Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Teddy Bear Named Mohammed

A British teacher in the Sudan has been arrested for letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear "Mohammed." The sentence for this crime can be 40 lashes, a year in prison, or a fine. This comes on the heels of a Saudi woman who was sentenced to six months in jail for allowed herself to be gang raped. After all, how dare this woman carry her well-covered vagina into a car with a man who wasn't a relative?

Muslims....can you see at all why the rest of us don't want to live under your Islamic Sharia law?

If I can get 40 lashes for mistakenly calling an inanimate object "Mohammed," or jail time for not being able to make other people control their own sexual urges, then I'll just ride this "Capitalistic White Devil Society" thing out. What other laws do you guys have over there that the less insane parts of the world haven't even considered yet? Is peeing on the seat punishable by castration? Is the punishment for drinking out of the carton having your house burned down?

At least America has laws that I can understand, like how you're not supposed to shoot people or stop at red lights. For lazy people like myself who require laws that don't make studying religious texts a pre-requisite, the land of the Great White Satan is the place to be. I can even understand why the Japanese once (and sometimes still do) prefer death to dishonor. I mean, I'd never do it because whatever happened, I'm sure I'd get over it, but if they want to jam a sword in their stomachs, more power to them. But getting offended at me for accidentally showing the bottoms of my shoes is ridiculous.

Apparently, the first commandment for Muslims is "Thou shalt overreact to all things non-threatening."

Allah loves us so much that he'd send the Prophet Mohammed (peace be unto him, because I don't want him using his otherworldly powers to destroy me) to saddle us with a legal system that doesn't allow for anything enjoyable, reasonable, logical, or sensible. It's like the Bible times 1000. It was named "Sharia" to take the edge off of it, because "Sharia" sounds like it might have sunshine and flowers in it. The first name they used was "The Anti-Common Sense Laws of Bloody Destructor Pain."

The charge for the "Satan's Insidious Teddy Bear Plot of 2007" relates to "insulting religion and inciting hatred." They're so right about that, because nothing makes me want to put a brick through the nearest skull than a plush stuffed animal.

It can soothe a child after their current nightmares, right before inciting the riot that sets off their next round of nightmares. Yea verily, the teddy bear is a versatile creation.

Maybe I just don't understand, because I'm an unbeliever, a heathen, AND an infidel. Perhaps something is lost in the translation between those who believe in God so much that they'd imprison a recently raped woman and my evil, hate-filled, Hell-bound brain. I just can't imagine that a God who claims to love us all would want me punished for naming inanimate objects "Mohammed," but is okay with exploding lunatics killing people in his name.

I think I'm going to start naming some of my things "Mohammed" to see how quickly I get struck down or my apartment gets burned down by easily offended Muslims in their quest for justice. When I get home, the first thing I'm going to do is turn on the Mohammed and watch some Mohammed. Then I'll look in the Mohammed to see if I have any Mohammed to drink, right before I turn on my X-Mohammed and play some Mohammed games.

Should I die in the next 24 hours, you'll know that this experiment didn't go well.

If any Muslims out there happen to read the above paragraph, please let me know how offended you were on a scale of 1 to Mohammed. If the rating is anything greater than negative one trillion, then it is further proof to me that somewhere in the Qur'an is a passage that says that you're not allowed to know that I'm joking. Clearly, there isn't one in there that tells you when your leaders are being stupid.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

What did Nick Saban do this time?

A little known fact about the sports writers’ community: Their secondary job is to be our moral compass. They are the guides who keep us out of the offensive abyss of depravity, the lighthouse on the shores of decency that keeps us from crashing into the rocks of immorality. I didn’t realize this until today, when they reminded us yet again of what we should and shouldn’t say, because after all, being able to analyze sporting events automatically qualifies you to be an expert on what passes for acceptable speech. I hear Ann Landers got her job after spending 10 years coaching women’s badminton.

University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban re-established his ties to the Prince of Darkness yet again, not for abandoning his job for more money, but for comparing football losses to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. It probably isn’t a connection that should be made, but because sports writers are the lemmings of the reporting world, I decided to reserve judgment until I heard the comments for myself.

And like always, a group of the world’s highest paid retards have overreacted. I could already see Bob Ryan spitting all over the camera in outrage.

Even when a spokesman at Alabama clarified what he meant (something that shouldn’t have to be done if one wasn’t actively seeking to find fault with people), the sports writers felt it wasn’t good enough and that Saban should have apologized to everyone. I think the sports writers need to explain this to everyone: “What exactly was so damn offensive?”

