- There are plenty of hazards for the average stripper:
overly hands-on, lecherous patrons who don’t understand club rules for contact,
a filthy brass pole with dozens of other women’s filth on them, the daily
assault on their dignity caused merely by doing their job, their lingering coke
habit, the real possibility that children’s services officials will take their
child away because little Ashley has a coked-out stripper for a mother….the
list is lengthy. Yet it was none of those dangers that caused the tragic death
of Richmond Heights, Ohio stripper who died Wednesday at the age of 22 after a
fall from a
second floor balcony. Lauren Block was giving a man a lap dance and reportedly
attempted a dangerous move that sent her over the balcony’s edge and to the
ground below. She fell head-first over the balcony’s railing and tumbled 15
feet, sustaining massive head trauma. Paramedics did what they could to assist
her, but Block had been listed in critical condition since Jan. 2, when she
suffered the fall at Christie’s Cabaret. Block’s family released a statement
thanking the community for its support of the family and letting everyone know
that she was an organ donor whose untimely demise would hopefully be able to
save lives. Her passing should also send out another warning beacon for any
would-be strippers who are debating whether their life has regressed enough to
resort to taking their clothes off for money and having total strangers with no
dignity or decency shove $1 bills down their G-string. The Occupational Safety
and Health Administration is still attempting to determine if it has jurisdiction
to investigate the accident and a final decision is expected to take several
more weeks.……
- Even though it couldn’t matter less because both of them
are absurd musical punchlines, “American Karaoke” judges Nicki Minaj and the
über-insane Mariah Carey have (reportedly) made nice and resolved whatever
differences existed between them and their two massively bloated egos. The two
I-think-I’m-a-divas has been feuding back and forth over God knows what (whose
music sucks more?) and in October, Minaj threatened to "knock out" Carey during a taping
of the show’s latest round of crappy karaoke auditions. Their bickering, very
possibly a contrived attempt to breathe life into the horrible show, reached
new heights recently when a disagreement over a contestant's performance
prompted Minaj to launch a tirade of insults towards Carey. In response, Carey claimed she had to hire extra security staff while
working alongside Minaj because their fighting made her feel "unsafe.” “Anytime
anybody’s reeling threats at somebody, you know, that's just not appropriate.
Sitting there on the road with two babies, I'm not gonna take any chances, so
yeah I did hire more security," Carey said. However, that extra hired
muscle may not be necessary if Minaj is telling the truth when she says that
her beef with Carey is over. Not only is it over, but it apparently ended
because the two women sat down and wathced Minaj's sex tape together. “I put on my sex
tape," Minaj said, explaining that Carey responded, "Time heals all
wounds.” It sounds like an absurd claim, but Minaj insisted it’s true. “We
watched my tape…and we’re professionals,” Minaj added. Of course, because
watching someone you hate fornicate on screen is always soothing,
life-affirming and never uncomfortable or awkward……….
- The New York Knicks have been here before. When they first
signed Amare Stoudemire to a five-year, $100 million contract
in the summer of 2010, then-coach Mike D’Antoni played the knee-troubled
forward more than 40 minutes a night even though Stoudemire is one of the few
athletes who have undergone microfracture surgery on a knee and managed to come
back as anything resembling their former self. Amazingly enough, Stoudemire has
not been the same since and current Knicks coach Mike Woodson just got the
6-foot-10 former All-Star back after he missed the first two-plus months of the
season recovering from surgery to repair a ruptured cyst in his knee. Now that
Stoudemire is back on the court, Woodson must be aware of how many minutes he
asks him and his worn-out knees to play, something team doctors reminded
Woodson of after Stoudemire experienced soreness in his surgically repaired
left knee in Monday's loss to Boston. Stoudemire played 28 minutes in the game
and is averaging 10 points and 2.3
rebounds in 20 minutes per game through four games. After Monday’s game, team
doctors approached Woodson and told him that he needed to scale back
Stoudemire’s minutes immediately. "He was probably a little sore and
that's probably the reason for it. So I've got to be open-minded to that and do
what's asked. That's the right thing to
do," Woodson said. Neither the coach nor his medically coddled player
wanted to characterize this latest development in Stoudemire’s story as a
setback, but Stoudemire admitted that he felt "a little bit sore"
after the Boston game. "I don't feel as if it's a setback at all. I feel
great," said Stoudemire, who's "I just think we're taking a
