- Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you hate the ass hat in your neighborhood who decorates every inch of their property - bi-level, ranch, condo or apartment - like it’s the freaking North Pole every Christmas season. Check that. The losers who go that gung-ho for the holidays have their decorations up pretty much the instant they’re doing handing out Halloween candy, giving everyone else that much longer to despise them. And if you don’t hate that person, they you ARE that person. You are someone like Marie Buonanno of Doylestown Station, Pa. See, Buonanno has boxes of holiday lights to decorate her house, one Christmas tree already up in her living room and a nativity scene nearby. However, the ever-annoying homeowners association in her neighborhood is shutting down her normally luminous exterior display of decorating excess. The Doylestown Station Condominium Association informed her its bylaws do not allow colored Christmas lights. She was fined for the lights last year, $10 for each day her lights were up. She whined that she was the only one fined for the offense. “One of my neighbors that I spoke to a few days ago, who decorates with multicolored lights, says he never got a letter of warning or a fine,” Buonanno complained. “It is very disappointing that we can’t celebrate the Christmas holiday the way that we religiously choose to.” Religiously? I wasn’t aware that Jesus was big on blinking, colored lights. Were there high-wattage, red, green, yellow and orange bulbs blinking brightly above the manger the day the messiah was born? Nice try, Buonanno. There are few groups more contemptible than homeowners associations, but in this case they happen to be on the right side of the debate. Limiting Buonanno to a holiday wreath on the door is unquestionably one of the best and most worthwhile things any of these asinine associations has ever accomplished. More homeowners associations should adopt policies allowing only white, non-blinking lights outside and only a single white, blue, or orange light in windows. After the policy went into effect, neighbors collected 62 signatures to ask the Association board to allow colored Christmas lights outside. The association conducted a survey and out of 38 total responses, 19 voted for white lights, 14 voted for colored non-blinking lights, and 5 voted for colored blinking. The board interpreted those results as 19-14 against colored lights, deeming the five votes for colored blinking lights to be in a separate category. In other words, suck it Buonanno family………….
- Even with the rabid push to remake every movie produced over the past 50 years or so, Hollywood seems to be getting a little to antsy in recycling films. When it hasn’t even been two decades since a movie was made, maybe you want to give it a little extra time to marinate and drift from the general public consciousness before you try to do it again. This time, Sony is the responsible party and Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 outer space comedy Starship Troopers is the movie being remade. Sony Pictures producer Neal Moritz is helming the project and as assigned the script to screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, who penned recent hits Thor and X-Men: First Class, as well as many episodes of the TV shows Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe. Oh, and these two are also hard at work on the single worst idea for a sequel in the past decade: a Top Gun sequel. Their revival of Starship Troopers completes a trio of sorts for Verhoeven, as his two other well-known films, Robocop and Total Recall, are also being remade and are currently in production. The Robocop remake will supposedly fill a “gap” left in the original, which director
Jose Padilha attempted to explain. “I have my take on it. And I can tell you this, in the first RoboCop when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop. My movie is between those two cuts.” Padilha is attempting to land Michael Fassbender for the lead role in his film, while the inexplicably idiotic choice to redo Starship Troopers is not far enough along to have a director, script or leading candidates to reprise its roles…………..
