Jingus

Aside from the whole legal mumbo-jumbo debate: MikeSC, if I read you correctly, are you actually saying that executing minors is a good idea?

That's because in general, NOBODY cares. There are plenty of people who get angry about this sort of thing. They're the Usual Suspects when it comes to anything to do with bashing Christianity: atheists and pagans. (And a few Muslims who take "there is only one god, and his name is Allah" a little too seriously.)

Austin and Owen were feuding throughout the whole second half of 1997, so who knows exactly whether the conversation that Beyond the Mat caught was about. Sometimes you just have to talk to a coworker you hate, there's a million possible reasons. I think Austin does have a legitimate gripe about the Summerslam incident. You never drop to your ass when delivering an inverted/tombstone piledriver like that. Doing so almost guarantees that you'll seriously fuck up your opponent. For an example of how to do it right, watch Taka Michinoku or Rikishi do their finishes: they hold the guy much higher up than Owen did.

You might be thinking about a completely different incident than the Patera one. In Japan one time back in the 80s, the British Bulldogs and Gypsy Joe went to a McDonalds to get something to eat before a show. For some reason they didn't have any of the Japanese workers with them, and the Bulldogs were afraid that they wouldn't be able to tell the McEmployees what they wanted to eat. Gypsy claimed that he could speak Japanese, and then proceeded to order a "Big-o Mac-o with frie-os". Dynamite Kid, being a sociopath, decided it would be funny to get even by setting Gypsy's jacket on fire with his lighter. So he did. Gypsy: "And I look down, and I'm on fire." (Much funnier if you've ever heard Joe talk and can imagine him saying it.)

Half of the fans at TNA's shows have never even heard of ROH. I doubt that the reverse is true. That pretty much settles the argument. But they were more than willing to make one of their top stars look like a worthless fool by letting Jarrett do run-in at that post-show press conference. Right after geriatric cripple Hulk Hogan had beaten Masa Chono at a big dome show, JJJ waffled Hogan with a guitar... and Hogan publicly blamed his subsequent knee injury on the two-second beating from Jarrett rather than his fifteen-minute match with Chono! All to set up a match that never happened. The whole deal made New Japan look like shit, yet they never really complained as far as I heard.

PWG continues to have the most bizarre, random, and hilarious show names. I love the gimmick of labelling every match with an Ernest movie. My grandma's old house can be seen in Ernest Scared Stupid. That's pretty much all I got to add here.

My first reaction to this: "Who the hell is Rikio?" I haven't watched much recent NOAH, and I had to go back and look at some internet results just to remember who he was. A question to anyone who's been keeping up with the promotion: had they built up to this big win in any way, or was it a complete surprise ending to what was otherwise presented as a typical title defense? If it's the second one, uh-oh, since "midcard nobody randomly wins da belt" storylines rarely tend to draw money (see Simmons, Ron). But everything else aside... at least it ain't Ogawa.

To answer the original question: Kash's shirt is just a tribute to his buddy RVD. The two men were good friends back in ECW and still talk to this day. (Remember a couple years back when Kash drew a buncha heat by saying that Van Dam was the only guy in the WWF who "knew how to work"?)

On the AMW argument: Harris is by far the smoother & more consistent of the two, and if you go back and watch the cage matches, Harris was taking the biggest risks. Chris's biggest problem is that he just lacks that certain something, that fire that separates the really big stars from all the other wrestlers. He comes off as a bit emotionless & robotic sometimes. Storm on the other hand certainly has no problems bringing the fire, as his babyface comebacks are just as energetic as anyone else working today. His downsides are that sometimes he's just plain sloppy with his moves (I've got a tape of him giving me a hella lame superkick that was downright embarassing to have to sell) and his thick Southern accent has even me, a fellow Tennessean, wondering what the hell he's saying in his promos. But together, they do make one damn good tag-team. Not as good as, say, the Dudleys or the various great 80's teams (the Expresses and so forth), but certainly better than anyone the WWE has teaming up right now. EDIT: and to drag the discussion back on topic, yeah, TNA definitely needs more Jerry Lynn.

