ScamBuster

Oh boy. Dinah Lohan is getting her own show after all. And from the description it sounds like it might air for about 4 episodes before they cancel her ass.

“It’s about empowering women to be successful single mothers,” she pontificates. “About being in the limelight without compromising motherhood. It’s about what I do, how you can be successful, and be a single mom and fulfilling your kids’ dreams. Working is my sole source of income. It won’t just be following my family around like other shows. It’ll show me cultivating careers, going to soccer practice. I’m a big supporter of domestic violence charities, so they’ll show that. Then they’ll show [”my son”] Cody at soccer practice. Ali going to school and in the studio. It’ll encompass everything. You’ll see me having five business meetings in the city.”

Definitely. If anyone embodies and exemplifies the successful working mother, it's Dinah Lohan. Her kid made all the cash and then wound up on drugs and a bit of a whore with movies failing left and right. Dinah should give seminars.

Owen Wilson is breaking his silence. After being hospitalized last month for an attempted suicide, Wilson has completed his first interview with friend and filmmaker Wes Anderson.

The interview will be posted online at midnight Friday as part of MySpace.com’s "Artist on Artist" series. It is unknown if Wilson will address his recent struggles and attempted suicide.

This week's episode of Heroes wasn't very good. That's not to say the plot was boring or that the story turned in a dull direction. Although some complain that the episode moved slowly and neglected to hit every major storyline, I am ok with an occasional "relaxed" pace. Saving the world isn't always a full-steam-ahead job.

The problem is that the dialogue was, for the most part, very amateurish. Some of the story lines seem frivolous, and there wasn't much payoff compared to how many good climaxes were building. This episode was written by Joy Blake & Melissa Blake, their first for the series. Mr Kring, make it their last?

We start out where last week left off...with Parkman and Mohinder by Molly's side. Molly is apparently comatose after being mentally confronted when she was using her power to find the Nightmare Man, Old Parkman. As precedes most episodes, we were treated to a "previously on Heroes" recap before the action began. Evidently Joy and Melissa have never watched a serial television program, because they recapped for us again in the opening scene, using character interaction. It was clumsy. Are we that dumb? We need to hear the characters work the details of what just happened in the story timeline into contrived conversations? No thanks! I didn't look it up, but I have a hunch Melissa and/or Joy wrote for Saved By The Bell. It was a horrible, forced opening sequence.

While I'm on the subject, has anyone else noticed that Matt Parkman is a horrible actor? For proof, watch the scene where he confront his dad, and says "You don't get to be sorry, you don't get to be anything!" It sums up his whole range. Lazy dumb angry guy that has a hard time making too many words in a row sound natural. Him and Ali Landry's toothy snarly tough girl garbage can vanish a la Claude as far as I'm concerned. Milo V's new angry look is working though. He pulls the tortured, "angry but containing-it...for now" look perfectly. Seeing him get mad or gleefully tortuous always puts a smile on my face. He's like my new karate kid.

I have never seen this Kristen Bell girl in anything before. I'm very excited to have an actress of this caliber on board this season. She was perfect, subtle and natural, completely believable. She made me forget she was acting and just watch the scenes. Irish guy, RIP, was a great actor as well. We never got to see what she actually did to him, but his body looked burnt and she was sending electricity-esque streams of light out of her fingertips. My favorite Kristen Bell scene was probably the phone conversation. It wasn't an amazing scene per se, but it was a fantastic performance. One sided phone conversations are among the hardest things to write, and can be harder to act. This one was flawless, a credit to the writers here. It'd be easy to make the dialogue clunky and obvious and overly explanatory, but it was far from it. And Kristen sold it like a real professional, there was literally nothing to complain about and those scenes are hard to pull off convincingly.

If these ladies think we the audience are dumb, they must think their characters are even dumber. Unfortunately Kristen fell prey to a bit of bad dialogue. She's a tiny blonde interviewing Irish dock workers. No one so much as whistles at her. And who in their right mind hears a statement like "I work for a company that wants to help keep him safe" and doesn't ask what the hell that's supposed to mean? I expect that in an episode of Inspector Gadget, not here.

I won't detail every line of bad dialogue, but probably the worst of it was Dana Davis playing Monica Dawson, talking to her cousin about her emerging abilities. "I don't know anything anymore, nothing makes sense!" Another line I expect to hear Kelly say to Zach during a breakup scene.

Probably my favorite line was "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." What a telling and overall poignant statement! I wonder if someone fed them that line. :) And how endearing was Micah's giggling when Monica was double-dutch jump roping? Loved it.

