I watched wrestling a little bit in my younger days. Playboy Buddy Rose, Andre The Giant, Rowdy Piper and others. One of things I liked about TBS out of Atlanta was Mean Gene and wrestling but I never got into it in a big way like some folks. Nowhere near like I’m interested in the “real” sports like the NFL and MLB. Still, I appreciate the entertainment value that wrestling brings.

But when it becomes real like the situation with Chris Benoit it’s scary.

The disturbing details of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit involved in a murder suicide and questioning if these crimes were the result of roid rage.

The 40-year-old champion strangled his wife, Nancy Benoit, and suffocated his 7-year-old son Daniel, authorities said, before he hanged himself on a portable weight machine inside his lavish home outside Atlanta … authorities suspect “that [Daniel] had been taking growth hormones for quite some time,” and are hoping to prove that with toxicology. The boy, Ballard said, was diagnosed with a form of dwarfism.

The part about this story that bothers me the most is the 7-year old son being allegedly injected with growth hormones. At 7 years old taking growth hormones? Is that what doctors prescribe for dwarfism for a 7 year old? Seems kind of young to be shooting the kid up at home.

Bibles were left next to the bodies.

The Howard Sterns kicked off this morning discussing the incident. The crew pondered why the WWE would be running out a tribute of Benoit’s wrestling career before the details of what investigators learned. WWE leader Vince McMahon called the incident a “tragedy” in a follow-up response, adding (emphasis mine):

… now some 26 hours later, the facts of this horrific tragedy are now apparent. Therefore, other than my comments, there will be no mention of Mr. Benoit tonight. On the contrary, tonight’s show will be dedicated to everyone who has been affected by this terrible incident. This evening marks the first step of the healing process.”

Wrestling might be fake, but this is real. Real sad.

Hmmcast #135 mp4

For $4.99 we picked up the hamburger press, a handy tool for your grilling arsenal this summer. Eat your heart out, Rachael Ray!

The Mingle2 What’s Your Blog Rating generator scans a webpage for keywords and assigns a movie rating: G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. The homepage for Hmm currently ranks PG-13 as of this writing. I was able to find a recent post that ranked NC-17.

Mingle2 is a free dating website run by a single guy named Matt. Talk about a super crowded market, he’ll need all the web linkable goodies he can round up and/or create. I don’t know what would be harder these days: a single guy finding the perfect love match or trying to create a successful dating site? Since I haven’t been single for, oh, about 20 years now, I’ll let somebody single answer that.

Added to the growing Hmm web generators page. What’s your rating?

Fellow male readers, how important is a woman’s face to you? A study showed that the first thing men looked at in a still picture of women having sex was their faces. The women’s eyes went to check out the sexual activity first, naughty, naughty!

Via AJC.com:

Wallen and his former graduate student, Heather Rupp, showed still photos of couples having sex to 30 women and 15 men between the ages of 23 and 28. Each was rigged up with a high-tech eye-tracking gizmo to measure where his or her gaze went first, and how long it stayed there.

Yeah, I know, only 15 men and 30 women studied. Could have picked different set of people and had different results, but it’s interesting that the results go against stereotypical thinking. Too bad the article is missing the still pictures so we could run our own informal testing.

Speaking of dirty pictures, I’ve been following the evolution — or degeneration, depending on one’s moral perspective — of Zinio at this blog for almost four years now with the first Zinio mention during Blogathon 2003. Zinio provides digital versions of print magazines that you can download. These digital copies include page turning, search, hyperlinks which actually work and even those annoying index cards that fall out at the most inopportune times. I’ve been a big fan of digital reading and subscribed to numerous magazines like PC Mag and Macworld.

I remember when the adult webmaster print magazine Klixxx that I used to write a monthly column for had to work to get Zinio to offer their print magazine. Klixxx magazine wasn’t for people who liked to look at naughty pictures, it was for webmasters who creates sites for people who wanted to look at them. Klixxx eventually prevailed and Zinio ran the magazine and then later expanded to offer Playboy in August 2005. At the time I wondered how long before even more racier types of adult mags would be offered?

The answer is today Zinio now offers non-mainstream adult magazines at an 18+ site called Undercover Mags. There you’ll find many of those x-rated adult mags that lurk behind the counters of convenience stores usually with some sort of black screen in front of them like High Society, Cheri, Swank and many others all available to download to the privacy of your computer and cheaper than the nearly $8.99 per issue price tag.

