the luminous blog

Sixteen former hockey "enforcers" (some might still be back in the NHL I understand... who knows...) competed tonight in a most unusual (as barbaric) competition - the first ever "Battle of the Hockey Enforcers" - live and only on pay-per-view it was too! With the withdrawal from competition of one Lyndon Byers, former Boston Bruin assigned protector of the likes of Cam "The Man" Neely (himself not too shabby a pugilist - but better known for his scoring touch, of course - he just knew how to defend himself, that's all) - the main man of the competition appeared to be one Link Gaetz who, you guessed it, bore the dubious monicker of... "The Missing Link"! Not sure if Link won it all in the end though - but I sure am glad that Lyndon Byers regained his senses and bowed out of this insane contest of pure(?) brawn. Hockey enforcers are often called nothing less than "goons" - but their job is to cut the crap on ice and not allow the competition to steamroll all over the finesse players that they are paid to protect! The rough stuff is thus supposed to be kept down to the strict necessary. Here, it is the ONLY THING - and a cash prize of 70,000$ to the one with the most endurance. Four grueling but surely swift rounds of fisticuffs to get the prize though... Is it worth it? I think not! Kudos for parodying the NHL's playoff format - 16 "teams", 4 rounds... But really now - what will they think of next?!? A former football tackles TACKLE-A-THON...?!?

Now THIS is the last straw... soft drink makers and dieticians conspired to allow the cheapest sugar replacement to get the nod - aspartame - when it was known to be... well... basically RAW POISON...?!? However, in their defense, it was believed and I dare hope proven scientifically that it was totally eliminated by the body's natural enzymes - WHEN INGESTED IN SMALL DOSES THAT IS. The problem is that, believing it safe, diabetics and other citizens keen on having a low-sugar diet would overindulge in it... It is in use by the mighty giant corporative Coca-Cola Limited and Pepsi-Cola Incorporated... it MUST BE GOOD, right? WRONG! Cutting calories while shortening your lifespans is simply NOT A SOUND DIETARY PLAN! If it is for Santa Claus and Bill Cosby, well it isn't for me! (Although, it is interesting to note that, for the most part, the two wise old coots were seen sipping from REGULAR COKE CANS AND BOTTLES - never the Diet Crap! How fitting... but, again, as Mustache would say, that is another story... yes!). Note that, of course, the nitwits that I am blasting here are the health officials who, once again, overlook simple common sense and okayed something that slowly undermines everyone's health... Great job guys! I am not calling the poor consumers "nitwits" at all - they cannot be blamed for trusting almost blindly a panel of educated overpaid braggarts who simply do not give a damn.
In short, aspartame is simply not as it seems to be... So many things aren't...
Read the article in the first link (a few sample paragraphs follow the links) and then check out the all-natural alternative - stevia - on the second link.

http://www.dorway.com/kids_sweetener.html

http://www.stevia.net/


"Are Synthetic Sweeteners Safe for Kids? The Feingold Association Weighs In

According to a new Grocery Manufacturers Association survey, almost half of all grocery shoppers now look for product with reduced sugar, and last year, the food industry introduced 2,225 no-sugar or low-sugar food products, including diet sodas, cerealsfruit juices, cookies, ice cream, bread, flavored milk, maple syrup and even bottled water.

With so many low-sugar foods available, the Feingold Association (www.feingold.org) has found that many parents are increasingly concerned about whether synthetic sweeteners are safe for their children.
(...)
According to Hersey, the Food & Drug Administration has received thousands of reports of adverse reactions to aspartame (NutraSweet) since its approval in 1981. (It stopped collecting these reports in early 1996.) The Feingold Association has also received many negative reports, leading it to add aspartame to the list of additives eliminated on the Feingold Program in 2004."




Drink On, nutra sweet chicks - and become living dead girls!

