If you do not home-school your children they will grow up to be like Hitler
Fellow Hagerstown blogger Steve Shives of Steve Likes To Curse wrote a blog post about home-schooling children. He pointed out that because these children are home-schooled by individuals — mainly their mothers — that lack a good background in science, these children shouldn’t be awarded a real high school diploma.
I thought Steve made some good points, but what do I know? I am the product of yucky government school.
Some of the mothers that home-school their children have responded to what Steve wrote. To say I enjoyed reading some of the replies is putting it mildly. Many of them were simply unintentional comedy gold.
One of these anonymous home-school mommies wrote the following:
The Germans, through their new educational system, turned the nation of Goethe and Beethoven into the nation of Bismarck and Hitler. Their students were thoroughly “socialized”; that is, they were indoctrinated to be loyal and obedient to state authority. This made them better soldiers and factory workers.
Hitler? I hereby declare Goodwin’s Law!
Hitler actually went to school in Austria, not Germany. He didn’t like school. In fact, he hated it. He never even graduated high school. He dropped out of high school when he was 16.
I think home-schooling is wrong. Not because home-schooled kids don’t learn enough science. To be honest, I could care less if a kid knows the entire periodic table of elements by heart. No, I’m against home-schooling because home-schooled kids miss out on the social aspects of school.
A big part of school is learning to get along with other people. People who you may not like and who may not like you. Not just other kids, but the teachers too.
Home-school proponents say their children get the needed socialization by interacting with other home-schooled children. Evidently many of them are members of home-school support groups and they schedule events for their kids to participate in.
In other words they get to interact with children just like themselves. Children who have been hand-selected by their mothers for the sole purpose of having someone to interact with.
What’s going to happen to these kids when they have to socialize and interact with people that aren’t just like them? People who haven’t been vetted first by their mothers?
In school you learn how to interact and hopefully get along with all sorts of people. It’s a skill children hopefully go on to utilize their entire lives. I don’t care what your career field is. If you don’t know how to deal with people, you are at a huge disadvantage.
I realize now that some home-school advocates think that if you send your child to a government school, there’s a chance they will grow up to be Adolf Hitler. I think maybe it’s worth taking that risk.
The Fountain (2006)
The Fountain
Directed By: Darren Aronofsky
Writen By: Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel
Staring: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz
I didn’t think a movie staring Wolverine and the girl from The Mummy could be so difficult to understand. I have to admit this movie went right over my head. I’m not saying I didn’t like it. I would have stopped watching it if that were the case. I just didn’t understand a whole lot of what was going on.
The story takes place during three totally different periods. The time of the Spanish conquistadors, modern day, and the far, far, future. Hugh Jackman plays the part of a conquistador, a modern day medical researcher, and a Moby looking guy traveling through space with the Tree of Life. I think all three characters were the same person. Rachel Weisz plays the queen of Spain and Jackman’s dying wife in the present. She also appears in the far, far future as Jackman’s dead wife.
I think.
The DVD doesn’t contain an audio commentary track. To help make up for that, the directer released a free audio commentary MP3 on his website. Actually, he released a torrent that people can download through BitTorrent. The audio commentary clears up a lot of the stuff I didn’t originally understand.
I plan on watching this movie again. It’s a very good movie.
Lenore Skenazy is an awful mother
You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Lenore Skenazy is an awful mother. If you didn’t know any better, you might think she was just another woman with a mullet.
When she isn’t needlessly risking the life of her 9-year old son, she is a columnist for the New York Sun.
In her latest column, she talks about how she left her 9-year old son at Bloomingdale’s in New York City with a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and a fist full of quarters in case he had to make a call.
She points out that she didn’t give him a cell phone because she didn’t want it to get lost.
She seems to care more about her cell phone then she does about her own son. To be fair, maybe she doesn’t like her son, but she really likes her cell phone.
Skenazy goes on to refer to people that protect their children “wimps”. She even points to crime statistics from the Justice Department that show that the number of children abducted by strangers has been going down over the years.
Gee, I wonder why that is?
I would argue that this is because parents are being more careful about exposing their kids to unnecessary risks. It’s not because there are fewer child predators. It’s because parents have heard the story of Adam Walsh. It’s because parents are being smarter.
Parents not named Lenore Skenazy.
Hopefully for her next column, she drops in at the local AIDS hospice and has unprotected sex with some of the patients. She can then take an AIDS test and if the results comes back negative, she can write another column. She can say that people who think unprotected sex with numerous AIDS patients is dangerous are wimps.
Maybe she is only brave when she is risking someone else’s life.
Metra Reid’s kids are smarter then your kids
Washington County’s newest public school, Rockland Woods Elementary School, will be open to all kids that live in the county. It doesn’t matter where they live. If they live in the county, they can attend the school.
This is not good news to some.
From Hagerstown’s one and only crap newspaper, The Herald-Mail:
Metra Reid, who lives with her husband and two children in the Westfields housing development, said during Tuesday’s public meeting that open enrollment at the school will be a disservice to her children. When her family moved to the development three years ago, she said they were promised that the school would offer a high quality of education.”It’s not fair to penalize those of us who live in the development by just sending in whoever,” Reid said. “We had such high expectations for the school.”
She said children from families in other parts of the county do not value education as much as families in her neighborhood.
“When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said. “It’s not fair to just let anyone just ship in whoever. Think about it before you let everyone and anybody go to that school.”
Reid said her daughter attends a private preschool in Hagerstown and will attend Rockland Woods in its second year. Her son would enroll in the school’s third year, she said.
Reid said her daughter is able to count into the hundreds and is learning to write. She said students from other areas of Washington County would not be at the same level when they enter kindergarten.
“It’s not fair to put her in the classroom with 20 other children who won’t know their alphabet,” she said.
I’ve got to say that her daughter sounds like a big dork. She’s not even five and she’s counting into the hundreds? Who makes their kid count that high? I’m not saying it’s comparable to water boarding or making them listen to Jimmy Buffet music, but can’t she think of some other way to torture her kids?
Better yet, can’t she come up with some other way of feeling good about herself without living vicariously through her children? Just because she forces her kids to learn how to count or learn their alphabet before they should doesn’t make them any smarter.
Kids should be allowed to be kids. The alphabet and counting to a thousand will wait.
Health care in this county is ridiculous
I woke up yesterday morning with an eye infection. My right eye is red and very itchy. I called my doctor’s office to make an appointment. He’s all booked up this week. Same with the PA (physicians assistant) he has in the office. She too is all booked up. I asked if he could then call my pharmacy with a prescription for some eye drops. The woman I spoke to said she would have to ask and that she would get back with me.
I tried calling again today. I explained my predicament and that I needed a prescription for antibiotic eye drops. After telling them my date of birth, I was placed on hold. After 6 minutes, I hung up.
Why do they constantly ask my date of birth? Don’t they have it somewhere in my file? I’m always afraid I’m going to get it wrong.
Health care in this county is ridiculous. If you get sick and need to be seen by a physician, you pretty much have to just go to the emergency room. If you try to actually go to your doctor, you will have to compete with all the people that want the latest cholesterol drug advertised on the evening news. They all made appointments weeks ago. Want to lower your cholesterol?
Stop eating fried animals.
