T.O. = no team, competition for the iPad and weekend movie news

- Shocker of all shockers, Terrell Owens is once again a man without a football team. You may remember that last offseason, T.O. drifted along without finding a team willing to sign him until finally the Buffalo Bills took advantage of that lack of interest to ink him to a one-year contract at a discounted rate. He arrived in Buffalo to massive fanfare, with hundreds of fans greeting him at the airport, Bills cheerleaders there to welcome him and the mayor presenting him with a key to the city. It was a feel-good story……for T.O. and his ego. He came in with promises to make the Bills potent offensively and vows that he would be willing to stay in Buffalo for more than one season if they would have him. Then reality happened in the form of a 6-10 season, a fired offensive coordinator, a fired head coach, a fired interim head coach and a season of 55 receptions for 829 yards and five touchdowns by T.O. With a succession of crappy quarterbacks throwing his way and his declining skills, T.O. had one of the worst seasons of his career and was an irrelevant part of an impotent offense on a terrible team. While he didn’t have a typical T.O. diva moment, that was more because he had mentally checked out and knew it wasn’t worth his effort to throw a fit than because he was committed to being a good citizen and teammate. With the team now looking to make a complete overhaul and new head coach Chan “Not a Single Person in the World Supported My Hiring” Gailey at the helm, the Bills have decided not to offer T.O. a contract for next season. "We wanted to inform all three players ahead of the start of the free agency period so they could begin making their plans," Bills general manager Buddy Nix said of Owens and two other players released by the team. "We just felt that was the right thing to do. All three have represented our organization with class and we thank them for their dedication and hard work." Don’t worry, I’m sure T.O. will take this just fine. After all, he gets to escape from the snowy tundra that is Buffalo, so it’s not like he’s missing much. "I would like to thank the great fans in Buffalo, Ralph Wilson & the Bills organization for all their supports this past season," Owens said on Twitter. Now, the question is whether any team will want to take the risk of bringing in the temperamental six-time Pro Bowl receiver with skills that no longer match his healthy self-image. I’m going with yes, but only if Owens is willing (i.e. forced by lack of interest) to sign a massively discounted deal…………

- The decision to postpone the release of Shutter Island from last fall until February 2010 has proven to be a wise one for Paramount Pictures. For the second straight week, the duo of Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese garnered the top spot at the box office with a take of $22.2 million, fending off several new releases and raising its total box office to $75 million-plus. The least-imaginative, most time-wasting new release had to be Kevin Smith’s “comedy” Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, and yet it raked in $18.5 million for a second-place spot in the rankings. Coming in third place was the R-rated horror film The Crazies, which debuted with $16.5 million and was the second-strongest opener behind Cop Out (no movie should ever be behind Cop Out on any list, by the way, it sucks that much). In fourth place was the big-budget blockbuster that just wouldn’t die, James Cameron’s Avatar. In its freaking eleventh weekend in theaters, the animated albatross of a movie dipped just 14 percent and grossed an additional $14 million, putting its domestic gross at $706 million. One area where the film might suffer is the competition to hold onto is 3-D and IMAX screens now that Disney’s Alice in Wonderland will be opening up. Those tickets cost a significant chunk more than a normal movie ticket, so Cameron and the studio definitely want to hang onto them for as long as possible. In fifth place for the weekend was Fox’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which used its family-friendly status as pretty much the only PG-rated film in theaters to conjure up $9.8 million. Filling out the rest of the top 10 were returning films such as Valentine’s Day (sixth with $9.5 million and a cumulative total in excess of $100 million), Dear John (seventh with $5 million its fourth weekend in theaters), The Wolfman (eighth with a measly $4 million for a total gross of $57 million), The Tooth Fairy (ninth with $3.4 million) and Crazy Heart, which rounded out the top 10 with $2.5 million. All told, it’s not an impressive collection of movies and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t go to see a single one of them over the weekend………

- The competitors for Apple's iPad continue to line up and based on what I’ve seen from the iPad thus far, Apple’s attempt at a tablet computer would do well to be wary of any and all rivals. Every computer company with an R&D budget over $50 seems to be working on its own version of a touch-enabled, multimedia-sporting device. Count Dell among them, as it has announced plans for the Mini 5 (a name that is still in beta) -- a tablet with a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen that, according to Michael Dell, will debut "in a couple of months." Unlike the iPad, the Mini 5 (or whatever Dell ends up calling it) will have a built-in camera. The 5-megapixel camera will be located on the back and the Mini 5 will also have a separate front-facing camera that can be used for video conferencing, a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1-GHz processor. The Mini 5 will also offer the same apps that are available on most smartphones and will include a set of specialized tools and programs for business users. One area where the Mini 5 will fall short of the iPad is screen size, as its 5-inch screen will put it closer to the Sony PSP than the longer design of the iPad. But of course, the major question is what operating system the tablet will run. That would be the latest version of Google's Android operating system, version 2.0 or higher. Potential users will also be happy to know that unlike the iPad, which features a 4:3 aspect ratio, Dell's tablets will support the 16:9 ratio that is used for watching widescreen movies. "It's a device optimized for media consumption," said Neeraj Choubey, general manager of the tablets division at Dell. "It will offer the full Web-browsing experience so you have something that you are holding in your hand that replaces everything the smartphone does and takes on quite a bit of the features of a laptop." According to Dell, the Mini 5 will be the first in a series of tablet PCs that will eventually grow to include several different screen sizes. One aspect of its new tablet that Dell won't comment on just yet is pricing, although the company claims that prices will be “competitive” in relation to the $500 to $830 Apple is charging for iPads. What remains to be seen is whether, collectively, all of these tablet computer offerings can actually draw significant interest from consumers. In the past, offerings of slates and convertible notebooks haven’t drawn a huge following. Personally I am never going to be down with touch-screen computers simply because I see the oil and filth that come off people’s hands onto mice and keyboards for standard computers and the idea of touching a screen over and over again and transferring that same filth to the screen is just a no-go…………

- Don’t rush into anything, NFL. Just because your current overtime rules are blatantly broken and give the team that wins the coin toss an unfairly high advantage in terms of winning games doesn’t mean you need to hurry up and fix the system. Oh wait, yes it does. As it works right now, the NFL’s overtime system allows the team that wins the coin toss to either receive the ball (duh, the obvious choice) or defend a particular end of the field. The team that scores first wins and the game ends immediately, meaning that the losing team could go the entire overtime without touching the ball on offense. That’s exactly what has happened an overwhelming majority of the time, both in regular-season and playoff games, and there has been a growing chorus of cries the past few seasons for the system to change. As you’d expect, the tools who run the league have stopped up their ears and both the owners and the competition committee, which is theoretically supposed to address issues such as this, have dropped the ball over and over again when it comes to revising overtime. But the turning point may have come this past season when NFL golden boy/egomanic Brett Favre and his Minnesota Vikings lost the NFC championship game in overtime after New Orleans won the coin toss and marched down the field for the winning field goal. With that example freshly seared into their minds, league officials are said to be seriously considering a change in the overtime structure – for the playoffs only. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Saturday the league could change its overtime format for playoff games at a meeting next month. No, don’t fix the problem for the whole season, just for the playoffs. What happens if a team loses a regular-season game in overtime without touching the ball and that team misses the playoffs because of that loss? Way to fix half of the problem, NFL! But back to the solution itself…..under the new format, both teams would get the ball at least once unless the first team to get the ball scores a touchdown. If the first team to get the ball makes a field goal and the other team ties the game, play would continue until one team scored again. "There have been various concepts that have been discussed in recent years, but this one has never been proposed," Aiello said. The competition committee will present the new concept to teams and players at league meetings March 21-24 in Orlando, Fla., after which a vote could be held and at least two thirds of the teams would need to agree to the changes for new rules to be adopted. There have already been discussions between the competition committee and the players' union during last week’s NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, but those merely set the stage for what’s to come. As much as I hate Favre (and will always hate him), if he is the impetus for this rule changing, then at least his career will have had some value for me. The current overtime rules have been in place ever since overtime was adopted for regular season games in 1974. Overtime for playoff games always has been sudden death, so changing it at this point would be a long time coming…………

- I’m going to take this next story as definitive proof that even God himself hates the plague that is MTV’s Jersey Shore. While Jersey Shore cast members Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Vinny Guadagnino were attending a party in New York (and really, what party is complete without two IQ-deprived, vapid, moronic reality TV cast members who pander to the worst stereotypes of ethnicities that several of them aren’t even a member of) at the Sony Building when a glass roof shattered and ice and glass fell into the lobby. The party, which took place Saturday night, was to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim. Ten people were injured in the accident, but no one was seriously hurt. After the collapse, Polizzi tweeted: "Omg roof just collapsed at the purim event! We thought the dj was beatin the beat hardcore but nope, the roof couldn't handle snooki and vin." No, judging by your portly physique and both yours and Guadagnino’s massive egos, it’s not at all surprising that the roof just couldn’t take the weight. While some might look at this is a terrible accident that nearly caused serious injury to a lot of people, I choose to view it differently. I view it as just one failed attempt to remove these despicable Jersey Shore fools from our society. We can try again, y’all, and if we stick with it, eventually we can rid our lives and television sets of these heinous d-bags…………

Tiger takes another hit, cows invade an Arkansas home and ABBA as a sign that you current strategy is doomed to fail

- Tiger Woods doesn’t appear poised to return to the golf course any time soon and by the looks of it, he’s not going to be returning to the top of most companies’ “gotta get” product endorsers in the near future either. Showing that scripted apologies read in front of a room of handpicked media members, friends and family members, refusing to take questions and sounding as robotic as possible while doing so aren’t enough to make you a suitable corporate pitchman, Gatorade joined the ever-growing line of companies jettisoning Woods as their spokesman. A representative for Gatorade, sold by PepsiCo Inc., confirmed Friday that it had severed its relationship with the Woods just a week after his contrived, staged, lame-o public apology. "We no longer see a role for Tiger in our marketing efforts and have ended our relationship," a Gatorade spokeswoman said. "We wish him all the best." Yeah, you wish him all the best, you just want nothing to do with him. I’m not blaming Gatorade; I would have done the exact same thing. What’s bizarre is that Gatorade plans to continue its relationship with the Tiger Woods Foundation, which is essentially Tiger Woods. I suppose that keeping ties only with Woods’ charitable organization allows Gatorade to say that it still cares about the kids it helps while not condoning or supporting Woods’ personal behavior. What cracks me up is a Gatorade spokesperson refusing to say whether his contract was terminated early because of trouble with his public image. Not that we don’t all know the answer to that, but don’t insult our intelligence. The decision itself was a few months in the making, as Gatorade discontinued its Woods-brand drinks in November. The company joins AT&T Inc. and Accenture, both of which dropped Woods in the weeks following his Thanksgiving Day one-car accident that led to the exposure of his habit of chasing as many skanks as possible any time he had the chance. Some companies have stuck by Woods, most notably Nike Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc., but there is no doubt that his value as an endorser has declined significantly and it shows no signs of rebounding any time soon……………

