No Sweatpants in Public: Inside the Rule Books for N.F.L. Cheerleaders
By Ken Belson
Photographs by Associated Press and Getty Images
Cheerleaders for the Carolina Panthers, known as the TopCats, must arrive at the stadium on game days at least five hours before kickoff. Body piercings and tattoos must be removed or covered. Water breaks can be taken only when the Panthers are on offense. TopCats must leave the stadium to change into their personal attire.
Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders were subject to regular weigh-ins and are expected to “maintain ideal body weight,” according to a handbook from 2009. The Cincinnati Ben-Gals were even more precise in recent years: Cheerleaders had to be within three pounds of their “ideal weight.”
Some cheerleaders must pay hundreds of dollars for their uniforms, yet are paid little more than minimum wage. Cheerleaders must sell raffle tickets and calendars and appear at charity events and golf tournaments, yet they receive none of the proceeds. Cheerleader handbooks, seven of which have been reviewed by The New York Times, include personal hygiene tips, like shaving techniques and the proper use of tampons. In some cases, wearing sweatpants in public is forbidden.
Super Cow
Cow escapes on way to slaughterhouse, smashes through metal fence, breaks arm of man trying to catch her then swims to safety on island in lake
Local politician reportedly agrees to let animal live after its ordeal captures public attention
Wczoraj zamieściłem wpis o krowie-bohaterce, która zwiała z transportu do rzeźni i od trzech tygodni przemieszcza się w okolicach Jeziora Nyskiego. Uciekała bohatersko i wpław przedostała się na wyspę na środku jeziora, gdzie pozostaje do dziś. Nie uległa strażakom, którzy chcieli ja przetransportować łodzią i wciąż trwa na polu walki. Nadmienię, ze Pan Łukasz- właściciel krowy- od trzech tygodnie codziennie dostarcza na wyspę żywność dla zwierzęcia. Nie jestem wegetarianine…
A cow has been living alone on an island, attacking anyone who comes near, after staging a miraculous escape on its way to a slaughterhouse.
The animal made its bid for safety last month after it refused to get into a lorry taking it to be killed for meat. Instead it rammed a metal fence before making a dash for the nearby Lake Nysa, south Poland.
After the cow’s owner, known only as Mr Lukasz, attempted to get it back to the farm, the cow broke one of his worker’s arms, according to Polish news show Wiadomosci.
It then entered the water and swam to one of the islands in the middle of the lake. Mr Lukasz said he even saw it dive underwater on its way.
Vigil For Torched Taco Bell
Alabama residents hold candlelight vigil for Taco Bell that burned down
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WJBK) – Residents of Montgomery, Alabama said goodbye to a beloved landmark
They gathered for a vigil to share their memories of a Taco Bell that is no more. The restaurant burned down last week.
Frequent customers took to Facebook saying they were going to have a candlelight vigil to “Stand together in the loss of our beloved Taco Bell.”
Cleveland Browns Implicated In Fan’s Death
Ohio Man’s Obituary Blames Browns For His Demise
HURON, OH (AP) – An Ohio man’s tongue-in-cheek obituary blames the winless Cleveland Browns for contributing to his demise.
The obituary published in the Sandusky Register says Paul Stark died Wednesday at a hospice facility after a brief illness “exacerbated by the hopeless condition of the Cleveland Browns.”
The football team was 1-15 last season and 0-15 this year ahead of Sunday’s finale in Pittsburgh.
Chip Hack
Employee used crisp packet as ‘Faraday cage’ to hide his whereabouts during work
A man in Australia was sacked after he relied on a 180-year-old scientific discovery to help prevent his colleagues discovering his whereabouts while he played golf during work hours.
Tom Colella, a 60-year-old electrician in Perth, lost his job after an anonymous letter to his firm claimed that he left work to play golf at least 140 times over the last two years.
Australia’s Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, heard that Mr Colella blocked his whereabouts by storing his personal digital assistant, a phone-like device that has a GPS inside, in an empty foil packet of Twisties, a puffy cheese-based snack that is popular in Australia.
Faux-Toblerone
Toblerone in Chocolate War With UK Copycat Who Stole Original Design
‘Twin Peaks’ bars bear a striking resemblance to the classic Swiss chocolate
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Toblerone photo via Getty; Twin Peak photo via Facebook/Poundland
A UK company is capitalizing on the near-disastrous redesign of the classic Toblerone bar by making an homage to the old version, much to the chagrin of the company that popularized the ridged Swiss chocolate treat.
Over the summer, British discount grocery chain Poundland created Twin Peaks, a Toblerone copycat with a gold wrapper, red lettering, and bar that mimicked the old, chunkier design of the candy. The biggest difference here is that the ridges have a V shape cut into the top of each peak. If Toblerone’s design mimicked the contours of the Swiss Alps, Poundland argued that its bars resembled two famous peaks near the Welsh border. And, in a wise business move, this new candy weighed as much as the old Toblerone before its slimmed-down redesign — and it was cheaper than its inspiration, too.
