- While I may not be a fan of Lily Allen, I am stepping up to let her know that she can count on me. I will absolutely honor her request that people not watch her new TV show Lily Allen: From Riches To Rags, which will air Tuesday 10 p.m. on British television. Now, I don’t like in England and even if I did, I would not be caught anywhere near anything that was in any way associated with Allen’s crap-tacular brand of pop music, but that doesn’t mean I’m not honoring her wishes. Allen is on edge because she feels the show is embarrassing and paints her in an inaccurate light, especially the opening moments of the show, in which she takes a run at Madonna and calls one of pop music’s most famous faces “mental” and insists that she won't still be hanging around pop music into her 50s like the Material Skank. "I am inclined to ask you not to watch it because quite frankly I am embarrassed. We started filming it a year ago and I feel like a completely different person than the one that features in the programme," Allen wrote on her Twitter page. "On the other hand I want you all to watch it so you can see how the press coverage of it has been totally sensationalized and quotes taken out of context.” The program also features a look at Allen's launch of her clothes shop, Lucy In Disguise, a joint venture with her sister Sarah. Apparently getting publicity for she and her sister’s clothing line, which I’m guessing is much more significant to her sister on account of not being a recording artist signed to a major label, is not as high on Allen’s priority list as acting like a spoiled brat who gets angry when she feels she isn't being portrayed in exactly the way she wants. One could make the case that had she not whined about how the show portrayed her and kept her mouth shut, a relatively small number of people would have known about and watched the show. Now that she’s made this into something of a spectacle, a lot more eyes will be turned in its direction. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what Allen wants……….
- Would it stun you to learn that 7 percent of college football players have a criminal record? If you follow the sport even casually, then the answer is no. A study conducted by Sports Illustrated has confirmed that there are many football-playing felons currently in the game and as someone who has long advocated that you need your share of criminals, knuckleheads, shoplifters, assaulters, potheads and underage drinkers if you are going to be an elite program, I feel vindicated. Almost any Division I program could provide numerous examples of this phenomenon, but perhaps none more so than the University of Pittsburgh. In a two-month span between mid-July and late September, four Pitt players were arrested for four separate, violent crimes. Senior defensive end Jabaal Sheard kicked off the criminal parade by picking up a charge of aggravated assault and resisting arrest after allegedly throwing a man through the glass door of an art gallery. He made certain that police knew who the suspect was by continuing to punch the victim in the face as he lay on his back, bleeding, even after an officer arrived on the scene. Yet like any coach who wants to win games and keep his job, former Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, who resigned after the season, reinstated Sheard for the season after he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct on Aug. 4 despite suspending him after the incident. The felonious good times continued on Sept. 12, when redshirt freshman running back Jason Douglas was charged with aggravated assault by vehicle while driving under the influence. According to court records, Douglas hit a male pedestrian who was found lying in the street, bleeding from open wounds to his head and throat. He then played the “Do you know who I am card?” by telling police, “Hey I play for Pitt football … please don’t arrest me.” A mere six days later, sophomore offensive lineman Keith Coleman was charged with aggravated assault and harassment and four days after his arrest, police responded to a 911 call reporting that a man was choking a woman at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and victim Donna Turner identified her attacker as Jeffrey Knox, a freshman defensive back at Pitt. Now, a cynic might argue that Pitt could have avoided these problems if it only had a procedure for screening football recruits for past trouble with the law, which it did not prior to this quartet of supreme idiocy on display. The worst part of it all? Pitt posted a mediocre 8-5 record last season, showing that simply recruiting felons and knuckleheads isn't enough; you must recruit the right felons and knuckleheads…………
- Here we go again. Another delusional kook with not nearly enough IQ points or proper psychological treatment believes they have seen the Almighty in an everyday place. Previous sightings have come in pieces of toast, tree bark, piles of grass clippings, grease stains, oil spills on sidewalks and just about every other asinine place where a moron could see a random occurrence of shapes and colors and immediately go Rorschach by insisting that the nonsensical shape is actually the likeness of Christ or the Virgin Mary. For our latest idiot being exposed/miracle sighting, we’ll journey to Mansfield, Mass., where pizza shop owner Josh Mather believes the Lord has appeared to him on a metal tray pulled from an old brick pizza oven. Mather and his brother once ran a sports bar in Mansfield, but it met the same fate as so many other businesses in this awful economy and closed several months ago. The brothers Mather cleaned out their belongings from the bar and stashed most of them in Josh Mather’s garage. Among the items stored there was a metal tray on which the brothers had cooked thousands of pizzas. Tuesday afternoon, Mather was sifting through the piles of junk in the garage and came across the tray. He picked it up and noticed that, to his massively malfunctioning mind, burn marks at one end of the tray looked like a picture of something…..but what? “As I opened the two garage doors, this image was right on the left door, looking at me in the face. It totally stopped me. I think it's amazing, actually,” Mather said. “I don't know, it's spiritual. The way I see it, it's Jesus on the left, and on the right I would believe it to be Mary.” The possibility that he was a delusional fool never crossed his mind, perhaps because he was caught up in the fact that he made his miraculous discovery the day before Ash Wednesday. Inspired by his meaningless find, Mather, who hadn’t been to church in more than 20 years, headed there on Ash Wednesday. “Wasn't really a believer, I saw this, I went on Ash Wednesday and got my ashes,” he said. “It was the first time in 20 years I walked into church on my own.” Not that going to church is a bad thing, but going because you’re a totally unintelligible sap who sees things that don’t exist on old pizza trays might not be the best reason to go. “It's one of those things they say you're going to get a sign at some point, and all of a sudden it's there,” Mather explained. “I don't know how to say it happened, I don't know if it will ever be explained.” Oh no, it’s already been explained: You’re a moron. Case closed……….
