Holy Moly... Four babies?!

So this chick from Calgary had quadruplets. My first reaction... "that's gotta suck."

But that's just me.

Though apparently the really rare part is that the quadruplets are identical, meaning they all split from a single egg. As if four babies isn't rare enough, having this happen is a one out of 13 million.

The hospital, obviously new this was coming, and made arrangements to make sure there was there was room for four babies in the neonatal facility. But, as luck would have it, the night before these quadruplets were born, two other premature babies were born and used up all the spots. So, just as the mother was going in to labor, they shipped her off to Montana to have the babies.

When the couple found out, months ago obviously, that they were having quadruplets, they nicknamed the babies "Baby A, Baby B, Baby C, and Baby D" until they could come up with actual names. The funny part is, they kept those names... sort of. They named the babies Autumn, Brooke, Calissa, and Dahlia.

Princess Goes to Jail

Some people give the justice system a hard time. Killers being set free... innocent people on death row... well there's finally some justice in the world. Mega Bitch Paris Hilton is going to prison.

As little miss snot-face got all teary and sad, the judge sentenced her to 45-days in jail for violating her probation for knowingly driving without a license.

It's about time that Hilton was given what she deserves—well, a small fraction of what she deserves, at least—and is thrown in jail. Reporters were saying that throughout the hearing, Paris wasn't taking it seriously and was seeking to be placed above the law.

You know what her defence was? "I didn't know I wasn't allowed to drive."
It's her own fault if she refuses to listen to people when they talk to her and tell her stuff. Just for that, she should be given even more time.

The judge said "In my opinion, there's not doubt that she knew that her license had been suspended. She doesn't look at her mail, her personal assistant never goes through it either. ... I think she just wanted to disregard everything that was said and continued to drive no matter what."

Paris' mom even yelled at the judge after the ruling, calling him "pathetic". You know what is pathetic? A 26 year who thinks they're a celebrity, rules don't apply to them, can't take care of them self, and the world revolves around them just because their dad has a successful hotel chain. That's quite pathetic.

When I first heard about this, me and my friends were joking around, saying that "oh, they must have finally outlawed stupidity." But if that were the case, she definitely would've gotten more than 45 days. She probably would've been given the chair. Or worse. They'd have to invent a new punishment just for her. Hey, here's an idea. They could crucify her and make it into a reality show. She likes being on TV, right?

Anagramarama!

You know what's fun? Anagrams. Here's some awesome ones I came up with.

First off, let's start with my name

"Brad Norman" = "Random Barn"

Next one... how about (in honour of Heather Mills), "you smell like socks". That can be rearranged to say "so... moles likely suck."

Speaking of Heather Mills, her name can be rearranged to spell "ill hamster, eh?"

And to finish off this random entry... "Club Seals is deadly" can spell "Icy dudes, less a ball."

You're So Gregarious!

Are you offended by that? Honestly... what was your first impression? It sounds like such a devious and menacing adjective, doesn't it? Sounds like something a news reporter would use to describe a murder or something... "It was a vicious and gregarious murder today at the dog park..." or "that gregarious monster ruthlessly beat his victim...."

Words are funny. Because gregarious actually has absolutely nothing to do with super villains (or even just normal villains). It's Dictionary.com's word-of-the-day today, and apparently it means "Seeking and enjoying the company of others". Cool eh?

So honestly, leave a comment and say what your first impression of this word. Would you have been offended if someone randomly called your gregarious (before you knew what it meant)?

Lovely Ass Lumps

At the request of my good friend Mike Sleep, I will be talking today about hemorrhoids.

So, first the basics. What is a hemorrhoid? Basically, they are varicosities or swelling of your butt's blood vessels. Hurts to sit on 'em, apparently.

What causes one to develop one of these suckers? Well, I'm glad you asked. You can be genetically predisposed to them, which really sucks. Bad genes could lead to weaker ass tissue, which makes it easier to get them. However, trying too hard when taking a dump can also cause one, even without bad genes. In fact, sometimes even having bad posture can make a person develop one.

If you have bad genes though, don't worry. Avoiding them is not too tricky. All you need to do is drink lots of water, keep your fiber intake high (which is a good idea anyways) and exercise a lot. Simple as that.

So thank you Mike, for encouraging this very informative entry... and for providing that very appropriate and professionally drawn image.

