Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

I was hoping that he would have taken a bit more of a beating, but check out what Michael Vick, dog torturer, has pled to:

• "one count" of conspiracy to travel across interstate lines for the purpose of doing the dog fighting thing. One count. yeah, that's believable. "I did it once."
• "I owned the property, but I did not bet on the fights nor did I make any money." Yeah, I just let people torture dogs on my property out of the goodness of my heart, there was no monetary compensation in it for me. I just like watching animals suffer, it's how I get off.
• "Through the collective efforts of everyone involved", dogs died. So, you know, he doesn't have to be documented as saying "I personally killed the weak ones." If you think about that one, it's even better — he had no monetary stake in the betting, and yet he still admits to killing the weaker animals? Why, exactly? What was his motivation there?

None of that is shocking. It is, after all, a plea deal. What is shocking is that the prosecutors are going to agree to the minimum penalty. I think their reaction should have been more along the lines of "No, seriously. What are you really going to admit to?"

Part of the penalty he might face includes "full restitution." What exactly does that mean? How do you unkill dogs? Who do you pay restitution to?

CNN has a lengthy article up on the mother who claims that children were injured during Kid Nation. CNN's article, though, is much longer and goes into much greater detail about the show in general.

Highlights:

• Complaint claims that 4 children "accidentally drank bleach." First of all, 4? One maybe, but 4? Second, dig how CBS confirms it as a "bleach-sipping" incident. Makes you think of wine tasting contests where they're passing it around. "Does this taste like bleach to you? here, try it."
• The comment that adults of all shapes and sizes, including psychologists, doctors and so on were around at all times. Ummm…so you *watched* 4 children drink bleach? I mean, ok, the other girl who had grease spatter in her face, that was an unpreventable accident. But somebody tell me how you watch 4 children drink bleach?
• Parents signed a 22 page waiver that said they wouldn't sue, among other things, "if their child dies."

ARE YOU FRIGGING KIDDING ME?

Explain to me in god's name how you can put such a piece of paper in front of a parent and expect them to sign it?
"Hey Billy, guess what Mommy signed you up for?"

"Karate? Soccer? Computer camp?"

"No, Kid Nation, where if you win mommy will take your $20,000, and by the way, you might die! That's ok, though, Mommy signed the paper, you really have no say in it. Get to work. Oh, shoot, Billy died. Well, I can't do anything about it, I signed a paper and everything. Oh well, I've got other kids. Hey CBS, what else are you working on? How much is the safety of my other children worth?"

I enjoyed this CNN Headline: Ex-Astronaut wants ankle monitor removed. The ex-astronaut of course being the now infamous Lisa Nowak who drove across the country in diapers to spray pepper spray into the face of a fellow astronaut in some sort of weird love triangle gone wrong.

Well, duh. Isn't that like saying "Prisoner in jail would like to go home, please"?

Turns out that the lawyer is arguing for the removal of the monitor as well as having all statements by his client, as well as evidence taken from her car, thrown out.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes from "Liar Liar", with Jim Carrey:

"Your honor, I object!"

"…on what grounds?"

"Because it's devastating to my case!"

The show's been taped, and hasn't debuted yet, so why not kill some time by filing a child abuse lawsuit? Most of the people who checked in here with a relationship to the show said that they had a great time. But there's at least one mother who has filed suit, claiming that the kids were neglected. One girl was burned by grease while cooking, and one "accidentally" drank bleach. Not quite sure how you do that, I'm wondering what episode that will be on.

Kid Nation, for those that missed the earlier posts, is a sort of Survivor / Lord of the Flies thing where they fill up a "ghost town" with nothing but kids and see if they can build up their own society. No word on whether there will be pig's heads, conch shells or sticks sharpened at both ends.

Update: I've been nicely corrected, she hasn't filed a lawsuit (yet), merely written a letter of complaint. I suppose you need to establish that someone's broken laws first. But who are we really kidding, if a kid sustained an injury, then regardless of what waivers they signed, there's going to be a lawsuit.

Well the report is out (at least the rushed, preliminary one) on what drugs they found in the bodies of Chris, Nancy and Daniel Benoit. And there's really not much new evidence, short of two things:

• There doesn't appear to be any overt evidence of steroids. Just testosterone, which we knew he was on.
• Daniel, the son, was sedated with Xanax.

So at least that hopefully answers one question. We were all most horrified at the thought of what happened to the son – did he know what happened to his mom? Did he know what his dad was going to do to him? The answer appears to be, mercifully, no.

