There is something about this that is unnatural, something you would see in a dream. First they don't look like normal owls. Second their gaze seems to penetrate the soul. Third, that one on the left looks like it could devour anything it wanted.
Sometimes its worthwhile discussing something on the best nothing. In this case, something disgusting, disheartening, and repulsive.
The back story from cbc.ca...
A concrete truck driver charged with killing five people in a Calgary rear-end collision testified that he's a longtime recovering alcoholic who's had a "couple of slips here and there."It's a horrific story, a whole family wiped out in an instant. This is not a simple story of an accident gone bad. What makes this so disgusting is this guy has come up with every excuse in the book to account for his actions.
Daniel Tschetter, 51, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of manslaughter, five counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of obstruction in the deadly crash in December 2007.
He recalled wanting a drink of water, so he reached under his seat and took a drink from a bottle, before realizing it was vodka, Tschetter said.Excuses. You don't kill five people and go "oops, my bad." You take fucking responsibility. You don't make shit up about accidentally drinking vodka. You would have to think everyone is out of their fucking minds to believe that. Batshit crazy. Who is going to know what a bottle of vodka is or isn't. That's right, an alcoholic. He would have had to crack the seal on it (assuming it wasn't already open, which he would have to claim it wasn't). I feel insulted by this comedic testimony.
...
Tschetter said he returned to his truck, climbed to the top and threw the bottle of vodka into the drum, because he didn't know what to do if people saw him with the container.
"What do I say, what do I do?" he testified.
Under questioning by his lawyer, Balfour Der, Tschetter explained the vodka bottle was in the truck so he could offer drinks to staff at concrete suppliers to get to the front of long lineups.
Most dashes in a blog post title ever.f
I'm going to piggyback onto Brett's "who looks like Quagmire" post and add another Premier League name.
Here he is, David Wheater:
If I see that stupid effing Enterprise Rent-a-car (for my trip? sounds expensive!) commercial again, I'm going to go on a rampage. Or maybe just curse at the TV more. But seriously. Twice in one commercial package? On Hockey Night In Canada? Is the marketing business struggling that much they can't pay for new commercials or nobody wants to buy commercial time?
Fuck! I mean, I will NOT rent a car from that company which I will not dignify with a name any further. Ever! And if I ever see that lady in the middle of the street... I won't say hi. probably.
I fell asleep last night with my contacts in. I know. Who does that? You'd think I would realize it by seeing the clearness of the inside of my eyelids. Hey, I don't normally see that vein! I wonder if my dreams were more vivid. Everything is usually so blurry looking back on it in the morning, maybe that's just my poor far-sightedness. Unfortunately, I don't remember thinking when I woke up: oh, that recurring 3 armed monster I always see is just a bicycle. Jeez, I've been pissing myself in bed for that? Maybe if I dreamed about optometrist appointments more often, the bed wouldn't be so dewy in the morning.
Then the worst part is peeling the things off in the morning. It feels like I'm giving myself laser eye surgery with my fingers instead of lasers. Except afterward, my vision is worse, not better. And I don't smell burnt cornea.
Speaking of good eyesight, Dwayne Roloson deserves props this morn. I would say 3 props. 3 props for Roloson. I don't know what the average props given is when they are. Maybe 3 is low. So whatever the average is, Dwayne deserves more than that.
51 saves last night to preserve a victory that the skaters in front of him tried so desperately to foil. Granted I only saw from 4-2 on, the Oilers took penalty after penalty. Awesome game and massively important for the Oilers in the standings. But seriously, Roloson played his 30th game in a row, which is no small feat for a 39 year old goalie. In fact, this playoff push is starting to look like 2006. Roloson even dropped his stick last night, a common occurrence back in that Cup run. And the Oilers are currently paired with Detroit in the playoff standings like 2006. Just sayin...
I'm watching the England Slovakia soccer friendly right now. England have gone through two strikers in the first half and now have a volleyball player playing center forward. Good old England though, too good to actually give a shit and trying hard to give up their one goal lead.
Welcome to "Things I Miss" Volume One. Alex's recent posting of those Barca highlights down below prompted me to watch the whole game replayed tonight on Setanta. Before the game started, they had a feature of the last time Barcelona and Malaga played eachother. It featured a Ronaldinho penalty.
Now. The penalty itself was unremarkable. It was smashed high into the roof of the net, but still...it's just a penalty. What was remarkable, however, was the joyous buck-toothed grin that followed. It reminded me of a simpler time. A time when Edgar Davids played for Barcelona. A time when I didn't have cable. A time when Ronaldinho was still lazy at training but nobody cared or called him fat because he was fucking amazing.
So. Tonight. For all your viewing pleasure, the thing I miss is...
Ronaldinho making people look retarded, smiling the whole time. Enjoy.
