LOLKANYE (or LOLSARCASM)

Omg guys, did you know that Kanye West was mean to Taylor Swift at the MTV VMAs? Ohmigawd it was soooooooo rude, wasn’t it? I mean, she was having a nice moment and he just went up there and-yeah, shut the fuck up.

Kanye West is still Kanye West-a slightly decent rapper with an ego that could fill a skyscraper. Taylor Swift is still mediocre at best.

WE FUCKING GET IT ALREADY.

Christ’s sake, you guys, you act like Kanye West hasn’t acted like a 5 year old getting grounded 2 or 3 times in the past. Why is this newsworthy? Why do we need to make such a big deal about things like this, every goddamn time they happen? Don’t we have anything better to talk about? Obama’s trying to nationalize healthcare, an action that is meeting a good amount of resistance from the Right. Osama Bin Ladin hates our guts, and most of us still don’t understand why. Kim Jong Il is still a fucking lunatic who could make Kanye look humble.

And yet, most of us are either crying or giggling because mister gay fish got another stick up his ass. Get over it, and get back to the things that really matter. In fact, to put it more bluntly, until Kanye spoons Taylor Swift’s eye out and skullfucks her for a huge audience to see, quit whining.

Not as long as my usual posts, I know, but I needed to get it off my chest.

Christian Bale and the celebrity fetish

So it seems that even with the stimulus bill debates and that crippling recession that, according to a few talk radio hosts, isn’t even a recession, people still manage to find time to gawk at celebrity gossip. In case you haven’t heard (And I’d be surprised, considering how many media networks are obsessing about it), a sound byte was recently leaked onto Youtube, consisting of Christian Bale flipping out on the set of Terminator 4 recently. A light technician wandered onto the set and ruined Bale’s shot, so he lost his temper and began viciously swearing the technician out. Many nasty things were said, and many expletives were used. It sounds like Bale was simply acting like your typical pretentious Hollywood git.

…Until you consider the fact that the guy wandered onto the set multiple times, hence the “fucking amateur” accusation from Bale. That’s only one thing to consider-also consider the fact that it’s a high-demand blockbuster, which means even a little stress for all involved, and that it may have been a rigorous scene. If I had to run across a desert plain for half a mile 20 times in a row with a PVC robot model draped over my back just because someone kept wandering into the shot, I would not only cuss the guy out, I would pick up the nearest sharp object and disembowel him in front of everyone else. Then I would take the footage that would inevitably be filmed and put it on Youtube myself.

Of course, you’re not going to get any of this from tabloids and news channels, because the appointed commentators will be too busy wagging their fingers at Bale for losing his composure and using the word “fuck.” They’re going to take the whole thing out of context and make Bale look like a short-tempered ego-maniac, and they already have. That’s the sad part-I’m willing to bet that if he wasn’t half as famous as he is, he wouldn’t be getting any of this to begin with. This is because if somebody is popular, then people are either holding them in a superhuman high regard, or tearing them to pieces because they fail to meet it. That is the point of the celebrity-an obsession with creating role models to force others to adhere to. The point of paparazzi and tabloids is to keep a constant eye on these role models and make sure they are constantly living their lives the way everybody else wants them to, and to punish them severely for deviating from it-even if the deviation is out of their control.

Because god forbid celebrities try to act like actual human beings… that would just be horrible.

Why Warner Music Group should be sued

By now I assume a lot of you have heard about the conflicts between Youtube and Warner Music Group. If you haven’t,then I’ll start with a quick crash course (Skip this paragraph if you at least know what Youtube is): Youtube is a website that was created for the purpose of social networking, video blogging, and independent movie producing, among other things. Its a website where you upload a video to share it with some of the close-knit community and have them comment on it, potentially gaining a criticism or two on how to improve. As more people caught on to the website, it was bought by Google for a large sum of money, causing the creators to rake in a whole bunch of money combined with what they got for advertising. Even more people caught on after this, especially businesses who saw an opportunity to milk the cash cow for all it was worth. Some, like Viacom, set out to sue everybody involved in the website and steal a portion of their money, as well as exploiting the website for their own advertising uses. Others sought to partner with Youtube, offering videos and assistance in exchange for another portion of money.

One of these companies was Warner Music Group, and it was more instrumental to the site. Recently, though, business negotiations between the two entities have completely collapsed, and Warner Music Group has stated that until negotiations re-open, they will be removing any and all Youtube videos containing any of their copyrighted material, effective immediately. This has resulted in what can only be described as a metric fuckton of videos from various artists, including Disturbed, Slipknot, Stone Temple Pilots, Van Halen, Killswitch Engage, and Linkin Park (Meh, not too concerned about this one) being completely purged from the site.

