- When are pastors/doctors/twin
brothers not really doctors? When they’re Dale and Gale Hammond of Nashville,
Tenn., that’s when. The brothers Hammond are members of the gospel group The
Hammond Brothers and in their spare time, they pretend to be doctors. They even
have business cards saying as much. The brothers claim to be natural medicine
doctors, which is a vague term that doesn’t seem to have any actual meaning in
the real world. Their practice is built on hyperbaric oxygen therapy they offer
in their clinic. They offer this service in several portable hyperbaric
chambers, but those chambers could land them in serious trouble. The Food and
Drug Administration has only cleared portable chambers for certain medical
uses, such as mountain sickness, and the larger versions of the chamber are
often employed to help deep water divers recover from decompression sickness. The
best part of the entire story might be the location of the “clinic.” It’s
situated next to the Hammonds’ church and while many religious people do
believe that God is in the business of healing, ministers don’t often turn
healing into a business. According to Dale Hammond, most people are
oxygen-deprived and can benefit from hyperbaric chambers. He and his brother
also pitch the chambers as a possible cure for all sorts of medical issues. Those
issues could even include depressions, which is a somewhat outlandish claim
given the fact that there are no known studies suggesting hyperbaric chambers
can help with depression at all. The clinic runs on the cash of patients paying
a minimum “donation” of $100 per visit. Dale Hammond said the clinic typically
treats patients in 40 sessions, which would come out to a very affordable and
not at all scam-tastic $40,000. Oh, and the brothers also present themselves as
certified diving medical officers even though the International Board of
Undersea Medicine does not recognize them as certified to run any sort of
hyperbaric device………..
- The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers has made some great statements with
his band’s music – and his solo efforts – over the past few years, but none of
them were as on-point as his statement about the current condition of American
pop music. Flowers succinctly observed that the majority of what he hears in
mainstream U.S. pop is "retarded.” Drummer Ronnie Vanucci agreed, pointing
out that the band achieved success much quicker in the United Kingdom than they
did in their home country. "Breaking in the UK first was great because
America is retarded musically," Vanucci added. "It's upside down.
There's so much great music that doesn't get the attention. There's a lot of
bullsh*t on US radio.” Like many non-pop artists, The Killers feel good music (i.e.
theirs) goes largely ignored while unoriginal pop drivel is celebrated. ''I
start to wonder, what do adults listen to? Do they listen to what's being
played on the radio? You should listen to something that's for you - not about
giving your virginity to your boyfriend on Saturday night,” Flowers fumed. “It
is retarded. Every song is that song. And if 40-year-olds are listening to that
rubbish, they're going to raise kids on it. It's not even music.'” These
comments just so happen to come ahead of the band’s release of their greatest
hits album, “Direct Hits.” It’s an odd coincidence because bands never say
outlandish or controversial things right before their new project drops in
order to drum up more publicity and hopefully sell a few more copies of that
album……….
- Cats have far too large a presence on the Internet. Anyone
who has spent even one second on YouTube and has seen the scores of insipid and
inane videos of cats doing stupid sh*t while their even-dumber owners film them
knows this to be true. However, that abiding love of all things cat only goes
so far when a person sits down at their computer and recent issues with some
new Dell computers have brought that reality to the forefront. The Texas-based
tech company was compelled to issue a rather hilrous customer service
announcement this week, offering to replace a part in some of its laptops that smells
like cat urine. The urine-smell issue has come to light on the pages of Dell’s
community message boards in recent months, with users complaining that the Dell
Latitude 6430u laptop smells like it was assembled near a used litter box. In a
sad, yet hilarious twist, some Dell owners recounted stories of being forced to
apologize to business clients when taking their laptops out for presentations because
the odor was so foul and so powerful. Even more humorously, others recalled
wrongly chastising their cats for causing the odor when their laptop was the
true source of the problem. After several months of complaints (and probably
plenty of laughs), Dell finally responded this week. It made the
not-so-generous offer for any 6430u laptop owners to contact the company to
have their device's palm rest replaced. According to Dell, the smell appears to
be the result of a manufacturing process related to the computer's palm rest.
