Mishmash Musings

41-year-old actor Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick Brown on the long-running CBS television series CSI, was arrested in Palm Beach yesterday for drug possession. Although details are still scarce at this time, several preliminary reports indicate that he was asleep in his car (which was parked on the wrong side of the street) at around 5am, which aroused the suspicion of police officers. When the officers went to investigate, they found an array of drugs in Dourdan’s possession, including cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy, prescription drugs, and assorted paraphernalia.

This arrest comes two weeks after Michael Ausiello of TVGuide.com reported that Dourdan would not be renewing his contract with CSI after it expires in May. Originally, it was thought that Dourdan was leaving to pursue other options, but a few days before this arrest, Ausiello followed up with a report that Dourdan may in fact have been fired for “personal problems”.

I did some more digging because I usually don’t follow this type of celebrity gossip (I just take in the major headline stuff like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Brangelina, etc.) and learned that it has long been suspected that Dourdan would benefit from drug and/or alcohol rehab. In fact, after reading various gossip columns, I’m surprised that the actor wasn’t busted or fired long before this.

Wow, I never would have guessed that Dourdan would be in this situation. Let’s hope this arrest serves as a wakeup call and that he gets the help he needs.

I like Coldplay, so I was pretty excited when I heard that they would be offering a free download of their new single Violet Hill over on their website (www.coldplay.com). But I’ve been trying all day and haven’t been able to get the download to work!

When you get to the site, you click on a link called “Song” and then you have to submit your email address, zip code, and country in order to get download instructions sent to you. I’ve tried that at least 10 times, but have not yet received download instructions! I’ve tried with a Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo account, and I’ve put the @coldplay.com address on my white list for all three accounts, but had no luck. How absolutely frustrating!

Have any of you been able to get the free song? Let me know how you did it!

When I was a kid, I received a Western shirt for my 10th birthday. I remember that it was light blue with white piping and had shiny snap buttons down the front and at the cuffs. Needless to say, I fell in love with it on the spot and wore it as often as possible.

On a lark, I decided to check out some western wear online this morning to see if I could find a similar shirt out there. As I was browsing, I came across a website called Cavenders.com that offers a huge selection of Western shirts, boots, hats, jeans, and outerwear for men, women, and children. They have so much apparel for sale that I ended up spending a lot time looking through it all, and was simply amazed by the variety of name-brand clothing available.

I actually found a shirt that is pretty close to the one I had as a child, though this one is pink. Still, it looks great, and I’m thinking about ordering it soon. It’s so different from everything else in my closet, and I can totally see pairing it with black jeans and some boots for a night out with friends. My husband gets paid next Friday, so maybe I’ll be able to order it then!

As I was reading the news this morning, I came across an absolutely sickening story that once again serves to show how utterly monstrous people can be — even when it comes to their own flesh and blood.

In Austria, a 73-year-old man named Josef Fritzl is accused of locking his grown daughter in a basement dungeon for the past 24 years and carrying on sexual relations with her that resulted in the births of seven children.

His crimes only game to light when one of the children fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital. Doctors asked that the mother come forth to fill in some details about her medical history, at which point Fritzl’s despicable actions were revealed.

The story is even more disturbing when you consider that Fritzl told his wife that their daughter ran away 24 years ago and didn’t want to be found. But all the while, the girl was being held prisoner in her own home and was subjected to incest and who knows what else.

According to the article I read, Josef Fritzl raised three of his daughter’s children with his wife after claiming that the babies were abandoned (by the daughter) on the doorstep because she couldn’t look after them.

God, what a monster. It’s too bad Fritzl is 73 years old already, as he’ll likely die well before serving any real time for his crimes.

What kind of world do we live in where a father would imprison and rape his own daughter — repeatedly over the course of 24 years? This story makes me sick to my stomach.

I’m just about to give up on my computer, as it’s frustrating me to no end. This thing is several years old and was a generic model to begin with, so I suppose I shouldn’t realistically expect too much performance out of it. Still, I thought I had solved its chronic slowness and lagging when I added more ram a couple months ago. Things did get better for a while, but in the past few days, I’ve gone back to the annoyingly slow performance again.

For instance, I was just trying to get some more info on Mr. Irrelevant of 2008 (the last player picked in the NFL Draft), David Vobora of Idaho, but every site I went to took forever to load. I know it’s my computer, not my Internet connection or the sites themselves because I tested the same sites on my laptop, where they loaded very quickly.

So now I’m back to thinking that I have to get a new computer — which is the LAST thing I want to do because of all the issues people are having with Windows Vista. This is not a good way to start the week….

Oh, BTW, this year’s Mr. Irrelevant was picked by the St. Louis Rams, who used the No. 2 overall pick on Chris Long — certainly not an irrelevant or unknown prospect at all!

I have a total of four blogs in my stable, all with a different focus. When I originally started this site, I intended MMM (as I call it) to be more of a personal blog than my other three. Whereas I hardly ever talk about family or work on my other sites, MMM contains quite a few posts about daily happenings, family stuff, and other personal issues. As such, I don’t promote this one at all, and don’t even tell people that I have it. I find that I’m able to write much more freely when I can be anonymous like this.

But unfortunately, my personal life isn’t exciting enough to generate decent traffic numbers. So over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with topics culled from the Google Trends list of top 100 searches, and I’m happy to report an enormous increase in hits since I’ve started writing that way.

Of course, writing about the keywords that appear in Google Trends isn’t a guarantee that you’ll see a traffic spike. After all, they list 100 terms, and those terms are updated several times per day. So something that’s No.1 at 7am might not even be on the list at all at noon. It’s all very hit or miss.

