Welcome back to an increasingly rare feature on the blog. It’s another edition of The Humanoids. I’d call it our signature piece here but more people come by to ogle the women in the Link-Off posts than read this. Actually, if I didn’t know better, I’d say our blog is a glorified picture book. Mind you, my post last week on reasons to love Canada sure didn’t help. And why is the most popular post of the week an April Fools’ story. Should people not be tricked by it three months on? Granted this week’s Humanoids targets have pulled the wool over our eyes so maybe that’s appropriate.

LeBron James
Drew Magary wrote a column on Deadspin that called King James a cocksucker. That’s not a term that I use very often, if at all, but it seems appropriate in this case. LeBron has strung along NBA fans in (or of) Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles (just the Clippers), and New York (both the Knicks and Nets). Really, though, Clippers and Nets fans realized that they never had much of a shot. New York hoped the almighty dollar would lure LeBron to town (almost an irony given the fact that the LeBron brand has been gearing up for a popularity explosion). Chicago and Miami were trying to win over LeBron by winning the hearts of Chris Bosh and/or Dwayne Wade. Cleveland was just living off hometown sentiment. It turns out that LeBron cares about winning. In fact, almost as much as he cares about making a public spectacle of himself. It’s bad enough he quit on his team in the playoffs because Delonte West (allegedly) fucked his mom, now LeBron gets his retribution by fucking everyone else over. I imagine Heat fans are happy with how all this played out. A couple of championships will make all anti-LeBron sentiments on South Beach, caused by the long wait, melt away. Still, LeBron’s a cocksucker for trying to make himself the centre of attention when there are so many other things happening in the world that are more important. Oh, and kudos to Stephen A. Smith. From ESPN to the Philly Inquirer to no one and still whipping everyone’s ass.

Caster Semenya
Guess who’s been cleared of being a man competing in women’s sports? Yes, our favourite gender indeterminate South African runner has been cleared of being a man after 11 months. I don’t know how it took 11 months to determine whether she was a man or woman. Granted, she looks quite masculine but you’d think a gender test would be as simple as attempting to ascertain if she is physically capable of peeing standing up. It turns out that she allegedly had some sort of inter-gender condition and was told to undergo hormonal or surgical treatment by the international track & field governing board. So she had to undergo 11 months of some medieval treatment so she could compete again. That doesn’t answer the question that started this whole thing. Was she too much of a man for the ladies to handle at the world championships. The sporting authority got so caught up in their tabloid scandal that they forgot what they were doing in the first place. The good news is that rules and procedures will be changed to prevent another public humiliation from happening. Wait, not good news. What are we going to do without another ridiculous scandal to ridicule? I guess it’s on to those women’s tennis players…

Sumo Wrestling
The time-honoured Japanese sport of Sumo has been rocked by yet another scandal and this time could be the final nail in the coffin. The latest scandal involves a high-ranking wrestler illegally gambling on baseball with the Yakuza. Somehow, gambling on another sport with mobsters gets you thrown out of your sport. That’s the time-honoured honour code of a sport where fat men in diapers bitch slap each other around. Of course, this is only a scandal because Japan’s most revered wrestling organization hasn’t caught up with its American equivalent. The WWE have been scripting matches for years. It’s helped them become a billion dollar company. It’s not as big as football but it’s one of the top shows on cable TV despite everyone complaining that it’s fake. Now sumo faces the crisis of being pulled from TV for the first time in 50 years. If they had a quality product that people would watch, I doubt they would have been pulled. Maybe it’s time sumo called up Vince McMahon for more than a cross-promotional sumo gong show at WrestleMania.

