Bausch & Lomb Makes a Bad Batch

A popular contact lens solution, Renu, has been linked to causing an eye infection in over 109 people in the U.S. in a fairly small time period. Eight of those people needed corneal transplants to stop them from going blind.

Bausch & Lomb, the company which makes Renu, stopped shipment of all their products when this was brought to their attention. Apparently it was just a problem with a batch of the solution made in one of their factories in the states, so any of you Canadians who use the stuff, don't worry.

The irony here is that eye doctors are always telling people with contacts that if they don't use solution regularly on their contacts, it could damage their vision... and now only the people who listened are going blind. Suckers.

Moses Born In New York

Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin must really hate their children. Their first born daughter, they named Apple. Yes, Apple. Like the fruit. They thought it would be cute. Paltrow says she doesn't know what the big fuss was about when the media jumped all over them when they heard what they named their child. Paltrow defended the decision a while back by saying that it sounded "lovely and clean." Yet she still pinned the blame on her husband, saying it was Martin who came up with the name, who says he chose it because apples are biblical due to the expression which originated from the Bible, "The apple of my eye".

But apparently "apple" wasn't quite biblical enough for them, so they stepped it up a notch. This past weekend, the celebrity couple had their second child, and gave it a name guaranteeing that this child also will be ridiculed by its classmates as soon as it starts school: Moses. Yes, Moses. Like the prophet. And again, surprise surprise, the media is all over the couple again, trying to figure out what is going on in their brains. Sigh... celebrities.

No More Magic for Menard

Jean-Michel Menard from Quebec surprised everyone by winning the Brier final over Glen Howard of Ontario. Winning that gave him the right the represent Canada at the World Curling Championship. The team struggled early on, but pull off a 2nd place finish after the round robin. Then they defeated Scotland in the one-two playoff game, only to face them in a rematch in the finals. Similar to the way Menard lost the one-two game to Howard at the Brier, and then battled back to face him again in the finals. And just as Menard got his revenge when he played Howard again, Scotland managed to beat out Menard and win the championship.

For Scotland's David Murdoch, this is a great win. This same team crumbled at the hands of Randy Ferbey last year in the World Championship finals, losing 11-4. Then this year at the Olympics in Italy, they had a disappointing tournament, not even making it to the podium. So as much as I would love to see the Canadians win the worlds this year, I'm kinda glad that Murdoch got it. He's a good guy.

Dr. Team Gushue

As if winning a gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino wasn't enough, now Brad Gushue and his team are going to get honorary degrees from Memorial University. At the university's Convocation this spring, more than 2000 students will receive their degrees. In that group are the six members of Newfoundland's Olympic curling teams; Brad Gushue, Mark Nichols, Russ Howard, Jamie Korab, Mike Adam, and Toby McDonald. The six guys from the gold medal team will all receive honorary doctor of laws degrees at the May 26 session of convocation. Joining them will be leaders from academia, business and the arts.

This isn't the first time that members of this team have received degrees from the university. Brad Gushue has a BBA from MUN, and Mark Nichols also attended MUN and received a kinesiology degree. Mike Adam recently graduated from the College of the North Atlantic and Jamie Korab graduated from Academy Canada in 2001.

To all those people who make fun of curling: HA! I don't see Joe Sakic or Steve Nash getting degrees for doing well at the Olympics... oh wait, they didn't do well at the Olympics. Well yes, Steve Nash did very well considering the team mates he had to work with, but still.

Leafs Hanging On

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been clinging to dear life for a long time now, but they just ain't giving up. Although it may be too little too late, they're still winning enough games to make people wonder. After losing two straight games in a shoot out, they were determined to win on Saturday night against the Philadelphia Flyers, preferably in regulation time. A task which they got to work on right away, scoring twice in the opening period. They added a few more, and the Flyers made some weak attempts at a late game comeback, but the Leafs ended up taking it 5-2.

The Leafs are still seven points back of a playoff spot, and with only five games remaining in the regular season, they'll need to win pretty much all of them, and hope that Montreal and/or Tampa Bay have a serious dry spell.

Menard in Finals

Jean-Michel Menard, who captured the Brier title back in March, is going to face Scotland's David Murdoch in the gold medal game at the Men's World Curling Championship in Lowell, Massachusetts.
After getting off to a slow start, Menard got his game back on track early enough in the tournament to finish in second place with a 8-3 record. They then faced David Murdoch in the one-two playoff game. After winning that game, Canada advanced to the finals, and Murdoch faced Norway in the semi-finals. Scotland won the game and now gets another shot at Menard and his Canadian team. The game will be broadcast on CBC Sunday afternoon.

