- Attention, one and all. ABC has completed its latest collection of D-listers, has-beens and rejects willing to humiliate themselves by donning sequined outfits and excessive amounts of makeup and doing all manner of absurd ballroom dancing on national television, a freak show otherwise known as Dancing With the (D-List) Stars. The new incarnation of the series that will have your wife, fiancée or girlfriend glued to the couch two nights and a week and attempting to guilt you into wasting two hours of your life, er, watching it with her, has been finalized and ABC certainly has outdone itself this time. While the collection of rejects may be stronger, top to bottom, than any that has come before it, it’s the “heavy hitters” at the top of the lineup that set this group of misfits apart. For starters, there is weight yo-yo Kirstie Alley, who may show up looking relatively svelte or may weigh in at 450 pounds, depending on which way the pendulum is currently swinging in her life. When she’s not repping weight-loss companies, she’s bulking up to weights that would put the average NFL lineman to shame, so there’s no telling with her, but I would reinforce the dance floor just to be sure. Then there’s professional wrestler Chris Jericho, who has tried and failed to make the crossover from wrassler to entertainer with his band Fozzy and other forays into television that have ended badly. Next on the list is actress Chelsea Kane, whose most prominent acting gig to date has been on a Disney Channel series with the Jonas brothers, to give you an idea of her acting chops. D-list rapper/hip-hopper Lil’ Romeo (or Romeo, depending on what he feels like being called today) is also a part of this circus and while he’s probably counting on the show to boost his sagging album sales, I wouldn’t count on it. As for former Hugh Hefner arm candy and Playboy skank Kendra Wilkinson, she somehow managed to find time to pull away from her oh, so successful E! reality series about…..well, whatever it’s about and she will also try to win whatever trophy ABC bestows upon the best D-list dancer. The other “big name” on the cast is kooky radio personality Wendy Williams, who is probably around simply for comedic relief. And to think that you can spend weeks and weeks watching these captivating, yet irrelevant personalities compete to see who can tango or cha-cha the best while wearing a lime green sequined dancing outfit……………
- Users of Google’s popular Gmail service did not have what you would call a relaxing end to their weekend, for the most part. Waking up on a Sunday morning and finding you have missing e-mails, contacts and chat histories will do that to a person, let alone tens of thousands of people. Google went to work on the problem and by 11 p.m. Sunday night, Google engineers noted on the Apps Status Dashboard that e-mail services were restored to "some" users and that they expected to fix the problem for everyone in the "near future." However, specifics on just how many users had their Gmail services restored and how soon everyone else should expect to get their services back were few and far between. The only exact figure given by Google was when a company spokesman said Monday afternoon that the company's estimate of the number of users affected by the outage has dropped from Sunday's figure of 0.08 percent to 0.02 percent. That may seem like a small number to you, but that reduction drops the number of affected users down to about 35,000, as opposed to earlier reports of 150,000. That same spokesman confirmed that, as of Monday afternoon, Google engineers had restored service to about a third of those affected and hope to have everyone back to normal in about 12 hours. However, no one is quite sure what caused the outage. Speculation on message boards and in chat rooms placed the blame on a hacker, but the same Google spokesman called those reports "completely false" adding, "I can say absolutely that it was something on our end." That sounds very much like something a tech company would say if someone hacked its system and it was trying to save face and reassure users. Google also suggested that it may soon release a short report explaining what caused the outage. Not everyone is happy with how Google has “fixed” their malfunctioning account, as some users have reported that their accounts seemed to have been reset so they appeared to be brand new. For the people who never delete any emails and have messages from five years ago still lurking in their inbox somewhere, all of this made for a scary end to the weekend…………
- Warfare looks different these days, I suppose. With technology advancing faster than the world can adapt, battles are bound to look different than they did even a decade ago. But warfare is even more drastically different on the Korean peninsula, where South Korea remains technically at war with North Korea since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire but accusations are flung back and forth more often than actual munitions of any kind. However, South Korea has employed a much more interesting technique of late as it looks to capitalize on world events to sow seeds of dissent in its neighbors to the north. South Korea’s military has dropped leaflets on North Korea spreading the news of pro-democracy revolts in the Middle East with the purpose of inspiring an uprising against Kim Jong Il’s totalitarian regime. It sounds like a World War II propaganda technique, but maybe going old school is crazy enough to work. The pamphlets detail the many citizen-led uprising across Africa and the Middle East, especially the riots that toppled Egypt’s government and have thrown Libya into turmoil, explaining that “a dictatorial regime is destined to collapse.” Song Yong Sun, a