Sens Beat Pens

It was a quick series, only five games. But the Ottawa Senators beat down the Penguins pretty good, allowing only one goal in the last two games of the series. Not bad. Emery's really bringing it. I was personally going for the Pittsburgh, but I guess it's good that Ottawa won. They're the only Canadian team left in the eastern conference, so... yeah, might as well go for them.

But hey, the Penguins have an incredible team... just ridiculously inexperienced. There are no more than ten of their players who have ever been in the playoffs before. But come on... look at this team. Crosby, Malkin, Staal... that's a pretty bright future right there. Three of the best players in the NHL (except for Ovechkin) are all on this team. It's crazy.

But yeah, the Senators are one step closer to the Stanley cup... something they should've had last year, if it weren't for Dominik Hassek going to the Olympics and pulling his groin. Let's see if Emery can do any better...

Home Made Sperm

Ever want to make your own sperm? Well, most guys do this anyways... but ladies, any of you ever want to make your own sperm? Well a bunch of scientists are coming close to making human sperm out of bone marrow! So if you have bone marrow (which I hope you do), you can make your very own sperm!

It's not quite that simple... and it's not even all that necessary, but yeah... they're getting close to finding a way to do it.

Research led by Professor Karim Nayernia showed that if you extract "mesenchymal" stem cells from the bone marrow, stimulate it with a bit of vitamin A, these cells will actually develop into germ cells. Germ cells are the things that grow up to be sperm. They haven't found a way to make these cells go through meiosis (the process that makes them true blue sperm... well, not blue...) in a laboratory yet. However, one experiment that they did with mice (yeah yeah, poor mice... suck it Heather Mills) involved the same process of stimulating the bone marrow (from the mouse) with vitamin A, but then they implanted the germ cells into the testis of live mice. And voila. They grew into real live working sperm. They haven't tried this out of humans yet... for obviously reasons... very few guys will volunteer to have their nuts chopped open so some hairy old scientists can grow artificial sperm inside.

But either way, it's pretty interesting... and frightening. If this technology gets perfected, it would mean that men would become obsolete. More seriously though, it opens the doors to lesbian couples actually giving birth to a child that is biologically related to both of them by making sperm from the bone marrow of one women and then fertilizing the other woman with it. Neat-o.

A Burning Ring of Fire

Country singer Johnny Cash's house burned to the ground. Well, it's not his house anymore... but the house that he and June Carter once lived in. It's gone.

The house in Hendersonville, Tennessee was home to the legend from 1968 until his death in 2003.

The current owner of the house, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, was doing some renovations when a spark ignited some wood preservative. The Hendersonville fire chief is saying that the spark flew from the ridiculous amount of friction caused by Gibb's unnecessarily tight pants.

Ok, so I made up that part about the pants. But that's my theory.

In conclusion... don't sell anything to the Bee Gees that you don't want to be set on fire. Those guys are just far too irresponsible. Exhibit A: Those shirts...

Need I say more?

Toronto Maples Leafs Win the Stanley Cup!!

...well, close enough. In the absolutely most dramatic game imaginable last night—last game of the season, biggest rivalry in NHL history, the loser is eliminated from the playoffs—the Toronto Maples Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadians with a come-from-behind victory in the third period.

Now, based on the first period, the Leafs should've owned the Habs and won by at least thirty eight goals. They were out shooting Montreal by 20-2 after the first eight minutes of the game. By the end of the first, despite the landslide number of shots, the Leafs only led 2-1.

However, Newfoundland native Michael Ryder scored a hat trick within less than six minutes in the second period, giving Montreal a pretty big lead.

Anyways, Toronto scored a couple more times in the third to get a 6-5 win, and that's all she wrote. Leafs win. Montreal stinks, and will not make the playoffs. Despite the awesome win and the excitement following the game, the Leafs aren't home free yet. The New York Islanders are only one point behind them, and they play their last game of the season tonight against the New Jersey Devils. If New York wins, that moves them one point ahead of the leafs, and last night means squat... well, aside from the fact that they knocked their rivals out of the playoffs... so either way it's a pretty sweet deal.

In an ironic twist, the Leafs' Thomas Kaberle said after the game that he would be cheering for the Devils in the game against New York... even after all the things he said about the Devils being cheap and dirty after Cam Jannsen knocked Kaberle out with a cheap hit a few weeks ago.

