Although the crux of the plan is clearly the G-20’s commitment to release an additional $850 billion in support of emerging markets and developing countries, the organization sought an additional, symbolic way to underscore its commitment to the Third World.

A range of ideas was discussed, from inviting increased, non-voting participation from Third World tyrants to hosting a “Live Aid” style series of rock concerts throughout the 20 countries.

But ultimately, the organization settled on a move they think will have even more symbolic impact: staging the summit for the first time ever in the Third World – in this case, Pittsburgh.

“We wanted to emphatically, empathically and unequivocally signal our solidarity with the struggling people of the Third World,” said Simon Guiltprowess, a spokesman for the Central Bank of England and de facto spokesman for the G-20. “Clearly, by hosting the conference in the very bowels of the Third World, the G-20 is putting its money where its mouth is.”

Summit participants are warned to stay away from neighborhoods like this one in the troubled Heinz Field district.

Guiltprowess said the organization had to plan for a host of challenges it does not face in advance of summits held in a routine locations like Geneva, Paris, London or Berlin, citing such efforts as “proof positive” of its commitment to the Third World.

Aside from security concerns, the G-20’s advance planners had to secure potable water, indoor plumbing and electricity, he said.

“Our logistics team did a great job,” said Guiltprowess. “They made arrangements with the host hotel to temporarily upgrade its water, plumbing and power capabilities. In addition, they reached out to the local regime in Pittsburgh to construct a temporary landing strip that will allow any of our members who might encounter health problems to be medevaced back to the developed world – to Philadelphia, for example.”

“Many of our members are old and frail,” he added. “It’s important that they have access to modern health care at all times, or at least to be within a short flight of it.”

For its part, Guiltprowess said the G-20 required attendees of the summit to undergo a vigorous cultural crash course that will allow them to more sensitively interact with locals.

“We found a great cultural sensitivity consulting group that really put our guys through the ringer,” he said. “For example, we learned that we shouldn’t be offended if the locals expose themselves or even relieve themselves in public – this is a common way to express deference or even fear in Pittsburgh, and the visitor should respond by keeping their hands visible, avoiding prolonged eye contact and speaking in soft, soothing, monosyllabic words or grunts.”

Although G-20 delegates are free and even encouraged to explore the general Pittsburgh milieu, one area is “absolutely” off limits, according to Guiltprowess: Heinz Field. An excerpt from a special travel advisory issued by the G-20 Pittsburgh explains why:

“Sports, in particularly American Football, is one of the rare perceived success stories in this forgotten corner of civilization. Residents of Pittsburgh quickly become agitated at the slightest real or imagined threat to the perceived position of hegemony ascribed to the local representative of American Football.

“Crime, typically staged by clans of street children or armed thugs, represents the most severe threat to foreign visitors to the Heinz Field district. Offenses typically include muggings, robberies, sexual assault and carjackings. Vehicles should be locked at all times, especially when stalled in heavy traffic, because of the risk of carjacking. The G-20 has received reports of armed criminals bushwhacking vehicles, especially on egress routes from the district. Because of a chronic lack of resources, local law enforcement are frequently incapable of rendering assistance during emergencies and in any case often side with the aggressors.

“In-country G-20 representatives should take precautions for their well-being. This includes keeping a high level of situational awareness, keeping a distance from crowds and generally maintaining a low profile. Do not fall into observable patterns and take care that all travel documents are current as a quick exit from Pittsburgh may be necessary with little notice. Few countries have formal diplomatic missions with Pittsburgh, and visitors should register with their home government to leave a clear record of their travel to Pittsburgh in the event of a crisis. Most importantly, take great care to avoid piercing the illusion that the local NFL football team is anything less than the most important aspect of existence. Doing otherwise can quickly lead to rapidly escalating violence that will only increase, not subside, in the face of reason.

The Pittsburgh G-20 summit begins Sept. 24 and ends Sept. 25.

Originally posted 2009-08-18 20:27:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Mendenhall made the announcement amid social media outbursts in which he criticized Americans for supporting the killing of 9-11 Mastermind Osama bin Laden and expressed doubt that bin Laden was behind the attacks and that a “plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”

After receiving a less-than-surprising barrage of criticism, Mendenhall unleashed an even bigger bombshell: “I’m outta here,” he tweeted. “Goin’ to ball with some straight up hard-core playas in Afghanistan.”