Now, I understand that WMG needs to find ways to make money in order to keep running. I understand that when you aren’t being paid for your work, you have full license to remove it from use until payment is made. That’s basic economics. If that was all there was to it, then I’d take it in stride and just get over the fact that about 4/5 of the music I listen to is no longer available on Youtube, will not be for at least a good deal of time, and, worse comes to worst, may not even be available on Youtube any more.

Except for the fact that-you know-they’re not only removing their own material, but the material of other labels.

Recently, I checked all the dead links in my favorites, and I noticed that among all of Warner’s actual material, a bunch of my George Carlin clips, as well as a slideshow set to “Don’t fear the reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, had been removed due to WMG copyright claims. Now, as far as I know, I might be wrong about the Carlin material. To my knowledge, the only corporate entity to exercise control over George Carlin’s stand-up routines was HBO, but maybe Warner got a hold of it as well, I don’t know. But Blue Oyster Cult’s music is owned and copyright by Sony Music Group, NOT Warner. In fact, many people have taken notice of WMG’s actions, so much so that it is even listed on WMG’s Wikipedia article.

This means that Warner Music Group has no interest in keeping its media from being used unfairly. Warner Music Group is simply trying to remove as many of Youtube’s most viewed music-related videos as possible, thus reducing traffic at a slow yet steady rate until Youtube concedes and finally gives up the bribe money. Warner Music Group is, essentially, extorting Youtube. This is not copyright enforcement, this is typical corporate bullshit in an attempt to scrounge up a few more measly bucks. It’s pathetic, and why nobody has bothered to take action against WMG (As they are clearly violating the copyright of Sony Music Group, as well as others) is well beyond me.

Free exercise of media: the root of all evil?

First off, the information I’m about to relate to the reader will be really confusing without knowing some terminology, so I’ll assume ignorance for the time being. First off, for anybody that doesn’t know, anime is a form of animation that comes from Japan. The style itself is very distinctive, and often recognizable by its archetypical portrayal of anatomy, although the traditions are sometimes broken by other series; the characters’ chins are very pointed, the noses are thick lines when seen from the front and pointy curves from the side, and the eyes are typically gigantic and almost circular, or noticably narrow. Some series also use a combination of these two eye shapes; the women will have the huge eyes while the men have the narrow ones. People who are so into anime that it begins to affect their daily lives are referred to as otaku, a Japanese word for geek. Otaku are generally very reclusive, sometimes overweight, and a good deal of otaku also delve into more sexually explicit anime. A form of this that they enjoy is pictures of younger anime girls or anime girls portrayed in a pre-adolescent way, called lolicon or “loli” for short.

Another thing you should know is that the otaku subculture is infamous for, like many other sub-cultures, producing a few horrific murders. Otaku murderers stand out, though, in the way that they are influenced by their long-term love of lolicon to sexually assault and murder younger girls instead of women. Now, the reason I bring this up is because one such murder happened a few months ago. Ryou Katsuki, a 21-year old futon maker, was recently found guilty of kidnapping and strangling 5-year old Yukimaro Narita to death, and when police investigated his home, they found that he owned a huge stash of anime memorbilia. If you want all the details, you can get them here:

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2008/12/07/mahou-shoujo-obsessed-otaku-murders-5-year-old-girl/

The media coverage is, in typical fashion of an otaku murder, concentrating much less on the details of the murder and the man’s personal life, including any mental disorders he may have been diagnosed with, and more on the fact that he was an otaku. In doing this, the intent is to create a scapegoat for the crime and make it go away faster as a result. In truth, as with other media-related murders, the problem is not the media itself, but a long, unchecked history of mental disorders ignored by the murderer’s family, ignored by the murderer’s friends, ignored by the school officials that worked with the murderer on a daily basis, and ignored by everybody else around the murderer in general.

For a great example of this, look at Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. (I bring him up because, other than the reason I mention, he was used as another scapegoat by Jack Thompson and others to blame all of society’s ills on video games, as Cho spent a lot of time playing Counter-Strike.) From an early age, he displayed strong mental illness, which simply got worse as he got older. And people just dealt with it. He threw tantrums over having to go to school. He had trouble talking with other students and was often bullied as a result. He wrote a hit list. He obsessed over the Columbine murders and wrote a message on his binder telling his classmates to fuck off and burn in hell. He stalked other women and harassed them over instant messengers. He wrote twisted screenplays with murder incorporated in some form. And how he was never actually treated for anything despite all this is probably one of the most pathetic examples of mass ignorance I have seen in the modern day, up there with Neo-Conservatism. Fuck’s sake, he even mailed videos to MSNBC threatening to murder everybody he didn’t like… that’s even worse than what the Columbine shooters did.