I don’t even really need to see a physician. I just need some eye drops. Being that we Americans are not trusted with purchasing antibiotic eye drops on our own, we have to go through a doctor and get his or her permission. It’s a stupid system. Why can’t I just buy antibiotic eye drops? Is there some weird recreational use for the stuff that I’m not aware of? I can buy antibiotic soap. Why not antibiotic eye drops?
The fun never ends with the Herald-Mail Forum
I blogged a little yesterday about my troubles with the Herald-Mail message board. Mostly I told people to go to Steve Likes to Curse and read Steve Shives’ excellent breakdown on what went down.
I emailed the Herald-Mail website administrator explaining what happened. I’ve yet to get a response. My suspension was removed yesterday. I only knew this because I read about it in the comment section of Steve Likes to Curse. If they were going to remove my 2-day suspension, they ought to at least tell me. What good is announcing it on a message board I was led to believe I was suspended from?
When I went back to the message board, I found the following post from the moderator:
After careful consideration of all the factors involved, and rereading the initial post and the subsequent replies. I have reconsidered my original judgement [sic].
Bentcorner used the term “Negro” and not the other “N-word”, for the record.
After researching the term “Negro”, it does not appear to have the same connotation that the other “N-word” has. While his post may or may not have had anything to do with the nature of the thread is not being considered. It did not take the post off-topic (anymore than what anyone else has ever done).
Bentcorner has my sincerest apologies for my hasty decision and is hereby reinstated.
The moderator had to research the word Negro to learn that it didn’t have the same connotation as the N-word? This is the same person that thought removing all the letters except the letter “N” was a good way of making the word not racially offensive. There’s only one word in the English language that has the same connotation as the N-word.
It’s the N-word.
As soon as I found out that my suspension had been lifted, I began deleting all my posts from the Herald-Mail message forum. The reason? I don’t appreciate how the moderator is able to edit posts. He drastically altered my comment. He made it appear I wrote something all together different then what I really wrote. Who’s to say it won’t happen again?
If he truly thought my comment was racially offensive, he should have just deleted it. He didn’t do that.
I’m once again suspended from the Herald-Mail forum. This time it’s for a year. I can’t log back on again until March 25, 2009. The reason? I don’t know. Once again, I wasn’t informed of the reason. It can’t be for anything I’ve posted because I haven’t posted anything since my initial suspension. I’ve only been deleting my posts.
There is no rule against that.
Click here to see a screen capture showing that I was suspended for a year.
Turns out being labeled a racist is not as fun as you might think
I was suspended from my local newspaper’s message forum yesterday for posting a comment they deeded to be “racially offensive“.
I’d like to explain what actually happened, but I’m still too pissed off to put it all into words. Luckily for me, fellow Hagerstown blogger Steve Shives of Steve Likes To Curse already blogged about it. He does a much better job then I ever could describing what actually happened.
I’m not even going to try. Go read Steve’s blog post and let me know if you have any questions.
My new computer
I pulled the trigger yesterday and bought a new computer. My old one has been acting up lately. It would lockup and force me to do reboot it by removing the electrical power. I tried re-imaging the hard drive with the restore disc. I even stripped it down to it’s most basic components. I took out the video card, each stick of RAM — one at a time of course — the sound card, and the extra hard drive. I even tried re-imaging the other hard drive with the restore disc. Nothing worked. It would still lock up. The CPU time would routinely show close to 100%.
I decided to go with HP. My notebook computer is an HP and I’ve never had a problem with it. I also wanted one that didn’t come with a monitor. I recently bought a 22 inch wide screen monitor and I want to go on using it. Out of all the retailers that sold HP desktops without the monitor, Wal-Mart was the best choice. It’s a HP Pavilion a6313w. I think it’s a model made specifically for Wal-Mart. It has a “w” at the end of the model number and there was a shortcut on the desktop to have my digital images printed at Wal-Mart.
- Processor Type: Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core
- Hard Drive Size: 640 GB
- System RAM: 2048 MB
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
I would have purchased a new computer with Windows XP instead of Vista if that option was available to me. Vista is different then XP. I’m not sure if I like it or not. I guess I just have to get used to it. Maybe I’ll buy a book.
American Idol contestant used to be a gay stripper
American Idol contestant David Hernandez is trying to entertain audiences with his singing. It seems he has some experience entertaining audiences, just not with his voice. The Associated Press is reporting that he once entertained audiences by removing his clothes. So says manager Gordy Bryan of Dick’s Cabaret, a male strip club in Phoenix. According to Bryn, the the 24-year-old finalist appeared fully nude and even performed lap dances for the club’s “mostly male” clientele.
According to Bryan, David Hernandez was pretty good at being a gay stripper. Bryan said, “He had the look and the type that people like, so he made pretty good money here.”
I guess if you are going to be a gay stripper, you had better be good at it, especially if you are dancing at Dick’s Cabaret.
I’m not sure how this will effect his position on American Idol. I think they’ve kicked people off the show for less. Then again, it’s not like he did anything illegal.
99 Luftballons v 2.0
When I was a kid, I once built a scale model of a German tank. It was 1/35 scale and made from plastic. This one is 1/1 scale and made entirely of balloons. Click on the photo to see a larger version.
Those Germans have come a long way. I can’t help but think that Erwin Rommel would be really pissed. More then just a little embarrassed, and very pissed.
Rendition
Title: Rendition
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally, Yigal Naor, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin
Director: Gavin Hood
Screenwriter: Kelley Sane
This movie did very poorly at the box office. It deals with the controversial practice of kidnapping people suspected of being terrorists and shuttling them off to other countries where they will be questioned and tortured by members of that country’s intelligence service. When I say “controversial”, I of course mean that its bat-shit illegal and we shouldn’t be doing it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- I don’t know if we will ever win the war on terror, but I do know that we wont win it by torturing people.
We’re told in the movie that the practice began under Bill Clinton. I don’t know if this is true or not and I’m too lazy to go look it up on Wikipedia.
A chemical engineer of Egyptian descent (Omar Metwally) is returning home to the United States from a conference in South Africa when he is kidnapped by members of the CIA at the airport and shuttled off to a generic middle-eastern country in Northern Africa. Records show that he received a phone call from a known terrorist. He claims to not know anything about this phone call. He is then subjected to a massive amount of torture. He is waterboarded and he is electrocuted. A young and every green CIA analyst (Jake Gyllenhaal) is there to observe the torture sessions. He shows obvious discomfort in witnessing the torture sessions.
While this goes on in the generic middle-eastern country, his very pregnant wife (Reese Witherspoon) tries desperately to find out where her husband is. Records show he got on the plane in South Africa, but that he didn’t get off in the United States. She even found a duty free credit card purchase he made on the plane.
There was a lot of things I liked about this movie, but there were also a lot of things I didn’t like. I enjoyed the parallel story going on about the generic middle-eastern country’s security chief and his daughter. This story had almost absolutely nothing to do with the actual rendition, but it was a much better story. It also included something of a twist. I thought the ending was weak. The character played by Jake Gyllenhaal springs the chemical engineer from his dungeon and smuggles him out of the country. He tells him not to speak to anyone until he gets back to the United States. What good would this really do? He was picked up the last time he entered the United States. Why wouldn’t they just pick him up again? This didn’t solve anything.
