From ESPN.com:

By Chris Mortensen
ESPN.com
Archive

Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was asked to leave the team’s training facility when he reported Monday for offseason workouts, his agent and team sources confirmed.
McNair was told by a team trainer that he would not be allowed to work out until his contract situation is resolved, according to James “Bus” Cook, who represents McNair.

“Steve was told that until he got his contract straightened out, he wasn’t welcome at the facility,” said Cook. “Heck, he’s got his contract already straightened out and now he’s trying to fulfill it by reporting for the offseason.”

Cook said there had been no warning of the team’s position. Titans sources said it was a decision was made by owner Bud Adams, who apparently fears that an offseason injury would make him liable for McNair’s current contract.

“We have no choice but to protect the club and its future from the possibility of having a significant amount of our salary cap at risk in a single player should he sustain a major injury,” the team said in a statement Tuesday. “This is entirely a risk management problem.”

Titans coach Jeff Fisher, who was in Los Angeles observing USC quarterback Matt Leinart in a private workout Monday, declined to elaborate but said, “Things got blown out of proportion. … We’ll get it straightened out.”

McNair is scheduled to make $10 million in 2006, including a $1 million team penalty because the Titans declined to exercise a three-year option. His salary cap charge is almost $24 million, and the team is trying to get McNair to restructure his deal. It has been speculated that the team could release the quarterback if there is not a new contract in place in the near future.

“The reason his cap number is $24 million is because they kept asking him to restructure every year to create space,” Cook said. “This guy has done everything for the team, and he has two or three really good years left. Now, they treat him like this.”

Today, Steve McNair was found dead in Nashville, TN from gunshot wounds. Here’s the statement made by Bud Adams (the NFL owner who locked out Steve from the Titans facilities in the article above) about how wonderful Steve was:

From ESPN.com (again):

“We are saddened and shocked to hear the news of Steve McNair’s passing today,” Titans owner Bud Adams said in a statement. “He was one of the finest players to play for our organization and one of the most beloved players by our fans. He played with unquestioned heart and leadership and led us to places that we had never reached, including our only Super Bowl.”

The NFL is just a business but let’s not let press releases gloss over how, as much as he admired his player, Adams threw him under the bus when it was time to make the deal. And that’s why the Ravens wound up with an All-Pro QB before the Flacco era began, and why McNair retired a Raven and not a Titan.

He goes on and on about stuff like this:

If we had WET

(White Entertainment Television)

…..We’d be racists

If we had a White Pride Day

…..You would call us racists

If we had White History Month

…..We’d be racists

If we had any organization for

only whites to ‘advance’

OUR lives, …..You better

believe that we’d be racists

We have a Hispanic

Chamber of Commerce,

a Black Chamber of Commerce,

and then we just have the plain

Chamber of Commerce

Wonder who pays for that?

…and I couldn’t help but think that he probably suffers from a bad case of RH (Revisionist History), because while he’s bitching and moaning about all the “reverse racism” that exists today, he doesn’t think about people like my father who were passed over for jobs they were qualified for not once or twice, but repeatedly for over a decade.

This, of course, created a cascading effect — Dad brings less money home, so as a result it affected everything for the next generation: where we lived, what schools he could afford to send us to, and so on. It’s not like we can just take a snapshot of our society today and say, “Look! The playing field is level! Why are you people complaining!?!!!” as if all of the sins of yesteryear will just vanish because institutionalized racism is no longer sanctioned by the government.

So yeah, this guy is bitching and moaning, but my response would be that his parents had every opportunity this country could make available to them and all they raised was a whiner. My parents lived through Jim Crow and segregation, where they couldn’t even eat in the presence of a white person, and now I enjoy working (and playing ) alongside people of all races, creeds, and colors.

And my car is cooler than his car anyways**.

** Okay, but I just wanted to put that jab in there, people!

Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and daughter, Ruby. She is survived by her daughters Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; grandchildren, Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; great-grandchildren, Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian, Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily. I apologize if I missed anyone.

Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing. Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself.

As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again. There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

Of course, I was thinking that since I also pay a pretty penny for DirecTV and Vonage, I might want to think about consolidating my internet bill with my TV and phone plan.

