Martin World News

Gotta get Bobby G to put Poophead the Buffalo and the groundhog-in-a-tube on here too, somehow...

ITEM:  For those of you that enjoy the Scrappy walks, I have someone for you to meet.  She goes by Brea in my comments section and does her thing at Real Housewife of North Idaho.  Not only did our walks inspire a hiking day of her own, not only did she post pics of her excellent trip on said blog, but she pimped me out in doing it!  So get your butts over there and hit the "follow" button!  Don't be a poophead!

ITEM:  I saw on Epoch Times 9 ways to stop overeating, an article by certified health coach Kerry Bajaj.  He had some ideas that would work for me- and some not so much.  I thought I'd share them for your perusal.

1- Eat more.  WTH?  He means, don't skip some meals and eat anything that moves the next one.  Eat a little breakfast, have healthy snacks in between.  He'd flunk me bad on this one.  Not likely to change much, either.

2- Eat whole foods.  Apparently they fill you up quicker.  Again, not a biog member of the Martin Menu Club.

3- Eat healthy fats.  He suggests, "avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, almond butter, coconut butter, grass-fed butter, salmon, sardines, nuts and seeds".  Outside of salmon and sardines, I'm not sensing tongue appeal.  Except maybe the butter, but I don't know how to go about getting my butter to eat grass.

4- Fill up on fiber.  I tried switching my fiber pill intake to evenings to keep me out of the fridge, but a whopping two days of attempts with no result made me go back to habit.  Bajaj says he puts a 1/4 cup of chia seeds in his smoothies.  Uh... not liking the concept of "chia colon."

5- Include bitter flavors.  He suggests this as a means of curbing sweets cravings.  He suggests sauerkraut or kimchee.  Kimchee doesn't curb your taste for anything- it burns it right off your tongue!

6- Hydrate.  Now here's one I've actually had some luck with.  Snack craving?  Bury it in a tall glass of water.  If it can't breathe, it can't crave.

7- Identify the foods that trigger a binge.  Got that one, too.  Dinner means salty, which triggers sweet.  HoHo takes care of sweet, which triggers salty.  Out comes the cheese.  Been eating healthy snack bars after dinner to tamp that down.  At least I think they're healthy,

8-  Take a break from alcohol.  He says some people have a think about eating while drinking.  For me that only ever occurred when it was a "throw something solid down there before you barf" moment, and since I don't do that no more...

9- Intentionally eat in full view of other people.  Thought being that you eat differently when someone else's watching.  I kinda doubt the efficacy of that one with me.

ITEM:  On the subject of weight loss, here's a headline from FoxNews that should, IMHO, go without saying:

Caffeine-infused underwear not a weight loss aid, US regulators say

Apparently two companies were applying the PT Barnum rule to idiots who thought that this was a viable concept.  And apparently there were enough idiots to make it work for a while...

In the case of Oregon-based Norm Thompson, the company sold clothing made with Lytess brand fabric infused with caffeine which, the company said, would break down fat.
"Slimming and firming results are visible in under a month," the company said in one advertisement the commission quoted in its complaint.
Wacoal America, based in New Jersey, also advertised that its clothing had microcapsules with caffeine, vitamin E and other chemicals that it said led to weight loss. In one ad, it cited the "revolutionary iPant new shapewear that works with your body to eliminate cellulite," the FTC said.


The two will be issuing about a million and a half bucks in refunds as a result.  Frankly, the FTC should have just sent out a few thousand postcards reading, "caveat emptor."


ITEM:  Still on the subject of food:

A road tunnel in Norway has been closed - by a lorry-load of burning cheese.

About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese - a delicacy known as Brunost - caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.
The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said.
The tunnel - which is said to be badly damaged - is likely to remain closed for several weeks, they added.
"We can't go in until it's safe," geologist Viggo Aronsen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

Police officer Viggo Berg said the high concentration of fat and sugar in the cheese made it burn "almost like petrol if it gets hot enough".

Cheese.com says, "Brunost is served thinly sliced on rye toast or crisp bread. It is considered healthy because of its high content of iron, calcium and B vitamins."  Hopefully there was a truckload of rye right behind the cheese truck.


ITEM:  The headline is "Ugandans baffled by sleeping ministers"...

Kampala, Uganda - At the most recent state-of-the-nation address, Uganda's second deputy prime minister wore sunglasses too dark to enable anyone to see whether his eyes were open or closed. 
Moses Ali, 74, is one of the cabinet ministers who seem to have improvised a way to escape the scrutiny of nosy media cameras that have on several occasions caught senior government officials and MPs dozing when the president is delivering his address and when the national budget is read. 
It all started four years ago when a local tabloid splashed the pictures of sleeping ministers and MPs on its front page as President Yoweri Museveni delivered his address to the country.
The paper's headline on the day was "Sleeping Nation". (Courtesy Al-Jazeera)


My only question is, "Why are they baffled?"


ITEM: Tired of your team playing in a crappy arena?  You could be in Oakland... and I'm not talking the O.Co Coliseum for a change...

The Golden State Warriors want their fans to know that their team won't be playing in an arena soon to be known as the "The Bowl."

The Warriors assured fans their team won't be playing in an arena that looks like a giant toilet.

Renderings from Manica Architecture, the lead designer of the Warriors' new arena, presented Thursday at the local citizens advisory committee went viral and made national news earlier this week after a San Francisco real estate blog called attention to the fact that it looked like a giant toilet bowl.
"This was presented at the meeting as very much a work in progress so that we could put the size of the building in context," Warriors spokesman P.J. Johnston told ESPN.com. "In the next few months, we will continue to show much more and the arena design will continue to be refined."


All I will add, is it appears they will have a roof that opens and closes, a first for a basketball arena to my knowledge.


ITEM:  And finally, from the "Hall of Fame, Lame Excuses Wing":


MIDDLETOWN, Pa. (AP) — Police in Pennsylvania say a man accused of shooting a bullet through a neighbor's window told a judge he fired the gun because it was the only way he knew how to unload it.
Middletown Detective Patrick Nicastro tells the Bucks County Courier Times (http://bit.ly/1CwbE81) that 31-year-old George Byrd IV of Penndel at first denied being behind the shooting but then acknowledged during his arraignment that he fired the weapon to clear the chamber because he was unfamiliar with guns.
Authorities say Byrd fired the gun early Friday afternoon in the suburban Philadelphia community. No one was injured.
Byrd is being held in the Bucks County jail on $20,000 bond. 


And with that, another sun sets upon the halls of stupidity.