Bent Corner

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I decided to make the switch from XM Satellite Radio to Sirius Satellite Radio. My reasons are many. I looked around and decided to buy the Sportster 5. It retails at $169 no matter what retailer you purchase it from. I stopped in at the Hagerstown Best Buy, found the unit on the sales floor, and took one up the the register at the front of the store.

The employee at the register started to go through the motions of selling me the radio unit when she asked me for my phone number. I gave her the standard fake phone number I usually give out in situations where a retailer asks for it. She typed it into the computer and told me that I wasn’t in the system. She asked for my name and address. I asked her why she wanted that information. She told me that she needed it to process the sale. I told her that I didn’t want to give out my personal information. I just wanted to buy a Sirius radio. She went on to tell me that she had to enter my personal information because it needed to be assigned to the radio. That way no one else but me could activate my radio.

This sounded like a load of crap. I never had to go through this when I bough my XM radio. I told her thanks, but no thanks. I would just activate it on my own without their help.

I was told that they could not sell me the Sirius radio without taking my personal information. It was a requirement from Sirius. This too sounded like crap. Since they were refusing to sell me the radio without giving them my personal information, I left without getting the radio.

When I got home, I called customer service at Sirius. I told them what I just went through and I asked them if there was any shred of truth to what I was told at Best Buy. They assured me that there was not. They do not require a customer’s personal information to be taken by the retailer when making a sale. In fact, they had no clue what Best Buy was talking about.

I went to Circuit City. I bought the same radio at the same price without having to give out any of my personal information. Imagine that.

I hate when I am lied to. I understand that a company like Best Buy would like to have my personal information. That doesn’t mean they have any right to it. What does it say about a company’s integrity if they will stoop to lying to get hold of your personal information?

It says nothing good.

Tags: Best Buy, Personal Information, Privacy Rights, Sirius Radio, Sportster 5, XM Radio

• What does all the software I enjoy using and ATI video cards have in common? ATI video cards won’t work with Fake UNIX (Linux).

• Producers of the The Comic Book Haters podcast have announced the first annual Schooly Awards. Voting ends June 31 and people of Irish decent are discouraged from participating.

• Steve of Steve Likes to Curse has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the MySpace page of Deryk Schlessinger, son of conservative radio fake psychologist Laura Schlessinger. In case you haven’t heard, young Deryk is a soldier stationed in Afghanistan fighting the enemies of freedom. When he’s not doing that, he evidently is posting cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation on MySpace. Has any good ever come from MySpace? I hate MySpace. Make sure to checkout my MySpace page. It’s awesome!

• Marvel Comics is at it again. The cover of HEROES FOR HIRE #13 features three young women wearing tight revealing clothing with their hands chained above them on a stone pillar. There is some kind of tentacle creature feeling them up. Who’s calling the shots over at Marvel, Deryk Schlessinger?

• Some kind of massive outage hit XM Radio yesterday. I thought it was my radio. While driving home from work I was constantly losing the XM signal. I even stopped at one point to see if my antenna was still where it was supposed to be. It would have been nice if the good people of XM Radio could have perhaps made an announcement that they were having problems. It wasn’t like it was constantly down. Instead I had to learn about it later from reading the Internet. My opinion of XM Radio has really taken a dive lately.

• John Edwards currently running for third-place for the Democratic Presidential nomination is calling for mandatory military service. He said that we should have some level of mandatory service so that everybody in America and not just poor kids are serving this country. What a hypocritical prick. Edwards never served in the military. Who is he to call for mandatory military service?

Tags: Deryk Schlessinger, John Edwards, Linux, Marvel Comics, XM Radio

This is the kind of thing that makes me glad I have an iPod. XM Satellite Radio has pulled the plug on Opie and Anthony (O&A) for 30 days. This stems from crude sexual jokes about Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, and Queen Elizabeth made by a homeless man on their show.

I read the press release on the XM Radio website. It sounds as though they suspended them not for the crude comments made last week, but because O&A didn’t seem overly contrite yesterday while talking about the incident.

Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday’s broadcast put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make clear that our on-air talent must take seriously the responsibility that creative freedom requires of them.

This seems extremely petty on XM’s Radio’s part. If they were going to suspend them, they should have done so after they made the comments. Then again, they were NOT the ones that actually made the comments. Now it seems they are being suspended for not sucking up to XM Radio management.

XM Radio may want to punish Opie and Anthony, but I feel like I’m the one that’s being punished. I will still be required to pay the monthly $12.99 subscription fee. I just wont get to listen to content I usually enjoy listening to. I guess I could cancel for the month, but they would then turn around and charge me a $10 connection fee to reestablish my account next month. That’s assuming O&A ever return to XM Radio.

XM Radio wins no matter what I do.

I’m not going to pretend that the comments weren’t extremely rude, crude, and in bad taste. The thing is, that’s what Opie and Anthony do. It’s what their show is all about. It’s a funny show that is often times extremely raw in nature. You never really know what you are going to hear. Because the show is on satellite, Opie and Anthony are free from FCC restrictions on content.

