In search of the bright side

Morale has been off-kilter at my employer these last few months. Anyone with the slightest bit of Internet know-how can find story after story about all that. (Read, oh, say, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer and Texas Monthly).

Good news is, for all of you who care about us Beloites, none of us has been fed to lions -- like this poor schlep:
According to the prosecutors, Scott-Crossley ordered his workers to attack Chisale, who was then beaten with a machete, tied to a tree, kicked and threatened with a rifle before being dumped into the back of a pickup truck. The workers were said to have driven to the 20-hectare enclosure of the Mokwalo White Lion Project, a breeding ground for the rare lions near Hoedspruit, and tossed Chisale over the fence.
-- from today's Times

Computer time-waster of the week

This one will be immediately funny-fun for sports fans familiar with the amped-up missives of glam-boy ESPN talk show host Jim Rome. Non-sporties will get the hang of it, too.

There's pages of "drops" from Rome and his show. The fun comes when you begin clicking on drop after drop, in rapid succession, to make the self-proclaimed "Van Smack" form wacky sayings.

I'll give any readers a prize if they can link together more drops than I can, or to anyone who can come up with the most hiliarious chain. Right now, I'm at 10. (My current favorite chain is: easy big man, slow down, better than that, whatever, with that said, screw you, and btw, enough already, don't care, i am great.)

And the credit for identifying the site comes from Gordon Keith's Web page, linked on this blog.

NOTE: Have your headphones on if you're playing at work. You'll want to hear the volume, but not necessarily clue in your boss.

Hook 'em Satan

All this time I thought the death-metal kids in Norway were Texas Longhorns fans. They had the "Hook 'em Horns" signs going at their music concerts, even though it was sort of odd they were flashing it in the mosh pit. But hey, UT is an internationally known school.

Actually the Norwegians view the hand gesture as pledging allegience to Beelzebub. So for a day or so, the confused Europeans thought Dubya and the first family -- seen doing the "Hook 'em" during the inauguration -- were Satan worshippers.

But in much of the world, those "horns" are a sign of the devil. Among Nordics, the hand gesture is popular among death and black metal groups and fans. The Internet's abuzz with speculation about what the Bushes really mean by the sign.

A headline in the Norwegian Internet newspaper Nettavisen displayed a photo of Bush's daughter, Jenna, smiling and brandishing the gesture. The caption -- "Shock greeting from Bush daughter." But Norway's leading newspaper, Verdens Gang, said Bush was simply acknowledging the Longhorn Band passing in the inaugural parade.

Do you think Democrats and Texas A&M Aggies will brush off the Satanist theory as easily?


UPDATE: I have new research that proves the Longhorns are not Satan's children. The men's basketball team lost to the hated Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday. A team blessed by either Satan or God would not lose to OU. Never. No way. No how.

UPDATE TO UPDATE: I have just received contradictory evidence suggesting the possibility of Satanic undertones in Greater Austin. This new proof comes from Sunday's Austin American-Stateman: an evil ZIP code.

Another missed career

So by now, we know that I have immense, kidney-punch regret that I never sent in an application for MTV's Real World. Had I been picked to have my life taped for a few months in some expense-paid pad in a cool city, I could now be touring the country as a reality TV star.

Here's another career I failed to recognize soon enough: wrestling. I'd have to be in the welterweight category, yes, because God didn't give me power-forward height. But after injection some performance-enhancing cocktails, I could look like my wrestling hero and fellow Texan, Stone Cold Steve Austin:



Luckily for me, Stone Cold is coming back to World Wrestling Entertainment after a year of contractual squabbling with the company. And this is why I think I missed out on the career: WWE is starting to produce movies and cast their wrestling stars in them, according to Rajah.com. The company first sold their merchandise, then books and DVDs. This is a cash-cow bonanza.

This deal between WWE and Austin allows Steve to use his “Stone Cold” name. It also puts him in a position of working with people that have a ready-made audience for his films and will treat him like a star. It gives WWE a star to market to their fans, and also will make it possible to get Austin on WWE programming from time to time. As long as the films make a little money, it’s a great move for both sides.