- Perhaps no player has epitomized the absolute failure that is the 2011 Philadelphia Eagles season quite like explosive (in more ways than one) receiver DeSean Jackson. Jackson entered the season hell-bent on a new contract and when he didn’t get one, decided not to hold out but rather show up and play under his current deal - sort of. Jackson hasn’t looked anything like himself this season, recording a grand total of two touchdowns on the year when he typically is good for double digits between his job as a punt returner and his full-time gig catching passes. He has been vocal about his displeasure over not having a new deal, was deactivated for a game after missing a meeting and has been benched other times by head coach Andy Reid. During Thursday night’s 31-14 loss to lowly Seattle, a disinterested Jackson caught just four passes for 34 yards, sat with defensive players on the sideline while apparently refusing to communicate with anyone on the offensive side of the ball - the one he plays on - and tried to bully reporters who dared after the game to ask him about his pathetic performance in a loss that dropped the pre-season “Dream Team” of the NFL to a lowly 4-8. But on Friday, Reid continued to defend Jackson. "You can take a camera and make it look any way you want to make it look," Reid said at a news conference. "I am telling you, that kid was all in last night and wanted to win that game as much as anybody." Umm, you CAN take video and make it look any way you want, but no one CGI-ed teammates out of the picture to make it look as if Jackson was isolating himself and being defiant. There was no green screen behind him while he sat either alone or with defensive players instead of strategizing and talking with offensive teammates. Granted, Reid was bound to be a little defensive when media members asked if his team was even invested at this point of the season and if Jackson was essentially a decoy, but lying or stonewalling doesn’t do any good. When pressed about Jackson not speaking with offensive teammates, specifically quarterback Vince Young, Reid sounded as if he’d heard just about enough. "There was nothing on the sidelines, no commotion with him and Vince," Reid said, referring to quarterback Vince Young. "There is nothing there. Nothing." See, that’s the problem. A quarterback and his No. 1 receiver should not have nothing going on between them on the sidelines when they’re in the process of losing a game that unquestionably puts the final dagger in their fading playoff chances. That’s doubly true when Young is making his third straight start in place of Michael Vick and his two broken ribs and has struggled in the role thus far. The only offensive spark the Eagles managed in the contest came from the NFL’s leading rusher, LeSean McCoy, who finished with 84 yards on 17 carries and added another four catches for 49 yards and scored both of the team’s touchdowns. As for Jackson, he has teammates back-handedly questioning his effort and now it’s too late for any sudden surge of interest and caring to make a difference in the season anyhow……….
- Apple juice is a good thing…..or is it. Drinking something that has actual fruit in it and isn't carbonated or topped with whipped cream would seem to be wise, but of course there is always a new study to contradict what would seem to be great logic and so there’s just-published research suggesting that apple juice can pose major problems because some of its most popular brands contain high levels of arsenic. The Food and Drug Administration is considering new limits on arsenic, so that issue may not be relevant much longer. However, growing numbers of pediatricians and nutrition experts are also warning that apple juice's real danger is to waistlines and children's teeth. With few natural nutrients and high numbers of calories, they say apple juice may actually be a worse choice than soda. "It's like sugar water," said Judith Stern, a nutrition professor at the University of California, Davis. "I won't let my 3-year-old grandson drink apple juice." Not only that, but experts believe that giving someone lots of apple juice - perceived to be a healthy choice - trains a person to like sweet things and thus leads to them moving on to the harder stuff, as in Mountain Dew and Red Bull. Even with some manufacturers added vitamins to give their juice a boost, experts aren’t satisfied. "If it wasn't healthy in the first place, adding vitamins doesn't make it into a health food," said Karen Ansel, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. The American Academy of Pediatrics piled on, saying in a statement, "Fruit juice offers no nutritional benefit for infants younger than 6 months" and no benefits over whole fruit for older children. In spite of this, children under 12 consume nearly 30 percent of all juice and juice drinks, according to the academy. Apple juice currently stands second only to orange in popularity and the average American consumes 267 ounces of apple juice in a year, according to the Food Institute's Almanac of Juice Products and the trade group Juice Products Association. Are there any positives, health wise, to drinking apple juice? Well…not really. Apple juice contains a small amount of protein and minerals, but not nearly enough. It has many more carbohydrates - mostly sugars - than in milk and lacks the fiber in whole fruit. Yes, but it sure is tasty…………
- Bombs away, Koblenz, Germany. As in, there’s a bomb in your town and you need to get away. Around 45,000 people have been evacuated from Koblenz because a 1.8-metric ton British bomb from World War II has been discovered in the Rhine river. Officials are preparing to detonate the massive incendiary device early Sunday morning and they need all residents within a 1.2-mile radius to leave their homes for the day in order to safely take care of the bomb. Evacuating the area means clearing out seven nursing homes, two hospitals and a prison. All train and road traffic in and around Koblenz will also be halted during the time before and during the planned detonation. The bomb was discovered last week alongside a 125kg bomb dropped in the same spot by American forces. Local citizens spotted the explosive devices after the Rhine's water level fell due to lack of rain. In the end, it equals a free (involuntary) field trip for everyone in the immediate area………….
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