Halloween Updates

• Off the bat, this is something that you should try not to hang from public trees.

• Halloween officially has an anthem and it's about time.
  
  Featuring weirdos like David Cross, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Beck and Arcade Fire, "Do They It's Halloween" is not exactly Ashlee Simpson or the Destiny's Child Christmas album.
  
  Originating as the indie parody and response to the condescension of Bob Geldof's first-world holiday pity song "Do They Know It's Christmas," "Do They Know It's Halloween" is a goofy and fully self-aware send-up of the horribly un-self-aware original.

Snitch of the Week: 10/22 - 10/29

(Anonymous Wal-Mart employee)

Following the success of last week's Snitch of the Week feature, it's only right that there be a follow-up.

Wal-Mart, my least favorite, multinational, publicly-traded corporation caused a lot of confusion recently when they lowered the price for workers to participate in the company's health care plan, demanded that Congress raise the nation's minimum wage and vowed to switch to renewable energy sources.

Of course Wal-Mart employees still have a $1,000 deductible, (which is a large percentage of the $18K the average full-time Wal-Mart employee makes) a minimum wage increase helps the buying power of their customers and the environmental pledge seems like an image ploy. But it was still oddly positive for Wal-Mart.

Proud Wal-Mart haters such as myself, had to pause with concern. Where to direct my unabated hate for Wal-Mart? Where is the Wal-Mart I used to know?

The one that used child labor, chained its doors to prevent workers from taking breaks at night and helped spread horrible country boy bands with its $7.88 Lonestar CDs?

Well the answer is they didn't go anywhere.

An internal memo (PDF link) leaked to Walmartwatch.com by an anonymous Wal-Mart insider, detailed how the company plans to the lower their health insurance costs after the seemingly benevolent move of lowering the price for its health care plan.

By making everyone do hard physical labor, from the obese check-out clerks to the elderly clean up lady, they aim to discourage the weak and the sick from applying. They have other old school evil tricks to cut costs as well as some positive ideas, such as increasing discounts on health foods (not a bad idea at all)

Besides Wal-Mart being evil, the deeper issue here is the American health care system. People are getting older, fatter and sicker and your job doesn't want to pay for it anymore. While Wal-Mart's approach wasn't the slickest one possible, it underscores an ugly reality more and more Americans will have to face as we compete internationally for jobs with countries they will pay health care.

Anonymous Wal-Mart employee, we here at Start Snitching commend you for outing Wal-Mart's bullshit PR campaign and hopefully bringing health care into the American discussion.

Today sucks (for India mostly)

While my personal day is going alright, the larger world is having a rough time as evinced by my BBC home page.

As if the currently ignored India/Pakistan earthquake wasn't doing enough damage to the region, terrorist bombings killed at least 50 in India.

And if that all that wasn't enough a train derailed in India killing over a 100 travellers as they were en route to celebrate Diwali.

Oh, and some stuff blew up in Iraq.

Kinda makes the 40 degree weather a little more bearable.

1998, 1999, 2000...

(With no shortage in sight)

In one of the more macabre countdowns of recent times, the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq has officially passed 2000 (there is talk that the Department of Defense only counts those who die in the Middle East and many more are flown out to later succumb from fatal wounds, but aren't counted as official casualties.)

With the presidential ban of coffins in the news still in effect and the concentration of death located out of the sight of the large city media centers, namely rural America; the human cost of the war is largely unknown and intangible to most. For many, the only connection is a number. With no personal ties to the military, I have tracked several sites out of curiosity. The best are Anti-War Casualties and ICasualties. With constant stream of bad news it's hard to avoid the feeling that these numbers become akin to baseball statistics.

For example, the rate it took to 18 months to get to the first 1,000; compared to 14 months for the second 1,000.

Marines disproportionately make up the most deaths.

More white soldiers died in the second thousand than the first as Blacks flee from the idea of military life at a faster rate than whites. As recruitment numbers for Blacks fall the percentage of Blacks in the military begins to reflect their real world percentage. Etc.

