They Have Arrived...

(The first X-Man, are you ready?)

And if that wasn't weird enough, what the fuck is this?



Oh, Asians...

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

***I'M SPOILING SHIT***

I ventured out today to try and help X-Men 3: The Last Stand get the biggest opening weekend of all time. (It came in a close fourth.)
I'm always reluctant to see blockbusters in theaters because people who see blockbuster movies tend to suck. I love the immersion of the whole theater experience, but I am not always willing to make the required social tradeoff. When surrounded by such great minds you must wonder things like,

Is this moron going to kick the back of seat?
Explain to the entire movie to his bimbo girlfriend?
Smell bad?

This is why 40" HD TV's are giving the film industry such a run for their money.

When I heard that Bryan Singer was leaving the X franchise and that Brett Ratner, hack-extraordinaire, was taking over I figured it was pretty much a wrap for the X-Men. It wasn't the normal comic nerd alarmist reaction of "Magneto's cape is too dark!! Where is my Ovaltine?" but more along the lines of "Brett Ratner is a horrible director."

While he didn't make a better film than X-Men 2, he didn't fuck it up either.

The premise for the movie is that the government has a way to "cure" mutants by suppressing their mutant gene. Magneto and his Malcolm X ass ain't buying it. There was a "By Any Means Necessary" thrown in the movie in case people still don't see the Magneto/Professor X story as a parable for Malcolm X/MLK Jr.

When Magneto realizes that cure is a little more than voluntary, the war starts.

One of the reasons for the X-Men's enduring popularity is its outsider chic as well as the constant subtext of social relevance.

In this movie alone you have Beast, who was represented well, as the Colin Powell of an aggressive administration that undermined him, while allowing him to embarrass himself as a "diplomat."

You have a mutant-cure clinic being fire-bombed by Pyro, while scared mutants wait on line on one side and angry mutants protest on the other (Abortion clinic anyone?)

You have Magneto delivering Osama Bin Laden style videos after terrorist attacks, with the Fox News logo beneath.

There was something off with the rhythm of the film as well. This is where Brett Ratner's inability to direct a film comes in. Luckily the source material is strong enough that the film remains enjoyable, but there is a seesaw effect created by important characters dying early, followed by a lack of resonance.

Here is where I nerd out,

• First off, why was the movie under 2 hours? Big mistake.
• How do you introduce Colossus and Juggernaut in a movie and not have them destroy several miles of property fighting each other? A true waste. In fact there was no all-out, balls to the wall, one on one fight like the Wolverine/Lady Deathstrike fight of X2.
  
• Juggernaut was portrayed as a mutant, Juggernaut is powered by a mystical crystal. (Ahem, nerd.)
• How can you have three movies of Rogue without a true Gambit story?
• Why is Rogue still a whiny gothy teen? She sold out hard in the end and was just annoying the whole way through.
  
• This movie made it clear that too many of the X-Men in the movie are teenagers. Many of these characters work better as the full adults they are in the comic.
• Cyclops, yet again, was reduced to bitch mode. Cyclops is supposed to be a hateable uptight dick, but he is supposed to get shit done. Like young Kobe.
  Yet he was passed out for all of X2 and got killed within 5 minutes of X3. A damn shame.
  
• With that said, tToo many X-Men died in this movie. I'm talking about important X-Men that should never die so soon. Granted they will (or should) all be resurrected in a cheesy way for X-Men 4. But so many early veteran deaths, with so many teenage characters made the X-Men seem a bit rickety.
• The Phoenix Saga is complicated even in the comic world, so I didn't entirely expect them to get it right here. But if she was supposed to be Magneto's ultra-powerful weapon, why did she sit out through 93% of the final fight?
• Halle Berry's bitching got her some more screen time as Storm and she did well with it, but I think it's time for Angela Bassett to run that role.
  The hot shit was Storm fighting an altered Calisto. The chick playing Calisto, Dania Ramirez is sexy as all hell. She needs to be in more movies.
  The third black mutant chick, (yes, three black women in a movie without Tyrese in it) was that dykey broad, Omahyra Mota, from Jay-Z's "Change Clothes" video. She is supposed to be hot in the modeling world, which means she is actually ugly.
  
• Wolverine, via Hugh Jackman, is the fucking man. He has some ridiculous one-liners that are really the staple of any decent summer movie.
  

The most incredible thing was that the Juggernaut actually said, "Do you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut bitch!" based on the ridiculous Internet parody. Watch this stupid shit, if you've never seen it before.
The saddest thing was that some sad Internet blogger yelled that out the very second the Juggernaut came on the screen.
Not a good look for the Internet.