God save the Queen and Matt Drudge is a douche bag
Matt Drudge, founder of the Internet news site the Drudge Report ran a story on his rag of a website that told the world Prince Harry was fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan. Much of the British and American press knew he was over in Afghanistan, but they all agreed to keep the story secret until Harry and his regiment returned from Afghanistan. It was believed that if it was known that a member of the Royal family was in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, it would create an extra risk not only for the Prince, but the rest of his unit.
Everyone was able to keep it a secret. Everyone except that douche bag Matt Drudge. He just had to let everyone know about it.
Because of Matt Drudge’s reckless disregard for the safety of Prince Harry and the rest of his unit, they are being withdrawn from Afghanistan. Their risk is just too high for him and the rest of the men in his unit.
My respect for Prince Harry is only matched by my contempt for Matt Drudge. Prince Harry didn’t have to put himself at risk and go to Afghanistan. His grandmother is the Queen of England and he is is third in the line of succession to the throne. Shame on Matt Drudge for putting his own desire for attention over the safety of Prince Harry and the rest of his unit.
Creepiest thing I have ever seen on the Internet
And I’ve seen quite a few creepy things on the Internet over the years. The music accompanying the video didn’t help.
Hitler’s lost U-boat fleet found in Black Sea
During World War Two, Nazi Germany transported six U-boat submarines 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping in the Black Sea. The subs operated out of Romania for over two years, hunting and sinking dozens of Russian ships.
When Romania switched sides and declared war against Germany, it left the remaining three subs – three had already been lost in combat – with nowhere to go. They were scuttled by their crew as the war neared its end.
The location of the three U-boats has been a mystery. Until now.
Selçuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, has located one of the subs two miles off the coast of Turkey sitting 8o feet under the surface. He believes he knows the location of the remaining two.
I’ve always wanted to dive a U-boat. There are about seven that can be reached by SCUBA here on the east cost of the United States. I got to dive ship wreaks while I was in the Air Force and stationed on Guam. There is one Japanese tanker from Word War Two sitting atop a German cruiser from World War One. I once dove deep enough so that I could put one hand on the German ship while placing my other hand on the Japanese tanker. It turned out to be highly anticlimactic.
Guam had a lot of cool dive sites. It didn’t have any U-boats.
Do not forget to defrag
My PC has been running slow lately. When I would check out the performance in Windows Task Manager, the CPU would often show something close to 100%. I thought it had something to do with Firefox since it was when I had several tabs and even browser windows running when the problem showed up. Then again, my PC usually has a couple Firefox windows up all of the time.
It wasn’t until I tried setting up my new external hard drive that my PC was heavily fragmented.
If you are Mac user or a fake UNIX (Linux) user, you probably don’t even know what a fragmented hard drive is. It’s something only we Microsoft users have to deal with. I used to be hyper diligent when it came to defragmenting my hard drives. Over time I just got out of the habit of doing it. I guess one of the reasons I let the task fall to the wayside was because I don’t think I’ve ever fixed a PC problem by running Defrag. It was always just something I did before actually finding the real cause of whatever problem I was dealing with.
Since defraging my C: drive, I’ve noticed a remarkable difference. It’s ridiculously fast now.
Local judge calls three black female lawyers ‘Supremes’
What better way to celebrate the beginning of Black History Month then to read an Associated Press story about a local judge being reprimanded for making disparaging comments about three black female public defenders?
Last April, Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone referred to the three lawyers as “The Supremes” and told a defendant to get “an experienced male attorney.” He has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.
But isn’t that their job? Women can do any job a man can do. That includes representing criminal defendants. Even if they are male.
I discussed this issue on a message board for people local to the Hagerstown area. Most people didn’t think this was that big a deal. Some said that it was actually a compliment since The Supremes are a famous singing group and maybe the judge was a fan of their music. I don’t agree. The only thing these three lawyers had in common was the color of their skin and their sex.
It would be like me referring to three black men as the Harlem Globetrotters. If I were to say something like that where I work, I would most likely be fired. This man is a judge.
It’s just another strike against Hagerstown concerning racism and how the rest of the country sees when they take a look at us. Things like this make me cringe. Recently our city got some negative exposure in the national media after the plan to rename a street after baseball great Willie Mays received negative response from some in the community and the plan eventually failed because of it. Mays played his first professional baseball game here in Hagerstown. Hagerstown’s former mayor William Breichner thought race was a factor in the public response that led to the end of the proposal.
I was embarrassed after the Willie Mays street renaming controversy and I feel embarrassed over this controversy. It makes us look like a bunch of ignorant racist hicks. Stuff like this only makes it harder to attract good companies bringing good wages to the region.
New external 500GB Hard Drive
I stopped in to the Hagerstown Best Buy yesterday and ended up buying a new hard drive. It’s a Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive.
I took it up to the register and the the total came out to be over $170. I knew the Maryland sales tax went up recently, but not that high. I told her that the tag said it was on sales for $129. She told me that she could go grab a weekly sales ad and take a look. She looked though the entire ad, but the hard drive could not be found. She then called the computer area and asked them to look for the posted price.
Luckily there wasn’t anyone else waiting in line. I hate holding things up.
The person called her back and informed her that that price was indeed $129. This is getting to be a definite pattern on the part of Best Buy. Other then a spindle of blank DVD +R discs, the last few items I have purchased there have scanned in at the register at a price different then what was posted in either the weekly ad or the sign displayed where the item was sitting.
I don’t mean to be bitching about Best Buy. I’m old enough to remember ordering peripherals for my Commodore 64 over the telephone when I was stationed on Guam. I was calling a 1-800 number, but to call anywhere in the United States was .99 a minute from Guam. The dork I was talking to on the phone was taking his sweet old time taking my order. If I didn’t want that second 1541 floppy drive so badly, I would have hung up.
The point is, I remember what it was like living in a world without Best Buy.
Hummer debuts Halo 3 Warthog looking vehicle
It’s called the Hummer HX Concept vehicle, but it looks remarkably like the Warthog vehicle in the Halo 3 game. Throw a chain gun on the back and it would be a dead ringer.
Wordplay
Director: Patrick Creadon
Writers: Patrick Creadon & Christine O’Malley
Runtime: 94 painfully boring minutes
What’s an 8-letter word for a movie that totally blows? The answer is a movie entitled Wordplay. It’s a documentary on the New York Times crossword puzzle and the people that do it. Not only the über crossword puzzle nerds that actually go to a crossword puzzle convention and competition every year in Stamford, Connecticut, but famous celebrities such as Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton.
I guess the reason they included celebrities in the documentary is to show that not all people that do the New York Times crossword puzzle are major dorks. Some are just regular people that do the crossword puzzle to unwind. I can’t help but remember what else President Clinton likes to do in his spare time to unwind. It involves a female intern and a cigar.
Forgive me if I don’t take anything Bill Clinton does as an example of normalcy.
These über crossword puzzle nerds don’t just do the New York Times crossword puzzle in pen, they do it while timing themselves. How do you make the New York Times crossword puzzle even more nerdy? By turning it into a speed event. Some of them keep logs documenting how long it takes them to complete the puzzle. The reason they do this is because the competition at the yearly convention at Stamford is timed.
The level of nerdiness displayed by these puzzles doers in comparison makes the Dungeon Master of my old Dungeons & Dragons group look like Fonzi.