The liberals hype up the numbers to force awareness. There were a bunch of white activists at the Flatbush Ave. station yesterday, engaging angry Jamaican women with a banner about the Iraqi civilians (bore-ring) casualties who have no official death count and civilian casualties ranging from 10,000 to 100,000)

The conservatives cry foul, because the obsession with numbers bypasses the humanity of the losses. That is only true when there are other means to express the loss. The attempt to ban Ted Koppel of Nightline from reading the names of the war dead read last year and the fact that Americans cannot see the soldier's coffins on the news shows otherwise. These realities mean that numbers are the only way to capture a fickle American audience. That's why the death of 1,372 or even 1,500 soldiers weren’t a news story.

Like the $3.00 gallon or the 10,000 Dow Jones Average, the 2,000 casualty toll will lose its urgency as the weeks past. As with all psychological barriers, once they are broken, they lose their sense of shock and awe, so to speak.

Don't despair; the countdown to 3,000 has already begun.

And the counter is already up to 2006.
2007, 2008, 2009...

That's that chick from the Outkast video! Right?!

Rosa Parks, or that lady who did that bus thing and had the Outkast song named after her, passed away on Monday at the age of 92.

Fifty years after her personal stand got real public, there is very little to add to the story. However there are two things that are particularly interesting about her life that stand out.

• She did not boldly sit in the "white" section of the bus. She was in the "colored" section of the bus and was ordered to go further to the back and stand in the back so a white person could take her seat. The recap is here. Maybe the Barbershop joke that sparked so much controversy wasn't so wrong.
  
  
• She was robbed in August 1994 by an "African-American youth" as the article puts it. I would use another term.

This second incident is so perversely ironic and indicative of the state of the modern Civil Rights Movement, which is sadly, but honestly, dead.

Blacks have lost all perspective of their historic efforts and achievements. The Civil Rights Movement has been relegated to ancient history. There are people still alive who have survived lynchings.

Segragation doesn't need to be illegal, it has circumvented the law and manifested itself through economic reality and unspoken winks and nods between school boards, governments and surburbia. You're lucky if you still see that one black kid in the class anymore (if you're wondering, I was him. Chris Rock feels me.)

At my old high school's football game this year, there was not one black player on the team. I found out the Black percentage decreased from 5% when I was there to about 3% now. If you don't have enough black people in your school to get one on the football, you have problems.

Perspective time

• In 1955, after refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks received death threats for months on end.
  
  
• In 2005, after marrying a white woman Taye Diggs and his wife, Idina Menzel, receive racist death threats threatening castration and other forms of unpleasantness.
  
  
• Increasing in logic, bi-racial Derek Jeter receives racist hate mail, last September, telling him to stop betraying his race by dating white women (you can't blame him though, it worked out pretty well for his dad.)

It's good to see we're going in the right direction.

What took so long?

Coming just in time for the holiday season, but a little too late for me, the iBelieve Shuffle case runs $12.95 for one and supposedly $2 from each sale goes to charity.
When Apple Computers became a charity, I'm not sure.

Alway humble, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, simply asked for a S to be added at the end of the Book of Job.

I got dirt on you doggy!!!

In an textbook example of "Watch what you name yourself," Killa Cam was almost the killee near a nightclub in D.C. this weekend. Refusing to give up his (pink?)



Lamborghini to a car jacker (what means the world to you...) he was shot through both arms as he sped off. What the hell kind of JFK magic bullet that was able to do this, I have no idea.

Luckily, Cam'ron recovered quickly so there is still a chance he will drop more nuggets of wisdom on the world, similar to those he dropped on Bill O'Reilly in this classic clip (Windows Media Player link.)

After a quick recovery, Cam'ron was released and on his way out the hospital he said to the news cameras, "It was a sloppy job."

So all you interpid carjackers out there, get your shit straight.

