More people than that, closer to 50 million according to some estimates, are actually registered with the game.

To put that in a little perspective, more people farm virtually every day than live in Los Angeles County, and there are about the same number of registered FarmVille users as there are people with bad teeth in England.

Recently, Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, the company that offers FarmVille (and others including MafiaWars, CafeWorld, and Roller Coaster Kingdom), admitted that his company’s business model is based in large part on scamming customers.

Get people to sign up, make them feel good by pumping them full of virtual happy pills, then lure them into partaking in all the for-profit goodies that show up on the screen, like software downloads, premium text services, and costly upgrades.

Pincus’s widely-broadcast admission about FarmVille scams have done nothing to curb the enthusiasm of people who flock to the verdant virtuality to plant swiss chard and tomatillos on their lunch breaks.  Still the herds flock to buy fake stuff, fake plant it, fake harvest it, and buy more fake stuff.

You can even buy hot air balloons, elephants, and grain silos to put on your farm.  Then you can move them.  Fun, huh?

There’s no endgame, no goal, no objective.  Just plant and harvest and move.

No doubt you’re asking, what could possibly be bad about a virtual world where the sun is always shining and cows co-exist peacefully with domesticated pachyderms?

And that’s just it.  The problem with FarmVille is that there are no problems.  The people are always smiling, the cows are always happily grazing, and teenager hoodlums are never going to sneak onto your farm late at night to spray paint gigantic phalluses on your grain silo.

Basically, FarmVille is drugging people.

I’ve watched people sit in front of their farms for hours, rearranging fig trees and harvesting wilting raspberries on their neighbors’ farms just to be helpful.

You would think that someone who genuinely loves wasting time, especially when my company is paying for it, would love FarmVille.  Harvesting virtual plants is just a big waste of company time.

But, people aren’t happy being happy all the time—they have to make sure you’re happy, too.  They come knocking on your Facebook door, asking if you’ve been saved by FarmVille, offering you sips of their Kool-aid.

“Want a mini Farmer’s Almanac?  Without FarmVille, you’ll burn for eternity in the pits of MySpace, you know.  I even got the local hostelry to put FarmVille in all the night stands!”

Now, I don’t really care what people do with their spare time.  I support Americans’ right to hole up in their houses and basically do whatever they want to themselves: watch infomercials until their skin fuses to their La-Z-Boys, read “National Enquirer” and start a ham radio club to talk about the government’s complicity in a Maine bat boy colony, or download porn and have at themselves until they develop lesions on their junk.

What do I care?

But FarmVille has opened a whole new can of worms.  Where people were once ashamed of their quasi-religious fantasies that kept them alone and lubed up, FarmVille has made it okay to evangelize what should be a private act.

The really insidious issue with FarmVille is not that the company is scamming their disciples.  It’s that they’ve figured out a way to make their disciples want to scam me.

To recap, last Thursday six-year-old Falcon Henne caused a nation to be glued to basic cable news networks as a silver balloon, reportedly with him inside, floated across the Colorado sky.

News outlets, ignoring the laws of physics, believed the poor little boy had accidently climbed into the balloon and that the balloon somehow became untethered and floated away. Falcon was not inside the balloon. Instead he was safe and sound at home hiding in a box (now even that fact is in dispute).

In the media firestorm that followed, Falcon, on more than one occasion, mentioned that his family staged the incident for “a show.”

That “show” is a reality show that the boy’s parents, Richard and Mayumi Henne, had been pitching to anyone that would listen (the family had previously appeared on the ABC reality show Wife Swap). Then a Denver man stepped forward claiming that Richard Henne told him he was planning a media stunt to promote said reality show.

So it should come as no surprise that authorities now believe the entire incident was a hoax and are looking to press felony charges against Richard and Mayumi.

Furthermore, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden and his investigators are looking at the possibilities “that even some of the media outlets may have had some knowledge about this.”

According to Alderden there are documents proving that a media outlet agreed to pay to the Heene’s with regards to the balloon boy saga. It’s not certain whether the deal was made before or after the alleged hoax.

The Henne’s becoming felons, with the media’s help, is far better than any other alternate ending to this tale (minus of course the little boy actually being in the balloon and getting killed).