Alas, it all makes me think of Marlon Brando's famous line from On The Waterfront:

"I coulda been sombawdy. I coulda been a contendah."

Canadian gives graft a bad name

Remember the days when politicians would accept bribes for lavish excursions abroad, fancy lakefront homes or oogles of cash wadded into a white envelope? In a weird (yes, highly unethical) way, you could see how their human foibles got the best of them when tempted with the kind of cool stuff they'd never get with their own monkey grease.



I have no explanation for this Canadian politican, however. When approached by a man accused of using someone else's passport and facing imminent deportation, Canadian Immigration Minister Judy Sgro dreamed up this payoff:

"She [the politican] assured me that if I helped out in her election campaign she would get me immigration in Canada," the man said. "Judy said she wanted me to deliver pizza, garlic bread etc. to her campaign office ... I did this. She also said that she needed 15-16 people to help work in her campaign. I organized this for her as well."

The story from Reuters goes on to explain that when word of the deal leaked, the politican reneged and then quit -- hopefully out of embarassment. Surely a national minister could surely fetch a better bribe than garlic bread. How about some eggplant parmesan?

Fame grows on trees

Once again, I am reminded how truly little celebrity I have in this world. And once again, I have Real World alums (ie, guys and gals who were picked to live together in a cushy pad and have their lives taped) to thank.

This time, it is two of the members of the Las Vegas cast, which featured the most drunken debauchery in the history of MTV. These 20-something reality lovebirds, Irulan and Alton, have launched an online dating service to help lonely hearts who want to "come out a winner in love" ostensibly hook up in hot tubs as they did on TV.

So, if I get this right, these Real Worlders go to college (sometimes), get on an MTV show, scream at each other and get wasted, gain lots of popularity, then continue to come back on other MTV reality shows, scream at each other and get wasted, then get paid lots of dough to appear on college campuses and talk about, you know, grown-up stuff like screaming and drinking.

And these two gush on their "Make Love Happen" site, with heart-felt testimonials, reminders about living in Las Vegas' Palms casino -- all while taking on really important questions and issues:

We’ve been asked by so many people: How do we do it? How do we stay together? When did we know that we found love? We decided to help other people find love like we did by giving them the chance to find their true love and soulmate through makelovehappen.com. This website can almost guarantee that you will find someone to love and be loved right back if you take the steps that we did and feel the way about your loved one like the way we feel for each other. You’ll for sure come out a winner in love.

Dick Vitale's cartoony alter ego

What do you get when you combine ESPN's amped-up, basketball-lovin' analyst Dick Vitale, a deadly sharp farm tool, March Madness and cartoon animation? A hiliarious viral video.

Go here, scroll down to "dick vitale" and click to launch. I should warn you that this is for "mature audiences." So, if you're not easily offended, watch this with some headphones or make sure your boss (or spouse or kids) isn't around because Dickie V gets a little R-rated.

Computer time-waster of the week

Feel patriotic and blow up very flamboyant reditions of the Hussein family in a valiant march onto the Iraqi capital. Go down this list and click on Baghdad Bowling.

I haven't gotten far enough to know whether insurgents swarm you in the bonus round, after Baghdad falls, while a cartoony Donald Rumsfeld insists all is swell and Halliburton reaps billions of dollars for reconstruction.

Progress in Iraq: Not so swift

If a story like this one in The Times of London has run in an American newspaper, I must have missed it -- or skipped over it to read about some trashy Paris Hilton gossip.

Comments from the head of Iraq's new intelligence services, who said there's an s-load more insurgents than U.S. leaders are admitting publicly, gives you a feeling the upcoming elections there will have problems than hanging chads. His other scary assessment in the story:

“People are fed up after two years without improvement,” he said. “People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army (dissolved by the American occupation authority) was hundreds of thousands. You’d expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers.”

FYI, the Apocalypse is nigh

The Red Sox and Dubya won against all odds, for starters.

