- Welcome back, world of delusional kook-dom. The fools
who believe they see the Almighty or Virgin Mary in a grease stain on a stove
or oil spill in their driveway are never far away and after a short break, they
have returned to provide the world with new reasons to laugh. Norwalk, Ct.
resident Joseph McCaffrey belongs to
this non-distinguished group and he’s found his supposed sign from above in a
truly insipid place. There McCaffrey was, skimming through a local newspaper
when he spotted what his tiny brain could only surmise was an image of Jesus
Christ in a blob of ink. While trolling the May 2 edition of his local paper,
he saw the blob of ink and mentioned to his wife – yes, kooks can have wives - that
the movie section had a large blob of ink. "I didn't see it at first, but
as I was reading the paper, I said to my wife the movie section was blotted out
with ink and held it up for her to see," he recalled. "And she
shouted, 'It's Jesus!'” Like any good delusional fool who has found something
amazing that doesn’t exist and is merely a figment of their overactive
imagination, McCaffrey snapped a photo of the holy ink blob to show his friends
and family. "Some see the image, some don't," he added. "The
overwhelming majority said they could definitely see Jesus." Those people
are known as idiots as well, just to be clear. But McCaffrey has questions
about what this supposed miracle in newsprint means. He’s even cracking jokes
about it. "If Jesus is really trying to send me a message, I wish he
popped up in the Lotto section instead," he said. "Does he want me to
see a movie?" No Bill, he merely wants you to stop being an overly
suggestive moron……..
- The United Nations would like you to eat bugs. It sounds
like a desperate idea to tackle world hunger and in a sense, it is. Edible insects
are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and
livestock and as a way to battle hunger, global warming and pollution. The bug
eaters at the U.N. are touting bugs’ benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and
feeding the millions of hungry people in the world. At present, some two
billion of the planet’s seven billion residents currently consume bugs, mostly
people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Rome-based U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization wants to expand that number and has issued a report
exploring edible insect potential. The report cites the use of a red coloring
produced from the cochineal, a scaled insect often exported from Peru, as one
way bugs are already in the food chain. Science ranks the nutritional value of
edible insects such as red ants, small grasshoppers and some water beetles high
on the list, with enough protein to match lean ground beef while having less
fat per gram. Bugs also contain useful minerals such as iron, magnesium,
phosphorous, selenium and zinc. Beetles and caterpillars are the most common
edible insects among the 1,900 species that people eat. Travel enough and you
just might find bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets on the
menu. According to the U.N. report, insects on average can convert 4.4 pounds
of feed into 2.2 pounds of edible meat compared to cattle, which need 17.6
pounds of feed to produce the same amount of meat. Oh, and beetles don’t
generate dangerous greenhouse gases with their farts the way cattle do………
- Money is being thrown around like a strip club on steroids
and the NBA is the setting for this massive orgy of big bucks. A battle has
been brewing for months over control of one of the worst franchises in the
Association. Sacramento has fought to keep the team currently known as the
Kings and get a new arena built, while a group from Seattle has tried
desperately to ply the franchise away to fill the void left when its former team
moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. At various points, both sides seemingly had the
deal sewn up, most recently when a committee of NBA owners recommended to the
league that the team remain in Seattle. That didn’t sit well with Chris
Hansen and Steve Ballmer, the deep-pocketed Seattle-based investors trying to
acquire the team, and they ramped up their offer to buy the Maloof family’s 65
percent of the Kings to $409 million (from $358 million) for a total valuation
of $625 million. That may not be enough to sway owners into voting for the
move, but it appears to have swayed owners Joe and Gavin Maloof. According to
multiple sources, the Maloofs have informed their fellow owners that if their
deal to sell and relocate the Kings to Seattle is not approved by league owners
next week, they will not sell the team to a Sacramento-based group that
promises to keep the Kings in Sacramento. Their reasoning is sound: They need
money and they need it now. Should their sweetheart deal with the Seattle group
be rejected, they have also reached a "backup" agreement with the
Hansen-Ballmer group to sell it 20 percent of the team for $125 million to
allow the Maloofs to continue to operate the franchise. In other words, Hansen
keeps throwing more money on the pile and hoping that wins everyone over. The
move seems to have had some impact, as the committee evaluating the potential
move plans to reconsider the revised offer next week. While the Maloofs work
their own angle, the NBA has been busy negotiating its own deal for the Kings
with a group led by Silicon Valley billionaire Vivek Ranadive. However, this
group has changed its leadership several times and its best offer was a
valuation of $525 million for the Kings and a deal with local governments to
building a new arena with more than $250 million in public funds. No matter how
this ends, quite a few people are going to get even richer from this deal……
- Billy Crystal is at that point in his career. He’s done it all on the
big screen, small screen and Great White Way. He’s hosted every awards show
worth hosting (a short list) and can essentially pick and choose his projects
without needing to work constantly. So what’s next for the acting icon? Crystal
announced Tuesday he will bring his Tony-winning play “700 Sundays” back to
Broadway one last time for a nine-week run this fall at the Imperial Theatre. Des
McAnuff will direct the one-man, autobiographical play Crystal wrote himself.
In the production, the Emmy winner plays several rounds of characters that left
an imprint on his life while growing up in New York. Despite all his prominent
roles and gigs over the years, Crystal has often called the play “the most
satisfying experience of my career.” His (allegedly) final round of the play
will have previews starting Nov. 5 and an opening date set for Nov. 13. “I’ve
now decided to tell this story one last time in my own backyard, where it all
took place,” Crystal said in a statement. “It is a privilege to return to
Broadway to say goodbye to one of the greatest thrills of my life.” The play’s
past success is impressive. “700 Sundays” debuted on Broadway in 2004 and
quickly set box office records by taking in the highest weekly gross at the
Broadhurst Theatre and earning more than $21 million by the end of its run. It
also snared its share of awards, most notably winning the 2005 Tony for special
theatrical experience. After its New York debut, it toured across the country
and internationally, with stops in Canada and Australia. For a native New
Yorker like Crystal, though, there was only one place it could end……..
- How long has the civil war in Syria gone on? Long enough
that participants are now drawing inspiration from old-school Hollywood action
films. There is no nice way to break the news that a Syrian rebel commander has been caught on
video cutting out the heart of a soldier and biting into it, so let’s dive in.
That claim comes from the activist group Human Rights Watch, which has
either been watching “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and eating spicy
foods before bed or watched an amateur video posted online in which a man cuts
into a dead soldier’s torso and removes his liver and heart. The attacker has
been indentified by HRW as Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Omar al-Farouq
Brigade. In the video, the attacker says: "I swear to God we will eat
your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.” That would be
embattled dictator Bashar al-Assad, who still refuses to cede power even though
it’s clear he’s not wanted any longer. Later in the video Sakkar also uses
sectarian language to insult Alawites, HRW said. So far, 80,000 are believed to
have been killed in the increasingly sectarian conflict in which majority Sunni
Muslims have sought to overthrow Assad, whose family is chiefly supported by
Alawites. No one is sure how many people have been killed or injured because of
government restrictions and security concerns, leaving amateur videos posted
online as the primary source of news. To verify the identity of the man in the
“Temple of Doom” clip, HRW claims to have compared frames in the clip to
similar videos of the same man and spoken to sources in Homs, including other
rebels, who identified Sakkar. HRW emergencies director Peter Bouckaert decried
Abu Sakkar’s alleged cannibalism and repeated his organization’s plea or
Syria’s conflict to be referred to the International Criminal Court. Please do
before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg view incidents such as this one as a
sign that a fifth “Indiana Jones” movie is needed……..
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