- No advice should be followed more closely for any current or former reality karaoke show contestants than this: Know your role. In short, realize how little credibility and worth you have and act accordingly. Stay in your lane, stay out of trouble and don’t act as if you’re a real rock star. That advice should be reiterated to One Direction a group of man banders who came in third in the 2010 edition of Simon Cowell’s spectacularly bad “X Factor” franchise. To repeat, these clowns couldn’t even win a reality karaoke show competition and they weren’t good enough to finish second either. Being the third best act on a season of a reality karaoke program is like being your town’s third most-sophisticated inbred. Yet there were the members of One Direction, playing well above their musical station by kicking off a U.S. tour with a gig at New York City's Radio City Hall. They should have been happy with that and ended their evening by hitting a club or two and cutting loose without acting like a bunch of entitled recording stars – something they obviously aren't. Instead, they decided to enjoy a bowling alley run, which ended disastrously because they behaved like asses and didn’t even bother to deny it. "The whole thing came off its hinges. It totally broke. We got a slap on the hand and were told off by the label for that," member Louis Tomlinson said of the night. "We'd taken over a lane, played about two games and then got a bit bored. So we started an experiment, throwing two or three balls at the same time." Sounds like a laugh riot, you kook. "It was really bad but quite funny - but no one else thought so," fellow man bander Harry Styles said. Maybe if you were actual rock stars and not a bunch of reality karaoke hacks, it would have been funny, or at least tolerable……….
- The hacker über-group Anonymous has achieved prominence and success in wreaking havoc on the Internet while taunting and evading law enforcement around the world. Their success was bound to inspire imitators. Whether anyone considered it or not, there were eventually going to be imitators who didn’t have the same socially minded, politically-tinged aims as Anonymous. There was going to be someone like a new posse of cyber criminals calling itself "The Consortium," which burst onto the scene by brutalizing a California-based porn site, Digital Playground. That’s right, they’re out to out porn addicts who aren’t savvy enough to enjoy the wealth of free smut available online and instead choose to pay $15 or $20 a month for their digital lasciviousness. After hacking the site, The Consortium published the usernames, passwords, and email addresses of around 72,000 members and administrators of the site. Consortium leaders claim to have the credit card information of some 40,000 users, but said they refrained from publishing them because they didn't want to punish people whose "only crime was wanting some porn." To drive home their point, they played the Robin Hood for these porn addicts by releasing 50 files of premium porn from Digital Playground. In a post announcing its arrival, The Consortium didn’t fully explain why it hacked the porn site. "This company has security, that if we didn't know it was a real business, we would have thought to be a joke - a joke that we found much more amusing than they will. This site has so many freaking holes that if I didn't know it was a porn site, I would have mistaken it for a honeypot.” Honeypot is a term for a trap designed to lure in would-be hackers and trap them in order to gain access to their system. The Consortium already has its own Twitter feed and has already received praise from Anonymous' official Twitter feed. At least with this hack, the victims aren't people deserving of sympathy………
- Randy Moss is an intriguing free agent for NFL teams to consider this offseason. He didn’t not play at all last season after spending 2010 bouncing between three teams and underperforming with all three of them. Yet he rededicated himself, said he was in his best shape ever and tried to sell the select number of contenders he wanted to play for on his new self. No one bit and he had another offseason to work himself into even better shape. He did that and is once again pimping himself out to teams as a great addition to their receiving corps. His first workout was with the defending NFC South champion New Orleans Saints. Moss showed up, ran 45 routes and caught nearly everything thrown his way while showing nearly the same top-end speed that once made him one of the game’s top deep threats. Other teams were bound to want to kick the tires and see Moss’ remade game firsthand. This past season’s NFC runners-up are among the pack of suitors for the 35-year-old receiver and the San Francisco 49ers are taking a unique approach to Moss’ tryout. Rather than have starting quarterback Alex Smith throw passes to Moss or have one of their backups chuck go routes and post patterns, the 49ers will have head coach Jim Harbaugh throw passes during the session. Harbaugh, who entered the NFL 25 years ago as a quarterback, played 13 seasons and will be able to channel the good old days playing catch with Moss. 49ers CEO Jed York tweeted early Monday morning that Harbaugh would be throwing passes to Moss at the workout. "Former Colt Pro Bowl QB throwing for #49ers tomorrow. Just to clarify, Coach Harbaugh is turning into Capt Comeback to throw to Randy Moss," York wrote. Hey-oh, good one Jed. Knowing Harbaugh’s competitive nature and his players’ tendency to talk about how he still believes he could suit up and play right now, odds are he’s going to show up in full practice gear for the session and get pissed at Moss if he drops a pass because it will make Harbaugh look bad as a quarterback. With their uninspiring receiving corps filled with other teams’ cast-offs, Moss might actually help the Niners out. That’s assuming he can make it through the workout with their head coach/veteran quarterback…………