I didn't think the episode moved too slowly at all. I was slackjawed and actually said "this is really scary!" out loud when Old Parkman threw Matt and Nathan into the nightmares. I will say that I am totally over Hiro's little sideplot. It may be advancing the plot in a slick way that ties in later...I think Kensei is immortal and is the hooded man. He took the picture.

So what do you think of Old Parkmans's power? Did it really start like Matt's, or was that a ploy to gain Matt's trust?

My guess is that West's flying is really something broader that we have only seen manifest itself in his flying around. Like maybe gravity control? Could he float a car?

I'm excited to see where this season goes, it is definitely not disappointing. I don't know what else Tim Kring has going on these days but I would really like to see him write more episodes. He has thrown me into a universe that I love, and I'd hate for inept production to ruin the experience. For now it's going to take a lot more than a few lines of unwieldy dialogue to make me give up on saving the world.

Hey! Stop saying "most unique" "very unique" or any of those. Something is unique or it isn't, there are no degrees.

I'm so confused. NBC has taken something so right...Prison Break...and done something so wrong with it. Well, not to it specifically, but they are making moves to sully the Prison Break name. Specifically, they are spinning off Prison Break into a show called Prison Break: Cherry Hill. Starring a woman named Molly that we will meet in the next few episodes.

Prison Break executive producers Matt Olmstead and Zac Estrin are already penning the script for the potential new series.

Cherry Hill would be set at a women’s prison and center on Molly, a new regular character that will be introduced on PB later this season.

After suffering a family tragedy at the hands of the Company — the government conspiracy that framed Michael (Wentworth Miller) and Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) and put them behind bars — she seeks them out at the hellish Panamanian prison Sona in her quest to exact vengeance.

“There is an ironic similarity between Molly and Michael — they’re both emotionally banged-up, both have lost loved ones, and both want the people responsible to pay — so they empathize with each other,” Olmstead said.

First of all, when you empathize with each other, that's called sympathizing. And it's not ironic, it's coincidental. Dammit, this guy's a professional? I hope dude writes better than he speaks.

Did you catch the conflicting pieces of information? If it's going to be set at a women's prison...why do they say it will take place at Sona just 2 seconds later? And how does a woman get into Sona, exactly, if she's not dressed like a nun?

Joining what will soon be the entire cast of Lost, Daniel Dae Kim will probably be killed off shortly due to DUI. This is #3. Michelle Rodriguez (Ana Lucia) and Cynthia Watros (Libby) got busted minutes apart in real life and were subsequently killed in the same episode a little later. See ya Jin, hope you weren't intrinsic to the new season's plotline!

No wonder Hollywood is full of beautiful people. They pay for it, and the more I look into it the more I realize these kids' parents were loaded before the kids even started getting paid. Cisco Adler? Rich off his music producer dad. Hayden Panettiere? Foot in the door thanks to her soap star mom. I understand nepotism and its conveniences but it seems so unfair.

Anyhow, look at homegirl's new schnoz. I don't think losing your baby fat means the tip of your nose gets smaller. I thought that was cartilage in there. Looks like a little less cartilage than originally allotted for girlfriend:

Yeah, at first I thought it was a different squinty-eyed guinea-pig-haired kid too. Until I looked at the birthmark on the left side of his throat. It shows in both pictures.

And has anyone else noticed that his eyes are asymmetrical?

David Copperfield has been in the media lately, mostly due to some rape allegations.

I can sum them up for you...He has a history of using security guards and a dictionary of codes to select women from the audience, lure them backstage by saying they could get a gig as a model, asking them all kinds of weird questions (what is your favorite mens cologne?) and getting their contact info for future jobs. Then they get invited to a party where the only other guest is David who then has sex with them. Seems elaborate for a millionaire. Anyways, one of these chicks is yelling rape so he is in the hotseat. Moving on... (this post is about to seemingly veer way off course but it will wrap up nicely at the end, I promise)

Remember that Paula Abdul video where they stretched it to make it look like she was taller and skinnier? "Abdul did not have the height commonly associated with dancers and choreographers. In her music video for "Promise of a New Day", a visual effect was used which stretched images vertically on the screen."


Well, I think Mr. David Copperfield may be using similar tricks! Look at how different his face looks compared to the promo piece behind him.

The American Journal of Psychiatry released the details of a study wherein they discovered that there is a suicide gene that predisposes certain individuals to suicide. Something about that doesn't add up.

If the gene is passed along, wouldn't it have diminished itself by now, millions of years later? It would seem like a group of people that tends to kill themselves would have a harder time procreating don't you think?