People are surprised over this? A tattooed redneck redhead is promiscuous? OMG WTF zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Might as well have one of these, since arguing over the Iraqi invasion/occupation tends to clutter up way too many other threads. My views on the war, broken down for simplicity: 1. Saddam Hussein and his Bathist party were evil, evil men. They used poison gas, a real live 100% official Weapon of Mass Destruction, on his own people. He invaded Kuwait in a move that was nothing more than a blatant land-grab. He waged a decade-long war against Iran that devastated both countries. He brutally repressed all religions except for the ruling Sunni minority, and only really paid them lip service. He tried to assassinate Bush Sr. when the prez took a trip to Iraq. He committed all kinds of human rights atrocities on his own people; imprisoning, raping, torturing, and executing them at his own whims in a manner that would've made Stalin and Hitler proud. He squandered his entire country's resources on building up his military and constructing massive palaces for himself and his family. He held fake elections just so he could lie about being the people's choice for their leader. He was rumored to have held meetings with & given support to members of Al Quaeda and other terrorist organizations. He completely & consistently ignored the UN resolutions that he agreed to as part of his surrender after the Kuwaiti invasion, thus directly causing the embargos on his nation. He kept flying his military planes in the no-fly zones. He repeatedly obstructed and resisted efforts to inspect his country for WMDs. He let millions of his own people die due to lack of food & medicine that he could've easily provided at any time. None of this is "bad intelligence"; it's all established fact. In short, this was a government who was begging to be taken out. 2. Despite having their own rules broken time and time again, the UN did nothing to stop Hussein from committing these infractions. They seemed willing to just leave the embargos in place and keep writing "cease and desist" letters telling him what a naughty boy he was. 3. The US had been taking minor corrective actions against Iraq, things like surgical airstrikes & sending inspectors, for years. Nobody else seemed willing to do anything or to give a damn that Saddam was acting like a playground bully to his entire region of the world. And there was some evidence of WMDs and Iraqi complicity in the 9/11 attacks. A military invasion & occupation looked like a good idea, speaking from the relative success we'd had in Afghanistan. So, the troops were sent in. My problems with the war: 4. The "threat of WMDs" line was way too heavily leaned-upon as a reason for war. We did have some proof: captured documents, witness testimony, and satellite footage that seemed to suggest that Saddam was at least interested in gaining such weapons in the future. But WMDs were brought up over & over again in every speech calling for action, using deceptive language that made the threat seem bigger than it really was. 5. We did move awfully fast, too, not waiting for anyone else except the British to say they'd support us, or to firm up our shaky evidence about the WMDs. Also, we couldn't use the "he broke UN rules" line when we were breaking them by moving without UN approval. So, two years later, we have this: 6. Over a thousand US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been murdered as a direct result of terrorists operating within Iraq's borders. These criminals use suicide bombings, target civilians, and regularly kidnap & behead foreign workers and journalists. They do all this to fight against democratic elections for their own country. They are amoral fanatics by any definition. But, somehow, the US has been painted out to be the "bad guys" by many members of the media and other foreign countries. 7. Lots of people disagree with the war for the following reason: "Well, if Iraq was such a bad country and needed to be fixed, then why hasn't the US invaded North Korea/Rwanda/Cuba/shithole-of-the-month?" Truthfully, there is no good reason why Iraq should've been singled out alone as the #1 enemy against freedom. But that still doesn't mean that we shouldn't have done it. Saddam Hussein was bad. Removing him & instituting democracy was good.

I am depressed by how much acedemic & intellectual potential I used to have and how I blithely threw it all away.

Didn't work for me. What's it say?

Mod powers? Meh. Had 'em, don't care. Call me back when you've gained the ability to fuck with people's lives just by showing up. And when you get the Reptite ending.

::stares:: ::keeps staring::

Is the guy who filed the lawsuit right? Technically, yes he is. Having the foundation of Christian laws in a monument on public ground is a violation of the separation of church & state. HOWever, do I care about it? Fuck no. We've got much more important problems to spend our time, effort, and money on than fixing some damn rock with words on it.

Actually kkk, you're more right than you know. I just saw a TV news story on the Texas case (yes the monument includes the actual commandments), and the guy who filed the suit was an unemployed & homeless ex-lawyer who spent his days hanging out in the local public law library, and was apparently offended at having to walk his reeking body past that monument every day.

People feel so strongly about it because they represent the Judeo-Christian religions, plain and simple. The staunch believers don't want their faith trampled on, while the angry atheists get pissed off at even the most tenuous example of the government supporting one religion over another. After reading the article a couple of times, is it just me, or did it seem to suggest that the monument in question in Texas didn't even have the commandments on it at all, but just the words "The Ten Commandments"?

Miss ya, salty. And Sandman, where the hell you been?!

-On nukes: FACT: America will never strike first with nuclear weapons. That is permanent American policy. Our military does not nuke anyone unless they nuke us first. It's writ in fucking stone as far as our officials are concerned. It will not be changed. That is the rule. Period. Don't argue that H&N contradict that, either. They don't. Those bombs were dropped to end a war that had already killed 50 million people and might've still killed millions more. Those bombs were much, much weaker than the ones that exist today, and nobody knew anything about the long-term effects of such a weapon. As the weapons got stronger and we learned more about them, the new rules were put in place. -On the missle defense shield: Most of the arguments against it are ridiculous. "It's not our war." Like I said earlier, WMDs won't just stop at the Canadian border because you guys aren't involved. "If you shoot down a missle we'll get radioactive fallout." Not near as bad as the fallout you'd get if the warhead detonates instead. "It encourages an arms race." With who? Nobody else has military technology that's even close to being advanced as ours; they'd have to run that race for decades to catch up. "It's not 100% effective." I think even 1% is better than nothing at all. -On religion: -Those Gallup numbers are just plain wrong. I live in Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible Belt, and nowhere near 45% of the people I know believe that the Bible is literally true and that evolution is false. -On the cause of 9/11: Osama Bin Ladin TOLD US, repeatedly, exactly why he planned the 9/11 attacks: because he objected to the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia (his home country and the birthplace of Islam). Despite the fact that our troops are there because the Saudi government wants them there.

FUCKING A. ...wait, I don't get ESPN Classics. ::cries::

Tell me about it. I've only experienced 2.5 of those 3, and my hair is starting to fall out.

It's not a big deal, just a minor plot hole, and one that was badly mis-explained by the producer in Roger Ebert's column since it showed that person clearly knows nothing about boxing.

I remember it. (Well, I should, considering I saw it live.) It was a good match, but it was hurt by the fact that all three guys had already wrestled that night: Low-Ki had been in some four-way X division match, and Styles and Lynn had just done their two-out-of-three matches deal barely an hour beforehand. If they hadn't been so exhausted I think they could've come up with something much better. One excellent ladder match that hardly anyone has seen was from NWA Wildside Fright Night 2001: a four-way ladder dealie involving AJ Styles, Jason Cross, Jimmy Rave, and JC Dazz. All four guys just went out there and tried to commit suicide, death by bumping.

"Southern drawl"? Cornette is an articulate motormouth. Where are you from, Harry, that you would consider Corny to have a particularly thick accent?