Iraq remains a freaking mess.

The Asian tsunami -- the worst natural disaster in four decades -- has killed 150,000 people, left an estimated 5 million in need of aid and spawned worries that a megawave could wipe out the Eastern U.S.

Snow, from two to nine feet deep, has shut down a major highway in sunny California.

And this Muslim preacher man missed his London court hearing because his toe nails were too long.

USC: Yer good

I thought that perhaps the third-ranked college football team Auburn was shafted out of an appearance in the championship game Tuesday night by the cruddy BCS system. The team Auburn should replace, I thought, might have been Southern Cal, ranked No.1 but winners of a weak Pac-10 Conference.

I'm a sports schmuck, it turns out.

The Pac-10 is still weak, but USC is in a class of its own. It took No. 2 Oklahoma behind the wood shed and just torn it to pieces. The Sooners looked bewildered on the field, which is the kind of performance I feared out of my precious Texas Longhorns in the Rose Bowl -- but never, EVER would I have dreamed OU would shit the bed like this. Not with Bob Stoops, aka Boy Wonder, as coach.

USC is so good it is insane. And the scary thing is, 16 of its 22 starters (including the Heisman Trophy winning QB Matt Leinart, who I officially have a man crush on) come back for next year. I'm thinking this team could win the national title again next year for the three-peat.

So where I can buy some USC shirts and dreamy Matt Leinart posters for my study?

Dogs rule

If I'm wrong about this reincarnation thing, and God opts to send me back as a domesticated animal, I'm lobbying to be a big, muscular, handsome dog.

Reason No. 47: They save lives during disasters.

2004: Year of the Weird

I told you people love lists. This one is a collection of the weird headlines from last year, courtesy of Reuters. A sampling from the "romance" category:

A Norwegian court acquitted a man accused of raping a sleeping woman after he said he was also asleep at the time.

All three wives of a 67-year-old Iranian man took overdoses in an unsuccessful triple suicide bid after the youngest wife sparked jealousy by buying an expensive pair of boots.

A Malaysian man shot his wife dead after he mistook her for a monkey picking fruit behind their house.

Everyone loves lists

Of course, they do. Duh. And here's a stimulating one from a Seattle writer.

No, it's not the most available, hottest, richest Hollywood bachelorettes of 2004. It's the top overhyped and underreported stories of the year.

A few names making the lists: Ronald Reagan, Abu Ghraib, Scott Peterson, Fannie Mae and AIDS. Have a funny-fun time and guess which list they made, then read the story for the answers.

Reveling in my "Texas-ness"

Think I was a little crazy on New Year's champagne when I hinted on my "Praise be to Texas Tech" blog posting that there was a bit of bias in the elite sports media toward teams in the fly-over states?

And that the bias showed itself when more writers on the West and East coasts complained (and continue to complain) about media darling California (runners-up in a weak Pac-10 conference) getting bumped from a BCS bowl game by Texas -- rather than, say, third-ranked Auburn (undefeated champs of the brutal Southeastern Conference) getting left out of the title game?

Check out this Los Angeles Times column, written by a fella who regularly appears on ESPN's "Around the Horn" show, and other game stories in that paper and see if you still think I'm a weird-o. Methinks no.

You're a Reality TV star, didn't you know?

Oh, yes. Casting directors are looking for YOU. All YOU have to do is get noticed. And YOU learn how to get noticed by dropping $19.95 (online orders accepted) for this video hosted by a few of MTV's Real World and Road Rules veterans.

Once again, cast members of these shows prove that we're all idiots for having never applied to "have our lives taped and aired in front of 50 bazillion people." These guys have all sorts of business opportunities. And now that I'm beyond the 24-year-old ceiling for the shows, I'm dying to get in. I'd give anything to have MTV come to my house and follow me around as I eat burritos, put my recycled trash on the curb and holler for my spouse.

Wait a minute. I guess MTV's already done that show. It's called "The Osbournes."

Does that make me a goober like Ozzy?