Hollywood Riot

Last week, a rampaging donkey was placed in a Mexico jail until he calmed down. Now the Mexican Navy (who knew that existed?) is on the hunt for a giant killer fish that devoured two swimmers and injured a third. One local Mexican fisherman estimated the shark was “as big as a house.” We later confirmed he meant his house, which puts the size of this beast at between 15 and 20 feet.

The Mexican Navy ran into some serious trouble, and called on G.W. Bush and the CIA for help. The embarrassed Mexican Navy may have embellished the threat. The following video explains everything… in a way.

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Political opinion certainly isn’t a modern invention, but we do have a few new novel systems in place to deliver the stories. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, internet. The boom in 24 hour news coverage on channels like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News etc. is unprecedented. Most of the personalities on these shows are opinion-based, with a few facts thrown in for gravitas. It’s entertaining, but has it gotten out of hand or what? Take this current election season, and specifically the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The pundits had stayed on the fence, for the most part, until one night after Bumfuck Primary #42 when Tim Russert outright declared Obama the Democratic nominee:

First of all, this guy is taking himself way too seriously. Secondly, there’s something else going on here, an air of acceptance. “Oh, well, if Tim Russert said so… then it’s OK for me to think the same thing.” I don’t mean to single Russert out, but that clip gives me the shivers. And I’m not even a Hillary Clinton supporter. Welcome to 1984, children. That proclamation, and the subsequent snowball effect that made it safe for the media to start openly referring to Obama as the nominee, despite the fact that Rev. Wright might still hop out of the bushes and mow everyone down with his white rage, is almost scarier than wiretaps. Warrentless and warrented wiretaps, illegal or legal. Big governments have been doing that since the technology was invented and spying itself has been around for as long as we sneaky humans have. If you’re worried about snoops, play death metal really loud and communicate via carrier pigeon.

However, this brave new media world we live in has never occurred before. Information has traditionally been passed down slowly via stories and cultural performances and then eventually through the written word and then, much later, the printing press. Because the process of relaying information was so time consuming, people didn’t have the resources to expound on every point. Stories were boiled down to their essence. Nowadays, programmers and producers have the opposite problem. There isn’t enough hard news to fill a 24 hour cycle, but there is plenty of hot air to go around in the form of pundits. Stick one of these self-important windbags in front of a camera and they’ll easily give you an hour of whistlin’ Dixie. We have been conditioned to give credence to these “talking heads,” as we tend to think of these people as experts. Yet, most of them are just really loud.     

Not to mention WRONG. Oh-so-certain Tim Russert made his Obama declaration nearly a month ago, but Clinton still hasn’t dropped out. What an incredible underestimation of Hillary’s grit, her determination… her delusion. So why are these media pundits even on the cable? Why do we believe them? Remember, these are the same people who failed to get the word out about WMD’s and Iraq before the war. The information was there, but it wouldn’t have been very popular, especially to the cabal of rednecks in the Oval Office. Which appears to be the same reason Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war in Iraq, and the same reason why she comes across as very un-Presidential today. Convictions are easy to throw out when you’re faking them to begin with. 

Let’s look at how France does it, as I believe they have an enviable system. Those nuclear powered, riot-lovin’ French get to watch Melissa Theuria every morning on the French equivalent of CNN, called LCI. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but for some reason I feel better about the world after watching her. Bill O’Reilly and his hideous mug make it easy to change channels, but Melissa is… hard… to… ignore. Great crepes, she’s the beautiful face of Big Brother that Orwell never saw coming! 

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OK, it’s official- TIME and CNN have done lost their minds. Before Dick Cheney could even begin to imagine a way to take advantage of his evil weather experiment the cyclone in Myanmar, these two wacko news outlets roll with a whopper of a headline:

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Whoa! What the hell? The survivors are lucky the brutal junta controlling their nation is finally starting to let aid workers in. Nobody wants to invade you, Myanmar, trust us. Don’t listen to TIME or CNN. Let those planes in!!

