Monday, December 08, 2014

"Eaten Alive" pisses off many, British lawmaker + Candy Crush and bitter Atlanta Falcons


- Why should anyone apologize for honesty, even if it was unintentionally triggered? Big ups to British Conservative legislator Nigel Mills, who was forced to ‘splain himself after photos of him playing Candy Crush Saga during a meeting last week about pensions and insurance popped up. Fact is, the hearing was about one of the most boring topics known to mankind and being elected/paid to give a damn about said topic doesn’t mean one is any less bored when having to sit through it. Mills merely failed to hide his disinterest as well as his colleagues and ended up in a shot showing him playing a video game on his tablet during a committee hearing in Parliament. He found some moral support from fellow legislator Edward Leigh, who said Mills had likely been trying to keep himself awake. "I just about managed not to go to sleep and not to play computer games but my God, it was boring,” Leigh said. And all of the people whose pensions and insurance plans you were supposed to be discussing have to feel awesome about your lack of interest, fellas. Of course, none of this would have happened if whoever took the photos had followed the rules banning any taking of images - photo or video - in parliament without permission. Parliamentary authorities have launched an investigation to figure out who took the photos, which isn't going to take much heat off Mills, but should give him at least a brief moment of respite while he exhales and pats himself on the back for playing a lame game instead of watching porn on the job………


- The Atlanta Falcons have a chance to become the worst playoff team in NFL history. The rest of the football world sees it and in a perverse way, is rooting for it. Falcons receiver Roddy White isn't ready to come to grips with the possibility of being a 6-10 division champion and hosting the most bogus first-round playoff game ever. White took issue with a story suggesting the Falcons are a football punchline and that it would be "a joke" for the team to win the NFC South. The anonymous NFL personnel director who called the team a possible postseason joke was alluding to the fact that Atlanta could win the division at four games below .500 and yet be the NFC's fourth seed as a division winner and host the fifth-seeded NFC team in a wild-card game. . "I'm upset because I just hear all the comments about us and our position and our division," White said. "Like no one has won a division going 8-8 or 7-9. When the Giants won the Super Bowl [in 2011], they were 9-7 going in and they barely got into the playoffs. Rod, Rod, Rod. It’s going to take a miracle for your team to get to seven wins and just because someone else has done it before doesn’t mean it’s a great idea. Besides, most of the haters would probably accept a sub-.500 division winner if that division winner didn’t get to host a game against a team with a much better record. "It's like everybody wants to be mad at us because we're in the position that we're in and other guys are winning games and they have better records than us. Don't nobody complain when other teams do it, so why such a big deal now? It pisses me off because it's not fair," White said. Fair? How’s it fair that an 11-win team might miss the playoffs in the NFC while a six-win squad could find a place in the January playoff landscape? Fairness is a bad word to include in this discussion……….


-  What do you get this holiday season for the criminal portfolio manager for one of the most disgraced figures of the past decade? How about 10 years in a federal prison and orders to pay back $155 million he doesn’t have? That was tossed into the Christmas stocking of fallen stockbroker Bernie Madoff's portfolio manager, Daniel Bonventre, who worked at Madoff Investment Securities. A New York federal court smacked Bonventure with those penalties six years after Madoff, who ran an elaborate Ponzi scheme that bilked $17 billion from investors, was sent to a North Carolina federal prison for 150 years. U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain went lighter on Bonventure in terms of time behind bars, but that forfeiture of $155 million for fraud associated with the Ponzi scheme stings - and proves the judge didn’t buy Bonventure’s pleas of ignorance. "I was used by the ultimate con man," Bonventre said before his sentencing. Ignorance is not a defense, Danny. You and four additional associates were found guilty in March of aiding Madoff, but you got to be sentenced first, ahead of Madoff's secretary, Annette Bongiorno, and Madoff's computer programmer, George Perez,. None of that quartet of winners owned their guilt at trial, but they didn’t need to with court filings like the one in which  74-year-old victim Norma Hill recalled how she lost much of her savings as a result of Madoff's scheme. Hill clearly made a point when she explained that the money was going to pay for her granddaughter's college tuition. Instead, her granddaughter is joining the legions of college graduates across America with a mountain of student loan debt. Maybe that $155 million Bonventure is never actually going to pay will help out with that issue………


- TV is not about originality or quality. It’s about putting ridiculous sh*t on TV that will convince as many people as possible to cease with doing anything productive for themselves or society, plop down in front of a screen and watch. In that sense, Discovery Channel's "Eaten Alive" special that pitted snake against man was a success. For a DC show to draw more than 4 million viewers is amazing, but not everyone is a loyal fan of this spectacle. The show was actually somewhat of a letdown, as a teaser for the show and its title intimated that naturalist Paul Rosolie would be swallowed by a giant anaconda, Sunday's pre-taped special stopped short of actually having a snake down a human being. Rosolie, described by Discovery as a snake researcher and conservationist, headed out into the Amazon jungle wearing bulky protective gear that didn’t exactly scream primal struggle ‘twixt man and beast. He then pulled the plug on the jungle encounter with the snake after it encircled his body and began squeezing. Rosolie suffered only a sore arm from the struggle and in displaying why Twitter was invited, social media users quickly ripped the show for not delivering on its promise. Some showed photos of themselves in mock animal attacks and asked if Discovery would be willing to give them a show as well. In spite of the fact that no one actually suffered any real harm, the kooks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were still up in arms. Lisa Lange, senior vice president for the animal rights group, said the special included the "inexcusable torment" of a wild anaconda and other snakes and was a "shameful stunt" done for ratings. And your point is? Was anyone pretending it was anything othan than a shameless ratings grab? It’s tough to tell whether PETA is more laughable or if it’s Discover Channel, which said Rosolie created the challenge to draw attention to an endangered part of the world and it was his "absolute intention to be eaten alive." Let’s just call everyone involved ridiculous and move on……..

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