Keep in mind these mostly everything I've said are the nerd complaints of someone who has read way too many X-Men comics as a child.
There were some great action sequences in the movie and the fight scenes were pretty solid throughout, there just a million little things that were left out and I like to think that Bryan Singer probably would have gotten them all as well as balanced the mood of the film better.

Let's hope that Superman movie was worth leaving X-Men for.

3.5/5 Snitches.

Snitch of the Week: 5/21 - 5/27

(My Lai II)

I probably forgot about this story with all the other pleasantries coming out of Iraq, but it is pretty much confirmed that American soldiers are snapping and intentionally killing civilians in Iraq.

A group of marines lost it and killed about two dozen villagers after one of their men was taken out by a roadside bomb.
In a place where animals carcasses have IEDs planted in them, there isn't always a clearly labeled terrorist to take your anger out on.
So I guess they found other ways to relieve the anger.

• The criminal investigation has been seeking to establish whether or not the marines killed civilians in cold blood. A 10-year-old girl told The Times of London this weekend that US soldiers deliberately shot and killed almost her entire family as she lay hiding in the corner. Iman Hassan described how she heard the dying groans of her grandfather, mother, father, two uncles and a young cousin.

So it goes.

Initially there was an attempt to whitewash the event and claim that the marines were attacked first, but conflicting reports messed that plan up. If the military covers up the friendly fire deaths of American soldiers, of course they are going to cover up Iraqi civilian deaths.

I don't need to be a soldier to know that patrolling Iraq is hard (you can watch Baghdad ER to learn that) and that when trash cans and dead dogs start blowing up around you on your third tour or Iraq, you are probably going to want to shoot something.
And it's probably even more frustrating when one of those explosions kill your friend.
But the really reason all of this is happening is because soldiers weren't meant to police cities and countries, they are meant to invade and bounce.

These soldiers deserve whatever they get, but they didn't take a detour on vacation to end up in this situation.
But just like Abu Gharib it's easier to pick off the bottom of the food chain than look at the top and see what is really going on.

Time Magazine, for dropping the original dime on this story back in March and pushing it into a full investigation, you are the Snitch of the Week.

Snitch of the Week: 5/14 - 5/20

Spending a fair amount of my life running on tracks, lifting weights and otherwise exerting myself it was pretty relevatory to find out that lactic acid is not the evil athletic poison it was made out to be.

In fact it is our friend.

Basically a man cut a frog in half and assumed that the lactic acid in the bottom half was proof that lack of oxygen causes lactic acid build-up.
He was horribly wrong and it took over a 100 years to figure that out.

The guy who did figure it out was blackballed, hated on and threatened (well not really threatened) for challenging convention but eventually he got fools to recognize.

Sadly it will take another 30 years before the average Joe Schmo (or in the case of my gym, Jacques Diallo) realizes what's really going on here but at least the knowledge is out there.

Dr. George Brooks, for your determination you are the Snitch of the Week.

Michigan Welcomes You!

(Hoffa cupcakes... that's gully)

I thought we already found Jimmy Hoffa in Tony Soprano's stomach early on this season of "The Sopranos" but apparently the FBI missed that episode, so they are back on the search for Jimmy and everyone is having fun with it.

With signs like, "To Find Hoffa, Look in the Yellow Pages Under Cement" the vibe is clear.
Small-town Midwesterners will bury you in a farm and laugh about it.


- French women confirmed what I have always said, pretty women don't need to wear makeup. The new thing is France is the ignorantly named "Le no makeup" look. (Similar to the du-rag I bought in France that I call "Le du rag.")

• In a 2004 poll by the market research group Mintel, 64 percent of American women said they sometimes use foundation, compared with 47 percent of French women; 81 percent of Americans use lipstick compared with 70 percent of French women and 59 percent of Americans use blusher, compared with 43 percent.

Not to side with France but American girls kill it with the make-up. In Michigan there were these twins that lived on my floor that looked like the were running a makeup research lab and whenever they opened the door, the dorm coughed in unison because of the nauseating combination of perfumes they had coming out of there.
And if you have ever taken a NY subway you have seen some true crimes against humanity pretending to be women.
Who wins in this situation?
These women are always alone, so the attention angle of it has failed, and then everyone has to stare at them in a sad state of confusion until their stop comes.
Just sad...


- You think you can hold your liquor?
A Lithuanian truck driver had his blood alcohol limit clocked at over 18 times the legal limit. The shit was so high they thought their readers were broken.
You should be dead at about 9 times over the legal limit.
Eastern Europeans do not play.


- If the deaf protest and none of them hear it, is it really a protest? (Sorry, I couldn't resist)


- On the heels of Cat Stevens rejection from the U.S., the first terrorist pop star MIA was denied an American visa by immigration officials.