Okay...so this video is kinda weird. I didn't wanna mention it until you'd watched it. Hopefully you have. My favorite sequence is what I like to call the "Barret" trifecta. Yes, that's "el barret", "el triple barret" and (lest we forget) "el grande barret". Or maybe my favorite is the "El Vaselina"- a porn title waiting to happen. But then, that's facing some stern opposition from the heartfelt tribute to hugging at the end. Ah...it truly was a simpler time.
But seriously folks. I was looking for a genuine "Ronaldinho Sings His Greatest Hits" type thing for this post, but this was just too good to pass up. Still, I don't want you to feel cheated, so here you go. For real this time. And just to re-iterate the whole "Ronaldinho was once fucking amazing" thing, this collection is from just one season: 2004-2005. Accompanied, of course, by circa 1992 dance music.
Some of the most beautiful, flowing soccer you will ever see. Barcelona 6 - Malaga 0. And Messi could have had a hat trick.
Honest to God, this is an accurate and sad representation of me playing soccer last night.
This is so true, you can't even believe it. I wake up feeling like the world has been lifted off my Atlas-ian shoulders.
There's always something stupid happening with our Windows Vista laptop. Problems that stump not only Heather, but me too. And every time my mind instantly wanders to that fateful decision to rule our a mac because it would be too hard to get accustomed to for Heather. Granted, we typically don't have any issues with our win XP box, so really, Vista is the source of the problem.
Last night, Heather put pictures from our camera onto said Vista laptop. She then created a folder where she wanted to move the pictures to. The folder with pictures and the new folder were both created by Heather. She had full permissions for both folders. She is an administrator on the laptop. But somehow, Vista would not let her move or cut/paste the folder with pictures in it to the new folder. It accused her of needing administrator permissions to move it, which were denied.
I was finally able to move the folder with pics in it by copying it and pasting in the desired folder. I then had the same problem deleting the original folder with pics in it due to administrator permissions. And so, here is the genius of Vista. I could delete all the photos in the original folder and then delete the folder itself, without any complaint. But before, I couldn't just delete (or move) the folder with pictures in it.
Genius! Way to go Microsoft. Good luck convincing anyone to get Windows 7 and abandon XP. Better yet, good luck avoiding the masses converting to Apple fanboys.
You can read the whole article here.
Fair enough. It's a retarded saying. I know there is no intent to trivialize rape when Alan Pardew says "He absolutely rapes him" but that's the whole point. The word rape has lost all it's meaning in this context already. If the word that society uses to connote one of it's most heinous acts becomes bereft of impact...then brotha! I don't know what to tell ya! But, you know, that's how it is.
It's a bit hard to blame Pardew here. After all how many times have you heard (or even used) this saying. Allow me, if you will, to get cerebral on yo' ass.
I think there's a real case to be made here that certain words used in certain contexts really do carry an entirely separate meaning from when the word is used in its original context. Allow me to elaborate.
Let us take, for example, the word "gay". When you didn't like the movie, and so when asked by your friend, "Did you like the movie?" you said "That movie was gay", did you (honeslty, in your mind) conceive of the film as a literally homosexual film? My guess is that you just thought it sucked balls. (But of course, when I say you thought it sucked balls, I don't really mean that in your mind the film literally wants to, has, or is right now sucking on some guys balls, I just mean that you thought it was simply an unenjoyable movie).
You see what I'm getting at?
In the case of the word "gay", while it's fair to argue that the widespread use of "gay" as a general pejorative is a pretty shitty comment on society, I think that it's also fair to argue that the sentiment behind the comment as used above has nothing cognitively to do with homosexuality. In this case it can be argued that the word "gay" bypasses all of it's original specificity, retaining only the empty pejorative aspects of it's meaning.
If we transpose this to the case of Pardew's comments, it is not, I should think, insignificant.
Lets go back to Pardew and his use of "rape". Is it a somewhat distressing development that the word rape has become disarmed of significance to the point of being used to describe a tackle in a football match? Without a doubt. But the fact is no one has ownership over language. Language grows and shifts in whatever way society grows and shifts. The use of "rape" in the context of the above article is hardly unique to Alan Pardew. I'm sure we can all attest to the fact that "rape" is a fairy widely used (if rather insensitive) saying in regards to sporting events when describing a blatant foul.
So.
Is Pardew trivializing rape when he says "he absolutely raped him"? Well...yes, in as much as he's validating a previously established, context-specific word-meaning which has it's origins in a rather insensitive metaphor with one of humanity's most horrible acts.
But does Alan Pardew really mean to trivialize rape when he says "he absolutely raped him"? I don't think so.
And isn't it the thought that counts?
What you look to gain from diving due to an official's flag is beyond me. Maybe you don't like the guy and think that maybe the ref will give the linesman a red card? Seriously. I'll bet that made that player's Mom cry when she saw that.
No, this isn't a joke clip, I read about this on ESPN and it isn't April 1st. This is an actual two handed bowler from Australia.
is the appropriate title of this youtube clip. And here I thought we were going to get to laugh at some stupid moron, when instead we get to laugh because we are immature, the way God intended.