For example, a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the Victoria Lindsay beating and posted a video of it. Even though it wasn’t the full Victoria Lindsay beating video (just a censored one from a news station), I ended up getting more than 900 hits on the story. That one turned out to be a goldmine as far as traffic was concerned.

But just last week, I posted about Cypress Bay High School (featured in the MTV reality show The Paper) because it was the No.1 search term one day, and only received a dozen hits on that post.

Regardless, I think it’s clear that people are more interested in reading about my take on some of the hottest news stories of the day than about how my latest orthodontist appointment went. Sure, I’ll still keep the personal posts coming every once in a while, but for the most part, I think it’s time for this blog’s focus to evolve. After all, what’s the point of writing on a daily basis if no one ever reads it?

If you think identity theft is something that would never happen to you, then you’re actually leaving yourself vulnerable to this kind of fraud. Even if you are extremely careful about how and where you transmit your vital information online and shred any documents containing your credit card and bank account numbers before throwing them away, identity theft is still a very real possibility. Just think of all the news stories we hear about bank or government employees who lose laptops and files full of sensitive data. Incidents like that are completely out of your control, and yet could still lead to a multitude of problems.

That’s why it’s important to take a proactive approach to protecting your identity by signing up with a service like lifelock. Lifelock is a company that provides identity theft protection for individuals, families, and even children by setting up fraud alerts on their behalf. Then, if someone tries to open a new account, get new credit cards, or apply for a loan using a name listed in an alert, the bank or financial institution will be required to verify that person’s identity. In short, Lifelock is an extra safeguard that will protect you when all of your other precautions fail.

It could take months or even years to undo all the damage caused by identity theft, so signing up for Lifelock seems like a good idea. Check out their website today to learn more about the valuable services they provide!

The AP is calling Sen. Hillary Clinton as the winner in the Pennsylvania primary. She has reportedly received 53 percent of the votes in this important state, while opponent Barack Obama received 47 percent of the votes. According to the article I read, 9 percent of precincts have reported.

Hmm, I didn’t know a race could be called after just 9 percent of the votes were tallied, but whatever.

With this win, Clinton will be able to remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, despite trailing Obama in most of the popularity/approval polls that I’ve seen.

The loss, while disappointing after a long six weeks of campaigning, can’t come as too much of a surprise to the Obama camp. His message doesn’t exactly resonate with blue-collar workers, and his recent comments about them being “bitter” and having to “cling to guns and religion”. Of course, he tried to downplay those remarks, as Clinton immediately jumped on them as proof that Obama is out of touch with the people.

Anyway, I’m glad the Pa primary results are in early. Now I can go watch baseball and forget about politics for a while!

I usually don’t pay much attention to men’s fashion trends, but I recently came across an article about the Best Dressed Brits and thought it was kind of interesting. Can you guess who was No. 1 in the UK? I thought it might have been David Beckham, but it actually turned out to be actor Daniel Craig, who is better known throughout the world as the newest James Bond.

Beckham did make the list, but he was at No. 6, just behind Tom Ford, fashion designer of choice to many Hollywood celebs.

Other notable entries on the list include Prince Harry (No. 12), the Prince of Wales (No. 25) and the Duke of Edinburgh (No. 33). Not on the list was Prince William, which should say something about the way he dresses, considering the fact that his younger brother, father, and grandfather were all included!! Yikes.

Wow, it seems like there’s an endless supply of crazy in this country. The biggest news story of the morning concerns an 18-year-old South Carolina kid named Ryan Schallenberger who was apparently planning to bomb his Chesterfield school in an act that he called a “Columbine followup”.

The plan was thwarted when Schallenberger’s parents phoned police after 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate was delivered to their door (yay for online shopping). A subsequent search yielded a journal in which Schallenberger laid out the details of his plans. He wanted to plant bombs around the school and then leave an audio recording of some rant or other after he killed himself and who knows how many others.

According to the CNN article I read, no guns or other weapons were found in or near the Schallenberger home.

To make this whole South Carolina school bomb plot even more of a head-scratcher, it seems that Ryan Schalleberger wasn’t an outsider or loner like the Columbine killers. He is described as “handsome” and “social”, which certainly doesn’t fit the typical bullied nerd profile of other kids who have taken this path.

I’m glad the parents did the right thing and called the cops here. Now I’m interested in finding out what the kid’s deal is. Why was Ryan Schallenberger plotting to bomb his school? Obviously something wasn’t right with him, but what???

Today is 4/20, which I guess means something to all the pot smokers out there. I personally don’t see what the big deal is, and I can’t imagine anyone over 30 getting excited about this “holiday”, but hey, there’s no denying that a whole cannabis culture exists, so there ya go.

While I’m sure there will be plenty of 420 festivals and celebrations today, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be attending any. I’m just going to spend the day like any other Sunday, going grocery shopping, cleaning the house, and watching DVDs. What can I say? I’m 34 and haven’t touched the stuff in probably 15 years!

A friend of mine recently went on vacation to San Diego, and like most people who visit there, decided to cross the border for a quick trip to Tijuana. He drove his rental car over there, then like an idiot, left his duffel and stuff in the backseat — clearly visible, mind you — while he strolled around with his buddies.

Not surprisingly, everything was gone when he returned several hours later.

Fortunately for him, it was mostly just dirty clothes and a few trinkets he’d purchased before. He was carrying his important items in a Pacsafe hip pack, otherwise that trip could have turned into a nightmare.

I thought everyone knew better than to leave a bag in an unattended car in TJ of all places, but apparently not. Yeah, he’s not my brightest friend, but whatever!