In an interview, Mendenhall’s agent explained that the player was not unpatriotic, but just had a soft spot for “the underdog.”

“Just like his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers never get the respect they so dearly deserve, neither does Al Qaeda,” he explained. “With so much in common, and with the NFL season in question anyway, Rashard just felt it was the right time to exchange some best practices with some of the toughest men in the world.”

At the ‘Qaeda camps, Mendenhall will focus on his ball-handling struggles; he has arranged to sprint through a live minefield while carrying a football and having rocket-propelled grenades fired just over his head.

In return, Mendenhall will donate several thousand “Terrible Towels” to the struggling ‘Qaeda terrorist cell, which plans to use them for a much-needed change of underwear.

The State Department could not be reached to comment on Mendenhall’s planned trip, including the legality of it.

They cite famed dog killer and Philadelphia star quarterback Michael Vick’s early boot from NFL postseason play as a precipitating event that could undo much of the PR gains the sport fought so hard to accomplish under Vick’s endorsement over the past year.

And, as Pittsburgh advances to the Super Bowl, they loathe the resurgence of their sport’s most bitter rival: rape. Pittsburgh is led by accomplished coed rapist and two-time Super Bowl Champion quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

“Michael’s defeat in the playoffs was a black swan event, a real script reverser,” frets Rick Haliburton, a retired champion dog killer who now writes a column on the sport for ESPN. “Everything was going full bore when Mike kept winning. When he lost so suddenly in the playoffs, some folks sort of had the blinders ripped right off.”

Haliburton said Vick’s early exit will especially harm recruiting efforts aimed at middle school children, a population the sport views vital to its long-term relevancy.

“There’s no longer any doubt that NFL players are the most important role models in a child’s life. So we worry not only about kids thinking dog fighting doesn’t offer them a future, we also worry will they look to rape to fill that void. The competition for kids’ hearts and minds is really tough out there. Now I know what Joe Camel went through.”

Michael Vick hopes to become the first athlete to win a Super Bowl and the Ballers' Cup, pro dog fighting's highest honor

“We as a sport came to rely on Vick’s winning dynamic,” he continued. “In the eyes of the modern parent, when an athlete wins, all of his behavior is virtuous by definition. Mike created a vital halo effect for us, and it’s going to be tough to recover.”

Initially, some expressed outrage at Vick’s heinous torture of dogs. But when he began unexpectedly winning games after his return from his token prison term, he – and dog fighting – became more popular than before his supposed fall from grace.

“It’s just a really neat example of moral relativism,” noted sports psychotherapist Winifred Simpson. “The more he won, the more compelling dog fighting apologists like Colin Cowherd became. The argument evolved from ‘It’s ok that he tortured dogs because he’s a winner’ to ‘If I torture dogs, I can be a winner.’ It’s going to be a big loss to the dog fighting industry if this line of reasoning gets dialed back a level or worse.”

But Haliburton says the industry hasn’t given up hope yet. They are holding out hope that Vick can sill capture the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award, and are lobbying to have a new annual award, Most Valuable Dog Fighter, initiated.

They are also launching social media campaigns, school fliers and even a children’s book that focus on Vick’s storied comeback in 2010, especially his historic victory against Washington, in which he became the first quarterback in history to pass for three touchdowns and rush for two in the first half of a game, and his comeback win over Washington, when he joined forces with Giants punter Matt Dodge to help Philadelphia overcome a 21-point deficit in the fourth quarter.

“The message to fans is the only difference between you and Mike Vick is that you don’t dogfight. Only you can change that. After that, the sky’s the limit.”

Originally posted 2011-01-25 22:35:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Merriam Webster went a long way in answering that age-old question when it revealed its “Word of the Summer”: “refudiate.”

“Refudiate” is the rogue word that former maverick political contender Sarah Palin invoked in quick succession earlier this year – once on a news show and once on her hyperactive “Twitter” feed.

The serendipitous neologism struck such a chord with the masses that, scant months later, it has been officially enshrined as the summer’s most-searched “word” by users of Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.

Sarah Palin sometimes uses her palm to keep track of the neologisms she creates.

While Palin insisted she had coined the utterance in a conscious effort to improve the English language, comparing herself to the father of English literature in the process, no such ready-made excuse exists to explain why hordes of Americans continue to look up something that is not a real word with such mule-brained persistence that it has surpassed all real words in popularity.

