It's another hockey weekend, and the US team smoked Finland 6-1 for a berth to the gold medal game. Their opponent?Yep...Canada. Again.
The two will meet on Sunday, 50 years to the day Team USA beat their northern neighbors to capture gold in 1960 at Squaw Valley. Sure, Canada gave the also favored Russian team a 7-3 spanking prior to this Semi-final round, but this solid victory by the Americans is a strong statement after a 2-0 win over Switzerland two days ago. And since Canada only beat Slovakia 3-2, could it be their bounce back victory over Germany (8-2) after losing to the US was their peak?
Best of the week: A new book by the son of a Hamas founder admitting that he was a long-term spy for Israel exposed a new side of the Islamic militant group's vulnerability and punched a hole in its meticulously groomed image of secrecy and discipline. Hahahahamas!
The spy affair comes at a time when Hamas is still reeling from suspicions that Hamas informants helped Israel assassinate a top Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel. The back-to-back scandals were sure to leave Hamas leaders fearful of their own and ever more painfully aware of how capable Israel is of reaching the inner circles of their organization.
At the center of the latest affair is Mosab Yousef (32), a son of Sheik Hassan Yousef, a Hamas founder serving a six-year term in an Israeli prison. Hamas dismissed the younger Yousef's claims as a lie and said they were part of an Israeli attempt to weaken the movement. However, the man's father did not rule out that his son was an informer, contending he was blackmailed by Israeli agents as a teen.
The Israeli Haaretz daily reported Yousef provided intelligence to Israel's Shin Bet security service for more than a decade, preventing dozens of Hamas attacks against Israelis, including suicide bombings, saving hundreds of lives. The paper said he also helped put several senior Palestinian operatives behind bars. Yousef's memoir, Son of Hamas, is being published in the United States next week, and the author wrote that his memoir "will blow your minds away, it is going to be like a tsunami in the Middle East."
Plus: Radical Publishing has announced that it halted the production and distribution of Nick "son of KISS' Gene" Simmons’ Incarnate comic book series amid allegations that the comic plagiarized Tite Kubo’s super popular Bleach manga. According to Radical, “We are taking this matter seriously and making efforts now to contact the publishers of the works in question in an effort to resolve this matter.”
Nick has gone on Facebook demanding an apology, which he clearly deserves. There are just a few of his comments:
• "Listen everyone... you're all digging your own graves posting on this forum. Facebook is looking into suspending this page and issuing any warnings for slander against me. I can't make this any clearer... I DID NOT STEAL OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK!! I may have appropriated some styles, but I did not steal. My work is full... of homages to everyone in my medium - not theft! You guys are just a bunch of mean spirited mouth-breathers - except all my fans on here who have rightfully supported me. I will ask Facebook not to press any charges against you if you give me a sincere apology here in this thread. Please do so. Facebook keeps all your IP addresses and info... so they will suspend your account if I do not receive proper apologies."
• "Okay.. now looking at some of these photo comparisons, I can see why a few people are up-in-arms. I can tell you right now these are all purely coincidences. I never even heard of Bleach! Who would name a comic after laundry detergent? When I channel my energy when drawing my book sometimes I can pull stuff in that I never seen before. It's like i'm possessed when I start thinking and drawing. Perhaps I just got on the same wave length that all artists share. My dad just called and said I have a real case against all this slander. If Facebook doesn't give into my demands soon there's going to be hell to pay. Now, I have to damage control on another site - more people being mislead. Now I have to deal with this and my book's deadline. I'm not sure how I can think and draw under all this pressure."
• "I have no idea how people are saying my comic looks like that Bleach magma [sic]. My book is in color and the other is not. My book reads left to right... the other reads right to left. Besides some vague similarities, they're nothing alike. I put my heart and soul into my book - great story and awesome characters... yet people are trying to pull me down. And NO... I didn't trace or copy other peoples work. Most of these photos are starting to look like photoshop manipulations to make me look bad. You can't trust everything you see on the Internet.
Rob at TR added:
"Now, I know the crime of plagiary is a serious one for artists, and I don't want to dismiss that. But what I do want to focus on is how fucking stupid Nick Simmons had to be to steal poses, dialogue and character designs from one of the best-selling manga in the world. Seriously, there have been over 50 million Bleach manga volumes sold worldwide, more than a million in America alone. Did he not think anyone would notice? Was he planning on no one reading his stupid comic? Did he go to Barnes & Noble and say, "Gee, this silly manga over has 40 fucking volumes for sale here, obviously, no one will notice if I start stealing from it wholesale."? What a fuckhead. He might as well have stolen from Watchmen and created a comic about Evening Owl and New York City, Ph.D.
Also: Angie Sanselmente Valencia is a lingerie model (with apparently only one photo ever online) who, authorities believe, is also the leader of the one of the world's largest drug gangs.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for Valencia (30), who is believed to be on the run in either Mexico or Argentina. Bringing a little glamor to the world of smuggling, she is said to have recruited beautiful models to smuggle the drugs from South America to Europe. Valencia has described the women working for her as "unsuspicious, beautiful angels." Yeah, "unsuspicious" is exactly the adjective I'd use to describe a woman's beauty.
