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Welcome to my utmost random thoughts on random shit that really doesn't matter much.
This is where my mind takes a dump.
~ Sticks, Stones and Funnybones ~
Part 15 - The Fall
The Fall
OK, so Enron bosses Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay were sentenced to effectively spend the rest of their lives in prison for fucking up the lives of tens of thousands of employees by setting off the corporate implosion of their own multi billion dollar company, dumping their own stock like it was diseased, while still encouraging their employees to buy more and more of the shit until even all the pension funds and the 401K’s were gone.
Skilling said afterwards that they had fought “the good fight” and Lay said that the Lord was on his side. What the fuck? What “good fight” was that? Did Hitler fight a good fight too, against millions of Jews? Did Chapman fight the good fight against John Lennon? Was the Lord on Idi Amin’s side? Judas fucking Iscariot, it pisses me off when people lean on their faiths to say absolutely nothing at all, thinking people won’t have the balls to speak up against God himself. Fuck God. And fuck the “good fight”. These assholes screwed over the people that built them their fortunes, and then kicked them to the curb. People who have worked for years and years in the company - now homeless beggars with nothing in the bank.
The two fuckheads are to be sentenced on September 11th. How fitting, considering they persistently and blatantly blamed the 9/11 terrorist attacks for the carpet being pulled out from under Enron, and that that is why they had to do what they did.
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The Spectacle
One of the biggest televised spectacles in Europe is the Eurovision Song Contest. Think American Idol, but with famous local artists singing original songs, and multiply the audience with about ten. Each country has qualification rounds and then send their winning entry to represent the nation in the huge final, competing against other countries’ winners. It’s the most time- and fashion confused show on Earth. The entries from Romania and Poland look like cabaret artists from a Caribbean cruise in the 80’s, the Mediterranean entries look like Mexican porn stars and the Nordic entries are always some lone guy with a mike who is awesomely famous in his homeland, but couldn’t get arrested for murder with the knife in his hand anywhere else. The songs range from polka to pop to disco to gospel to rock, and this year… to METAL!
What?
Yes, the Finns proudly sent their boys Lordi to represent the blue and whites. Lordi is a bunch of guys in monster and troll costumes, playing melodic, but heavy, metal at the top of their Finnish lungs. Think Slipknot meets Black Metal meets The Dark Crystal. There they were, performing next to Greek Divas with diamond necklaces, German gospel singers and Hungarian dance troops – and they won. 450 million viewers got to revel in Finnish Death Polka, and the guys became superstars over night. The band that started as a joke just to show how silly the comp was, won the whole thing.
That would be like Carrot Top dressing up as Queen Elizabeth and winning American Idol.
The show itself is enough to give you a musically challenged nosebleed, but I think this year qualified for a brain hemorrhage instead. I am now officially musically retarded in the left half of my brain.
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The Final
Speaking of American Idol… Taylor, my boy, won the whole thing but THANK GOD THE FUCKING THING IS OVER! Watching the show is like that classic scene with the deer in the headlights, but I have yet to figure out who’s the deer and who’s the car? The stars sometimes look like deer in headlights, but I was the one mindlessly tuning in every week in awe of the impending wreck. Taylor, at least, had some character, which also means he will sell the least of all past and previous Idols. What fucking songs are they going to write for him? They’re going to call upon Michael McDonald and Joe Cocker and write him a gritty soul patrol album? No, they’re going to throw him a bone with some shit songs, and concentrate on Katharine (who they wanted to win). As a matter of fact. I bet you they already wrote 12 songs for a Katharine album and will have it ready to ship out a couple of months from now.
Fun fact: When they tell you on Idol (or anywhere else for that matter) that they sold “millions” of a certain album, awarding them Gold this or Platinum that, it is not very accurate. Those numbers are based on “Shipped” copies, which translates to how many copies were shipped from label to distributor, and then, at best, from distributor to store. Some stores have return-rights, which means they can return unsold products to distributors – who then either eat the loss or also have return-rights to the label. Either way, the “shipped” amount still counts as the “sold” number. So if they tell you Fantasia sold 2,000,000 copies that only means that her label aggressively shipped out 2,000,000 copies to local distributors, but nothing about whether they were sold, whether they are still sitting unsold on shelves or in boxes in the back room, or whether they are being packed up to be returned to sender.
Soundscans are slightly more accurate in measuring sales, but half the mom and pop indie stores in America do not soundscan – it’s a voluntary thing.
Just figured you would like to know that next time you wonder why a 2,000,000 selling artist like Fantasia is still virtually invisible on the radar, while artists who sell 400,000 copies rule the air-waves and video-charts.
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The Plunge
A 44-year old woman died during her first ever sky-diving jump. She slipped out of the harness she shared with her instructor when he pulled the string and plunged to her death, thousands upon thousands of feet down.