Music Video:LIVING DEAD GIRL by Rob Zombie

Music Video Code provided by VideoCodeZone.Com

Labels: aspartame

Remember The Muppet Show's curmudgeonly sarcastic two old cranks that sat in the balcony and criticized the whole blamed farce of a show the whole while through...? Well - those two old coots are BACK - and even if I am not an avid web-surfer, I caught on to their return to prominence within half-a-dozen episodes of their movie review show on www.movies.com! Not bad, even if I do say so myself... As a child, I never knew what to call these two but "the two old coots" really... NOW I learn that my favorite of the two is Waldorf... and the crankier one is Statler. Goodie. Their distant cousin from Quebec, Canada - Monsieur Tranquille - has a common name in comparison! Mr. Tranquille (the temptation was great to call him Mr. T...!) incidentally bears an uncanny resemblance to the Swedish Chef - whom he predates by a few years I believe. Tranquille is much more outspoken and articulate than the Chef is too... but that is another story, as Mustache would say (and they all have mustaches too - well, all except Statler... there is always an exception to every rule they say... he should have one though; it would add to his style... he cannot grow one so Muppet Studios staff should plaster one on him pronto... *lol* Okay - enough!).
We all need to laugh, sometimes... I sure do these days... So seeing these two back is great indeed.
Wish it was still 1977...

Statler & Waldorf From The Balcony

The definition of useless knowledge would be the following - to know that a haughty, yet scrawny and truly not that knowledgeable over-rated TV personality is acting holier-than-thou... when he appeared in the lowest form of mass-appeal entertainment... a movie such as "Baseketball"!

However - such is not the subject that got me back to blogging today - after a week of mourning and rethinking things... a bit of existential angst is to be expected after losing a relative in her prime such as my cuz Paula... Another young woman, younger even, has met her demise untimely - one Natalee Holloway, originally of Mountain Brook, Alabama... She should have not left her near-rural stomping grounds (I presume they were) to go study in the big city and from there go to Aruba on what would become a fatal school trip, though all in hopes of a bright future... and a dashing rich boy boyfriend... She will never have the former now - and should have never found the latter either; for he was likely her downfall. 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot seems to have been a Claus von Bülow of the new millennium - quite prematurely though. More and more boys his age and much younger still tend to be precocious in this day and age, yes... a sign, undoubtedly...

Other so-called columnists have wasted their time applauding one TV personality -the over-rated one I alluded to early on- for declining to guest-host on Larry King Live* on the day that this sad affair was the topic... as the media circus surrounding it has become too much yet again. Focusing on that is like decrying that the packaging bubblewrap of your Holy Bible that came in the mail is sub-par... what matters is the MESSAGE. And applauding an imbecile like Bob Costas for frowning upon the most meritorious subject he will EVER be asked to talk about - while he appeared on meaningless movies and sports shows, dispensing his even more meaningless opinion about things... well... that is an exercize in futility that boggles the mind! But such is what the following third link would-be "serious" columnist chose to focus on... Me - I want the rich boy to pay if he did it (which is likely to be the case too - he would be a much younger as smuggier Ted Kennedy in that...) and thus what is of interest to me is the contents of the first link.
(Here is hoping that these links will remain valid for a long time to come - as both sites here are so stiffy about copying and pasting their not-so precious material... wiat.com has NEWS - they become yesterday's news every 24 hours or so - correct? And useless-knowledge.com - well - that very name says it all! It is useless; only funny at times - why in the world won't they let people copy and paste it? Again - it boggles the mind...).

The timeline of the events of the ongoing investigation

How the interrogation might have gone according to one useless knowledge jokester

And how wonderful news reporting is according to another useless knowledge jokester

In the comments section, en lieu of the forbidden contents of those links (which really are not so interesting that you might want to preserve them forevermore anyway - especially that third one there...!) - you will find my correspondence with the so-called columnist who lauds one Bob while diminishing the drama that the family of one Natalee Holloway is going through - because of the handling of this story by Fox-News... Truly nonsensical...