Martin World News- If I were sorry edition

ITEM:  Our title story comes to us from Eurovision 2016, the continent wide music contest in which each member nation elects one singer with one song to vie against everyone else's to become... well, Eurovision champion.


This year's contest has had a LOT of controversy.  The Australian entry (yeah, EV takes into account future continental drift) almost got tossed for having the words "face time" in it, in such a way that it could have been interpreted as promoting the app FaceTime, which it was decided it did not.  Then, the Romanians were tossed because their national TV had not paid its dues in several years, and in fact couldn't, as it was teetering on bankruptcy.  Then came the great Ukraine/Russia debate.  The Ukraine entry was by a Crimean Tatar woman, driven from her homeland by the recent Russian invasion, who did a song about how the Tatars were executed or deported for "collaboration" with the Nazis when the Red Army reoccupied Crimea.  The Russians claimed the song, 1944 by Jamala, was political, a slap at the Russian occupation.  EV decided it was "historical fact" and not political.  Then the grand final came and the  дерьмо really hit the вентилятор.


You see, EV has a two-headed scoring system:  half a vote by juries of professionals from each nation, half a "televote" by fans at home.  And in combining the two, Ukraine (who finished second in each) won the contest, while the Russians (who won the fan vote), who were the bookies' favorites, finished third.  One Russian government official claimed Ukraine was the winner because nobody likes Russia.  Well, if the shoe fits, yes, you ARE sorry.

I listened to the top 8, and this is how I saw it:

(NOTE:  I was planning to put up links, but I just learned that EV has pulled all the official videos from YouTube because they aren't "allowed in our country."  Yes, rights owners, you ARE sorry.)

1- Australia's Demi Im with "Sound of Silence".  It was #2 overall, getting 1 from the jury and 4 from the audience.

2- France's Amir with "J'ai Chereche",6 overall, the jury #3 and fan #9.

3- Bulgaria's Poli Genova with "If Love Was A Crime", 4 overall, 7 Jury, 5 fan.

4- Armenia's Iveta Mukuchyan with "Lovewave", 7 overall with a 10 jury and 7 fan.

5- "1944", and you know the stats.

6- Russia's Sergey Lazarev with "You Are The Only One", who got the #1 from the fans but only a 5th from the jury.  I thought he was really cocky and smug in his performance.  Shouldn't have went by the bookies.

7- Poland's Michał Szpak with "Color Of Your Life".  the #8 overall, he was 3rd on the fans but a much more reasonable IMHO 23rd by the jury.

And that brings us to the title theme of this post.  The #5 overall (9 jury, 6 fans) was hometown boy (finals were in Stockholm, Sweden) Frans with "If I Were Sorry".  I listened to about 45 seconds before I said, yes, you ARE sorry.  The song was half sung poorly, half mumbled incoherently, and Frans resembled a love child of Shaggy and Velma's who, if he weren't under the influence of marijuana, he SHOULDA been.  I didn't even rank it an 8th;  my board simply lists it as "sucked".  In fairness, I had Laurie listen, and she had a look of absolute horror on her face.  SHADY NOTE:  If you look up any of these (you'll like Poli Genova, and the Armenian girl), do NOT look up this one.  You have been warned.

Frans, you ARE sorry.
"But wait, is Scooby my mom?"

ITEM:  Openly gay "Pastor" from Texas Jordan Brown has admitted now that his lawsuit against Whole Foods was a hoax.  If you haven't followed this, He allegedly bought a cake decorated with "Love Wins" at WF, which he says he took home and it said, "Love wins, fag."  However, he made the mistake of showing his altered cake online, where sharp eyed viewers noticed the sticker that WF seals the box with had been moved, and the "fag" was in a different color.  He also failed to note that the baker explicitly blamed in his lawsuit was a member of the LGBT community.

“I want to apologize to Whole Foods and its team members for questioning the company’s commitment to its values, and especially the baker associate who I understand was put in a terrible position because of my actions,” Brown said in the statement.

“I apologize to the LGBT community for diverting attention from real issues. I also want to apologize to my partner, my family, my church family, and my attorney.”

