibiotics will kill off the most susceptible bacteria at higher rates. Thus leaves behind a disproportionately robust batch of surviving bacteria to pass on heartier genes to their offspring. The more antibiotics a strain is exposed to, the more durable it becomes. The U.S. has been dealing with gonorrhea strains resistant to penicillin and tetracycline since the 1970s, according to the CDC. Most Neisseria gonorrhoeae - the bacteria that causes gonorrhea - have also become resistant to fluoroquinolines. The CDC thus recommends treating gonorrhea with both a cephalosporin and either azithromycin or doxycycline, two relatively commonly administered antibiotics. Recently, the CDC discovered that U.S. samples of Neisseria gonorrhoeae are no longer responding quite as well as they used to against cephalosporins either. Couple that with news of the new strain in Japan that is reportedly resistant to everything and…….damn. Gonorrhea is already the most common of sexually transmitted infections, with 700,000 new cases in the U.S. each year, and an estimated 340 million new cases each year globally. As anyone who has spent quality time hanging with gonorrhea knows, it often causes painful intercourse among women, tender and swollen testicles among men and pain when urinating among infected people of both sexes. Left untreated, it can lead to internal scarring of parts of the reproductive tract and, in women, pelvic inflammatory disease or lifelong infertility. "The potential emergence of gonococcal cephalosporin resistance is of particular concern because the U.S. gonorrhea control strategy relies upon effective antibiotic therapy," the CDC announced Friday. "No other well-studied and effective antibiotic treatment options or combinations currently are available [once the bacteria are resistant to cephalosporins]." And to think, all of this can be avoided for almost everyone by simply not skanking it up………….
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