Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Family Guy guest stars, dogs at work and criminal Lions


- Aaron Berry, Detroit Lions poster boy or the prime example of what is wrong with NFL players and their conduct away from the field? Yes. Sadly, Berry is now filling just one of those roles after the Lions cut him Monday after he was arrested in Pennsylvania for the second time this offseason. He joined Lions running back Mikel Leshoure and defensive tackle Nick Fairley with multiple arrests this offseason, but he’s the only one on the waiver wire. Cpl. Kyle Gautsch of the Harrisburg Police Department said was taken into custody early Saturday morning on three charges of simple assault. Gautsch says there "was a weapon allegedly brandished during the incident." The Harrisburg resident was also arrested in that area June 23 on suspicion of DUI, failure to stop and render aid from an accident and other counts. He does not seem to learn from his mistakes, otherwise he would not have been picked up for a second time. Ironically, Berry was set to enter a diversionary program following the June arrest, but that plan has to be up in the air now. The Lions cut him after the second arrest and said explicitly it was for his off-field conduct and the harm it did to the team. His modest on-field contributions clearly were not enough to keep him around. Leshoure, of course, was cited twice for possession of marijuana and tried to eat his ganja to conceal it the second time. Fairley doubled up with an arrest for possession and one for DUI, while offensive tackle Johnny Culbreath also had a marijuana-related run-in with police. Pro Bowl defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, who was pulled over in March and ticketed for driving a BMW 91 mph in a 55 mph zone and was also involved in a crash in Portland in which he lost control of a car and crashed into a drinking fountain and tree, said last week that his teammates must be "accountable" to themselves and to each other. "Everybody has to be accountable for themselves, and obviously we as teammates need to hold each other to a higher standard," Suh said. Right now, the highest standard in that locker room is the standard for stupidity in offseason conduct……….


- Woof if you like this idea. Dogs in the workplace could actually lift office morale. Useful for everything from pooping in the conference room to chewing up important files, dogs could also improve the overall atmosphere in the workplace, according to a preliminary investigation published in March in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business. The research team found that workers who bring their dog to the office can cap the amount of stress experienced during the day, and improve job satisfaction for all. Professor Randolph Barker (real name) led the study and measured the stress levels of employees at a retailing and manufacturing business with a 14-year history of allowing dogs in the workplace. The firm averages Between 20-30 dogs a day amongst its 550 employees and Barker questioned 76 of those workers, some of whom brought their dogs, some who didn’t and other who don’t even own a canine.  The study found that while everyone started the day with low baseline levels of the stress hormone cortisol, those who didn't bring their dogs to work reported drastically higher levels of stress by the end of the working day. Employees with their dogs experienced lower levels of stress throughout the day and about half of that group felt that dogs were important to their productivity. Better still, 80 percent of those who did not bring a dog to the office said the pooches had no negative effect on productivity. Although other factors are clearly involved, workers in the study all rated the company higher than the industry mean for job satisfaction and perceived organizational support. Barker cited the dogs’ usefulness in sparking conversations amongst employees, and increasing engagement. Now if the dogs could only answer the phones…………


- The 11th season of Fox’s vastly overrated adult comedy “Family Guy” is shaping up to be a star-studded affair. Sofia Vergara, who is big on the commercial circuit of late and who also stars on the sitcom “Modern Family,” will be is making a cameo as Peter Griffin's fantasy love interest. The series’ main character will will be involved in a cutaway gag as a "telenovela lothario" in an upcoming episode and Vergara will be voicing his "sassy" lover as well as a woman selling roses in a restaurant. Another character named Quagmire is "wooing" Peter so that Peter will do him a big favor and Vergara’s character will be involved. When the show returns from its summer hiatus on Sept. 30, the new season 30 will also feature voices from Johnny Depp, Ryan Reynolds, Elizabeth Banks, and Kellan Lutz, among others. Depp will reprise his "Edward Scissorhands" role and should be solid, while Reynolds will play a character who doesn't exist in biblical history, but is related to Jesus. Vergara is doing commercials for everyone who calls her up these days and also making an appearance on another Fox show, “The Cleveland Show.” On that show, her character Tia Sofia tries to talk Cleveland into hosting a quinceanera for Cleveland Jr.'s 15th birthday. “The Cleveland Show” returns for its fourth season on October 7 and Vergara’s omnipresence on the small screen will be in full swing………….


- A promise from the Syrian government is one you can take to the bank…..as long as the Syrian government hasn’t ordered its military to bomb the sh*t out of the bank and murder everyone inside first. Still, Bashir al-Assad’s regime has assured the world that its chemical weapons are secure under the army’s control and won’t be used against insurgents. Unconventional weapons would be used only in the event of “external aggression,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi claimed, er, lied, er, uh, said at a press conference shown on state-run television. With more than 19,000 civilians dead in the 18-plus-month conflict and Russia and China ass-hattedly holding up any United Nation attempts to use force to stop the government’s onslaught, chemical weapons are just about the only way the conflict could get more brutal. Russian despot Vladimir Putin, speaking in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin said an unconstitutional ouster Assad would plunge the Middle Eastern country into civil war. While it’s great that Putin can ignore that the civil war has already started, the fact that Syria has one of largest and most advanced chemical warfare programs in the Arab world is worrisome. Even as the vow not to use chemical weapons was made, the government concurrently built its case for using them by lying about more rebel-initiated conflict Damascus and Aleppo, where the mighty army supposedly destroyed trucks and confiscated large amounts of weapons, according to the state- run Sana news agency. Alleging the involvement of terrorists from other nations to aid its own terrorists that the rest of the world knows simply as civilians who want a new leader elected by democratic means, the government seems to be ramping up to a nice mustard gas attack or something similar. When that happens, no one will be shocked………

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