Day: March 23, 2010

Eat My Sports: If I were a bettin’ man …

As you may have heard, Bryan Schools leading a protest against his hometown’s new AA baseball team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels. He’s at their field The Diamond (this play oozes originality) saying he doesn’t want a mascot named Nutzy. Last we heard he climbed one of the light posts armed with a bottle of whiskey and is refusing to come down.

So until next week, I, Bryan McBournie, will be filling in, which makes sense, since a power outage yesterday kept me from posting my own weekly column. I’m here with all the regular sports expertise I am known for (none). Since there’s really only one thing that matters right now in the sports world: March Madness.

I’d like to be clear on this point: I know nothing about college basketball. I don’t much care about basketball as a sport, and the whole March Madness thing had been lost on me–until this year. Due to some peer pressure, I made a bracket for my office pool. Now, I’m sitting in 13th place out of 25, and have the highest potential points left. How did I do it?

Continue reading Eat My Sports: If I were a bettin’ man …

Calling a spade a tool of Big Digging

After admitting to yelling out “Baby killer!” during Rep. Stupak’s backpedaling explanation to vote for the health care reform bill, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) regrets his outburst.

No, it’s not because he called a fellow abortion-opponent a baby killer. It’s also not because he sounded suspiciously like an unwashed hippie circa 1969.

No, Rep. Neugebauer regrets it because he has to maintain his bulls#@t explanation for yelling it out:

“… I exclaimed the phrase ‘it’s a baby killer’ in reference to the agreement reached by the Democratic leadership[, not] as a direct reference to Congressman Stupak himself.”

Yes, because that’s exactly how we yell at bad drivers: “That Ford Focus is a maniac!” Or at a terrorist in the mall: “Bomb vest! Bomb vest! That bomb vest is gonna kill that poor man who’s wearing it!” Or at barbers that always give us the same bad haircut: “Stop those clippers before they nick my neck again!”

You think you’re a hardcore gamer?

Counter-Strike players in the Jilin province of China apparently take cheating extremely seriously. An argument between Counter-Strike players at a Chinese net café over suspected use of a cheat led to a 17-year-old boy being stabbed through the head (Big Warning: the link is probably Not Safe For Work, as there’s a semi-graphic photo of the boy and ads on the linked site that are icky at best) with a foot-long knife and somehow managing to live to tell the tale.

The 17-year-old victim was suspected of using a hack that allowed him to see through walls, giving him an obvious benefit in the computerized game of hide and go kill each other. A fight broke out outside the net café regarding the hack, and one assailant decided to do a little hacking of his own, stabbing large knife into the side of the cheater’s head, the tip of the blade barely protruding from the other side.

The boy, miraculously still conscious, was rushed to a nearby hospital. After around 10 hours of surgery, the knife was successful removed. The boy survived, but is under observation in case bits of rust (oh yeah, there’s that too) flaked off inside his brain.

So how does someone survive a foot-long knife through the skull? According to doctors, the blade missed major arteries, which kept him from hemorrhaging, and managed to somehow avoid affecting motor skills even though the blade passed through areas that handle those functions. The net café where the incident occurred was popular with local youths because it didn’t require ID, which may prove to be a factor.

The doctor states that the chances of surviving such a wound were one in ten thousand. Personally, I like those odds.

Can they transform into good movies?

You see, people? This: this is what happens when you see a movie that you know will suck, but pay for the privilege anyway. (We are not exceptions.)

Transformers 3 is in the works.

You know what that means. More Linkin Park. More “is Megan Fox legitimately hot vs. skanky hot” debates. More John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Ken Jeong.

… Wait, what?

Just when we think we can walk away from what will be the loudest, most Michael Bayingest train wreck ever, he throws the careers of two Academy Award-winners into the dining car. Now we have to watch.

There’s more Jesus to go around

We’re only two weeks away from Good Friday, better known as the Last Supper. From what famous painters can tell us, we seem to imagine larger and larger portions as time has gone on.

According to the International Journal of Obesity, the leading authority on fat people, from 1000 to 2000, portion sizes increased by 69%, plate sizes increased 66%, and the bread loaves grew by 23%. Does this mean that we now think Jesus was overeating?

Have you ever seen that guy on the cross? He’s so thin it’s hard to imagine eating carbs, much less overeating.