I heard what Saban said, and understood what he meant without having my hand held by the spokesperson, something that’s easy to do when your motivation isn’t to be the first person to condemn someone else. But for the people who don’t think that brainpower is a requirement to process information, allow me to clear all of this up.

Saban wasn’t comparing football to our national atrocities and he’s not disrespecting anyone by having them in the same sentence. If that were the case, I should be criticized every time I have “Atlanta Falcons” and “winners” in the same sentence. The fault isn’t with him, the fault is with all of his critics for claiming that he said something wrong and jumping down his throat just because they don’t like him.

If you listen to his words without passing judgment in advance you’ll see that he’s merely saying that in times of tragedy, advancements are made. That’s all. And in the context of college football, losing to some no-name school from the backwoods of Alabama is a tragedy when you’re playing for the Crimson Tide. Look at the effect that losing to Appalachian St. had on Michigan earlier this season. They don’t even have a mascot that sounds like a euphemism for “menstrual cycle.”

Evoking 9/11 was a way to illustrate an example of when advancements were made following tragedy and it was one that everyone would know. He could have used “The Battle of Pisswater” that followed the “Invasion of the Turd Miner Homestead,” but then no one would have known what he was talking about.

Clearly, Nick Saban’s only crime (and mine, apparently) is not knowing that the ban on mentioning or referring to anything that happened on September 11, 2001 is still in effect for anyone not named George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Rudolph Giuliani.

It really shouldn’t take the words of some hack blogger to explain things like logic and common sense to people whose job it is to sway public opinion, and yet, here I am, doing it again. This would be so much easier if I already worked at ESPN. It’s just a suggestion.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Barry Bonds' Indictment: Is it all worth it?

Minutes after Barry Bonds was indicted on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges, ESPN had a statement from the President of the United States on this matter. Doesn’t matter what he said, but I know he didn’t respond to the Jena 6 situation that quickly. Shows where his priorities lie.

The equation for the Bush’s concern level would read:

Baseball > Black Americans’ Ongoing Struggle for Racial Equality.

But anyway...

Four years and millions of dollars were devoted to building a case against Barry Bonds. For that kind of persistence, one might think that Barry Bonds was a president-killing-child-rapist with ties to al-Qaeda. Or that he was plotting to overthrow the government and inject all of us with AIDS. Maybe he was caught putting crack and urine in the drinking water. But no, he’s being indicted for lying to the government and possibly paying his friend not to rat him out.

No, for real. I’m so sincere.

And should he be convicted, he could get up to 30 years in prison, for four counts of perjury (five years each) and one count of obstruction of justice (10 years). And what did Barry Bonds lie to a federal grand jury about? Did he lie about his involvement in the revelation of a secret agent’s true identity? Did he lie about our government’s reasons for invading a sovereign nation? Did he even cover up something that possibly involved bringing harm or death to another human being? No, he allegedly lied about whether or not he knew the stuff in the syringe in his butt was steroids. For all he knew, it could have been fruit juices or concentrated happiness.

And with that, one of America’s most hated human beings is going to go to trial. I say “one of” because O.J. Simpson still draws breath.

I’m actually curious to know what lies he allegedly told that are worth four counts of perjury. The only thing he was most likely asked about was whether or not he knowingly took steroids and how many lies can you really tell about that? Couldn’t they just whittle that down to one charge?

No, of course they couldn’t, because the government was bound and determined to get dangerous criminals like Barry Bonds into jail and off the streets where he could knowingly give someone incorrect directions to the grocery store or what time the results show for “Dancing With the Stars” is coming on.

Was all of this really necessary for a dishonest person? Look, no one’s saying that Barry Bonds didn’t do anything that he’s accused of doing. Certainly, I’m not defending his alleged *wink wink* steroid use and alleged lies told. What I’m saying is, was four years and millions of dollars to bring this man down really called for? He wasn’t the only one using steroids and he definitely wasn’t the only one lying to the government, but unless it was written in invisible ink, I don’t see Mark McGwire’s, Sammy Sosa’s, and Rafael Palmiero’s names anywhere on the indictment.

Do you know how many actual criminals the government could have brought down in four years? Imagine if this kind of persistence and focus had been applied to something that matters, like The War on Otherwise Innocuous Words or Lindsay Lohan’s War on Sobriety. In half that time, we’d be done waging war on concepts and Lindsay Lohan would be so drunk that she couldn’t even see anymore.

Seriously, it’s not like Bonds was giving away government secrets or was a threat to national security. He was covering his own ass about the level of horse piss in his veins, which ranks among things like “elected official lies about his love for cock in his mouth” or “Hypocrite Newt Gingrich has also cheated on his wife and lied about it” for importance in the court system. Everyone lies to the government. I lied once and told the government I lived somewhere where I didn’t so I could register my car in another state and not have to pass emissions. Should I spend four years of my life in jail for that? And should the government dedicate their lives to bringing me down?