Mats Sundin actually said that "We'll be praying that [Brodeur] is [playing]," after the Devils thought of resting their star goaltender. The Devils are already in the playoffs regardless of what happens, so to put in their superstar and risk injuring him right before the playoffs is a bit risky. But for the Leafs, having Brodeur between the pipes ensures their own trip to the playoffs.

Bryan McCade (Leafs defenceman) said ''I got to go to church Sunday. The biggest church day of the year is Easter Sunday. I know I'll be there with my wife and kid and I'll be praying.''

Guns Kill People?

Lawyers have been famous for being evil, and twisting just about anything to make criminals seem like heroes. But the lawyer of William Whary, the man charged with murdering 18-year-old Sara Easton in Edmonton, takes the cake. Here's the lawyer's case: when Wharry fired the gun at Easton, he did not intend to harm her. Now, I understand that there are people who have lived sheltered existences... but nobody living in the modernized world would ever think for a minute that being shot is going to tickle. Wharry's lawyer tried to convince the court that the gun was only fired at the group of friends to scare them.

So here's what went down. Wharry spotted Easton walking home from her birthday celebration (the fact that she was murdered on her birthday is kind of irrelevant, but all right). When Wharry saw the group of people, he stopped his car and fired three shots at them; one hitting a truck, one hitting a tree, and the third hitting Easton in the face.

Maybe—just maybe—the lawyer could make a good argument for the "scare tactic" if only one shot was fired. And maybe if there was a jury filled with mindless, gullible seal protesters, he could get them to believe two shots were to scare them. But nobody is going to believe that three shots is anything less than an attempt to kill (or to badly injure, at the very least).

A Porn Domain

There's .com's, .net's, .org's, and website address endings for nearly every country in the globe and the porn industry wants to add another: .xxx

They've been throwing the idea at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for a while now. However hard they try to get this domain name ratified, ICANN keeps shooting down the idea, and has once again shot it down.

Ironically, the porn industry proposed this ideal for moral reasons. For once, they are "thinking of the children". Parents are always afraid that their kids will stumble across porn sites by accidentally misspelling some common .com addresses. By having a .xxx domain, all adult entertainment sites would have to be restricted to .xxx addresses, therefore freeing up all those tangly .com addresses.

Sounds like a good idea, right? Harder for people to accidentally stumble into porn sites, and easier for those looking for porn to find it. So why does this seemingly good idea keep being turned down by ICANN? Screening websites. Somebody will have to go through all the websites, billions and billions of them, and find any porn ones and give them the boot. And, to be fair to the porn kings, they'd have to trudge through all those .xxx addresses to make sure non-porn or even anti-porn sites appear. That's a hefty job for anyone to do... and so, ICANN won't be making the .xxx address... and a loud cheer erupts from the NetNanny corporation.

Promise-lie... Potato-Potato

Okay, so that "po-tay-toe" / "po-tah-toe" thing really doesn't work when you type it, but you get the picture.

Basically, Stephen Harper doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between a lie and a promise. To help him out a bit, I had this interview with a specialist in the area, 5-year-old little Billy from kindergarten.

"So, Billy, do you know what the difference between a lie and a promise is?"

"Yes. A promise is when you say something and you got to do it no matter what. And a lie is when you say something that isn't true."

Very good Billy. Hear that Harper? They're not the same.

This is all because Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams placed a pile of ads in newspapers across Canada. The ads quoted various "promises" made by Stephen Harper during the last election, and then contrasted these statements with what actually unfolded in the recent budget. In big bold letters, the ad quotes Stephen Harper as saying "there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept."

Despite the full page ad, stuffed full of promises broken by Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister still says he has done nothing wrong. He doesn't feel he has broken any promise.

The odd part about this whole thing, is that Danny Williams seems somewhat surprised at the whole thing... as if he expected a politician to keep his promise. Danny Williams threatened Harper long ago, saying that if he didn't keep his promise, Newfoundland would deliver a "goose egg" for the Tories in the next election. Although it is quite possible that this will happen, Harper doesn't care. Newfoundland has 7 seats. It's "only" Newfoundland to Harper... we don't need any particular attention. Seriously Danny, who do you think we are? Alberta?

Stealing a "Star's" Thunder

So Heather Mills thinks people like her. She is pissed because Paul (former husband/bitch) was seen in public with his new girlfriend. The nerve of him, a full grown man... going out in public with a girl. Scandalous!

