Yesterday there was a story in the news concerning former major league slugger, Jose Canseco. Canseco has had a rough go since leaving professional baseball (none of which is his fault, just ask him) and has fallen through several careers and reality TV shows before landing in the world of celebrity boxing. Over the weekend Jose was scheduled to fight in Florida for the sum of $5,000. When he got there "Jose" began demanding the promoter pay him in cash or he wouldn't fight. It was at this point people in the crowd noticed something was not quite right about this (something even more obvious than the fact they had made the decision to pay money to see Jose Canseco fight). Through some quick detective work and checking pictures online, someone figured out that the person in the arena was not Jose Canseco but his twin brother, Ozzie, who might be the one person with less going on than Jose. Now, obviously the fight promoter was not happy about this turn of events and refused to pay the money. This led to all sorts of security problems and eventually Ozzie Canseco was given a police escort out of the building. Jose then took to Twitter (where all good defenses are offered) saying it was the fight promoter who was in the wrong for refusing to pay him (still not sure if the 'him' in that sentence referred to Jose or Ozzie).
I understand that Jose Canseco has become a running joke at this point and therefore nothing he does should be taken too seriously, but this seems to be a new low even for him. Using the word 'celebrity' was already pushing the limits, but to send his brother to fight in his place is just plain lazy. I'm sorry, did Jose have something better to do that day? Because if he did I would really like to know what that was. Apparently, this isn't the first time the brothers have done this because allegedly Ozzie has sat in for Jose at autograph shows. Now, I don't have a twin, although if I did I'm sure we would have tried to do all sorts of switching shenanigans when we were growing up. However, at some point that stops being cute and needs to stop; Jose and Ozzie passed that point a long time ago. Trying to pull the old switch-a-roo in your forties is just sad. There is a reason Hollywood kept re-making "The Parent Trap" versus trying to do a sequel. When you're 10 swapping places is cute, when you're 45 it's criminal. Charging people money and promising that they would get to see Jose Canseco or his autograph and then delivering Ozzie Canseco instead is outright fraud. Make all the jokes you want about fools and their money soon parting, but if people want to spend money on a Jose Canseco autograph they should at least get what they paid for. Now people have to question the value of every piece of Jose Canseco merchandise on the market. In one day Jose has managed to make his own name less valuable - and here I didn't think it could go any lower.
-It seems almost fitting that, one week after I was sick from a virus, my computer got infected by a nasty virus as well. This was one of those really annoying viruses that turns itself on right when the computer powers up, displays a fake 'virus scanning' page and then declares that your computer is infected with tons of problems that only one particular program can get rid of, when in reality that program is the only problem. The 'creating a problem and then asking to be paid to get rid of it' is a scam as old as time, so dealing with this virus wasn't really what made me mad. It was a pretty standard fix of turning my computer on in safe mode, removing the virus before it had a chance to start itself up and then running some viral removal software. No, what annoyed me even more about removing the virus was that after I did this, the virus software I already had on my computer was very proud of itself, telling me through pop-ups that it had removed all traces of the previous problem. Well, here's an idea, McAfee, why don't you try fighting the problems before they infect my computer? I believe that was the whole point. And they wonder why I haven't renewed my subscription yet.
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