Instead of Falcon soaring from one dopey talk show to the next as the cute little “balloon boy,” we get to see his disgraced mom and dad paraded around in cuffs from one court hearing to the next.

Interestingly enough, this outcome will not only land them in jail but will land them a reality a show as well. Does anyone doubt that the morally-bankrupted wasteland of television will pass on these insidious and disgusting villains? Of course not, they are now more viable candidates for a reality show (minus whatever jail sentence they receive) than ever before.

Knowing that they will stoop so low as to stage a hoax involving their youngest son being in mortal danger makes them far more fascinating than a family that accidently had one of their kids take off in a floating jiffy pop container. Train wrecks garner ratings.

They are awful human beings who will do anything for attention and that’s the mandatory recipe for reality television stars.

If found guilty of the felony charges, which are likely to be conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, making a false report to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant, the Henne’s could face six years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Who is this Jane Adams? Isn’t she a figure from the American Revolution?

Not quite. Adams is one of those actresses you’ve seen plenty of times in movies and on television but you don’t know her name.

Currently, the mousey brunette can be seen in the HBO series “Hung.” I haven’t watched an episode so I’m assuming it’s about a picture hanger or a prominent Chinese man?

This past July, Adams ate lunch at Barney Greengrass, a restaurant in Beverly Hills known for catering to celebrities. When the bill for $13.44 arrived Adams claimed that she had “left her wallet in the car” and couldn’t pay (sounds like ReynsGems every time the TPH staff goes out to lunch).

Her waiter, Jon-Barrett Ingels or JBI to his friends, allowed her to leave to fetch her wallet. But according to JBI, Adams never returned.

Shortly thereafter, Adams’ people called and paid the bill. I know what you’re thinking, this podunk actress actually has people?

However, her people didn’t give Ingels a tip. That prompted the scorned waiter to write on his Twitter page:

“Her agent called and payed (sic) the following day. NO TIP!!!”

That tweet eventually got Ingels fired.

Before you become indignant at the restaurant, you need to realize that they serve the stars (although the only names we’ve seen listed as customers are Tori Spelling, Ali Later and Mindy Kaling). The restaurant relies on protecting the privacy of its celebrity patrons as much as they rely on their menu. Ingels’ tweet broke that sacred covenant.

“I understand they want to keep a safe environment for the celebrities and I think that I broke that safety,” Ingels told AOL’s Slashfood. “Had they come to me and said you need to take this down or change it to private, had I been told if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose your job — I would’ve done that.”

Ingels was fired despite having worked at the restaurant for five years, putting his job on the line to vouch for Adams, and tweeting the truth.

It would have been classy had Adams returned and gave Ingels a crisp twenty dollar bill (that’s what a star of a Showtime series would have done). Instead, she gave Ingels a three dollar tip.

The story goes that a month later a scowling Adams returned to the restaurant and slapped the measly gratuity down on a table.

“Thank you so much. You didn’t have to do this,” Ingels told Adams.

“Well, I read about it on Twitter!” she replied.

The problem is fixed.

Astronauts on the International Space Station got their first taste of a new drink that they can take into outer space.

And one of the researchers whispers to another…”Just don’t tell them what the ingredients are.”

And since you already asked, I’ll go ahead and tell you. The new recycle water magically transforms urine, sweat, and water condensed from exhaled air which thus creates a new bottle of pure, tasty water.

According to reports, the astronauts actually dug the taste…even after they were told what ingredients were included to make it.

So this is what NASA does with our valuable tax dollars.

Recently, White put out a YouTube tirade that has the MMA industry buzzing. White took offense to an article written about the UFC’s credentialing process by MMA journalist Loretta Hunt (Sherdog.com). There is not much to explain that watching the video clip below doesn’t do so I will let the video speak (watch starting at 4:30). I will comment though that the fact that a President of a company can feel justified that he has the right or power to act so unprofessionally is amusing to us. Imagine if Bill Gates went off on one of the TechCrunch.com writers like this because they criticized his latest version of Windows. Comical.

Check out the commentary on Sherdog.com (LINK).

UFC pulls the video from its website (LINK).