It's

1. Pistol whip driver that fool while he's talking slick on his Sidekick
2. Snatch out the driver, preferably through the window as Camron did in "Paid In Full"
3. Drive away

Don't ask them to get out, Killa Cam could have told you this.

Snitch of the Week (and that's a good thing)

On Thursday, 10/20, Marty J. Bahamonde, the only FEMA official in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, testified to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about his attempts to alert his superiors about the immediacy of the situation escalating in New Orleans.

Mr. Bahamonde also refuted prior testimony by former FEMA director, Michael Brown in which Brown stated that a dozen agency employees were in New Orleans before the storm, including an emergency response team.

Bahamonde's testimony was not disputed by anyone at the Department of Homeland Security.

Bahamonde warned that hospitals were running out of oxygen and tried to get various officials to take the growing crisis seriously. He was ignored until he decided to email FEMA head, Michael Brown directly.

His email read,

"I know you know, the situation is past critical, hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water."

Too busy ignoring the Superdome chaos, an aide of Brownie managed to respond hours later saying, "... the director would need a restaurant in Baton Rouge that night. It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner."

For your honest and straight-forward testimony in our current environment of responsibility shifting and pathetic dissembly, we here at Start Snitching, honor you with our first ever Snitch of the Week award.

Droppin' knowledge

I passed on this gem of tech news to Engadget today.

It won't be long before I steal all of their interweb traffic.

Tell the blogosphere to stay alert.

Start Snitching is coming up.

Hop it, take the other 50% off

No sooner than the MTA announced plans to reduce fares for the holiday season they have been hit with criticism over their seemingly generous fare cuts. They are hoping the reduced fares will ease traffic during the holiday season (we all know how smoothly the MTA runs during rush hour) and that commuters would rather line the coffers of the crooked MTA rather than those of crooked Arab nations through gas prices.

Everyone in New York as well as all the non-taxi using tourists can tell you the MTA is garbage. From unexplained train shutdowns at Times Square, never-ending weekend construction to small families of mice playing beneath my bench and Christian women throwing Bibles at you, it's hard to commute in peace.

The MTA has already started to turn me into a savage. I literally hand-checked some short Mexican bitch who thought I was the person in the bus line she should cut not too long after I got into a verbal argument with what may have been a junior high school girl who decided that resting her head on my hand was a good idea.

When I heard first heard of the half-price plan I thought the fare was going down to $ 0.75 because I still haven't gotten over the fare raise from $1.50. Dammit, I still remember when fares were $1 and the paper passes from school. I helped lay the tracks for the 2/5 line dammit. That's how old-school I am.

Fare reductions are deserved and well-earned for the unexplainable inflation in price paired with the degradation of service. But I trust the MTA like I trust that trenchcoat dude in Macy's trying to sell me his own watches. No one should forget the debacle where they raised fares claiming to be in debt, only to have revealed, another set of accounting books showing a large surplus.

Reducing the fare over the holiday is short sighted solution and generally stupid. It's your typical MTA solution. I'm not sure if it's a Bloomberg ploy to generate some goodwill in his direction following his failed Jets Stadium bid, but it solves nothing and using the gift of foresight, it will probably make things work. The MTA still forsees debt in its upcoming budget years and has plans to raise fares in 2007 and 2009.

Good idea or bad idea, please believe I will be in line to buy the 40 day $76 pass on November 23.

Damn homie

Thomas Friedman is a decent columnist for the NY Times who pretty much nailed the reason why countries shouldn't run other countries unless their country is perfect.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Iraq News Agency) - A delegation of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were "bewildered" by some of the behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of "her religion." She is described as a devout evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to separate "mosque from state" in the new Iraq, he was also floored to read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson that Miers deserved support because she was "a very, very strong Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to people in the households of faith around the country."

"Now let me get this straight," Judge Mithaqi said. "You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an evangelical Christian.
"How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis: 'Don't pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.' Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to die for? I don't think so. We can't have our people exposed to such talk."
A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of P.O.W.'s.