People who are perplexed by such an irony are “missing the point and over-thinking things,” said Professor Jerumbiah Hopscotch, who teaches relative linguistics at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute of Pittsburgh, which also offers online degrees to the general public. “The very fact that ‘refudiate’ has been searched more than any real word simply means we’re celebrating the birth of a brand new baby word, for real. That’s how language evolves. There ain’t no rules.”

“Make sure you spell ‘Jerumbiah’ right,” he added. “There’s a ‘u’ and a ‘d’ in there.”

Others disagreed.

“We’re talking about a populace that is uncomfortable above the sixth-grade reading level, a populace in which a quarter don’t know where the U.S. gained its independence from and more than half can’t find New York on a map,” noted Lawrence Killjoy, a former public school teacher who was dismissed for using standardized testing.

“Declaring ‘refudiate’ a word is not just tyranny of the majority, it’s tyranny of the mediocrity. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like our immigration policy – get enough people to break the rules and eventually the rules just go away.”

Experts have generally ceded the battle to maintain any semblance of integrity in the English language, pointing to other officially accepted absurdities like “za,” “ginormous,” “Twitter,” “Tweet,” and “guesstimate.”

“Imagine it. The French get upset with loanwords like ‘le weekend’ creeping into their language and we happily accept a horror like ‘staycation,’” said Killjoy.

“You can’t stop this encroachment of worthless garbage, you can only hope to contain it,” said Bill Wilson. Wilson is not a member of academia – he’s a plumber who happens to speak competent English, which, in addition to placing him among an extreme minority, qualifies him to be an expert.

“The big difference is Social Media,” Wilson said. “In Shakespeare’s time, a new word would have had to stand the smell test, would have been mulled for several decades at least as it was passed around. Today, with real-time tweets and twats, coupled with ADD, garbage like ‘friended’ can spread like a weaponized strain of Ebola.

“I refuke it!”

Note: “refuke” is a new word that was invented during the preparation of this story. It is a combination of “rebuke,” which means to censure severely or angrily, and “refute,” which means to prove to be false or incorrect.

“It was awful,” the Pittsburgh Steelers’ star quarterback told reporters at a hastily called press-conference. “I was so scared.”

In a statement taken by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, Roethlisberger claims he was by himself drinking a beer at a local bar when he noticed himself in the bar mirror across from him. “I saw myself, and I guess I got a little starry eyed. I mean, I AM Ben Roethlisberger,” said Big Ben. “Then I noticed myself wink at me, and at that point I probably should have just left. But I was so intimidated by myself, I couldn’t find the will to move. Next thing I know, I’m buying myself drink after drink after drink. And it just got worse from there.”

The bartender on duty, Lisa Lichtenstein, says she noted something was amiss after she served Roethlisberger his fifth round of two-fisted drafts. “Something didn’t seem right,” said Lichtenstein. “I could tell he was getting very uneasy with himself, you know, like he was getting really uncomfortable with the whole situation. Knowing what I know now, I shoulda seen what happened coming, but I guess it was easier to just not get involved.”

Big Ben struggles to contain his lust - for himself.

Lichtenstein says Roethlisberger announced after his twelfth beer that he had to go to the john. “He said he had to take a whiz, and then he says this: ‘I really should be going, my friends will be worried about me.’ He could barely walk, stumblin’ all over the place, knocking over chairs. That’s when I just knew this wasn’t going to end good,” said Lichtensetin. “But I wasn’t about to try to tackle him. You ever seen guys try to tackle him?” Eventually, Roethlisberger got himself alone in the bar’s men’s room, and that’s when the assault allegedly occurred.

Roethlisberger told police that once he entered the bathroom, he unzipped his jeans, presented his member to himself, and forced himself to perform various illicit acts. “It was a nightmare!” said Roethlisberger. “I was absolutely out of control! I made myself do unspeakable things! Things that will be indilible … indel– … indulib- ….  things that I’ll never ever get out of my head again.”

Roethlisberger says he was nervous about filing the report. “You just never know how you’ll be treated by the media when you accuse a star athlete of a crime,” he said. “But in the end, I know I have a responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen again to someone else. The nightmare MUST … STOP … HERE!”