- Welcome to Twitter, where creativity and original thought are NOT encouraged. Communicating in 140 characters or less has become extremely popular for both regular folks and celebrities alike, but one thing the powers that be at Twitter will no longer tolerate is the development of any third-party apps for its platform. Twitter threw down the gauntlet Friday with a strong statement to developers that they are not to create any new apps. "Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience," Twitter executive Ryan Sarver said. "The answer is no." Despite the moratorium on new apps, existing ones like Foursquare or Instagram are free to integrate Twitter into their services. The move is a clear step by Twitter toward further tightening its control on how users access and utilize its service. Signs of the move could be seen as early as lat spring, when Twitter acquired iPhone client Tweetie and started making its own "official" apps. Sarver stated that 90 percent of tweeters use the company's official apps and with this decision, that figure should rise higher. "We need to ensure that tweets and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter what they are," Sarver continued. "For example, some developers display 'comment,' 'like,' or other terms with tweets instead of 'follow, favorite, rewet, reply,' - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. In other words, branding. Twitter wants its phrases and terminology to be used any time the service is discussed or referenced in any way, whether it's on the desktop, a phone, a tablet, or any other device. While Twitter claims that is due to its desire to give users a seamless experience, only those on the company’s payroll are actually going to buy that line of bullsh*t. But bullsh*t or not, existing third-party clients must change their apps to reflect the updated policy or they'll have their API access pulled. That could mean no more TweetDeck, Echofon, Twitterific or UberSocial soon………….
- Every forward-thinking nation in Africa or the Middle East has seen the slew of uprisings in their region, assessed its own situation and begun the search for ways to prevent its own citizens from taking to the streets to riot against their leaders. In Saudi Arabia, the chosen maneuver was banning public protests and gathering. In Morocco, King Mohammed VI has elected to take a different approach. The king announced this week that the country will revise its constitution for the first time in 15 years in order to strengthen democracy and beat opposition groups who might call for such changes to the proverbial punch. King Mohammed VI, who is extremely popular among Moroccans, made the announcement in a rare TV and radio speech to the nation,. He laid out plans for a new commission that would suggest constitutional revisions to him by June, after which the overall project would be put to Moroccan voters in a referendum. "By launching today the work of constitutional reform, we embark on a major phase in the process of consolidation of our model of democracy and development," said the king. The overall reaction to the king’s proclamation wasn’t as enthusiastic as might be expected, with some Moroccans celebrating in the streets of Rabat, honking car horns and waving the country's single-star flag, but many too focused on the latest European Champions League contests to react to something going on in their own country. Way to have perspective, Morocco. Who do you think you are, the United States? We’ve cornered the market on being so engrossed in relatively meaningless endeavors that we can't be bothered to respond to real-life, serious matters. For those willing to pay attention, it’s worth nothing that this will be Morocco’s first constitutional revision since 1996, and the first since Mohammed VI took the throne following his father's death in 1999. Mohammed VI is considered to be a reformer who has ruled in stark contrast to the manner in which his iron-fisted father Hassan II led Morocco. The big question about the impending reforms is how they will affect the oft-debated Article 19, which establishes the near-absolute power that the king has in Morocco. The article makes the monarch "the defender of the faith" — Islam — and "guarantor of the perpetuation and the continuity of the state." It has been a frequent target for labor unions, political parties and human rights groups who wish to see that power diminished. The king did not directly address the article in his speech, electing to focus on planned efforts to extend greater power to Morocco's regions, improve the independence of courts and ensure that the prime minister is selected by the majority party in parliament. He also addressed the need to increase women's rights and political participation and to ensure through law that men and women have equal access to elected positions. Whether all of these promises are enough to stave off a potential uprising like the ones that have beset fellow north African countries Tunisia and Egypt remains to be seen, but credit King Mohammed VI and his regime for looking ahead if nothing else…………
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