Category: In the News

the Royal Wedding needed more bacon

I’ve tried my best to not hear about the whole Royal Wedding celebrity real-life soap opera.  I really do not care, and I figure many of my regular readers don’t either.  I wasn’t planning to write anything about it, even if it might bring in more traffic.  (I’m not selling-out, if you’re wondering.)  But I did happen across an angle to the story that includes bacon, which does interest my readers.  Curious?  Read on.

Pippa Middleton, sister of Princess Kate Middleton, has created controversy by wanting to change the royal wedding reception traditions.  They normally serve champagne and some dish that I don’t know how to spell, but she wants to have a disco ball and serve bacon sandwiches.  She is a part-time party planner, so she does have some experience.  Plus, how can you go wrong with bacon sandwiches?  (I should’ve had those at my wedding!*)  I don’t know if she was successful on her quest — I’d guess not, since they probably serve only fancy food with foreign names.  I’m sure I could find it online, but again, I don’t care enough to look.  What they ate is their business, though it could’ve been even better with bacon.

* So why did I not have a buffet of bacon at my wedding?  It would’ve been one of the best wedding receptions ever!  (If you’re married you may already know the answer.)  Well, it wasn’t my day, and I didn’t plan that stuff, nor would it have been “appropriate” — there’s something about traditions and what’s normal.  I don’t know about all that stuff… Being the guy, I just put on a tux and showed up.  It is her day, after all.  I have lots of ideas to make a wedding ceremony and reception much more awesome, but they’re not “storybook” type things.  They would be worth writing a story about, perhaps, but they didn’t fit into my wife’s storybook.  I let her have her day.  It’s one of those compromises you make in a relationship.  Since, I’ve hosted numerous “Buffet o’ Bacon” outings, and there are more to come.  (They are all documented on this blog, if you want to search for them.)  My wife had her day, so I’m having mine.  And to be “fair”, I figure I can have a few hundred of my outings before I catch up with the cost of her very special day.  🙂

pro golfing gone wrong

I don’t know much about golf, except that you hit the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible.  I am somewhat familiar with the scoring, from video games.  I do know that taking 16 shots on a par 4 is extremely bad for a pro.  (FYI, par is what’s normal/expected.)

Last week a pro golfer named Kevin Na shot a 16 on the ninth hole in the Texas Open, for the second-worst score on a single hole in PGA Tour history.  This is what you would call a debacle.  This video is a summary of it from SportsCenter on ESPN.

Is it bad when your caddy lost count of your score?  And then during the shot summary your caddy says, “You whiffed at 8.”  I understand amateurs swinging and missing, but it’s got to be rare for pros to whiff.

If you want to see how Kevin Na dealt with it between shots, here’s the full telecast of just that one hole.

It’s funny that at 0:47 in the video he says, “What are the chances of me getting out of here?”  He’s likely talking about hitting the ball out of the extreme rough / deep woods.  You don’t want to hear that.  But in the back of his mind he might be wishing for an escape tunnel, so he can get out of there before this makes all the sports highlights for the wrong reasons.  (This did make #1 on ESPN’s “not top ten” plays for the week.)

John Daly holds the record for the highest score on a single hole at a PGA Tour event, with 18.  That was a par 5.  I heard he hit several in the water.  I wouldn’t mind seeing a video clip of that one, but a quick glance online didn’t find it.

I’ve heard there’s a 5 minute limit to find your ball or you’re penalized.  It would’ve been better for Kevin Na if he had never found his ball…

On a related note, a while back we had a caption contest about golf featuring an animal hazard by the green.

explaining Japan’s nuclear situation to children

Someone sent me a video of a cartoon character named Nuclear Boy, who explains the nuclear disaster in Japan, but in a format for children.  This video (below) has captioning translated to English.  Apparently it was designed by someone in Japan, so I don’t think it’s meant to make light of the situation, just putting it in terms children can relate to, like passing gas / farting, poo, and diarrhea.  Yeah, this video compares radiation emissions to gas, and a complete meltdown like Chernobyl is diarrhea.

Just to be clear, this is not to make fun of what’s happening in Japan right now.  My heart goes out to them.  I can’t imagine what they’re going through.

This video is a lighter take on it, for children — well, also for teenagers and adults who are still fascinated by flatulence and poop.  Not everyone understands nuclear meltdown, but everyone understands diarrhea.

The name of the video translated into English is: A Nuclear Reactor Explained by Poop and Farts: Nuclear Reactor Boy’s Tummy Ache.

I’ve wondered if this is an actual translation, so I looked at the comments on the original video, and someone there translated it very similar, so it appears legit, as far as I know.

Will the Supermoon destroy us all?

I saw an interesting headline in the news recently: Will March 19 “Supermoon” Trigger Natural Disasters? Uhh… What is this “Supermoon”?  Apparently it’s just that the moon will be closer to the Earth than it has in the past 18 years (“just” 221,567 miles away), and it will be a full moon.

Here’s what is amusing to me about the article:

“One astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet.”

Notice the first word of that quote.  The guy is Richard Nolle, who runs a website, and he termed this upcoming event an “extreme supermoon”.  He says when this happens, “chaos will ensue: Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be expected to wreak havoc on Earth.”  If there’s truth to that, then we should be very concerned.   But the very next sentence of the article clarifies the situation:

(It should be noted that astrology is not a real science, but merely makes connections between astronomical and mystical events.)

Ahh…   Back in factual terms, a seismologist has said it does cause more “stress” to the Earth, but it’s a less-than-1-percent increase in earthquake activity and slightly higher in volcanoes.  He thinks there should be more of an effect, but the evidence just isn’t there.  The U.S. Geological Survey has done a lot of studies and haven’t found anything significant at all.

The article goes on to say, “Most natural disasters have nothing to do with the moon at all.”   Notice the first word again.  So the moon is to blame for some Earth destruction after all!  Well, as they say, you can’t be too careful — so obviously we should blow up the moon! (There are numerous discussions here at Buffet o’ Blog on why the moon should be destroyed.  Feel free to search the archives and join the discussion.)