Like I said, I’m not defending Bonds, but I am saying that all of this is overkill. How is this going to make the world safer for anyone? How is this even going to improve baseball? The man is 43 and about to retire, anyway. His records have already been set. He’s not selling steroids to anyone and everyone who wants to take steroids is already taking them. What is this really going to do? I guess since the home run record has already been broken and all of that money has already exchanged hands, it won’t hurt to go ahead and bring down the biggest name in baseball. Or is the timing of this only suspect to me?

I’m not even saying that he shouldn’t be in trouble, just that all of this effort isn’t worth the payoff. Putting Barry Bonds in jail isn’t going to even begin to clean up the drug problem in baseball. It’s not going to change anything. It’s like claiming that putting Mel Gibson in jail is the first step to ridding the world of alcoholism.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Electrocution of the Ancients

The Chicago Police have shown us the way: It takes tasering to stop the rise of the octogenarians.

The police tasered an 82-year-old woman who held them up at hammer-point. With her immense strength, she could have easily punched holes in the drywall or accidentally busted out her TV. Chicago PD could take no chances with their safety when facing down this wrinkled whirlwind of fury.

And with that, they were tasering their way into the history books. This could have only been a bigger story if we could have actually watched it on YouTube. These guys have managed to blow past the “Don’t tase me, bro,” guy as the greatest potential for jokes involving unnecessary taser use.

They had to be wondering how funny it would be to shock the crap out of this woman, because one look into her cataracts and anyone could see that she wasn’t a threat to anyone, even with a hammer. She was more likely to break her own wrists from the shock of actually making contact with something.

Not only that, she was suffering from schizophrenia AND dementia. Chances are, she didn’t even know the cops were in the room. She was probably swinging at her hallucinations of the giant, singing lollipops that were fighting the Teletubbies.

But the cops couldn’t be too sure, because this clearly insane woman had the reflexes of a person nearly two to three hundred years older than she was and the dexterity of a person with only one broken hip. This highly trained police force was in mortal danger and could only rely on potentially hilarious technology to quell what could have been a bloody attack led by a person who, according to people on the scene, “constantly struggled with her juice box.”

There’s a lot of outrage surrounding this incident, as the police could have used a different tactic to disarm and subdue the toothless assassin. Of course, there was no way to know when she was going to need her diaper changed and willingly put the hammer down.

I probably shouldn’t be making jokes about this, because I remember just last year when the Atlanta SWAT Team, when fearing for their lives, shot the hell out of an old woman who thought the cops were burglars and bravely held off an entire squad with a six-shooter. Those cops couldn’t be bothered to see if she’d ever run out of bullets so they matched her force with over 120 rounds of machine gun fire. It sounds so ridiculous that it’s probably what I would have compared this situation in Chicago with if it didn’t actually happen.

Or maybe we’ve all missed the point. Maybe all these incidents are calculated tactics intended to lower crime, because either these cops have gone completely crazy or they haven’t quite figured out where the line is drawn for “excessive force.” And if these so-called trained professionals can’t see how sending 100,000 volts of electricity through a woman three times their age might be considered “excessive,” their gambit is working, because I’ll never give them any problems next time they tell me I ran that stop light.

They’ll have a funny story to tell, though, because it’s a safe bet I’ll have already pissed on myself next time I see blue lights flashing behind me.

Ricky, Mercury, and Alex

Maybe they can trade him to the Knicks?

Ricky Williams has been reinstated by the NFL after an 18-month suspension as a result of his efforts to prove to the world that marijuana IS addictive, orgasmic, and quite delicious. The question on everyone’s mind is not the over/under for “Weeks before Ricky Williams fails another drug test,” but instead, “Should the Dolphins take him back?”

I say why the hell not? What’s the worst that can happen?

The Miami Dolphins are already paying celebrities to come to home games in a desperate attempt to trick star-watching fans in the area to wander into the stadium and maybe catch a glimpse of that guy from Survivor: Upper Antilles, or that drunk chick from the O.C., and in an ironic twist, this year’s Dolphins are in danger of going 0-16 in the same season that the Patriots are trying to surpass the 1972 Dolphins’ Undefeated Season (more on this in a second). Why not give the fans the hope of seeing an on-field train wreck?

What do they have to lose? They’re already a lock for the number 1 overall draft pick and it’s not like they have any other options at running back because Ronnie Brown is hurt, and I can’t be bothered to remember their back-up’s name. What, are they worried about messing up their team chemistry? Are they afraid that Ricky Williams will disrupt their precision offense? Maybe they just think he’ll sell weed to the rest of the team.