"I survived eight years of torture under Saddam," Unfi said. "Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk."
Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq's new newspapers, said he wanted to go home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

"I had nightmares watching this," Sahafi said. "It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: 'Thank you very much for everything. I like you.' It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops."

Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal propaganda - an attempt by the government to buy good press.

"Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab world," Sahafi said. "It makes me sick to see even a drop of that in America."

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America's image among Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President Bush. She said, "The more they know about us, the more they will like us."

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren't so true.)

Yehaa for Yahoo!

In the Bloods vs. Crips battle of internet search engines I ride with Google over Yahoo any day of the week.

However Yahoo! has a new service (new as in I just found from my boy) that has me switching colors, at least temporarily.

I knew Yahoo! did the radio thing but I didn't know it could be personalized and had such a good variety of music.

You login here with your Yahoo! ID and choose what genres and artists you like. Be sure to allow explicit content and whether you want a detailed 0-100 point scale or simple 0-4 star system.

It will then play songs based on what artists and genres were selected, trying to match your tastes. Tell it what songs, artist and albums you like or never want to hear again. I almost slapped my computer off my desk when it tried to play Musiq Soulchild and Smashmouth. After a day or two of tweaking it will get it right and throws new music into the mix.

Where else can you get Rush, Marvin Gaye and the Motown gang, Elephant Man, Pearl Jam and Mint Condition's 3 good songs?

In typical Yahoo! fashion something is wrong, it only works in Internet Explorer and the display occasionally freezes, but it still saves me from having to rip my entire CD collection and putting Windows Media Player on random.

Throw yo Y's up, for now.

37 years ago today

In 1968, almost halfway through the Vietnam War and slap dab in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two track athletes, decided to say something at the Olympics.

They were banned for life.

Surprisingly, Peter Norman, the seemingly frightened white dude on the left, wore an Olympics Project for Human Rights Badge in support of their cause.

He was not banned.

Good Idea, Bad Idea (A Recap)

Yakko, Wakko and Dot were sages. Their animated sketch comedy taught millions of today's 20 somethings that it is fairly tricky to take over the world and that even in pigeon form, it's still Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are mockable.

If the residents of Toledo, Ohio were aware of the lessons that another Animaniacs character, Mr. Skullhead, imparted on me in my youth, this last weekend would have been a lot more pleasant for many Ohioans.

Since it seems many people missed the lesson, I'm taking it back to '93 with Good Idea, Bad Idea.


GOOD IDEA

Peaceful Protest




BAD IDEA

Angry Protest





GOOD IDEA

Pro Nazi march in your own neighborhood





BAD IDEA

Pro Nazi march in poverty ridden Toledo




Last weekend the National Socialist Movement, an American Neo-Nazi group attempted to march in Toledo. Besides general pro-whiteness, the alleged purpose of their march was to protest the black gangs that harass white students. To prove the NSM wrong about the black gang problem, angry mobs consisting of... black gangs... decided to destroy their city and harass white people. It was reported that when the violence broke out, the Nazis returned to their headquarters and avoided most of the melee.

The mobs destroyed local businesses, parked cars, and threw bricks and bottles at police officers. Whether this accomplished more than firing on the rescue helicopters in the New Orleans aftermath is yet to be seen. A far more suitable option would have been to throw the eggs that were being provided to onlookers by various community groups at the Nazis.

In this Bush economy and post-Katrina climate, racial anger and class disparity are seething and raw. The type of saint-like tolerance it would require to sit quietly and watch Nazis march through your disproportionately unemployed neighborhood and insult you, is unreasonable to expect. But how the always popular yet never helpful tool of the riot becomes the answer is hard to understand.

Following the latest example of police brutality in in New Orleans, it is painfully obvious to most (black) people that cops are not a benign presence in the communities they operate. But these repeated incidences of unproductive energy and extreme irrationality show that there is a large gulf between how black people should express their anger and how they actually do. Someone can take the time to ask why black people are so mad all the time and why this is Ohio's second race riot in less than five years or we can continue the racial waltz until the next hurricane.

