- Every country celebrates its independence a bit
differently. Some nations go with standard fireworks celebrations, others enjoy
military parades put on by their dictator and then, there’s Indonesia, which
went a very different route in marking the anniversary of its freedom. The
southeastern Asian nation decided to mark its Independence Day by sinking 60
foreign ships seized for fishing illegally in the country's waters. To each
their own…and even better if “their own” includes explosives and watercrafts
being sent to the bottom of the sea in a giant ball of flame and malice. Maritime
and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said the ships were sunk at eight
separate locations across the Indonesian archipelago, which is nice because it
gives everyone a chance to watch something go boom and across all cultures and
civilizations, that’s a true joy that all of us can enjoy, regardless of our
age or socioeconomic status. Pudjiastuti is quite the pyromaniac, having
organized the destruction of more than 200 illegal fishing boats since 2014.
Sadly, this time the sinkings of the renegade boats were carried out in lame,
low-key fashion compared with previous occasions, when the government made its
point in über-public fashion by televising the kabooms live. Blowing sh*t to
smithereens always makes your point well and seeing C4 detonated and turning a
boat into a cascading mess of wood and metal is the sort of national bonding
experience that can really unite a nation and send everyone away feeling better
about the place they call home……..
- On the surface, a live-action Pokemon movie based on the
recent Pokemon Go craze seems like a terrible idea….and it is. But maybe some
good can come out of “Guardians Of The Galaxy” scriptwriters Nicole Perlman and
Alex Hirsch penning the script for the first live-action Pokemon film…and that
something good is the punishment for all of the ass hats who spent the past few
weeks wandering around the world with their heads up their asses while their
noses were stuck in their phones as they stumbled into walls, doors and
buildings in search of digital glory by finding all of the Pokemon characters imaginarily
scattered in their area. The movie itself will be on the new game Detective
Pikachu, a game which is currently only available in Japan and focuses on Great
Detective Pikachu, a character who isn’t as nimble as other Pokemon characters,
relying on his intelligence to solve cases. It’s ironic because the tools who
have devoted their lives to Pokemon Go seem to exhibit no signs of
intelligence. This movie should be a dumpster fire of cinematic awfulness, so
anyone who has caused a single inconvenience for another person while playing Pokemon
Go should be forced to watch the Pokemon movie on a loop….for as many hours as
they spent playing or thinking about the game. This could work because Legendary
studio bosses say they have put the Detective Pikachu film into fast-tracked
production so that filming can start in 2017, meaning this
punishment-by-crappy-film can get underway sooner rather than later………
- Why, oh why, would any college want to rid itself of the
vestiges of one of the ugliest, most regrettable eras in American history? You,
Vanderbilt University, are freaking unbelievable. How dare you pay the
Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy $1.2 million in
exchange for relinquishing the naming rights to the private school's
Confederate Memorial Hall. Such a B.S. move, doing something you feel might
eliminate an ugly reminder of a hateful, shameful time in America’s past,
especially for the many African-American students, staff, faculty and visitors
who pass through your Nashville campus each day. Showing its hurt for all the
world to see, the UDC said in a statement "is disappointed that an
institution such as Vanderbilt University would attempt to whitewash, sanitize
and rewrite American history." However, the group claimed that once the
university made the offer, it had no choice but to accept even though the UDC’s
attorney, Doug Jones, said that a successful 2003 lawsuit to block the dorm's
renaming resulted in a ruling that Vanderbilt couldn't change the name of the
residence hall without paying back a 1933 donation of $50,000 — adjusted for
inflation and interest. It took a little while, but once Vanderbilt decided to
pay, Jones said the group had "no legal option or alternative" than
to accept the money.Yes, it’s sad that people can't simply appreciate a union
built on the idea that no one was going to tell its citizens whether or not
they could wrongfully enslave other human beings and treat them as less than
human based on…umm…….
- Rather than prosecuting Patrick Hickey for allegedly
scalping tickets for the Summer Olympics, maybe we should all be admiring him
for being bold enough to commit a crime in Rio right now. Sure, it seems simply
shady that an International Olympic Committee executive who is also president
of the Olympic Council of Ireland as well as president of the European Olympic
Committees had an arrest warrant issued for him by Rio de Janeiro authorities
as part of a wider probe of tickets allocated to Ireland that were being sold
for higher fees. It looks like a rich, old white dude was using his lofty
position to cash in illegally….and that’s probably true. "Continuing our
investigation, civil police discovered the involvement of Patrick in the
international scheme of ticket scalping," the Rio police fraud unit said.
Wow, already on a first-name basis….that was quick. But given the robbing,
murdering and other criminal nonsense going on around Rio, the fact that an old
dude on foreign soil was bold enough to engage in his own criminal enterprise
is impressive on some level. As part of the probe, agents seized more than
1,000 tickets that were being sold for high fees and allocated to the Olympic
Council of Ireland. At the center of this scam along with Hickey (allegedly) is
British hospitality provider THG Sports. Kevin James Mallon, one of the heads
of THG Sports, was arrested at the start of the Rio Games along with an
employee who was working as an interpreter and allegedly has false tickets in
his possession. From there, the threads of the case led to Hickey and another
case of Olympic corruption, much to the surprise of no one…….
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