Look, Arular is a really good album, but the chick's father is a terrorist, she shouts out the PLO and says "Inshallah" (Arabic for 'Boom!' er, I mean "God willing.") in her skits.

Why the hell would she expect not to get flagged?
The U.S. has to catch someone every once in a while.

The funniest shit about this is her incoherent MySpace post

• THEY TRY SHUT MY DOOR!

  Roger roger do you here me over!!!!
  the U.S immigration wont let me in!!!!!
  i was mennu work with timber startin this week, but now im doin a Akon "im locked out they wont let me in" im locked out! they wont let me in! Now Im strictly making my album outside the borders!!!! so il see you all one day, for now ill keep reportin from the sidelines
  to my people who walk wiv me in the America, dont forget we got the internet! Spread the word! or come get me!!!!!! ill be in my bird flu lab in china! liming and drinkin tiger beer with my pet turtel. I love everyone for the support, now i need it more. ill stay up spread out else where.

...and the morons who respond to her chicken scratch like it's the Newer Testament.

Why is MySpace so awful?


- I don't know if any news I've heard about the Iraqi war beats this old article I read in the NY Times.
If you've seen the first season of Arrested Development this shit is extra hilarious.

Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed from Rocky), the man who ripped off David Cross with his promise of acting lessons while stealing his food, is now giving acting lessons to Iraqi-Americans in a mock-up Iraqi village that the U.S. military built in the Arizona desert in order to train its troops.

wow


- Thanks for tolerating my random ass roundup of ridiculous, but I had to get that out.
I've been busy trying out the new Microsoft/MTV online music store, Urge, and that shit is pretty hot.
It won't work with an iPod but the shit is still hot.
I'll be coming back to it soon.

The "Nigga" Defense

(It was only a matter of time)

And this to the "Battered Wife Defense," "The Ambien Made Me Do it Defense," and the "I was Molested by Circus Clowns Defense."

Now white people can call you a nigga, beat your ass and say that hip-hop made them do it.

Last June, Glenn Moore, a negro, got his skull fractured in Howard Beach, one of most racist parts of NY.
It was one of those moments where people act surprised because there is still... wait for it... racism in New York!
Twenty years ago another negro got murked in Howard Beach and it was a much bigger deal.

The prosecutors (or the offense, as I like to say) allege that Nicholas Minucci called Moore a nigger as he chased him and beat his ass.

The defense claims that Minucci said "What up nigga?" to Moore as he approached, to which Moore replied "What up?"
Then Minucci beat his ass after he was attacked.

As far as this whole story goes, Minucci's defense strategy is laughable, because I don't think a white person has ever had to defend themselves from a black person in Howard Beach nor has any black person, post-1970, replied to a white person's "What up nigga?" with a friendly "What up?"

Negroes know better.
Plus Minucci is a racist ass name. That sounds like one of A.J. Soprano's friends.

Article quotes,

• Mr. Minucci's friends and family have said that the word is uttered today more in collegiality than hatred, and that its proliferation in rap music and everyday conversation among young people of various races and ethnicities has changed its meaning and impact.
  
  "Every kid in the neighborhood uses it," she said. "It doesn't mean the same thing anymore. They all say it all day long, no matter what race. They all grow up saying it now."

  She added, "All of Nick's friends — black, white, Spanish, Chinese — they all use the word. You should hear when they talk on the phone to him in jail. "
  
  Ms. Minucci suggested that such a shift has been "the best thing possible for that word" because through its use "it's lost a lot of its power and hatred."
  

I pray to the God of racism for a Chinese kid to say "What up nigga?" to me.
Truly.


Recently there was a Internet nerd debate about the racism of an indie artist who doesn't like rap.
He said rap has "more vicious caricatures of African-Americans than they had in the 19th century."
Is he wrong?

And he also said that the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the super racist Disney movie, "Song of the South" was catchy.
Is it not?

During this whole debate some said this issue raises "the dangerous and stupid notion that one's taste in music can be interrogated for signs of racist intent the same way a university's admissions process can: If the number of black artists in your iPod falls too far below 12.5 percent of the total, then you are violating someone's civil rights."

Although it's clear this guy was a victim of the P.C. police, the question remains, does the word nigga coming from a white man who like totally digs hip-hop dude and then cracks your skull, better than nigga coming from an indie-loving, Pitchfork-reading cracka?


While writing this "In the Heat of the Night" and "Remember The Titans"(soo inaccurate) were playing; two movies whose driving conflict comes solely from 1960's racism and both had plenty of niggers, coons and general racism to go around.

So how did that kind of obvious understanding of racist language and intention devolve into a sort of pan-niggaism where people are unable to to identify the meaning of the word?