Don't call it a comeback, Sony's been here for years

After raising the bar on the cell phone industry last week, Sony Ericsson strikes again and teaches Apple a thing or two about MP3 playing phones with the W900i.

The Motorola ROKR, Apple and Motorola's first MP3/phone attempt flopped (even with the kool RAZR like mizpelling) much to Apple's delight. Truthfully, Apple does not want a successful MP3/phone hybrid until they can build the phone themselves and sell you shitty Coldplay songs over the phone through iTunes. Until then, they would rather continue the monopoly that is the iPod.

Look for the iPhone in the 2nd half of 2006.


Back to the W900. Some of the features include

• 3G cellular broadband that remains largely unavailable in the U.S.
• 470 MB of built-in memory (close to the iPod shuffle)
• Expanson slot for up to 2 GBs more of flash memory
• FM Radio with standard 3.5mm jack (iPod headphones and all will fit)
• A 2.2 inch screen (damn near the size of the iPod video)
• 2 MP camera with flash and hi-resolution video capture
• Easy music transfer and external music buttons
  
  

The W900 will be out in the Middle East, Africa, China and Europe in time for the Christmas season. No word on the US release. As always.

NYTimes roundup, yee haa!

Three interesting tidbits from the jew run liberal media, er, I mean the New York Times.

1. Circumsions have been found to reduce HIV tranmissions by 65% in a recent South African study. The facts are in, not only does it look good, but it's now good for you.

And if it stops 65% of African HIV then it should probably stop around 187.3% of American HIV.
2. Wal-Mart wants to start a bank for the fourth time and this time it looks serious. Ho-lee shit.

If you thought it was creative when they rearranged their workers' timesheets so they didn't have to pay overtime, wait until they get a hold of your checking account.

Their main motivation is to recoup the fractions of a penny they pay to banks each time a customer uses plastic. When it comes to savings, Wal-Mart does not play. They claim they have no intention of creating a chain of consumer banks, but I trust Wal-mart like I trust this guy.





3. Finally, last week Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, was in China shucking for American capitalism. He encouraged, China, whose savings rate, at 50%, is one of the highest in the world, to spend more, borrow more and save less like America, whose savings rate, at less than 0%, is one of the lowest in the world.

Why did China, which basically owns America due to our unsubstantiated consumer whoredom, entertain this nonsense?

Politeness I guess. Or perhaps a sense of circus-like curiousity.

In exchange, next month the Chinese Treasury Secretary will tour the U.S. and encourage Americans in strip malls to buy overpriced houses, $1,200 hangbags and big screen plasma TV's they can't afford.

Doesn't this make you feel like kicking puppies?

Another week, another stupid holiday.

Unlike Columbus Day, I hope you have never heard of this one.

I was introduced to Sweetest Day in October 2000 as a freshman at the University of Michigan where I was informed of my obligation to buy something for a girl. I politely declined.

Five years later, as people more and more people flee the Mid-Waste without the proper vaccination (Ohio, Michigan and Illinois are the biggest celebrators), they carry Sweetest Day with them across the Union while afflicting SARS-like damage.

What started out as a fairly noble day of remembering the less fortunate with kind gestures in the 1920's has devolved into another reason for Americans to buy shit.

And rightly so, because poor people, are like totally depressing. Have you ever taken the subway? Not all poor people sing and dance. Some of them just ask for food and cry.

What am I supposed to do about that other than buy Midwestern girls chocolate?

Take my wallet, but keep it tidy

Mike Bloomberg is signing city workers to new union contracts like it's an election year.

He recently closed a long battle with the NYC teachers' union by agreeing to a tentative contract after he nearly pushed them to break federal law and strike.

He then managed to squeeze a terror alert for the subway system that officials have agreed was a Code Gray.