Much of the movie takes place at the yearly convention in Stamford. The competition involves seven timed crossword puzzles with the final three people with the best scores moving on to the main event. They then do a puzzle up on stage using a large dry erase type white board while wearing sound-canceling headphones that look to have been invented in 1972.
Towards the end of the competition when the tension was at it’s highest level, I was thinking how funny it would be for someone to pull the fire alarm. If Stamford wasn’t a 7-hour drive, I’d probably seriously consider making the trip just so I could do it.
These people would freak out.
When free fluorescent light bulbs are not free
A couple of weeks ago we got two free fluorescent light bulbs in the mail from our electric company, Allegheny Power. We made the switch to energy efficient fluorescent over a year ago. I took the box containing the two free bulbs and put them on a shelf in the laundry room and didn’t think about them again until I was reading the local newspaper, the Herald-Mail:
Allegheny Power’s efforts to supply its 220,000 residential Maryland customers with energy-efficient fluorescent light bulbs might have burned out some post office personnel.
And as it turns out, the package of two bulbs isn’t free — customers are being charged 96 cents on their monthly bills for one year — in all, $11.52 — under the category of energy surcharge.
“The charge became effective in October,” said Todd Meyers, spokesman for Allegheny Power.
He said the Maryland Public Service Commission on Sept. 26, 2007, gave the utility permission to add the surcharge to customers’ bills.
So the free light bulbs aren’t free after all. The electric company was given permission by some state agency I’ve never heard of before to send me something in the mail I didn’t ask for or even want.
I have to hand it to the Herald-Mail. They know how to research a story:
Contacted by telephone, a large Hagerstown supermarket chain store spokesman said a comparable light bulb made by General Electric sells for $7.99 for each bulb.
They want to know how much fluorescent light bulbs cost so they get on the phone and call a grocery store. It’s not like whoever answered the phone knew how much fluorescent light bulbs cost. They would have to put the phone down and go look. All because some reporter is too lazy to actual research a story.
The Herald-Mail is a joke.
WGA going after Jay Leno?
“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno may face discipline from the Writers Guild of America for writing his own monologue. Leno is a member of the WGA. What this discipline may be is unknown. Will they make him do push ups? A couple of months ago he passed out donuts to writers walking the picket line. As fate would have it, there happened to be reporters there who were able to capture the act on video. I’m sure Leno had no idea that reporters would be on the scene and that his good deed would be observed by so many.
Yeah, right.
I thought this strike was stupid two months ago. I haven’t see anything since that makes me think I was wrong. The writers want more money. I get that. The problem is that every day this strike goes on, they are losing money. They will reach a point in this strike where they will have lost more money during the strike then they can ever hope to make with any increase they get as a result of the strike.
That’s assuming they haven’t already reached that point.
Back to Jay Leno. He may face some sort of penalty from the WGA, but his show appears to be winning the late night battle. David Letterman returned to the “Late Show with David Letterman” with his WGA writers. The first night back, Leno’s show got a 5.3 rating and a 12 audience share in the 55 largest U.S. television markets. Letterman’s show scored a 4.3 rating and a 10 share.
Maybe Lettermen would have got better ratings if he went without WGA writers.
Somehow Lettermen was able to secure a private deal with the WGA. Why can’t the other shows do this too? There are only a few shows I actually care about ever seeing again. The rest can go rot as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve getting into English Premiere League football (soccer) and I read that CBS is bringing back Big Brother. Who needs scripted entertainment?
More proof Thomas Edison was a dick
When Thomas Edison wasn’t running around stealing inventions that weren’t his own, he was publicly electrocuting defenseless animals. He was trying to make Nikola Tesla’s Alternating Current (AC) look somehow more dangerous than his own Direct Current (DC). He would normally electrocute stray dogs and cats, but one time he got to fry an elephant.
Boing Boing has a link to a YouTube video of Edison’s elephant electrocution. I’m not into animal cruelty so I’m not posting a link to the video.
Not only was Thomas Edison a major asshole, he was wrong. AC voltage is no more dangerous then DC. It’s the current that is deadly. High voltage normally means high current. It doesn’t matter what version of voltage it is.
The worst I’ve ever been shocked was not with AC, but good old DC. I once accidentally brushed up against high-current 28 volts and it felt like I was hit with a baseball bat. I’ve done the same with AC voltage as high as 460 volts and it didn’t hurt nearly as bad. Current kills, not voltage.
I think most people associate DC voltage as being safer then AC voltage because most of the DC they are familiar with is the low voltage, low current variety. For instance, the voltage found on a computer’s USB bus. It’s normally at around 5 volts with around 500 mA in current. Wall socket AC voltage on the other hand is around 120 volts with around 10 to 20 amps on each circuit.
Cat 1, bratty kid 0
Video of some brat getting what’s coming to him. I love the fact that there are two adults just watching as a kid attempts to engage in some animal cruelty. I also assume that there is another adult holding the camera. By the looks of the video, it was probably a super 8 movie camera.
Karma’s a bitch.
It is a Christmas miracle!
Through some loophole in the rules that govern the holiday known as Christmas, agreeing with your spouse that you will not exchange gifts this year does not include one person giving the other an XBox 360. Sheri surprised me this year by giving my an XBox 360 system. It includes the the game console, a 20 gig hard drive, two (2) wireless controllers, a headset, and a cool looking messenger bag. It also came with some games – Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Forza 2 Motorsport, and Halo 3.
She told me she bought it a month ago from Wal-Mart Online. She said it doesn’t break our no-gift agreement because she plans on using it as much as me. She has a point. It also technically isn’t a Christmas gift because she gave it to me two days ago. Who am I to question it?
I bought a wireless network adapter for it. I wanted to be able to use it online so I could enjoy the pleasure of 14 year old nerd-boys fragging me at Halo 3. Plus, I wanted to be able to stream media files from my PC to my TV. The XBox 360 allows me to do just that. I created a shared video folder on my PC and placed all of my avi videos in it. I then added them to my library in Microsoft Media 11. Now I can watch all of my videos on my 42 inch HD TV in the living room. What surprised me was the picture quality. It’s really quite good. Excellent in fact. Just to have the ability to stream digital media from my PC makes the XBox a worthwhile investment.
We had been talking about getting a Wii. I asked Sheri why she bought an XBox 360 if she wanted a Wii. She told me that she wanted both. That sounds good to me.
Tee Morris vs Brother Love
There is a feud going on in the podcasting community between singer Brother Love, a superstar in the world of podsafe music and frequent guest of the Keith and The Girl podcast and author Tee Morris, a man who may be best known for writing Podcasting For Dummies. I honestly had never heard of the guy. I’m not a podcaster and I’m not a dummy. At least most of the time.
The two men got into this past summer at the New Media Expo in Ontario California. Being that it transpired at the New Media Expo, the whole exchange was captured on a digital recorder. Imagine that.
The argument stemmed from something that happened prior at this past Dragon*Con. Brother Love was to speak at one of the panels dealing with Creative Commons until he was scratched from the event at the last minute without any prior warning. He didn’t find out until he attempted to go on stage and take his seat. Understandably he was irritated over this. He had spend time promoting his appearance at Dragon*Con and this one panel had been the only panel he had planned on participating in. He voiced his displeasure to Derek and Swoopy, the event organizers and the team that produce the Skepticality Podcast.
