- From here to the rest of eternity, allow 2012 to be known
as the year when rioting became the world’s favorite sport. From the United
States to Asia, from Europe to Africa, angry groups of people raging against
everything from austerity measures to oppressive dictators have risen up and
clashed with The Man, burned sh*t to the ground and turned everything
imaginable into a weapon. Even Kyrgyzstan
has joined in on the fun and Kyrgyzstani rioters showed they can do it just as
well as anyone else Wednesday as they clashed with police and tried to break
into a building housing the parliament and government offices in Kyrgyzstan's
capital Wednesday. The scene in Bishkek took place after a rally to demand the
resignation of the prime minister and other top officials finally moved past
the lame protesting and got real. In a typical overreaction, government
authorities the Central Asian nation described the mass assault as an attempt
to overthrow the government. Police officers assigned to protect government
offices known as the White House overreacted by using dogs and smoke bombs to
disperse a group of young men who attempted to scale the gates, as if scaling
the gates was an act of tyranny or something. The carnage was solid, with 10
people treated for injuries, three of them for gunshot wounds. Those 10 came
from a group of around 1,000 people who gathered in the center of the city for
a rally, organized by nationalist politicians Sapar Zhaparov and Kamchibek
Tashiyev, to demand the nationalization of a controversial gold mine in the
east of the nation. Interior Minister Zarylbek Rysaliyev postured, posed and
promised those responsible for the violence will be sought out and punished. Kyrgyzstan,
a humble nation of 5 million people on China's mountainous western border, is
currently governed by a parliamentary coalition presided over by Prime Minister
Zhantoro Satybaldiyev. Both Zhaparov and Tashiyev are members of a nationalist
opposition party, Ata-Zhurt, and Tashiyev who was one of a group of people that
scaled the White House gates, a sure sign of leading from the front. These two
wisely pretended that Wednesday's gathering was to voice discontent over the
Kumtor gold mine, which has been the source of a series of toxic spills in past
years, before springing their real plan. Seeing a good riot go down in Kyrgyzstan shouldn’t be a surprise, not in a
nation that has seen the overthrow of two governments in its short history
since gaining independence amid the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
This truly is the year of the riot………
- Oh, so transparent, “American Karaoke,” so transparent. For
the briefest of zero seconds, the leaked video of new “AK” judges/attention
whores Nicki
Minaj and Mariah Carey embroiled in a heated argument on the set of the
original terrible reality karaoke show seemed real. Both “singers” appear to be
extremely angry and the clip has had the desired effect, causing fans of both
women to launch a massive Twitter war against each other and slam the opposite
side’s lady of being wrong, stupid, a fraud or some other derogatory word. “AK”
producers have also leaked rumors of tension between the two women ever since Minaj
and Keith Urban were confirmed as the season's two final judges, hoping the
breathe life into a lame-tastic franchise that should have been taken out
behind the shed and “Old Yeller-ed” long ago. Making the video appear even more
bogus, neither Minaj nor Carey have publicly commented on the video. There is
no need to comment on something that is completely staged and artificial, especially
when both of you are attention-desperate hacks with questionable degrees of
sanity who will do literally anything to get people looking at them. “AK” has
grasped at every possible straw in recent years, bringing in pathetic
caricatures of formerly great artists (Steven Tyler), musically talent-less pop
hacks (Jennifer Lopez) and now the always-insane Carey and the overly produced,
skill-less faux hip-hopper (Minaj). That these developments are occurring as
the show is so far past jumping the shark that it has circled the globe and is
about to jump the same damn shark again is rather convenient and with the
series’ music-murdering creator gone to wreck music with a different reality
karaoke show, finding ways to keep the lights on is an increasingly desperate
proposition………
- Two things that had never happened before both occurred
Wednesday afternoon in Washington, D.C. No, a member of Congress did not reject
oral sex from an intern while simultaneously turning down a bribe from a
lobbyist, although that would be a history-maker. No, the rare feats too place at
Nationals Park, where the hometown team clinched the best record in the Major
League Baseball and the Teddy Roosevelt mascot won the Presidents Race in the
middle of the fourth inning. Since moving to Washington in 2005, the Nationals
had never sniffed the playoffs, let alone pushed for the MLB’s best record.
