Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

WWE.com is reporting that the Benoit family's death was the result of a double murder-suicide after all. No more details on how the details of the story tie together, or really which are accurate and which are not. There was a story of Nancy and Daniel throwing up blood and Chris staying home to take care of them. How does that fit in? What caused it? If the report is true, then that means that somebody did the murdering and then committed suicide. But who? Nancy? Chris? As I mentioned in another post, I can't conceive of either of them deliberately murdering their child.

ABC News has the most information so far about what we know. Benoit had cancelled his pay per view appearance, but ABC news reports that he had "missed several appointments over the weekend" making me question how long he had been missing. I was under the impression that he was the one who had cancelled (as opposed to someone doing it for him), and that it had happened at the last minute on Sunday. I am wondering now if it could have been days ago. (One report says that it was the WWE who alerted authorities to do a "welfare check" after they could not contact Benoit. So now it's beginning to sound like he did not show up for the PPV, and when they could not find him it was the WWE that had no choice but to change the event, and report the circumstances as "family emergency".)

Second and more importantly, the sheriff reports "no evidence of stabbing or gunshot wounds" which almost surely rules out the murder/suicide theory, since if there were some crime of passion at the cause of this, then some violent and obvious means of death would have been apparent. They are now looking at poisoning, strangulation and other causes. I suppose that poisoning could still be an option (carbon monoxide?) if they'd actually been involved in some sort of mutual thing…but remember, their son is dead, too. I can't conceive of parents working together to kill their child as well as themselves. So was the whole thing a tragic accident? I'll keep updating as I find out more news.

Update: Sources now report that Benoit was the one to call and say that he would be taking a later flight to the pay per view, that he had to stay home to take care of his wife and son who were throwing up blood. I have no idea if this is a confirmed report or not, or if it implies that he too was sick with whatever happened to them, or what. But it's looking more and more like some horrific tragedy and not any sort of murder/suicide situation.

I don't really follow the WWE pay per views, but I do follow the "sheets" that give the update on matches. I noticed last night that Benoit would miss the Vengeance PPV because he had to fly home for a "family emergency."

Apparently he, his wife Nancy, and their child have all been found dead. Holy sh*t. No more news is currently available, although you'd have to guess at some sort of murder/suicide thing – the question is who started it.

Long time wrestling fans might recall Benoit's wife Nancy as the character Woman, former protege of Kevin Sullivan. They had some classic battles in WCW using their own real life feud as fodder for some memorable television.

It's hard to explain to a non wrestling fan what it means when something like this happens. I mean, let's be honest, I'm 38 years old and I've watched wrestling for all my life. I don't buy the merchandise, or the pay per views. It's just a sort of Monday night habit I've never really kicked. Now imagine for a minute that there's someone you see every week. Every single week, for, oh, call it 20 years. There's really nothing that can compare to that. No television show does it justice – they tape, they rerun. Wrestling is live every week. No movie star can compare – they have stunt men, they get up and climb back in their trailers until they're needed again. Pro wrestlers put on the show that they do, live, every week, because it's what they're born to do. Sometimes they go away for awhile, sure. They're injured, they're written out of story lines. You don't hear from them for months. And then one day when you least expect it, their entrance music kicks in and you get honest to god shivers down your spine. Not because I'm screaming at my television "Kill him, Chris! Get him!!" Of course we know it's fixed, of course we know who "wins". It's not about that. It's about knowing that the guy walking down the aisle is about to put on a damned entertaining show for me, and I appreciate that.

Men like Chris Benoit (and his longtime closest friend Eddie Guerrero) were the sort who redefined what it meant to be great at what they did. Chris Benoit absolutely transcended what it means to be a professional wrestler these days. He wasn't among the circus of "dead men" and "degeneration X" and other gimmicks and story lines. You want to know the Chris Benoit storyline? He was the best wrestler there was. Prove him wrong. In a business where people got over almost entirely on their monster physiques or their movie star microphone work (the Rock, anyone?), Chris Benoit held his own entirely on his wrestling talent and intensity.