Right now it’s 5:34pm and Verizon has missed their window. And they wonder why people don’t buy in to having all of their communications handled by Verizon?!?!?!?

Right now, I am on hold listening to (I kid you not) easy-listening music waiting for someone I can ask, “Where is my installer?”

When did it become my responsibility to make sure that when a bank is loaning someone money, or when a credit card company is activating a credit card, that their security measures don’t allow someone to impersonate me?

It’s time for one of my patented bad analogies…

Imagine if a woman knocks on my door claiming to be Eva Longoria.

For the sake of argument, her husband Tony Parker does not exist.

She proceeds to use her charms to ask me to loan her $1,000. Being completely smitten, and with my penis ruling my life (yet again), I wilingly give her the money.

Can I sue the real Eva Longoria for $1,000 afterwards? Nope. I have no legal grounds to sue her!

So why then should consumers be forced to monitor their credit reports — which are records maintained by a cabal of banks and credit institutions that we had no real visibility in to until fairly recently — just in case the ever-omniscient banks and credit card companies fail to check I.D. any better than the bouncer at the local watering hole? After all, don’t they claim that they provide for secure transactions? And yet they can’t even figure out who is really applying for a credit card or mortgage?

C’mon people, are we really that stupid as a society?

The shocking revelation in the article is that some of the patients weren’t terminal — just “too difficult to move”, like one paralyzed man who weighed 380 lbs.

…

The state investigative report obtained by CNN says that, in addition to King, at least one other doctor objected to the alleged plan to euthanize patients.

The report also notes that when a nurse indicated to Pou that he did not feel comfortable sedating one of the patients, Pou reportedly said to him: “If you don’t feel comfortable, or if you are not ready to do it, don’t, because it will come back to haunt you. I know the first time I did it, it haunted me for two years.”

The report gives the following accounts of the deaths of three patients in the Lifecare facility, who appeared, according to the report, to be conscious and responsive:

One Lifecare patient, Emmett Everett, was alert and aware, and, according to the summary of an interview with his primary care physician, “while Everett had a number of health issues, he was not in imminent danger of dying from those conditions and … had expressed a desire to live.” But since he weighed 380 pounds and was paralyzed, some felt he could not be evacuated. After some discussion on the seventh floor with a Lifecare administrator, the report says that Dr. Pou asked for a tray, and the Lifecare employees present left.

Lifecare’s director of physical medicine, identified in both the six-page summary and the 68-page report as Kristy Johnson, told investigators that she “heard Dr. Pou tell patient Wilda McManus,

‘I’m going to give you something that’s going to make you feel better.’ ” The account continues: Johnson “later heard Dr. Pou say … ‘You know, I had to give her three doses, she’s fighting.’ ”

Johnson told investigators she heard another patient, Rose Savoie, say, “That burns,” after a nurse whom Johnson identified as Budo administered an injection.

…

I know this may seem tangential, but given that we’re heading towards the end of year, this is a great time to donate (tax-deductible!) money to non-profits who are doing good work in New Orleans, like the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Heck, you can even throw a party to raise money for hurricane victims during the holidays.

Case in point, the sad story of Megan Meier, a 13 year-old girl who committed suicide after being harassed via a fake account.

The fake account was the brainchild of a girl who was a former friend of Megan’s. What pushes this story from sophmoric schoolkid bullying in to the realm of the criminal is that the girl who created the fake account did so with the full support of her mother.

From the Associated Press article:

…

The Dardenne Prairie girl’s parents say she hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, minutes after she became distraught over mean messages received through the social networking site MySpace. She died the next day, and weeks later her family learned that a boy she had been communicating with online did not actually exist.

A police report said that a mother from the neighborhood and her then-18-year-old employee fabricated a profile for a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her.

“I think people are upset that a parent got involved in something so childish, and that a young girl committed suicide,” Banas said in a telephone interview.

…

In fact, the best summary of the story I’ve come across is this article in the NY Times.

The story does not end there…

The original article in the St. Charles Journal did not name the mother who assisted in the hoax that pushed Megan to ultimately commit suicide. The author of the article has been reamed in the press for not naming names, and had to respond to the criticism that he was a “coward” for not revealing the identity of the perpetrators.