After making that statement, Roethlisberger tearfully stormed from the podium, and headed for the door, pausing just long enough to dry-hump a female intern for the Post-Gazette on his way out. Police say they are still investigating and haven’t decided whether to press charges, but in a strange twist, Roethlisberger has now been interviewed by both a police detective AND victims assistance counselor. But regardless of whether criminal charges are filed, Roethlisberger says he intends to file a civil suit. “Absolutely, I plan on taking myself to court. I’m going to pay for what I did to myself, one way or the other. I cannot let myself think I am above the law.”

For his part, NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, says the league intends to investigate the allegations. “But not too much,” said Goodell. “I mean, you know … ick.”

Originally posted 2010-05-06 14:02:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

When engorged with Iron City and enraged by a Steeler loss, the male Steeler fan can be very dangerous to his rutting partner and others. Experts recommend maintaining at least a quarter-mile distance.

Earlier in the day, the Pittsburgh Steelers suffered an embarrassing, overtime loss to the struggling Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs improved to 3-7 while the Steelers dropped to 6-4, in the process losing two-time Superbowl phenom and acromegalic hobbit quarterback “Big Ben” Roethlisburger to an injury to his already-overclocked dome.

“It wasn’t looking good,” said Merriweather Clark-Figgins, a counselor for Smiling Tears, the city’s largest drop-in shelter for battered women. “We knew wives throughout Steeler Nation were in danger of some pretty serious abuse in light of today’s disaster on the gridiron, but the one thing we had going for us was that the Bengals played in the late game. That gave our menfolk some hope, some time to restock on Iron City beer and to root for the Raiders.”

Sure enough, the Bengals, who have defeated the Steelers twice this season, handed the game to the bottom-feeding Oakland Raiders, delighting the home-crowd thugs in Silver and Black with 10 points in 33 seconds.

“We can’t thank the Raiders enough. Thanks to their heroics, or I should say thanks to taking advantage of the favors the Bengals handed them, our understandably frustrated men used open hands rather than clenched fists when administering the customary beatings that take place on Stealer-loss Sundays once the Iron City runs out.

“For a minute there, you’d have thought the Steelers won the Super Bowl, they were so excited with the Raider victory. But most of them quickly remembered that their team had also lost to a horrible team, and it was on.”

Clark-Figgins, who was interviewed at her home and kept her eyes nervously glued to the closed door of her bedroom during the entire session, added, “I want to make clear that open hands are a walk in the park compared to clenched fists. Go Raiders!”

Originally posted 2009-11-23 19:07:16. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

A week later, dozens of protesters remain in the hospital after being subjected to the cutting-edge sonic weapon. Observers blame law enforcement’s decision to use amplified bursts of musical efforts by puerile rock band Nickelback instead of its usual arsenal of 150-decible car alarm-like sounds. The injuries, both physical and mental, are the worst ever recorded in the short history of the weapon, known as the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).

LRAD works by projecting a cone of annoying sound up to two miles. At close range, it can register 150 decibels – louder than a jet engine.

The ACLU and other legal groups denounced authorities for what  they perceive as overkill.

“We’re not against the weapon per se,” said Feral Junk Poem, sub-junior analyst with the ACLU’s anti-law enforcement office for its Western Pennsylvania division. “What we question is why, when it was clear that these peaceful protesters were already dispersing, law enforcement sadistically increased the level of force from screaming car alarms to Nickelback.”

When you hear this sound, be afraid. Be very afraid ...

Law enforcement, however, tells a different story. “We had given them about two minutes of the standard high-pitched noise,” said Rectal “Whim” Boil, assistant chief with the regional counterterror task force that held tactical command during the event. “But they kept coming, kept throwing bricks and such at us. So we had no choice but to go to the Nickelback.”

Medical experts and music critics alike warned of the dangers of even brief encounters with Nickelback music. Dr. Emphatic Learner, non-managing director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said, “Exposure to Nickelback for any period of time is contraindicated for anyone, but this is particularly so in children under seven, the elderly and anyone with a weakened immune system.”

Prehensile Newt, a music critic with Allmusic, said, “Using evolution among primates as an analogy to the music industry, Nickelback are still living in the trees. They haven’t figured out how to walk upright yet, and their efforts to do so are downright dangerous.”

Assistant Chief Boil said roughly 17 people remained in area hospitals. Most were being treated for auditory difficulties, severe nausea and dehydration and all would require “long term counseling” once they recovered from their physical ailments, he said. One had suffered a permanent loss of vision, which doctors cannot yet explain, he added.