Funny that a PASTOR, whose first allegiance SHOULD be to God, apologized not once to his Creator.  Well, when you consider that this "pastor" openly admits to being the unrepentant committer of a sin against God's word, well, whether you consider it a sin yourself, you have to admit that a player that deviates from the playbook already has at least one big hole in his credibility.  And he just admitted to another.  Jordan Brown, you ARE sorry.


ITEM:  So the "prestigious" New York Times ran a lengthy article Sunday titled,  “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private.”  In this anti-Trump piece, they relied heavily on an interview with model Rowanne Brewer, whom they presented as someone who had been "debased" by Trump.  However, the model was on Fox and Friends Monday, and blew a BIG hole amidships the story:

“He never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way,” she said, calling the article “very upsetting.”

“The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across … that it would not be a hit piece,” she said. “That my story would come across the way that I was telling it … and it absolutely was not.”


The times, for their part:  In a written statement, a New York Times spokesperson also said: "Ms. Brewer Lane was quoted fairly, accurately and at length.  So no, "I'm sorry for telling a tilted truth.  Do you expect anything else from "America's Newspaper"?  NYT, you ARE sorry.


ITEM:  One Senator who is no flake is Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Az.  He recently released a report about the 20 questions Congress should ask before appropriating money for "research" projects, and gave several examples of projects that wouldn't have seen the light of day had they been held up to his standard.  Here they are:

-One Michael Smith drew from a $1 million grant to Cornell University, in which he allowed bees to sting him in 25 different places on his body in order to find out "where it hurts the worse to be stung."  For the record, he listed the top five worst were the nostril, upper lip, penis, and a tie between his scrotum, palm, cheek, and armpit.

- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a Pentagon offshoot, drew from a $172,000 grant to Cal- Santa Barbara to learn why "coffee spills from your cup while walking."  Obviously a big problem at the DOD.

- How about a $50,000 National Science Foundation grant to learn if you can tell a Republican from a Democrat by looking at their face?  The UCLA researchers basically learned what conservative meme-makers have known for a long time- the more feminine a woman congressman looks, the more likely she's a Republican- with the effect increasing with the conservative bent to her voting record.

A telling example?

- Drunken birds slur when they sing.  Really?

Like drunks at a karaoke bar, inebriated birds slur when they sing, according to research
supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The project examined the impact of alcohol on the speech impairment of birds was conducted by the Oregon Health & Science University with funding provided from three separate NIH grants totaling more than $5 million.
The birds in the study, zebra finches, were served and mixed drinks made of white grape
juice and ethanol.   The cocktails had “about six percent alcohol concentration, similar to many
commercial beers.”
“We just showed up in the morning and mixed a little bit of juice with 6 percent alcohol,
and put it in their water bottles and put it in the cages,” explains Christopher Olson. “At first we
were thinking that they wouldn’t drink on their own because, you know, a lot of animals just
won’t touch the stuff. But they seem to tolerate it pretty well and be somewhat willing to
consume it.”
“Zebra finches will consume alcohol when it is provided to them, resulting in elevated
blood ethanol content (BEC),” the researchers note. “We found that when zebra finches drink
alcohol, they can reach BECs comparable to those commonly seen in humans, which
measurably affects their song.”

They went on to note that one of the birds observed bordered on "binge drinking".

- An NIH study decided to blow $3.5 million in grants to figure out why people see the "face of Jesus" on slices of toast.

-Another NSF study blew $855,000 to find out that conservatives are more likely to be disgusted by, say, watching a man chewing a mouthful of worms, than liberals.  And again, $390,000 to find out how many shakes it takes various animals to get dry.  They ranged from 5 times for a bear to 30 for a mouse.

-NSF again: $1.1 million to learn if  a cheerleader perceived to be "hot" as a member of the squad is still "hot" when separated from the group.

There are many, many more on Flake's report; I'll feature them in a future report.  But believe me, they ARE sorry.

ITEM:  One last "you Are sorry", and it goes to a group of turkey vultures who decided to buzz bomb Scrappy and I Friday.

They were circling low... "How low were they?"  Well, I'll tell you.  One of them was coming dead at us so low he and I were looking right into each other's eyes- until he noticed he was heading straight for the lowest of the wires on the nearby high-tension towers, abruptly did an, "Oh crap" in mid-flight, and nearly crashed trying to adjust his glide just a bit higher.  If there was ever a better example of life-imitating-cartoons that didn't directly involve Scrappy, I've not seen it.