The Kentucky Derby & Other News

The Kentucky Derby ended sadly when second place horse Eight Belles had to be put down on the track due to two broken ankles. There have been recriminations from it, but it was an accident. Some argued that fillies shouldn't race males, but that's stupid. She was bigger than most of them, and it wasn't like she ran into one. Then the circus started as America's least favorite wackjob organization, PETA, decided to give their uninformed opinion. First, they wanted the jockey suspended (yet later said they didn't blame him). Then they came up with their demands which included no dirt racing. Because these giant animals are so fragile that they can't run on dirt. For the record, the worst breakdown I ever saw at Keeneland was on the turf course. Why would anyone take these dumbasses seriously? PETA once asked the Green Bay Packers to change their team name because "packers" came from the meat industry. And that's one of their lesser braindead moments. This is actually an organization that sent a letter to Yasser Arafat after a mule was used by a suicide bomber to tell him not to use animals in the future to blow up people. They were okay with blowing up a bus of students or a pizza joint.

This led to hand wringing by sportswriters about the cruelty of the sport. I saw one say he saw no difference between horse racing and Michael Vick's dog fighting. Well, for those stupid enough not to see the difference, let me explain what it is. The point of dog fighting is to watch two dogs try to kill each other. The point of horse racing is to see a horse outrun other horses. Having a horse get hurt (even if it survives) is considered the worst thing that could happen. That's why it's considered a tragedy. People who are criticizing horse racing don't seem to understand how horses are. Horses aren't trained to run. They are trained to pace themselves while they run. Horses run in the wild. They run in the pasture. They have to be held back while training on the track. When a jockey gets thrown off a horse, the horse will almost always finish the race without the jockey. These horses love to run. Ending horse racing won't stop them from running.

The real problem with horses is just the way they are built. Horses (and horse like animals like zebras) are odd in the fact that a broken leg is almost always a death penalty. Barbaro had only one broken leg and everything possible was done for him, and he still didn't make it. To begin with, broken legs can easily become infected (not many blood vessels down there). Even if that is fended off, horses can't go on bed rest like a human. Horses can lay down, but can't stay that way. This leads to the big problem. Laminitis. If a horse puts too much weight on one leg, it can cause a very painful inflammation and broken support. That's what got Barbaro. Can racing on dirt cause a broken leg? Certainly. Of course, horses break their leg and die in the wild. Horses have broken their leg in stalls. I volunteered at a nature center in Chattanooga. They had a pasture where people boarded their horses, and one of them broke its leg in the field. Was not a pretty sight as the horse kept struggling to get up, but couldn't. I heard they eventually called someone to show up with a .22 rifle to put it down. Taking a horse off the track doesn't mean it's not going to break its leg.

Now, up next is the Preakness. I heard on the radio that Gayego will attempt to take on Big Brown. That means those two are the only horses from the Kentucky Derby who are going on to the Preakness. Not that it really matters. I think after watching the Derby that we have a very poor class of 3 year old horses. The Derby was a slow race with slow fractions all the way around. Yet, Big Brown won easily with some horses being 50 or more lengths back. Even worse, most of the jockeys on the other nags said their horses were gassed down the stretch. A slow pace and your horse got tired? Those horses weren't very good. Now Big Brown is facing horses that didn't have the earnings to make the Derby which is why I don't see him losing to any of them unless he gets hurt. The only other chance is if Big Brown bounces hard (doesn't run worth a crap after a big race) due to being lightly raced and only getting two weeks off. Even then, he might win. If he does bounce or get hurt, I would go with Macho Again. I'll probably just put a place/show bet on him on the assumption he'll finish second. A good long shot to hit the board is Hey Byrn.

Now, all is not lost on the Triple Crown. A foreign horse just shipped in from Japan and crushed the Peter Pan Stakes. Casino Drive is really lightly raced so I'm not sure I can pick him to run huge again and win the Belmont, but it certainly makes it a lot more interesting.

And on to other things. A French doctor is saying farting, belching and sweating lead to good health. Or something along those lines. Well, I'm set.

I've got to say Democrats aren't looking too bad right now. At least compared to Italian leftees which isn't really that complimentary. In a fit of pique after being voted out of office (again), they posted the salaries of every Italian on the internet. My employer doesn't even want me to let co-workers know how much I make (probably so I won't be ridiculed for having such a lowly salary). I'm still trying to figure out the Economics minister's soap opera defense where he says "This already exists all around the world, you just have to watch any American soap opera to see that." You see, I wasn't aware that Days Of Our Lives was announcing my salary.

Still, that isn't the worst "your government at work" story I've heard recently. A Japanese bureaucrat had 780,000 hits on porn sites in only nine months. I don't think I've ever reached that level. He also wasn't fired. Just lost a little pay and got a demotion. Must be nice. The pay decrease didn't seem that much (about $155 a month) and the demotion probably means less work. I'd take that to spend my entire work day surfing porn. I'd take that to spend my entire work day surfing most websites.