Still, Boil maintains things could have been much worse. “If the crowd didn’t relent, we were ready to launch some Celine Dion songs,” he said soberly. “That would have been very, very bad, but at the end of the day, you have to use force commensurate with the threat.”

Meanwhile, an attorney for Nickelback says the band is exploring its legal options in light of the fact that authorities apparently used unlicensed tracks rather than entire albums in their assaults, which she said raised “dangerous reminders” of Napster-like copyright issues.

Originally posted 2009-10-05 10:28:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Reed, who entered the men’s room of a Sheetz store around 3 a.m. Saturday morning, became enraged during his visit, bellowing profanity from within the restroom and during his removal from the premises. He also attacked the empty towel dispenser, punching it and delivering several devastating blows with his million-dollar foot-cannon.

Initially, many in this iconic small town, which is nestled along the Shenango river east of Pittsburgh, chalked up the incident to yet another steroids-fuelled outburst by a self-entitled sports diva.

“3 a.m., the public restroom at the New Alexandria Sheetz, an NFL kicker who looks like he passed out headfirst in a barrel of peroxide and an attack on a defenseless paper towel dispenser – I can’t recall a more textbook case of ”roids rage’,” said first responder Fern Teasel, a Pennsylvania State trooper.

Sheetz, site of Reed

While steroids surely helped fuel the tantrum, new details emerged during a tearful press conference today that may help explain why the world-champ kicker was so furious.

“We were cruising down Route 22 on my buddy’s motorcycle and I had just finished like my 12th Grey Goose, Red Bull and Deca shooter – uh, it’s a propietary mix my doctor prescribes to keep my legs limber during the offseason,” Reed said. “I wasn’t driving,” he quickly added.

“Anyway, all of a sudden, nature called, and when I say she called, I mean she was using a bullhorn and talking number two – maybe even number three, if there’s such a thing.”

Reed said that he spotted the Sheetz store and asked the driver, whom he has refused to name but has described as “the second-youngest or maybe youngest ever quarterback to win a Superbowl – something like that,” to pull over.

“I ran into the men’s room, and everything just happened so quick. I didn’t have time to notice they was out of everything – toilet paper, towels, everything,” Reed said, beginning to break down.

After the kicker emptied his bowels in the general direction of the toilet, he says he got up to “light a match and get cleaned up.”

But the restroom was devoid of all paper. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t walk out like that, and I sure as heckfire wasn’t going to use my hands. So I had no choice but to use the Terrible Towel I always carry with me.

Terrible Towels are yellow rags that resemble NFL penalty flags. Steeler fans enjoy waving them during games, obstructing the view of friend and foe alike, and often react emotionally and even violently to any perceived insult to the Towels. In Pittsburgh, they are fatuously believed to transcend marketing material and to be superior to the combined merchandise of every other team in all of combined sports.

“At first, I thought ‘no big deal,’ I mean they’re kind of a nasty yellow color anyway, and the stuff that I was dealing with really didn’t show up that much against it.”

But the kicker says he then thought of all the “millions – maybe billions” of Steeler fans out there who “invest everything in those towels.”

“Our towels are different than the fan stuff the other 31, 41 whatever teams have,” said Reed. “The Pittsburgh Steeler Terrible Towels are the only authentic memorabilia in the league. Everyone else’s stuff is just marketing gimmicks. Sometimes I forget that, because it’s hard to tell the difference, but then I remember. And when I remembered this weekend in that men’s room, I just lost it.”

Reed says he respectfully folded and pocketed the heavily soiled towel and then began his attack on the dispenser. “If that dispenser had been full, like it should have been, this tragedy could have been avoided. I really feel like I was provoked.”

State police and NFL officials both said no action would be taken over the kicker’s apparent use of steroids. “That would tarnish the accomplishments of the Steelers, and we can’t have that,” said Earnest Elf, a spokesperson with the local chapter of the Pennsylvania State Troopers.

Fetal Sneer, a spokesperson for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, agreed. “We can’t allow an ‘idiot kicker’ to scandalize this great team. That wouldn’t be good for the Steelers, and what’s not good for the Steelers is clearly not good for the league.”

Reed’s disorderly conduct charge remains pending.

Originally posted 2009-02-17 16:17:28. Republished by Blog Post Promoter