- Not that Clark Kent needed any more powers, but he got them (temporarily, of course), on tonight’a Smallville. CK finds himself is accidentally infected with gemstone kryptonite, which has wish-fulfilling properties. But the episode kicks off with Lois and Clark investigating RAO corporations (Zod's company that's building the towers they plan to use to turn the sun red and give them back their powers). It’s not exactly an ideal Valentine’s Day and Clark says as much. Suddenly, a Cupid-like fairy blows her pixie dust at the couple and Clark's eyes go purple. Back at the Daily Planet, Lois insists on getting a story out. Clark argues that maybe they should put their relationship first for a night and for once, he wins out – because of his new power. Lois is under his spell after her eyes flash purple as well and even when Clark changes things up because the towers are set to open in two days, she replies, "Anything for your career sweetie." Over at Watchtower, Clark arrives to pick up some new documents to establish lives and indentities for the Kandorians. Chloe laments feeling hollow and empty and also disagrees with helping the Kandorians, but Clark’s power to control others surfaces and Chloe’s eyes flash purple as well. "I will protect you no matter what it takes," she answers robotically. Clark takes the documents to the RAO site and several Kandorians accept them with profuse thanks. He asks for a favor in return: the identity of his father’s killer. Instead, they warn him that Zod has many loyal followers and he should rethink his quest. Clark zips back to the Kent Farm, where Lois is in true un-Lois fashion: homemaker. She takes a fresh pie out of the oven and has moved in, albeit in the guest room – until they get engaged. Lois then serves up dinner with a pot roast so bad that even Shelby the dog won't eat it. She also drops a bombshell – she quit her job at the Planet to focus solely on his happiness. Tension with the opposite sex is also in order at the Luthor mansion, where Zod walks in on Tess taking a bath. She offers him a chance to join her, but he caustically remarks that she’s already in bed with Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark. "You're digging your own grave," she says to Zod of his tower-building project. He is already upset about that topic because he’s found out about Clark supplying the new identities for some of his people. Tess taunts Zod that Clark will someday be their leader and that they see him as their future. Zod shoots back that Tess will be in need of mercy once he has his powers, then storms out. Back at the farm, Chloe shows up and finds Lois scrubbing the floor. Clark’s powers to control suddenly become a problem when an angry Chloe rips into Lois, saying she's seen Clark in love before and this is a definite distraction. "It's just a little sad that the only way you can get close to Clark right now is to play mother hen," Lois retorts. Chloe shoots back that Lois isn’t trustworthy, having pimped out her previous relationship with the Blur to the public. "If you really love him," she goes on, "the best thing you can do for Clark is leave him." Meanwhile, Clark is on a trip to Metropolis and he tracks down the Valentine's fairy. He learns that the pixie dust comes from a quarry in Smallville and realizes that it probably has meteor rock in it. That epiphany is interrupted by am emergency text from Lois, who is back at the farm bawling her eyes out because she’s taken what Chloe said to heart and is worried that she’s not good enough for him. Furthermore, she theorizes that she needs to leave Clark and escape from Smallville. Always one with the right thing to say, Clark assures her that they'll be together forever and they hug. Back at Watchtower, Dr. Emil is working feverishly to hack into Chloe’s system, but she’s put a series of impenetrable safeguards in place before leaving. Clark arrives and his new power again proves troublesome when his attempts to calm Emil down lead to the good doctor losing interest entirely, grabbing a beer from the fridge and taking a break. When Clark details his current dilemma, Dr. suggests using it to his advantage. At the farm, Lois calls up Martha Kent (looking forward to Annette O’Toole’s impending return) in Washington to ask if she can try on her wedding dress. "Thanks mom," she says before modeling the dress, then calling up her family, including her sister and dad, to break the news of her engagement to Clark. As for Clark, he heeds Dr. Emil’s advice and goes to find Zod so he can use his power of persuasion to stop the towers from being finished. He also attempts to force Zod to be truthful about who killed Jor-El, but Zod insists that Tess killed Jor-El. Zod clearly sees a win-win for himself, because if Clark kills Tess for revenge, she’s out of Zod’s way. But if