Their identities came out when they pressed charges against the distraught father, Ron Meier, for destroying a foosball table he was keeping in storage for them.

It is at this point the blogosphere, in the form of a lady named Sarah Wells, decided to take matters in to its own hands…

From Wired.com:

Given the (publicly) unrepentant attitude of Lori Drew (the mother who assisted in the hoax), it is hard not to feel that “outing” her and exposing her to the full, unfettered (yet somewhat ultimately impotent) fury of the Internet, is somehow just.

I found out about this on slashdot.org and felt it merited “forwarding” via my blog to folks who may find this story interesting.

The story spans six videos.

I especially enjoy it when friends look me square in the eye and tell me, “I know someone who would be perfect for you!” because, quite frankly, I know that I am about to learn a lot about what that friend thinks about me.

It also makes me wonder if some of my friends really know me at all, but hey…

This week’s amusing fix-up comes via a friend of mine from college who shall remain nameless. We don’t see much of each other, but she’s always been a sweetheart, and rarely acts the role of a busybody. So let’s watch how this one unfolds.

It begins with this (seemingly) harmless inquiry in to my relationship status. I’m not the type who goes traipsing from relationship-to-relationship, stepping over the body of my ex on the way to the next, so my friend knew the odds favored me being single. To her credit, she does ask what my status is…

Of course, this is scary and exciting because, quite frankly, I know this could be very bad. I have never had a fix-up go well. It’s like my friends pick people who are like funhouse mirror distortions of what would really work for me. I partially blame myself because, hey, I may emphasize certain things like, “It wouldn’t hurt if she looks like one of Prince’s protegés”, or “I really dig a girl who is smart!”, or “I like a chica who can drive a car with a manual transmission”, or one that probably confuses them “I want a woman who can put up with me.”

For example, here’s what I think when I see Mayte Garcia, former Prince protegé:

So, naturally, I respond with the sentiment that this question is scary and yet intriguing.

Now things get a bit confusing for my friend…

…before I make it clear, that yes, I am interested in meeting a single available woman who might make my brain light up like this:

…which led to this exchange…

Being naturally suspicious, and wanting to jerk my friend’s chain a little, I react as if this person may have The Black Plague. Or was bitten by an ebola monkey.

Not an ebola monkey, but equally disturbing. Plus, I think having a picture of him in my blog makes me look that much better by comparison…

And then I get this response.. the possible deal-breaker:

The girl I want to introduce you to has one in the oven, and oh, by the way, “Have a great weekend?”

Whoa!

I can’t even begin to wonder why my friend thought this might have been a good match for me, but rest assured, I’m going to ask her “WHAT THE F*CK WERE YOU THINKING!??!?!?!?!??!!?!??!” the first chance I get.

Maybe it’s crazy talk, but it’s pretty appalling that Bob Jones University could ban interracial dating until as recently as 2000. The interesting twist for me is that I had two friends, one white and one black, who were best friends who went to Bob Jones briefly in the early 90′s in their quest to get a “Christian education” and eventually bailed on that idea after going there.

As a Christian (albeit, not a very active one of late), it galls me that racism can be propped up in a university that is purporting to emphasize Christian values. The sad part is that this will simply build up more ill-will towards all Christians, which will result in an inevitable cultural backlash against everyone who is part of the faith. Or part of any faith.

Many stores do not stock shirts with a neck size larger than 17 1/2″!

And no, I do not have a Herschel Walker-sized neck… I’m a pretty average fellow whose neck just barely goes over 18 inches in circumference.

The author’s incredibly normal neck.

Specifically, sales people at both Calvin Klein and Kenneth Cole stores showed me that their shirts don’t even offer sizes larger than 17 1/2 inches.

Oh sure, I guess he’s good looking… if you like small necks.

I know a lot of plus-sized women lament the fact that a lot of stylish clothes aren’t offered in their sizes, but who will hear the cries** of the thick-necked American male who wants to look good when he’s out and about? Must I starve myself and sport underwear that resembles butt floss in order to find a nice shirt that fits? Has American manhood fallen so far that only pencil necks are allowed to be fashionable? Bah!

**Okay, we thick-necked guys really don’t “cry” a lot. Well, sometimes…