- Iraq sounds like it’s in great hands as the United States finally leaves a place it never should have gone in the first place. Iraq seems to have embraced some key traditions that its American friends may not have intentionally tried to impart, things like persecuting specific groups based on their lifestyle choices and wardrobe selections. That’s right, so-called death squads have spent the early months of 2012 traveling the country and targeting two separate groups - gay men, and those who dress in a distinctive, Western-influenced style called "emo", which some Iraqis mistakenly associate with homosexuality. In east Baghdad, an area dominated by Shi'ite Muslims, local security and medical officials have confirmed 14 such deaths in the last three weeks and similar killings have been reported by a variety of gruesome methods in other cities as well. Victims have typically been found bludgeoned to death, often with their skull crushed by a heavy object. While homosexuals have lived in fear in Iraq for years, many activists say the surge in killings in the past two months is by far the worst they have seen. Members of Shi’ite militia groups have even begun circulating lists of names of people targeted for killings. Their threats refer to "obscene males and females," a direct reference to both gays and emos - an American teenage subculture of spiky hair and black clothes that has spread to Iraq. Although the violence was initially focused on homosexuals, the bigotry and ignorance has gradually spread to include heterosexual youth who dress in emo style. The killings have led to extreme panic among many young Iraqis, many of whom have begun to embrace Western dress. Emo has its roots in American "emotional" punk rock, but has evolved into its own subculture in the past decade or so. For a country of young people seeking self-expression in a conservative culture, it has a natural allure. However, spiky hair, tight jeans, t-shirts and chains are now as much of a target for violence as they are a proclamation of independence in Iraq. The country’s own Interior Ministry exacerbated the problem last month by releasing a statement that labeled the emo culture "Satanism" and promised a special police force would stamp it out. Embracing intolerance and bigotry, how very American of you, Iraq…………..
- The lottery is, if nothing else, a wonderful entity capable of bring people together under the umbrella of compulsive gambling. Millions of losers throw away hard-earned money on the miniscule chance they will strike it rich, be able to quit the job they hate and live they life they’ve always wanted. That .0000000001 percent chance is enough to spend the $10 or $15 they could have spent on gas or on food for their family, week after week. But even when the dream comes true, the lottery doesn’t always bring good tidings. Sometimes a person wins, doesn’t pay the taxes and ends up with the IRS on their tail for years and years. Other times, a winner begins spending exorbitantly and blows through their winnings in a matter of years. Then there’s the occasion when a group of co-workers pool their money, buy lottery tickets every week and win only to have one member of their group jam up everyone else and claim the prize for themselves. The last of those three scenarios has befallen five New Jersey construction workers who pooled their money with former co-worker Americo Lopes to buy lottery tickets each week in the hopes of striking it rich. When they used their money to play the Mega-Millions lottery, the assumption was that they would split the money six ways if they won – at least that’s what everyone other than Lopes thought. On Nov. 10, 2009, one of the tickets Lopes purchased won the jackpot, which amounted to $24 million after taxes. Oddly enough, he soon took four months off work for foot surgery and returned only to quit on the spot and confirm that he was a now a millionaire. His five stunned lottery pool pals were shocked but quickly recovered and began demanding that Lopes give them each $4 million for their part in the pool. He refused, his friends hired lawyers and the case went to trial. That trial began last week and Lops faces charges of fraud because of his actions. His attorney is relying on the convenient excuse that Lopes bought a personal ticket in addition to the ones he bought for the group and the personal ticket just happened to be the winning one. Attorney Michael Mezzaca attempted to convince the jury that trying to hide his winnings didn’t mean Lopes was guilty. That jury must now scrutinize how the pool was organized and determine whether it’s possible to separate a single lottery ticket from ones purchased collectively. One member of the group, Candido Silva Sr., did his best to sway jurors when he took the stand. “I’d never think he’d do what he did,” said Silva, adding that the group shared an “all for one and one for all mentality.” Don’t you just love it when money brings people together………….
No comments:
Post a Comment