Clark does that, then he is no better than Zod himself. Zod even manages to Jedi-mind-trick Clark into turning his new power inward, causing him to want to kill and get revenge for his father's death. While Clark sets off on his new quest, Chloe returns to her old stomping grounds at the Planet, but not as a journalist. Instead, she’s attempting to launch a massive computer virus to stop the satellites that will work in tandem with the RAO towers. Tess warns her that if she does that, Clark will be in even more danger. Tess actually offers to work with Chloe, but Chloe decides that she’d rather pistol-whip Tess. That means, yes, chick fight time! Tess ultimately gains control of the gun, but before she can use it, Clark super-speeds in and whisks her off to a nearby rooftop. There, he encircles them in a ring of fire and angrily informs her that his powers would disappear if the towers go up. She claims she had no idea, but Clark doesn’t seem to believe her. "Don't worry, Tess. I'll save your world, just not with you in it," he snaps before almost burning her alive. Ironically, it’s Chloe who saves Tess’ life by bringing Clark down with good-ol’ green Kryptonite. It snaps everyone out of their various states of altered consciousness and undue influence. Elsewhere in Metropolis, badass Kandorian ninja/assassin Alia admits to Zod that she was the one who killed Jor-El. She surrenders herself to her fate by handing Zod a gun and he obliges, shooting her dead. On to lighter matters, Martha Kent learns from her son that the engagement was a misunderstanding, even though the announcement made it on the front page. Having snapped out of her spell of influence from the pixie dust, Lois clues Clark in to the fact that things are moving too fast and they agree to slow down and be honest with one another. The episode closes out Alia's traditional Kandorian funeral, where Zod admits to Clark that he killed her, but only because she murdered Jor-El. Clark informs Zod that this isn’t his kind of justice, but Zod confronts him with the reality that he will have to decide whether he really is one of them in the coming days. At Watchtower, Clark and Chloe share a quiet moment as friends and she confides that she really believes he's the savior. Then, in a dramatic close to the show, Clark blows up the towers using his heat vision the night before they are to open, proving that he really has succeeded in changing the future that we saw courtesy of Lois’ apocalyptic dreams of the future earlier this season…………
- There are FAT passengers (like director Kevin Smith), there are loud and disruptive passengers (i.e. whiny babies) and now, there are passengers so spectacularly smelly that they must be booted from flights. This practice has been initiated by Jazz Air, a regional airline in Canada that also serves U.S. cities. The B.O. bandit was kicked off a flight originating from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on February 6. "People were just mumbling and staring at him," said a woman who sat near the offensive passenger. Another fellow passenger described the smell as "brutal." Asked about the incident, Jazz Air spokeswoman Manon Stuart confirmed that a passenger was "deplaned" from the flight but cited privacy issues when asked to give further details. "As an airline, the safety and comfort of our passengers and crew are our top priorities. Therefore, any situation that compromises either their safety or comfort is taken seriously, and in such circumstances, the crew will act in the best interest of the majority of our passengers," Stuart said. "It's important to understand that our crew members make every effort to resolve a situation before it becomes an issue. Unfortunately, in some circumstances, it may become necessary for our crew to remove passengers." I like this trend because if I’m ever stuck next to someone with overwhelming B.O. for a long flight, I want to know that I and my fellow passengers have the option of pulling a crew member aside and having the olfactorily-offensive person removed from the flight. Where I see an issue is in the fact that Jazz Air, like most other airlines, does not have a specific policy addressing body odor. That needs to change and it needs to change right now because I freaking guarantee you that this is not the first or last time this specific problem will come up and something needs to be done about it preemptively……………