Justice for Net Celebrity

Everyone knows the Star Wars kids. A teenager from Trois Rivieres was taped in a mock light saber battle with himself in 2003. Fellow students then put the video online, and it spread like wildfire. The kid was a celebrity within weeks. He even got a guest appearance on the new cartoon show, American Dad. Although this guy was the most popular kid on the internet, he received brutal teasing ever since from friends and classmates. His family files a lawsuit against the families of the students who posted the video online, a lawsuit for over $350 000. Ghyslain Raza, the 17 year old "victim" has become the poster boy for lawyers' new favorite word, "cyber-bullying". The Raza family lawyer has said that the case will not be heard in court and that the two parties have settled the patter. The kid obviously did not enjoy all the fame and attention he was receiving. Reporters and news stations were calling and emailing him for months, seeking an interview, to which Raza replied "I want my life back". Ah yes, the tough life of a celebrity. His video was viewed by over 76 million by October of 2004. Since then, enhanced versions of the video (special effects, background music, etc) have also been popping up all over the web. The Gaza family lawyer said in their lawsuit that they sought money for damage to the boy's self-confidence and he changed schools to escape the ridicule of his classmates. He went to a school that specializes in psychiatric help for troubled teens.

Despite how hurt this guy says he is, he has fans, and a website sells shirts saying "I love the Star Wars kid" and they even tried to petition to get him into a Star Wars film, which failed. The site also photoshopped the boy into a few really great looking pictures. Like this one, for example:

Dan Brown Not Sued

Dan Brown, the author of best selling novel "The DaVinci Code" was being sued for copyright infringement by British novelist Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Brown won the case, and Baigent and Leigh were left with nothing but over a million dollars in legal fees. If I were Dan Brown, I'd be rolling around in all my money laughing at those two clowns.

Baigent and Leigh thought that Brown should be paying them royalties because of their book "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail", another novel which deals with Jesus. Two novels that deal with the most known person in basically all of history, the guy who divided history into "before" and "after"... yeah I'm sure that Brown really copied off those guys. I mean, where in the world else could he have come up with the idea of Jesus? Note the sarcasm.

Dan Brown's publishing company, Random House, called the case a "joke" saying that it would be a sad day for literature when authors can't be inspired by other works and expand on ideas of past writers. Well, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing afterall. If that damn Rowling lady didn't mutilate The Lord of the Rings, then we wouldn't have those horrid Harry Potter books and movies.

They Got One!

The Liberal Leadership was looking like it was first come, first serve as far as finding a leader goes. But they still couldn't find anybody. Rick Mercer came up with the bright idea of trying to sell the leadership over eBay, which kind of backfired when the price rose to over $15 million, and since eBay charges the seller a percentage of the selling price, Rick was out a fair bit of money. I'm not sure if the winning bidder actually paid up or not though. But Rick is still a cool guy... (I have to be nice to him because I know he occasionally reads this blog).

But today, the Liberals got another serious candidate, Stephan Dion, current foreign affairs critic and ten year veteran of the house of commons. He joins Toronto lawyer Martha Hall Findlay and former cities minister John Godfrey as candidates for the leadership. Looks like we finally got a race on our hands.

But just look at that picture! Man, can you imagine the debates where we gotta stare at the blank, expressionless face of Stephen Harper, and now this new Dion guy. No wonder people find politics are so boring. Too bad we don't have good ol' Jean anymore, with his crazy accent and screwed up face. Now that made politics entertaining.

9/11 Movie Confuffle

Universal Studios has been spending a lot of time and effort making a movie depicting the events that unfolded on Flight 93 which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The studio anticipated that the movie raise a few eye brows and were very careful to make sure that nothing in it was offensive to the victim's family. The stadium worked closely with the families and made sure to be sensitive to any concerns they had with the movie.

So far so good. It looked like the movie would be going ahead and be a great success. Until a bunch of New Yorkers stated to complain that they weren't completely alright with the movie. Now, I don't mean to be insensitive, but does it really involve them? Sure, New York was effected on 9/11, but hey, Canada was effected by WWII but I wasn't offended at all by all those war movies that take place over in Europe. The movie is not about the attacks on the World Trade Center, but about the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania. If the family's of the people on the plane are all right with the movie, what could the people in New York possibly be offended by?