Now if he was fired, he would have been better off in The Netherlands. The unemployed there are actually being forced to take some New Agey crap "Regression Therapy". I fail to see how getting "in touch with their past lives" will help them find a job. If they tossed them off unemployment, they would probably be more likely to get a job.

A civil war is breaking out in Lebanon. That's strange. The US doesn't have any involvement there, and the Israelis pulled out some time back. I don't understand. I didn't think you could have a crisis in the Middle East without US or Israeli involvement. It's almost like another country (possibly one whose name looks like the title of a Flock of Seagulls song missing the space) might be causing problems in that part of the world.

A quick thanks to Phil (or payback for that winning horse when you went to Keeneland) for calling me about going to see Iron Man. It was a very good movie. I was never a comic book nerd, but I would periodically go through stages where I would buy them and Iron Man was always a favorite.

Even though some won't admit it, anyone with a grain of sense knows that OJ Simpson committed a double homicide. Yet, he walked. A man has been put into prison because his daughter was truant while living with her mother and failed the math section of her GED. A daughter who is now an adult. That's garbage. I'm all for enforcing parental responsibility, but when the child becomes an adult, it's a moot point. You shouldn't have to go to jail because your daughter is stupid.

Now, here's a guy who definitely needs to go to jail. He trained his girlfriend's 12 year old daughter to be a dominatrix and had sex with her as part of the training. With the mother's permission and assistance. The Mother of the Year candidate (San Fransisco chapter) will probably get less time in the joint for it, but I think she should actually get more time. To begin with, sex offenders don't do well in prison so the man's experience will automatically be worse (or possibly better in his mind). Plus, she was the girl's mother. She had the added responsibility of protecting her child. I don't think dressing her in leather and handing her a whip qualifies.

And along the same lines of underage sex, the defense of all those female teachers sleeping with teenage boys has centered along the lines that they want it (an argument that doesn't work with a man and his 15 year old mail order bride or so I've heard). But this story may show that is not necessarily true. A 13 year old boy had the credit card company send him a second copy of his dad's card which he used to rent a motel room, buy an Xbox and have some hookers sent over. Yet, he didn't seem to know what to do with the hookers so he played Halo with them. Loser. No word on whether or not they beat him (at $1000 a night, they should have let him win). I've never paid a grand for a hooker, but I damned sure wouldn't be playing Xbox with them. So many things went wrong in this story. It's a sad commentary on American society that the teenagers knew enough to claim the American with Disability Act as a reason why the whores had to stay because the kiddies claimed to be circus midgets who couldn't be discriminated against. Even better, the little fraudster's defense to the cops was his father would be okay with the charges because he forgot his birthday. That got taken to a whole new level because the father felt the need to defend himself by saying he was going to take his son to Disneyland. Let's put it this way. If I did this, there would be no Disneyland. There would be hard labor. If I was lucky. Now, my dad might insist on getting serviced by the hookers since they were already paid for, but that just makes good business sense.

I'm pumped about the NBA playoffs. My Utah Jazz are tied 2-2 with the damned Lakers. Unfortunately, two of the next three games are in LA. I get the feeling that if it goes to game seven that the Lakers will have more free throw attempts in the fourth quarter than the Jazz will have the entire game.

In other sports news, Danica Patrick ran over someone else's crew member during Indy 500 practice. Reporters fell all over themselves to say it wasn't her fault, but he was not in her pit box. If you're going to drive through someone else's pit box to get to your own, it's your responsibility to look before you plow ahead. I think my first thought was the same as everyone else's. Was she fixing her makeup or talking on a cell phone when it happened?

Damned Brits and their misleading headlines.

In other science news, the animal porn story of the week is about a seal trying to have sex with a penguin. Probably too much bourbon that night. The scientists had some ideas why - inexperience, predatory act or play turned dirty. I have another thought. Sometimes you're just horny. They also refer to it as "the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known". I don't know about that. I was at a party once and saw a guy dragging a girl up and down the stairs by her hair.

But I think the story shows just how important nookie is. In an unrelated case also involving sexual frustration, a woman had a blow up with the cops because her husband wasn't interested in a little late night boning. And in the long run wanted to clean up their lives some. Which led the dingbat to rant and rave while drinking a half gallon of whisky (I think we've all been there before), steal her husband's wallet and throw the family dog at the cops. I just have a question. The husband "told his wife they had three hours to quit smoking, drinking, swearing and engaging in some sex acts" apparently due to a newfound Christian belief. I just want to know what "some sex acts" were. If deviant behavior was somehow involved, I think that is newsworthy stuff.