No matter what reason anyone could come up with for why the Dolphins shouldn’t take Ricky back, I can very easily just throw this out there: That only applies to teams that have something worth saving. The Dolphins are already in trouble for years to come, so they’re not exactly rolling the dice here. They’re not even flipping coins.

Mercury Morris’s Apparent Death Wish

There are very few things in life that are funnier than crazy old people, and one of them is probably crazy old people crapping on themselves. But if you don’t have any of those around, you can always look for crazy old people that used to be famous and are desperate for some face time. And that brings us, once again, to Mercury Morris of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins, who has started running off at the mouth about his block, when you should and shouldn’t call him, furniture moving, and something about the Titanic. Then, he started throwing crap at reporters.

Oh, that wacky Grandpa Mercury. When did you stop taking your pills?

The man is about 70 years old, but the way he’s talking, you’d think that should the Patriots go undefeated, the 1972 Dolphins will suit up and play the Pats in the Ultimate Lightning Bowl Wrapped in Barbed Wire. And for their sake, I hope that they don’t play the Patriots, because it can only give us the opportunity to see what it looks like to see old people explode in a cloud of their own bone fragments.

The Steinbrenners could have had me for 1% of that.

Last month, Alex Rodriguez asked the New York Yankees for a contract totaling $350 million. No word on how many years that contract would be for, but I can confirm that he did mean to say “$350 million.” That’s dollars, not rubles or Monopoly money.

He couldn’t have been serious about that amount, because no one whose head is on straight would take that offer, unless they’re dyslexic, in which case, the numbers they would actually see on the paper would read “$000,053,000 dollars.” The best player in baseball would be a bargain.

The amount that he was asking for is of Dr. Evil proportions, at which point, you might as well just start making up numbers, because no one’s signing him for that much money. Then again, no one could believe that Texas would sign him for $252 million, so why not take a shot at eleventeen bajillion dollars? $30,000 kazillion? After all, the next closest offer was for less than half that.

Whoo-wee, those are some great negotiating skills, Tom Hicks. How you’re not in the poorhouse is beyond me.

Anyway, the Yankees told him to go fuck himself. And after Alex Rodriguez saw that no other major league teams had money-printing machines in their clubhouses or owners that were incapable of breaking the laws of good business sense to sign him, he crawled back to the Yankees…and the Yankees apparently, are going to take him back and all of his post-season chokery. All of this for the bargain-basement price of $275 million dollars, in 10 yearly installments.

The Steinbrenners should be in the poorhouse alongside Tom Hicks.

Anyone who thinks that A-Rod has been debased or demoralized by coming back to the Yankees needs to look at the numbers again. They’re paying him MORE than they were the first time. Yeah, the Yankees really showed A-Rod. Boy, they sure got over on him.

Not only is he getting paid more over the life of the deal, the Yankees have to pay all of it this time. Remember, the Rangers were still paying part of his salary, and when he opted out on his contract, all of that went out of the window. So the Yankees payroll just went up again. Who’s getting the better end of this again? I mean, aside from the Texas Rangers.

He had no other takers and someone is still willing to break the bank to pay him. Professional sports management: A breeding ground for the retarded.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Should I be offended by Katt Williams' noose?

Katt Williams got on TV at the BET Hip-Hop Awards wearing a noose around his neck. I know this is old news, but I tend to stay away from television shows that exemplify a high-level of niggerdom. It's the same reason why I never watched the Source Awards or anything with Snoop Dogg in it.

Katt Williams followed that up with an appearance on CNN's "Out in the Open," a show that I was surprised to discover wasn't about the lives of gay people in an increasingly hostile world. Turns out, it's a show where the tough questions are asked, apparently. And during Katt Williams appearance, instead of answering the questions, he preferred to dance around them.

A lot of people were upset by what Katt Williams did, but I wasn't so sure that I should be one of them, so I decided to find out exactly what he said and did. I wanted to know if there was a statement he was making or anything like that, because it's not like I can just start defending or condemning the guy just based on a picture. Katt Williams has never been a source of political commentary before. He has, however, been the last bastion of support in the world of pimpery.

He's not like Nas, who has named his next album "Nigger," and touched off a flurry of hurt feelings and yelling and whatnot from black leaders, but support from people who actually listen to hip-hop. The reason why he's getting that support is because we know where Nas is coming from before we hear the album. If Nas is naming his album "Nigger," I'm sure he's got a reason for it. Nas isn't into shock value, as evidenced by his underwhelming album sales and lack of promotion. And I think it's a safe bet that Nas won't have songs about the joys of slavery or a remix of "I Wish I Was In Dixie."