Keeping pace he dished out a new contract for sanitation workers. According to the NY Times

"Under the old contract, workers started at $30,000, but under yesterday's deal they will start at an annual rate of $26,000, climb to a $29,000 annualized salary after six months and then reach the maximum of $57,392 five and a half years after being hired. The sanitation workers' starting pay will be higher than the $25,100 rate for police officers."

Garbage men are more important than the cops that have made NYC the safest big city in America.

>

Next time you get snatched into a back alley, take the time to notice how clean it is.

Finally, an iPod as pretty as me

Apple finally released an iPod with native video playback. Despite the bigger screen creating the optical illusion of it being gimongous it's actually the same length and width as the old iPod, while actually being slimmer than before (the Motorola RAZR being the originator of the electronic anorexia trend.)

The top shelf 60GB model has 20 hrs of battery life (yet only 3 hrs for video) and is still lighter than any of the previous 4th generation iPods. Despite all that hotness, there is still no built in FM radio tuner and it only plays a few (Apple-created) video formats.

It comes in 30 and 60 GB sizes for $300 and $400 and will be stolen back and forth in the NYC subways throughout the holiday season and the New Year.

Please don't actually put U2 on it.

Drop down and get your QWERTY on

Nokia dropped two new phones today.

The E61 is their first and very late response to the whole Blackberry movement.



Other than built-in Yahoo! and AIM clients built in, the E61 is geared more toward the business client. It has Microsoft Office compatibility, Wi-Fi and the new Symbian 9.1 OS, among other smartphone basics like Bluetooth, Infrared and and a speakerphone.

Like the Blackberry, it has no camera or video functionality, but it refrains from being ridiculously ugly.


The other phone, the E70, is an upgrade to the flip-out QWERTY phones Nokia has been putting out for a while.

Now you see it...

Now you don't



Despite having the same business-centric features, it also has a 2MP camera, high resolution video recording (not the fuzzy garbage most phones capture), an MP3 player and an audible time reader.
This is something that can go in my pocket with pride.

Carry on Nokia, carry on.

My Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman

On the roof of a building, outside my window at work, in midtown Manhattan.

Random as all hell.

The Green Goblin and Venom came by later, but my camera battery died by then.

I wonder how much this would go for at the Daily Bugle?

When will I be loved?

I don't know much about Harriet (Ms. Miers if you're nasty) and I'm definitely not going to waste time writing about her in length when her prospects look so bad, but how weird is it that she is 60 years old and has no kids or husband? Or that she is good friends with fellow bachelorette Condoleezza Rice?

I know Sex and the City was supposed to show us that it is O.K. to be single, old and childless but that bit is not working for her so well.

Harriet Miers scares the crap out of me.

Seriously, what is she thinking in this picture?

Positive about HIV

HIV and AIDS awareness in the black community are needed as badly as anything else but

"Girl, I'm telling you, I just came from the doctor. The virus is undetectable in my blood. It's there but they can't detect it."

Is not appropriate cell phone conversation at a bus stop.

Especially when the minute before that I heard

"Yea, I had sex with him."

I don't even want to know the timeline on that one.

My true love (until next week)

Coming Q1 of 2006 to Europe, Asia and the other civilized continents that always get these beauties first is the Sony Ericsson P990.

It will be packing

• Cellular wireless broadband, mostly unavailable in America
• Wi-Fi with internet browser
• 9 hrs talk time
• Bluetooth
  
• 2.8" high resolution touch screen
• 80 MB of built-in memory (enough for one or two CD's)
• Expansion slot capable of up to 4 GB
  
• FM Radio
• New Sybian 9.1 OS (the last soldier against Windows Mobile)
• 2 MP camera with auto-focus lens (true camera style)
  

And it is lighter than the Palm Treo.
I guess it's time to say goodbye to my old love, The Motorola Q.



I barely knew you.

Happy Genocide Day!

Although a few states in the U.S. and various countries have renamed the holiday, for the most part, here in America, we still celebrate Christopher Columbus' liberation of the Native American people from millenia of freedom and disease-free life.