- Having never had the feeling of returning home to find a herd of cows wandering unattended through my home, I can’t say for certain how Latisha Francis of Pike County, Ark., felt Monday when she pulled into her driveway and was greeted by a cow sticking its head out the front door. Of course, when one lives in such a rural area as Pike County, cows are an omnipresent part of life. However, seeing cows in the fields or in pens on your neighbor’s property is one thing; having one greet you at the door and several others inside your house is something else entirely. In addition to the cow at the door, Francis also found another cow hanging out in the living room and a third one chillaxin’ in the master bedroom. As you would expect, the inside of the house was a ginormous mess in the aftermath of the bovine invaders. They found a 50-pound bag of dog food in the kitchen and helped themselves, scattering food all over the floor and forgetting to be courteous visitors and clean it up. Additionally, the trio of cows had difficulty walking on the home's wood floors, slipping and falling repeatedly and crashing into/destroying one piece of furniture after another. The best part of the entire story is how the cows came to enter the house in the first place. No, they didn’t go MacGyver and pick the lock on the back door. Their saga began when they managed to escape their enclosure and were subsequently chased by several dogs. Rather than put their obvious size advantage to use, the cows fled and forced their way inside the house. While there, they also deposited a large yield of cow droppings, which I’m sure will give Brown’s home a lovely odor for the foreseeable future. The lesson, as always: cow-proof your home just to be safe…………

- Here’s a good rule for any walk of life, especially politics: If your strategy for success in any given situation involves the music of ‘70s disco/poppers ABBA, you need a new strategy. I say this partially for the benefit of everyone reading this, but largely for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Perry is fighting hard in the Texas Republican gubernatorial primary and with only two days remaining, he unveiled a tactic that just may be the worst in political history, which is saying something for a guy who hails from the same state as W., our worst president ever. Perry needs to fire every last one of his advisors because they undoubtedly were part of his decision to use a modified version of ABBA's 1976 hit "Dancing Queen." The poorly made video targets challenger Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and casts her as the "Earmark Queen." Worse still – and how can one possibly make an ABBA song worse? – is the fact that in place of ABBA’s crap-tacular lyrics are new ones sung by…….wait for it…….wait for it……..keep waiting……..yup, a former American Karaoke contestant! That would be former AK karaoke-er Stephanie Daulong. Now I have no idea who Daulong is, but by virtue of his having been an AK contestant, I know he is an absolute tool, a musical hack and someone I would definitely punch in the face if I ever had the misfortune of meeting him. "You are the Earmark Queen, Spend and spend wasting our money, Earmark Queen spend and spend, From the Treasury oh no!" Daulong warbles. He is backed by a video showing reminders of what the Perry campaign refers to as "Hutchison's fiscally irresponsible 17 years in Washington." The video is also in response to Hutchison's campaign producing its own set of Web videos as the primary heats up. What would be great about Perry’s video if I were a Texas voter is that I wouldn’t need to know his or Hutchinson’s positions on any of the issues. No, I would just base my vote entirely on Perry’s ABBA ripoff and know that my only option was voting for anyone but him…………

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Okay, so it’s not an actual riot and it’s more of a protest, but dammit, this is everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the world and we’ll talk about hundreds of Jordanian politicians and trade union members staging a sit-in at the Trade Unions Complex in Amman on Saturday if I so decide. The protest was meant to denounce Israel's addition of two West Bank holy sites to a list of Jewish heritage centers. Let me first say that I’m not supporting or denouncing the addition of those sites; I am merely commenting on the protest itself. Whether I agree with someone’s position on an issue or not, I can always find a way to enjoy a good act of social dissidence in support of that position. Included in the protest were groups including Muslim Brotherhood figures and leading trade unionists. Those assembled dissenters chanted slogans and hoisted signs calling for decisive action against Israel, the declaration of jihad (why does it always have to be jihad, y’all?) and the total dissolution of ties with Israel by all Muslim countries. The decision that caused the protest came earlier this week, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the inclusion of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Tomb of Rachel near Bethlehem on the list of Jewish heritage sites. That’s how those sites are known in non-Islamic circles, while inside those circles the sites are referred to as the Haram al-Ibrahimi and the Bilal Mosque, respectively. "The response to this crime should not be confined to the issuance of denunciation statements, but must go beyond to express backing for the resistance option, the cancellation of all peace pacts and the suspension of all forms of normalization with Israel," Chairman of the Jordan Doctors Association Ahmad Armouti said. Oh, and what would any Islamic-themed protest be without a little lashing out at the United States? And rest assured, that happened here when several speakers during the function chided the U.S. and other world powers for failing to condemn Israel’s actions. This is a tough protest to enjoy after taking all of that into account, so let’s keep moving…………

- Not that Facebook needed the hammer in its hand any more than it already has it, but now Mark Zuckerberg and friends have additional ammo to keep themselves at the top of the social networking heap. This week, the company awarded a patent relating to streaming "feed" technology -- more specifically, "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network." Basically, the patent would allow Facebook to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent. That could spell trouble for Twitter, which is basically just one ginormous news feed (filled will all sorts of inane info because 99 percent of Twitter users simply aren’t interesting enough to merit a Twitter feed in the first place). Even though traces of Twitter’s influence can be seen in the way Facebook has developed its own news feed technology, it is Facebook which now has a patent on the technology. Critics and observers in the social media field are already fretting about the wide-ranging implications of the patent and looking across the landscape of social media, I can definitely see why they are concerned. If Facebook so chooses, it could literally make life miserable for a lot of other social networking sites out there. The entire situation is incredibly ironic because way back in the fall of 2006, Facebook users ripped the introduction of the news feed concept so viciously that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted an apology note on the company blog in response. The word most used at the time by news feed haters was "stalkerish," but the concept was eventually embraced and now is an essential part of Facebook to the extent that the site now holds a patent on it. Other social networking sites, beware…………

Recapping Smallville, a pointless Favre-related proclamation and things in life you'd like to get right

- A madman is running loose on the streets of Metropolis tonight and his name is Dr. Bernard Chisholm, abducting Kandorians. Yes, Smallville had a new whack-a-doo and Chisholm began the hour by abducting Vala, one of the Kandorians that Clark Kent helped obtain a new identity and life. She has embraced normalcy by working at a coffee shop, but her night is ruined when Chisholm ambushes her inside the coffee shop wearing a welding mask/gas mask combo and renders her unconscious with some sort of toxic gas. Next thing Vala knows, she is in Chisholm’s dark, Spartan lab and trapped inside some sort of containment unit that basically shrink-wraps her body and keeps her head inside some sort of small compartment. Chisholm vows that he knows about she and her alien friends invading Earth and that he is going to stop them. At the Daily Planet, Clark and Lois once again lament their lack of quality time together and make a date for that evening. However, those plans take a detour when Vals’s sister Faora shows up at the Planet looking for Clark’s help because her sister has gone missing. He begins searching the city to find her, but the search proves fruitless and Clark can’t figure it out. Figuring things out is exactly what Tess Mercer has in mind, as she summons Oliver Queen to her office and challenges him to find a leak in one of the subsidiaries of LuthorCorp, which they are both owners in. Someone is stealing large chunks of money and since it’s a subsidiary that Oliver oversees, Tess demands that he plug the leak. In truth, Oliver has a very good idea who the leak is. He visits the apartments above the Talon in Smallville and Chloe is happy to see him. She thinks he’s there to hook up, as apparently they are now an item, but instead he cranks some rock music on the stereo and instead of getting close to kiss her, he gets close so he can whisper a warning to her while the music blares. He explains that Tess is watching him and probably listening to their conversation and that he knows she is probably the source of the leak. Chloe admits that she has been siphoning money from the company, but not stealing it for herself. Instead, she explains that she’s been buying a “insurance policy for the world.” That insurance policy is located in a large trailer in some random freeway underpass/back alley in the city. Inside are a slew of Kryptonite weapons – knives, daggers, guns, bullets, etc. A stunned Oliver marvels that Chloe has amassed a trailer full of weapons that could kill Clark, one of her best friends, but she counters that Clark’s moral compass has led them astray before, that she’s no longer comfortable blindly trusting him and that he is now running with his Kandorian peeps and that could spell trouble. As they exit the trailer, an investigator working for Tess snaps pictures of them with a long-distance telephoto lens. Back in Metropolis, Lois is at the café where she and Clark were to have their date and instead, she is approach by Chisholm, who cuts right to the point and says that he wants to offer her the scoop of a lifetime: aliens in Metropolis. He claims to have plenty of evidence and even says that he has sent dozens of letters to her at the Planet to get her attention. Lois, clearly thinking she’s in the presence of insanity, pretends to be interested in the story but excuses herself outside to call 911. Before she can speak to the operator, a gun clicks right behind her head and Chisholm is there gun in hand. He renders her unconscious and drags her back to his lab, where a horrified Lois sees the Kandorians inside holding tanks that Chisholm has amassed – three of them in total. He forces her to begin writing the story about aliens invading the planet and promises that once the story comes out and scientists from around the world see it and see the results of blood testing and other work he has done on the aliens, they will come to see what he is doing. While Lois is being held captive, Zod is busy trying to track down the missing Kandorians. He sneaks into the Planet, steals a credential and poses as a reporter to sneak into the archive room, where he is pointed in the direction of submissions from readers who claim to have seen aliens and UFOs. Digging through the pile of whack-job mail, he finds a bundle of letters from Chisholm to Lois with Kryptonian symbols on the envelopes and realizes he’s found his culprit. Zod arrives at Chisholm’s lab to find Lois, whom he met while she was in the hospital and he posed as an FBI agent who was also a pal of Clark’s. Zod attempts to free the captured Kryptonians when Chisholm leaves the room, but the deranged alien hunter returns and shoots Zod in the stomach. Because he doesn’t have his powers back yet, Zod is wounded by the shot and falls to the ground, slowly bleeding to death. Chisholm forces Lois to keep writing his story and she appears to have no other option. He also reveals to her that he is hunting the Kryptonians because he died of a heart attack, but they somehow stole his body, experimented on it and brought him back to life. His skill is all cut up and he clearly has a score to settle with those responsible. Meanwhile, Clark and Faora attempt to get to the bottom of what’s going on. They head to Metropolis General, where Chisholm was apparently a doctor. While there, Faora admits to Clark that the three Kryptonians who disappeared were all engineers of a sort, experimenting on human bodies they stole from the morgue at the hospital. Clark is furious and says what they did was wrong, but Faora surprises him by revealing that Zod had no knowledge of the project. Furthermore, she claims that while on Krypton, he was a brave and fearless leader who once saved her life in battle. Clark doesn’t know him at all and doesn’t realize what a great man he is, she claims. When they finally do get into the morgue to ask questions, the doctor they encounter is unwilling to help until Clark threatens to blackmail him if he doesn’t. The doc admits that Chisholm caught body snatchers – the Kryptonians – in the morgue and was so stunned by their presence that he had a heart attack and died. All told, four bodies were stolen, including John Corben, i.e. Bryan Austin Green’s character from earlier this season who was implanted with a Kryptonite-powered heart and became Metallo. Clark super-speeds to Chisholm’s lab just in time to stop the good doctor, who has busted out a chainsaw and is prepared to finish off Zod. When Clark stops him and tosses him across the room, Chisholm raises the chainsaw above his head and runs it right into some electrical wiring, killing himself on the spot. Intentional or accidental? Not sure, but either way, he’s dead. Zod is about to join him until Clark seizes a piece of Kryptonite from a nearby table, cuts himself and drips some of his blood into Zod’s open wound. The wound heals and Zod survives, so Clark appears to have done an about face on him. Back at the trailer where Chloe’s arsenal was, Tess and one of her men arrive to look inside and when they crack the lock, they find the trailer empty. Oliver explains to Chloe that he moved her stockpile because he figured Tess would eventually come after it. At the Planet, Clark and Lois meet up and try once again to find a time for a date, but both are drawn away by text messages. Lois’ message is from someone calling themself The Wall and thanking her for forwarding them one of the blood samples she nabbed from Chisholm’s lab. Clark’s text is from Zod, who is up on the Planet’s roof. The two men share a handshake and Zod thanks Clark for saving his life, admitting he was wrong about him. The two pledge to build a better future for their people together, but as Clark walks away, a wry smile creeps across Zod’s face. He walks to the edge of the roof, looks down and throws himself off, but takes flight on the way down and zooms through the Metropolis skyline to end the episode. That’s the last episode for more than a month, as the show won't return until April, so until then…………