It seems my experience trying to download the new Radiohead album, giving up, and subsequently finding an alternate means of acquisition was a shared one. This article explains that the album was downloaded illegally more times than it was downloaded off of their official site.

The author attributes this to users not wanting to register for the free album (ultimately my dealbreaker as well) and just being used to downloading another way. I agree with both.

In related news, I checked and the songs on the album are rendered at 160kbps. While most sites say this won't be an audibly qualitative issue, I disagree. Listening on computer speakers it sounds predictably thin but not too digitized. Burning to disc and listening in my car yielded quite a different result. Most notably the cymbals sound like a casio keyboard sound. Almost painful, super digital-y. I made that word up.

Maybe Radiohead did the inital "name your price" push to collect marketing information. That's a commodity. Then they'll release the actual album later at studio quality and sell a boatload more, probably as many as downloaded it legally plus some. Even though I don't usually buy music, there's a bit of ceremony and fanfare in acquiring the new CD by a favorite artist, kicking back, and giving it a few initial spins.

I feel like this whole website hide-and-seek thing diluted the experience for me. I failed to find the page for download, then found it but had to register, then said screw that and searched for it on BT, found it there, downloaded it, listened to a song to make sure it was real. Then I burned it to disc, listened to the quality, and ultimately decided to hold off until it is available in a higher quality format.

When I want steak, I want steak. Not a hamburger to tide me over and then little bits of steak over the course of a few hours. I'm American. I want it now. That didn't happen this time and it left me feeling crappy about the whole thing...I call that bad marketing.

If only I had paid for it so my disenchantment was warranted...

"Suri pretty much does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. If she fusses before bed, they let her stay up later. If they want her to go swimming and she cries, they’ll take her out. If she whines about food, they’ll ask her what else she wants to eat. They always want to please her."

I can think of someone else that probably grew up like that. It was a full success.

US Magazine has some supposedly inside supposed info about how the Cruises are raising little Suri.

"Suri, who as a baby was breastfed and nursed on a mixture of barley water, milk and corn syrup which [Scientology founder L. Ron] Hubbard advocated as being healthier than formula and breast milk -- is too young to take classes at the Scientology Centre, the 18-month-old is constantly surrounded by believers, including her two nannies."

Hubbard, as you may or may not know is the deceased mastermind of a religion called scientology. I don't capitalize that one. Long story short:

75 million years ago, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu who was in charge of 76 planets in our sector of the galaxy, including planet Earth, whose name at that time was Teegeeack. Following this?

Xenu had an overpopulation problem, he sent out notice to millions of people that they were being audited basically by the Xenu IRS. The XRS we'll call it. As these folks arrived for their audit, they were kidnapped, drugged, brainwashed, and stacked in piles around volcanoes in Hawaii. Then Xenu blew them up with Hydrogen bombs. I swear to you, besides the XRS thing I am not making any of this up.

So their brainwashed soul-remnants (called Thetans) stick around earth to this day and spend their days infiltrating our bodies and giving Brooke Shields postpartum depression. Getting rid of the Thetans and their negative impact on our well-being is a very expensive process, funds going straight to the church of scientology (and, formerly, Hubbard's pockets).

***In preparation for Xenu's return, Tom Cruise, as reported by This Is London (dubious source since he's reportedly building in Colorado which is not in the UK!) is planning to build a $10 million bunker under his Telluride, CO estate. It's a self-contained underground shelter with a high tech air purifying filter system. Article can be found here.***

Well I hate to break it to L. Ron Hubbard, Tom, Katie, and anyone else that wants to listen...the barley water, milk, and corn syrup thing is just plain dangerous. I know, it's a slippery slope to refute the scientific knowledge of a man that is "in the know" about Xenu and whatnot, but I feel comfortable sticking my neck out on this one.

Cow's milk is difficult to digest. We tolerate it because we grew up drinking it, but technically everyone is lactose intolerant to a degree.

Barley is a common allergen. Administered in small but regular doses, it could even trigger an allergy that didn't exist before. And since she's had it since she was an infant, she will never experience a barley-free metabolism. So if it's making her stomach or head hurt or causing some other kind of nonvisible symptom we will never know.

Corn syrup carries the same risks, except add in the sugar factor. You could easily trigger diabetes in someone that little by feeding them corn syrup...which is pretty much straight sugar. Seriously, a can of coke is like 30% corn syrup and 65% water. Great idea.

I guess the main tenet of this religion is belief that physical and mental illnesses are a result of being plagued by Thetans. So allergies are a mental block caused by Thetans. Pneumonia is a mental block caused by Thetans. I wonder if there's anything in the books of scientology about Thetans causing you to be fucking nuts?