member of the National Assembly’s defense committee, spoke about the propaganda drops in an official statement released Monday. In truly kid-like fashion, the South launches the leaflets in balloons that drop their cargo when they burst. Thus far, South Korea has sent over 3 million leaflets across the border. You really can’t blame the South for engaging in its own brand of psychological warfare after North Korea shelled one of its islands in November, killing four people, after (allegedly) sinking a South Korean ship last year. “North Korean people’s protests may also be able to bring a change to the regime,” Song, a member of the Future Hope Party, said in the statement. “South Korea’s military and government should also be ready for any revolt inside North Korea.” And lest you think that South Korea is merely looking to sow seeds of dissent and not provide much-needed help, it has also started sending rice, clothing, medicines and radios in baskets tied to balloons this month for the first time in 11 years, Song said. Well played, South Korea, well played…………
- Sure, blame is on the possums. Any time there’s a major electrical problem resulting in a fire that leaves four families displaced from their homes, the automatic reaction is to blame it all on the nearest possum. So while I wish I could say that I’m surprised to hear that fire investigators in San Antonio are blaming a fire at a multi-family structure in the 1000 block of W. Huisache Avenue just before 6:30 a.m. Monday, I just can’t do it. Firefighters responded to the blaze and found smoke inside two front units of the building, which houses four families. Putting out the fire was obviously the top priority, but once the blaze was extinguished it was time to begin assessing blame. As investigators scoured the scene for any clues, they found the charred remains of a possum inside a roof overhanging the porch. In a typical rush to judgment by those looking to scapegoat a possum for starting a fire, officials casually tossed out a tall tale of a theory about how the rodent chewed through electrical wiring and started the fire. Never mind that there are plenty of other possible causes for the fire or that no witnesses recalled seeing the possum doing the alleged wire-chewing, let’s denigrate this poor rodent now that he’s passed on. How do you think that makes his grieving possum family feel to hear him talked about like that? Oh, and all residents in the building at the time of the fire, including a man in a wheelchair, got out safely, but those facts wont get top billing here. The first story people will hear and the one they will ultimately remember when the day is done is the tale of a mischievous, malicious possum forcing four families out of their home because of senseless wire-chewing. Never mind that the possum may have inadvertently pointed out some faulty wiring that could have eventually led to a similar fire (no one is promoting this theory yet, so remember that you heard it here first)…….let’s vilify this one wayward rodent…………
- Only you, Iran, only you. Only you could come up with something so ridiculous and use it as an excuse to threaten a boycott of the 2012 London Olympics. Oh, and only you could be delusional enough to believe the world gives a damn about a relatively small, athletically inferior nation with no hopes of winning any medals skipping the Games and staying home. But for humor’s sake, let’s give this story a legitimate look. Iran is pissed because of the logo for the 2012 Games and as you might guess, the rationale is predictably insane. Seems that, in the minds of Iranian officials, the logo is racist because it resembles the word "Zion." To be sure, the logo is butt-ugly and the numbers are in bizarre shapes bearing little resemblance to 2012, but only an insanely oversensitive, mentally unstable country looking for any reason to start a fight would look at them and believe they spell out “Zion.” However, insanity is the current policy for all matters in Iran and so the secretary general of Iran's National Olympic Committee said Iran sent a letter to International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge objecting to the logo and threatening a boycott if it is not changed. Secretary general Bahram Afsharzadeh said the letter urges other Muslim states to oppose the "racist logo" and join a potential boycott. "There is no doubt that negligence of the issue from your side may affect the presence of some countries in the Games, especially Iran which abides by commitment to the values and principles," the letter said. This so-called negligence stems from the fact that Zion, of course, is a biblical term widely recognized to refer to the city of Jerusalem. Given that Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's destruction and questioned historical accounts of the Holocaust, you can see where that might be an issue – if Iran’s claims were true, which they are obviously not. In the past, Iranian athletes have refused to compete against Israelis – probably for fear of getting their asses kicked. In spite of this dicey history, objecting to the London logo showing the numbers "2012" in four jagged figures was something no one saw coming. Plenty of others have objected to the logo, but only on the grounds that it’s just plain ugly. Thankfully, the IOC confirmed receipt of the letter and after its members stopped laughing, the committee joined London organizers in rejecting Iran's complaint. "Our response is as follows: The London 2012 logo represents the figure 2012, nothing else," the IOC said. “We are surprised that this complaint has been made now.” Considering the source, maybe none of us should be all that surprised…………
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