What I find so amusing about this is that the ref, instead of just announcing the number of the offending player, decides to also identify him by name. I've never seen that before. It's like he was trying to specifically embarrass him or shame him, which I suppose is deserved. Especially when you so deviously try and get away with it like Spezza does.
A couple weeks ago (sorry took me this long to find adequate video on YouTube) the Melbourne Victory followed up their A-League Premiership by winning the playoffs to become Champions for the second time in three years. Yes, I am a Melbourne Victory member. And yes, I was there for the grand final. This is the goal that brought us our second title. Next year, Asian Champions League. Fuck. Yeah.
Not a bad goal either.
First things first, the backstory:
For there to be 55,000 people out to watch soccer in the middle of hockey season is one of the most amazing things ever. Though soccer is the most played sport in this country, it receives very little attention and more bad news seems to revolve around the sport than good (see Canadian Mens Soccer team). In fact, I wouldn't be so sure that the national team has never had that many spectators, not in recent history anyway.
The additional thing that makes this a cinderella story is that Montreal is a USL team, a division below the MLS, and they beat out Toronto FC of the MLS to become Canada's representative in the CONCACAF Champion's League. Then they made even bigger news to make it out of the group stages. Then, of course, they went on to blank a top Mexican side 2-0 in the home leg of the semifinals as seen above.
Though that lead would still be precarious going south to play the Mexicans at home, up to this point it was nothing but good news for soccer in this country. Just this week there was discussion that Vancouver was a front runner to become a MLS franchise. Even Montreal and Ottawa have been in that mix. This is great news for the development of domestic players, to have something to aspire to right here in Canada.
Then, on Thursday night, everything went horrible wrong. I couldn't find any English highlights, so this will have to do, I'll explain the story below.
Since Montreal won the first game 2-0, Santos needed to win by at least 2-0 to force extra time and had to win by more than 2 goals to win the two leg competition. But if Montreal scored, which they did, they would become the only team to have scored an away goal over the two games. Which means that if the score over the two games was tied, then Montreal would go through to the semifinals because the team having more away goals has the tiebreaking advantage. So when Montreal went up 2-1, shockingly, this forced Santos to need to win by at least 5-2.
All was going well. They carried that lead into half time, so they could prepare to prevent 4 goals in the second half. Easy right? What followed left me feeling like shit yesterday just thinking about it. First off, Montreal left two strikers on the pitch to start the second half, and if I remember correctly, they didn't sub one off until they were down 3-2. And the guy that came off, Roberto Brown, looked disinterested for most of the second half.
Then CBC started to bring out the jinx. In a completely disgusting fashion, they started to announce the dates for the semifinal for Montreal IF they won, with 15 minutes left in the game! Then, Jason Devos, former national team member, concluded victory with 2.5 minutest left. WHY!? Why the fuck would you do that!? Montreal was in dire straights trying to defend for most of the second half and was restricted to clearing the ball out of their box. Anything could have happened. Then it did.
With 2 minutes left, Santos scored, leaving them 1 goal shy of winning the tie. Montreal weathered their next push, and with about 30 seconds remaining in extra time, they cleared the ball out of their half. I don't know who it was, but an Impact player had the ball on the left wing with 2 midfielders stretched across the field, wide open. This winger proceeded to pass the ball straight to the forehead of the central midfielder, which needless to say he couldn't control. 15 seconds later the ball was in the back of the Montreal net again, game over.
Montreal's defending all game was amateur at best, but when you are withstanding a full court press and there is 30 seconds to go in a game and you have the chance to clear the ball, the last thing you do is gift it back to the other team. All the Impact winger had to was play a nice easy ball to Sandro Grande in the midfield and the game was over. And this guy knew he fucked up big time because he instantly grabbed his head, announcing to everyone, "What the fuck did I just do?" Amateur and embarrassing.
So there you have it. Unprofessionalism at its best by both CBC and a bunch of soccer players + coach which, if anyone is like me, has seen a chance to ride the wave of a great Canadian soccer story slip by. And made a team the laughing stock of the soccer world.
I want to cry.
From wpbf.com ...
Now, after becoming an Internet sensation for calling 911 three times to report an emergency after McDonald's had run out of McNuggets, a Fort Pierce woman said Wednesday she is embarrassed by all the media attention.Oh, you crazy Americans. Your craziness is so entertaining.
"I'm embarrassed to show my face in public," Latreasa Goodman told WPBF News 25's Alexis Rivera one day after her McNugget meltdown was first reported.
Goodman, 27, was issued a written notice to appear in court for misusing the 911 emergency communications system.
...
"The manager just took my money and won't give me my money back, trying to make me get something off the menu that I don't want," Goodman said in one of the 911 calls. "I ordered chicken nuggets. They don't have chicken nuggets, and so I told her, 'Just give me my money back,' and she tells me I have to pick something else off the menu. She is not going to give me my money back, and she don't have the right to take my money."
