Admit it, whether or not a chunk of pink SPAM meat will ever cross your lips, you'd still like to know where the brand came from.

Young YouTubers viewing SPAM-themed parodies by Weird Al Yankovic and Monty Python are discovering that spam is not just junk e-mail; it's something they can cube, pair with pineapple and nibble on while deleting those messages. Viewers of the parodies seem fixated by what exactly is in SPAM (the food), with one confused user even asking, "Does SPAM have anything to do with Microsoft?" The answers: precooked pork, salt, sugar, and no, there seems to be no merger in the works for Microsoft and Hormel, the maker of SPAM (though you never know these days).

OMMA's editors - who are usually quite agreeable by nature, we assure you - threw the pleasantries out the window this month. We cussed out each other's mamas, broke chairs over backs and pounded coffee until the wee hours of the morning. Why? To finalize our annual list of Rising Stars, that's why. When we got done throwing jabs, we assumed that everyone else, from the Rising Stars themselves to Rupert Murdoch, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, that guy Tom from MySpace and Mark Zuckerberg should fight it out battle-royale style. After all, it's a competitive world out there, and today's …