- They may make a subpar operating system, but one thing you can't say about Microsoft is that Bill Gates and Co. are soft and afraid of a fight - well, assuming said fight doesn’t involve actual, physical fighting. For months now, Microsoft has been itching to buy up struggling online competitor Yahoo. Yahoo’s executives have been fending off Microsoft’s advances, which include a $40 billion buyout offer. Selling out to one of heir most bitter competitors doesn’t seem to interest Yahoo, but Gates and his posse will soon attempt and end-around to get what they want anyhow. Microsoft Corp. has sent a letter to the Yahoo Board of Directors setting a three-week deadline for acceptance of the $40 billion buyout offer. If Yahoo does not capitulate, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that his company will then take its case directly to Yahoo shareholders and work to elect a new group of directors at Yahoo. A balls play by Microsoft to be sure, but will it work? If Yahoo shareholders are being financially smart, it will work. They’re not going to get a better offer and while they won't be making out as well as they might like, this is a decent deal for them. Maybe focus on making a better OS and not as much on corporate takeovers, Microsoft, but regardless of your inferior product, this is a battle it looks like you’re going to win.
- Maybe it’s time we stop calling Warren Jeffs a religious leader and start calling him what he really is: a combination pimp/pedophile/abuser. Texas state authorities have finally wrapped up their raid on Jeffs’ clandestine religious compound outside of Eldorado, Texas and removed nearly 200 women and children in the process. The investigation started when a 16-year-old girl living at the compound complained of physical abuse. State troopers had enough evidence to obtain a search warrant and began searching the property, which is owned and operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or F.C.J.C.L.D.S. as friends call them). The troopers were searching for evidence of a marriage between the girl who sparked the raid and 50-year-old Dale Barlow, a member of Jeffs’ organization. In Texas, it is illegal for girls under the age of 16 to marry even with their parents’ permission, so if there is evidence that the girl was forced into marriage shy of her 16th birthday, the Barlow is in deep sh*t. The warrant provided for the seizure of hard drives, CDs, DVDs and photographs from the facility. Not surprisingly, the compound itself sits in a secluded location, behind a massive hill that almost completely hides it from view. I wonder why that is…could it be because those running the polygamy factory, er, retreat are doing illegal and immoral things with young girls and don’t want anyone to know about it? Besides, Texas is merely the latest state in which Jeffs and his loony followers have plied their despicable beliefs. In November, Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in a Utah prison for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who was forced into a marriage with her cousin back in 2001. Also hanging over the head of this sick freak are charges as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual contact with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives. He’s currently in jail in Kingman, Ariz. awaiting trial, but if you don’t think he had a hand in what was going on in Eldorado, you’re wrong. His terrible legacy is being carried on by his deluded, brainwashed followers and the justice that will hopefully be dispensed to him soon can't possibly be enough to adequately punish him for all he’s done.
- What you think of the new horror flick The Ruins will depend largely on your threshold for blood, gore and gratuitous carnage. As far as horror thrillers go, it’s a solid movie in terms of plot, dialogue, writing and overall execution. Unfortunately, the plot is founded upon the idea of a man-eating vine in a jungle, so there’s clearly going to be lots and lots of bloodletting. The film is an adaptation of Scott Smith’s best-selling novel of the same name and for the most part, it stays true to the book. Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore and Jonathan Tucker star as four college kids on a Mexican vacation who end up accompanying a German tourist to a middle-of-nowhere archaeological dig to search for his missing brother. The site of the dig is a Mayan temple that is nearly covered in vines, but the real hurdle comes when natives from the nearby village prevent the group from leaving the temple site. Explaining why would give away too much of the plot, but let’s just go ahead and say that this is where things begin to get very, very bloody. There are people losing limbs after being crushed by rocks, attacks from killer plants and a whole lot more blood and gore. The vine is malicious and bloodthirsty, ripping off appendages and doing enough damage to make the weak-stomached among you very queasy. The only significant departure from the book comes at the end, which has been tied up nice and neat with a pretty bow, a happy ending in place of the melancholy one in the book. For a horror movie, this ends up being a surprisingly good one. The acting is better than average, the suspenseful scenes are great and if you can stomach the grisly violence and guts, you’ll end up enjoying it.
- Why do power outages so often occur because of the most basic, lame causes? Squirrel gets into the power substation, finds his way into the wrong place and ZAP, your power is out for hours. Or in the case of Stockholm, Sweden last Saturday, it was a single rat that was responsible for a major power outage that resulted in delays in morning traffic, people stuck in elevators around the city and escalators being frozen in place for three hours. The rat was obviously electrocuted and not around to witness the effects of his misstep. But I’m sure that once news of the cause for the outage got out, people were just thrilled to know that there was such a solid explanation for their day being ruined. The real surprise here is that the rat-induced power outage took place in any city other than New York City, where there are rats aplenty and most of them seem to be on the Bar-roid Bonds diet and workout routine for rodents.
- It’s about freaking time. Reality TV has been running rampant and largely unchecked in America for far too long, giving ordinary losers the misguided impression that not only do they matter, but that they’re actual celebrities. Idiots from Survivor, American Karaoke and The Real World have started acting like they’re actually famous and important because they did a season on some abysmal and tired reality program. Of course, all of those shows have been around for a few years, so a recent crop of über-awful shows have come up behind them and taken things to a new low. Among those shows are a series and its spin-off that have given middle-aged women everywhere a soap opera in the form of reality television: The Real Housewives of Orange County and its illegitimate, redheaded stepchild of a show, The Real Housewives of New York City. Yes, because we all want to see a bunch of spoiled, rich, over-the-hill women whine and obsess about things so ridiculous and trivial that everyone not in the upper tax bracket wouldn’t even give two seconds of thought to in their lifetime. Thankfully, one Wall Street company is striking back against this reality trash. Although I hate big corporations and all they represent, in this case I’m making an exception because this particular company has made a brilliant decision to fire Jason Colodne because he appeared on The Real Housewives of New York City. Colodne is the boyfriend of Bethenny Frankel, one of the “housewives” on the show. Just a thought, but doesn’t housewives imply that the women are wives? You can't be a housewife if you’re not a wife, right? Otherwise, you’re just airing a show about some random, anonymous people who are dating and might break up at any second. But Colodne’s former company wasn’t down with him showing up on what it deems “a tawdry show” and thus gave him his walking papers. In predictable reality show cast member fashion, Colodne has sued the company for $55 million, alleging wrongful termination. The company contends it did not know of his appearance on the show before promos aired because he never revealed it to them. If only this started a trend whereby companies everywhere fired people for appearing on crappy reality shows. Of course, this wouldn’t work with the cast of MTV’s Real World, Road Rules and Real World/Road Rules Challenge shows because none of those hacks have jobs anyhow and are basically trying to build acting careers based on their past appearances on reality TV. In the end, I guess I’m just thrilled that someone has finally hit a reality TV “star” where it hurts and done what most of us have wanted to do for a long, long time.
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