Back in 2003 there was a very bizarre story (that made some "most bizarre way to die" lists) about the pizza delivery man who was forced to rob a bank on behalf of some other criminals who had kidnapped him and attached a live bomb around his neck. While the police waited for the bomb squad to arrive, the bomb went off. Apparently not a hoax, indeed!

Well, people have finally been indicted. And you know what? It appears that the guy was in on it. Ok, follow the details, because they are messed up:

1. "Wells" is the guy that blew up. "Barnes", one of the two people who are charged with the crime, was a fishing buddy of Wells. "Armstrong", a female who is also charged, is listed as a friend of Barnes.
2. The original plan was to get the money so that Armstrong could hire someone to kill her father.
3. The plan was to set it up so that if Wells was caught, he could claim to be an unwilling participant.
4. As apparently an added benefit, the bomb also ensured that Wells could not keep the money for himself. "If he dies, he can't be a witness." No honor among thieves, apparently. Who would volunteer for that deal?
5. Armstrong (who wanted the money to kill her father, got it?) was already in jail after police found the body of James Roden, her boyfriend. She has already confessed to killing Roden because he knew about the robbery.
6. Roden's body was found in a home near the place where Wells had made his last pizza delivery. The guy that owned the home has since died of cancer.

Got all that? If somebody wrote that all up as an episode of Law and Order, the producers would say "No way, too confusing."

This guy wanted out of jury duty so badly that he filled out the form saying that he was a racist, homophobic habitual liar. But his real stupidity came on the stand when the judge asked "Are you lying to me now?" and the guy said, "I could be." The judge said, "I think you're intentionally trying to get out of jury duty," and the man said, "That's true."

Judge immediately had him arrested and charged with perjury, among other things. Love it.

As you can tell, I got a little overloaded with the Benoit news and decided that it was too depressing to keep writing about every little detail. Several times I've tried to write something to sum up the story, but nothing seems adequate.

Meanwhile, sometimes it's nice to get a little smirk or even a smile. I love to read my referrer logs from the search engines. Most, of course, are variations on "chris benoit", sometimes spelled "benwa" like the ball :). One of the more unusual ones, though, was "chris benoit killed kevin sullivan." That's…different. For starters, Kevin Sullivan is alive and well and has been interviewed a few times regarding the story :). I think perhaps they meant it the other way around, as I have seen several people trying to tie Kevin Sullivan (Nancy's ex-husband) to the murder.

Even in the storylines back in the day, I don't recall Kevin Sullivan ever actually killing anybody. I do remember him raising a couple of people from the dead, and having a stable of bizarre, satanic creatures to do his bidding (of which Nancy was one, by the way, playing "Fallen Angel" and eventually "Woman"). But as a general rule, pro wrestling storylines never got into fake death. Ironically, of course, that's exactly what Vince McMahon was doing just a couple of weeks ago, and in the span of that time two wrestlers (Benoit, but also Sensational Sherri Martel) have died.

The latest I've found:

A law enforcement official close to the investigation says pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room.

I don't know what to say.

A number of news sources have the story now that the sheriff has all but confirmed that Chris Benoit killed his wife and child sometime during the weekend, and then killed himself on Monday. WWE itself also claims to have evidence that they have been asked to keep silent about, for now. While awaiting the crime lab results, the sheriff did say that the details as they come out will be "a little bizarre."

Knowing absolutely nothing about Benoit's personal and family life, it is easy to throw out guesses about what could have happened. Did Nancy want to divorce him and take away his son? I am honestly hoping that it's more like "Something happened that caused Nancy to try to kill herself and their son, Chris was home trying to save them, and when he could not do so, he also committed suicide." But nobody is reporting a triple suicide, they're all very plainly saying that the evidence is for murder. And they've already said that there's no shotgun or stabbing wounds, which rules out the sort of crime of passion argument where someone's waving a gun and the next thing you know people are dead. If reports are true that Benoit had told people his wife and child were "throwing up blood", then that certainly lends credit to the belief that they were poisoned. (It sounds very twisted to say, but I suppose it is possible that he poisoned them, and then missed his flight while waiting for them to die. Yikes.)

I think I'm going to stop guessing and see what the news reports have to say. Oh, one last thing. My local news sucks. While running the story this morning they said, "Despite the murder, WWE ran a three hour tribute to Benoit last night." Ummm…morons…yesterday nobody knew the details, they just knew that their coworker was dead. You can't exactly fault them for that. Idiots.