DIY Waffles
from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Waffle House customer cooks his own meal after finding staff sleeping
by Theresa Seiger
WEST COLUMBIA, S.C.
A hungry, slightly inebriated man knew just what to do when he stopped by a South Carolina Waffle House early Thursday only to find the restaurant’s staff snoozing: He cooked up his own meal, snapping selfies along the way.
Alex Bowen said in a Facebook post that he stopped by a Waffle House in West Columbia because he couldn’t sleep.
The restaurant’s employees apparently did not have the same problem.
“I walked back outside to my car to look for employees,” Bowen told WIS. “No one in sight.”
It wasn’t until he walked back inside the restaurant that he noticed an employee snoozing in a corner booth.
“Then it was go time,” Bowen told WIS. “(I) got hot on the grill with a double Texas bacon cheesesteak with extra pickles. When I was done I cleaned the grill, collected my ill-gotten sandwich and rolled out.”
Crazy College Kids From The Past
In an era of USC-UCLA pranks, one stood out. Sixty years later, its mystery is solved
by Zach Helfand
From left to right: Dave Visel, Mike Loshin, Wally Karabian, Jerry VanWert and Steve Marienhoff. (Photo courtesy of Maria Aparicio)
A septuagenarian professor and former USC student, having caught wind of a forthcoming story in the Los Angeles Times, recently sent a cryptic email to the newspaper.
Sixty years ago, the professor, Dayle Barnes, belonged to an organization at USC called the Trojan Squires, which pulled off one of the most memorable in a long line of pranks in USC’s rivalry with UCLA. For the game at the Coliseum in 1957, UCLA’s student section had planned a series of card stunts. The UCLA students were to hold up placards that would combine to form Bruins-friendly words and pictures.
Except when the students actually did hold up their cards, they had been altered by a band of USC saboteurs. In each stunt, the unwitting UCLA students revealed a different pro-USC message. It caused such a stir that Sports Illustrated wrote about the prank — without interviewing its creators.
Barnes wrote in the email that reporting about the prank’s creators would be a “tough assignment” given “the complete secrecy with which the clandestine group of Trojan Squires” operated.
He explained that though he was part of the Squires, the prank was conceived and executed by a small, elite unit within the organization, operating under deep cover. Barnes didn’t know their identities.
“That is not to deny, however, that more than a few of that year’s membership were eminently qualified, by background and personality, successfully to conduct a covert assignment,” he wrote.
The mystery endured among the dwindling population of USC and UCLA alumni who keep score of such pranks. There would be no answer for 60 years.
Until now.
Christmas Music Driving People Crazy
Christmas Music Can Harm Your Mental Health, Psychologist Says
CBS Local — Are you one of those people that can’t stand hearing Christmas songs months before the holiday actually arrives? Does hearing festive carols weeks before Thanksgiving only make you upset that you haven’t eaten your turkey yet? A psychologist in Great Britain says your reactions don’t make you a Grinch because too much Christmas music is actually bad for your mental health.
Clinical psychologist Linda Blair claims the constant barrage of Christmas tunes too early in the season forces people to remember all the things they have to do before the holiday. Blair says the songs are a reminder to buy presents, cater parties, organize travel, and all the more stressful chores during Christmas.
“You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing,” Blair tells Sky News.
Digitus Impudicus
The Long, Angry History of Flipping the Bird
The middle finger is way older than you think.
In late October, a woman named Juli Briskman pulled off something that many Americans—plus many foreigners—would die to do.
Briskman, bless her heart, flipped Trump the bird.
While Trump’s motorcade was cruising through Sterling, Virginia, they passed Briskman who was on her bike. Briskman, realizing who was pulling past her, extended her arm and popped up that wonderful, old as time, middle finger salute to America’s special liddle guy. As a result of pulling of the much loved stunt, the 50-year-old Briskman was fired by her government contractor employer.
However, the hero of this tale is a defiant one and told Huffpo that she’d “do it again” if given the chance.
But what was Briskman really saying with that single digit salute?
Well, as I’m sure you know, the finger is one of the most cherished gestures in the Western world. It’s how we show disapproval to those who can’t hear our vulgarities for whatever reason, it’s how I tell that chachi dude in the black truck that he almost ran me down in a crosswalk, and, if you’re the Canadian editor of VICE Sports, how you say hello to me in the morning.
The history of the finger isn’t completely concrete, but, as Benjamin Bergen, director of the Language and Cognition Lab at the University of California in San Diego explains, we know flipping people off goes back not just centuries but millennia.