I can't even wrap my brain around what it means for him to be gone. Eddie Guerrero died last year. That, too, was a tragedy. But to put it in context? Honestly? Eddie Guerrero had a long time history of messing his body up pretty badly with drugs. It was not a surprise to many people when he died. Benoit died suddenly, unexpectedly and tragically, along with his entire family. The magnitude of that is inconceivable.

The show's on now. I'm going to stop typing and start appreciating the memories. RIP, Crippler. I hope you get to see your friend Eddie again.

Lots of news coverage about the Norwegian study that says firstborn children are smarter than their siblings, by a few IQ points. I'm not sure if this is just political correctness gone wild or people just don't read stories anymore, but the study focused exclusively on boys, and what it reported is that the first born *boy* (or is it "boys who are the first born" which is not the same thing) is the smartest. I wonder if the people writing the headlines are afraid to write that for fear of being tagged sexist?

Since the study focused entirely on men, it is essentially useless as far as I can tell. My eldest son is actually my youngest child. So what does that mean? Does it mean that he'll supposedly be the smartest? Or that, since this study did not include girls, that my two older girls are just as likely to be smarter than him? Is it safe to say "Boys and girls are the same, so everything they said for boys really applies to both genders"? It would be sadly shortsighted to think so.

The "rider" is a document often associated with musicians that dictates what sort of amenities they demand backstage. Some classics include things like "a big bowl of M&Ms with no yellow ones".

The Dalai Lama's requests are a little more humble.

• He prefers flowers in happy colours and in particular green. Although unlike Smarties – he doesn't like red ones.
  That is a weirdly constructed sentence – does that mean that he specifically requests Smarties candy in his rider? Is it red Smarties or red flowers that he does not like?

• His luxurious room at Brisbane's Sofitel was to be magazine-free, there were to be no incoming calls and all alcohol removed from the mini bar – that's for religious reasons, not because of how expensive they are.Makes sense, except I don't understand the magazine thing. Calls could interrupt meditation, and alcohol is a temptation, but magazines? Does he have a thing for Paris Hilton stories where he just can't help himself?
• No alcohol was to be consumed in his presence at functions and as for his meals, he also doesn't eat after 1pm.I actually knew this from an earlier story. Apparently he's quite the big eater when he does eat, which would make sense if he has to go the next 16 hours without any additional food.
• The Dalai Lama is a vegetarian and does not eat eggs, he likes to eat solo and and his preferred choice of beverage is still mineral water.I do not think that he is a vegtarian. I have heard other reports that he eats veal, and has claimed that doctor's tell him meat is good for him, something having to do with a liver condition. I've also read reports that call him to the carpet for hypocrisy on that point.
• His favourite dish is momos, which are Tibetan dumplings (recipe not supplied). Recipe easily searched.

Wait, what?

In Vermont, a woman was arrested for making faces at a police dog. Apparently she was drunk, and she walked up to the police car window where the dog was waiting inside and began "staring at him in a taunting manner." Then, when she pulled away from officers, they threw on a charge of resisting arrest as well as "cruelty to a police animal."

Charges were, of course, later dropped.

I'm disappointed that all we get for a description is "stared in a taunting manner." As they say on digg, "Video or it didn't happen." I mean, come on, did she do that thing where she sticks her thumbs in her ears and wiggles her fingers? Or maybe that old "Do that too much and your face will stay like that" face where you pull down on your eyes and push up on your nose? Eyes crossed? Tongue out? What kind of reporting is this??? I need a visual!

The problem with this story is that the officers responded entirely in an incorrect way. What they should have done was opened the car door and let the police dog fight his own battles.

Update: Hooray, I'm famous – BoingBoing.net used my link :). Well, acknowledged that I pointed out the video link. Close enough :).

When I first heard about this in passing I didn't think much of it. I didn't realize that there is video. This is the incident you may have heard of where a small boy climbed under the ropes in a Kansas train station and danced all over a Buddhist sand mandala that they had been working on for days. The video shows the entire event, and I have to admit that I did look at the progress bar to see when it would mercifully be over.