She claims that McCartney is trying to "steal her thunder". What thunder, you might ask? Well apparently Heather is going to be on "Dancing With The Stars". I never knew. Not only did I not know, I didn't even care. You know what's worse than reality TV? Reality TV with washed up celebrities. You know what's worse than reality TV with washed up celebrities? Heather Mills.

If anything, she should be thankful that Paul is taking some attention from her sad attempt to get famous again so she can continue her crusade to unemploy hard working Newfoundlanders.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat some seal oil capsules.

Hula Hoop, or Air Humping?

The host of this new CBC show, "Living Newfoundland and Labrador", Krista Rudofsky sure can't hula hoop. She was killing time on the CBC news hour tonight by showing that the "sport" of hula hooping is alive and well in St. John's by talking to some lady with dreds who was all about the hula hoops.

Anyways, Krista decided to give it a shot. One word can describe it. Hilarious. She spread her legs out as if she were riding a horse and went to town with the pelvic thrusts. Looked more like air humping. But she was loving it. Big ol' smile on her face and everything. Despite her best humping, she only managed to keep the hula hoop up for a couple seconds. However, the girl with dreds was actually quite impressive. I didn't think I would ever think hula hooping was ever "impressive", but she kinda was. She had three going at once... going around her waist, around her arms, hopping on one foot, and moving them from her knees up to her neck and everything. It was crazy.

This is in no way news of any sort... but hey, this is Newfoundland. I think having an exciting news story is really too much to ask for. Sure there's the whole "Stephen Harper hates Newfoundland and Danny's pissed at him" thing... but that's boring.

Swimmin' on Mars

There's water on Mars. Lots of it, in fact. A bunch of old NASA guys used some infrared technology to track down a huge lump of ice at Mars' south pole. They're estimating there's enough water there to flood the entire Martian surface in 30 feet of water if the whole chuck were to ever melt.

Translation: humans shouldn't live on Mars. We have a tendency to pollute planets until they're broken and overheated. At least on Earth if we melt all the water, not all the land would be submerged. Despite what a bunch of panicky naive tabloid readers will tell you, the vast majority of Earth would stay dry. Yes, a lot of it would be wiped out, but life could still go on.

No so on Mars, however. Now I know that moving humans to Mars is still a long ways away, but if they want to do it, they're really going to have to get this whole "Global Warming" thing figured out first... or all that money NASA putting into this Mars jazz is all going to be flushed down the crapper.

On a somewhat related note, on December 18th, 2007, Mars will reach its closest points to Earth in years. Because Earth and Mars both orbit the sun in elliptical orbits (non-circular), they are at varying distances from each other. So, if you ever wanted to get a good look at Mars, break out your telescope on December 18th. They're saying that you should be able to see surface features and everything even with a normal department store telescope. Neat.

Yep, I'm still Alive. Thanks for asking.

Well it's been far too long since I last posted. I want to write something more regularly, but I just have so much going on between school and whatnot. But I'll make an effort. And thanks to all those spammers who kept emailing me, trying to get me to put links from my blog to your websites. I give you all a collective "no".

Anyways, keeping with the theme of spamming... I have a new book out. Buy it.

It's called The Oris. It officially goes on sale April 16th, but you can order a copy from Amazon right now if you like. For more info on the book and whatnot, just check out my website (www.BradNorman.com)

Cool... so with that out of the way... I suppose I should write something that is at least somewhat newsworthy.

Apparently, Viacom decided to sue the popular video blog site YouTube. For how much? One BILLION dollars. Yes. Billion. Why? Viacom (the company behind TV stations like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, etc) asked YouTube to remove unauthorized clips of Viacom shows from their website. There's over 100 000 of these "unauthorized" clips, including episodes of Sponge Bob and segments from The Daily Show. But come on... YouTube doesn't put those videos there themselves... their millions of users upload them. It's unrealistic to expect them to search for hours and hours every day to weed out all the "non-blog" videos. Sure they could do what other video-blog sites (such as Revver) did, as not allowed videos be available to the public until it has been viewed first by a moderator to ensure there's no copyright violations... but with the number of videos uploaded daily to YouTube, it could take days before a video gets approved. And that defeats the purpose of a blog. Imagine getting your newspaper three or four days late (not that my paper delivery person is far off that mark)... it would stink.

In conclusion... MTV is among the worst things to ever happen to the planet. For many many many more reasons that this.