precautionary route. Just making sure that everything [continues] to improve. I
think that's about it, really.” What “fewer minutes” means is open to
interpretation, but Woodson said Stoudemire would play between 20 and 23
minutes against Indiana on Thursday. He will continue to come off the bench as
he has since his return…….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! South Africa is the place and a highway in the
grape-growing Western Cape, heart of South Africa's multibillion-dollar wine
region, is the place for this edition of everyone’s favorite overview of social
dissidence around the world. Tensions are higher and pain tolerance needs to be
higher if this awesomeness is going to continue, but it was definitely a ton of
fun on Wednesday when police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at hundreds
of striking farm workers who blocked the aforementioned highway. These bold
rebels piled burning tires across the main highway through the town of De
Doorns, 60 miles east of Cape Town, for a simple cause: higher wages. That led
to a chaotic confrontation in which four rioters ended up in the hospital for
minor injuries from rubber bullets as police dispersed the crowd. “I can
confirm that 41 people have been arrested, but that number could rise,"
said police spokesman Andre Traut. Before police flew into their state of
overreaction, pyromaniacal protestors set bushes, a bulldozer and a trailer on
fire, sending a beautiful cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. Sadly,
the bullying tactics from The Man worked and after the crowd scattered, police
removed large rocks that protesters had used to block the road. The strike is a
continuation of labor unrest that began last year in the platinum mining
industry and swept through the trucking and agriculture sectors. Pyromania has
been a persistent theme in the work stoppage industry in South Africa, as a
similar walk-out in December by farm workers saw these manual laborers set
warehouses on fire. Many of the workers are black seasonal hires employed to
pick and pack fruit on farms owned mainly by the white minority, further
exacerbating tensions. Their demands center on an increase from a minimum daily
wage of 69 rand, a number they want to see increased to 150 rand, or $17.44.
Protestors at Wednesday’s shindig lamented that farmers spend money on security
guards and expensive cars rather than pay workers more and the mix of distrust and
racial rage indicate that the dispute isn’t likely to be resolved any time
soon. "We have been met with naked racism and white arrogance," said
union leader Nosey Pieterse, general secretary of the Bawsi Agricultural
Workers Union of South Africa………
- Stock up on that full-strength sleeping medicine now,
America, because The Man is looking to buzzkill your anti-buzz by forcing the makers
of Ambien and similar sleeping pills to lower the dosage of their drugs. Why
would they do such an unconscionable thing? Because of some overreactive and
over-reaching studies suggesting patients face a higher risk of injury due to
morning drowsiness, that’s why. Because of those studies, the Food and Drug
Administration is requiring the changes. The FDA said Thursday that new
research shows that the drugs remain in the bloodstream at levels high enough
to interfere with morning driving. Oddly enough, the agency believes this
drowsy driving increases the risk of car accidents. To counter the problem, regulators
are ordering drug manufacturers to cut the dose of the medications in half for
women, who process the drug more slowly. Those doses be lowered from 10
milligrams to 5 milligrams for regular products, and 12.5 milligrams to 6.25
milligrams for extended-release formulations. In a slightly sexist slant to the
story, the FDA is only recommending, not requiring, hat manufacturers apply
these lower doses to men as well. However, the new rules do apply to all
insomnia treatments containing the drug zolpidem, which is sold under brands
including Ambien, Edluar and Zolpimist. Additionally, FDA officials want doctors
to prescribe the lowest dose possible that will successfully treat insomnia. "Patients
who must drive in the morning or perform some other activity requiring full
alertness should talk to their health care professional about whether their
sleep medicine is appropriate," said Dr. Ellis Unger, a director in FDA's
Office of Drug Evaluation. Unger cited a number of reports the FDA has received
detailing car accidents connected to zolpiderm over the years. While it cannot
definitively connect the drug to a specific role or assess a specific
percentage of the blame in these accidents, the agency still decided to take
action after recent driving simulation studies showed that drug levels remained
high enough to cause difficulty driving in some patients. Before these new
rules rip the full-strength, good stuff off the shelves, stock up now or else
you just might have to fall asleep on half the medicine and wake up cognizant
enough to know what you’re doing behind the wheel of that 2,500-pound hunk of
metal in the morning……..
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