This makes me wonder why XM Radio didn’t have a problem with any of the other things they have done the past three years. Was everyone else fair game, but Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, and Queen Elizabeth off-limits? If I didn’t know any better, I would think this had something to do with the possible XM/Sirius merger. The one that would require the Federal government to step in and change the law to allow both satellite radio companies to merge.

Tags: Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, Opie & Anthony, Queen Elizabeth, Sirius, XM Radio

Finally XM Radio does something that I can appreciate. Something positive. Something that doesn’t make me wish I bought a Sirius satellite radio instead of an XM radio. They are moving liberal/progressive talker Ed Schultz from a single one hour on tape delay to the whole three hours. His show will also be live. He will fill the time Noon - 3pm time slot that was being filled by The Al Franken Show. Franken is leaving the Air America Network to run for the U.S. Senate.

XM used to air the complete Ed Schultz show on tape delay at 3PM before moving him to a different channel and cutting him to one hour. The move never made sense. In fact, I actually emailed XM and complained. Ed Schultz is one of the few progressive talkers that is actually successful at radio. He has an audience. His show generates revenue. The man has real ability behind the microphone.

In other words, his show is the complete opposite of most of the Air America lineup.

Don’t get me wrong. I listen to most of the shows on Air America. Though the hosts have passion for what they talk about, most lack even basic fundamental skills behind the mic. Most podcasters are more professional and polished behind the microphone then some of the Air American hosts.

It’s not enough to simply be passionate in what you believe. You must also have actual radio skills. Though I don’t agree with most of what Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity have to say, I have to admit that they have superb radio skills. These two guys know what they are doing when it comes to doing radio.

So does Ed Schultz.

Yesterday while listening to the Sam Seder show on Air America, I heard the host talk about Ed Schultz joining the Air America lineup on XM channel 167. Instead of treating the news as something positive, he treated it as something negative. In fact, he advised listeners to call XM and complain.

Huh?

He told listeners to call and ask XM to not add Ed Schultz, but to instead add liberal talker Thom Hartmann. The reasoning being that XM channel 167 is called AIR AMERICA and Ed is not part of the Air America network.

Personally, I don’t really care. I just want to listen to the best liberal or progressive or non-conservative radio that I can. That means Ed Schultz. I’ve never heard of Thom Hartmann. Not to say that he is bad. I’ve just never heard his show. From what I gather, his show is on Air America only on the weekends. His show is sandwiched between repeats of other Air America shows. I would think that if he was better then Ed Schultz, Air America would have moved Thom Hartmann to Jerry Springer’s old time slot.

Yes, Air America put Jerry Springer on the air. The same Jerry Springer that does a TV show that features transvestite prostitutes that marry their brothers.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time believing that a radio host that isn’t good enough to replace Jerry Springer on Air America is somehow better then Ed Schultz on XM.

Tags: Al Franken, Ed Schultz, Sam Seder, XM Radio

I was driving home from work today and decided to listen to Sean Hannity. I was listening to XM Radio and CNN was on yet another commercial break. I noticed immediately at Hannity was quite upset about something. The tone of his voice was even more shrill then normal. It seems there is a new weekly TV show on Fox News entitled “Hannity’s America”. Alessandra Stanley from the New York Times watched the show and then wrote about it.

Sean Hannity didn’t like the article. Go figure.

When I got home, I read the article. I thought Sean Hannity’s reaction to the article was funny. The actual article was hilarious.

Underneath the flag-waving swagger, Mr. Hannity’s show is riddled with leftist subliminal suggestion and degrading, un-American images of violence and pornography. Last Sunday Mr. Hannity toured the Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada and stood over two prostitutes lolling on a bed in skimpy lingerie, their hands placed between their legs, and asked them if they believed in God.

The Bunny Ranch? You have to hand it to him for finding a way of incorporating prostitutes into his show. Who knew that Hannity’s America included prostitutes.

But it’s the sex and violence that suggest that Mr. Hannity harbors a secret plan to undermine American moral fiber. Despite President Bush’s assertion that the execution of Saddam Hussein was botched and disgraceful, Mr. Hannity repeatedly flashes some of the more gruesome video images of the hanging, pictures so ghoulish and unsettling that they could well be the fare for a snuff film.

First Hannity shows prostitutes rolling around a bed, then he shows the Saddam Hussein snuff film. I think to many Republicans, the crappy cell phone video of Saddam getting killed is a form of pornography. That strikes me as being quite off. Most Republicans worship Ronald Reagan and Reagan was really quite fond of old Saddam Hussein. May he not rest in peace.

Sean Hannity is a tool. He wraps himself in the American flag and dishes out disparaging comments about the patriotism of Americans that hold views different then his own. Americans like me. He does this not because it is what he really believes. No, he does it to make a buck.

Hannity’s fake patriotism has made him millions of dollars. He loves to chastise people like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, and the Dixie Chicks because of their political views. The thing that separates these people (and others like them) from Sean Hannity is that they have never made a buck off their political views. Like he does. In fact the complete opposite is true. They often lose money because of their political opinions.

Just ask the Dixie Chicks.

Link

Tags: Dixie Chicks, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Saddam Hussein, Sean Hannity, XM Radio