Duff: Bad actor, bad singer, bad person

Disney's newest teenage brain-washing machine, Hilary Duff, has hopped on the bandwagon in hopes of making headlines and increasing her fame. Duff started off on the Disney show, Lizzy McGuire, but then after they found out that pre-teens will buy ANYTHING that Disney sells with this girl on it, they decided to slap together a few poorly written songs and make a CD. Although she is very untalented and does neither thing well, little teenagers will do anything and buy anything if it's trendy. Which is why it's extremely dangerous and frightening that Hilary Duff is jumping on board with Pam Anderson and Paul McCartney in protest of the seal hunt.

Little junior high kids and the majority of high school kids don't are what's right or wrong. They only care about what their celebrity icons and (shudder) Oprah thinks is right and wrong. Paul McCartney and Pam Anderson aren't really the ones that these kids are really listening to these days, but Hilary Duff... yes, most definitely. It's unfortunate that this girl can hardly spell "seal" and she's already protesting the hunt which she most definitely knows nothing about... and the kids will follow. Hilary Duff has never even been to Newfoundland, yet she seems convinced that the seal hunt is "inhumane" and "barbaric", just like McCartney told her it was.

Duff was schedualed to play at Mile One Stadium in Newfoundland a few months back, but the show was suddenly cancelled due to bad weather. Duff has now said "I am glad that [the concert] ended up being cancelled. I just wouldn't feel right being around people like that."

"People like that"?! Since when does this little priss get to judge everyone in this province based on lies fed to her? As you may have noticed, I am not a Hilary Duff fan, but I didn't like her before all this, just because she's a bad actor and a bad singer. But now that she's had a little bit of time in the spotlight and all of sudden feels all high and mighty, any little respect I had for her is gone.

An internet petition site, www.peititionspot.com , is holding a petition to kick Hilary Duff out of Hollywood. The site calls her "evil" and a "lousy wanna be singer/actress" who is "dangerous to children". Although the petition will probably never actually get her banned from Hollywood, at the very least it will give her bad press and hopefully end her atrocious career.

POG Tournament!

Ok, stop the presses! This is the biggest story of the year! Screw the seal hunt. Who cares about the Olympics? War where? Forget all this, POG is back!

Funrise Toys have revived one of the biggest fads of the late 90s, POG. A game where you stack a bunch of milk caps and throw a heavier milk cap at them.

St. John's, and all Loblaws/Dominion stores across Canada are taking part in the revived craze by holding a national POG championship. Oh yes, that's right. This Saturday, April 8th, a POG tournament will be held at various Dominion and Loblaws stores across the country. Funrise Toys has announced that they have 116 stores which have agreed to host the event on April 8th. Aside from Newport Beach in California, the only part of America which is getting in on the action is Dallas Texas, which will be holding 8 tournament throughout April and May, including one at the Dr. Pepper StarCenter, home of the Dallas Stars, which will be the largest official POG tournament in the history of the game.

It's sad that I'm this excited about something like this, but man... everyone loved POG as a kid. Although I certainly won't play in this tournament, I may certainly drop by to check it out.

Red Bull Energy Drink Sued

Popular energy drink, Red Bull, is being sued by a man who claims he was mislead by the company's slogan. He apparently took the slogan, "Red Bull gives you wings" a little too seriously, and after chugging a can of the drink, he hurled himself out of his apartment window and was shocked at the fact that he did not fly, as the cartoons on the commercials did.

How dumb is the world getting when a cartoon man cannot sprout wings and fly around without a "Warning, do not try this at home" message flashing up on the screen. Where does misleading information from a company end, and just plain stupidity from the consumer start? I would say that in this case, the consumer was miles over that line. Every little kids knows that if you do what cartoons do, nothing good can happen. Imagine if little kids thought that they could run halfway across a canyon without falling in, like Wild. E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons? It is absolutely ridiculous for people to actually expect a drink to make you grow wings and be able to fly. If I were the judge in this lawsuit case, I would award the guy no money, but give him sixty eight punches in the face for being stupid.

Despite the extreme probability of this guy actually winning his case, Red Bull has launched a new ad campaign which actually includes a warning, mostly as a joke, but also to stop any other morons from attempting this stunt.

