- Intrigue is in the air in China, where the Communist Party
has taken time away from trampling the basic human rights and freedoms of its
people and hatch a truly compelling tale of a disappearing high-ranking
official. Now technically, the government’s position is that it has no information about the status of
leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping, who dropped from sight 10 days ago and has
canceled a series of meetings with foreign visitors. Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hong Lei insisted he had "no information in this regard" when asked
about Xi's condition and whereabouts at a news conference Tuesday. When a
reporter wisely asked whether a man who may have run afoul of someone within
the government or its enemies in a country where safety and security are never
guaranteed, Hong derisively replied, "I hope you can ask more serious
questions." Maybe, “Did the government abduct and behead Xi Jinping would
have been sufficiently serious, but sadly no one asked that question. Instead,
the saga of Xi’s absence drags on and so does the complete lack of information
from the government. Obviously, there is plenty of speculation about his
whereabouts, mostly on boring crap like a health crisis ranging from a sore
back to a stroke. The better, more creative conspiracy theorists on the case
have crafted tales involving a staged car crash as part of a political feud.
There may not be any evidence for this theory, but it’s far more entertaining
than the alternatives and therefore shouldn’t be totally dismissed. China or
not, a world power’s vice president and handpicked successor to the president
disappearing without a trace is a remarkable story. President/dictator Hu
Jintao remains in power, but Xi is due to take over as head of the ruling
Communist Party at a congress later this year. He was last seen in public at
the opening of the Communist Party training academy's fall session on Sept. 1,
but has since canceled meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Danish Prime Minister Helle
Thorning-Schmidt. He was also AWOL Sunday for an emergency meeting of the
Central Military Commission, of which he is a vice chairman. If he’s missing a
raging kegger like that, clearly something evil has befallen him………
- Aaaand just like that, Billboard has officially ceased to
matter. Decades of charting, critiquing and reviewing new music and profiling
the artists making said music became a total waste the instant hacky,
crap-tastic pop rockers Matchbox Twenty snared their first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 as the
band’s horrifically bad new album "North" debuted with 95,000 units sold according to
Nielsen SoundScan. Sure, one could defend Billboard by claiming it is only
regurgitating the data it has been given, but that does not absolve it of
blame. Factor in some sort of formula that ranks albums not only on sales but
also on their ability to make listeners run screaming from the room in search
of a rusty ice pick to jam into their eardrum and then see where Rob Thomas’
crew of musical tools ranks. The album is Matchbox Twenty’s (NOT Matchbox 20,
as they were formerly known but changed from in order to be “edgier”) first
full-length studio album since 2002's "More Than You Think You Are,"
meaning music lovers had a decade to recover from that disaster. An EP in 2003
(unimaginatively titled "EP") and a greatest hits package in 2007
titled "Exile On Mainstream” (which should have been empty on account of
all the band’s songs sucking donkey balls) were easy enough to ignore. Matchbox
Twenty has received plenty of accolades from the kooks at Billboard in the
past, including having 13 top 10 hits on the Adult Pop Songs airplay chart, so
this undeserved new honor is not a huge surprise. However, it is a death knell
for Billboard’s musical credibility and for a ranking service that has give
prominent chart placements to the likes of the Hack Eyed Peas and glorified
man-banders Maroon 5, that’s saying a lot……….
- Not long ago, a father in Texas was absolved of any
wrongdoing after punching and killing a man he found sexually assaulting his
4-year-old daughter at a family function. That vigilante dad has a Turkish
counterpart who hasn’t been so fortunate. The women is awaiting trial after beheading a man who
she says raped her repeatedly for months and is the father of her unborn child.
That’s right, chased him down and lopped his dome off. According to her lawyer,
she killed the man to protect her honor and given the circumstances of the
case, who’s going to argue with her? Nevin Yildirim is a mother of two who lives
in a small village in southwestern Turkey. She told police that the man,
Nurettin Gider, began the attacks a few days after her husband left in January
for a seasonal job in another town. She could have contacted her husband and
waited for him to return and exact revenge, but she chose otherwise on account
of Gider allegedly threatening her with a gun and said he would kill her
children, ages 2 and 6, if she made any noise. The alleged rapes took place
over eight months and Gider also resorted to outright stalking and menacing,
breaking into Yildrim’s house while she was asleep and taking pictures he
threatened to post online if she didn’t do what he wanted. One of the images
showed her to be pregnant and in her village, such a revelation would have been
scandalous. So it was that on Aug. 28, a woman five months pregnant decided she
had had enough, spotted Gider climbing up the back wall of her house and
snapped. "I knew he was going to rape me again," she said at her
preliminary hearing Aug. 30. Acting quickly, she grabbed her father-in-law's
rifle that was hanging on the wall and shot Gider. He tried to draw his gun and
she fired again. "I chased him," she said. "He fell on the
ground. He started cussing. I shot his sexual organ this time. He became quiet.
