Work Killer

This week 17-year-old British factory worker Stacey Irvine was rushed to the hospital when she collapsed, struggling to breathe. During the exam, doctors were stunned to learn that Ms. Irvine had never in her life eaten fruit or vegetables; instead she had eaten almost nothing but fast-food chicken nuggets since she was two years old.

Her mother, Evonne Irvine, told reporters she had gone to great lengths to try to feed her daughter more nutritious food, at one point even trying to starve the girl, but it hadn’t worked. Stacey responded that, once she started eating nuggets, she “loved them so much they were all I would eat.”

Aside from collapsing and gasping for air, as Stacey Irvine did? Doctors also discovered that the veins in Ms. Irvine’s tongue were swollen and she was diagnosed with anemia. Further, such a high salt intake can increase a person’s blood pressure (which ultimately can put them at risk for a stroke or heart attack).

McNuggets are low in nutrients everyone needs, such as calcium, fiber, vitamins, antioxidants and healthy fats, so a steady diet of nuggets means missing out on the health benefits of those ingredients.

The “Wheel of Fortune” wasn’t the only thing spinning for Pat Sajak and Vanna White back in the day.

Sajak said in an interview on ESPN2 this week that the long-time game show team would occasionally walk over to a restaurant for “two or three or six” margaritas during a break in taping early “Wheel of Fortune” shows in California. Sajak has hosted the show since 1981; White joined him a year later.

Sajak recalled the margarita stops after answering “yes” to a question about whether he had ever hosted the show “a little bit drunk.”

Although he joked that he had “trouble recognizing the alphabet” for shows taped after the drinks, no one ever said anything to them.

Now that he’s older, Sajak said he couldn’t do that anymore.

Even those not born in the Year of the Dragon, which begins today on the Chinese 12-year lunar calendar, respect a good dragon tale. Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo leaves a haunting impression on audiences and fans of the series. When the second season of Game of Thrones begins in April, fans are looking forward to seeing what happens with Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon hatchlings that emerged from a funeral pyre in the final episode of Season 1.

Will the beasties be friendly or ferocious? Not all dragons are created equal.

Dragons we would like to meet:

1 Puff, the Magic Dragon: Don’t analyze the meaning of the lyrics in Peter, Paul and Mary’s 1960s hit. Just sing along.

1 Smaug: The biggest Komodo dragon at the Houston Zoo. The 208-pounder is not to be confused with the fierce fire-breather of the same name from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (a dragon to be avoided).

1 Falkor the Luckdragon: The fluffy dragon looks like a dog in the movie version of Michael Ende’s fantasy novel The NeverEnding Story.

1Any Disney dragon: Although Mulan’s Mushu looks cute, who could resist Elliott in Pete’s Dragon?

1 Toothless: The black beauty that Hiccup befriends in How to Train Your Dragon (2010).

1Spot: Eddie Munster’s pet lives under the stairs in The Munsters (1964-66).

1 Kalessin: An old dragon in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series.

1Saphira: Eragon’s beloved dragon in the book series by Christopher Paollini.

1 Spryo: The small purple firebreather adds a spark to the Skylanders video game.

All other dragons should be avoided, particularly:

1 The unsleeping dragon: The menace Jason finds guarding the golden fleece in some versions of the Greek myth.

1 H.R. Pufnstuf: That weird puppet thing in the 1969 kids series is called a 6-foot dragon.

1 Hungarian Horntail: Considered the most dangerous dragon in the Harry Potter universe.

1 King Ghidorah: If Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra don’t like the space-alien dragon, we don’t either.

5. The number of poop jokes: Presumably because the telecast was targeting children. Fecal matter kept dropping, none of the jokes executed with the explosive tenacity of the scene from Bridesmaids that inspired them.

4. Best original song: I suppose they had to give the award to one of the snoozily dull songs that were nominated, so Madonna’s Masterpiece was as good/bad as any of the others. But poop on the Hollywood Foreign Press for failing to get Bret McKenzie’s “Man or Muppet” or “Life’s a Happy Song” on the list.