Catholic Church
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI (or as I call him, thanks to that Pope pool win, B-Money) announced that his was launching a team to resecularize countries that are going through a “progressive secularisation of society.” In other words, people are bailing on the Catholic Church, and he’s designated some priests as a marketing team. They’re supposed to promote the truth of the Church and the Gospel to people that have left the flock. His Holiness hinted that his new team would benefit all of Christianity rather than just Catholicism. While it might seem egotistical of him, he’s not too far off. The Catholic Church’s continued ignorance and cover up of sex abuse scandals have cast a dark cloud over all of Christianity because people tend to paint Catholics and Protestants with the same brush. In reality, the Protestants are far smarter and more worldly than the Catholics. (Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic but now consider myself atheist.) Maybe if the Pope wants to bring people back to his Church, he can start by cleaning it up. Clean out the corruption and make priests accountable to someone other than God. Asking for forgiveness doesn’t make everything better, no matter what the Church thinks.

Twilight
First, calling it “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” (the formal title of the movie, as Jackie informed me) is moronic. “Twilight: Eclipse” would be a better title because everyone is going to call it “The new Twilight movie” or “Eclipse.” My preferred title for it is “Another Pointless, Generic Teen Angst Film” or “That Giant Pile of Steaming, Stinking Monkey Crap.” I’m sick of the last two or three years worth of whether Office Denizen X is on Team Excessive Use of Hair Products (Robert Pattinson… Or is it Patterson… All I know is he thinks bloggers are nerds so fuck him for being right about me.) or Team Spray Tan (Taylor Swift’s ex). I’m on Team Wooden Stake. I could just as easily be on Team Silver Bullet but if you kill the vampires with the wooden stake, there wouldn’t be any werewolves in a love triangle to worry about. Then again, the best way to kill anyone in this movie would be to tell a joke. I’ve never seen any of the principal actors crack a smile, especially that Kristin Stewart who appears not to know what facial expression is. If you were to tell them a joke and, assuming they had a sense of humour, they laughed, would their faces crack causing their heads to explode, killing them? There’s my mission for the Anti-Twi-hards. Tell one of the actors a joke and see what happens. I would assume that a good joke could cause the end of the universe so follow my instructions with care.

Emmys
That brings me to another thing. Who picks the Emmy award nominees? These things have become such a joke that I don’t know how they haven’t joined the Grammys in terms of prestige. The Emmys are an old boys club. Nobody new gets nominated unless there’s a spot to fill for an ended show or there’s a chance to increase public interest. For example, this year’s biggest snub, as it has been for the previous three years, is Friday Night Lights. After a off-year in the second season and rebound in the third year, this season of FNL was spectacular. The show was practically flipped on its head and even with a mostly new cast, it never missed a beat. I don’t see how it can’t be rated as good as True Blood, Lost, The Good Wife (Seriously?), etc. I think it’s a case of being on a satellite provider’s channel and a network station make it not as trendy as AMC, TCM, and HBO. I know that Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton were nominated for acting awards but does anyone think they’ll get the recognition they deserve. The other snub comes in comedy. Community is a better show than Glee but doesn’t have the hype going for it. That’s not to say Glee is a bad show, I just don’t think it’s as good or as funny as Community. I won’t begrudge Modern Family its nomination because it’s a good show as well. But what’s Nurse Jackie besides House with a nurse and called a comedy? I must be a moron because I’ve never found 30 Rock particularly funny. And you can’t tell me that The Office isn’t starting to get stale. Yep, the Emmys blew it yet again. It’s time us denizens of the interweb stop talking about it and watching these awards can go the way of the dodo. If they don’t shape up, they can ship out.

April Fools Jokes
If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’d know that our most popular post of the last few days has been “EA Sports Announces CIS Football Video Game.” It’s bad enough that the headline would indicate something ridiculous but you’d figure the date would be a dead giveaway. It’s from April 1st. Yes, that article is an April Fools’ Day joke. I thought the fake quote saying that EA just copied and pasted some source code was also a dead giveaway. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to track the link’s origin in FaceBook so I don’t know who fell for this one hook, line and sinker. But since people are still reading this article, I’m wondering if the joke wasn’t on them but on me.