The internet is all ablaze with updates and breaking news about the woman who gave birth to octuplets, or as we might be more used to thinking about it, a litter. The woman, who is still anonymous, was first thought to be a young woman in her early 20s. Later, sources (not quite sure who they are or what it takes to be a “source” these days) claimed she was around 33 years old.

After the dispute over her age, the next big topic was her relationship with the father. It was reported that he was an Iraqi native, then a war vet, then a contractor hired to work in Iraq–either way, people were giving him an Iraq connection. Well the latest news seems to be that it’s not the father of the babies, but rather the father of the mother (or the litter’s grandfather if you need clarification) that’s heading to Iraq, allegedly to earn money to raise his daughter’s 47 million kids.

Of course, there is also the revelation that the mother already had six kids, so the addition of the new eight brings her total to 14. There have also been reports that a few of the six were twins/multiple births, but I’ve only seen that on one or two sites, so it doesn’t seem to have gone through the rigorous fact-checking that the rest of this “news” had to pass.

There are now reports that the whole thing happened via sperm donor and that the mother could be a mentally ill woman who tricked a doctor into helping her get pregnant because of her obsession with children.

I’m writing all this down to illustrate the way that the internet spins things completely out of control. Whoever has the most recent post is the most credible source and everyone can write something different, saying they don’t want to reveal their sources. Just take a look at some of the gaping holes and complete inaccuracies in Wikipedia, the supposed repository for all knowledge, and you should start to think twice about the “facts” on the internet.

I don’t know why the world is so fascinated with this woman in the first place, let alone to the point where everyone needs to make up the most amazing breaking news about her.

I recently published a review of Diablo Cody’s new series, United States of Tara, on Trashwire. In the review, I talked about how I tried to get into the show, but found the teenage dialogue so annoying that I just couldn’t make it through a second episode.

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I saw that a few people had already responded and even had a couple messages in my inbox about the review.

Apparently Cody is a sacred cow in this crazy series of tubes that is the interweb because people were downright pissed that I’d described her writing as anything less than stellar. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting about 3 hours of sleep the entire weekend, I finally launched the brand spankin’ new redesign on Trashwire.com.

I scoured the internet looking for the coolest WordPress themes and finally settled on a fantastic magazine theme by Gabfire. I made a few alterations, which took forever since I’m definitely not a PHP genius, and I was able to customize it to fit Trashwire. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a few pictures from the Suns/Nuggets game at the Pepsi center last night.

It was one of the first really exciting games I’ve seen in a while, which might not be saying much because I hardly ever watch sports. The dudes were playing their asses off and it even went into overtime. It was a late game anyway, so this meant it wouldn’t end until after midnight. Despite how tired I was, I really enjoyed it and it brought me back to the old days when I had the NBA League Pass for DirecTV and watched every Clippers game.

Afterward, me and my peeps (AKA my mom, my good friend Dave and my boss Neil from DFS) went back to say hello to the guys. Everyone we saw from both the Nuggets and the Suns was very friendly and cool, but the highlight for me was definitely Grant Hill.

I’ve known him since I was a kid and my dad was an Assistant (and later Head Coach) of the Pistons. Of all the NBA players I’ve ever met, he is definitely the coolest. He’s like the quintessential role model for how NBA players should be. He’s smart; he’s friendly and polite; he’s charismatic and personable, just an all-around great dude.

After we said goodbye to my dad, I headed home and got about 3 hours of sleep before heading off to work this morning. Needless to say, I’m pretty worn out today. Still, it was one of the funnest nights since the Festival and totally worth chugging Pepsi Max to stay awake the next day.

There are many game show moments featuring people giving completely stupid answers to simple questions, but this one is just fantastic. The confidence in the answer, the face he makes when he sees it’s wrong, all perfect! He has to be thinking about all the time he spent preparing and all the sleep he lost only to blow it on the very first question. This really is a delightful–yet completely tragic–video clip.

Video after the jump
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