How does this involve Tee Morris? Evidently, he is friends with Derek and Swoopy and he didn’t appreciate how Brother Love spoke to his friends.
Not only was the entire argument between Brother Love and Tee Morris recorded, it was played in it’s entirety on The Keith and The Girl podcast (episode 589: A Hero’s Return) the next time Brother Love was a guest. The segment begins at about the 18 minute mark.
Tee Morris might have been irritated with Brother Love over something that happened at Dragon*Con, it’s nothing compared to what he feels about Keith and The Girl playing the audio of the argument on their show. He’s also extremely angry with Brother Love, though I don’t really understand why. The audio wasn’t recorded by Brother Love. It was recorded unbeknown to him by someone who was there. Brother Love said he didn’t know a recorder was going during the argument. Keith and The Girl said they got the audio not from Brother Love, but by the person that recorded it.
Tee Morris is making the claim that recording the argument between Brother Love and his was a crime. He claims that you must have permission to record someone, even if it is in a public place in complete earshot of everyone there. Even if that public place is an event called the New Media Expo. Personally, I would assume everything said in public at the New Media Expo was on MP3 somewhere. I doubt I would be wrong.
If you want to hear exactly what Tee Morris thinks about all this, you can listen to Keith and The Girl, episode 641: Happy Jeremymas. They have the audio of a commentary made by Tee Morris concerning this whole thing. It’s the final seven minutes of the show.
It’s irritating to listen to. Tee Morris refers to Keith and The Girl as “Amateur Hour” and Brother Love as “Dink”. I’m not sure why he feels the need to give them codenames. It seems to me that if you are going to go to the trouble of trashing someone, you might as well make it clear just who you are trashing. There actually is a podcast called The Amateur Hour. Now it seems that Tee Morris has a problem with a podcast he has probably never heard of.
Why is Tee Morris so upset about the audio being made public? I can only imagine it’s because he comes off sounding like a complete douche. Not only when he is discussing his perceived problems with Brother Love/Dink, but what he says afterwards. When he learns that Brother Love is Jewish, he shares that his “first time” was with a “Jewish redhead” and that he has the scars to prove it. I’m not entirely sure I understand what he meant by that. I thought he was talking about the first time he had sex, but why would that leave scars?
I think that if it left scars, he was doing it wrong. I guess he should have read Having Sex With Jewish Redheads For Dummies.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to cross the picket line
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report look to be returning with new episodes after the first of the year. From the LA Times:
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert joined their late-night comrades Thursday in announcing that they would reluctantly return to the air next month without their writers.
After a previously scheduled two-week hiatus, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” will resume production Jan. 7, Comedy Central said in a statement released late Thursday afternoon.
Stewert and Colbert are members of the WGA. Both of them will in effect be writing their own material for the respective shows. Doesn’t this mean that they are scabs? It certainly seems that way to me. They as members of the WGA will go on to enjoy any advancements the WGA secures as a result of this strike. It just seems unethical for them to cross the picket line now and go back to making new episodes.
I’m not going to pretend that I agree with this strike. I think most of what they are fighting for is silly and not important. With that said, if you are a member of the WGA, you ought to respect your own union and your fellow union members. You ought to be respecting your own strike.
As far as I can tell, both Stewart and Colbert are scabs.
EBay wants to ditch the ‘fleamarket’ feel
John Donahoe, a muckety-muck over at Ebay, wants to do a major overhaul to the site so that it can shed the fleamarket stink eBay has developed lately.
I wish him the best of luck with that.
EBay used to be a great place to go to find stuff. It used to be a place where people went to unload their stuff to other people that wanted their stuff. Stuff was always sold in the timed auction format. You knew exactly how long something would remain up for auction. You could bid on stuff you wanted and then wait to see if you were the high bidder. It was actually a lot of fun.
Something happened to eBay a long the way. It became less of an auction site and more of a place for professional junk peddlers to sell their crap. They don’t use the auction format. They list things using a set sale price.
In other words, a fleamarket.
If John Donahoe truly wants to clear the fleamarket stink from eBay, he will find a way to clear the merchants and their eBay storefronts from the site. Return it to the timed auction format where regular people go to bid on stuff from other regular people.
Like I stated earlier, I wish him the best of luck with that.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a blight on civilized society
I recently upgraded my cellphone to a Motorola RAZR. Not only is it the best cell phone I’ve ever owned, it does all sorts of neat stuff such as playing an MP3 file as a ringtone. I’ve been using the generic ringtones because I haven’t had a way of transfering an MP3 file to my phone. That was until this past weekend. I purchased a software package that allows me to transfer picture files to use as wallpaper and MP3 files to use as ringtones. It came bundled with a USB cable along with adapters for most cellphones.The software allows you to edit down a sound file to a more manageable size. I made a 20 second MP3 of the hook from BLACK HOLE SUN by Soundgarden and it turned out great. After that turned out so swimmingly, I decided I would try something else. I decided to convert over PUNKROCKER by Teadybears. It features Iggy Pop doing the vocals. It was used recently in a car commercial. I don’t remember which. I had purchased the song on iTunes. Every time the commercial would play, I would end up playing the song in my head. It’s a cool song.
When I tried to convert the file over to an MP3, iTunes informed me that I was not allowed because it protected.
I paid for this song. I can play it on my PC. I can play it on my iPod. I just can’t play 25 seconds of it on my phone.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a blight on civilized society. It’s an unnecessary obsticle getting between me and the music I paid for. If I want to hear, “well I’m a punkrocker, yes I am” every time my phone rings, I have to burn the song to a disc and then import the one-song disc back over as an MP3. What a waste of my time. And to think this is what I get for actually paying for the song instead of jumping on The Pirate Bay and downloading it.
Thanks. Thanks a lot.
WGA writers get shafted out of residuals from iTunes?
Recently actors from the hit NBC television show Heroes picketed outside Universal Studios. Not the part that is a cheesy amusement park with the fake looking giant shark, but the part that is the actual movie studio. Someone from Comic Book Resources was on hand and was able to write about it.
Greg Grunberg, the actor that plays Parkman on Heroes said something interesting. This from the CBR article:
Grunberg characterized the AMPTP’s position on the issues “ridiculous.” “When a musician puts out a record that becomes a CD and then becomes an online digital download, they still make the same amount of money,” Grunberg said. “Why isn’t the same true for a writer?”
This is something I’ve heard said before. B.J. Novak, actor and writer for The Office said something quite similar in the YouTube video I linked to earlier.
It’s not true. The writers have been getting residuals on iTunes downloads all along. When the consumer pays for a download, the writers get their residual just like they would if the consumer paid for a DVD instead of a download.
I’m not sure if this misinformation is perpetrated on purpose or if it’s simply a case of the people involved not understanding the specifics. Most people that read about the strike or watch YouTube videos about the strike know about iTunes. Most of them have probably purchased media from iTunes. I’m sure it resonates with these people when they hear that writers don’t get paid from iTunes downloads they have paid for.
That doesn’t make it true.
10 things people need to know before going on Judge Judy
I like watching Judge Judy. I find it extremely entertaining. I find the whole process of two people going before a televised small claims court and arguing their case in front of millions of people entirely fascinating. Ironically, I get the feeling that many of the litigants going before Judge Judy have never bothered to watch the show.