3. Homeland’s wins: Often this newcomer is compared to the gimmicky, preposterous and inferior “24.” Such comparisons do this sly, tense and intelligent show no favors. Fortunately voters recognized something special, awarding it best TV drama and also honoring star Claire Danes.

2. Kelsey Grammer’s best actor, drama win: For 20 years he played a single character that spanned two sitcoms. Audiences haven’t warmed to him in a political drama (I believe “Boss” draws fewer than 1 million viewers per ep, but Grammer is intensely excellent in the show.

1. Ricky Gervais: I’m among those who thought last year’s telecast benefited from the bite. Alas, this year was close to toothless. Targeting Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian for jokes is like hunting cows for cheese. His introduction of Colin Firth, however – “Please welcome the evil Colin Firth” – was funny.

Nintendo’s chief is determined to get right the launch of its next game machine, Wii U, set for this year’s holiday shopping season, and acknowledged Friday some mistakes with selling its 3DS handheld.

But Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata warned earnings for the fiscal year set to begin April will be the toughest ever for the Japanese manufacturer behind the Super Mario and Pokemon games.

Nintendo went against conventional wisdom with the original Wii in 2006. The quirky, cheap game console relied not on high-end graphics and complex buttons to lure in hardcore players, but on simple motion controls to lure in everyone.

Although the company successfully courted casual gamers with the Wii, it is now facing increased competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other devices that offer simple games. It had hoped to win new gamers through a 3-D handheld device. But sales were slow, and Nintendo slashed prices on the 3DS within six months.

Iwata’s remarks come a day after it lowered its annual earnings forecast to a 65 billion yen ($844 million) loss, much larger than the 20 billion yen ($260 million) loss projected earlier. It posted a 77.62 billion yen profit the previous fiscal year.

Iwata blamed the strong yen, which erases overseas earnings, as well as the arrival of smartphones and other devices that offer gaming.

The higher yen slashed nearly 54 billion yen ($701 million) from the company’s operating profit for the April-December period.

“I can see how the red ink may be perceived as abnormal,” Iwata told analysts and reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “The environment has changed.”

The failure of the 3DS handheld to take off with enough momentum during the last quarter of 2011 was one of the main reasons for the dismal results, according to Iwata.

The 3DS has gradually started to sell better, but it took a price cut in August. It still lacks a strong lineup of attractive software games, a key factor for a machine to succeed in a big way.

Iwata vowed the company will be better prepared when it introduces the Wii U home console during the 2012 year-end shopping season for a strong comeback.

He declined to give details such as pricing or what the software games available at that time might be.

But he said the Wii U will come with a strong game lineup at the launch as well as secure and safe Internet services that will offer players individual accounts.

The Wii U will come with new ways of playing that will almost make the term “home console” obsolete, Iwata said. It will also offer mobile gaming. The machine has a touch-panel controller.

Nintendo has long competed against rival game makers, such as Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. These days, all face the threat from hit devices like the iPad and iPhone from Apple Inc. that also offer games.

Iwata’s comments also showed Nintendo is growing less cautious about the Internet, which in the past it had brushed off as mainly for hard-core gamers.

Kyoto-based Nintendo has built its reputation on making games fun to play for casual and newcomer players.

“We are going to put to use our bitter experience with the 3DS,” said Iwata.

If you’ve been on the Internet for all of one second, you’re aware that some of the information on it is false. Fake. Made up. Fiction. Wrongamundo. And yet people still fall for bad information daily — it’s why snopes.com, the great debunker of urban legends, exists. But if you have 12 million followers, as Kim Kardashian has, perhaps you should think and verify before retweeting information that even to you seems to be false. On Thursday, Kardashian tweeted “Did I just hear that Cher has passed away? Is this real? OMG.”

She may have heard it, but it wasn’t, of course, true. (The Huffington Post has tracked the rumor to the Twitter accounts which may have kicked off the hoax.) Kardashian didn’t just tweet once, she tweeted twice about the death-that-didn’t-happen, later tweeting: “I hope this is a twitter joke and not true. I don’t see it on the news anywhere. I’m praying its not true.” Twitter user the boss was one of many to set her straight, tweeting “Of course not, Cher will outlive you.”