I spend some of my free internet time using the StumbleUpon extension for Firefox. It's a toolbar, and you basically install it, tell it what kinds of things you like to read about, and start clicking the "Stumble" button. When you click that, the tool takes you to a random site that falls within the range of your expressed interests. It constantly updates and edits itself by having users give a thumbs up or thumbs down on each site it produces.

So if I told it that I like comic book sites and it kicks up a bunch of those for me, but it sees I give a thumbs down to all Spiderman sites...it will learn to stop giving me Spiderman comics. Download here if you use Firefox. Alternatively: IE, Opera. Iceweasel here, but good luck figuring out how to install it you Linux Weirdos.

Anyways, using that I find a lot of blogs that I never would have found before. This is about one of those blogs. The article was called The Day I Timed Out. It was funny. A guy went to an interview, was forgotten in a room for 15 minutes, got fed up and since he didn't really need the job he walked out and left a funny note about having "timed out" at 900000 milliseconds (15 minutes).

In the comments, people were taking what happened and applying it to other situations...then bashing him for acting the way he did in their made up scenarios! So I posted a comment that said:

You want to date a hot girl, you are willing to take a little bit of crazy. If he really wanted the job I am sure he would have stuck it out. Since he clearly didn’t, nothing was lost.

Everyone is placing his actions in a different context and then bashing him for his conduct. The context is what it is…he didn’t need the job more than they needed him so he was not willing to deal with BS. This exact thing happened to me once and I didn’t bat an eyelash because I really wanted the job. Willing to take a little bit of crazy so to speak.

Besides, we need to acknowledge that the note he left was pretty funny and in good humor. He didn’t write “F#^k Off Doodie Heads!” or anything like that.

Next day I get an email that said:

Matt,

Thanks for your comment. I have had to moderate it just slightly though by removing the first sentence "You want to date a hot girl, you are willing to take a little bit of crazy."

Regards,
WarpedJavaGuy

That's weird. I hit him back with:

That's cool, but for future reference I gotta ask why. No profanity, and the analogy basically makes my post since I reference it later. Maybe just delete the whole post for me then?

~Matt

His reply:

Matt,

The hot girl bit just makes it a bit too easy for people out there to misinterpret the metaphor. It's your call if you want me to delete it, but it still reads well I think.

Regards,
WarpedJavaGuy

Well that didn't make sense. Isn't it kind of on me to make sure people understand me? How does he know he didn't misinterpret me?

At this point I am dying to know what the problem is. Is this a gay IT blog, have I alienated his readers with a reference to girls? That would make more sense (and be easier to accept) than his first explanation. So I hit him back with:

WJG-

I understand. However, I would rather say exactly what I mean and be misunderstood than feel like I have a publicist helping me communicate. I'm not running for office!

Now it's almost guaranteed that my thought will be misinterpreted since it was truncated. I think there is a difference between editing and moderating. A magazine needs to be edited because each article is more or less a representation of the magazine so they want to ensure all thoughts and opinions are communicated in one voice or style. Comments on a blog need to be moderated to ensure that the content of your site is not offensive. All the comments don't need to be in your voice and style as well.

Two people can read the same sentence and come away with two different meanings. That's due to a dissimilarity in reading/writing comprehension and attitude. The people that see eye to eye with me would not misinterpret what I meant. The ones that might not 'get it' could very well misinterpret me. Worst case scenario, someone misunderstands and calls me out, I explain what I meant, we all walk away having learned something about how the other half communicates. That's also traffic for you, and as long as it's moderated (for vulgarity), it's interaction that makes people feel ownership in a site...because they can be heard.

Now I wonder how many of the other comments were retooled and therefore misunderstood. I feel that lacks honesty and creates a wall between readers and admin that should only exist in print media or perhaps China. :) I'm not trying to overblow this by the way, I've just never seen something like that before...I was surprised and I want to understand is all.

~Matt

His reply follows:

Matt,

I totally appreciate what you say. I do not want to edit your words and there is a fine line between editing and moderating. Maybe you could help me moderate it somewhat to make it less vulnerable to potential misinterpretation. I am more than happy to do that :)

Regards,
WarpedJavaGuy

At this point my head hit the desk. The difference between editing and moderating is not just nominal! Changing my post (I am convinced my thought was communicated clearly) and calling it moderation doesn't change the fact that it's being edited.

You can't color vanilla ice cream brown and say it's chocolate!

This situation is a perfect illustration of why everyone should act and think just like me. Then there'd be no problems.

Are you using Bit Torrent yet? It's speedy, pretty safe, and really easy to use once you know the 4 basic steps.