The bottom line of this rant is that media in general, no matter how explicit, does not cause murder; most of the time, all it does is influence a mentally ill person to model their actions after it. In other cases, though, the person will become unhealthily obsessed with the media, but this would count as a mental disorder, which I will discuss in a second. The reason that so many people out there blame everything on anime/video games/explicit music/violent movies is because people don’t like to take responsibility for anything. When a mentally ill person appears, people make a diagnosis at the most, then just go on with their lives as if nothing had ever happened. Threatening letters? Just begging for attention. Hostile actions? Just a phase. Video of themselves shooting off a whole bunch of guns as if gunning other people down? Just being silly. This mindset of “ignore, then blame” is going to create more murders and create more murderers, that’s all there is to it. If people really have any interest in bringing the numbers of murders down, then they should stop pissing and moaning about how bad <form of media> is and work to better the process by which mental disorders are diagnosed and treated by advising more people to report suspicious activity or contributing money to psychological research. Course, a lot of the people speaking out against “bad” media are social purists who are only interested in using real life happenings to push their personal interests forward, so that obviously won’t happen any time soon.

To finish the rant up, I’ll tack on this aside: yes, I am also defending lolicon, hentai, pornography, satanic metal, rap, and most fetish indulgences. While this probably makes me a gigantic asshole, condemning the above as bad influences after the rant I just typed would make me a bigger asshole, and a hypocrite on top of that.

Much ado about Joe the Plumber

So, I was going to do a post about fetishes (Or, more specifically, people who are so taken aback by their mere existence that they set out to make anybody who has them, or at least has one that they aren’t into, miserable), but I haven’t been satisfied with what little I’ve written on the subject, so I’ll put that off for now. Instead, I’ll talk a little bit about a person whose confrontation with Presidential candidate Barack Obama has added more fuel to the fire of the 2008 Presidential election. Of course, I’m talking about Joe Wurzelbacher, or as most know him, “Joe the Plumber.” If you haven’t heard about him already (And if you haven’t and live in the US, get your shit together), he was a simple plumber living in Ohio who confronted Obama as he walked through his neighborhood, asking him about his tax plan and how it was going to affect everyday workers like himself. First of all, I admire what Joe did. It was a pretty bold move on his part, and despite that, he brought up a valid point and stuck with it rather than resorting to some of the stuff more radical Republicans have (Throwing around bullshit that they’ve heard, resorting to a volley of racial slurs and stereotypes, etc.). Take note, people… this is how you do it.

Of course, this resulted in a lot of media hoopla, especially after both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, referred to him 23 times during their final debate. Which, in turn, caused a few news networks to leap on Joe for going against somebody they support, digging into his personal information and dredging up 15 tons of crap about him, some of it probably untrue (I.E: His wife divorced him, his total income is smaller than the incomes Obama would be taxing under his program, he doesn’t have a plumbing license, etc.). This caused a major backlash from McCain supporters, accusing Obama of using his supporters and the media to punish an innocent man for standing up against his divine word. First off, where is the evidence that Obama started the attacks in the first place? There is none… it was the news networks, not the Obama campaign, that dug up the information, and any connection between the two is merely speculation at this point. Second, yes, the media was really vicious with Joe for no good reason. Let me ask you, is this really news to you? News networks have been launching attacks against people they dislike for ages now. Even Fox News, who has been a major mainstream opponent of the attacks, has a long history of slanted reporting, attacks on people that speak out against people or things they support, and pulling things out of their asses and reporting them as actual stories. Most, if not all news channels, have been little more than vulture circles and halfway political tabloids for a while now, and to hear them constantly criticized as evil establishments that have broken all new ground in the field of mudslinging is annoying at best.

I suspect Joe will not be the last person to infuriate one side of the spectrum… there are still plenty of people out there who haven’t made their voices heard, and with more rallies coming up, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to. And with the media on the prowl, you can be assured that it will be on the front page of every newspaper and the top story of every network out there when the next person steps up. November 4th cannot come any sooner.