- Corruption in housing agencies just seems like a given, regardless of where in the world you live. Be it the United States or abroad, those running housing agencies just seem more prone to corruption and evidence for that theory can be found in the case of Michael Colón, director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Senor Colón has been indicted on 40 counts of corruption, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Just what could he have possibly done that was so terrible? Umm, apparently instead of spending his time doing the job he was paid to do - supervising 79 employees in the Caribbean, including the Virgin Islands – dude instead spent his time shopping and running errands for his family restaurant. What? The restaurant business is tough and I’m sure the Colón family’s eatery just needed little extra TLC. Sure, Colón was supposed to be overseeing a branch of a major federal agency and that agency’s job is theoretically more important than running a restaurant, but I’m sure no one noticed he was gone. Well, other than the U.S. Attorney’s office in Puerto Rico, that is. "The defendant claimed to have been working, when in truth and in fact he was doing non-work-related errands, including, among other things, shopping at Sam's Club, Costco, and Ralph's Food Warehouse to purchase groceries," said a statement issued by U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez Velez. Oh, and there’s also the San Juan grand jury that issued the federal indictment against Colón. They didn’t seem to believe him either. The indictment alleges that for more than a year Colón routinely shopped and unloaded the groceries at a restaurant he owned before selling it to his daughter. So what is the penalty for not doing your government job and instead working somewhere else on personal business while on the government’s dime? Well, if convicted, Colón could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. As for me, I’m just flat-out stunned that someone working for a housing agency is corrupt…………

- This may be the most irrelevant and pointless proclamation of all-time. The Minnesota Vikings have decreed that they will not impose any sort of timeline or deadline on perpetually-waffling quarterback/egomaniac Brett Favre when it comes to deciding if he will retire or return for another season. "I'm not going to put him in any box," Vikings coach Brad Childress said Friday at the NFL's annual scouting combine. "Four weeks and change, he's still healing up from that game [the NFC championship]. He's kind of earned that latitude." Thanks for that, B. Like what you say makes one damn bit of difference to the Ol’ Gunslinger. You freaking drove your own car to the airport to pick the guy up last season after he jerkred your entire team around for weeks deciding if he wanted to come back for another ego boost, er, season of the game he loves. You handed him the starting job before he took a single snap in practice for you and from that moment on, Favre officially owned your ass. No team he has ever played for has been able to enforce any sort of deadline for him in his annual game of retirement chicken because the guy a) loves the drama and the attention and b) doesn’t give a rat’s ass about hanging his current team out to dry while he makes his decision. He feels like whenever he damn well gets around to deciding to play, the team should set everything else aside and welcome him in with open arms because he’s the Ol’ Gunslinger. So Childress saying that the team won't impose a deadline on Favre deciding whether to return for a 20th NFL season is as irrelevant as it is ridiculous. We all know how this story goes. Two years ago in March, Favre made a tearful retirement announcement in Green Bay and when he reversed field to come back and feed his ego right before the season, he was infuriated that the Packers had the gall to accept his decision and move forward without him. That led to his acrimonious departure from Green Bay and subsequent trade to the New York Jets. He played on season there and again retired with a torn biceps in his throwing shoulder in February. But when summer rolled around, the Ol’ Attention Whore was itching to play again and Childress prostrated himself at Favre’s feet and gave him whatever he wanted to play for the Vikings. Thankfully, karma came back to bite both men in the ass when the Favre’s moronic interception in the NFC championship game cost the Vikings a shot at the Super Bowl and ended their season. Now, Favre will hold a gun to another team’s head all offseason long, hijack the NFL news cycle all summer long and ultimately decide that his massive ego needs boosted once again. He will return amidst warnings that this will probably be his last season, the Vikings will have a good year and ultimately fall short in the end because Favre will throw another ridiculous interception at the worst possible time and this entire farce will happen all over again a year from now. Good God, I hate Brett Favre…………

- There are a few select things that you want to make absolutely sure to get right in life. Brain surgery, diffusing a bomb, that sort of thing. Well, releasing the correct convicted felon from prison because his or her sentence is up also falls under that heading. I say this for the administration at from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center in Baltimore. On Thursday morning, officials at the prison accidentally released the wrong man, thinking he was a different prisoner. Raymond Taylor was freed after a mix-up in which he was able to use another prisoner’s name and identity to flee the prison. Taylor was serving a life sentence for attempted murder and he escaped by……well, I’ll allow Michael Stouffer, commissioner of the Maryland Division of Correction, to take it from here. "Inmate Raymond Taylor reported to the front of the cell and handed the officer the ID card presenting himself as William Johnson," Stouffer said. "The inmate was asked to verbally give his ID number as this officer checked the numbers against the ID card. Taylor recited numbers belonging to inmate Johnson, and the officer removed the inmate from the cell and escorted this inmate to the control center." How did this kind of f*ck-up happen? Well, apparently the two men look somewhat alike, as if that’s an excuse. In a written statement, Division of Correction spokesman Mark Vernarelli said the two inmates have "similar physical characteristics." Yeah, that may well be, but at a former "Supermax" facility that's currently used to house inmates who are awaiting court appearances or moving from one prison to another, you should be able to differentiate between inmates. The prisoner whose identity Taylor escaped with was to be released after serving a two-year sentence. Instead, he got a full day of freedom before being captured in Martinsburg, W. Va. Authorities took him into custody without incident Friday while hiding in a bedroom closet at the home of a friend in Martinsburg. He will be extradited back to Maryland. What’s amazing is that he was wrongly released mid-morning and the mistake wasn’t discovered until about 3:45 p.m. As for Johnson……wow. I know criminals are stupid and that’s a big part of the reason they’re behind bars to begin with, but wow. He was on the verge of being released only to pull something like this and now he has been charged with conspiracy and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. People in and between Baltimore and Martinsburg can thank prison officials for allowing a man who was convicted in 2005 of three counts of attempted first-degree murder and related counts, including assault and handgun crimes and is currently service three life sentences to go free in their area for a day. "Initial indications are that proper policy and procedures related to inmate releases were not properly followed," said Felicia Hinton of the Division of Corrections. Hmm, you think? Thanks for the shocking revelation, F. Protocol or no protocol, you need to figure out how to correctly identify inmates. Perhaps do something innovative like assign them numbers or a tactic along those lines…………

- Coups are awesome. They evoke mental images of mustachioed men in poorly lit, poorly ventilated back rooms with exposed pipes, plotting and scheming to overthrow leaders and chomping on smelly cigars while they plot and scheme. Thus, I am a big fan of the alleged "Sledgehammer" coup plot in Turkey. Turkish police may not enjoy the coup quite as much, which is probably why they launched a second wave of raids rounding up military officers tied to the coup. Media outlets within Turkey reported that one retired officer and 17 active duty soldiers were detained in operations conducted on Friday in 13 cities. Dozens of military leaders have been imprisoned or charged as part of "Sledgehammer," an alleged plot concocted by the secular military to plant bombs in mosques to destabilize the country's elected and Islamist-inspired government. It’s a freaking awesome story and you know it’s good when prosecutors refuse to comment on the investigations and arrests. While those allegedly responsible for the coup are rounded up, Turkey's president held crisis talks Thursday with the prime minister and top military general in a futile attempt to diffuse tensions. But when 50 high-ranking active duty and retired military commanders are arrested and accused of a sinister coup against the government, soothing unrest is a fairly impossible task. President Abdullah Gul must face the reality that the country’s military has a long history of dominating Turkish politics and that won't change under his watch. In the last half-century alone, Turkish generals overthrew at least four civilian. That has begun to change, especially in the past eight years since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party swept to power. Let’s just say the generals aren’t big fans of Erdogan, whose party has its roots in political Islam. Another alleged coup was investigated a year ago, when prosecutors began detaining hundreds of suspects. Critics have ripped the government for that investigation ever since and this new incident certainly won't cause that talk to go away. Gul’s office did release a short statement urging the public to "be confident that the matters on the agenda are going to be resolved within the constitutional order... and everyone will act responsibly to ensure our institutions will not be hurt." Umm, color me unconvinced. Not that I mind all of the chaos and craziness, because those things are what make coups so great in the first place. I’m just saying that expecting a situation like this to settle down quickly in unrealistic and the Turkish government should sit back and enjoy the madness along with the rest of us…………

The U.S. Navy gets with the times a bit, I defend my pal Caron Butler's right to chew straws and Google goes color-coded

