Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Miley Cyrus Exclusive: No Underwear Pics and Photos
Here on Future Twits, we have an exclusive: NO UNDERWEAR PHOTOS AND PICS of Miley Cyrus !!!
Some of these were pulled straight from blogs like the Perez Hilton blog.
Scroll down and enjoy!!!
Yep, that's right folks, there are no pics of Miley Cyrus in her underwear here!!!
What kind of person are you, trying to look at a 17 year old girl in her underwear???
Saturday, June 26, 2010
We Didn't Start the Flame War
The video is hilarious.
Harry Potter and the Douchebag Magicians
Hardly Working: Family Guy
Friday, June 25, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Review: Valentine’s Day (movie)
Another Monday night, another 2+ hours of my life wasted on a crappy romantic comedy. While having promise for the first ten or so minutes, Valentine’s Day quickly looses all credibility as it becomes increasingly corny and insipid, all the way to its contrived, tired conclusion.
The film actually starts out pretty promising. In the first few minutes, the story centers around a florist named Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) who just proposed to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba) on Valentine’s Day morning. The performance of Kutcher – a nice break from the vapid “party boy” rolls that he usually is cast in – is generally pretty strong throughout the movie (what little of it you get to see, that is) and is one of the few bright spots for a movie that doesn’t have many.
Unfortunately, the movie heads downhill from there. First, you have the story of Bennett’s best friend and obvious shadow love interest, Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner) that breaks the Bennett story because she’s dating some secretly married doctor (also played by a “who’s who” of Hollywood – look it up on IMDB if you want to know who), which is then broken by a story about some one night stand between Anne Hathaway and the squirrely looking guy from That 70’s Show (Topher Grace), which is then broken by a story about . . . well, you get the picture. Of course, following the cliché, all of these stories are interrelated at the end – well past the point where the audience has stopped caring about the movie. One of the main faults of this movie is that it never seems to come together cohesively. About the time that I became interested in one story line, it would suddenly cut away to a worse story line, only to cut away a few minutes later into an even stupider story line that I cared about even less.
To fill in the transition points between stupid story lines, the director managed to stuff nearly every lame rom-com cliché in existence into two hours of film. There was the “nice” secretary who was a phone sex operator on the side, the divorced doctor who wasn’t really divorced, the kid who wanted flowers delivered to his school to give to his teacher (I called that one 45 minutes in advance), the dramatic showdown between the wife/cheating doctor/mistress at a fancy restaurant, the old couple where the wife cheated on the husband twenty years ago or something and decided to tell him about it that day, etc. The only thing that the movie was missing was some gay guy coming out of the closet – oh wait; it had that one too, in the form of some Hollywood pretty boy (Eric Dane) and the lead guy from The Hangover (Bradley Cooper).
The acting also left a lot to be desired. As mentioned before, Kutcher did well in the lead role, and Anne Hathaway was okay (though seemingly very out of place) in the role as a good girl/bad girl secretary-phone sex operator. Most of the other performances seemed phoned in, with the exception of some truly atrocious ones – notably by Taylor Swift playing a one-dimensional bit part as a high school girl named Felicia. At one point, Felicia has to do several kicks and cheers to impress a television reporter visiting her school (don’t even ask how this is related to anything else in the story). Watching her do those kicks, I swear that I was watching the female version of Napoleon Dynamite. Same lankiness and jerky movements, same big red lips, same blank expression – although Swift is far less funny. How she became a Hollywood and pop music icon is a mystery that I’ll never fully understand.
In short, this movie isn’t worth either the dollar from Redbox it cost to rent it or the two hours of my time it took to watch it. Rent Paris I Love You instead.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Review of Top 5 Internet Sites That Pay You to Write
1. Constant Content: If you’re a professional or semi-professional freelance writer, this site was made for you. Constant Content works by creating a virtual “marketplace” where authors can set prices for articles and post those article in hopes of attracting interested buyers. Authors have the option to sell, one-time, unique, or exclusive rights to buyers, similar to Associated Content. Also, buyers can send out requests to authors to write articles centered around certain themes or ideas, along with the amount of money the buyers are willing to pay for those articles. Constant Content makes money by taking a portion of the sale price – about 35% -- for each article sold. This large fee, however, is compensated for by the high prices that most articles sell for – sometimes as much as 250$ for a 1000 word article.
Overall, the site seems legitimate. While I haven’t sold articles on Constant Content directly, I have a close friend who has, and he has been impressed by both the professionalism of the buyers on the site and the amount of money that authors can make from selling only a few articles per month.