- Welcome to your own personal hell, Richard Seymour. The Oakland Raiders are a dysfunctional enough organization to ruin even the best player and they have managed to sink their claws into Seymour. Prior to this past season, the Raiders traded for Seymour from the New England Patriots and he had the same reaction any player would have when asked to go from one of the NFL’s best organization’s to its worst: stay the hell away. That’s just what Seymour did, refusing to report to the Raiders and basically going AWOL for as long as possible. Eventually he showed up because not doing so would have meant forfeiting his chance at a free agency this offseason and not getting paid to play in 2009 as well. So he went to Oakland, displayed a marginal level of interest and effort for a team that set an NFL record with its seventh straight season of double-digit losses and didn’t cause any trouble. The problem for Seymour is that now the Raiders won't let him go and there’s not much he can do about it. While he is a free agent, the Raiders invested a 2011 first-round pick to get him from New England and rather than allow him to walk away as a free agent after one season, the team will use its franchise tag on him if the two sides cannot agree on a long-term contract extension. The franchise tag is a way for NFL teams to avoid losing their marquee free agent in a given year without signing him to a contract. Basically, they slap him with the franchise tag and he becomes a member of their team for the next season and must pay him a salary that is the average of the top five players in the league at his position. That is his guaranteed salary for the season and the team cannot franchise that same player the following season. The franchise tag for defensive ends is $12.398 million, which is what Seymour would then earn for another season of losing and despair in Oakland. It’s not a bad salary and most people would wonder why any player would be upset with the arrangement. Basically, it prevents that player from signing a long-term contract with a new team that could neat them a lot of guaranteed money, theoretically more than they will receive for one season under the franchise tag. The thing with Seymour is, the Raiders and everyone who follows the NFL saw this coming. Everyone knew that Seymour would be miserable in Oakland and want to leave after being forced to play there this year. Likewise, everyone knew that the Raiders would not simply trade a first-round pick for a guy and allow him to go free after one season. So here we are, at the inevitable standoff, and Richard Seymour is about to become a) much richer and b) much more miserable in Oakland over the next 12 months…………..
- I didn’t know Oprah Winfrey was currently vacationing in Argentina. After all, it was Oprah who went to war against beef in the United States and was looking to wipe the beef industry off the map in her whirlwind of rage. Now I have no direct evidence that she’s involved in the ongoing beef boycott in Argentina, but I have my suspicions. If you believe the story currently being told, it was a leading consumers' group that called for a meat boycott some five days ago. The head of Argentina's beef industry responded Thursday by stating prices will fall by week's end. Gustavo Valsangiacomo, president of the Argentina Beef Industry Union, would not admit that the boycott was responsible for the price drop, but his acknowledgement that he is concerned that demand for beef is falling is enough of an admission for me. "There are a sum of factors," Valsangiacomo said in an interview. "I don't want to take importance away from the boycott, but it will be analyzed by the end of the week. Nonetheless, we undoubtedly believe that prices reached a point that the public cannot and does not want to accept." The Association of Free Consumers, the Argentinean consumer group that called for a one-week beef boycott in an attempt to lower prices, has been buoyed by the success of a similar recent boycott of tomatoes, which also had risen in price. Beef is an especially important dietary staple in Argentina, which eats more beef than any other country in the world. I am 100 percent behind this boycott because, unlike Oprah’s misguided rampage, this one stems not from alarmist health and safety “concerns,” but rather from the fact that the price of beef has increased 40 percent to 50 percent since December. Valsangiacomo speculated that the problem stems from cattle growers attempting to maximize their profits despite their access to cheaper feed for their animals. "There has to be an equilibrium between their costs and what consumers are paying," he said. Another complicating factor is the decline in cattle supplies in Argentina. Those supplies have dipped to their lowest levels in 45 years, according to the Argentina Farm Federation. Demand for beef hasn’t declined on a similar curve and Argentineans eat more beef than any other nation in the world -- 150 lbs per person annually. Unfortunately, a one-week boycott seems like only a temporary fix and if things simply go back to the way they were once the boycott ends, one has to wonder how much will really be accomplished……….
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