For a time last week, a storm that hit the United States actually spanned the entire Atlantic Ocean.. that’s incredible.

More here

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TahFP6wqA1c?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Good evening everyone. Here’s the Toxic Airborne Event with HAPPINESS IS OVERRATED. Truly a shame this band broke up.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Yes they happened.. The "best" internet April Fools jokes of 2013

I say “best” in quotes because I truly hate this yearly tradition.. 

Yes they happened.. The "best" internet April Fools jokes of 2013

PETER THE ROMAN? FRANCIS VISITS THE TOMB
Seriously, why does this Pope have to keep reminding us he’s probably the last one!?

Clyde Lewis continues to humor me with incredibly great headlines for his nightly radio show.. Tonight "Olympus has fallen and it won't wake up!"

And if you still think Noory is the king of paranormal radio, you haven’t listened to Ground Zero 

(Though I still wish Art Bell would come back)

Clyde Lewis continues to humor me with incredibly great headlines for his nightly radio show.. Tonight "Olympus has fallen and it won't wake up!"

Good evening.

Ashland PA, 4/1/13

The top ten stories that sound like April Fools jokes. But they aren't

1. Until 2012, Pepsi used aborted fetal-cells to flavor soft drinks


2. There have been so many suicides in China among workers making our iPhones that factories had to put up suicide nets


3. Wikileaks helped bring out information that DynCorp contractors were involved with a child sex ring..


4. There is a brewing water crisis—one so bad that rivers and lakes are drying up across the planet


5. Very recently, the mega rich withdrew their money from Cyprus banks—right before looting..


6. Obama signed the Monsanto Protection Act, and the NDAA. He often signed bills despite his ‘reservations’


7. There are black sites across the world where children are tortured in front of their parents


8. Fear of Chinese censors is so intense that video game makers change their games


9. North Koreans are eating their own children because of extreme hunger


10. Each year, up to 800,000 children go missing in the United States

So sorry to be such a downer on such a ‘funny’ day.. But that’s just what I do.

My God Charley Sheen gained weight

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguiAWrUGMM?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Good to see that media is all on the same page. If you watched your local diatribe of fires, plagues, crime, and pestilence, you’ve most certainly heard that ‘economic factors may take some spring out of the Easter Bunny’s step this year.’

It was so noticeable that Conan O’Brien put a montage together of local boobs on the tube telling us the same statement from their teleprompter.

While the video is hilarious for obvious reasons, it begs the bigger question: Who writes it.. and how it is dispensed to all the stations? And just once sentence, quite frankly, could be proof that we are hit with misinformation all at the same time.

Remember, while some may have abandoned the big network news and papers, we still turn to the locals for the information close to home. And if the big conglomerates could get to them, well… the mis and disinformation could survive.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

By now you’ve seen or heard about the horrible event last night involving Louisville player Kevin Ware. (Video here, watch at your own risk) 

It was so graphic that CBS even halted replays of the leg break.. It’s most obviously the water cooler talk this morning and will be rehashed over and over again throughout the day.

When it happened, however, something else struck me about the affair. Immediately Twitter lit up with people’s thoughts, and my Facebook friends’ collective chatter was all about Ware. I get it.. It was a sports injury live on TEE VEE, it was enough to make you queasy.. and we all celebrate March Madness like it’s a religious event. So it makes sense..

But what is absent from Twitter and my Facebook friends’ profiles? Any or all words about innocent children killed in drone attacks in Pakistan. Any and all stories about the civilians’ lives we left in shambles in Iraq after ten years of war (those who survived).. And and all knowledge of North Korean death camps.. Any and all information about, well, pretty much anything to do with the African continent.

