Hey, everybody, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Remember Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter and double-amputee who participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics and once beat a horse in a footrace? Yeah, he murdered his girlfriend today. As the story goes, he mistook her for a home invader and shot her. Uh, four times.

Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs.

Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said. (via ESPN)

One of the worst things about the murder (you know, besides somebody being f**king murdered) is that Steenkamp’s last words to the Internet were cheeky affirmations of how awesome Valentine’s Day is and an Instagram about how you shouldn’t be violent towards women. Cajun touched on that on our main page earlier today.

I don’t really know what to say. It’s a tragedy. It’s stupid.

Because we are contractually obligated to never do Twitter Reacts! posts again, I decided to find 10 Huffington Post comments section comments that totally and unbelievably missed the point, each in their own special little way. Consider it a reference guide. If you’re about to type something about Oscar Pistorius that reads like one of the following comments, just backspace it until it is gone forever.

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Sometimes a situation is just too f**ked for a clever headline. From HuffPost Sports:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman was stabbed to death early Monday and his brother was arrested as a suspect, Dutch police said.

Rotterdam Police spokeswoman Patricia Wessels said police were called to a home in the port city in the early hours of the morning and found the 24-year-old Dutch player bleeding from a stab wound.

The worst part of the story — at least aside from the death of a man who was essentially still a kid — is that the suspect arrested and taken in for questioning in connection with the murder is Halman’s 22-year-old brother. There isn’t a lot of information beyond that other than tribute quotes from the people who knew him and a weird, lingering sadness. Halman had been a member of the Seattle organization since he was 16-years old, hit .230 in 35 games and made starts at all three outfield positions for the Mariners in 2011. That’s where his story ends. I don’t know what happened between the brothers that would lead to this and obviously I didn’t know Greg Halman personally, but from a sports perspective, the only perspective I’m awarded, there is a strong, resonant sadness to “he hit .230 in 34 games, and then” without anything following.

Mariners Chairman Howard Lincoln, President Chuck Armstrong and general manager Jack Zduriencik paid tribute to Halman on behalf of the club.

“Greg was a part of our organization since he was 16 and we saw him grow into a passionate young man and talented baseball player,” they said in a statement. “He had an infectious smile that would greet you in the clubhouse, and he was a tremendous teammate. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Greg’s family.”

He’s got our thoughts and prayers as well. I don’t know how good they’ll do him, but they’re his.

A passenger plane carrying 37 members of the Russian Lokomotiv ice hockey team and 8 crew members crashed briefly after takeoff earlier today, killing 43 of the people on board. Former NHL forward Pavol Demitra was among the team’s entire main roster reported as casualties of the crash. Four members of the Lokomotiv youth team were also on board.

The Los Angeles Times offers more details:

The plane, which was carrying members of the Kontinental Hockey League team Lokomotiv, crashed on the banks of the Volga River shortly after departing from an airport in Yaroslav, located 150 miles northeast of Moscow. The team was flying to Belarus to play in its season opener against Dinamo Minsk.

Russian officials say a crew member and Russian player Alexander Galimov are the only survivors. Both are in critical condition.

A Czech Embassy official told the Associated Press that former NHL players Josef Vasicek and Karel Rachunek were among those killed. Latvian officials onfirmed the death of former NHL defenseman Karlis Skrastins.

Locomotiv Coach Brad McCrimmon, a former NHL defenseman who worked as assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings, also died in the crash.

Officials did not immediately release the names of all of the players and coaches who were on board, but former Ducks defenseman Ruslan Salei was among the players listed on the Lokomotiv roster.

Detroit Red Wings prospect Stefan Liv was also listed on the roster.

I don’t really have much beyond, “Holy crap.”

A “major Canadian concert act” is scheduled to perform at next month’s NHL FaceOff in Winnipeg. Who could it be? The Barenaked Ladies? (The Barenaked Ladies are triple platinum. Are you?) Maybe Sarah McLachlan will show up with an eight-minute ballad about “shelter” and a crate full of one-eyed kittens. Whatever they come up with, it couldn’t be worse than the NFL bringing in Kid Rock, Maroon 5 and Lady Antebellum to christen the new NFL season, right? Right?

Before you assume the people in charge of professional sports don’t want us to kill ourselves, consider that the band could be Nickelback.

Thankfully, the people of Winnipeg (and all good people in this world) are fighting back — by way of Deadspin (+1) comes an open letter published a few days ago in the Winnipeg Free Press urging the NHL to not ruin the Jets’ return to Winnipeg with a concerto from Chad Kroeger And His Stooges.

As people who love music and love Winnipeg even more, we have a request: Please ensure this does not happen. The return of the NHL to Winnipeg is something we have been dreaming about for 15 years. Please do not sully the celebration with the presence of a band whose existence is antithetical to the very concept of celebration.

Please, Person In Charge Of Booking This Event, do not bring Nickelback to Winnipeg that weekend. They can play the arena to their own fans — of which there are many — any time. But a free public performance? That would be tantamount to spitting on Bobby Hull’s toupee, burning Dale Hawerchuk’s jersey, leaving something wet on Thomas Steen’s city council seat or tripping Teemu Selanne on the ice during his final season in the NHL.

Strong words, but strong words are necessary to preserve the morale of a sport going through three player suicides since May. You may want to type, “come on, Nickeback isn’t that bad, they’re just a rock band, if you don’t like them you don’t have to listen”. Want to know why professional wrestling has such a problem with premature deaths? It probably has something to do with this:

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I spent all morning trying to figure out whether or not I should write about this. We aren’t a Faces of Death website and my job description is basically “take anything that happens and make jokes about it on the Internet”. The only other way to take it is in the “my thoughts and prayers are with his family” direction, but if your thoughts and prayers are really with his family you wouldn’t be writing about it, or posting a video of it, or posting a comment about it after searching for and finding it on YouTube. Or would you? I spent all morning trying to figure this out. I spent my entire life trying to figure out how humanity works, and when I thought I had the answer, people changed the question. Mostly with cell phone cameras.

But anyway,

On Thursday, July 7, 2011 during a game between the Texas Rangers and Oakland A’s, Conor Jackson hit a foul ball which ricocheted off the left field wall. Fans yelled for Josh Hamilton to give them a souvenir ball. Josh threw the baseball up and a fan who has not been named fell over the railing to catch the ball. He tumbled and fell head first.

I go to a lot of baseball games, but I’ve never been that guy who brings his glove and shoves people over to catch a foul ball. At the same time, I can’t tell you with any honesty that when the Fun Bunch comes around with a t-shirt gun I’m not standing on my chair, waving my arms yelling OVER HERE, OVER HERE. It’s unsettling to think how easily this could’ve been me, with “me” as sort of an everyman qualifier meaning “if Josh Hamilton tossed me a ball, I would try to catch it no matter where I was standing”. Most of us would. It’s easy to say we wouldn’t.

And the writing starts to get maudlin.

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