Her 'angels' were paid several thousand dollars for each trip they made and one of her gang is believed to have boarded a flight every 24 hours with the packages of cocaine. From Argentina they would fly up to Cancun and from there they would smuggle them into Europe. Authorities caught on to Valencia after one of her drug mules was busted at an airport in Buenos Aires with 55 kilos of coke last month. Not surprisingly, the model decided to talk to authorities.
The entrepreneurial Valencia had apparently been dating a notorious Mexican drug lord known as "The Monster," but had broken up with him last year in order to start her own drug-smuggling operation. That's pretty ballsy. It's like if she was dating a carpenter and broke up so she could start a rival construction company. Well, congrats anyway - she's done well since being crowned Colombia's "Queen of Coffee" back in 2000.
And: Former Vice President Dick Cheney left a Washington hospital on midweek following a heart attack he suffered earlier in the week. No, that doesn't make me too happy, but I am thrilled at the thought he had another heart attack.
Aides say the heart attack was mild. It was his fifth since age 37, and he has undergone several heart procedures since. Surviving five heart attacks makes Cheney unusual, showing that he has good medical care as well as a particularly aggressive form of heart disease, and likely little or no living human heart tissue. It has long been rumored that a piece of pure evil sits within his chest cavity.
Best picture of the week:
I'm skewing some of those figures
Best bonus links:
• Shark-Filled Aquarium In Dubai Mall Springs Leak - It's not such bad news when you consider their world-record skyfucking tower is closed, foreigners are assassinating people on their soil, their economy is tanking. What mall's shark aquarium hasn't sprung a leak?
• Charlie Sheen, Wife, Children In Rehab - Make up your own variant of "the family that rehabs together stays together".
• Batman Beats Superman In Million-Dollar Comics Battle - The bat beats the boy scout again, even though it's still a pretty penny spent on some old funny pages.
• Guinness: Arizona Great Dane Is Tallest Dog Ever - And you can bet that it makes the most record-breaking giant piles of dogshit too.
• UK Makes Abbey Road Studios A Historic Building - The best way to not have to avoid selling a property is to make it historically significant.
• Prelinger's Lost Landscapes Of Detroit Now Available For Download And Remix - I enjoyed the industrial films of the Prelinger Collection even though it was one of the most torturous night's of Scarlett's life. Even if you don't plan on messing with them, you should check them out.
• No. 21 Is Done In San Diego: Chargers Release LT / Manny Ramirez Says This Is His Final Season In LA - A pair of busts for southern California sports? Probably. And will they be able to win vindictively with another team?
• NYC Terrorism Suspect Pleads Guilty In Bomb Plot - At least this scumbag admitted it. And may I suggest his sentence be he has to walk the length of Manhattan? If he survives, then he can go free.
• Was Dorothy Hamill Almost Attacked At The 1976 Olympics - Good thing it's being brought up 34 years after it happened. I'm glad it didn't keep her from winning gold that year, because the reverberations in history are incalculable.
• Mother Of Starved Child Believes He'll Live Again - And this time, she'll make him eat those vegetables...or else!
• Kirsten Dunst: Turning Japanese - Check out the expressions on those Japanese faces! Damn, they look miserable and confused. But the blue hair trumps her bad teeth, so that's a win.
• Ohio Man Bulldozes $350K Home To Avoid Foreclosure - The headline was originally "Idiot from Ohio pisses away $350K thinking he won't owe bank money after destroying home".
• Michael Vick Offered $1M For Playgirl - Rehabbing your image always includes a stop in the nude photo redemption corner of the public eye. Brilliant idea PETA, especially where he does it for free and you take the money and give it to a pet charity.
• Senators To NASA Chief- Go Somewhere Specific - Was "space" too vague an answer?
• Designers Line Up to Dress Full-Sized Gabourey Sidibe - Mostly because that much uncovered flesh at the Oscars would doom the ratings and likely keep the show off the air forever.
• Jet Fuel From My Algae - Finally, the military is getting green. Missions ought to be carbon neutral if they're going to neutralize carbon-based beings.
• News results for Boner / 'Boner' Found: Father Says Son Took Own Life / Kirk Cameron Expresses 'Great Sorrow' For Andrew Koenig - It's almost no fun making up and enjoying the myriad dick jokes from the story when Mike Seaver throws his Jesus flavor into the mix.
Worst of the week: A killer whale attacked and killed a trainer in front of a horrified audience at a SeaWorld show. Little did they know the animal was involved in two previous deaths.
Distraught audience members were hustled out of the stadium, and the park was immediately closed after veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau (40) was killed. SeaWorld spokesman Fred Jacobs confirmed the whale was Tilikum, one of three orcas blamed for killing a trainer who lost her balance and fell in the pool with them in 1991 at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia.
Tilikum was also involved in a 1999 death, when the body of a man who had sneaked by Orlando SeaWorld security was found draped over him. The man either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water and died of hypothermia, though he was also bruised and scratched by Tilikum.
