8:15 p.m.

• Well, the attempt to legalize the Mexican invasion is back on like Donkey Kong.

President George W. Bush's effort to overhaul the country's immigration laws got a last minute reprieve in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, giving a boost to millions of immigrants who hope to legalize their status.

Time to see how my elected officials voted.

Casey (D) Yes; Specter (Rino) Yes.

Big fucking shock there, Crazy Arlen and Junior.

8 p.m.

• So now we can start suing hurricanes, or, better yet, George W. Bush for causing global warming which makes these natural disasters more, err, disastrous? Woo-hoo.

Teenagers in a southeast Texas county were more likely to smoke cigarettes if they or their family members were affected by Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, according to a university study.

 

The study by the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston surveyed more than 5,100 middle school and high school students in Jefferson County six to nine months after the hurricanes made landfall.

• My n*gga.

Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash.

 

He immediately grabbed the person's wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened.

 

"I guess he thought I was an easy mark," Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday.

 

He's anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden Gloves boxer and retired after 20 years as an iron worker.

• Wait a second.

Don't expect to see the calorie count for Burger King's Double Whopper with cheese on the menu anytime soon.

 

Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's are among the chains planning to defy New York City's new rule that they begin posting calories on menus Sunday.

 

Other big fast food eateries like Taco Bell and KFC aren't saying whether they will comply, but with just days to go until the deadline, the menu boards in their Big Apple restaurants remain unchanged.

 

All are hoping a New York Restaurant Association lawsuit in federal court will get the new regulation thrown out. Meanwhile, the city won't fine anyone for violating it until October.

 

"We are not trying to avoid providing this information to customers," said Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch. He noted that the company has made nutritional information available for 30 years on fliers and posters.

So these places have to put the calorie counts NEXT to their products on those marquee menus? Putting all the nutritional info on a placemat or on a wrapper or carton should be good enough.

Fast food chains also say they have been unfairly singled because the new rule only applies to restaurants that serve standardized portions and offer nutritional information voluntarily.

This raises an interesting point. I'd be more curious to see this kind of information on sit-down restaurant menus. Not like that would deter me from ordering anything.

For the record, that Double Whopper with Cheese will run you 990 calories, or more than half the recommended daily calories for an adult woman.

Only 990? Shit, I thought it would be way more than that.

2:30 p.m.

• Murder-suicides that make you think of ... Chris Benoit

Buncha crazy fucking people in this world.

2:15 p.m.

• So Chris Benoit died. Hey, why is my office desk swirling around me? And why do I have the urge to upchuck my lunch?

I don’t comment on wrestling all that much, and I stopped watching the product about 5-6 years ago. Growing up during the 80s, I was a huge Sgt. Slaughter fan, especially when he would beat up brown people. However, as I got older, I tuned out of the pro wrestling scene. In the mid- to late-1990s, I got interested in it once again when some people I knew started wearing those black-and-white New World Order shirts. When I found out what these things meant, I decided to check out this testosterone-lace soap opera. Again.

Even though I had no idea who most of the people were on WCW’s Nitro, I must say that I enjoyed this product. The production value, the pizzazz: it made for a very entertaining evening of television. And while I found much of the “main event” action boring, I tuned into to watch those little masked guys fly around in (and out) of the ring. I also took a liking to many of the wrestlers who were in “mid-card” storylines. One of these performers was some guy named Chris Benoit. I didn’t know what it was about him I liked. He didn’t talk much, if at all, and all he really did was wrestle. But I did enjoy his work. I can’t explain why –– I just did. One thing I thought to myself was, “Why didn’t this guy get more exposure? He seems pretty good.” Little did I know that a few years later when I was introduced to this thing called the Internet Wrestling Community I discovered that I wasn’t alone. Sure I knew nothing about the “glass ceiling” or about how Kevin Nash was holding everybody down, but I really didn’t care as long as I got to see Benoit wrestle during some Nitro segment every Monday night.

As the years went by, and my wrestling viewing continued, I always liked Chris, among other talent. (I was a huge Booker T. fan while he was in WCW, and I always laughed whenever Lance Storm said “if I can be serious for a minute…”) I haven’t been up to date on the wrestling scene in years, and the only news I hear about is when someone dies. So when I saw the TSM “Chris Benoit Dead” thread early this morning, I thought, “Is this real?” Turns out it was. Wow. That sucks. How did he die?

Wait, what?

Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

If this is indeed true (breaking news can sometimes be inaccurate –– remember the cannibals in the post-Katrinia Superdome), why did I just waste 400 words on you, Chris? I don’t care how much I enjoyed your work in the past. You killed your wife. You killed your kid. You also, according to the above news article, left two other kids fatherless, although I don’t know how much of a father figure you were to them in the first place. It's a shame you didn't decide to clamp down on the barrel of a shotgun and pull the trigger in your weight room first before paying a final visit to the rest of your family.