Ian’s Shoelist Site offers 31 different ways to tie your shoes, but mathematically there are two trillion different methods of lacing shoes with six eyelets:

The selection is limited to those methods that I considered worthy of devoting the time required to create instructions, either because they are widely used, have a particular feature or benefit, or just because I like the way they look.

Informative site, Ian. The most comprehensive site I’ve seen about shoelaces.

My tennis shoes have seven eyelets so there are even more possibilities. I prefer the slippers which employ the No Laces At All method.

The only way I’ve ever laced shoes is with the Criss Cross lacing method (top most example pictured right). Ian prefers over under lacing. Some look really strange like the Bushwalk / Cycling Lacing.

Which method do you use and prefer?

I used to run cross country and track in high school and don’t understand at all why Arielle Newman, age 17, was using pain relieving cream like Bengay on her legs before and during running. Did the stinging sensation of the creme help her run faster or something? Bengay contains methyl salicylate — the ingredients of ultra strength Bengay show 30% — and can be toxic if absorbed in large quantities. Sadly, Ms. Newman’s usage led to tragic results.

The medical examiner’s spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said the teen used “topical medication to excess.” She said it was the first time that her office had reported a death from using a sports cream.

Recently my back and ribs on the right side were tweaked and I used ultra strength Bengay on it for a couple days. At the time it hurt to walk, much less run and after 4 or 5 applications over a few days the Bengay helped. Strange that the medical examiner’s spokeswoman cited “death from a sports cream” when nothing on the packaging of ultra strength Bengay says anything about being used — or promotes use by — athletes; it is described as “pain relieving cream” and in the instructions it says not to use with “arthritis-like conditions” and to stop using if the pain persists for more than 7 days. I think they’ll be safe from a lawsuit if the thought is crossing some attorney’s mind.

Didn’t her mother question why her daughter was using a pain relieving medication like a sports enhancer? Did they check with their family physician about the use of an over the counter drug for a purpose it wasn’t intended? I feel for the loss of her daughter, what a terrible situation, but I’m confused how or why a medication was being used for running competitions. Perhaps some athlete reader who uses pain relief cremes like this can educate me of the advantages?

Bengay isn’t a steroid.

Forgive me for a rare Paris Hilton rant. In case you haven’t heard, Hilton got busted for reckless driving and then later driving with license suspended with her headlights off at night. Darn lucky she didn’t hurt anybody.

I was surprised to hear that she wasn’t getting the celebrity slap on the wrist, the judge sentenced her to 23 days in jail. Good judge. This morning my surprise turned to anger when I learned she’d been released to house arrest after only serving three days because of a “medical condition“:

“With extensive consultation with medical personnel it was decided this reassignment should be done,” Whitmore said at a news conference … [Hilton] will have to wear an electronic monitoring device on her ankle to ensure she does not go out for the next 40 days.

Look, I’m no doctor but what kind of medical condition generates a get out of jail free card after 3 days on a 23 day sentence? Ok, maybe not completely ‘free’ since she’s confined to house arrest for 40 days, but what are the odds she doesn’t stay there for all 40 days?

And then what? She gets 50 days in jail only to leave after 5 because she broke a nail? I don’t swear very often here, but it’s appropriate in this case for the millions of people incarcerated who don’t get out of jail so easily: bullshit.

Hmmcast #124 mp4

If you ever come out to the Seattle area then be sure to take a lunch detour south to Tacoma, WA try out MSM Deli (I keep wanting to mistitle it MSN deli, but that must just be Microsoft on the brain). These are the best sandwiches I’ve tried in the area. Highly recommended. They like it at Yelp too:

“The decor is a little dive-y, a mix between a deli and a discheveled 7-11 … ( I found this added an unassuming charm to the place)”

An accurate description.

Linda Carlson was looking for some female to female e-harmony at the dating site you’ve probably heard advertised on the radio called, yes, eHarmony. Problem is eHarmony doesn’t offer matchmaking options for gays, lesbians or bisexuals. So what does a person in this day using common sense do? Find a different website that does allow women to search for women. No, Not Ms. Carlson, these days you sue! And then the attorneys ask for class action status.

