- Did I or did I not warn you, America? You encourage an ass hat like Joe the Plumber, you give an uninteresting, IQ-deprived tool with an over-inflated sense of self worth the idea that he’s someone important and that people give a damn what he thinks. If only Joe Wurzelbacher hadn’t had that chance encounter with Barack Obama during a campaign stop, we wouldn’t be suffering through this knob Wurzelbacher parading around, appearing on TV and radio shows even though he’s a) totally unqualified to comment on anything other than the correct way to snake a drain or fix a leaky faucet, and b) DOESN’T FREAKING MATTER. But no, you all didn’t listen to me and ignore him, so now this dipshit has hired himself a publicity team and he’s planning to write a book. A book! About what? How to become famous in America despite doing nothing to justify it? Sorry Joe, but Paris Hilton, Heidi and Spencer from The Hills and a dozen other losers have already beat you to it. I did get a good laugh out of Wurzelbacher’s Nashville-based publicist, Jim Della Croce, calling his client a “celebrity.” Or maybe the book will be a detailed breakdown of the one-minute encounter with Obama, 300-plus pages detailing each of the 60 seconds when a guy who doesn’t matter and isn’t important talked to a guy who might be elected president, can’t wait….
- Sorry ‘bout that, Penn State fans….wait, no I’m not. Your team might have thought that a loss by Texas, the top team in the Bowl Championship Series rankings, would be good news for your beloved Nittany Lions. Think again. Even though Penn State was ranked third and a loss by the top team should have helped them theoretically, it ain’t so. The Texas Tech Red Raiders, who defeated then-No. 1 Texas, received more enough of a boost from their ginormous win to leap ahead of PSU when the BCS standings were released Sunday. The win wasn’t enough to secure the top spot for Tech, but they are now in second place, behind Alabama and just ahead of third-place Penn State. And if you’re an objective, non-PSU fan, you know that’s the right move. Fact is, Penn State’s “toughest” opponent was a decent Ohio State team that they beat in a 13-6 yawn-fest, a game wherein neither team looked impressive or even mildly competent. So teams from much, much better conferences than the Big Ten (11), where Penn State resides, conferences like the Big 12 and SEC, deserve higher rankings than the Lions. Don’t mistake this as support of the BCS, because it’s still a total joke and sham that should be replaced by a playoff system, but any rankings system should have both Alabama and Texas Tech ahead of Penn State at this point. Plus, Tech will get further opportunities to prove its worth the next two weeks when the Raiders take on Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, two top 10 teams from its own conference. On the flip side, Penn State takes on a mediocre Iowa team that would be blessed to crack any spot higher than last place in the SEC or Big 12. Advantage, Tech. So I don’t want to hear any crying from you, Big Ten (11) fans, if and when the Nittany Lions miss out on the national championship game despite going undefeated. They are nowhere near as good as any of the teams around them in the BCS standings, and if you believe they are, you are a homer, a sycophant and a myopic idiot…..
- Fast paced, dramatic and violent were the central themes on last night’s Prison Break. For the violence, look no further than the warehouse that Michael Scofield and his convict crew have been working out of as they try to take down the Company by accessing Scylla, the Company’s database, and using its information to take down the bad guys. At the end of the previous episode (which aired two weeks ago), the crew captured Company hit man Wyatt and took him back to the warehouse. Now, they have to break him by any means necessary and convince him to call the General, Jonathan Krantz, and pass along word that he has in fact killed Michael, Lincoln and the others. Being the trained professional assassin he is, Wyatt won't break despite hours of beatings from Linc. With other things to accomplish, Linc, Michael, Bellick and Sucre must leave to go to GATE headquarters, the building through which they will access Scylla. They do so after Homeland Security agent Don Self, their “boss,” arrives and promises to stay with Sarah and keep an eye on Wyatt. Self also lets the group know that Roland, their tech dork team member who was shot and killed by Wyatt last week while trying to rat out the rest of the group for revenge because of how they treated him, was dead and buried. The only one fazed by the news was Bellick, but there was no time to mourn. It was off to GATE, leaving behind Sarah and Self. Sarah went in to talk to Wyatt, setting up a trap with Self’s help. As she got Wyatt to talk and try to negotiate his way out of captivity, a voice recorder placed nearby captured his every word. Once there was enough voice data to reconstruct Wyatt saying that the job was done and that all of the targets were dead, Sarah left him alone and Self marched in to deliver the news. Armed with the engineered recording, Self placed a call to the General on Wyatt’s phone, informing him that the job was done. That stopped the General and his minions from putting a plan into play to flood the local media with information that Michael, Linc and two other members of the Fox River Eight were in L.A., a plan concocted when the Company believed Wyatt had possibly been captured (which ironically, he had). It also meant Wyatt was of no further use to Michael’s crew, so Self agreed to finally let Alex Mahone have his chance to exact revenge on the man who killed his son. He tortured Wyatt with things like five-inch needles shoved under his fingernails and electrical shocks to rouse him back to consciousness when his body began to shut down from the pain. All of that torture was done with the aim of pushing Wyatt to the point where he would agree to talk to Mahone’s wife on the phone and apologize for murdering her son. After that, Wyatt was of no use to Mahone either, so with his hands handcuffed and locked inside a cinder block, Mahone pushed Wyatt off the pier outside the warehouse and watched him float to the bottom of the bay. Having one of their hired guns killed was the least of the Company’s concerns, or it would have been if they knew. Foremost on their minds was the issue of moving Scylla to keep Scofield’s crew from accessing it. As plans to move the system progressed, another Company operative, albeit one gone rogue, came looking for the General. Gretchen was on the warpath after visiting her sister and estranged daughter, stocking up on guns and heading to L.A. where she has since teamed up with T-Bag and Scofield’s