I guess I reluctantly understand this. I come from the coal region, where football and sports is worshiped.  Often, high school players get a VIP treatment.. And nationally, as the economic crumbling still happens and the moral decay is evident, we turn more and more to sports .. it’s a vacuum that sucks up the depression. We cheer on our high-paid professionals as though they know we are doing it.. we cry and wine about the other team that simply wears a different uniform color. We get angry and argue about college kids on a court.. and yes, when one falls by the wayside, we gather around the young hero and honor him with glory—of course while we voyeuristically gratify ourselves by watching the hero’s injury take place over and over again. 

Not to take anything away form Kevin Ware, but it’s certainly amazing how little we know about a worldwide network of pedophiles.. How little we know about the amount of drone attacks in Pakistan.. how little we are aware of the Monsanto Protection Act..

But we know batting averages.
Football facts.
Boxing bouts…
And hell, even professional wrestling stars’ real names.

But did you know that, once again, America is getting ready to prop up another leader in the Middle East? This time in Syria? That’s not an April fools joke.

A few days ago I posted something on my Facebook page about the concerns I have with the Monsanto Protection Act, as signed into law by President Obama. My sister commented in a straight-shooting fashion:

Nobody cares about genetically modified corn until there is a crop failure like there was in South Africa in 2009. If fuel and veggie prices skyrocket…then they’ll care. Until then…this is tin foil hat stuff to most, Bryan.

And I bet no one knows much  about that crop failure in 2009, now do we?

Hey, there was a earthquake in Haiti .. we had a telethon. Oh and a tsunami and meltdown  in Japan.. we had a telethon. And Sandy .. we had a telethon.

All events of true importance somehow slip away like they never even existed in the first place. We are left in the end with sports…

Those football stars of the coal region often have something in common with heroes of Friday night lights from across America: Many don’t follow their dreams and make it big. Instead, they end up at the local watering hall, sometimes wearing old sports jerseys from their heyday, but always reliving the past and wishing it was still the present.

They now have Kevin Ware’s leg to speak about for a while..

In the mean time, other events that shape our lives will occur. But we’ll turn that off. It’s too inconvenient for us..

April fool.

April Fools day.. when we somehow keep up the tradition of mocking those who don’t follow the Gregorian Calender. 

But the one tradition I have come to despise about today: Fake news stories that get plastered all over the web are get believed by people who forget it’s April Fools Day.

Seriously, reality is so mind-bending that I don’t want to be barraged by fiction.. Reality is much worse. However, today it will occur, because that is just how it goes.. 

I bet there will be some ridiculous headline and news story that makes the big time .. and it will prove fake. I almost don’t want to read a shred of information today for fear that it will be untrue.

I don’t find any of this funny, or amusing.. It’s rather annoying, to be perfectly frank. 

But here we go.

Be a fool on April fools..

Rainy days and Easters always get me down

We keep sinking more and more as a human race.. FDNY EMS workers violating city rules and common decency by posting gory and macabre images online of people they are supposed to be helping..

I guess they..just can’t help themselves…..

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OEqavkJGCE?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]

Good morning. It’s Easter Sunday.

This is Keith Green singing an Easter Song. After all, if you’re going to have an Easter song, you may as well get all Jesusy in someone’e face with it, right?

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[wpvideo XRSUiT37]

Here is a quick video from today.. the Coal Speaker family went to what was going to be a simple and peaceful Easter Egg hunt. I never really went on these.. my wife Tara did, as a child.. This was Ayden’s first in his two years and one month of life. We didn’t know what would hit us, and I am still quite surprised at what did..

The weather was quaint.. the sun was rolling in and out from behind the clouds.. There was a warmer feeling today, at least warmer than it has been for the entire winter.. And when we arrived at the site of the Easter Egg hunt in St. Clair PA, there were hundreds of people already waiting. Baskets in hand.. children in arms.. kids in Easter bunny costumes.. ages 1 through whatever age you need to stop hunting for Easter eggs…

How bad could this be, I thought? Mom and dad figured, ‘we got this.’ 

So we instructed the two year old Ayden the best we could on the ground rules. He ignored most of what we said, but he knew the basic premise: Hunt and gather as many eggs as he could.. There were even prizes, apparently, for certain eggs. My wife’s sister told us, “When you get ten eggs, go to the building to collect your prizes.”