- The housing market is bleak for everyone right now, even fictional families of hunky vampires. Yes. the house in Vancouver, British Columbia that home to the Cullen clan in Twilight: New Moon is on the market. Better still, it has been on the market so long at its original asking price that the owner is slashing that price tag and you can now own this piece of cinematic history for a mere $2,998,000. Right, because $3 million even would have been just excessive. That $2,000 under the $3-mill mark makes all the difference in the world. In the movie, the Cullen family eschews the typical vampire dwelling places of coffins and creaky old castles and lives in the most luxurious house in town. The estate used in the movie is located in western Vancouver and it is being sold by real estate agent Jason Soprovich. Soprovich scored this primo gig and he is listing the five-bedroom, four-bath home for the current owner. Why is this local looking to sell? According to Soprovich, this individual is “looking for a change of pace.” Allow me to decode that for you from real estate-ese: Too many no-life-having, pathetic, gawky Twilight losers, er, um, fans, are prowling around, trying to snap pictures and catch of glimpse of the place the dreamy Edward Cullen called home in a FICTIONAL MOVIE THAT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO TIES TO REALITY WHATSOEVER. But I suppose that’s the price you pay when you agree to allow a movie to use your property, even if they do compensate you handsomely for the privilege to do so. Should you have $3 million lying around and aren’t smart enough to use it to purchase a property somewhere warm and tropical, this could be just the investment for you…………

- While the fate of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is still uncertain, the United States Navy is prepared to change another long-standing policy and make itself much more inclusive on a daily basis. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates notified Congress of plans to allow women to serve aboard submarines. If you aren’t very familiar with the U.S. Navy and its operations, it may surprise you to learn that at present, women are not allowed on submarines. Heck, I’m stunned that N.O.W. and other femi-Nazi groups aren’t picketing this policy on a daily basis outside the Pentagon. But the fact is that although women joined the crews of the Navy's surface ships in 1993, that decision did not apply to submarines. Naval officials cited limited privacy and the cost of reconfiguring the vessels as the arguments against including women on the crews of subs. Somewhere along the way, that line of thinking took a different turn and in September, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead (sounds like a porn name, no?) said he was "very comfortable addressing integrating women into the submarine force." Asked again about the issue of accommodating the ladies on submarines, he seemed cautiously optimistic. "Accommodations are a factor, but not insurmountable," he said. As is its custom, Congress has requested briefings on the matter. Right, because what would any bureaucratic decision be without lots and lots of meetings and red tape? In response to that request, the Navy sent letters of intent to Congress Monday. However, there will be no vote on the matter in Congress. The official recommendation for the change came from Adm. Roughead (bow-chicka-bow-bow), the secretary of the Navy and Gates. A source close to the situation said that there was no opposition to the move among Navy leaders. The implementation of the decision would then be done in phases, with officers -- who already have separate living quarters -- the first to go co-ed, followed by crews, with the women bunking together, the source said. Prior to that final step, crew space would have to be. As for the submarines that would host the first female crew members, at least initially they would be the larger ones -- nuclear-power, missile-carrying submarines known as SSBN and SSGN. I have to say, I support this decision fully. Women should be allowed to take the same risks and serve their country in the exact same way that their male counterparts do. In other words, it’s about freakin’ time……………

- Fans of ESPN’s popular "Pardon The Interruption" sports talk show will be without one of the show’s co-hosts for the next couple weeks after the network suspended Tony Kornheiser for two weeks following comments he made on his Washington-based radio show last week. Not to reiterate Kornheiser’s stupid remarks, but he made critical comments about the wardrobe of morning "SportsCenter" co-anchor Hannah Storm. Being the oversensitive corporate entity it is, ESPN of course had to overreact. ESPN executive vice president of content John Skipper released a statement regarding the decision: "Tony Kornheiser's comments about Hannah Storm were entirely inappropriate. Hurtful and personal comments such as these are not acceptable and have significant consequences. Tony has been suspended from PTI for two weeks. Hannah is a respected colleague who has been an integral part of the success of our morning SportsCenter." Yeah, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, Hannah Storm is good at her job and all, but she is definitely not an integral part of the success of “SportsCenter.” She hasn’t been with ESPN all that long and “SportsCenter” was a massive success long before she arrived. In response to the backlash and ESPN’s decision to suspend him, Kornheiser apologized for the remarks on his radio show Friday. The two-week ban is a bit excessive, but at least Kornheiser didn’t receive the same treatment that former NBA player and ESPN contributor Paul Shirley suffered after he made an offensive post about the post-earthquake relief efforts in Haiti on a blog he writes for that has no ties to ESPN whatsoever. Shirley, only a part-time contributor to ESPN.com at the time of his infraction, was dismissed almost immediately. Welcome to the Worldwide Leader in Sports, where we can have a sense of humor about things……as long as no one is making fun of us and everyone toes the same corporate line…………

- I’ll say this once and I had better not have to repeat it to the NBA and any of the Association’s teams that forward Caron Butler plays for in the future: Freaking leave Caron Butler alone or you’re going to have a brawl on your hands and that brawl is going to be with me. I say this after the NBA forced Butler to cease and desist his in-game habit of chewing straws on the sidelines. Yes, the NBA has a policy against players chewing on plastic straws during games. NBA executive vice president Stu Jackson phoned Butler on Tuesday and told him that his straws were no longer permitted on the bench. The issue came up after Butler was traded to the Dallas Mavericks as part of a seven-player trade that sent he, center Brendan Haywood and guard DeShawn Stevenson from Washington to Dallas. His new teammates noticed his chewing habit immediately and the league also took notice, as did the Dallas front office. "It's against the rules," Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. Honestly, this is possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of in terms of legalism in professional sports. It’s right up there with the NFL dictating exactly how high players can wear their socks, what they can write on their eye black and what size towels they can tuck into their waistband during games. What’s dumb about this situation in particular is that Butler didn’t just start chomping on plastic straws when he came to Dallas. He has reportedly chewed plastic straws at a rate of 12 per game for years, dating back to high school. He even discussed the habit in a chat on NBA.com in March 2009. "It calmed me down," he said in the chat. "Then it became one of those things you keep doing." In response to the NBA’s idiotic stance on the issue, a local radio sports talk show host encouraged fans to come to Wednesday night's game against the Lakers bearing straws to show their support for Butler. Sadly, Butler did not play against the Lakers due to a reaction to medication, so the protest didn’t have as much impact. This all comes on the heels of a battle between Butler and his previous team, Washington, over his Mountain Dew habit. Seems that Butler would down a 2-liter of the Dew before games or even a 1-liter bottle at halftime and also chug it before practice. Eventually, the Wizards came down on the practice and demanded that he stop. In summer 2009, Butler blogged on NBA.com that he had lost 11 pounds just by defeating his "addiction" of drinking at least six 12-ounce bottles of Dew a day. "I was going through withdrawals," Butler wrote on NBA.com. "Honestly, those first two weeks without the Dew [were] the roughest two weeks of my life. I'm talking headaches, sweats and everything." Honestly, I’d like to know what The Man’s fascination with persecuting Butler is. He doesn’t shoot guns into the air outside strip clubs, he doesn’t bring guns into the locker room, he’s not getting arrested for domestic violence, he’s not (that we know of) a major stoner and all he wants to do is drink Dew, chew straws and ball. Why can't the league and his teams leave him alone and let him do those things…………

- Great. Not only does our country’s terror alert system run on an infuriating and hard-to-remember color code (what level of danger does turquoise indicate again?), but now Google’s Gmail service will do the same. Apparently so, based on a new Gmail layout that the company unveiled this week. In Gmail, red boxes indicate e-mails sent from friends, bright green labels are attached to messages from e-mail lists, notes from family members in gold and gray messages are bills. The system of color-coded messages is intended to save users time and organize their emails more efficiently, but to me, it just sounds confusing. Rather than learn a color code, how’s about you just look at the damn email and decide if it’s important or not. How is seeing a color any easier than seeing who a message is from and having the wherewithal to decide if it is important? Until Wednesday, the color system was classified by Google as a beta-stage feature in Gmail Labs. Gmail Labs is the location the company refers to as "a testing ground for experimental features that aren't quite ready for prime time." But now it appears they were just short-selling the color system because it was clearly closer to being ready for use than Google let on. Along with five other new features, the color system has become a full-time part of Gmail. Additionally, Google also held "funerals" Wednesday for five Gmail Labs features that were unpopular with e-mail users: muzzle, which hid away messages from online friends; fixed width font; e-mail addict, which let users force themselves to take a break; location in signature; and random signature. Ah…..how very clever of you, Google. I’m laughing my ass off……or I would be if it were at all funny or amusing. While ditching those five functions, Google will keep the following Gmail functions: search autocomplete; forgotten attachment detector; YouTube previews; custom label colors; and vacation dates, which sets up away-from-e-mail messages to coincide with trips. In adding the color system and ditching unpopular features, Google is seeking to keep up with its espoused philosophy of developing products that people enjoy using, getting those products out to the public as soon as possible, and allowing consumers to think it's OK for things to malfunction during the learning process. "At Google, in general, the philosophy is to get things out quickly in front of our users and not make huge promises," said Ari Leichtberg, a Google engineer who has developed multiple Gmail Labs products. "Gmail was a beta app for a while in itself and that kind of let us as a company not be too afraid about getting something out that may screw up once in a while." Now we’ll see if the color system is as widely ripped as the release of two recent Google products, Buzz and Wave. I’d expect a solid influx of vitriol and unhappiness and if I actually used any of Google’s products other than its search engine, I would probably have further thoughts as well……….