So, I don't know where Katt Williams was coming from. The controversy surrounding the noose as of late was a clear inspiration, but what's the message he was trying to send? I didn't see his CNN appearance, but I did read the transcript of the show. Other than saying, "We have to get past this," he wasn't really clear about his message. That quote wasn't saying anything. He used the same line on "The Boondocks" when he was trying to convince Tom that "going upside a bitch's head" was the right way to "get the desired result"of obedience.

Should I be mad about what Katt Williams did? I'm still undecided on that. After all, I'm still not any closer to understanding why he did it. I'm not changing my stance on the noose, because after all, it's still a direct link to the days when lynchings were publicly acceptable. I'm not going to go off on Katt Williams, either, because I'm still pretty confused. I do think that the people who were hanging dummies from their houses on Halloween with nooses should be allowed to do that, because let's face it...it's Halloween and I'm pretty sure that the noose had already been invented well before the Klan got a hold to it.

I guess unless he's prepared to make a statement on why he did this, the best thing for Katt Williams to do is to take the noose off, along with his pink suit. The noose notwithstanding, the man ALWAYS looks ridiculous whenever he's in public.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Hugging your friends will initiate the Apocalypse, scientists say

Clearly, this is just preparation for the day when The Body Snatchers invade our world and are looking for those who exhibit smiles and happiness as the tip-off for people who haven't been assimilated into their collective yet. Or perhaps we're just being protected from that prophecy in the Bible that states that being happy and enjoying the companionship of your friends is what gives the Anti-Christ his power to begin storming the gates of Heaven. It's all for our own good.

Mascoutah Middle School student Megan Coulter was given two days detention for daring to risk her own life and the lives of two friends by hugging them before leaving school. Noble and protective Superintendent Sam McGowan thinks that this is okay to do, because it was printed in the student handbook. He followed his reasoning up with "Duh!" and was later quoted as saying, "School by-laws state that logic and reason are not allowed on school property." The rules must have been written by the Catholic Church.

Coulter tried to justify her reprehensible acts by claiming that they "weren't even full-on hugs, just an innocent arm around the shoulder and a slight squeeze." Lord knows what could have happened if she used two arms. Her friends might have let out a joyous reaction of some sort before the Pod People set upon their school. Witnesses to this horrible crime would have burst into flames or their heads would have exploded. We simply can't have people liking each other in public.

Really, this one is stupid, even for me. If it's wrong to show affection to your fellow classmates, how long is it going to be before we're not allowed to wave or wink at people? Hell, for shut-ins like me, the first hugs I ever got from people who weren't already related to me were girls at school. Speaking of my school experiences, had I gone to this school, they probably would have executed me by way of lethal injection, because I spent most of the 8th grade grabbing the ass of the girl that I liked at the time. I didn't know any better, but I won't apologize because she got her payback in the form of punching me in the crotch. True story.

Coulter was quoted as saying, "Nobody can believe it," and I would suggest that's because the average person tends to do their thinking while their brain is actually inside their head and not when it's sitting in a pickle jar under their desk. How stupid do you have to be not only to write a rule like this, but actually enforce it? Seriously, does it hurt to be this retarded?

Or maybe these people are just evil. Assistant Principal Randy Blakely was the one who handed down the punishment, and if you add up all of the letters in his name, divide them by "Sigma" and multiply the answer by 163, before converting it all into AASCI code, you'll get a message that states that "Randy Blakely will usher in the war on happy feelings." Our only defense from this will be the Care Bear Stare.

Seriously, what is a rule like this going to prove, that even the most asisine rules will be enforced? It's not like she was tongue-kissing her shirtless friends before pulling a strap-on out of her locker, and it's not like she was anally raping them, despite their cries that she stop. She gave her friends a half-hug. She's a eighth grade girl, and anyone who doesn't understand that girls like touching people as a show of affection clearly doesn't need to be supervising a middle school full of them.

And there's no need for a superintendent or principal who can't be bothered to think aloud that a rule where students aren't allowed to physically show affection could possibly be a stupid one. What these administrators don't understand is that the kids can see how stupid this is and will openly mock the teachers for this. They've just lost all their credibility amongst people whose voices still crack. Next time Randy Blakely comes around a group of students and they start fake hugging each other in his face, he's got no one else to blame except his ability to question a rule that anyone could see doesn't make any sense.

Be on the lookout for a mother being brought up on molestation charges for kissing her kids goodbye on school grounds or a 12 year old boy getting arrested for indecent exposure when he's called up to the board to work on a math problem during his accidental erection. This is what's in our future.