If it comes in an electronic file, it can be downloaded with Bit Torrent. Software, console and PC video games, movies, pictures, music, TV shows, books, you name it. Right now you're about ten minutes away from turning the internet into a huge cookie jar!

Bit Torrent is a program, and you need to install it. Download official version here. Alternate version available here. I use the latter. When prompted for preferences during setup, you don't really need to add icons to your desktop or anywhere else. Trust me.

Once Bit Torrent is installed you basically have the sharpener. Now you need a pencil to use it on.

To download a file, you need to find a "torrent file" for Bit Torrent to be able to find it on the internet. A torrent file is a tiny file that, when double clicked, opens itself in the Bit Torrent software and tells Bit Torrent what to download. That's how it's done! That may be a lot to keep track of.

1. Install Bit Torrent software.
2. Find a file that you want to download, let's say the new Kid Rock album. Go to a torrent search site like this one. Type in what you want and you will get a bunch of results. Click on one, it should initiate a download. Put that file on your desktop, the download should take less than a second.
3. You don't have the album quite yet! Double click the file you just downloaded. Bit Torrent will open up and you will see it begin searching. As soon as you connects to a source, a folder will appear on your desktop, called "Kid Rock Whatever Whatever". Inside of the file, it will appear that there are mp3s already there. Check the properties... 0 MB in size. They need to fill up! As the Bit Torrent software nears 100% on the download status bar...the files on your desktop will get bigger and bigger in size, like they are filling up. The initial new folder and mp3 icons are just placeholders for the files you will be downloading
4. When the Bit Torrent software says the "downloaded has succeeded!" the files on your desktop will be fully there and ready to be used.

Things to remember:

• Set up your preferences to put new downloads on your desktop.
• Even though it looks like you have a folder with 12 songs in it, you don't actually have all of the files until Bit Torrent says you're done downloading.
• Start easy, search for new release CDs or TV shows. They are the most widely available files at a given time.

CULINARY QUIZ

1) What unit of measure is approximately 2150 cubic inches?

2) This dish probably originated in the middle of the 18th century as a thick oatmeal gruel or hardtack and molasses cooked together. It was a basic item in a ship’s mess served to English sailors as early as 1750. It eventually developed into something quite different in America, especially in the southern states. Name this dish.

3) Here is the recipe, can you name this dish?
Brown roux mixed with bouillon, vinegar, mustard, and catsup, simmered until thick, then add parsley, pickles, and chopped walnuts.

4) Take some fish and dehydrate it. Then soak it in water for 8 days. Then soak it in lye for 2 days. Then soak it in water for another 2 day. Finally poach it for 15 minutes. What is this?

5) This dessert item takes its name from an 16th century Italian marquis. While living in Paris, he created a perfume for scenting gloves. It became so popular that local pastrycooks started making an item to cash in on the popularity of this glove scent.
Can you name this dessert item?

6) Where is Florida Mustard produced?
a) Florida.
b) California.
c) France.
d) Spain.
e) Iceland.

7) When Ben & Jerry’s obtained funding to start their ice cream company, the backers insisted that they also sell what other item?
a) Candy Bars.
b) Soup.
c) Bubble Gum.
d) Hot Dogs.
e) Cheesecake.

These are various herbs in the parsley family, with small white or greenish flowers. They are native from Greenland to central Russia, but are naturalized over most of Europe. Their roots, leaves and stems are used in cooking and the fruits are used in liqueurs. The stems are also candied and used in jam. Essential oils from the seeds, root and stem are used to flavor spirits, candy, ice cream and baked goods. The seed oil is also used in perfume and toothpaste. Can you name these plants?

9) A bitter extract from this southern European plant root is used in Angostura bitters, chocolate, vermouth, certain aperitifs, , candy, ice cream and vanilla flavorings. The name is derived from an ancient king of Illyria, who supposedly discovered the medicinal value of the plants.

10) Various plants of genus Cassia, with showy, nearly regular, usually yellow flowers. Many are used medicinally, and seeds of some species are used as coffee substitute in various parts of the world. They have a tealike aroma and antibacterial effects. Which matches this description?

a) Cinnamon.
b) Senna.
c) Ceylon Tea.
d) Sedum.
e) Khaki.

Answers!

"Angelina Jolie is sort of amazing because everyone thinks she's like this great beauty. And I'm not saying she's an unattractive woman, but she's not beauty, by any stretch of the imagination."

"I really understand beauty. And I will tell you, she's not -- I do own Miss Universe. I do own Miss USA. I mean I own a lot of different things. I do understand beauty, and she's not."

