Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Lars Ulrich = Kofi Annan, a ganja-friendly candidate and Bill Snyder's fashion ignorance


- By land and by sea aren’t working. Time to take to the air, would-be Costa Rican drug smugglers. First, authorities in the Central American nation seized 690 pounds of cocaine in a bust of a tractor-trailer loaded with beans that was preparing to cross the northern border into Nicaragua. Beans proved not to be an effective scent masker for the Bolivian marching powder, as a sniffer dog was able to power its way through the beans’ pungent scene and locate the coke. The truck had Nicaraguan plates and authorities detained the driver, who was identified as a Nicaraguan citizen. The bust was the first in a big day that wasn’t nearly over. Later on, a second seizure of some 910 pounds hidden in coolers on a fishing boat took place off Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast. Police thanks a joint patrolling agreement between Costa Rica and the U.S. for facilitating the second bust and the corresponding arrests of three suspects. All together, some 1,600 pounds of Colombian nose candy were stopped from making their way across the border and into the hands of cartels. That merely means a bunch of other low-paid lackeys will have to try again by different means and the dealers who have been counting on that quality product will have to up their prices in order to make their current supplies last longer. It’s a difficult situation for all involved and perhaps one that should inspire the affected cartels to check into a time share for a luxury jet to ferry their yayo across the necessary borders next time……….


- The Big 12 needs to cut old man Bill Snyder a break. The man is a college football icon who took what was once the worst Division I program in America and revived it before leaving, seeing it fall back into the abyss and coming back to revive it a second time. He’s also about to turn 75 years old and like many men of retirement age, his fashion sense leaves much to be desired. Simply put, fashion has changed and he hasn’t because he’s old, out of touch and doesn’t give a damn whether he’s in style or not. He knows he’ll soon shuffle off this mortal coil and since he’s been around longer than most everyone else, he figures he can say, do and wear whatever the hell he wants. So if he wants to wear purple windbreakers on the sideline that have logos of past bowl games on them, some of which are several years old, then it’s time for the Big 12 and the overbearing bureaucratic tools who run the league to take two giant steps back and leave the old man who insists that his butter be whipped and that he ride only on the shady side of the plane alone. The league is getting all pissy because it no longer has contracts with some of those bowl games anymore, and others have changed names. The issue vaulted to the forefront during last week's nationally televised game against Auburn, when Snyder rocked a jacket pimping the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, now called the Cactus Bowl. After getting scolded, Snyder sadly rolled over and opted for a rare white windbreaker -- sans bowl logo -- for Saturday's 58-28 blowout of UTEP. Wrong move, Bill, and a crotchety old man should have known better……….


- Anne Armstrong won't be the next governor of the nation’s smallest state….but it would be awesome. She wouldn’t be the first elected official to be a ganja fanatic, but she may be the first to base her entire campaign on her affinity for toking it up. Armstrong is a medical marijuana advocate turned write-in candidate for Rhode Island governor and she has garnered plenty of ink for the savvy move of smoking what she says is pot in a campaign video. . "I'm Anne Armstrong, and I'm going to be the next governor of Rhode Island," she says in the minute-and-a-half-long video. "And I hope that during my tenure, I will be able to dispel a number of misconceptions about cannabis use." As this anachronistic hippie tells it, she smokes herb daily for medical use and because it also helps her focus and communicate with people around her. While doing bong rips in the video, she argues that pot users "shouldn't be ostracized or marginalized." "It doesn't make people crazy the way you've been told," she says. "We've been lied to for a long time by our government, and something that's been essential to our health has been taken away from us." After a joke about former President Bill Clinton's famous "didn't inhale" remark during his first run for President in 1992 and then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2006 admission that he did inhale, Armstrong makes the case that states should be able to carry forward with medical marijuana with no restrictions. Sadly, the squares at the the Department of Justice say that marijuana is a schedule 1 narcotic. Pot legalization is a big issue across the United States and the hippie lettuce is permitted in 22 states and the District of Columbia. It’s allowed for recreational use in Colorado and Washington state and next month, voters in Oregon, Alaska and D.C. will find the legalization question on their ballots. Unfortunately, voters in Rhode Island aren't like to find Armstrong on theirs………


- Could Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich be the Kofi Annan of the rock and roll world, bringing peace to war-torn nations/bands with bitter rivals on either sides of a cavernous divide? Ulrich may not have intended to step into such a void, but did exactly that when he proclaimed that dissolved British rock band Oasis  "has been the soundtrack to my life for the last 20 years.” The Manchester band, which split in 2009, has well-documented interfamily wars between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher and the two have only intensified their back-and-forth bile since the band’s break-up, including but not limited to allegations that the other one wants to reunite the band because he’s failing on his own, throwing around blame for the break-up and accusing each other of being everything short of the anti-Christ. But maybe, just maybe, the cash-grab release of the band’s 1995 album “(What's the Story) Morning Glory?” and the unabashed adoration of one of the greatest metal band drummers ever can begin the healing process in earnest. "Oasis has been the soundtrack to my life for the last 20 years on this wonderful planet. I have stories and pictures in my mind that go along with everything, from the first time I heard particular songs and read certain articles, to hearing about the band's shenanigans and festivities,” Ulrich said. He recalled a 1995 concert at a small venue in "Nowheresville, New Jersey" where he had to step in and man the lights. "They didn't have a crew guy to run the light board, and I was the only one in the building that knew the songs,” Ulrich recalled. He included an inspiring anecdote about reading an interview in which Noel Gallagher talked about quitting drugs inspiring him to kick his cocaine habit, which is both life-affirming and somewhat sad because if a world-famous rock drummer can't enjoy blow off the toned stomach of a model backstage after a show, then what’s the point of rock and roll at all………..

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