That’s too bad.
I can not help but think that if they had simply watched a few episodes of Judge Judy, they may have learned things that would have helped them avoid a lot of grief and very public humiliation.
These things include:
- Before you appear in Judge Judy’s court, you will be required to submit a written statement detailing your case. Much of what Judge Judy decides will be determined from your written statement. Make sure you do a good job on your written statement. Get someone who is smarter then you to help you with your written statement. Study your written statement before you appear on the show. Do not come into her courtroom and contradict your own written statement.
- Um is not an answer. She hates it when when people preface an answer with um. Do not do it. It is preferable to have a few seconds of uncomfortable silence then for you to preface your answer with um.
- Stand up straight and do not cross your arms. Do not lean on the table.
- Look her in the eye when you speak to her. Do not look away or off to the side.
- Do not raise your hand just because you think you have something to say. You will get your turn to speak.
- If it appears you are winning the case, stop talking. Do not interrupt Judge Judy to add anything while she is questioning the other litigant.
- Answer simple questions with either Yes or No, or preferably Yes your Honor or No your Honor.
- If you have evidence to present to Judge Judy, do not attempt to approach the bench and physically hand it to her. Officer Petri Byrd (the bailiff) will stop working on his crossword puzzle and come to you to gather your evidence and present it to her. Under no circumstances should you leave your table and approach Judge Judy.
- Do not tell her something someone who is not in the courtroom supposedly said. She will tell you that it is hearsay and she will not listen to hearsay. Judge Judy does not like hearsay. It does not matter how you try to reword it.
- Dress for the show as if you were going on a job interview. The less skin showing, the better. Think about leaving any exposed body piercings at home.
Lets be Digg friends!
Click this link and you and me will be Digg friends.
http://www.digg.com/invitefrom/BentCorner
You need to have an account with Digg, but I you probably already have one. Most people do, right?
Gillian Anderson has been found!
I’ve always wondered what happened to Agent Dana Scully from the the TV show The X-Files. Gillian Anderson seemed to fall off radar (cue spooky music) after The X-Files went off the air. I regularly see David Duchovny pop up, but not Gillian Anderson. Until now.
She will be appearing as one of the hosts this January on PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre. She will host the first 10 episodes.
Michael George murder trial to begin February 26
A trial date has been set for comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon organizer Michael George. His trial has been scheduled to begin February 26 in Michigan. The trial is scheduled to last two weeks.
George stands accused of murdering his wife, Barbara George, 17 years ago execution style in the comic book shop they both owned. Investigators initially believed that that the murder was the result of a robbery gone bad. George claimed at the time that many high-value comic books were missing from the store. He filed an insurance claim against the missing books and received $13,000 from his insurance company.
It’s the prosecutor’s contention that no comic books were stolen and that the story of missing books was made up by George to make it look like a robbery. Both cash registers in the store still contained money and Barbara George still had all of her jewelry when they found her. A witness will testify that George was in the shop at around the time of the murder. The witness is claiming that he called the comic book shop at around the time of the murder and spoke to Michael George.
Michael George claims that he was asleep on his mother’s sofa at the time of the murder. His mother and his then 4-year old daughter will testify that he was asleep on the sofa. Neighbors will also testify that they remember Michael George’s vehicle parked in front of his mother’s house at the time of the murder.
No physical evidence links Michael George to the murder. The weapon used to kill Barbara George has not been found.
The BBC interviews The Pirate Bay
Dan Simmons, a reporter with the BBC, interviews Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde from The Pirate Bay. It’s an interesting read:
Those behind the site say they do not fall foul of those laws because it acts as a search engine and does not directly host any of the content
But although it may not break Swedish laws that has not prevented the authorities from trying to close it down. Last year police raided the building and seized its servers.But what the authorities did not expect were the public protests that followed.
In the main the protesters were angry about the US film industry telling their parliament what to do. They believed that senior US politicians forced their government to shut The Pirate Bay down, even though it was not doing anything illegal under Swedish law. And that really sparked public debate.
I think part of the problem with copyright law is that not only is it different from one country to the next, it’s a line in the sand that is constantly moving. What’s in the public domain and what isn’t? Take Disney. They have earned billions of dollars through the years making movies based on stories and characters in the public domain. They didn’t create Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, etc. They were characters created by other people a long time ago. These characters now reside in the public domain.
When it was about time for one of Disney’s own creations, Micky Mouse, to finally fall into the public domain, they successfully got the law changed by lining the pockets of the politicians that sponsored the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act.
Where would Disney be today without stories and characters in the public domain?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Today is Thanksgiving. It’s the one day a year that Americans throw caution to the wind and eat like total hogs and not feel totally guilty about it. We show how thankful we all are by gorging on roasted turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and dinner rolls.
I’ve gotten Thanksgiving down to a science. I avoid eating mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, green bean cassarole, and even sweet potatoes. I can eat most of that stuff any day of the year. What I can’t get much of is my mother-in-law’s cornbread dressing. To say that it’s good is an understatement. It’s beyond good. It’s fantastic. It’s a work of culinary art. She also makes cream corn to go with it. You put the creamed corn on top of the cornbread dressing.
That’s what I concentrate on. When there is my mother-in-law’s cornbread dressing on the table, eating food that can be had on any other day of the week is a rookie mistake.
More fallout from the WGA strike
The New York Post is reporting that NBC has fired nearly the entire production staff from “Saturday Night Live”. The people that do all of the behind the scenes work on the show each and every week are now faced with a holiday season without the benefit of a job.
It must suck not being able to provide Christmas presents for your kids. That doesn’t matter though. What’s important is that the writers get their fair share (whatever that is) of all that Internet streaming video money the networks are raking in. It doesn’t matter that the paid advertising doesn’t even cover the bandwidth costs associated with streaming video on the Internet. It doesn’t matter that the networks only stream episodes on the Internet as a way of promoting the show and that they are not streaming them as a revenue source. That’s something for the accountants to figure out. The writers aren’t really good with numbers. They are much better with words.
Speaking of words, The New York Post included the following words in their article about the layoffs:
Despite being scrooged out of their Christmas-season paychecks, the “SNL” crew still has a big heart. Playbill reports that the cast plans to perform a nontelevised show tonight at the New York Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on West 26th Street. Ticket proceeds from the sold-out performance, which was produced by Lorne Michaels, will benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund.
The proceeds went to benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund? They could have given the money to the people that now don’t have jobs because of the strike. That actually would have been the decent thing to do. I’m not saying that the Writers Guild doesn’t need money in their strike fund. You don’t expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to buy her own red WGA strike t-shirt, do you? Now that would just be silly.
It’s a known fact that streaming video on the Internet is worth billions upon billions of dollars. Look at all the people that are now millionaires because of videos they posted on YouTube. I heard that Chocolate Rain guy bought his own island in Dubai and he’s even thinking of adopting a baby from Cambodia. The vast fortunes that can be made from streaming video on the Internet are without limits.
A percentage of this limitless streaming video Internet wealth is clearly worth fighting for no matter who gets harmed in the process.
DC electrical service in New York City finally comes to an end
I didn’t even know that direct current (DC) electricity service still available anywhere, let alone New York City. It seems that alternating current (Con Ed) still had one lone DC power station still up and running and feeding DC to customers. It was finally converted over to Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC) electricity on November 14.