On crappy parents and video games

First off, please excuse me for any missed spaces. It’s a long story, but by being a retard, I ended up splashing my laptop with iced tea, and now that the space bar’s been out for cleaning, I’ve had a few issues putting it back in just right. I think I might’ve fixed it this time around, but if not, I’m not in much of a mood to dick around with it, and it just seems to get worse as I do, so I’ll deal until I have an opportunity to get the laptop looked at.

Anyways, I’ve been hoping for something else to drop into my lap that just screamed for a rant to be written about it, and I just got such a thing… but now I kind of wish I hadn’t. I logged onto a forum I frequent earlier tonight and found this:

http://www.gamegrep.com/news/13045-boy_accidently_kills_himself_trying_to_imitate_halo/

If you don’t want to bother reading it, an 11-year old kid became so obsessed with Halo that he took his parents’ .22 rifle out back and shot himself in the head with it. Needless to say, he died shortly thereafter. Now, I’m sure that Jack Thompson, as well as hordes of parents who, as far as I’m concerned, just hate video games, are going to be all over this in a day or two.

The kid had absolutely no business having the game in the first place. We’ve already established that most pre-teens are unable to own violent video games… hence, the Mature rating. Since Hot Coffee, all kinds of safeguards have been implemented by retailers to prevent fragile-minded kids such as Nimm (It’s the only name the article provides) from owning violent media… mainly, employees are required to warn the parents about the rating so they’ll at least be deterred from buying it. That should work, but it doesn’t, and I’ll tell you what all of you out there can do about it, mainly parents.

A serious problem is set up among us, and we need to take action immediately. Parents, only you can put an end to this problem. The only solution will be extremely painful for some, almost unbearable, but if you truly love your children as much as you say you do, it is the only option.

RAISE YOUR FUCKING KIDS.

Just look at the situation. They bought a Mature-rated game for their son, who was six years younger than the age limit. When he became dangerously obsessed with the game and with guns, they didn’t notice, or at least didn’t bother to do anything about it. And after all this had been established, they still left him at home with a loaded gun in the house. The only way they could be worse parents is if they failed to pay child support on multiple occasions, locked him in a dirty bathroom, and gave him cold table scraps to eat every day. The multiple deaths related to media nowadays are not the fault of the media itself, as some would have you believe, but rather of plain-out irresponsible people who are just unable to raise their children. They appease their kids by giving them unrestricted access to whatever TV shows, video games, or movies they want, despite the fact that they haven’t been taught common sense any time in their lives, then the kids start to obsess, which also goes unchecked, and when they end up inevitably offing themselves somehow, the parents go on TV and cry, “We didn’t know! We didn’t know!” so their neighbors won’t dissect them over their horrid parenting. Of course you didn’t know, you fucking empty-skulled, lazy, slackjawed, irresponsible baboons. Because you never paid any attention to your flesh and blood while this was going on, and I’m guessing that holds true for their entire lives as well. I don’t care whether it was My Chemical Romance, Halo, Naruto, or whatever else you can throw at me. These things are restricted, and they are restricted for a good reason: to keep them away from dumbasses like you, and to keep them out of the hands of your forsaken children. But it doesn’t work, and there is no other sensible way to keep these things checked, since nobody in the retail business possesses telepathy.

But what do I know? After all, I’m just an 18-year old who’s been surrounded by violent media all his life, yet has managed not to go out and kill himself or his friends by imitating something from it.

How not to hate Obama

I had a few other things to rant about before, but none of the actual rants really blossomed into more than a paragraph or two, so I canned them. Instead, I’ll go with something not only I, but many other people could talk about until they’re blue in the face. Something that affects our daily lives, something that determines and shapes much of what we do. That’s right, I’m going into the bullshit that is politics, at least for now.

I’ll come right out and say it, and you can tell me what grade of idiot I am when you’re done reading (And please, do read the full passage and not stop after this sentence), but I like Barack Obama. I like his character, I agree with him on a lot of issues, whereas I find myself in disagreement with John McCain on the same issues, and fiscally, he’s no worse than his opponent. Because of this, it makes me chuckle every now and then to see what Republican pundits are attempting to do in an attempt to make him look bad. Sean Hannity claimed that because he was at a party where hors d’oeuvres were being served, he’s automatically disqualified as a people’s candidate. Michael Savage rabidly obsesses over the fact that his middle name is Hussein, and insists that he’s Bin Ladin’s butt buddy simply because of this fact. These are just flagrantly silly examples, but there are also a few other points that are slightly more serious, but are plain-out stupid if you look at them.