She’s not the first celeb to grab information that has not been researched and run with it. Back in November, Ashton Kutcher came under fire when he expressed anger that Penn State had fired coach Joe Paterno. He had his facts right — Paterno was fired — but Kutcher later claimed he didn’t know anything about the much-publicized child sexual abuse cases involving former coach Jerry Sandusky, and thought Paterno was fired for a bad football season. For Kutcher, the fallout was so bad that he moved to a less-open Twitter account, saying his tweets would now go through a management team rather than just fly out as he thought them up.

Sure, there’s a lot to be said for the spontaneity of a fun tweet, but it’s different when only a few dozen of your friends are seeing it. Who knows how many people — maybe even family and friends of Cher herself — thought the singer really was dead because Kardashian sent it out there to 12 million followers? Kardashian was apparently corrected on her error within an hour. She then tweeted: “Can’t believe people would make up a sick joke like Cher died. These people need to get a life! Thanks Twitter for clearing that up.”

Other Twitter followers were quick to reprimand Kardashian. A.J. Nelson tweeted at the reality star: “Can’t believe u would immediately start tweeting about it before finding out facts.” In summary: Cher — not dead. Kim Kardashian — not that careful about facts. The Internet — still trying to trick people. The beat goes on.

The infamous Legoman that washed up on a Florida beach is now free after spending 90 days in lock-up.

The 8-foot tall statue named “Ego Lennard” was released from protective custody Thursday to Denise Kowal, the chair of the Sarasota Chalk Festival.

Legoman quickly became a big celebrity in town and even made Time Magazine as one of last year’s top “oddball” news stories.

Ego had to wait so long to be released because any found property without an official claimant must be held for 90 days.

For those of you out there wondering where Legoman will land, Kowal says hopefully he wants to stay right here for Sarasota to enjoy.

“I’m sure I’ll be told. He’ll tell me things that he wants to do and as they come along, we ‘ll hopefully out in the community quite a bit,” she said.

Representatives of the Chalk Art Festival say Legoman is in big demand all over the country, so he might not show up on the beaches of florida again until after his tour is over.

Looks like the “Bridesmaids” won’t be taking any more walks down the aisle.

After weeks of speculation and comments from various co-stars and crew, the hit comedy’s co-writer, producer and star Kristen Wiig has nixed the idea of a sequel, telling E! Online that, “We’e not planning on doing one. We had a special time making the first one, but we’re really excited to try something else.”

Back in September, co-star Jon Hamm shot down the idea of a sequel, saying that he didn’t think Wiig was too interested in a revisiting of what became a Golden Globe-nominated film. That clashed with more recent statements from director Paul Feig, in an interview published earlier this month in Vanity Fair, seemed a little bit more optimistic — and perhaps less updated — about the potential for a sequel.

“Everyone is up for it, and yet it’s hard to say,” Feig said. “Everyone’s very busy right now is one of the problems, and kind of doing their own thing, but we’re very open to it. My only stipulation is I just want to make sure it’s as good or better than the first one. You definitely don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, shoot, I wish they didn’t make that.”

Earlier in the month, The Hollywood Reporter relayed the news that Wiig was said to not be interested but that Universal was interested in pursuing a sequel without her, which is perhaps what Feig was referring to. Still, he probably won’t have much luck convincing the supporting cast to come back if Wiig maintains her opposition; co-star Melissa McCarthy has said it would be “a terrible idea” to do a “Bridesmaids” film without its main star.

Wiig will next star in another film she wrote and produced, the indie flick “Imogen,” in which she’ll star as a troubled writer who goes back to live with her even more troubled mother (Annette Bening) and strikes up a romance with a younger man (Darren Criss).

For more, click over to E! Online.

Don’t worry, it’s not another campaign ad brought to you by Tea Obama! In honor of her 90th birthday, President Obama sent a video message to Betty White, asking to see her long-form birth certificate. After all, she is incredibly spry for a woman of advancing age.

We’re not sure how many hipster votes Obama just re-won with this, but considering how many write in votes White for to host SNL, it’s probably a ton!