Back in the day Thomas Edison and had a long standing fued over which current was better. Edison pushed the idea of using inefficient DC while Tesla campaigned for the much more efficient AC current. Edison would denounced AC as being too dangerous. He would even electrocute live cows with using AC to try to show just how scary dangerous AC current supposedly was. In reality, DC is much more dangerous then AC.
For getting electrical power from one place to another, AC is clearly the superior form of current. It’s not even debatable.
Nikola Tesla was truly a genius and he was one of the most important men to ever live. Of course he died penniless and severely in debt because that is just the way Life works.
Link
Gordon Lee and the reason his trial was declared a mistrial
Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) was interviewed by his friend and Newsarama administrator Matt Brady. The purpose of the interview was to discuss the Gordon Lee trial. There was something said in the interview that I found interesting. Specifically, it’s something Brownstein said about why the trial ended in a mistrial:
Before the jury was brought in, lead counsel Alan Begner brought some motions before the judge, including an oral motion in limine asking the judge to instruct prosecutors that their witnesses could not admit statements referring to Gordon’s previous criminal conviction for selling adult comics to an adult.
The phrase “selling adult comics to an adult” refers to Gordon Lee being convicted in the early 90’s of distributing obscene materials. It’s a phrase that gets mentioned a lot. It’s normally followed with the explanation that this prior conviction has nothing to do with his current legal troubles because that involved an adult and this involves a very young child.
What if the two cases are more connected then it seems?
Sandra Allen of Rome, Georgia was the adult that Lee was convicted of selling obscene material to. She wasn’t a comic book reader. She wasn’t a reader of obscene material. She was a mother of a child that came home from Lee’s comic book shop with a comic that she judged to be pornographic. It bothered her that her minor aged child could somehow get his hands on something she felt was pornographic. She didn’t understand how the neighborhood comic book shop could sell her son something she thought to be obscene. She decided she would make a visit to the comic book shop and check things out for herself.
On November 1, 1991 Sandra Allen went to Gordon Lee’s comic book shop and found more of what she believed to be pornographic on display to anyone entering the shop. Allen purchased two adult comics from Lee’s shop, Debbie Does Dallas and Final Taboo and took them directly to the Rome Police and made a complaint.
Upon receiving the two books, Rome Police Officer Marshall Smith took the two books to Floyd County Superior Court Judge Robert Salmon. After reviewing the two books purchased at Lee’s store, Judge Salmon issued an affidavit stating that there was probable cause to believe that pornographic materials were being sold at Lee’s comic book store. Based on the affidavit and the two books, Judge Salmon issued a search warrant for Lee’s comic book shop.
Over 300 allegedly obscene books and magazines were found and seized at Gordon Lee’s comic book shop by Rome Police. Lee was eventually convicted. His conviction stemmed not from the seized books and magazines, but from the two books purchased by Sandra Allen.
The seized books and magazines were not part of Lee’s trial.
Technically it’s true that Lee’s prior conviction was for selling “adult comics to an adult“. The comics being Debbie Does Dallas and Final Taboo and the adult being Sandra Allen. What is often overlooked is the reason Sandra Allen even went to Lee’s comic book shop and purchased the obscene comics in the first place. It wasn’t because she was looking for titillating reading material for herself. She went there because she was angry that her juvenile aged child was sold a pornographic comic book by Gordon Lee’s comic book shop.
A mother was upset by something her child received from Gordon Lee’s store. Why does that sound so familiar?
More on the WGA strike
I’ve been trying to learn more about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers strike. Much of what I’ve read or heard about the reasons for the strike seem to be contradict other things I’ve read or heard about the strike. I found a list of points at the WGA.org website. Here’s a quick summery of the main sticking points:
- Home Video (Videocassettes and DVDs) Residuals – They currently get 0.3% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.36% thereafter. They want 0.6% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.72% thereafter.
- Non-Traditional Media Residuals – They currently get .3% of the gross for downloads where the customer pays for the download. They currently get paid nothing when the customer pays nothing. They want a residual payment of 2.5% of the distributor’s gross for re-use on non-traditional media, including the Internet. I’m not sure what they want to be paid when the content is free. It’s hard to assign a percentage to free.
If you go back and watch the YouTube video I posted the other day from the people from The Office, what they say in the video seems to contradict the information found on the WGA website. B.J. Novak, actor and writer for The Office, says that every time he meets a new viewer to The Office, they are watching it on the Internet or on DVD. I’m assuming that when they say they were watching it on the Internet, they were downloading the episodes from iTunes. Only recently did NBC start streaming episodes from free. The inference is that Novak and the other writers aren’t getting paid for the episodes on the Internet or on DVD.
That’s not true. If money changes hands, the writers are getting a percentage.
NBC launches online service
NBC has launched something they call NBC Direct. It allows viewers to watch complete episodes of most NBC shows. I guess NBC chose to do this as a result of their recent blow up with Apple iTunes. NBC chose not to sell their programing through iTunes, or iTunes chose not to sell NBC programing. I honestly lost track of which came first.
I’m watching the newest episode of The Office. Though it’s just as funny as the first time I watched it, it’s a real pain in the ass to view. The episodes have enough DRM to choke a goat. You have to use Internet Explorer 6 or 7 to launch the player. NBC Direct does not support Firefox. You also have to be a Windows XP or Vista user. If you are an Apple user or a fake UNIX (Linux) user, you are out of luck.
It also features paid advertising. Annoying paid advertising. Every commercial break shows the very same stupid commercials. The good people from Lipton evidently want me to know that the way I look at tea will forever change. That’s good because the way I currently look at tea is that it sucks. My view on tea can only get better. With that said, Lipton seems to think that I will now like tea because they have placed their tea in tea bags shaped like pyramids. That’s not the way to make me change my opinion on tea.
If they want me to like tea, they need to figure out a way to make it taste just like coffee.
Other then showing why the WGA writers are on strike, I don’t see why NBC decided to launch this crappy service. It’s clear NBC plans on making money by featuring content on the web. It’s also clear that they need to realize they will need to actually pay the very people that create this content. Also, putting cumbersome restrictions on customers forcing them to watch content a certain way will only turn away customers. I should be able to put content on my iPod and watch it where and how I want. Because of NBC’s restrictive DRM, I cannot do that.
The gang from The Office explain the WGA strike
I think I understand the Hollywood writers strike much better after watching this YouTube video. Some of the cast members of The Office who also write the episodes give clear and concise reasonings behind the strike.
Comic book retailers warned about ALTERNATIVE COMICS #2
Diamond Comic Book Distributors warned retailers not to give copies of ALTERNATIVE COMICS #2 to children. This is the free comic Georgia comic book retailer Gordon Lee stands accused of giving to a 6-year old and his 9-year old brother.
According to Alternative Comics Publisher Jeff Mason, Diamond made sure that all of their retailers knew that the book was intended only for mature readers. Diamond even sent out the following written warning to retailers:
Please don’t give Alternative Comics #2 to children without adult supervision!!
From Diamond Daily:FCBD: Watch for Mature Readers Titles
Free Comic Book Day, Diamond Daily, Thursday, June 17, 2004As in Free Comic Book Days past, all of the Gold Sponsor titles (those required to be in participating stores) are all-ages appropriate, in order to make certain that the event has a family-friendly character and to make it easy for stores to participate regardless of their regional standards.