~Donald Trump

You know what? I agree. She's kind of nasty. Now don't get me wrong, I think her big lips and cheekbones are striking, and she's hardly ugly. She's not really a "ten" either...

I dunno, I like it when girls have waists. Helps keep them from looking like prepubescent boys when they wear bathing suits.

And for my final piece of evidence, I present this:


Pretty risky of her to walk so close to that open grate! (she'd fall right in, get it?)

She's ok. Not amazingly hot, but not ugly either. Goes to show, America is blinded by good boobies. And for some reason the way she talks when she is acting drives me nuts. Like she won't separate her teeth to say words, they have to stay gritted. Anyhow, since I'm pretty much the most attractive man you've ever met I can post things like this. Deal with it.

Hey! As if on queue, Perez Hilton posted this just now.

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is going on here? That's Pete Doherty and Kate Moss.

On the other coast, we have more celebrities pulling enough illegal nonsense to get any normal person thrown in jail.

A few fun facts about Nick Hogan:

Nick is, of course, the son of WWF wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan. He was recently involved in a one-car accident that left his Supra totalled and his buddy in the hospital.

The custom license tag on his black 1998 Supra is "COEHSP2", a reference to the police acronym for "Capable Of Eluding, High Speed Pursuit"

In my silver Viper, I was driving from Miami to Tampa. I got pulled over going 107 mph and the guy let me off. He’s like, “Hey, I know who you are, just keep going, ya know.” Dude, I got back on the road and two minutes later I get pulled over going 113 mph. Another highway patrol from the same county said, “I just heard on the radio that my buddy pulled you over and let you go. I’ma let you go this time. It’s your second warning. You get pulled over again, you’re probably going to go to jail.” Three minutes later, I was doing 123 mph in a 50 mph zone. The guy is like, “Hey, I just heard you got pulled over twice in the last 10 minutes. I got to write you a ticket.

~Nick Hogan

The yellow Supra and yellow Viper are pussy magnets for sure...girls see the yellow, and panties start dropping off.

~Nick Hogan

Date	Violation
September 17, 2006	Nick was driving a black Mercedes when he was stopped along Alligator Alley for speeding. He claimed that he had a family emergency, and was let go with a warning. He was stopped 19 miles later going 115 mph in a 70 mph zone and issued a $305.50 citation.
February 8, 2007	Nick was ticketed in Dade County, Florida for driving 57 mph in a 30 mph zone.
April 25, 2007	Nick was ticketed for driving 106 mph in a 70 mph zone in Osceola County. He was convicted and received four points on his license.
August 10, 2007	Nick was ticketed in Pinellas Park after his 1998 Toyota was recorded going 82 mph in a 45 mph construction zone while workers were present. He pleaded no contest, was fined $1,000, and received another four points on his license. He was also ordered to attend a 12 hour driver improvement school.

Within the first year of obtaining his license, Nick was ticketed five times and received eight points. That's enough to restrict his license to driving for "business purposes only" in Florida. Well, not his license. Any normal person's license. (I guess they consider his "business" to be watching hoes' panties drop...which as we know can happen anywhere anytime, so he was technically covered with the business purposes thing.)

Nick is now out and about, eating Taco bell, watching movies, driving his pick of 20 something cars, buying new sneakers at the mall. Breathing without the aid of a machine.

John Graziano, however, is not so hot. John was Nick's passenger. He suffered extensive facial injuries and brain damage, is still in critical condition, and will likely need to live in a nursing home for the rest of his life. At best he will be able to open and close his own eyelids from time to time. That's from the doctors, not me.

Pinpointing the "enabler" from a bird's eye view of this thing is like finding Waldo, except that the cops, his parents, everyone is wearing the glasses and stripey sweater!

What if you only had to sleep 2 hours per day? Would you be interested in having 22 hours free per day instead of 16?

I'm going to tell you how to do it. This will work if you can commit to it all the way!!!

First of all, it is suggested that you take 2-3 weeks for the transition, time where you don't have much to do or many obligations. This system may not work with your lifestyle, particularly a work schedule. Polyphasic sleep is certainly not for everyone.

Polyphasic sleep means sleep in many phases, more simply put it means you sleep in intervals instead of all at once. It can be argued that polyphasic sleep correlates more to natural rhythms than the traditional 8-hour monophasic sleep schedule. Babies are polyphasic sleepers. So are most animals (like your dog or cat!). It's not unnatural and it's not bad for you. I don't think.

Sleep Cycles
We've all heard of REM sleep, or the stage in a sleep cycle where you experience Rapid Eye Movement. It's when dreams happen. That is the deepest level of sleep, and it is the phase where psychological and physical repair are taken care of most efficiently. As you sleep throughout the night, you move through sleep cycles.