19 Year Old Wins Lotto

Atlantic Lottery started a new game a while back called "Set For Life", where you win $1000 every week for 25 years. A 19 year old named Jamie Brophy from Corner Brook was the big winner on March 27. Apparently the lotto give you the option of either taking the $1000 every week, or you can just get one just lump sum of $675 000 right away. Of course, like all teenagers would, she opted for the big money right away.

See, I don't think I'd wanna do that. I'd blow that 675 grand pretty quickly I think, or at least be tempted to, as most would. But that $1000 a week, you're forced to wait and spend it slowly. Just watch. This girl will go out and buy $675 000 on clothes and jewelry by next week. Or, if she's really dumb, she'll just get 675 000 more lottery tickets, hoping to get lucky again.

Nah, that's not fair. I'm sure she's a smart girl who will use her money responsibly. Afterall, she spent her money on a lottery ticket, right?

What?! Coldplay isn't Canadian?

As if Pamela Answer hasn't been booed and made fun of enough over the past few days for her pathetic attempts at protesting the seal hunt, she has just reassured us of why the dumb blond stereo-type exsists. Prior to the Junos, she was asked if she would use her hosting privelage at the event to talk about the seal hunt. She replied with “I know I’m hosting the Junos, and I don’t want to say anything about this, but I didn’t realize that Chris Martin was Canadian."

Uh.. wait. Did she say that she didn't realize that Chris Martin (Coldplay front man) WAS Canadian? I didn't realize that either. I always thought that the brittish accent and bad teeth and distinctly european sounding music meant that he was from England. Hmm.. let's consult Wikipedia. Ah, yes. He is from england!

So, maybe talking isn't really your strength, Pam. Good thing you spent all that money upgrading your chest. Perhaps if you fax Stephen Harper some pictures of your boobs instead of that letter filled with false facts and just plain lies, then maybe he'll consider meeting with you.

CurlTV Covering Men's Worlds: Bad idea.

The Worlds Mens Curling championships began last Saturday, April 1st, in Lowell, Massachusetts... but who knew? The event has not received a single second of air time. Not on any television channel, not in any country. Not even the heart of curling: Canada. Why? Because if you give the Americans anything good, they'll ruin it on you. The United States was slated to host the event this year, and they sold the entire round robin coverage exclusively to CurlTV, an online sports network. But the thing is, in order to watch the games on CurlTV, you have to have a paid subscription, which can be as much as $7 US per day. To make a long story short, nobody's watching the event, and all the publicity and excitement that the sport had built up from the Olympics has now been stopped dead in its tracks. Come next season, curling will again be forgotten by all the people who are just now starting to become interested.

But, for those of you who are interested in how the event is going and aren't crazy enough to shell out a pile of money to watch curling games on your computer, here's the results so far:

1. Scotland ( 3-1)
2. USA (3-1)
3. Norway (3-2)
4. Switzerland (3-2)
5. Australia (2-2)
6. Canada (2-2)

Canada's Jean-Michel Menard has gotten off to a slow start, but is still keeping within striking distance and still a serious threat to make the playoffs and win the whole thing. The top four teams will make the playoffs.

Juno's In Halifax Tonight

The annual Juno awards ceremonies are being held tonight in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The greatest Canadian musicians and whatnot are all gathered tonight for a big show to see who's the best. Everyone's on their toes though to see if Pamela Anderson, who is the host for the evening, is going to use her air time to make some dumb comments about the seal hunt. I wrote an article earlier this week about how Pamela Anderson has jumped on the celebrity bandwagon and protested the hunt (Taitor!) But, since the event is in Nova Scotia, if she tries anything, she'll probably be booed off the stage so fast.

Although the results are in yet, I sure am pulling for our boy Rex Goudie to take home a couple of Junos. He's nominated for a few awards.

Anyways, speaking of celebrities and Pamela Anderson and the seal hunt... why are celebrities so full of themselves? Well, the "animal rights" ones anyways. They think their opinion is better than everyone else. Between Heather Mills McCartney saying that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper should join in their fight to end the seal hunt because "his last name is Harper, and they're harp seals" and Pamela Anderson saying that he should "take celebrities seriously." Let's hope she doesn't ruin a perfectly good night of Canadian music and talent.

And go Great Big Sea!!

EDIT: Pam did end up making attempts at protesting the seal hunt during the junos, and was booed by the entire stadium. Ha! Take that!

About Time!

