On small style changes and Criminal Intent

Since I'm running late tonight, y'all get a two-for-one entry! Try to hide your burgeoning affection and appreciation for this. Well, unless you're a classy, attractive lady. (hey. callll me.)

- As you may or may not have noticed, I am trying my best to get this blog in line with the features you see on most other publications. Last night, I took the plunge and added the Link Within widget to my blog. Now, all of you new readers will be able to read glorious past entries that I've done, such as surveying the late night scene, and asking Comedy Central not to suck, and about lions and dogs with sweaters in Rhode Island.

(I wonder if me writing about Linked Within will cause my blog to explode though, like a supernova caving in upon itself. It's a risk I'm willing to take.)

- In completely unrelated news, I'm kind of digging Law and Order: Criminal Intent, even though the show no longer has Bobby Goren and Eames (a.k.a. the nice lady from The Mighty Ducks 2). Those two had always been the standout characters of the show to me, followed closely by Captain James Deakins and Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver.

However, the new detectives are pretty solid and provide a new dynamic for the show. There is a bit of blatant sexual tension and flirting between Zach Nichols (Jeff Goldblum) and Serena Stevens (the foxy Saffron Burrows), which is refreshing, considering that most Law and Order shows just tease romance or portray it as an impossibility (Eames and Goren, or Benson and Stabler). Having Nichols and Stevens hook up would take the show in a bit of a new direction, which I would enjoy, as long as it didn't become the sole focus. (Special Victims Unit became unwatchable to me when it started to become more about the detective's back stories.)

Is Criminal Intent as good as the first five seasons, which had Goren, Eames, Deakins and Carver? No, but it's still good in a different way. It remains focused on weird criminals and detective stories, in grisly details, as opposed to the law quirks of the main show or the technical mumbo jumbo of a CSI or NCIS.

What Steve Thinks About: 42 Midgets vs. A Lion

Unfortunately, this would not be "groovy" for Mini-Me.

Sooooooo. On The Ricky Gervais Show, they read a news story about 42 midgets in Cambodia fighting a lion. Apparently, the athletic commissioner of a traveling circus of midget wrestlers was challenged about their actual fighting skill by a heckler, and the heckler said that 42 midgets couldn't take down a lion. According to the news story, the fight was stopped after the lion killed about 28 midgets, and the remaining 14 were too maimed to continue.

I was curious enough after hearing the story to Google it, and unfortunately, the whole story is an urban legend. (I say “unfortunately” and that probably makes me a horrible person.) However, just hearing about this hypothetical fight immediately makes my mind imagine what would happen if it actually, uh, happened.

First, a few qualifiers. According to the fake news story, the midgets were not armed, and did not have access to weapons. It was just them in a Colosseum-style ring vs. the lion. Also, no mention was made of any special armor. So, I'm assuming that puncture-proof Kevlar vests are unavailable.

With those provisions in place, the lion has to be a heavy, heavy favorite. Its sheer size and speed would make it a lethal killing machine in the ring. It would be very hard for the midgets to encircle it, or to generate enough force with just their fists or legs to significantly damage the lion. Because it would be in a ring, there would be no terrain to use as cover, or to launch a more effective attack. Also, lions are much faster than humans, and presumably have greater endurance, so you couldn't wait for the beast to get tired, especially since it probably wouldn't take much energy for it to mow through the midgets.

If the midgets want to take down the beast, I can only think of a couple ways, and they're all pretty grisly, and require sacrificial lambs. Or, in this case, sacrificial midgets.

1) When the lion is chomping on a midget, shove it even further into its mouth, in an attempt to choke the beast to death. This would be kind of similar to the scene in Return of the Jedi, when the huge beast in the pit at Jabba the Hut's lair momentarily choked on the bone in its mouth.

2) Scavenge a midget corpse for weaponry. While the midgets can't bring any weapons into the ring with them, this does not prevent them from doing the sick deed of using a dead midget for their femur and other bones to craft crude weaponry. Yeah, it is extreme and gross, but do they want to kill the lion or not?

Anyway... Sometimes I worry myself.

The photos of the lion and Mini-Me are from their respective Wikipedia pages. The rancor from Return of the Jedi comes from this page.

Weird Rhode Island news - Lions and lions and lions, oh my!

I might not have time to do a proper television entry today - I'm running all over the place working on various stuff. But, I did want to at least post some token weird Rhode Island news.

According to an article in The Providence Journal, a lion was recently taken from the home of a Glocester man. Yeah, I'm a bit surprised this story didn't originate from Florida, the capital of bizarre animal and just bizarre news in general.

Although the article notes that the former owner did have the proper permits for the lion, it makes me think that the animal was grandfathered in as legal, since he's apparently been there for more than a dozen years. I'm surprised there wasn't any outcry from the neighbors about, you know, the lion in their backyard, after earlier news stories about a chimp mauling some people. (I would link to the story, but everyone reading this has probably already seen it, and I'm not chancing that I'll see the horrific picture of the woman without a face again.)

Also, the Rhode Island climate makes me wonder if the lion is really comfortable; don't they normally live in warm portions of Africa? Then again, lions have a lot of hair, so maybe he likes the breeze of 20-degree weather.

Finally, this makes me ponder an exotic pet of my own. Is it legal for me to own a penguin? What about a giraffe or a kangaroo? This is something I seriously have to look into.

The lion photo is from this site.