The U. of Michigan, home of Fraud-riguez, a "Lost" recap and Google continues its quest for world domination

- Allow this to be a lesson to us all: drunk break dancing is a bad idea. Don’t let what happened to Ryan Baczkiewicz of Elma, N.Y., happen to you. Baczkiewicz showed up drunk for a house party at a friend’s house and as drunk people do from time to time, he acted like an absolute ass. More specifically, dude decided that it was a good idea to try out his work-in-progress break-dancing skills……on his friend’s parent’s hardwood floors…….while wearing a large diamond belt buckle. Needless to say, those attempts did not bring about a positive result. Well, unless you consider approximately $3,000 in damage to the hardwood floors and an arrest on felony criminal mischief charges successful. As with all bitchin’ house parties thrown by teenagers, this one happened while the party-throwers parents were out of town on vacation, looking to escape the mountains of snow piling up in Elma, N.Y. of late. They returned home and found their nice hardwood floors scratched the heck up and probably had a fairly animated conversation with their daughter about how that came to be. For sure, that’s not one of those things that happen during a party where you can try to cover it up by moving some furniture to cover it or slapping a little touch-up paint on the problem. If there are massive scratches all over the middle of some hardwood flooring, you are f*cking screwed. When the truth about the damages came out, a call to the police was the next step. Baczkiewicz was then charged with criminal mischief in the second degree, a class D felony, and criminal trespass in the second degree, a class A misdemeanor. According to witnesses, he made “repeated attempts at break dancing” while very drunk. That was enough to earn Senor Baczkiewicz a trip to the nearest police station, where he was held on no bail, pending his arraignment in the Town of Elma Court. Honestly, this tool should consider himself fortunate that the police can’t prove what his blood-alcohol level was at the time of the incident because at age 18, he would also be facing some sweet underage drinking charges as well if that were the case. Well done, moron…………


- NOW do you believe me that Google is attempting to take over the world, piece by piece? The web giant’s acquisition quest took another giant step forward today as it acquired reMail, an app that provides advanced e-mail search capabilities for the iPhone. Founder and CEO Gabor Cselle announced the acquisition on his blog, but did not give official terms of the deal. Cselle is the former VP of Engineering for Xobni and also a former engineer at Google, so perhaps his connections to the company were key to this deal. Google is also buying out Silicon Valley seed funding firm Y Combinator, which is also an investor in reMail. The thing about this deal is that Google apparently has no interest in reMail itself. In fact, Cselle admitted up front that both companies have decided to discontinue the reMail iPhone app and that he will become a product manager for Gmail. The losers here appear to be users of reMail, which I have actually heard quite a few positive comments about in learning what it is and how in functions. Acquiring reMail allows Google to stamp out some of its competition while acquiring some new talent to boost its own product line. And in a strict business sense, focusing on Gmail rather than an iPhone app makes a lot of sense. Having said that, I’m not moving off my point that Google is secretly plotting to take over the world and enslave us all. Subverting their competition gradually is one of the more sinister parts of the plot, I’ll grant you, but it doesn’t mean that plot doesn’t exist. Google has also acquired social search startup Aardvark, display ad tech firm Teracent and mobile ad network AdMob while most of you weren’t paying attention, by the way. Some day, all of you will come over to my side of this battle and I will welcome you. I just hope that happens before it’s too late…………


- Shocker of all shockers, some characters involved in major plot lines from last week’s Lost were completely AWOL this week. But rather than dwell on the negatives, let’s proceed with the recap. Things begin in Oceanic-land (where Flight 815 never crashed on the island) and Jack Shephard on the phone with his mother. It’s 10:30 a.m. and she’s frantic because she can't find her late husband’s will. Jack promises to help her find it, but right now he has to go to St. Mary’s Academy to pick up……his freaking son, David. Yes, Oceanic-land Jack has a son. Their relationship is clearly strained an apparently they don’t see one another often. Back on the island Jacob appears to Hurley at the temple as the big man passes through the room with the healing pool on his way to get something to eat. The dead-but-hanging-around Jacob informs Hurley that someone is coming to the island and he needs to do certain things to help them find it. To that end he suggests that Hurley find a pen to write down the details. Back in Oceanic-land, Jack is at his apartment with his son but has to leave to go help his mother find his father’s will. He promises to bring back dinner, but David doesn’t seem too enthused by the prospect. On the island, Sayid finds Jack and questions him as to what happened with the mysterious pill Dogen wanted Jack to give Sayid. Jack is honest and admits that it was poison because Dogen and his people fear the same darkness that infected Jack’s sister, Claire (he doesn’t know that’s who it is) has also infected Sayid. As for Claire, she’s out in the jungle, where she frees Jin from the bear trap he was ensnared in while being chased by two of the new Others, Aldo and Justin. Claire tells Jin she’s been alone on island for three years since the other Oceanic 815 survivors left. Jin tries to get up and walk but can’t because of his leg wound, so Claire helps carry him. Meanwhile, Hurley it at the temple, following the directions he received from Jacob. They are written on his arm and take him to a remote hallway deep inside the temple. He examines symbols on the wall and stops at one that looks like a ring At that moment, Dogen finds him and tells him to leave, but Jacob (who only Hurley can see) appears, and tells Hurley to tell Dogen that he’s a candidate. An angry Dogen snaps at Hurley in Chinese and leaves. Not done, Jacob tells Hurley to go get Jack because he needs him for his new mission and to tell him, “You have what it takes.” Initially hesitant to follow Hurley, Jack changes his mind when he hears that line. On their way to Hurley’s mystery destination, they also encounter Kate and she explains that she’s parted ways with Sawyer and Jin but has no plans to return to the temple. She and Jack share a tension-packed moment but when he tries to invite her along on the journey, Hurley objects because, “She wasn’t invited.” On Jack and Hurley go while elsewhere in the jungle, Claire returns to the lean-to where she apparently lives and has brought Jin to treat him for his injury. Jin is inside the structure alone when Claire saunters back in carrying Justin, one of the Others who attacked Jin in the jungle. Before Claire returns, Jin finds a bizarre crib made out of materials from the jungle and inside is a pile of animal bones in the shape of a baby with an animal skull in place of the baby’s head. While Claire heads back out for materials to treat Jin, Justin pleads with Jin to cut him loose so they can both escape before Claire kills them. In Oceanic-land, the search continues for the late Christian Shephard’s will. Jack’s mother finally finds it, but the first name in the will is not hers or Jack’s, but rather Claire’s. As for Claire, back on the island she is stitching up Jin’s wound while expounding her theory that the Others stole her son, Aaron, and have him at their temple. She explains that both Christian (dead but still known to appear various places on the island) and her “friend” told her the Others took Aaron. She then tells Justin he needs to tell her where Aaron is right now. Flip back to Oceanic-land, where Jack returns home to find David has snuck out. Jack calls around looking for him and goes in search of the boy at his (David’s) mother’s house, although we don’t know who that is. At the house, across town in L.A., Jack finds several messages on the answering machine, including one from Jack himself while on his trip in Australia and one from a music conservatory confirming an audition. On the island, Jack and Hurley tromp through jungle, discussing why they returned to island as they go. Jack admits he was broken and believed that coming back to the island would fix him. They then reach their destination: an ornate lighthouse on edge of the island. Jack wonders how they’ve never seen it before, to which Hurley replies, “Maybe we just weren’t looking for it.” Elsewhere in the jungle, Claire continues to question Justin, but Jin admits that Aaron has been with Kate off the island for past three years. That revelation isn’t enough for Claire not to kill Justin, which she accomplishes by planting an ax in his chest. In Oceanic-land, Jack follows up on the message he heard on the answering machine and finds David auditioning at a place called the Williams Conservatory. While he stands in the back and listens to his son play, Jack also encounters freaking Dogen, who is also there with his son. The two dads talk briefly, but are obviously total strangers in this particular setting. On the island, Hurley and Jack enter the lighthouse. At the top, they find the same names that were written on cave ceiling that faux Locke showed to Sawyer last episode, etched on a wheel in middle of top floor of the lighthouse. There are also several tall mirrors attached to the wheel and Hurley has instructions from Jacob to turn the wheel to 108 degrees. As it turns, Jack sees something astonishing: the mirrors that rotate with the wheel show images from life of person (i.e. his life, Hurley’s life, etc.) whose number corresponds to degree marker on the wheel that is pointed to by an arrow hovering about the wheel. When Jack sees his name beside the number 23, he grabs the controls from Hurley and turns the wheel to 23 degrees. When he stops the wheel, he sees house he grew up in reflected in the mirrors. Unnerved and badly rattled, he demands to talk to Jacob, whom Hurley has promised all along would be at the lighthouse. When Hurley can’t make that happen, Jack smashes all of the mirrors, enraged by the realization that Jacob has been watching all of them all their lives. Back in Oceanic-land, Jack meets David outside recital hall. They reconcile as Jack admits that his own dad told him, “You don’t have what it takes.” He says he just wants to be a part of David’s life and the boy agrees. They go back home for pizza, providing at least one happy ending for Jack in the episode. Life is not so happy on the island for Jin. With Justin dead, she turns her attention to him and asks about his claim that Aaron has been with Claire off the island. Jin tells Claire he was lying about Kate, realizing after she buried the ax in Justin’s gut that Kate would be in grave danger if he stuck to the truth. And as it turns out, Claire admits she would have killed Kate if Jin were telling the truth. Instead, he tells her Aaron is held by the Others at the temple and offers to help her sneak in. At the lighthouse, Jacob appears as Hurley and Jack exit and wander around on the area between the lighthouse and the cliff. Jacob tells Hurley what happened was what he wanted because it brought Jack to the lighthouse and showed him how important he is to what’s going to happen on the island. Asked why he didn’t just find Jack and explain it to him the way he did for Hurley, Jacob replies, “Some times you can hop into the back of someone’s cab and tell them what to do and other times, you have to let them sit and stare at the sea.” He nods to Jack, sitting on the rocks and staring out at the vast expanse of the sea. Jacob also explains that because of Hurley and Jack’s importance, he had to get them as far away from the temple as possible because someone dangerous is headed there. He also warns Hurley that it’s too late to warn those at the temple of this dangerous visitor. The final scene is back at Claire’s makeshift shelter, where faux Locke appears in Claire’s tent and Jin is stunned to see him, since at last he knew, Locke was dead. Claire she reveals that she knows it’s not really Locke, but someone else in his body. She also says he is the friend she referred to earlier. So perhaps the darkness that Dogen referred to as having infected Sayid and already having turned Claire bad is actually real. I could have used Sawyer in this episode, along with Ben, Ana Lucia, Sun and more than 30 seconds of Kate, but I suppose you take what you can get. Not a bad episode overall, but it could have been better with those characters involved…………