I knew he was dead. I then cut his head off." Read that quote again and
let it sink it. Yildrim blasted her attacker’s man parts off, waited for him to
stop breathing and then removed his head from the rest of his body. Witnesses
told the jaw-dropping story of Yildirim walking into the village square,
carrying the man's head by his hair, blood dripping on the ground. "Don't
talk behind my back, don't play with my honor," Yildirim said to the men
sitting in the coffee house on the square. "Here is the head of the man
who played with my honor." It is one of the most badass scenes ever to
happen anywhere, in the movies or in real life. Yildrim finished by throwing Gider's
head to the ground and local media outlets got footage of the decapitated head
lying on the ground before police arrived. His killer remained defiant after
her arrest and rightfully so. "Now no one can call my children
bastards," she said. "I cleaned my honor. Everyone will call them the
children of the woman who cleaned her honor." She is now facing questions
about her mental stability after saying at her hearing that she doesn't want to
keep the baby and that she is ready to die. For now, Yildirim remains in the
local jail while she awaits trial………
- Don’t ask who let the dogs out in Beaver Falls, Pa.,
because if the town has its way, the dogs will never get in. At least in its
business district, Beaver Falls is considering banning dogs because of the apparent
hazard they pose to shoppers. According to complaints lodged by individuals
shopping and passing through the district, pet owners sometimes leave larger
dogs tied to parking meters and rather than walk around those dogs (who
probably are not on a 50-foot leash), they are simply scared away from the
business they had planned to patronize. Oh, and there is the very real problem
of lazy, classless dog owners whose canines drop a deuce on the sidewalk or in
the street and the owner leaves the waste where it lands for some unsuspecting
soul to step in or at least small. “When I walk, I try to walk daily, I tell
you I get disgusted because people aren’t cleaning up after their dogs, after
animals,” said John a councilman in Beaver Falls. “They got to clean up.” But
because people don’t always do what they “got to” do, the council may be forced
to act and then the responsible dog owners out there will suffer because of a
few brain-deads who are either oblivious or simply don’t care. Maybe dog owners
will skate and the council won't ban canines entirely, electing for a law that
simply mandates no dog can be left unattended outside a business. But in
typical bureaucratic fashion, even in a small city, council members are
researching the issue and don’t plan to take any action until later this year……….
- Left for dead and 11 games out of a playoff spot two
months ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have pulled a Jason Voorhees and returned
to terrorize the rest of the National League. In mid-July, the buzz around the
Phillies wasn’t about contending, but about them trading off key assets like Cliff
Lee or Roy Halladay to begin the rebuilding process. After a 3-1 win over the Miami Marlins on Wednesday, the
baseball team from the City of Brotherly Love is one step closer to completing
its comeback, now three games out of the final wild-card spot in the NL. A team
that still has many pieces from its 2008 world championship roster is closing
in on the fading St. Louis Cardinals and their manager knows what time it is. “We're
in it," manager Charlie Manuel said. "We're dead in it pretty
good." A three-game sweep of the Marlins sets the Phillies, who are on a
season-best winning streak and have won 15 of 19 to move over .500 for the
first time since they were 28-27 on June 3, set up perfectly for a four-game
weekend series with the worst team in baseball, the Houston Astros. Lee, who
pitched his team to a win Wednesday, sees more good fortune ahead. "If we
can continue to play the way we have since the All-Star break, we have a pretty
good chance," Lee said. Signs of the Phillies’ hope could be seen on the
TVs in their clubhouse Wednesday as players watched a pair of games that will
shape the NL wild-card race: St. Louis at San Diego and Pittsburgh at
Cincinnati. Earning the second wild card spot will mean getting past the
Cardinals and Pirates, neither of whom have shown much life of late. None of
this seemed possible or realistic for the five-time defending NL East champions
back on July 13, when they stood at 37-51. Now, they have the best record in
the NL since Aug. 23 and even with stars Ryan Howard and Chase Utley slumping,
other players are stepping up. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins, who was batting .224 in
late May, has raised his average 25 points since and has nine of his home runs since
the start of August. Lee has regained his Cy Young form after making 13 starts
to open the season without a win and is 5-7 on the season. Their run may or may not end with a
postseason berth, but they have still done more than anyone would have given
them a chance for at the start of the summer………
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