Most 8-hour sleeping sessions see you through 4-5 intervals of REM sleep, lasting an hour or so each and bookended by light and medium levels of sleep. Picture a rise-and-fall mountain road...the high points are light sleep, and the lowest points are REM sleep. If you wake up in the midst of REM sleep, you feel kind of groggy and wake up more slowly. If you wake up during a light phase you will feel more refreshed and alert.

All that light- and medium- level sleep is just fixings on the burger. The REM sleep is the beef, it's the most important part. We need to train your body to cut the extra stuff and just eat the beef.

Transition
It's going to be tough at times, because you cannot oversleep. You can and often will undersleep until your rhythm is reestablished. That's why the recommendation is two weeks where you don't need to do anything!

You will be sleeping in 20 minute intervals every 4 hours. That's it. The key is to maintain that schedule of 4 hours off, 20 minutes on. If you miss a nap, catch the next one. Don't take one off-schedule.

Example: Sleep 8:00am-8:20am...awake at 8:20am until 12:20pm...sleep 12:20pm-12:40pm...Awake at 12:40pm until 4:40pm. And so on.

For 2 days you will swing back and forth between extreme exhaustion and unreasonable bouts of energy. The next week will be very tiring, but you will feel more and more normal as the two weeks ends. You should feel totally great sleeping only 2 hours per day within 3 weeks of starting this process.

The Idea
Have you ever been so tired that you fell asleep in a car or watching TV for less than a couple minutes...but you had a dream in that short time? You were so tired you dropped straight into REM sleep. We want you to drop straight into it every time you lay down.

You are teaching your body to sleep super-efficiently by depriving it of sleep so often that it starts entering REM as soon as you lay down. Before the two weeks is up, you will be on that cycle naturally instead of under the duress of being exhausted.

The Lifestyle
It seems like the most difficult part would be that 8 hour timespan from 9-5 when most people are at work. I suppose if you had a lunch hour you could pull off eating and taking a 20 minute sleep at once. Or if you take a half hour, you could take a nap in lieu of eating.

Questions
I wonder if you eat more since you are up and about more.
What do you do from 3am-7am every single day?!
Could you work a FT job and a PT job...and have just as much free time as before?
How does a date work? Sleep 6-6:20. Dinner 7-9. One hour until sleep time. Then a movie after that.

1. You pay for software even though you know how to "get around that".

2. New video games are too complicated to get into.

3. You know your credit score.

4. You no longer know the maximum number of drinks you are capable of consuming in one night.

5. Top 40 radio sounds like it's full of "noisy crap".

6. You remember when Garfield was an afternoon cartoon, not a shitty CGI movie.

7. Ever seen a bottle of Crystal Pepsi?

8. You can no longer tell the size of a TV screen just by eyeballing it.

9. Grown men no longer introduce themselves as "Mister" anything. Now it's just "Gary".

10. You still buy your music, on CD.

Not much info, but a couple of things were confirmed by Rockstar at the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event held in Toronto recently.

For starters, no Wii release. Expected.

They are considering opening up the whole playing area right off the bat. That does eliminate the "dangling carrot" factor of completing missions to unlock more of the board, which could be a drawback for some who like some incentive to progress through the story. A lot of folks hated that restriction, however, and wanted full access right away (myself included). We'll see how this winds up.

There will be online multiplayer support. Sounds like up to 16 players can meet up and interact in the game. Not sure if that means they will be fighting against each other in a multiplayer battle, or if cooperative missions or sidegames will come into the picture. Sounds a little Second Life -ish. I think it's a really interesting idea that has a lot of potential.

GTA lost me circa San Andreas. My horrible sense of direction in real life is hampering my ability to complete a specific mission (smash up a mall) in time and I am stuck. So the game got shelved.

That said, I'm always willing to give a new GTA title a shot. It's a tried and true gamestyle with a replayability factor through the roof. If Rockstar can continue to stay true to what makes GTA work, and add more value to the title via features like the ones in discussion, the series could go on forever!

Now for some speculation...

GTA VI...set in the future? Flying cars!

GTA VII...set in the past. Old West!

"Grand Theft Wagon VIII: Deadwood."

I like it.

Ok, so I have an idea for a movie. The only problem lies in the fact that I don't have an actual story idea or a plot outline or anything. I just know I want 2 specific pairs of actors in it, and that it will maybe wind up a buddy comedy or maybe something darker along the lines of the Schwarzenegger/Devito vehicle Twins. Bear with me.