To TIME and CNN: shut the hell up. Who asked you, Dick Cheney? Seriously, cover the news and report it and go home. Your airy suggestion to invade Myanmar is ridiculously infuriating. The U.S. spent $5 million per day as our military helped the tsunami victims a few years back, which really improved the situation. That relatively paltry figure doesn’t even come close to how much we’re spending on gasoline consumption alone in Iraq each day, so invading a country is neither easy nor cheap. Like we did in Bosnia and elsewhere, the U.S. and International Red Cross should just ignore the junta and air drop shipments of food and aid in. Even if half of it is confiscated by the military, it would provide some relief while a better resolution is worked out.

If we send the rest of our Marines storming in, that messed up Myanmar government will prop up their poor civilians with fake guns and we’ll end up shooting the very people we are trying to help. That will lead to some other radical group (The Myanmar Militia or Burmese Roaring Tigers or whatever) to spring up and start attacking the invaders (U.S.). What are we left with? Another un-winnable war in some foreign land.

Of course, this all changes the moment someone discovers oil there. Then, naturally, we invade the shit out of Myanmar. And if that happens, my theories on Dick Cheney’s weather machine will gain some serious traction.

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The group behind the Blue Bin and The Three R’s is at it again. In a new direction for the Recycling Union Coalition of the United States, hundreds of goats are being introduced into local recycling centers to do what goats do best- eat cans.

“We’ve known for years that goats consume aluminum in the wild- which explains why many choose to live on extreme rock outcroppings and steep mountain tops.” said Dr. Tucker Florentine, VP of Communications at R.U.C.U.S. “Goats seek aluminum deposits and, much like a horse to his salt block, will stand there and lick the mineral for hours at a time. Apparently, it plays a part in their horn development. The more aluminum a goat absorbs, the stronger their horns. Stronger horns give an evolutionary advantage both in mating and defense against predators.”

With aluminum being so sought after by goats, it was only a matter of time before R.U.C.U.S. contacted local petting zoos to test their theory. Several large specimens, of both Billy and Mountain variety, were presented with a large bale of crushed aluminum cans ready for traditional recycling. Would the goats take to aluminum cans as they do to natural aluminum deposits?

“Needless to say, the goats went crazy.” said Dr. Florentine, “I’ve researched feeding frenzy behavior in sharks and piranha, but I’ve never witnessed anything like this. Over the course of ten minutes, six goats consumed nearly 17,000 cans. It was messy, and three agency workers were bitten, one quite extensively. However, at the end there was hardly a scrap of aluminum left. Simply incredible.”

Could goats usher in a new golden age of recycling? At least for aluminum, the answer seems to be a resounding yes. It’s not a stretch to think the (DN)A-Team is somehow involved in all of this.

“We had nothing to do with those goddamn goats.” said Mr. DNA himself, “Eating aluminum cans? Are you serious? Everyone knows they only eat tin cans. These morons are going to kill millions of innocent goats who can’t tell the difference between a ferrous and non-ferrous metal. The Team has been busy working on these kick ass bacteria that can eat radioactive waste, but as soon as we’re done we’ll get to work on making sure these animals are able to digest every known iron alloy. Fucking humans, I swear.”

Mr. DNA then downloaded a startling image from the R.U.C.U.S. database that clearly shows they are moving forward with this progressive, if not completely understood, recycling program:

As always, Hollywood Riot will be on the scene to keep you informed of the latest developments. Or you can easily Subscribe to our Free Feed and let the news come to you.

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It’s become cliche. Everything gives you cancer is now a justifiable response to any warning over potentially harmful products. When I informed my aunt about the dangers of pesticides in her food, she just shrugged and exclaimed: “They said the same thing about microwaves. Everything gives you cancer!”

The sad truth is that everything does give you cancer. Even oxygen, that sweet life-allowing element, ravages the cells in your body like millions of tiny Mike Tyson’s (and I’m talking “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!” Mike Tyson, not the current “I’m-a-crackhead-rapist-Jimmy-Kimmel-cameo” Mike Tyson.)