The Silver Sponsor titles — being optional — are not required to be all-ages appropriate. As in the past, some are intended for mature readers only and were solicited as such.
As you receive your FCBD editions, be sure to bear in mind that the following titles were solicited as being for mature readers, and be certain to hand them out only to the appropriate customers.
Diamond No. Title
APR040027J ALTERNATIVE COMICS #2 FCBD EDITION (MR)
APR040041J ADVENTURES OF BARRY WEEN SECRET CRISIS ORIGIN FILE FCBD EDITION (MR)
APR040042J LOVE FIGHTS #1 FACING THE GODDESS FLIP BOOK FCBD EDITION (MR)
Gordon Lee is charged with two misdemeanor counts of Distribution of Harmful to Minors Material, each carrying a penalty of up to one year in prison and up to $1,000 in fines. The comic contains nudity and adult language. It’s unclear why Gordon Lee chose to give this particular book to young children, especially if he had been warned a head of time by the distributor that it wasn’t intended for children.
Gordon Lee trial quickly ends in a mistrial
From the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:
Lee and his legal team, paid for by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, appeared in court this morning for jury selection and returned in the afternoon to begin the actual trial. Before the jury was brought in to begin the trial, lead counsel Alan Begner argued an oral motion in limine asking the judge to instruct prosecutors that they could not admit statements from their witnesses alluding to Lee’s character and previous legal actions Lee has been party to. Prosecutors assured the court that they had instructed their witnesses not to address Lee’s previous conviction for selling adult comics to an adult. Then during opening statements in front of the jury, prosecutor Tully said witnesses will testify that Gordon was defensive and that Gordon had told police, “I’ve been through this before,” a clear reversal of his earlier statement to the judge that prosecutors would not be entering such statements into the record.
Who would have guessed that instructions prohibiting witnesses from bringing up Lee’s previous conviction also included any statements made by Lee himself? I guess I can understand barring witnesses from mentioning that they knew that Lee was convicted in 1993 of “distributing obscene materials“. I wouldn’t have guessed this also included any statements made by Lee to the police. So much for, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Lee’s prior conviction was for selling two porn comics, Final Taboo and Debbie Does Dallas.
The great Hollywood writers strike of 2007
Talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended with the two sides not being able to agree to a new contract, resulting in television and movie writers going on strike. The conflict seems to be over on how to divvy up money generated from DVD sales and the Internet.
Much of the disagreement seems to be over how earnings will be generated in the future using technology or mediums that may not even exist today.
Jay Leno and David Letterman will be in reruns until the strike comes to an end. Evidently they both need their zany wisecracks written out for them before hand. The same applies to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No new episodes until the strike is over.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t understand the concept of residuals and perpetual earnings. I’m a simple electronics technician. I repair frequency drives used to power three-phase AC electrical motors. I work for the company that makes these drives. When I repair a drive and ship it back to it’s owner, I don’t continue making money from the profits generated from the drive I repaired.
I don’t understand why somebody that wrote something for Jay Leno to say on TV should be paid more then once. I don’t understand why they should continue getting paid for said writing on a continuous basis. Its hard for me to grasp.
Gordon Lee trial supposedly starts November 5
The trial for Georgia comic book retailer Gordon Lee is scheduled to start Monday. Lee will stand trial for two (2) misdemeanor counts of of distributing harmful to minors material. The charges stem from a Halloween 2004 incident in which Lee handed out copies of ALTERNATIVE COMICS #2, an artsy comic featuring both female and male full frontal nudity and language of a sexual nature to children.
The case has drug on for three years. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is managing Lee’s defense and has already gone through $80,000 defending Lee. They plan on spending at least another $20,000. That’s a lot of money for two misdemeanor counts. Especially when it is money that has been donated by comic book readers.
If Lee is convicted on both misdemeanor counts, he faces a maximum sentence of up to two years and $2,000 in fines. In a perfect world, this case would have ended along time ago with a simple plea bargain. The problem with that is Lee doesn’t seem to feel as though he did anything wrong. He has equated this comic book to the Sistine Chapel and even the Bible. Also, the The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is managing Lee’s defense. They have a not-so-public policy of only taking on cases where the defendant agrees not to accept a plea deal in exchange of a lessor penalty.
I think this policy is dumb. It makes cases drag on a lot longer then they should and cost a lot more money then they should. This dumb policy is the reason I refuse to give any more money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
The Bionic Woman is stupid
I think I’ve finally given up on NBC’s new fall television show Bionic Woman. It’s just too stupid. Not the concept, but the execution. I was a big fan of The Six Million Dollar Man when I was a kid, but then again, what kid wasn’t? I don’t remember watching that show’s spin off and this show’s predecessor the original Bionic Woman. I don’t need to have ever watched it to know that it was better then this show is.
It bothers me to admit this show stinks because I really had high hopes for it. There is something about the concept of a bionic woman that trumps the concept of a bionic man. It’s interesting to see the supposed weaker sex be able through the power of bionics to kick some major ass. In The Six Million Dollar Man, the main charactor Steve Austin (played by manly man Lee Majors) already looked as though he could more then take care of himself in a physical altercation. The addition of bionics only added to his already perceived physical strengths. You might not guess that Steve Austin could pick up a custom van, but you probably had an idea that he wasn’t a weakling.
With a bionic woman, you wouldn’t guess that she was strong, let alone super bionic strong. She doesn’t look like she could open a jar of pickles, let alone pick someone up off their feet and throw them 30 feet.
The problem with this show is that they have gone too far with making her look the part of the dainty female.
They constantly have the title character Jamie Sommers (played by British actress Michelle Ryan) wearing high heeled boots. They then put her into one physical altercation after another. The only thing more ridiculous looking then a woman running in high heels is a bionic woman running 60 miles an hour in high heels.
The show is called the Bionic Woman, not the Bionic Lady.
Now Christians have one more reason to hate Harry Potter
Not only do the Harry Potter books feature witches and wizards, at least one of the main characters was gay. A gay wizard. What’s the world of literary fantasy based fiction coming to?
This from Newsweek:
In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. “Dumbledore is gay, actually,” replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort’s predecessor who appears in the seventh book. After several minutes of prolonged shouting and clapping from astonished fans, Rowling added. “I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy.”
To some people, the only thing worse then a gay wizard would be a gay wizard conducting stem cell research. I’m not sure how the religious right will react to the notion of a character loved by millions of children being gay. I’m guessing it wont be good.
Stars Wars to be a live-action TV show
George Lucas announced that he has begun working on a live-action television series rooted smack dab in the Star Wars universe. From the LA Times:
“The Skywalkers aren’t in it, and it’s about minor characters,” Lucas said in an interview with Times’ reporter Geoff Boucher. “It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It’s completely different. But it’s a good idea, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to do.”
I’m glad that it wont have any of the main Star Wars characters in it. The thing I like the most about Star Wars aren’t the main characters, but the many minor characters that help make up the Star Wars Universe. I don’t think I’m alone either.
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Rick: Hayami: Ryan, so far I’ve seen no evidence that Handley was sexually attracted to real children. Then you haven't been doing e...
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