Do you remember the Sega game Altered Beast? You were a normal guy until you got your first power up. That "altered" you (get it?) and initially made you a huge version of yourself. Except your head stayed the same size.

I always thought Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson looked like an Altered Beast version of Rob Schneider. Don't believe me?

Come on. The Rock is 6'3" and Rob Schneider is 5'4". Hilarious.

So from there I got one more idea right off the bat. Mr. Big and Mr. Small.

Chris Noth is 6'1", Tom Cruise is 5'7". Not as pronounced, but it has the Tom Cruise factor. How fun would it be to see him play a little brother or second-rate clone or something belittling like that?

Bad accident on a slide!

Another kind of slide accident. He looks up like..."Screw that, I'm jumping!" And, well...

Or you can just move to Mexico!

I found a site where you can see the final meals of death row inmates. Old, but a time waster if you need one. Highlights below:

Gerald Mitchell, RIP, wanted 1 bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers. Ha! What if they got him all watermelon, which as everyone knows is not only the worst Jolly Rancher flavor, but is maybe one of the worst tastes of all time? Who got the last laugh there, Gerald?

Miguel Richardson is the saddest one I think. Sorta creepy too. He wanted a chocolate birthday cake with "2/23/90" written on top and seven pink candles. His birthday was 7/7/54 and his execution was in 2001. I think maybe he had a little girl that he was remembering or something? It's super sad until you think about the 2 hotel security guards that happened upon him breaking into a room one day and wound up handcuffed in a hotel coat room and shot at point blank range in the back of the head. Then it's just a little sad.

David Gibbs is my favorite. Mr. Gibbs was executed on 8/23/00. He was a maintenance man and a murderer. He burglarized an apartment in the building where he worked, slit the elderly occupants' throats, and fled to Texas. He was also an oddly choosy man. On top of his 2 bacon cheeseburgers, fries, shake, and salad...he requested "two scotch eggs boiled and packed in a sausage roll, battered and deep-fried, served with syrup. And a slice of pie".

Ok, WTF is a sausage roll?

Anyways he gets through all those details about what I am convinced is a made-up meal and they ask him what kind of pie...ready for it to be dry-aged swedish yidderberry pie baked in mud and licked by a unicorn...and instead he shrugs and says "whatever you got".

The folks over at espn.com ran what I think was supposed to be a heartwarming tale of a city rallying around a sick adolescent. Boring version here. I'll sum it up:

Sick high school sophomore, nice kid, very outgoing and upbeat. He has acute myelogenous leukemia, which is very, very bad. Homecoming rolls around, so elections for homecoming court came up, you can see where this is going. The homecoming king nominees all dropped out in deference to letting the sick kid be homecoming king.

It sounds nice, but there is a not-too-subtle message here. The homecoming court is supposed to be seniors, the kid wasn't a senior, he was a sophomore. So basically the whole school told him he has less than 24 months to live. Well thought-out.

People magazine has some 'news' about Lindsay Lohan!!! It's been forever!

"Lohan arrived over the weekend and had a low-key evening with friends Sunday, seeing the movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age and visiting a tanning salon. On Monday, Lohan was due on the set of the tango-themed film Dare to Love Me, the film for which she was preparing in July when she was arrested for DUI. She still has to serve her 24-hour jail sentence arranged as a plea deal in the drunken-driving case."

Sounds like a normal day of running some errands, no? Tanning, catch a movie, take care of that pesky "Multiple DUI and Repeated Possession of Class II Narcotics" conviction, and then maybe grab some Starbucks before calling it a night.

What the fuck? She may literally be in the tanning booth longer than she's in jail. They check her in at midnight and she leaves at 12:30am. That's a "day" in LA I guess. 30 minutes. (graphic)

You know what would happen to me if I were to get caught driving drunk, with blow on me, over and over? My life would be over...financial ruins, prison, etc. This worthless degenerate? She has to deal with the inconvenience of running an errand.

Nice one, America.

I noticed that...

Britney's song, (as of yet unnamed as far as I know), listen here, is Stairway to Heaven?

Mashed here, not so hot editing but you get the idea.

Matchbox 20's new song How Far We've Come is the same as Avril's song Girlfriend?

Mashup here. Same beat, same cadence, different key of course!

And she stole it to begin with!


Check it out!!!

For those of you not in the know, the new Radiohead album is available on a name-your-price basis online. BUT navigating to the "download" button is practically impossible!

I clicked around for around 10 minutes and then gave up. Bit Torrent yielded the full album (supposedly at 320kbps) in about 15 minutes.

I'd pay ya for your hard work, Radiohead, but you made it impossible!!!