The Rhythm is Gonna Get Ya

For those of you reading this on your mobile device while walking and listening to music, turn off that music right now. According to researchers from the University of Maryland, “serious injuries to pedestrians listening to headphones have more than tripled in six years,” and that number will only go up as we get older and/or the music playing through those headphones gets louder.

70 percent of headphone-wearing pedestrians in their study of 116 cases ended in death. (No one reported whether the iPod or Zune was OK.) And this was despite over half of the accidents involving trains, which, c’mon, kind of give away where they’re coming from with tracks.

At least a third of the 116 accidents involving cars and trains tried to alert pedestrians with their horns, but this blended in seamlessly with listeners’ techno and dubstep mixes. The study did not account for people of superior musical taste who aimed for the pedestrians and then sounded their horn in a victorious yawp.

Bonus: The article in the link comes from an online section of the USA Today titled, “DriveOn.”

Brains later, mended bones now

The Resident Evil movies haven’t exactly been great. While they’re not truly atrocious, they’re definitely not good, but the only pain that the films have inflicted upon the masses has been purely of the cinematic kind. At least, before October 11, that was all they did.

On Tuesday, October 11, while shooting a scene in the newest movie in the film series, Resident Evil: Retribution, a stage collapsed and sixteen actors fell, some from as high up as 20 feet. Paramedics were rushed on site, and injuries were diagnosed as not life-threatening, but only after some time and confusion passed.

Oh, I also forgot to tell you that all sixteen actors were in full costume, dressed as zombies.

The victims’ zombie costumes made it difficult at first for crews to assess the severity of their injuries

What, did the producers put Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero to work on the make-up beforehand? That’s some good costume and make-up effects if not. Of course, this did happen in Toronto. Is this what free health care gets you, emergency personnel that can’t tell the difference between an actor and a zombie?

Maybe they should send more paramedics.

Pastor fires premature celebratory shots

Controversial Pastor Terry Jones, who torched a Koran in his church’s backyard to goad his Middle Eastern equivalents to riot in Afghanistan, has courageously traveled to Dearborn, Mich.

He heard there are a lot of Muslims he could protest there, but not the scary ones that kill antagonistic white Christian bigots.

In fact, Terry’s so mantastically badass that he accidentally fired a gun, which he believed he would still need for protection, in his car.

Don’t worry, though: our Christian warrior missed his what-must-be-tremendous balls.

There’s a ‘You might be a redneck’ joke here somewhere

I’m not very tall.

Seriously. When I back out of places, I have do a near total turn of my body while sitting in order to make sure that I don’t hit anyone or anything. This is also compounded (or perhaps helped) by the fact that I drive a car that isn’t exactly the largest on the road. Nonetheless, I’ve never backed into anything.

A friend of mine, while embarrassed at one point in her life, once peeled out of a parking lot, but not before accidentally backing into a light pole, doing just a little bit of damage to the end of her car. Lawsuits? What are those?

Richard Griswold of Maine drove into a light pole in a Walmart parking lot after subsequently dropping a passenger off, feels he’s not to blame and has now sued said Walmart because of that. So, who’s got a line on how quickly this suit ends?

Senior citizen-on-senior citizen crime!

Sometimes, when a story is important enough, you have to find the right source to present it in just the right way; otherwise, you might miss the essential life lesson.

Fortunately, Fox News is on the case!

The Case of Joe Perry and the Rear-ended Motorcycle seemed nigh unsolvable. Why did this happen? Who would hit a beloved American icon (in 1993)? Where did the system go wrong? Will it ever be safe to ride a two-wheeled overpowered vehicle that doctors call a “donorcycle” again?

The Fox answers: it’s the fault of a senior citizen driver.

The 59-year-old lead guitarist of your dad’s favorite band was hit on his motorcycle by a 62-year-old biddy who should have had her licensed seized at least five years ago!

Learning to drive easier than learning to open a door

I currently reside in a magical town in Virginia. It’s not as super upbeat as where the Bryans live, and it’s not as economically stimulating as where Rick lives, but it does the job. Of course, just 10 minutes down the road from me is the neighboring town of Salem. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a truly magical town. No, not because of some kooky witch-based pun, but because in that town, anything can happen.

The sky is green, left is right, orange is taupe and cars crash into the back of offices, rather than the front.

Well, at least one of those things is true.

Honda of Jupiter had no comment on the matter

Toyota vehicles have been having a problem with sudden, uncontrollable acceleration lately. It’s been variously attributed to faulty circuits and driver error, but the real culprit might be radiation from beyond the skies. Woooo, oooooOOOOoooo, woooo.

Every day, the Earth is bombarded with trace amounts of radiation from space, though it poses no direct harm to you and me, but the radiation has been known to cause glitches in circuitry, including the kind found in airplane navigation systems. And now, Toyota is looking into the possibility that the same radiation might be causing their cars to speed out of control.

An anonymous tipster contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to let them know that Toyota might be using software that’s unusually susceptible to ambient radiation. A body of published scientific work lends some credence to this theory, so federal regulators are now talking about devising a test to check Toyota’s radiation immunity.

Toyota maintains that radiation has nothing to do with the sudden-acceleration phenomenon. Thus far, the official and most widely accepted story is that something’s wrong with the car’s hardware or software—wiring, circuitry, something like that. Still, we at SG kind of like the cosmic radiation angle, if only to see four Corollas randomly gain superpowers.

The McBournie Minute: Don’t let Tiger Woods drive the golf cart

Welcome back, everyone. Hope both of you had a great Thanksgiving. I can’t speak for the rest of The Guys, but as much as I enjoyed a little time to relax, I missed being able to write–so much so that my fingers are rusty. I mean that metaphorically, of course.

No one’s really talking about it at the moment, but I hear tell that Tiger Woods, who you may know is a professional golfer, and pretty good, at that, got in a car accident outside his home while we were gone. What we do know is that it happened in the wee hours of the night, when nothing but arrests and pregnancies happen. We know that Woods was leaving his house when he hit a fire hydrant, which probably made an awesome geyser like you see in movie car chases. We know he hit a tree head on. We know that at some point the driver’s side window was broken.

We know that this isn’t the first time Tiger’s drive has gone off course and gotten him in a pickle. What? No more golf jokes? Fine. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Don’t let Tiger Woods drive the golf cart

Good show. That was just pun-derful.

If there were any passing tanks of flour, there’d be sweet potato pie for all.

Traffic jams absolutely suck. There’s no other way about it. But how can we make them better?

Make all traffic jams be created by spilt sweet potatoes. In Baltimore, a section of a major interstate had to be shut down for a bit. Why so? A tractor trailer full of sweet potatoes lost its load. A delicious time was had by all the EMTs.