That obviously raises the question of why cat urine is being used in the
manufacturing process or why litter box-eschewing cats are manufacturing the
palm rests, but Dell is adamant that there is no health hazard in play here. "We
would like to reassure customers that the odor was not related to biological
contamination nor did it present a health hazard," the company said in a
statement. "The manufacturing process has subsequently been amended and
newly purchased Latitude 6430us are not affected by the issue." Glad that’s
been taken care of……..
- Is there anything sadder in professional sports right now
than the ongoing verbal pissing match between Major League Baseball's top officials and disgraced New York Yankees
slugger Alex Rodriguez? The two sides are lobbing snarky remarks back and forth
as Rodriguez contests his 211-game suspension for violating the joint drug
agreement and the collective bargaining agreement by his involvement in the
Biogenesis wellness center scandal. Rodriguez started the sniping Thursday
morning by releasing a statement ripping commissioner Bud Selig for his role in
the drama. "It is sad that Commissioner Selig once again is turning a
blind eye, knowing that crimes are being committed under his regime,"
Rodriguez said. "I have 100 percent faith in my legal team. To be sure,
this fight is necessary to protect me, but it also serves the interests of the
next 18-year-old coming into the league, to be sure he doesn't step into the
house of horrors that I am being forced to walk through." That led to Rob
Manfred, MLB's chief operating officer and the favorite to be the next
commissioner, dropping a verbal nuke on A-Rod by saying his career is "sad" and
"tarnished." Manfred said Rodriguez and his representatives are engaging
in gross misconduct. "This latest, sad chapter in Mr. Rodriguez's
tarnished career is yet another example of this player trying to avoid taking
responsibility for his poor choices," Manfred said. "Given the
disappointing acts that Mr. Rodriguez has repeatedly made throughout his
career, his expressed concern for young people rings very hollow. Mr.
Rodriguez's use of PEDs was longer and more pervasive than any other player,
and when this process is complete, the facts will prove it is Mr. Rodriguez and
his representatives who have engaged in ongoing, gross misconduct." Those
words had barely been uttered when Joe Tacopina, Rodriguez's lead attorney,
called for Manfred's ouster from the case. Tacopina (a great new for a new
Mexican restaurant, by the way) accused Manfred of slander. His words were
chased by an MLB staement denouncing him as “delusional.” Hey fellas, how about
you stop passing notes in class about each other and take this out behind the
school where you can attempt to cave on another’s faces in……….
- Now THAT is how you celebrate Halloween. Border agents at
Montreal-Trudeau International Airport found someone looking to commemorate the
(not really a) holiday the right way and although their job description
mandated that they kill that would-be reveler’s buzz, you know they had to
respect the effort deep down. The fun unfolded when a female traveler toting
three pumpkins with her turned out to be a drug mule attempting to smuggle 2
kilograms of cocaine through security. The plan itself, while clever at first
glance, is terribly flawed. After all, who takes pumpkins with them on a plane
or even puts the orange orbs in their luggage when they travel, even on Halloween?
You can buy pumpkins wherever you’re going and they’re a) not easily portable
and b) not very durable when they're banged around. Security took note of the
pumpkins because they seemed to be too heavy, so an agent sent the gourds through
an X-ray scanner. That’s when four pounds of the Colombian nose candy housed in
multiple bags of white powder were discovered and the Royal Mounted Police were
called in. This is quite a haul for Canadian law enforcement, as the stash
seized here represents almost 5 percent of all cocaine seized at the airport
this year. Determining the total street value of the stockpile is difficult
because the Bolivian marching powder’s price varies depending on its purity and
how it's processed. According to the most recent United Nations figures,
cocaine retails for $137 to $170 a
gram. Sadly, whoever was counting in this particular shipment of blow to
bolster their drug dealing business did not have a happy Halloween and may have
to settle for snorting a few lines of Pixie Stick dust to get by………
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