That certainly sounded easy enough, right?

By this point, more and more people had already shown up. The POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN this morning reported that over 3,000 eggs were hard boiled and ready for the event. Clearly, there were enough people to get all of those eggs.

Shortly after 1pm, Ayden and Mommy and Daddy happily got in line in the 1-2 year old section. And then, much to my surprise, an air horn let loose to indicate that the race had begun—quite frankly it was a race I didn’t know existed.

Once the kids were permitted to go collect eggs, the parents of those children quickly forgot that they had children. They pushed, poked, ran, and did whatever they could to get in front of others. They rushed to where the eggs were, taking every single one that they could find. I thought to myself, well the rules have changed.. So I took Ayden and picked up, realizing now that it was a life and death struggle for hard boiled eggs—you can hear in the video Ayden getting so excited about the immediate need to run that he told me, “HURRY!” Meanwhile, Tara was holding the camera for what she thought would be a cute family video, only to turn into a state of modern war.

At one point you’ll hear Tara, my wife, being struck in the face. Maybe by Ayden’s shoe, or maybe by someone else. The panic was so fast and furious that I just can’t tell. 

In the end, little Ayden only captured one yellow egg. You’ll see at the end of the event, he was quite proud of that little yellow egg. 

I don’t know what happened in other age group sections at the egg hunt, but in the kiddie section, I was amazed at so much.. amazed that, in this little “fun” event, how parents could act.. If they acted like this because red Easter eggs mean they can collect a dollar, I’d hate to see how they act before a big natural disaster in a grocery store. Oh wait, I already did, I went to Walmart before Sandy.

So I suppose next year, or next egg hunt, we’ll be ready.

Perhaps we’ll arm Ayden with shin guards, a helmet, and a mouthpiece. Maybe we’ll get him cranked up on sugar just so he can beat the crowd.. 

I am just grateful Ayden got a yellow egg. As my wife and I stood in amazement for a minute after the event suddenly ended, we also saw a spattering of kids and moms here and there, looking stunned, like zombies just attacked and ate the family dog. Maybe they, like me, thought they’d get a priceless family photo of their children happily finding an egg. Little did they know, other parents had much more ulterior plans.

All for eggs.

I am amazed….

Happy Easter nonetheless. Hopefully no one tramples your eggs.

Pope Francis holding a tall, lit, white candle, enters a darkened St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican Saturday, March 30, 2013, to begin the Vatican’s Easter vigil service. Pope Francis is celebrating a trimmed back Easter Vigil service after having reached out to Muslims and women during a Holy Week in which he has begun to put his mark on the Catholic Church. Francis processed into a darkened and silent St. Peter’s Basilica at the start of the Saturday service, which recalls the period between Christ’s crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

No way in hell (or heaven) that Benny Natzinger would ever have done this.. Pope Francis, prostrate on the ground for Good Friday mass.. plain black shoes and all. A day after he stirred the world by washing the feet of young prisoners.. not a bad holy week for the Pontiff, now was it?

NORTH KOREA RELEASES PHOTOS OF WHAT APPEARS PLANS FOR AN ATTACK ON US MAINLAND

Though lil’ Kim may be years away from having weapons that could cause such mass destruction, it’s further evidence of an unsettling escalation of tension.. And now that Un has gone as far as saying the nation is in a state of war with South Korea, we may be beyond just increases in tension..

NORTH KOREA RELEASES PHOTOS OF WHAT APPEARS PLANS FOR AN ATTACK ON US MAINLAND

AS THE WORLD BURNS

NORTH KOREA ENTERS ‘STATE OF WAR’ WITH SOUTH KOREA

“As of now, inter-Korea relations enter a state of war and all matters between the two Koreas will be handled according to wartime protocol,” the North said in a joint statement attributed to all government bodies and institutions.