crew. When she goes to pay the General a visit at Company HQ, though, it appears to be the General who comes out on top with some psychological warfare. He catches Gretchen off guard, takes the gun from her hand and talks her into staying with the organization as his No. 2. Heck, creepy old dude even plants a kiss on her and calls her “my girl,” in very disturbing fashion. So it seems that Gretchen is back in the fold…..or is she just pulling a fast one on the General, seizing a chance to get inside the Company’s inner sanctum and get valuable intel on Scylla? If so, she definitely needs the help of Michael, Linc, Bellick and Sucre, who spent the day navigating their way through the tunnels that lead from T-Bag/Cole Pfeiffer’s office at GATE in the direction of Scylla. Up top, T-Bag is under heat because of his co-worker Andrew, who Gretchen killed in the last episode and whose resignation letter, a fake, was faxed to the company president. When Andrew’s fiancée calls to say he’s missing, the police get involved and questions are asked around GATE, especially of T-Bag. With Gretchen’s assurance that Andrew’s body won't be found, T-Bag lies his way out of trouble, putting Andrew’s name on the fraudulent sales records that were about to get T-Bag/Cole Pfeiffer into trouble himself. By deflecting blame, T-Bag averts disaster above ground, but below it, even bigger trouble is afoot. After following the blueprint hidden in the pages of the late James Whistler’s bird watching book, the four-man crew arrives at a difficult junction. In front of them is a major water main, with 30,000 gallons of water passing by the point every minute. Using sledgehammers, they try to dig under it, but that fails miserably. Michael then re-formulates the plan to go through the pipe. That means shutting down the flow of water through the pipe, accomplished by Linc and Bellick sneaking into the water management facility and blowing a control that sends water through the system. That gives Michael and Sucre and hour to cut a hole in either side of the pipe and slide a smaller pipe through the hole, perpendicular to the main pipe, that they can crawl through and get to the other side, where Scylla is, once the water starts flowing again. However, Michael experiences effects of whatever tumor or brain malady he’s been suffering from this season, with nose bleeds of previous weeks giving way to weakness, double vision and faintness. Sucre is concerned for his friend but agrees to take over the manual labor. He cuts the holes and once Linc and Bellick return from their errand, they go into the pipe to held slide the secondary pip through. But when a board used to brace the middle of the secondary pipe inside the main pipe breaks and there is no other way to lift it, Bellick volunteers to climb back inside and hold the middle of the pipe up. Doing so means he can’t get back out and will be drowned by the oncoming torrent of water, so he’s basically committing suicide, jumping on a grenade for the fellas. Despite pleas from the other three to get out and basically condemn the mission to fail in order to live, Bellick hangs tough and ends up getting swept under by the now-restored water flow. That sets up a macabre tone for next week’s episode, wherein Michael and the remainder of the crew have to copy the sixth and final Scylla card, the one belonging to the General, and access Scylla before it is moved, which is slated to happen by the end of the next day. Tune in then for the next part of the story……
- So contrary to what you might think, women are dirtier than men…..at least in one respect. A new scientific study has found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. “The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women," explained lead researcher Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in Colorado's department of ecology and evolutionary biology. So far, the researchers haven’t been able to explain why women harbored a greater variety of bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to so with the acidity of the skin, as men generally have more acidic skin than women.
On top of that, women also may have more bacteria living under the surface of the skin where they are not accessible to washing. So maybe the next time you are about to hold hands with your lady friend, guys, perhaps you want to give her a dose of Purell first - just kidding, I think. There isn’t a huge reason to worry, as even the researchers in the study admit that the vast majority of the bacteria we have on our bodies are either harmless or beneficial.” To conduct the study, the researchers took samples from the hands of 51 college students and tested the samples using an intricate new system for detecting bacteria DNA. In so doing, they were able to identify 4,742 species of bacteria overall, with the average hand containing 150 species of bacteria. Looking at all of this data, I’m starting to think that maybe the quasi-obsession many people seem to have with using Purell or other hand sanitizers a dozen or so times a day isn’t so bizarre or unnecessary…..
- You can’t freaking stop Donald Trump. Like him or not (no, your vote doesn’t count, Rosie O’Donnell, you are still a crass, rude, classless, flabby slob who is neither funny nor entertaining), the Trump-ster keeps finding ways to score massive new business deals, make money at ridiculous rates and somehow shake free of the waves of negative publicity invariably sweeping over him at any given time. The Donald’s latest ginormous business deal came Monday when the Scottish government announced yesterday that it was granting outline planning permission for Trump to build a controversial $2 billion golfing development on a pristine stretch of northeast coast of the country. This isn’t a totally done deal yet, as the permission is subject to Trump and the council satisfactorily concluding legal agreements with each other. But technicalities aside, this deal is going to get done and piss a lot of people off in the process. “Unless something striking happens ... this is essentially approval for the project,” said a spokesman for the Scottish government, which is run by the Scottish National Party. All of this comes nearly a year to the day that a committee of Aberdeenshire council -- which is administered by a Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition -- rejected on environmental grounds the project to build two championship golf courses, 500 homes, four blocks of holiday flats, a luxury hotel and 36 villas on the same tract of land. But I guess when you come in flashing the big bucks and big name that D. Trump is flossin’, you can change a lot of minds and usually get anything you want…..
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