Perhaps the most annoying part is not the child – I mean, come on, he's maybe 2 years old? — it's the mother. Not only does she leave the child completely out of her site for close to 2 minutes (in a train station?!), but when she finally comes to collect him, she never even stops to look at the damage he's caused, and makes no effort to make amends or even to acknowledge fault. She just walks away. Not sure whether to call her a bad mother or just a bad person in general.

Wherever you are, lady, I hope you get reincarnated as a centipede. And I stole that joke from NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me.

The best part of the story, of course, is the quote from the monks who simply said, "No problem" and started over.

I'm sure I'll never get to meet the Dalai Lama, but I continue to be fascinated by stories of people who have. Rick Ray made a movie about the experience ("10 Questions With The Dalai Lama") which looks like it could be neat. Through a bizarre set of serendipitous occurrences he was granted an audience with His Holiness. He was given 90 days and told to prepare 10 questions, and that he would have at most 1 hour with him. The Dalai Lama, apparently, has a habit of cutting interviews short if he feels that the questions are "insincere." (Comments like that bother me, because they make him sound like he's not a nice guy.) Luckily for Rick the interview goes quite well, over an hour as a matter of fact. His description of how the room changes with the Dalai Lama enters it is quite enjoyable. You can see, from his explanation, that someone would indeed have to be pretty insincere to deserve a snubbing from the man.

Ray's movie is a tiny little independent thing so I don't expect it to come from the local cinema anytime soon. I'll have to keep an eye out for it on DVD.

Update: Thanks very much the anonymous commenter who provided the URL of the movie, which contains a trailer. Looks interesting, although I fear that the questions are the same questions that are always asked ("Does tolerance work? Will there be peace in the Middle East?") As I read more news stories coming out of Australia that are pro-China, I am wondering about some of the historical comments. Was there really torture and slavery used in Tibet until China showed up? Does the Dalai Lama get a paycheck from our CIA to fund attacks on China? On the one hand I would like to laugh those things off, but it would be nice to get answers to the questions from both sides.

Too good to pass up is this story about the police breaking into someone's house because they saw the silhouette of an armed figure in the window. The problem was that the silhouette was a lifesized cutout of videogame heroine Lara Croft that the homeowner, a videogame store employee, had taken home to sell on ebay.

The figure remains "impounded as evidence". The homeowner , who is apparently waiting to find out if he'll be charged with anything (ummm…like what?) is trying to decide whether to sue for wrongful arrest. Personally I think it's silly but I'm not really sure that he has to go running for the lawyers. The story does NOT take place in the United States, so he may not overreact.

What to serve the Dalai Lama? Veal, apparently.

I wish this story had gone into more detail about how and why the Dalai Lama is cool with being a meat eater. I'm not saying that I'm a vegetarian by any stretch, but neither am I the spiritual and political leader of Buddhism, where most hardcore practitioners believe in the sanctity of all life, not just human life. A comment from him on why he's ok with it would have been fascinating.

The story is amusing in many ways, though, as the restaurant owner and workers talk about how the preparations and protocol for the visit were worse than Al Gore. "Do not turn your back on him, do not touch him, and do not speak to him unless he speaks to you," the chef was told. So when he bumped into the Lama coming up the stairs, what was he to do? "I did this little kind of moonwalk backward all the way up, and smiled," said the chef.

I love that the holy man has a great sense of humor. When asked to sign his book, "How to See Yourself As You Really Are" he apparently giggled and said, "There's no 'self' in Buddhism, and this is my book!" I'm sure he gets lots of mileage out of that joke :).

He's also a big eater, they say, polishing off every plate that was put in front of him. His vows do not permit him to eat after 1pm (didn't know that) so I could see where he'd have to pack on the calories for the rest of the day. I'm still curious about the veal thing, though. I suppose it's one thing to just say that as a humble monk he'll eat whatever is put in front of him out of graciousness to his hosts, but if he's got people preparing the way for him before he ever arrives, surely they could have said "No meat" and chose not to.