Fucking idiot.
I never got how you can trust anybody like that. No, I don’t mean the instructor you jump with, I mean the guy you never see who packs your parachute. I mean, chances are he’s not college material, right? Chances are he’s not really a brain surgeon and just packs parachutes in his free time, right? Chances are it’s the Sky Diving Club’s office manager’s kid, making an extra buck while banging away to Lordi.
I feel safer already.
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The Plummet
But also the pros fall. Swedish mountaineer, Tomas Olsson, fell while scaling the summit of Mount Everest last week, and plummeted 9,000 feet down a chasm.
I have always wondered: What goes through your head as you fall to the ground? Do your survival instincts kick in and put you in some sort of sedated state, or are you continuously hollering like a banshee all the way until you’re nothing but instant Steak Tartar on the ground?
I will never find out since I ain’t stupid enough to put myself in that position in the first place. Now, car-racing on the other hand. Sign me up, kids. Dying in a burning pool of titan octane grade gasoline sounds more appealing than being flattened on a slab of ice.
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The Summit
Speaking of Mount Everest. The Everest country of Nepal is in an uproar after one of the sherpas (local mountaineer Indian carrying the white man’s gear and showing him the way to the top – scaling the mountain hundreds of times like it’s a mere hill outside their door) stripped down and stood on the summit of the mountain stark naked for several minutes, while the icy winds blew. Apparently it’s an offense to the gods, or some silly shit like that, and Nepali priests are stacking up the coals to burn the guy once he returns.
Still, the funniest part was that the Sherpa, whose names always remain unmentioned in the details of Everest-scaling, stood there naked in the freezing thin air while the mighty white mountaineer stood in the background looking at him, dumbfounded, in full breathing gear and five layers of thermal clothing. You know the Sherpa did it because the fucking white guy had been whining like a bitch all the way to the top about how cold it was and that he couldn’t feel his toes. Stick it to the man.
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The Search
The search for Hoffa's remains rages on. As the FBI are now digging up the Michigan town of Milford, excavating it like they were Egyptologists looking for a curse, you could instead pay the janitor at Giant’s Stadium a couple of hundreds to dig up the four corners of the field.
Seriously (not that I wasn’t)… These guys know where to hide their shit. You usually only find the corpses if they are sending a message. The rest they burn, sink or feed to pigs or dogs so no remains are found. Hoffa was probably run through a meat grinder and served as Steak Tartar at some union dinner. Don’t fuck with the hand that feeds you.
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The Move
In Sudan 350,000 people have been killed, and 2.5 million others rendered homeless since 2003. The extinction of certain Sudanese villages and tribes have been classified as genocide by the WHO and the UN. The US have finally decided to make a stand for oppressed people world wide, against the true tyrants they suffer under, and we are thus sending…
... two senior envoys, Constance Newman and Roger Winter, to talk to the Sudanese government and mediate in the conflict.
Conflict? On one side you have the Sudanese autonomic militias, armed to the teeth – and on the other you have defenseless villagers with rocks and twigs. What’s to mediate?
It’s funny. I was just going to write that Sudan’s big mistake was to not have enough oil to make them interesting in the eyes of the American government, that they’re a dead end investment for purposes of war, but at the very moment I started typing it out Sudan just announced that they have enough oil production now to apply for membership in OPEC. Scary or what?
How much do you want to bet that we will now, most benevolently, join the good fight in Sudan – against the evil tyranny of the oppressing militia – for only a small fee… say, half of their oil shit?
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The Monster
A child rapist in Nebraska was released on a conditional term instead, since the judge, Kristina Cecava, felt he was of too small stature to go to prison. He was set free, with a ten year probation, and was equipped with an electronic anklet and instructed to not go near anymore children. Richard Thompson is only 5’1” and the judge felt the prison life would be too hard on him since he wouldn’t be able to defend himself against people who wanted to get his way with him.
Excuse me?
Isn’t that exactly what he did to the 12-year old girl he raped?
Send the motherfucker to the worst prison in the fucking country, to be raped daily by the most HIV-infected bad ass motherfuckers available. This pisses me off so much I could spit. So, Michael Jordan can’t rape your kid, but Joe Pesci can? Fuck that shit. We’re all the same in the eyes of the law, right? Justice is blind and all that bullshit we’re supposed to be all about. We know it doesn’t apply to people who can afford a real lawyer, but at least we were under the impression that lowlife trash was still punished according to the crime.
The man’s name is Richard W. Thompson. He lives in Cheyenne County, Nebraska. For complete address, look him up in the Sexual Offender Registry in a couple of months. I hope some close-by motherfucker saws his legs off one day. I sure as fuck won’t tell anyone. His picture is on the left. If you see him in the grocery store, shoot him in the balls.
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