“We know that it goes back, at least, to Greek times,” Bergen told VICE. “It shows up in some Greek plays and where it’s juxtaposed with other sorts of vulgar gestures, like the waggling of a penis for example. We also know that from records that it also showed up in plays in Roman times and in accounts of senate chamber conflict and so on.”
“We know that it had a name in Roman times where it was called the indecent or impudent finger, the Digitus Impudicus. It continues for the following millennium as we know, there are some urban myths people tell about the origins but as far as we can tell none of them are true, it really has a several thousand year history.”
End Of The World Maybe Later
Doomsday Rescheduled: ‘Researcher’ Moves End Of The World To October
CBS Local — After Sept. 23 came and went without a rogue planet crashing into the Earth, some might think Christian numerologist David Meade would be out of the doomsday prediction
Meade predicted that a rogue planet named Nibiru would slam into the Earth on Sept. 23 and bring about a global apocalypse. NASA had publicly debunked the “Planet X” conspiracy theory in 2012, but it didn’t stop the self-published author from writing and speaking about the doomsday prediction.
Now that the fateful Saturday has passed, Meade has reportedly revised his schedule for the planet’s last day. The controversial doomsayer claims his Sept. 23 prediction was misinterpreted and that the world will actually end at some point starting in October. Meade now believes the new date will begin a seven-year period of world-ending events.
“That’s when the action starts. Hold on and watch—wait until the middle of October and I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed,” he wrote on his website. The former student of astronomy at the University of Louisville says his predictions come from deciphering codes in the Bible as well as other ancient markers like the Great Pyramids.
South Park F†ckery
‘South Park’ Episode Triggers Viewers’ Amazon Alexa and Google Home
by Ryan Parker
The 21st season of South Park premiered on Wednesday and, as the show usually does, touched on multiple current topics.
The episode, “White People Renovating Houses,” mostly skewered the white nationalist movement, poking fun at members’ obsession with waving the Confederate flag.
But it was another aspect of the storyline that was messing with some viewers’ smart speakers.
Both Alexa and Google Home were featured in “White People Renovating Houses,” and the cartoon characters yelling commands at their cartoon models for 30 minutes played havoc on some actual Alexa and Home models.
She Got Legs
ZZ Top Reveals Meaning Behind Classic Song ‘Legs’
HOUSTON—More than three decades after the song was a chart-topping smash and became an instant classic-rock staple, ZZ Top finally revealed to fans Tuesday the meaning behind its iconic hit “Legs.” “People have been coming up with all these crazy interpretations for 30 years, so we’ve finally decided to just come out and say that the song’s about a woman’s sexy legs and how much they make us want her sexually,” said lead vocalist Billy Gibbons, acknowledging that spelling out the meaning of “Legs” might take away from its longstanding mystique.
Eyeballs In My Anus
WYOMING MAN FOUND WITH 30 EYEBALLS IN HIS ANAL CAVITY
CASPER, Wyo. –
Police made a routine traffic stop early Thursday morning and got more than they bargained for when Roy Tilbott, 51, stepped out of his El Camino for a field sobriety test and Casper police noticed several eyeballs slide from his right pant leg onto the road.
Feeling they could have a potential murderer on their hands, police quickly drew guns and cuffed Tilbott.
Tilbott assured police the eyeballs were not human, but instead cow eyeballs he had pilfered from Johnson Meats (a slaughterhouse) where Tilbott is employed as a butcher.
“Company won’t let us take animal scraps home and instead toss them in the landfill,” Tilbott said in the police report. “They’re a very wasteful company. We should be allowed to take scrap meat and other parts home. The company should start a green initiative. They don’t even have recycling at the plant.”
Tilbott explained his actions: “I enjoy eating bovine eyeballs and smuggling them out in my colon was the only way I knew how to get them out without potentially getting caught and fired.”
Tilbott told police he estimates he has smuggled several thousand eyeballs from the plant over the past few months.
“I put them in soups,” Tilbott said in the police report. “They’re beneficial for erectile dysfunction, which I currently battle, but I also just like the texture and taste.”
Sky Sex
Couple Had Sex While Skydiving, And Gravity REALLY Helped.
CNN
Your significant other is always claiming the sex has become a little stale. So the typical solution seems to be to start trying all kinds of new positions, some of which are neck-breaking. But we follow the Kama Sutra because when it comes to sex, it’s sacred. But this unlikely couple decided to try something that was beyond wild. They decided to do it from thousands of feet in the air. Yeah! That’s right! We’re talking about having sex while skydiving. Not only were these two fearless, but they also made history in the process.
Take a good look at this woman’s face. That’s the look of sheer and utter sexual gratification.
Most women can only hope to achieve this level of orgasm and most men only dream of making it happen. Of course you’d have to be hurtling through the air at insane speeds, and if that parachute doesn’t open, that big O could be your last.
