EARLY FAVORITE FOR A DARWIN AWARD

Update: Since this happened in 2007 he can't win the 2008 Darwin Award, but we can give him an honorable mention.

This is fucking brilliant:

A 39-year old New Zealand man died in a head on collision back in July. This isn't, by itself, newsworthy. What is, however, is that he was wearing a "fake seatbelt" to trick the police into thinking that he was wearing a real one because he had been stopped and fined 32 times for not wearing his seatbelt.

Of course the coroner determined that if he had been wearing his seat-belt, he would've lived. But my question is, wasn't the effort of making fake seatbelt setup and putting the fake belt on every time as much work as wearing a seatbelt would have been.

I understand that he didn't like wearing one, but real rebels don't fake it. Did Rosa Parks wear white face paint? Did Martin Luther kind of mutter a few sentences under his breath? Did Billy Joel care what the public thought when he wrote that freak-out song "Uptown Girl?" No damnit, these heroes did what they thought was right, not caring what The Man thought.

Screw those 32 fines. He should have put a big sign on his car saying "Fuck you pig, I don't wear a seatbelt and I'm loving it." Then his life would've been worth something.

Anyway R.I.P. Ivan Segedin...you obviously went out as you lived, in a blaze of idiocy.

[IHT]

T.I.H.™: IDIOT REPORTERS FROM HELL

STUDY ABROAD QUERIED AFTER ITALY KILLING screams the fucking absolutely worthless headline on MSNBC today (edit - it's actually an AP article).

As with most main-stream media reports about things of which they know little, this story just enrages me to the point that I can't even think clearly...My brain just feeds out a stream of profanities.

It's hard (for me at least - I searched Google for a total of 2 minutes!) to determine the exact number of American students that study abroad each year, but if we consider that the American Institute for Foreign Exchange has 50,000 students exchanged each year (so one-half are Americans if it's a "true" exchange), that's 25,000 students for one program. Let's be conservative and say that it's double that (I'm sure it's more, but I don't want to over-estimate). That's 50,000 US students that go abroad every year and study at a foreign school. How many are arrested for murder or suspicion of murder? As far as I can remember the total number, after accounting for statistical variation inherent in this type of higher math, is one in the last 10 years or so (so 0.10/year). Yet all of the sudden we're going to start questioning study abroad programs. FUCK YOU NBC (and you too Billy G, since you prostitute your name to this "news" source) and the AP.

Some of the arguments against study abroad (which as a really short aside was an incredible experience for me. It very influential in my transition from a US college student to an adult): The students are going to these places to drink and do drugs (did anyone have any problems getting alcohol at their US university when they were under 21? drugs if that was your thing? yeah I didn't think so); It's only the "English-speaking" (Brits & Aussies count) who are raising Cain in the streets of these pristine "European capitals" (any reporter who has ever set foot in a European capital knows that it's not just the "anglos" who are running rampant...every weekend all types of students run amok in all the cities of Europe - just like...wait for it...the US. Amazingly college students will be college students, sans geographical limitations); it's obvious that these foreign bars are targeting anglos/Americans "out to get drunk" because the bar signs are in English!!! (and the restaurants in NYC are targeting the French only because they have Boeuf Bourguignon & Filet Mignon on the menu and sommeliers on staff). Fuck you MSNBC and the AP.

Quote of the day: “For [the foreign students], it is a new world. They come here, have fun and get trashed in the evening.” (Holy shit, 'cause that is so much more different that what I did as a college student in upstate NY - we all just sat around every night and watched prime-time TV or discussed the history of the Chinese dynasties).

Anyway, I just happened across this article and couldn't resist the urge to point out the absolute lunacy of it all.

Further proving that MSNBC is a highly reputable news source - the #3 viewed article today is "Did Reese and Jake join the mile-high club?" That, my friends, is hard-hitting, spare-no-feelings, news reporting right there.

Fuck you MSNBC. Oh and lest you forget, Bettman Sucks.