They secured the mark with a 5-1 win over Philadelphia, giving them 98 wins an
securing homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. But the feat that drew
more attention was Teddy -- Mr. Rough Rider, himself – rallying for a win after
losing 534 times since 2006. The Nationals
began having races among 10-foot-tall foam renderings of Roosevelt, George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln at home games in their second season and
it took until Wednesday for Roosevelt to break through. Even then, Teddy needed
help from a green mascot
wearing a jersey of the Phillies to jump out onto the field
and knock down the other three presidents. The WWE-like interference gave Teddy
a win in the final game of the regular season and fittingly, the game's very
next batter, Washington third baseman Ryan Zimmerman , hit a homer leading off
the bottom of the fourth for the home team's first run of the afternoon. After
that, Michael Morse doubled and eventually scored, too. With two to-do’s
scratched off their list, the Nationals are now ready to bring postseason
baseball back to America’s capital for the first time since the Washington
Senators lost in the 1933 World Series. That includes three-plus decades
without a team until MLB moved the Montreal Expos to D.C. before the 2005
season. The Presidents Race has never been quite as awesome as the racing
sausages at Milwaukee Brewers home games or the dueling pierogies at Pittsburgh
Pirates games, but neither of those races have produced results leading both
Sen. John McCain and White House press secretary Jay Carney to comment on them
the way they have on the Presidents Race………
- One could make the argument that the Federal
Trade Commission should not waste its time or money on any projects to protect
those dumb enough to be suckered in by Internet scammers. Sadly, government
rarely has the option of doing the smart or right thing and so it is that the FTC
on Wednesday cracked down on telemarketers who bilked consumers out of hundreds
of thousands of dollars under the guise of fixing their computers. These
scammers worked their magic by calling consumers and directing them to a
utility log on their computers that displays warnings and errors as part of its
normal operations. Seizing on these fools’ technological naïveté, the scammers
than offered to eliminate the “malware” for a fee. FTC agents posing as
uneducated consumers recorded phone calls from scammers and heard insane
threats as extreme as a possible computer explosion unless they purchased the
fix being sold to them. After wrapping its investigation, the FTC announced it
had filed charges on Sept. 24 in the Southern District Court of New York to
stop the scams. For some odd reason, a federal judge then ordered six of the
scammers to halt operations and froze $180,000 in assets. You won't believe
this, but the scammers are largely based in India and mainly targeted
English-speaking customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and United Kingdom.
Tech-savvy people from India working over clueless Americans? No way. The big
loser in the case so far seems to be scammer Kristy Ross, who was fined $163
million for selling fake malware clean-up software. The FTC reported that more
than 1 million people were hooked by this scam between 2000 and 2008. A second
scammer charged in the FTC’s lawsuit paid Google $1 million for search ads that
would direct consumers to call the scammer’s toll-free number when searching
for McAfee support or PC fixes. So-called “scareware” is largely on the
decline, but there will always be fools out there too clueless to know better
or be skeptical of strangers who call them up unsolicited and attempt to extort
them……….
- Where does one go to have a good time when in Phoenix,
Ariz.? There have to be plenty of bars and clubs, maybe even a few house
parties on any given night, right? That is probably true, but not everyone
wants to live it up at such a clichéd spot. For those original souls, there has
to be a better option and thankfully, there is – even if that better option is
causing some major outrage amongst the city’s overly sensitive souls. The new
party scene just so happens to be the Greenwood
Cemetery at 2300 W. Van Buren in Phoenix. Somehow, the cemetery has turned into
a great spot to stage an outdoor rager and a visitor who was there for the
cemetery’s originally intended purpose stumbled across one such event. The man,
who asked not to be identified, stopped by around 11 a.m. and spotted a large
crowd of people elsewhere on the property. He thought he was seeing a wake or a
funeral, right up to the point he spotted footballs, volleyballs and people
running around and laughing. Those sorts of activities seem a bit too lively
and not quite macabre or respectful enough for a place where departed souls go
as their final resting place, but no one would be that offended, right? Wrong.
The cemetery good Samaritan broke out his smartphone and captured the party on
video, which also shows another visitor trying to pay his respects to a dearly
departed loved one as the party rages on. One week later, this anonymous
agitator returned to the cemetery and saw partiers making out and shotgunning
beer. Soon, another round of party people arrived with yet another case of
beer, at which point several car radios were cranked up and the party truly kicked
it up a notch. Somewhere along the way, one attendee very classily poured beer
over a grave in celebration of…..something. Maybe that person knew who was
buried there and knew that person to be a fan of cheap, watery beer from a can,
but cemetery management didn’t see the situation that way. While there is no
agency in Arizona that regulates this type of behavior, officials put up signs
telling people what they probably should have known – no parties in the
cemetery. Time to find somewhere else to rage……….
No comments:
Post a Comment