The lawsuit claims that by only offering to find a compatible match for men seeking women or women seeking men, the company was violating state law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Crazy. Take a look at the screenshot at the top of this page which as of this writing is the home page when you visit eharmony.com. It clearly shows the options available at the site. You’re either a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. There isn’t any other option. This woman becoming so upset that eHarmony didn’t offer a lesbian option that she went running to the lawyers is bizarre and wrong.

Note to people thinking of lawsuits: make that a last resort. Suing someone or a company should be the last option on the table. In this circumstance and I didn’t try searching, but am certain there are dozens (hundreds?) of other dating sites (and please do not use the comments below to link to them) that cater to gay, lesbians and bisexual people. These alternative sites are just a Google search away.

There is no discrimination happening at eHarmony, there was a business choice made to focus on a niche market that did not include people with certain sexual orientation. Heck there are niche sites like Asian Friend Finder that focus on people of a specific nationality (and curiously they offer the same options as eHarmony). You don’t see people running out class action lawsuits against them. Or maybe that’s next?

Nothing against people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, but I do discriminate against frivolous lawsuits.

The American Medical Association (AMA) is endorsing a social networking site of sorts called Sermo (means ‘conversation’ in Latin) that encourages physician to physican discussion on difficult medical cases. Relax, only physicians can register and login to the guts of this network.

“Someone can say, ‘I’ve got this one complicated case. Here’s the workup. Have you ever seen this before, and how would you manage it?’” Tomblyn said. “Within three hours, you can have a dozen responses from physicians in three or four different specialties. With all the burdens of practicing medicine today, there is not a lot of time and effort put into creating a physican-to-physician community. That is really something Sermo has built.”

Don’t expect any API or mashups for Sermo any time soon. What a great idea to get doctors talking among each other. This is the kind of social networking I can get behind.

This morning I’m taking a neighbor to the airport, so time to put on my chauffeur hat. Any readers need a ride anywhere today? My rates are cheap

Speaking of doctors, I’m taking my wife to another appointment this afternoon so I have to take another Hmmcast vacation day. The orthopedic doctor last week said there was nothing he could do for her because the pain she is still experiencing almost four years is still emanating from her neck and spine. Some days she feels a little better, particularly summer days when it is warmer than when it is colder.

Later today we see the doctor that operated on her neck last August to see if there is anything else he can do. Before the operation he warned that she might only be 60% cured, meaning she’ll have to live with 40% pain for the rest of her life unless we can find some other resolution.

I don’t know about you, friendly reader, but if somebody who was too busy in life to fully defrost her windows completely hit me and my son in the crosswalk and I potentially had to live with pain for the rest of my life because of it, I’d find it very hard to forgive. My wife, bless her soul, doesn’t seem to be as frustrated by the situation as me. If there was a way to take her pain I would, really. It really bothers me that she spends most days in pain.

On the financial side of things, our insurance company is still preparing some kind of offer. We haven’t gotten an attorney because there’s been no reason to do so. I know the first thing some people think about is attorneys these days but we haven’t gone to that well yet. The woman who hit my wife and son as pedestrians only had $50,000 coverage and that was exhausted in medical bills a long time ago. She didn’t have any other assets to go after to pay the other bills, so it turned to our insurance to take care of the situation. An attorney wouldn’t have been that much help in negotiating the woman’s company to pay policy limits which were not enough to pay the medical bills anyway.

Friendly word of advice: make sure you have adequate insurance coverage, especially uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your auto insurance policy. We have plenty of coverage so there will be no problems for us in this case but there are many people out there like this very negligent woman who don’t.

I think the part that bothers me the most is that this woman has never contacted my wife to say she was sorry. She lives about a block from our office and could have chosen any day, any time to stop by and apologize. To say sorry that she didn’t carry enough insurance coverage and that she didn’t take an extra few minutes to fully defrost her window that frosty morning 3+ years ago. While that wouldn’t take away the pain my wife might have to live with until she dies (and we hope that isn’t the case), I think it would make her feel better that the human being responsible actually cared.

Perhaps a site like Sermo could offer my wife’s case help if only patients could enter in their own case data (?) Maybe we’ll tell the doctor about Sermo today. There has to be some solution beyond just live with the pain.

Be good to each other out there.