Monday, November 30, 2009

Tiger Better Fess Up

By now, everyone within range of a TV or radio knows that Tiger Woods had some kind of "incident" over the holiday weekend. The official story is that at 2:30am, Woods was backing out of his driveway and ran into a tree and a fire hydrant, injuring himself. His wife supposedly had to break his rear windshield with a golf club to pull him out of the vehicle, and when the police arrived, they found Woods lying in the street, bloody and incoherent. with his wife "standing over him."

Riiiight.

Before any of the inevitable rumors began to swirl, I had my doubts. First I thought, "Tiger Woods had an accident at 2:30 in the morning? Backing up? What was he trying to get away from?" Then I heard more details. Facial injuries, wife with golf club. Immediately, I figured, he wasn't injured from the accident, his wife went upside his head with that golf club. After all, if he injured himself that badly backing up, he would have had to stomp on the gas pedal, meaning at least he would have pulled the hydrant out of the ground (I've seen it happen) and/or possibly backed into -- or through! -- whatever was across from his driveway.

Then it came out that Mrs. Tiger had read a National Inquirer report of her husband having an affair with a woman in New York. That would definitely be a rationale for her working him over with a golf club or whatever. These days the Inquirer has to be taken more seriously than in years past; after all, they stuck to their guns with the John Edwards paternity story, and turned out to be correct.

Eldrick Woods is, and has always been, a private person. I can respect that; I treasure my privacy as well. But Tiger better put aside the worries about his image and just fess up to whatever it is he's so afraid of the police finding out, and just answer their questions. The best way to make the story go away is to tell it. But continuing to stick to an obvious fable, and continuing to hold off the police, will just prolong the publicity until the truth comes out anyway, maybe bringing along with it something else the Woodses would like to keep private.

EDIT: Of course, now more women are stepping up and saying that they've had affairs with Tiger Woods, one even supplying a voicemail recording of Woods asking her to remove her name from her phone so it won't show up in his cell phne's call logs  when she calls, because his wife had checked his phone and seen the name. And, typically, Woods is throwing money around to all involved, including his wife, in the hopes that it will keep everyone in their respective lanes.

I will never understand the mindset of someone who apparently values image above reality. Woods is apparently rewriting his prenuptial agreement with his wife to give her more money if (well, basically "when") she leaves but giving her more to stick around for a couple more years. Reminds me of a movie I saw parts of a few years ago, "Love Don't Cost a Thing," starring Nick Cannon and Christina Milian. Tiger comes off as a lot nerdier (and maybe needier?) than Nick here, because Nick's character didn't pay millions to Christina's cool-girl character to pretend to be his girlfriend, the way Tiger's paying Elin millions to stick around and pretend to be his loving wife. (Take note of the title, Tiger; whatever you're paying for ain't love.)

Interesting note from UrbanDictionary.com, in its definition of Kobe Special, named after the ring NBA player (ha!) Kobe Bryant bought his wife after being caught cheating:
Jewelry bought by husbands to appease their angry wives. Usually, the anger concerns extramarital skank diddling on the side. In normal households, a gift of jewelry like this would solve nothing; it would be seen as the empty and loveless gesture that it is. However, in the lives of the rich and famous, empty materialism covers all sins and fixes all problems because they have no souls.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Archos Do-over?

Back in September I posted my frustrations with my Zune 80 -- its almost total dependence on software, the software in question (which is pokey and ornery), and failure to copy all the files the configuration calls for -- and dithered between the Apple iPod Touch or Archos 5 for my next media player.

A sales clerk at Target tried to make a case for the Zune HD, but my research showed that the Zune HD was still dependent on Microsoft's crippled ("customized") Windows Media Player software. Being able to control the device directly through WMP would have worked out much better, but everyone knows Microsoft cares little for what the buying public wants. And after all the clerk's talking, Target doesn't even carry the Zune HD, only the older Zunes that have been phased out!

I finally settled on the Archos 605 Wifi, the generation before the Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet (which has since been relaunched with the Android OS). I figured that both the Apple and the Archos had too many advantages over the Zune to even consider it seriously: The Apple has a max storage capacity of 64 GB, but it comes with tens of thousands of applications available, while the Archos has much more storage capacity than either of the others (mine has 120GB; I think the largest available is 320GB, which is larger than my laptop's drive). However, this 605 Wifi takes forever to charge, and a nagging flaw with the operating system dating back to my old Archos 420 Personal Video Player still persists: if you add, delete, or refile any photos while the player is connected to a computer by USB, the filing system goes haywire when trying to catalog the changes. It only seems to affect photos, though; I can add, delete, and transfer music and videos to my heart's content and not worry about songs or video clips being resorted.

Oh well, can't have it all, I guess. But I don't want to overtax this thing now by trying to rip any DVDs to it, though that was one of the reasons I decided to buy a player with so much storage space...