Oxygen facilitates the aging process. Listen up! Want to stay young forever? Stop breathing! Drink some tap water for a little OTF Ambien and pass out. Proceed to have nightmares involving Trans-Fat Phantoms and evil Vaccination Vixens turning the children autistic. Welcome to the Dreamland of Misinformation, the place where Chinese Lead rules supreme and Chicken McNuggets are good for you.

Which brings me back to the headline of this post. I’m done believing anybody, about anything, ever again. My trust in the system of safeguards I had always assumed existed has been destroyed. There is no system of safeguards. Nobody is testing your cheeseburger for germs. When I was a kid, styrofoam cups were destroying the world. Don’t use styrofoam, it’s cutting a hole out of the ozone layer! So, like everybody else not wanting to make a hole in any of our layers, I switched to plastic. Well, turns out plastic is terrible for the planet, too. And, according to many recent studies… wait for it… the shit gives you cancer! Chemicals leeching freely from Nalgene bottles has the hiking and camping crowd in an uproar (those people would live in their Nalgene bottles if they could.)

Scientific Fun Fact of the Day: Neither plastic nor styrofoam grow on trees or in the wilds anywhere on Earth. We had to invent and manufacture these products… which turn out to have harmful side effects. Sure, you could easily blame all of that on the pressures of primitive manufacturing techniques or an unforeseen chain reaction. That would be understandable, because humans make mistakes. After all, we’re only talking about a couple material items here. Nothing we actually consume. Wrong! You know those multi-vitamins you’ve been scarfing down with your oatmeal every morning? Not only haven’t they been protecting your body, but according to the BBC they might be hurting you. Keep swallowing those killer capsules and you could die sooner than your co-worker who inhales his Vitamin N (as in Nicotine) supplements. That’s right, health nut- you’ve been had.

Don’t feel bad. We all have. Our whole lives. About everything. Misinformation is a plague and it is spreading. Hollywood Riot’s very own expert has determined that the only celebrity spokesman we can trust at all is Wilford Brimley. That’s it. Diabetes is a hellofathing, for sure, and that man isn’t throwing around any misconceptions about the disease. Just the facts. That’s all we want, but that’s (almost) never what we get.

- Are we supposed to drink 8 glasses of water per day? No, but the people who bottle tap water and sell it for $3 sure want you to believe that.
- Does marijuana really make you a homicidal maniac? Not unless you get zoned in while playing Grand Theft Auto, but tell that to the propagandists behind Reefer Madness or our current Drug Czar.
- Do French Fries even come from France? NO! They come from fucking Belgium.
- Is it true that we only use 10 percent of our brains? Sure seems like it, but this one is also bullshit. No matter what your self-help guru says, you have no potential left to unlock. Sorry. There are people out there working very hard to make sure you muddle through life in a constant state of unease and doubt.
- Should I want to buy the kitchen cleanser with or without bleach? A difficult decision, and I bet the company which makes a cleanser featuring the “safe bleach alternative” is doing quite well. Of course, after a few years of using the “safe” product you’ll learn that the “alternative” chemical they replaced bleach with causes brain tumors. Hey, there is money to be made in misinformation.
-How do you “cure” a split end? Duh, the commercial said to buy their Split End Remedy Formula shampoo and conditioner. Ouch, $20 right down the drain. There is no cure for a split end… save for a hair cut. Care to comment, Wilford?

The corruption of thoughts and ideas is easier and faster now than ever before. Ask any traveling salesman (if you can find one)- it’s much harder to lie while looking into someone’s eyes than over the telephone (or email). Consumer confidence is at an all-time low for a reason. The endless barrage of scams, product recalls and 5 O’Clock News alerts we endure haven’t always been a reality. There are nearly 7 billion of us, going strong, and for most of our time we didn’t have to question the validity of every single claim. Nobody’s friggin’ spear ever bounced off the mastodon. We didn’t get this big by making bows that would sling an arrow backwards.

The bottom line? Stop living life through PSA’s. The “experts” were paid. Just quit following anyone’s advice, ever, and your life will turn out great. When faced with a decision, go with your gut. It appears common sense is the one thing that doesn’t give you cancer.

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