- Two words for you, University of Michigan football coach Rich-er Fraud-riguez: Uh-oh! You may have denied it, but the NCAA is accusing your program of five potentially major rules violations under your watch. Well, Fraud-riguez denied the allegations initially when no one had definitive proof, but now that they have that proof, he is admitting making "mistakes." Of course, making those major “mistakes,” having losing records his first two seasons in Ann Arbor and going to no bowl games so far still isn’t enough to get him fired, but that’s UM’s problem. Fraud-riguez will be back for a third season at UM under the watch of incoming athletic director David Brandon, who disclosed the NCAA conclusions Tuesday. Brandon stated that there were no surprises in the report and expressed full support for his coach, but you know inside he has to be seething at the prospect of having a coach who is 8-16 in two disappointing seasons also being a dishonest, deceitful douche bag who is being counted on to rally a once-proud football program. "Rich Rodriguez is our football coach, and he will be our football coach next year," Brandon said. That’s your problem, Mr. AD. In the notice of allegations delivered to the university Monday, the NCAA said Rodriguez "failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program," and tracked neither what his staff was doing nor whether his players were following NCAA rules. The rules they appear to have violated the most often are those limiting the time spent on practice and football-related activities. Not content to point its finger at the football program, the NCAA also said the athletics department failed to make sure its football program was complying with NCAA regulations. A defiant Brandon confessed that the department "clearly made mistakes," but "there was no charge of loss of institutional control." His choice of words there is key because in previous cases where the NCAA has found there to be a “loss of institutional control,” severe sanctions have bee handed down. The notice was accompanied by a letter from the NCAA to university President Mary Sue Coleman stating Michigan "should understand that all of the alleged violations set forth in the document" are considered to be "potential major violations of NCAA legislation, unless designated as secondary." Brandon didn’t exactly come across as intelligent or competent in his new job when discussing that aspect of the case. "I'm not sure I understand the difference between 'major' and 'minor' and 'secondary' and 'primary,'" Brandon said. "They spell it out very specifically in their own language." I would advise you to become familiar with those things, Dave, because odds are that with the guy you have coaching your program, those topics will come up again soon…..very soon. Also hanging over Michigan’s head is the fact that it could be subject to the NCAA's "repeat violator rule," because of NCAA sanctions imposed in 2003 because of wrongdoing within the basketball program. What’s next in the case? Michigan has 90 days to formally respond to the charges and the case will be heard at a hearing in August. One tactic the university could take in seeking to mitigate potential NCAA penalties is to administer self-imposed sanctions such as restrictions on recruiting or reducing the number of scholarships available for the football program for the next few seasons. All of this uproar originated in August, when reports of Michigan exceeding NCAA limits regarding practices and workouts in 2008 and 2009 surfaced thanks to the infamous “unidentified players.” Personally, I think handing a guy a six-year contract worth $2.5 million per season should buy you the right to expect a clean program that runs by the rules, but maybe that’s just me. What cracks me up is Fraud-riguez trying to pretend that he doesn’t know exactly what the violations are, who was responsible and what wrongdoing occurred. "We're looking at it to see why we misinterpreted and why we made mistakes," he said. You certified piece of crap, how dare you insult us. You are the HEAD COACH. You know exactly what you and your staff did and dammit, you knew it was wrong when you did it. Stop lying and trying to cover your ass, you jerk. NCAA regulations allow players to spend eight hours a week on mandatory workouts during the offseason and multiple players said that required practices sometimes amounted to two or three times that many hours. Don’t even attempt to tell me that you thought requiring those time commitments from players was within the rules, Fraud-riguez. Nearly as bad is Brandon trying to spin the situation as the football program merely failing to communicate properly and turn in mandated monthly reports documenting practice time and other time commitments for players. "My reading of the situation is we had a breakdown of communication," Brandon said Tuesday. "We found we were not being vigilant in the way those [time records] were being filled and managed." Yeah, that’s what it was, a big communication error. Look Dave, I realize that you are the former chairman and CEO of a pizza joint (Domino’s) that is the third or fourth best national pizza chain around and that you won't officially take over as athletic director until March 8, but you need to step your game up and get a clue. If only I were named athletic director at the University of Michigan……Fraud-riguez would be out in less than two seconds because I would take advantage of the provision in his contract stating that Fraud-riguez can be fired for cause if the NCAA, the Big Ten or the school determines he has committed a major violation of NCAA rules or he has intentionally committed any other type of violation of NCAA rules. It would be adios, coach Fraud-riguez…………


-I knew the Pacific northwest was Stoner Central, but even I’m impressed by the stoner-ific stream of pothead news coming out of the state of Washington lately. We’ve all heard of the stoner who thinks that baking pot into his or her brownies and taking them to work is a funny joke. What you may not have heard of is the drug dealer using brownies and other homemade baked goods as a sort of Trojan horse to get his brownies into the hands of kids. Now you have, thanks to my man Kruz Hawkins of Spokane, Wash. Spokane police arrested Hawkins because he allegedly sold marijuana-laden Rice Krispy Treats to Shadle Park High School Students. He was busted in a parking lot near the high school Thursday morning by members of the Special Investigations Unit. Hawkins was spotted selling his spiked snacks to several kids standing nearby and that he would do so on a daily basis, after which his customers would then take them back to school and consume them on campus. "Clearly they can't light up a joint at school," Spokane police officer Jennifer DeRuwe said. "So they're eating their treats back at school." With my abiding love for stoners, I would love to tell you that Hawkins is going to get off on these charges, but it definitely doesn’t look that way. When police executed a search warrant at the of Hawkins’ father, they found more hippie lettuce and more baked goods. "He'd sell the marijuana in the cookies, or brownies, or Rice Krispy treats. Whatever he could to conceal the marijuana," DeRuwe said. Oh, and Hawkins’ father Ricky was arrested for knowingly allowing his son to sell drugs from his home. I have to say, I just don’t get all of this. What’s with the combined surveillance and undercover operations in and around Shadle Park High School focusing on the sales of drugs in the neighborhood, Spokane police? Once again I ask you, are stoners not some of the most mellow, gentle and harmless people you know? Why are you so against a new generation of stoners being created and learning how to create bongs out of aluminum cans, apple cores and toilet papers rolls? Leave the stoners alone and I promise you, the world will be better off because of it…………

A "Greek" recap, mocking Canada's quest to "Own the Podium" and Washington quickly becoming Stoner Central

- Unquestionably, the best and most-entertaining part of the Olympics had been not a sporting event of any sort, but rather host nation Canada trying to tuck tail, turn and run from the spotlight while simultaneously looking to spin/bury/take a blowtorch to its pre-Olympics pledge to storm the medal stand and dominate competition at the Games. The Canadians poured tens of millions of dollars of public and private funds into a ginormous training program, called Own the Podium, designed to prevent its Olympic program from becoming a running joke as it tends to be during the Games. In fact, the last host nation for the Winter Olympics not to win a gold medal was, you guessed it, Canada back in 1984. Yet for all their boasting and bravado, it was awesome to see the reaction after a lackluster first week of competition for Team Canada. Headlines across the frozen tundra to the north bemoaned the country’s lack of success and labeled it the "Lost Weekend." The biggest loss came Sunday evening when Canada's hockey team was b*tch-slapped by the underdog United States in a sport that Canada a) invented and b) hangs its entire national identity upon. The streets of Vancouver were a freaking morgue after that 5-3 loss, but it really capped an entire week of punches to the gut for Canadian fans, who had the double-whammy of watching the rival U.S. move steadily toward its best-ever medal haul at the Winter Games. Even if the Canadian men’s hockey team recovers and medals, the Canadians will still be nowhere near the top of the medal race overall. And after they spent five years and $117 million into Own the Podium in the past five years, being fourth or fifth in the medal count isn’t at all what Canada was hoping for. But rather than man up and admit that their quest has failed, Canadian officials are trying to spin things so they don’t appear quite as inept. "It was the 'U.S. Week' last week. This week will be ours," said Michael Chambers, president of the Canadian Olympic Committee, at the start of this week. Umm, not really. You’re still not going to win the most medals, not even if we only counted this week’s events, Mike. Let this be a lesson to other would-be Olympic-hosting nations out there: It’s not worth it in so many senses of the word. You tend to spend more money than you making hosting the games, you feel the added pressure to perform even better athletically and you overspend to make that happen and oh yeah, you become a prime target for loons, whackos and terrorists looking to use one of the world’s biggest sporting events to get their message out. No thanks………….

- Memo to everyone in an around Vancouver right now: If you see Boner, please, please, please help him and alert the authorities immediately. I should probably point out that Boner is former Growing Pains co-star, Andrew Koenig, who has been missing for the past week. His character on the show was nicknamed Boner, hence my initial statement. Koenig, who played best friend Boner to Kirk Cameron's Mike Seaver on the '80s sitcom, was last seen on Feb. 14 during a trip to Vancouver. He was scheduled to return to California on Feb. 16 but hasn’t been heard from since departing for Canada. “Mike and Boner could always work things out when they put their minds to it," Cameron said. "I'm praying for you, pal. Hope to hear from you soon.” Koenig is also the son of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig. The senior Koenig wrote on his website that his son was suffering from clinical depression at the time of his disappearance and that he received a note from Andrew on Feb. 16 that had a "despondent tone." That is certainly the scariest aspect of this story because it makes it sound like Koenig likely is AWOL of his own volition and not because he met with any sort of foul play. Hopefully he is just in a bad funk and laying low because he doesn’t want to see or talk to anyone right now and not because he has harmed himself in any way. Dealing with depression is such a huge battle and doing it while surrounded by people who know and love you is difficult enough. Fighting that same battle such a long way from home has to be more difficult than any of us could possibly imagine. Koenig's family asks that anyone with information about Andrew Koenig contact Vancouver authorities and I would second that request and I sincerely hope that this story ends on a positive note…………

- By now, Microsoft Corp. and I have a nice little ritual. They come up with a crap-tastic new operating system of some sort to replace their previous crap-tacular OS, I and everyone else with a brain and any tech savvy at all rip it to shreds and we all share a good laugh. Okay, so maybe Microsoft isn’t laughing quite as much, but it’s still our ritual and I feel confident in saying it’s one we all embrace and enjoy. So let’s start the process again, because Microsoft unveiled a new operating system for mobile phones Monday. The new OS is designed to help Microsoft compete with rivals Apple, Research in Motion and Google, but that design will undoubtedly be flawed in several significant ways. Simply put, there’s a reason that Microsoft software is embedded in less than 10 percent of all smartphones sold when that figure was nearly 25 percent just a few short years ago. That reason extends well beyond having more competition. The reason is that Microsoft operating systems absolutely suck, they are poorly designed and they are prone to bugs, crashes, freeze-ups and all manner of significant problems. Juxtapose those problems against the introduction of Google's Android and the continued success of BlackBerry and iPhone devices and it’s easy to see why Microsoft’s stock in the smartphone market is going downhill so rapidly. Will Microsoft 7 for smartphones change that? Of course not. But just for the heck of it, the system will be a tiles-based interface and include live access to Facebook X-Box Live for gaming and Zune for music and photos. And yes, the Zune still sucks and is still the bastard cousin of the iPod. Even if Microsoft’s claims that the new OS will look like nothing on the market, that’s not going to be nearly enough to win over customers to one of these phones. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said 7-based smart phones will be manufactured by the likes of Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Garmin-Asus. Those phones may allow Microsoft to cater to more specific groups of customers with a phone tailored for them, but the fact is that these phones are still operating on a Microsoft OS. The phones won't launch until later this year, so we have to wait a few months for Microsoft’s next inevitable and spectacular failure……….