After losing game, after game, after game, the Toronto Maple Leafs decided to give J.S. Aubin a shot between the pipes. And it has been working so far. The Leafs, although still clinging for dear life to their hopes of making the playoffs, have won three straight games. Their latest victory was against the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night. Nik Andropov contributed two goals to the five goals scored by the Leafs in the first period. The game was pretty much over after the first six minutes of the game, where the Leafs scored four unanswered goals. In fact, those goals, followed by three more, went unanswered for the entire sixty minutes of play. They went on to blow away the Sabres with a final score of 7-0. This is just the third time this season that the Leafs managed to shut out their opponent.

Seems that the Leafs do well when they're not under pressure. Surprise surprise. How many times have we seen the Leafs crumble and give up during the first or second round of the playoffs? Now that it seems nearly impossible for them to make it to the post seaons, they're unstopable. Pat Quin is better off telling his team on the first day of the season "sorry everyone, but we can't make the playoffs this season." Then bam. You got yourself a perfect season. They'd be 82-0-0 by the end of it. But would probably will be out in the first round of the playoffs. Oh well, as they say in Toronto... there's always next year.

Buying Gold

A few months before the Olympic games in Torino, Italy, the Canadian Olympic organizers promised that in the Vancouver games in 2010, Canada would be number one in the medal count. The program was named "Own The Podium" and is costing over $10 000 000. That's a lot of money to fund sports and coaching. But hey, they were close to achieving their goal of 25 medals this year, only off by one (thank you men's hockey), and in true Canadian fashion, had more fourth place finishes in the 2006 Olympics than any other country did. So, maybe that extra ten million will give them that last little shot to get them onto the podium.

The program is being funded by the Vancouver Olympic committee, the B.C. provincial government and the Canadian government. Although it's a huge amount of extra money to be pumping into sports, they have all but 10% of it already paid off, with four years to go.

But, if there's one thing we can learn from the Canadian men's hockey team, is that you can never buy gold.

Coverstory: The Brier Tankard

This is a new thing I'm starting here with Club Seals. Each month, I'll do a special feature thing on something cool. This month... you guessed it! The Brier Tankard!

This month was the Brier, Canada's (and perhaps the worlds) most elite curlers battle it out to say they're better than everyone else. But the Tankard, that big trophy they hand out at the end of it all, is old and has quite a history behind it. So, in honor of The Brier, this month's coverstory is on the Brier Tankard.


The Tankard is actually as old as the Brire itself. The very first Brier was in 1927, under the title sponsership of Macdonald Tobacco Company. That was the very first time that shiney sterling silver cup was ever handed out. The silver cup itself was hand crafted in, where else, Great Britain. To make that cup today would cost over $17 000 US.

Each year, the names of the winners were engraved on a sterling silver heart which was mounted on the base of the trophy. Once there were 27 hearts, there was no more room for more, so a single silver plaque was mounted on the back, which housed the names of another 23 championship teams. After fifty year, and fifty Briers, Macdonald ended its sponsership and the Tankard was retired... or was it?

Fastfoward 21 years. Labbatt's brewing company had been the guys in charge ever since the Tankard was retired, but now, they finally call it quites, and their ugly, yellow, beer mug statue went with them. A new title sponser, Nokia, steps in, and brings back that classic old Tankard. This time it's bigger and badder. With an expanded base, and 71 silver hearts of each winning team since 1927... a resoration project which cost the CCA nearly $10 000. But man, it's worth it.

The revival of the Tankard was huge, and even after Nokia ended its sponsership, Tim Hortons (who is the current title sponser) is keeping the Tankard as curling's top prize.

When the Tankard returned to curling, it was greeted by one of the most dominant teams the world's ever seen. The first three years of its return, Randy Ferbey and his team from Alberta won the championship. After being defeated in the finals in 2004, ruining their streak, they rebounded in 2005 to hoist the trophy for the fourth time in five years. Although Randy Ferbey has a reputation for being, well, a jerk, he must've done something right to win that many times. By the expression on his face in that picture as he counts his fingers, it seems he may have lost count.

The first ever team to have their names inscribed on the trophy were the 1927 champions from Nova Scotia, Murray Macneill, Al MacInnes, Cliff Torey, and Jim Donahoe.


And of course, the newest team to have their names printed forever in curling history, is this year's Brier in Regina, the Cinderella team from Quebec, skipped by Jean-Michel Menard (MENARD!)