For those that just logged onto the internet yesterday, Twitter is a social networking site where users send and read posts known as tweets.  Tweets are little mini-blogs made up of 140 bytes of text.

140 bytes isn’t much, but in a world where people like Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Pete Wentz are famous, it’s often more than enough.

Twitter is quite popular and anyone who spends any amount of time on the internet is inundated with incessant Twitter talk. If that wasn’t bad enough, since it’s the latest internet phenomenon it has the main stream media hyperventilating and tripping all over themselves to cover everything “Twitter.”

Of course the media has the imagination of a gnat and half its intelligence.  They think that’s because Lance Armstrong, three days after having surgery to repair his broken collarbone tweets: “Got on the spin bike for half an hour today.” We all do it.

Or just because Ashton Kutcher sent the following tweet from the Miami airport: “Dealing with customs in Miami. I’m only going to speak to them in Spanish. This should be fun. Hola. como esta?” That everyone uses Twitter while traveling.

Everyone doesn’t, but gray areas are beyond the media’s comprehension.  They just report so you don’t have to decide.  That’s why the above two tweets weren’t just included into a news story, they were news!

That’s right, Twitter, and those using it, are starting to make news for Twittering.  Below are three news stories that aren’t days apart, but hours apart.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks was recently fined for negative tweets he made about NBA officiating: “how do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground?”

Commissioner David Stern must be one of Cuban’s “followers,” because the NBA fined the Mavs owner $25,000.  What did Cuban do?  He responded to the fine on his Twitter account: “can’t say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does:”

There’s a rumor going around that Jennifer Aniston dumped John Mayer because of his obsession with Twitter.  It’s doubtful, not even celebrities are that superficial.  Then again, maybe they are.  Here’s what Mayer had to say about his debilitating Twitter habit:

“I’m just goofing off, it’s silly. Isn’t it silly? Twitter is fun, but I’m gonna get off as soon it becomes like ‘Skippy Peanut Butter Presents Twitter.’ But for right now it feels sort of underground…”

Could you sound like a bigger douche bag, John?  What you said about Twitter is like saying “I don’t watch mainstream films” or “I only listen to independent bands.”   Besides is there anyone more “overground” than John Mayer?

In other twitter news, Courtney Love is being sued for libel by her former fashion designer, Dawn Simorangkir.  The libel stems from Love’s “obsessive and delusional crusade” on Twitter.

Apparently, Love posted a number of tweets that accused Simorangkir of being a “nasty, lying, hosebag thief,” and having a “history of dealing cocaine.”

Is this onslaught of Twitter related stories a portends of things to come or just a coincidence?  Will the nightly news have a Twitter segment like they have a sports segment?  Probably not, the hype will die down and the next “big thing” will take its place.

In the meantime, as Twitter oscillates between being barely tolerable to completely obnoxious we can revel in one thing: it’s another great mechanism for celebrities to publicly embarrass themselves.

Unfortunately, that last sentiment is too long to post as a tweet.

The very wise Peter Griffin once said, “Literacy is extremely important. If we don’t teach our kids to read, how will they ever know what’s on TV?”

The very witty comment definitely struck a cord with America. In a land where anything can steal your attention at any given second, and hold it for about that long, the iPhone has found another way to distract our children while they’re in school.

The other day I caught an ad for an application on your iPhone that allows you to download books and read them on your phone.

I couldn’t help but shake my head. First off, do kids even read anymore? Between XBOX 360 and Guitar Hero 3 World Tour, Shakespeare may become ancient news in a matter of decades.  And now iPhone wants to allow the option of reading a book on a 2×2 inch screen?

Let’s face it, we are becoming dumber and cell phones may represent “cause numero uno.”

Because of cell phones…we can no longer drive safe on the road anymore as every trip to work represents a chance to be hit by a distracted 40 year old dude who thinks he is cool because he talks on his phone and drives a car at the same time.

Because of cell phones…we cannot sit patiently in public for more than two seconds before whipping out our phone and pretending to have received a new text message.

Because of cell phones…people have become anti-social, “too cool for school,” and ultimately dumber.

And now iPhone thinks people will buy their phone because they can read books on it! That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. A phone on a book.