This existence of this holiday is fueled equally by the misguided pride of Italian-Americans (it is not even entirely sure that Columbus was Italian) and the sad state of history in the American public school system. How many years was I told he proved the Earth's spherical nature and that he landed in America and not San Salvador? Too many.

Genodical Cheat Sheet (via en.wikipedia.org)

-It has been estimated that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over the first four decades of Spanish rule.

-Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to a low of 237,000 by 1900.

Damn homie.

Google, my favorite multinational publicly traded corporation.

This is just the Reader's Digest version on my thoughts of Google. I have lots to say about the capital G and I am sure something big will happen before 2006 that will make me expound upon them further.

But today Google's merging of their Local and Maps feature got my hair braided.
I'm sure that's what Eric Schmidt had in mind.

Google Maps, which changed the web in my view; recently combined with their local business search to form Voltron. The new page interface grows on you quickly and like all Google services it just makes life easier.

As I sat getting my hair braided and watching an African soap opera called Magic Moments 3, I wondered if these Ghanaian women knew what brought me in their store and how the ole world wide interweb brought us all together.

But I also wondered if they knew how sweet (Napolean Dynamite redeemed that word) Voltron was and how much better it was than their soap opera?

Anyway, my point here is that Google is still on a roll, helping people and making money at the same time, but now that I think about it, Google should buy Voltron and use it as their logo.
That dude will search the shit out of anything.



Could Microsoft compare?















Doubtful.

How the mighty Wolverine has fallen...

I went to a small state school called the University of Michigan. They have a football team called the Michigan Wolverines. You may have heard of them. On most Saturdays during the college football season you can see my old school's games broadcast on a little channel I call ABC.

For four years I had the opportunity to see them in person at the Big House, an aptly named stadium that literally stunned me the first time I set foot in it. I couldn't believe that there was something that beautiful in Ann Arbor, let alone University of Michigan. It almost made me regret the fact that after a whole college career and close to 50 games that I only went to one.
Almost.

Today the Wolverines lost to a team that hadn't beaten them since 1986. Do know where I was in 1986? I was mourning still mourning Reagan's re-election while watching Thundercats with Smooth Criminal in the background.

If that's not bad enough they lost to a team called the Badgers.
This is their logo.



That shit is seriously gay (not that their is anything wrong with that...)
And to top it off it was the Michigan homecoming. I feel sorry for any nostalgic alumni who ventured back to the Mid-Waste (Zing!) hoping their presence and inebriation would reverse the Wolverines woeful fortunes.

At this point, the season is shot. The only thing carrying them is their marquis and the fact that millions of fans will still watch them anywhere, even when they end up at the 1st Annual Lay's Salt and Vinegar BBQ Chip Bowl.
Luckily I didn't even watch the game. I was at a high school football game in Brooklyn, where my little brother's team came back from a 0-8 halftime deficit and won 14-8 in OT.
The solution to Michigan's problem is obvious.
They need to come to Brooklyn.
Holla at me Lloyd.

Go Meebo!!

Despite sounding like an empowerment program for disabled children, Meebo is actually a pretty useful web application that allows you to chat within your web browser.

With Meebo, you can login to any of your IM accounts, Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, etc., at the same time if you want. It gets behind corporate firewalls and other programs that prevent you from downloading the actual IM software or logging onto AIM Express.

And unlike AIM Express, Meebo actually gets better as new features are added each week.
The "I can’t get on IM at work" excuse is now a thing of the past.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of the American workforce's productivity dropping.

Illegal immigrant eats American

File this under the Mother Nature said “Fuck it” category.

A 13 ft. Burmese python swallowed a 6 ft American alligator whole in the Florida Everglades and in what seems to be an emerging battle as more pythons are dumped in the area by their ecosystem respecting owners. Over 150 pythons have been found in the last two years.
The battle ended in a draw as the alligator burst through the python’s stomach. They both died.

The python’s head was nowhere to be found.
Jeb Bush was unavailable for comment.