- A week late, Greek offered up its take on Valentine’s Day. In Rusty and Ashleigh’s marketing class, professor Clarissa rants against Valentine’s Day and its commercialized nature. Rusty and Ashleigh chat about their V-Day plans, with Rusty lamenting not having a date to the Kappa Tau party and Ashleigh excited about her new boyfriend, Omega Chi brother Pete. At the KT house, the pledges are busy preparing for the party and have set up a Cupid-themed archery range in backyard. Meanwhile, Rusty is walking across campus with pal Calvin and decides to find himself a date to the part. He asks a random girl named Tabitha out and she actually seems willing to give him a chance until he hands her a candy Valentine’s heart from a bag of the sweet treats that his mother sent him. It turns out to be an X-rated message on the candy heart (someone sent the wrong bag of candy, it seems) and that offends Tabitha enough to reject Rusty’s invite. Love also hits a bump for Ashleigh, who is having a cup of coffee on campus with Pete when Gamma Psi president Natalie “happens” by and reveals that a) she had been dating Pete and b) she thought they were still together. Pete insists that they broke up a month ago and Ashleigh seems to accept his explanation, but she’s a bit bothered by the incident. Casey and Cappie are having some Valentine’s Day fun of their own, as they recall their first V-Day together during freshman year. Cappie gave Casey a bottle of vodka, drank it all and threw up on her. He promises the perfect gift for her this time around. They also hear about Rusty’s problems finding a date and Casey talks with Ashleigh and decides to set Rusty up with Gamma Psi officer and Pan-Hellenic president Katharine. When Rusty decries Valentine’s Day to his KT brothers and decides that he doesn’t care about not having a date, Casey walks into the KT house and tells him about Katherine. Rusty accepts and because Katharine is a neurotic ball of weird, she insists on a pre-date at Dobler’s before their actual date to the KT party. The date seems to be a total disaster as Katherine gives a string of one-word answers to Rusty’s questions and comments, leaving Rusty thinking that he is once again date-less for the KT V-Day party. Calvin is having exactly the opposite problem, as he worries that his relationship with boyfriend and OC brother Grant is becoming too stale and boring because they are also roommates at the OC house. He seeks out advice from OC president Evan, who is trying to figure out his own relationship with Rebecca Logan. He wants to convince her that true love exists despite her cynical outlook and tries to find the perfect V-Day gift to prove it. That gift, an expensive diamond necklace, is delivered when he picks her up for the Omega Chi Valentine’s party. Rebecca loves the gift and is clearly surprised by it. As for Rusty, he is surprised as well when Casey stops by his apartment and informs him that Katherine had a great time on their date and wants to go with him to the KT party. She came to visit Casey at the Zeta Beta house to gush over how great Rusty is and make sure they would have a second date. Rusty, thinking the first date was a dud, isn’t so sure. In exchange for helping Casey out in her bid to get on Katherine’s good side, he agrees to the second date only in exchange for one month of free access to Casey’s car, to which she agrees. Katherine and Rusty head to the KT “Straight Through the Heart” party after she shows up looking über-hot when Rusty picks her up. At the party, they bond over their shared intellectual dork-dom and wanting to be more than that and have more than a bookish college experience. Katherine falls for Rusty and leans in to kiss him until he sticks his foot in his mouth by inadvertently spilling the beans about how he came to agree to a second date. An angry Katherine stands up and begins to tell Rusty and Casey off until she’s struck by an errant arrow from the KT Cupid-themed archery range. Over at the Omega Chi party, Grant tries to liven things up with Calvin by adopting a new image for the event, bleaching his hair, whitening his teeth and donning a velour smoker’s jacket. What he sees as livening things up, Calvin sees as reminding him of his previous boyfriend, Michael. Calvin gets some advice from an unexpected source: Rebecca. She tells him not to be so uptight and he takes her advice, smoothing things over with Grant. But he also slips up when he shares something Evan shared with him, that he sees a real future with her. That freaks her out and she ends up at the KT party, when she gets really drunk and decides to sleep with lunk-headed KT brother Beaver. It’s the same party that Rusty, Casey and Cappie have exited to take Katherine to the hospital after being shot by an arrow. She’s fine and suffers only a surface wound, but still lands on enough painkillers to be a little loopy. While waiting for her, the other three encounter Dale, who is there because he’s had an unfortunate accident with the braces worn by the nerdy girl, Bridget, that he’s now dating. Once Katherine is treated and released, Rusty walks her back to her dorm room and she forgives both he and Casey. Both Rusty and Katharine agree that this V-Day was least suckiest each of them has ever had. They share an awkward hug and say goodnight. As the episode ends, we catch up with Casey and Cappie, who have been dueling all episode long to see who could come up with the best V-Day gift. After failed attempts to find the right gift, including a bottle of vodka he had a pledge fetch for him in an effort to play on V-Day from freshman year, a frantic Cappie comes up with an idea. He drives Casey to the dark parking lot of a local mini-mart where they are apparently going to exchange gifts. She admits that she copped out because she couldn’t think of anything and got lingerie for him. His gift turns out to be bringing her to the mini-mart because it’s the place he fell in love with her freshman year and he’s been in love with her ever since. He says that they went there because he had an empty fridge and she didn’t want him to go hungry, so she took him food shopping and while standing in the checkout line, she looked back at him and smiled. That’s when he fell in love with her, he explains. A sweet ending to a fun episode and it kept a very good season of Greek going strong……………

- As recently as two years ago, I absolutely loved Manny Ramirez. He was a freaking circus sideshow who disappeared into Fenway Park’s Green Monster, wore sunglasses equipped with an MP3 player into the outfield, high-fived fans after making catches but while the ball was still live and cut off throws from other outfielders while standing 20 feet away from them. But now? He’s a guy who cheats by taking female fertility drugs to boost his on-field performance, who is a malcontent in the clubhouse and no longer has the production to make himself relevant in spite of those deficiencies. So when Man-Ram appeared in the Dodgers' clubhouse for the first time on Monday morning at spring training in Glendale, Ariz. and declared that this would be his final spring training with the club, I could not have cared less. "I won't be here next year, so I just want to enjoy myself," Ramirez said. "I don't know [if I'll play next year]. I just know I'm not going to be here. When the season is over, I will see where I'm at." Whatever, Man-Ram. Based on that bloated two-year, $45 million contract that you are now in the final season of, I’m sure the Dodgers wish you weren’t playing this season. You spent a large chunk of last season serving a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug policy and when you did play, your numbers were mediocre at best. While Man-Ram said he hasn't been told by club officials that the Dodgers aren't interested in re-signing him, even he concedes that it would be extremely unrealistic for them to do so. No, it would be downright insane because there is no way Manny is accepting the extremely reduced salary that his production would merit at this point. His main point is that he hasn’t yet decided if the 2010 season will be his last. If he does come back, he would almost assuredly have to return to the American League, which (erroneously) still uses the designated hitter. "The game is still fun, but I think I have to wait until the season ends and see where my family is at before I make a choice," Ramirez said. "I will just wait and see how my body reacts." What I want to see is whether Man-Ram can do better than the .218 average he posted at the plate after Sept. 1 last year because right now, he’s simply an irrelevant clown who no longer merits the attention and tolerance of his many quirks that he once received. Either get back to your usual high level of play or please just fade away, Man-Ram…………

Telling Canada to suck it, recapping "24" and chaos in Niger

- Suck it, Canada. While I’m the first to admit that I don’t give a crap about the Winter Olympics and didn’t watch a single moment during the first week of the ongoing Games, you can bet I tuned in for the final few minutes of Sunday night’s stunning U.S. victory over the host Canadians, roundly considered the favorite to win the gold medal on their home turf. What I saw, live from Vancouver, British Columbia was the freaking United States curb-stomp Canada 5-3 to advance to the quarterfinals the Olympic tournament. I saw my man Brian Rafalski score two goals and set up another and I saw my new pal Ryan Miller stand on his freaking head to turn away the Canadians time and again in the game’s waning moments. "I got a lot of goal support from my boys ... we really battled for each other," Miller said. In a game and a tournament that clearly mean so much to Canadians and so very little to Americans as a whole, it was freaking hilarious to watch this scene unfold, knowing full well that the proclamations that the sky is falling would be running roughshod through Canada today while Americans who don’t give a damn about hockey and couldn’t name even four players on the American team would be reveling in Canada’s misery. Sure, it was only the preliminary round and yes, Canada outshot the U.S. 45-23, but so what? Miller made 42 saves, the U.S. team remains undefeated and they are now one step closer to the medal round while the Canadians must play an extra game Tuesday night simply to qualify for the medal round and would have to win four games in six days to hold up their gold medal hopes. Oh, what I would give to have been there in the arena for Rafalski's slap shot from the right point 41 seconds into the game to stun Canadian goalie Martin Brodeur and the heavily pro-Canada crowd. All along, I’ve been saying that the Winter Olympics are an irrelevant waste of time and the redheaded stepchild/younger brother of the bigger, better Summer Olympics and all of that is still true, but for a couple of hours, it was fun to be able to ruin the party for our neighbors to the north. And I’m sure that Canadian fans who scalped tickets just to get inside the arena, spent more than $1,000 in some cases for a single seat and doled out the big money to buy their authentic Team Canada jerseys to wear to the game before standing in line for hours just to get inside weren’t at all regretting their decision right around the time U.S. forward Ryan Kesler banged home a one-handed, empty-net goal with less than a minute to play to cement the win and seal Canada’s fate. Mind you, this is a country where the average Canadian will admit that hockey is part sport, part religion. This is a tundra-like country where kids play hockey with the passion and commitment of the combined passion and quality with which kids in the United States play basketball, football and baseball. Right around the time Team Canada had to go to a shootout to win its previous game, Canadians from coast to coast got their grip on. After a stunning loss to their bigger, badder and tougher neighbors to the south, that grip can only tighten and for the sake of all involved, here’s hoping that disaster does not strike Tuesday night when the Canadians take to the ice for another shot to qualify for the next round of the tournament…………