Whatever happened to the phone only being used to engage in conversation?

Hate the “my cell phone is everything trend?”

Lash out or tell me how much of an idiot I am…

Some of these Guitar Zeroes actually think their musicians.

If you play Guitar Hero you don’t actually know how to play a guitar.  All you know how to do is play a video game and erode your dignity.

A real guitar is a musical instrument with frets and six strings.  A Guitar Hero guitar is a video game controller with five brightly colored buttons and a toggle switch.

If gamers spent half the time they spend playing Guitar Hero actually learning how to play a real guitar, they’d be session musicians by now.

Some losers have recorded their Guitar Hero performances and put them on YouTube.  Why would I want watch someone play a hackney version of a classic rock song when I CAN JUST LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL?

You got five stars on “Freebird” on expert?  Big deal, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Allen Collins got five stars on “Freebird” in real life!

I’ve actually seen Guitar Hero porn—naked women playing Guitar Hero.  It’s not the least bit sexy and it will do nothing for your whammy bar.

Have you been to a big box electronic store lately?  They have Guitar Hero merchandise stacked up like those pallets of food the U.N. airlifts to third world countries.  Best Buys should be renamed to Best Guitar Hero, Circuit City to Guitar Hero City.

If you like to play the game, that’s great.  Play Guitar Hero and enjoy the experience.

Just understand that by playing Guitar Hero you’re just playing a video game, not actually making music.

Also keep in mind that excelling at Guitar Hero doesn’t make you Slash from Guns N’ Roses, it just makes you pasty with a wide-open social calendar.

The only difference between being good at Guitar Hero and being good at Gears of War 2 or Fallout 3, or some other video game, is with Guitar Hero you learn some cool rock songs.

1. You are trying to nail her sister: Nothing shows how much you care more than sacrificing yourself for the happiness of her sister.  She is sure to give you a shot after seeing the sacrifice you made in nailing her chubby little sis.  Her parents will love you more for it too.
2. You just need to blow your load and its better than straining your forearm to rub one out:  This should be an obvious one.  Nailing a fat chick, as gross as some people find it, is still potentially more pleasurable than stroking it in front of your computer screen.  I mean, if you can imagine its Megan Fox when you are doing it to yourself, why can’t you imagine it is Megan Fox when you are getting ridden to the point of breathlessness?
3. Charity:  Every man has a duty to give back to his community.  If you are one of those soup kitchen volunteers or high donors to the Red Cross than maybe this reason doesn’t work as well.  But if you are like most men and haven’t given much back to the community, nailing a fat chick is a good start as it raises society’s overall happiness quotient
4. Boredom:  Boredom can lead men to do many evil things.  Some people pick fights when bored, others do hard drugs.  Heck, some crazies even go on mass killing sprees just to cure the boredom that ails them.  I think it is pretty obvious that nailing a fat chick can cure hours of boredom (i.e. the 20 minutes doing the deed and the weeks of rationalizing it and getting over the regret that is sure to follow).  So nail a fat chick, it could save lives.
5. Revenge:  Nothing is more degrading to the ex-girlfriend who just dumped you to focus on her career/studies than the knowledge that you went out and had unprotected anal sex with a ginormous bitch.  Trust me guys, do it, tape it and send it to your ex……it is as satisfying as life gets.

The reasons for this one should be obvious, but just in case you didn’t sleep last night because Aunt Becky was too loud in her banging of drunken Uncle Redneck, I’ll explain.

See, white people love to conquer. Such fact is evident in looking at history (see slavery, the holocaust and hundreds of years of war as examples). Over time, that need to conquer has been taken away from whitey. For example, slavery was abolished, it has been determined that genocide is bad, and heck, today even war has a negative connotation. The last feeling of conquest that white people are left to experience (or shall I say WERE left to experience) was the ability to freely destroy a toilet with the simple push of a sphincter muscle. But what good is conquering if you cannot see the results? Automatic toilet flushing devices rip away that valuable time that used to be spent admiring one’s own conquest by flushing it down the drain before you’ve had a chance to turn around and bask in its glory. Like I said, WHITE PEOPLE HATE automatic toilet flushing devices.