September 27, 2013

You're never going to get where you want to be dwelling on the road you didn't take.

Former New England Patriot Brian Holloway discovered that teenagers broke into his vacation home and threw a wild party (complete with alcohol, weed, and meth), creating $20,000-$40,000 in property damage, and posted several pictures on social media. Holloway reposted a lot of the pictures on his own website. Now, some of the parents are threatening to sue because they believe the exposure could endanger the teenagers' chances of getting into college. Now that is nerve.

This is why I used to call these random thoughts: it occurs to me that before beatboxing became popular, fewer people were willing to spit into their hands in public.

Rihanna unknowingly put her life in danger last week by posing for this picture with a loris, an endangered Southeast Asian animal who carries a toxin that, when it comes into contact with humans, puts them into anaphylactic shock. Ironically, the picture was taken to promote Loris Awareness Week. Well done.

Butterball (no, I'm not referring to myself in the third person) is making history by hiring men to work the annual turkey hotline for the Thanksgiving holiday. Though I don't observe the holiday, the pressure it places on cooks mystifies me. Isn't turkey disasters the reason we have Asian restaurants and frozen pizzas?

Can you cite 'medical reasons' as an excuse to limit your exposure to people who make you sick?

I know that some people are calling New York Giants cornerback Prince Amukamar the "black Tim Tebow" because of his stand on chastity, but I'd be a little nervous being nicknamed after someone who got cut from his team after three games.

While I think actor James Franco's fake papparazzi photo campaign is a clever expression against media hype and a lack of privacy, I sure am glad we aren't friends.

When I was growing up, bad kids got whupped (not whipped, but certainly not spanked). The only spanking I knew of was a dance move from the disco era. Now spanks are compression undergarments. No wonder the English language is hard for so many people.

A bear walks into a bar. He's told to leave. He complies. It's no joke, it actually happened at this Alaska tavern. I guess they take that "No shirt,no shoes, no service" sign very seriously. Although, it didn't loo like there was much going on there; I probably would have gone, too.

Agape' -- P

September 20, 2013

My snack budget was low last week, and I couldn't decide between Cracker Jack, Fiddle Faddle, and Crunch 'n' Munch. The last time I had a headache like this was the Twizzler/Red Vines conundrum of 2010.

Look, Jaden Smith, you're not the first 15-year-old to think that school is dumb. But you're the first I've ever heard say that newborn babies would be the most intelligent beings on the planet if they could only talk. Mmmm... maybe it's not the school that's dumb.

It's official: the engagement between rising movie heartthrob Liam Helmsworth and marathon-twerking, teddy bear grinding, foam finger molesting, sledgehammer sucking, nude wrecking ball riding Miley Cyrus is officially over. Go figure.

While I'm as disturbed as the next person that Gwyneth Paltrow was awarded a motorcycle license days after a video went viral of her cutting off a school bus while riding a Vespa with her child on the seat behind her (almost giving new meaning to the term "road Apple"), what I found most shocking was that, in Hollywood, you're allowed to retake your license picture if you want. This is an outrage!

The British town of Northampton is currently being freaked out by repeated sightings of a man standing around dressed as a clown. See? That's what I like bringing to you: stories about people with real problems.

It would not surprise me one bit to find out that every male courtroom judge and TV news anchor has at least once tried, or at least fantasized about, spending a day doing their job without any pants.

A Chicago woman is suing Epic restaurant for $50,000 after one of her breast implants deflated during the night, allegedly because of a hug from the restaurant's doorman, a former college football lineman who weighs about 300 pounds. I don't buy it; a real man would've gotten both sides.

There should be a law against promoting your restaurant's great delivery service in areas where you refuse to deliver. Are you listening, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Jimmy John's?

Did you know that September 19 was International Talk Like A Pirate Day? I don't think a lot of people remembered, because nobody talked like a pirate to me.

New York City's plan to replace their taxis with Nissan's "Taxi of Tomorrow" has brought up a lot of questions: will the roomier, more comfortable vehicles cause a hike in fares? Since the vehicle is technically a van, will accommodations for the disabled be mandatory? But I have yet to hear the obvious question: will people of color be able to ride them?

Agape' -- P

September 13, 2013

Should we feel sorry for people who have two faces, but only one head?

Okay, I'm all for using fame to provide mass responsible health advice, but is anybody going to drink an extra glass of water each day just because Michelle Obama says we should?

There is an often-used argument that marijuana should be legal because there are more tragedies due to alcohol than there are due to smoking weed. But unless you somehow factor in that a lot of people are turning to alcohol instead of weed because weed is illegal, do those statistics tell an accurate story?

By the way, I don't use marijuana; my cravings for Funyuns come naturally. But I just heard someone defend the use of marijuana for police and medical personnel because of job-related stress. Is it just me, or is that scary?

I'm going to break a promise I never mentioned by posting a link to this video about twerking. Thanks, Jimmy Kimmel.

Reactions are mixed about the mother who used public humiliation to punish her 11-year-old daughter for twerking at a school dance after being told not to. I don't have an opinion on the punishment, but the outfit your daughter chose for the punishment is a huge red flag.

See, Miley Cyrus? You put out videos with you riding naked on a wrecking ball just causes reactions like this!

Burger King is selling a new burger with french fries on it. Wow, what a concept. And here I thought selling frozen PB&J sandwiches was a dunb idea.

I'm not always big on pranks, but I love this ad campaign for LG.

I got a headache this week, trying to choose between Cracker Jack, Crunch & Munch, and Fiddle Faddle.

Agape' -- P

September 6, 2013

There's an old saying that goes, "A man who isn't thankful for one dollar wouldn't appreciate a million of them." As much as I agree with that, I wouldn't mind a chance to prove it. Just throwing that out there.

Before we take action, it's important to examine whether our motivation comes from pain or misery, because we can easily hide a destructive objective, even from ourselves.

It's unfair to remain angry with someone without telling them what they did. On the other hand, sometimes, telling them is counterproductive. That's when you just let it go.

Most of the people in our lives are there because we share family, or one or two interests, or some shared consequence, like where we live, learn, work, or worship. It's very rare when someone in our lives would be there just because we both want them there.

Fred Stobaugh, 96, submitted "Oh, Sweet Lorraine", a poem he'd written about his recently deceased wife of 75 years, into a writing competition in Illinois. Fred didn't win the competition, but his story made it onto the Internet, which led to singer Jacob Corgan recording the song, which has led to more than 100,000 copies of the tearjerker being sold on iTunes (dwarfing the sales numbers of the latest singles by Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus), and tons of lucrative licensing offers, one ore than $100,000. Now that's a positive story of the power of the Internet.

Congratulations to competitive eater Joey Chestnut, who suffered a crushing defeat last month by rival Matt Stonie during a Gyoza eating competition, but reclaimed his title at a Rib fest in Reno, NV, by consuming 13.76 pounds of ribs in 12 minutes (Stonie finished at 11.2 pounds). When it comes to sports, you can have your football, basketball, and hockey... this sounds like my event.

It was all over the news this week: Kim Kardashian is now a blonde. I have been trying to form my opinion, and now I can say without a shadow of a doubt: I don't care.

On the other had, having seen the commercial a gazilion times, I have decided what I would do for a Klondike bar: go to the store and buy them (they come in a pack of six).

I could only think of one word when I saw this picture: adorable.

Agape' -- P