2. Seed: Another great place for aspiring freelance writers is Seed.com. The content generated on Seed is distributed through a network of affiliated sites, most notably AOL. Articles are generated from assignments sent out from the site editors and can cover a range of topics, everything from history lessons for kids to stories about crazy road trips. While the pay is not quite as high as Constant Content, a 400 word article can still generate upwards of 25 dollars per article. Experienced authors can also easily receive 20+ article assignments per month. They also have an alternative performance pay system, but their upfront pay system is so good that my friend has never bothered to write anything for performance pay only.
Seed seems to me to be a site that caters to authors looking for a series of assignments that offer a one time, upfront payment. While I have again not personally written for this site, the same close friend who wrote for Constant Content also highly recommended this site and regularly uses article assignments to supplement his income to the tune of an extra 1,000-1,500 dollars per month.
3. E-How: Among the “performance pay” internet sites – sites that pay users based on advertisement performance on their site instead of upfront – E-How is probably the most well known. I used E-How to find out how to make sushi rice long before I realized that they were part of the pay for content scene. As with Associated Content, they are mostly a pay for content site, with pay coming as a cut of the ad performance from your articles. I believe that they also have a program similar to the “featured contributor” program at Associated Content that allows certain authors to collect upfront pay.
My sentiments about E-How are mixed. On the one hand, they have arguably the most name recognition of the pay for content sites, meaning that the articles on their site, over time, probably have more traffic than the other choices. However, in order to get any of your hard earned performance pay, you have to build up ten dollars on each individual article (as opposed to an aggregate system on sites like Associated Content). Because of that restriction right there, I have never been able to generate even a single payment from the several E-How articles I’ve submitted. I’m not a big fan.
4. Helium: Helium is a good site for people who like to write niche articles about technical or specialized topics. They have a mix of performance pay and upfront payments, similar to Associated Content, with the upfront payments tending to be slightly higher than those on AC.
The main detraction that I’ve seen so far with the articles I’ve submitted there is that their traffic tends to be much lower than Associated Content, meaning lower performance payments. Also, Helium tends to only pay upfront for a very limited selection of articles, most of them quite technical in nature. Still, their terms are better than E-How.
5. Associated Content: Associated Content is somewhat akin to a glorified blog: you can literally post almost anything and see if it generates you any money. I’ve seen everything from old term papers to travel guides to poetry and everything in-between. Have some old documents on your hard drive that you need to delete? Stick them on Associated Content and see if they make some money!
So far, I’ve had good experiences with Associated Content. My page views per day have been increasing every day for the last few weeks, and I think that the rate of 1.50-2.00 dollars per thousand views is generous. By comparison, my blog has had over 5,000 page views and it averages about 40 cents per thousand – not very good.
Bottom Line: If you’re serious about making a living from writing online content, try Constant Content or Seed. If you’re writing for fun and lunch money, stick with Helium and Associated Content. Stay away from E-How.
5 Creative Places to Invest Your Money
When most people hear the word investing, they automatically think of stocks, bonds, bank accounts, and real estate. However, there are five simple money saving and money making investments that many people miss.
1. Car tools: If you have ever had to take an aging car to a mechanic and shell out hundred, or even thousands, of dollars for repairs, I’m betting it was an experience you hope to avoid in the future. Most people don’t realize that many simple car repairs – everything from changing your oil to replacing a radiator – can probably be done by someone with the right tools and the ability to follow written instructions. Most auto stores carry do-it-yourself car repair books, most notably the “Haynes” manual that give step-by-step illustrated instructions on how to perform most basic and several major repairs for cars of every make, year, and model.
2. Home improvements: Especially if you’re looking to sell your home in the near future (one to five years), a few simple home improvements can add dramatically to the sale price of your home. Improvements as simple as repainting the walls, updating the kitchen appliances, and redoing the tiles in your bathroom can add thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars to the value of your home. Stores like Home Depo can also often help neophytes with home improvement projects with everything from tools to manuals to helpful staff on call to answer your questions.
3. Gardening: People often underestimate the value that a vegetable garden can add to your life, both in terms of exercise and the more nutritious food that comes with it to the savings you can see each month when you harvest vegetables from your front yard instead of from the grocery store. In addition, the sense of fulfillment and happiness that individuals and families experience while growing a garden can be rewards all by themselves.
4. Education: By some estimates, college graduates on average can earn more than double the lifetime wages of someone with a high school education alone. Also, many intangible benefits come with higher education, everything from a longer life expectancy to a higher probability of your children graduating from college. Even if obtaining a college degree is currently out of reach, simple classes at the community college can often be translated directly into skills and certifications that can be used to get promotions, find better paying jobs, or make money part-time by tutoring other students in that subject.
5. Small business: Helping a friend or family member to realize a dream and open a small business can be a rewarding gesture that can generate potentially unlimited returns on your capital. In addition, your investment will give you enormous flexibility with your capital, including potential future options to invest in the business again if the business is doing well.
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