- Tonight’s 24 was a prime example of why the show is a) sometimes predictable but b) almost always awesome (how ya like my alliteration?). TO start off the hour Joseph Bazhaev arrives with the enriched uranium fuel rods to sell to Fahrad Hassan, brother of Islamic Kingdom president Omar Hassan and leader of a rebel faction seeking to overthrow the president and prevent him from signing a peace treaty facilitated by the U.S. While Joseph waits for Fahrad and his men to arrive, Jack and Joseph’s father Sergei get him on the phone from the family’s restaurant, where Jack and CTU have taken control and are attempting the locate the fuel rods from. They try to convince him to turn self in with the promise of immunity, but as he waits in central Queens near Flushing Meadows, Joseph is shot by Fahrad’s men just as he agrees to Jack’s final plea to turn himself in. Fahrad and his crew seize the fuel rods and get away while Jack, who has heard the shooting over the phone, speeds back to CTU. On the way, he calls Renee Walker, who is in the medical bay of CTU. Jack reiterates her need to stick to her story of killing her contact in the Russian mob, Vladimir Lehtanen, in self defense. Before hanging up, Jack also seems to imply that they are more than friends and that he wants to be together when this is all over. “When you say I have you….” Renee asks, to which Jack replies, “It means what it sounds like.” Elsewhere at CTU, director Bryan Hastings receives a call from White House chief of staff Rob Weiss, who has an interesting solution for the problem currently on their hands, i.e. the missing fuel rods. Now that things appear to have gone south, Weiss wants to put blame on Renee for entire situation, implying that she murdered Lehtanen and was the key problem in things getting out of control. To that end, he informs Hastings that he is sending Kristen Smith from the Justice Department to interrogate Renee. We then switch back to Fahrad, who is in a truck with a compatriot named Samir, transporting the nuclear rods to a warehouse for the time being. When they arrive, Fahrad learns that Samir has recruited a team of radicals ands they want to use the uranium rods as a weapon inside the U.S. because there is no way to transport them out of the country without the American government finding them. Fahrad is uncertain of this course of action, but eventually he capitulates and agrees to go along with the plan. Then, in bringing up the single most annoying, irrelevant and pointless storyline in 24 history, it’s time to check in on Dana Walsh, the ex-con from Arkansas who fibbed her identity to score a job at CTU and is now having her past come back to bite her in the ass. Her fiancé, CTU agent Cole Ortiz, has caught wind of her shady activity and receives her current coordinates from CTU data analyst Arlo, the pervy dork we’ve all come to know and hate this season. Cole commandeers a CTU vehicle from the scene where he and his tac team went in an attempt to find the nuclear rods and goes to find Dana. She’s out in the woods, having followed her ex-con, ex-boyfriend Kevin, his loser friend Nick and the two skanks they met at the strip club. Kevin and Nick continue to blackmail her to stay a part of the criminal activity they’ve dragged her into by threatening to reveal her past and rather than fess up to who she is, Dana decides that murder is a better option. Back at CTU, Jack arrives and discovers that Renee is being interrogated by Justice. Hastings, having been directed by Smith to cut all monitoring to the room except for a single camera for Justice Department records, is looking on. Smith presses Renee to admit that she didn’t kill Lehtanen in self-defense, as she said in her statement. Jack is furious because he knows what the Justice Department is trying to do. He takes out a guard, busts into the room where Renee is being interrogated and attempts to break her out. Instead, a second guard shows up to hit him with a Taser blast and both he and Renee are captured. Over at the warehouse, Fahrad says he can recruit a professor at a university in New York City to help with the bomb, but when one of Samir’s men walks him across the warehouse to use the phone, Fahrad attacks the man and tries to make a run for it. He is slightly wounded in the melee, but manages to get away and hide long enough to get a call through to CTU. He talks to Hastings and offers to turn himself in and share all he knows if CTU will come rescue him. The call comes in as Jack is sitting in Hastings’ office to be chewed out for his actions and told he’s being processed and must leave the building immediately. Cut to Cole finding Dana in the woods, gun in hand as she prepares to approach Kevin’s van and shoot both he and Nick. Cole intercepts her and demands that she explain what she’s been up to. She admits that her real name is Jenny Scott and that she is an ex-con from Arkansas. Meanwhile, with Cole AWOL, an agent named Owen is tasked by Hastings to lead the tac team headed to rescue Fahrad Hassan. At the same time, Jack is leaving and makes a caustic remark to Hastings about the mission. When Hastings challenges him on it, Jack offers to bring Fahrad in and help with rest of mission if all charges against Renee are dropped. He goes on to tell Hastings that he knows pressures of running CTU, but that Hastings has more power than he thinks even when it comes to working with the White House. Hastings and Jack strike a deal for Jack to stay with the mission to the end in exchange for the dropping of all charges against Renee. Back in woods, Dana tells Cole her whole story and he approaches the van to confront Kevin and Nick. Cole informs them that they can go to prison or go away for good. They agree, but when Cole and Dana turn to leave and Kevin starts to pack up and prepare to leace, Nick stabs Kevin because he still wants to kill Cole and continue their burgeoning criminal enterprise with Dana. Kevin’s last act is to lean out of the van and scream out to warn Dana/Jenny as Nick sneaks up from behind to kill Cole, Cole ducks for cover behind his SUV and blasts Nick with shotgun. Nick dies on the spot and Kevin dies too, leaving Dana and Cole alone in the woods with two dead bodies as the hour comes to and end. Quite an episode and oddly enough, the president of the United States didn’t get a single second of screen time. So until next time……………

- I have found a new favorite mayor, everyone, and he may be my favorite-est mayor (pro tem) in the whole, wide world. That would be Olympia (Wash.) Mayor Pro Tem and incoming Thurston County Treasurer Joe Hyer. Why Joe Hyer, you ask? To which I ask: Would your city’s mayor look to raise some extra personal income by selling the hippie lettuce? Didn’t think so. One word: owned. Hyer was arrested following a months-long investigation on charges of selling marijuana. He left jail Thursday night after posting $20,000 bail and when asked him if he had any response to the allegations. Hyer said, "No, certainly not yet. No ... Don't even understand them yet ... I haven't been read them." Don’t understand them? My man, you are a politician. One thing you need to be smart enough to do is understand criminal charges against you, even if they are totally bogus. Yes, I said totally bogus. Weed should be legal in this country and if it were, we would not have problems like this. As it is, the chronic is illegal for non-medicinal uses (and even for medicinal purposes in some backwards-thinking places) and the Thurston County Narcotics Task Force launched a two-month investigation that ultimately led to them busting Hyer. They base their “findings” on claims that an informant twice purchased tree from Hyer and that detectives found small amounts of packaged marijuana at Hyer's home. What’s scary is that after Hyer was first appointed to the Olympia city council in August 2004, voters re-elected him in both 2005 and 2009. Heck, earlier this week, Thurston County commissioners chose Hyer to succeed Robin Hunt as county treasurer. That appointment is scheduled to take effect March 1 and to hear Hyer, he absolutely plans to take that gig while also holding onto his spot on the city council. However, in light of the pending charges against him, he has asked Olympia mayor Doug Mah if he could have some time away. “Councilmember Hyer has expressed an interest in taking a leave of absence from his council duties and I'm going to respect that and encourage him to take care of his personal business,” Mah said. My support for Hyer is clearly not shared by some of his colleagues, including Thurston County Republican Party Chairman Scott Roberts, who released a written statement saying Hyer should resign his seat on the city council. No, I think it’s you who should resign, Scotty. Times are tough, money is tight and if Joe Hyer can raise some cash by selling pot, then he should do it and you should leave him the heck alone…………

- How’s this for irony: Niger's constitution has been suspended and all governmental institutions were suspended by the government itself and these actions were undertaken by a body known as the Superior Council for the Restoration of Democracy. That’s right, a council for THE RESTORATION OF DEMOCRACY is shutting down the very institutions that are supposed to make democracy go. Col. Goukoye Abdul Karimou, a top Niger military official, announced the decision Thursday night on the nation's three television channels. As a quick aside, do you think people in other countries get as pissed when their normal television programming is announced by some sort of presidential or government speech? Or is it only here in the United States that we’re that shallow, superficial and spoiled? But I digress……Col. Karimou called on the nation for calm and on the international community for support. While the country is in a state of unrest, President Mamadou Tandja and his ministers are being held in a military camp. Well, that’s the story the government is selling. Some media in Niger are reporting that Tandja is missing, although having your president go AWOL would be quite a feat to accomplish and I can see why the government would want to cover up the truth if that were the case. As of yet, no curfew has been ordered, but look for that to change soon if things don’t improve substantially. With a coup d’etat raging, improving conditions aren’t exactly easy to attain. The coup reportedly went into motion members of the military surrounded the presidential palace, where a ministerial meeting was taking place, about 1 p.m. The military stormed the meeting, shots were fired and from there, it’s anyone’s guess. "Indications are, it could be an attempted coup," Assistant U.S. Secretary of State P.J. Crowley stated. "There was evidently an attempt at assassination of President Tandja." All the Americans reading this will be glad to know that while the U.S. Embassy is monitoring the situation, Crowley confirmed that embassy staff were safe. For some reason, Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, is also in Niger and was also safe at the embassy. I have to wonder how Grayson’s presence in Niger, of all places, is serving his constituents back in Florida or helping address key issues in the U.S. right now like health care, the economy and national security. But again, I digress. The ongoing sh*tstorm in Niger has been a while in the making. Tandja, who has been in office since December 1999, has recently been trying to channel his inner Manuel Zelaya and force through a bid for a third term. "This is a difficult situation," Crowley said. "President Tandja has been trying to extend his mandate in office." By so doing, Tandja has attempted to push off planned elections. If you’re asking why you should give a crap about what’s going on politically in Niger, just know that although it is one of the poorest countries in Africa, Niger does possess about 8 percent of the world's uranium, and has had some lucrative uranium contracts, particularly with China. Aside from making it a potential candidate for being part of a plot on an upcoming season of 24, that uranium stockpile makes it a definite factor in the world of terrorism. I’m not saying, I’m just saying…………

- And the beast that is Facebook continues to grow unchecked. According to data released earlier today by web analytics firm Compete.com, Facebook is now larger than Yahoo in the U.S. For years and years, Yahoo was perched atop the standings as America’s most popular Web site, be it as a search engine, for news or other uses. That reign ended two years ago when Google blew right past Yahoo and became the Internet’s most popular destination. That left Yahoo at No. 2 until now, when Facebook stepped up to knock it down a notched. In December, Yahoo brought in 133.45 million visitors in the U.S., narrowly besting Facebook with 132,130,000 million unique visitors (i.e. if you visit multiple times, you only count once). Those stats flip-flopped in January, when Facebook’s traffic increased to 133,620,000 million visitors while Yahoo dropped down to 132 million. Now that Facebook has added its 400 millionth user (eclipsed only by the number of lame, pointless, moronic and wasteful groups that those 400 million users create on Facebook), only Google stands between Mark Zuckerberg and the top of the online mountain. Of course, with Google rolling out Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google smartphones and zillion other Google-related products and gadgets the past few months, don’t expect Google to surrender the top spot any time soon. Also, as previously revealed here, Google is engaged in a sinister plot for overall world domination, so there is also that to consider……………