Category: In the News

a stupid lawsuit involving Victoria Osteen

Normally I create all the ramblings in the posts here from scratch, but today I’m going to ramble about something that is happening in the news, just because it’s so random.  Victoria Osteen, the wife of famous pastor / televangelist Joel Osteen, is being sued by a flight attendant.  Some people are always looking to make money off the rich and famous, and this is no exception.  But why I’m writing about it is that this case is crazy.

First off, this happened almost three years ago.  So why would it just now be filed?  Second, the charges are ludicrous:

According to court documents, Brown claims that she suffers from anxiety and hemorrhoids because of the incident and said her faith was affected.  She is also suing Osteen for medical expenses for counseling.

So this flight attendant got bumped while cleaning up a mess on the seat and all that happened.  Whatever.  But it gets even crazier — the woman is asking for 10% of Victoria Osteen’s net worth, which is probably in the millions.  How can she ask for a percentage?  Even if you could put a value on her emotional distress and hemorrhoids, it’s nowhere near millions of dollars.  And if her faith was damaged because some famous preacher’s wife accidentally bumped her, then she didn’t have much faith to start with.  And why would she need counseling?!?

Oh, wait, I just figured it out!  If she thinks that someone bumping her in the chest causes hemorrhoids and affects her faith and makes her anxious, then she needs counseling.  The problem is, it’s not Victoria Osteen’s fault that this other woman is a fruitcake.  So, case dismissed!  (I should be a judge.  Although I would’ve already dismissed this joke of a lawsuit before it even got approved to go to court.)

new diet plan based on Michael Phelps’ success

U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps dominated the swimming contests at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  He won a record 8 gold medals in 8 events, and shattered 7 world records.  How does he do it?

Well, our investigative staff here took a look at his daily routine.  When asked what he was doing during the Olympics when not swimming, he replied, “I’m eating a lot of pasta and pizza.  I’m eating a lot of carbs.  And sleeping as much as I can.”  I could do that!  And I’d like to do that!

In preparation for the Olympics, he also swims a lot for training, which is expected, but so do all the other contestants.  So what sets him apart?  I’ve found that he eats over 12,000 calories per day!  That’s not normal!  So in the name of research, I’m going to start eating 12,000 calories per day to see if it makes me excel at what I do.

Here’s a listing of what he eats on a typical day:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread — capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs — what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen — with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For me, I’m going to substitute sweet tea instead of those energy drinks.  I don’t know how many glasses of tea it will take to get those 1,000 calories, but I can handle it.

Of course, if my daily workout doesn’t keep up with this increased caloric intake, I run the risk of looking like this:

But I reckon someone should test out this crazy new diet plan, in the name of research…

why dinosaurs may kill us all

Global warming is a big concern to many these days.  It does appear that there has been some warming in recent years, although there’s much debate on whether it’s mostly man’s fault or not.  But I found an article recently that says there may be a bigger contributor to global warming than anything man has done.  Mankind emits about 7 billion tons of carbon per year.  But this new source may contribute 500 billion tons of carbon.  And it may cause global warming to accelerate at a rate that we cannot stop.  Are you curious yet?

The “new” source of carbon is actually very old.  It’s dead animals from a long time ago, like prehistoric times.  According to some scientists, their organic matter was stored in the frozen Arctic tundra.  But now that the permafrost is melting, this is being exposed.

So if this “new” contribution to global warming is the downfall of all mankind, we can blame the woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and dinosaurs, because it will be their dead carcasses that doomed us all.  Go figure…

You can read more on that here.

So, what can we do about this potential end of the world?  Let’s get the discussion started, since there are numerous important geniui here (both good and evil).  (And yes, even an evil genius should try to help, because if all life on earth ends because of this, there will be no world to conquer, and his life’s work would be in vain.  But I digress…)  What can we do to save the world?

2008 hot dog eating championship

On July 4th every year, there’s a hot dog eating competition which brings out the world’s best at such things.  This year, former world record-holder Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi tied with defending champion Joey “Jaws” Chestnut.  Get this — they each ate 59 hot dogs (with bun) in 10 minutes.

At this news site, you can watch a video of the competition, but I would advise against it.  It might sound neat to discuss this, but it’s not so fun to watch it.  Really…

The winner gets a one-year supply of hot dogs from Nathan’s.

Joey Chestnut, wolfing down the hot dogs
Joey Chestnut, wolfing down the hot dogs

Anyway, back to the 2008 competition.  I had the misfortune of watching it this year because the people whose house I was at decided to watch it for some reason.  The two former champions tied, so we were wondering what should happen.  One of us had the idea that they should have a race across a football field, lengthwise, to see who wins.  That would be funny to watch them try to run after consuming 59 hot dogs in just 10 minutes.  (They’d probably need to censor out the ensuing vomiting.)  But instead of this, they had a “dog off” where the one who had 5 more first won.

Also, there were quite a few contestants that weren’t even close.  As far as I saw, none of them stopped eating early.  I’d think they’d stop the torture if they saw the scoreboard and noticed that they were 10 hot dogs behind already.  Why would they keep going?  But maybe they wanted to say they did their best.