Brancheau was on a platform with the whale and was massaging it during and afternoon show when it "pulled her under and started swimming around with her." An alarm sounded and staff rushed the audience out of the stadium as workers scrambled around with nets. Some had heard that during an earlier show the whale was not responding to directions. Others who attended the earlier show said the whale was behaving like an ornery child.
The death was not the first attack on whale trainers at SeaWorld parks.
In November 2006, a trainer was bitten and held underwater several times by a killer whale during a show at SeaWorld's San Diego park. The trainer, Kenneth Peters, escaped with a broken foot. The 17-foot orca that attacked him was the dominant female of SeaWorld San Diego's seven killer whales. She had attacked Peters two other times, in 1993 and 1999. In 2004, another whale at the company's San Antonio park tried to hit one of the trainers and attempted to bite him. He also escaped. In December, a whale drowned a trainer at a Spanish zoo.
And by the way, the white spots are not the eyes.
Plus: Another story about a deadly whale...
During an interview with Oprah, the host brought up a May 2009 interview in which Kirstie Alley revealed her affinity for actor Jamie Foxx. “I haven’t been having sex,” Alley (59 - her age, the lowest number you'll ever see associated with her), said at the time. “I want a booty call with Jamie Foxx. For real,” she said. “I’ve always had a bit of a thing for him.”
“Well, you know, that’s really great because we have a special relationship, but I don’t want a booty call,” Winfrey said of Foxx, who then appeared via closed-circuit TV – prompting screams from Alley. That's probably the last thing an upside-down pineapple cake hears too.
“Kirstie … with Oprah’s permission, I’ll be your booty call,” Foxx said.
Even though the brothas love to tag fat white chicks, it’s hard not to notice that Foxx didn’t appear in person. And the thought of Alley gluttonously attacking him like a a sheet of chocolate marzipan is nauseating.
Worst picture of the week:
oops...photoshop fakeryWorst bonus links:
• Jessica Simpson Eats Cockroaches For Reality Show - After the things that have already been in her mouth (John Mayer, Nick Lachey), it's actually a step up. But not career-wise.
• ESPN Suspends Kornheiser For Comments About Anchor's Outfit - The real insult isn't saying how nappy and manish a female sportscaster looks, it's to get hacked on by a douche with the name Kornheiser.
• Pediatricians Want Hot Dogs Redesigned To Curb Choking - For the same kids who need soap from a dispenser because bar soap was too tricky. There's a fail in there somewhere and it's not on the part of weiner makers. Clearly not doctors who are part of Darwin's HMO group.
• Bachelor Bob Guiney: Jake Should Choose Tenley - Says the guy who's getting a divorce and barely made it out of his own season before breaking it off with his choice. Shut up, putz.
• Cyrus, Efron, Stewart, Lautner Join Oscar Show - Four people who will never in their lives be nominated for an Oscar, let alone have any reason to attend are being added - how dim still is the star wattage to add them and make zero difference. That under-18 demo really makes an impact at the box office.
• Bristol Palin To Make TV Debut In Teen Pregnancy Show - This is only because there's no programing about what equates to snow hillbillies. Actually, she already had her TV debut as "irresponsible, stupid daughter" on that reality show "Election 2008".
• Petra Sets Record, Sells Diamond For $35 Million - That's over $69,000 a carat. Why do people keep saying there's economic trouble?
• Infatuated Man Kills Washington Teacher Outside School - Who's great idea was it to let the guy out on bail after stalking and threatening her and not follow up on what he was going to do? Oh well, problem solved...
• Obama, Shakira Meet At White House - Nah, take a break from fixing the economy, ending some wars, and getting health care for Americans to hang with a marginally talented belly dancer who made some records.
• Brittany Murphy’s Autopsy Report Released - What? Drugs? As long as they were prescription ones...not those deadly street ones.
• Lindsay Lohan: If Not Samantha, Then 'I Would Probably Be With A Boy' - I would rather be with a boy than with Samantha Ronson, who's ugly by any gender standards. How much coke and pills do you need to do to find her attractive? She looks and dresses like an underage redneck from a truck stop... *barf*
• X-Games Skier Dies After Fall At California Ski Hill - I'll feign surprise after I forget the last coma-inducing accident he had.
• California Lawmakers: Cut The Foul Language, Please - Fuck off, assholes.
• Clay Aiken Takes NC Stage For Gay Rights - Smart move, getting out in front of the people who will totally get behind that idea.
• Will Janet Jackson's Nipplegate Come Back to Haunt CBS - No. And why are we talking about this six years later?
• Justin Bieber: Miley Cyrus Is Not My Type - Not that her backwoods jailbait ass wants your maple leaf wigger q-tip head anyhow, but thanks for chiming in.
• Shayne Lamas: My Dad Lorenzo Lamas Will Wed A 23-Year Old! - Fifth time must be a charm for the 50+ year old. And as long as your 24-year old daughter is onboard...
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