-Reverend Wright: This isn’t milked nearly as much as it was back when it happened, but it still is somewhat. It went from a convincing point to yet another media obsession when various news channels spent all their time following Reverend Wright around and dedicating entire 3-hour blocks to dissecting Obama over the issue. What people who cry out about Reverend Wright whenever somebody supports Obama fail to acknowledge is that McCain got endorsements from evangelical Christians, a handful of which were just as bad as Reverend Wright.

Don’t believe me? http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/22/mccain-reverses-himself-to-reject-hagees-support/ Hmm… sounds really familiar, doesn’t it…

-He never voted when he was in the Senate: Bullshit. Complete and absolute bullshit. He voted many times, and on many controversial issues, no less. I had to look up his voting record for an assignment in my government class, so I actually know what I’m talking about. So he voted present a bunch of times. So say that instead, even though it defames him significantly less.

-He thinks the Iraq War was a failure: He thinks the Iraq War was badly planned, badly executed, and started on a false basis. He says that it’s great that Saddam Hussein was taken out of power during its duration, but with that accomplished, we need to withdraw and focus our military on Afghanistan, which is a much more pressing matter. Yes, that is, indeed, different from calling it a failure.

-He’s too inexperienced: So was Bush, and people voted for him anyways. Course, the result was much more unsavory, but still.

-He’s black, so he clearly isn’t qualified to hol-: Stop talking now. Just. Stop. Talking.

I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to dislike Obama. There are a few good reasons to: you don’t like his stances, fiscal or social, you like McCain more, you think he’s too much of a bandwagon candidate, or you’re afraid of the fact that he’ll be working alongside a Democratic-majority Congress and has much more influence over the law as such. But there are many more things people cling to, because they want to see him crash and burn come November. Why? Partisanship? A much stronger preference towards McCain? Or is it just because he’s black?

EDIT: No, I’m not trying to fly the race card every way I can… I seriously don’t know if that’s the reason or not.

The customer is always wrong

I’ve been waiting to see Hellboy 2 for a while, ever since I knew they were making it, and I finally had my chance today. The first was nice and interesting, and if you enjoyed it, then I suggest you see the second one. It was a good movie with a bunch of popcorn action, and second only to Wanted as a movie you’ll want to see if you want to leave your brain on standby for a good deal of time. That being said, though, I had a bit of an experience while I waited in line to see it. A pair of people lumbered over from the snack bar in angry spirits, and all I caught was that the cashier had asked them not to do something, which they took very badly. When they got in line, I picked up this little nugget.

“No! Don’t even bother talking to him! He works for 6 dollars an hour, he doesn’t give a shit! If you bitch at him, he won’t even listen, because he just doesn’t care about you! You want to bitch at someone about it, bitch at the manager! It’s his job to listen, and he can fire that shithead!”

I looked at the register they had just come from, and standing behind it was a tall, scrawny, bespectacled 15-year old looking somewhat upset and confused. Let me just say I feel really bad for this guy, because chance is whatever she was bitching about was insignificant, or at least hard to do. Let me explain why I think this:

-She was judging his work ethic based on his paycheck and job. People who do this to others tend to have much fatter hourly pay and, as such, they think very highly of themselves.

-In all my time in the Century Summit Sierra theater, I have never once had an issue with an employee. People who work there are generally very friendly and take their jobs somewhat seriously. The issue is that the couple couldn’t have exactly what they wanted and they responded accordingly.

I find it very appropriate that she used the word bitch, because that was exactly what she was doing. I would’ve said something to her in response had I not had a feeling that my expletive-filled reaction would have gotten me kicked out of the theater, at least for a while. People who do, indeed, work for 6 dollars an hour shouldn’t have to put up with bullshit from rich bastards who get upset if the left side of their cup gets more condensation than the right side. In fact, those kinds of people should be thrown out immediately and disallowed from coming back on the premises without being arrested for trespassing. But no. Instead, they probably ended up complaining to the manager when the movie got out, getting the cashier in trouble and getting a gift card for all their “troubles,” or something like that. Why? Because the customer is always right, no matter how much of a prick he or she is. The fact that people are even taught the concept of “the customer is always right,” even if it’s in a parody of some sort, pisses me off, because it can be attractive to people who then take it on, even if it’s shown in a negative light. There was a great article someone wrote a while back about how harmful the “customer is always right” mindset is, but I can’t seem to find it. Point is, though, public service establishments should just throw it out altogether, or at least reform it so that anal customers can’t get honest workers in trouble.