Rap music.

The defense's argument rests on the assumption that rap has changed the context of the word to the point where tossing out a "nigga" before a beating does not constitute a hate crime.

When one of the most white-friendly artists, Kangay West, had 2005's biggest hit with the sing-along friendly chorus of,

"Now I ain't saying she a gold digger
But she ain't fucking with no broke niggas."

What is Amber supposed to sing in her Audi after she buys Kangay's unedited album from Best Buy for $9.99 on her way to the Hamptons?

Please believe that she ain't fucking with broke niggas, not broke... broke as the radio would have you believe.

Snitch of the Week: 5/7 - 5/13

Matthew Hahn had two felonies under his belt and was in the midst of committing his third while he was robbing John Aitken's house.

While going through the possessions of the safe he had *allegedly* stolen he came across a memory card, that he realized had pictures of a grown man molesting a 2-year old child.

Disturbed by the pictures, he decided to risk his third strike by sending in the memory card to the police with John Aitken's name and address on it with a note incriminating John Aitken.

Being that he had reported his safe missing, the police called him in for 'follow-up' questions and nailed him on the child porn which lead to them finding hundred of other illegal kiddy porn pics in his house.
If you ever get called in for follow-up questioning, don't go and if you have a safe with illegal shit that gets stolen, don't report it missing.

Matthew Hahn eventually got busted on some other warrants he had pending, and is now hoping for leniency, now that the police realize that he is the one who gave up Aitken.

Granted, if you live in a three strikes state and you still go ahead and commit a third felony, you are a probably a moron that deserves to be in jail for a long time. But he could have very easily shut his mouth and dumped the safe but he risked getting tracked to bust this kiddy porn guy, Aitken.

For that, Matthew Hahn is the Snitch of the Week.

Snitch of the Week: 4/30 - 5/6

(Free Clyde Kennard!)

I caught two stories in the NY Times that had an odd parallel.

On May 3rd, one article told the story of a group of Germans in Montana in 1918, who were convicted of sedition during WWI for speaking out against American war policies and not buying war bonds and how their sentencing were commuted by the current governor.

From the article, or here if you don't have Times Select

• In one instance, a traveling wine and brandy salesman was sentenced to 7 to 20 years in prison for calling wartime food regulations a ''big joke."

Then

• ''I'm going to say what Gov. Sam Stewart should have said,'' Mr. Schweitzer said, referring to the man who signed the sedition legislation into law in 1918. ''I'm sorry, forgive me, and God bless America, because we can criticize our government.''

  Dozens of relatives of the convicted seditionists will be at the State Capitol to witness the signing of the pardons, with some traveling from as far as Florida. Marie Van Middlesworth, the 90-year-old daughter of one of those convicted, Fay Rumsey, will be coming from Medford, Ore. She was among 12 children put up for adoption when the family farm failed after her father was imprisoned.

Great, right?
Happy story about some (late-as-hell) American freedom.

On May 4th, the very next day the Times had an article about Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who decided not to commute the sentence of a black man, Clyde Kennard, who has falsely convicted to stop him from integrating a Mississippi college.

Peep the racism here or here,

• Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi acknowledges that Clyde Kennard suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of state officials more than 45 years ago. But he says he will not grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Kennard, a black man who was falsely imprisoned after trying to desegregate a Mississippi college.
  
  Mr. Kennard moved home to Hattiesburg, Miss., after seven years in the Army in Germany and Korea and three years as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He wanted to finish his education at the local college.
  

  But because that college, Mississippi Southern, was reserved for whites, state officials not only rejected Mr. Kennard's repeated applications but also plotted to kill him.

  They kept him out of college by convicting him of helping to steal $25 of chicken feed based on what the sole witness now says was perjury. The 1960 conviction drew a seven-year prison term, and Mr. Kennard died of cancer in 1963.
  

Peep the quote from the admissions director at the time,

• Mr. Lucas said pardoning Mr. Kennard might cost Mr. Barbour a few votes.
  
  ''There are some people around here still,'' Mr. Lucas said, ''who think we should be separate as races and who refuse to see the errors of our past. But I can't imagine it would be a factor in his re-election.''
  

So in one (white) instance, the ability to commute a sentence is a meaningful and symbolic sign of forgiveness and self-correction and in the other (colored) instance, a commuted sentence is a late and pointless gesture for a man who was robbed of his freedom 42 years after the first commuted sentence.

That's some ole bullshit.

For me noticing said bullshit, with the help of the NY Times, I am the Snitch of the Week.

Snitch of the Week: 4/23 - 4/29

(Shahawar Matin Siraj, dumbass or terrorist?)

Osama Eldawoody, a 50-year old Egyptian nuclear engineer who became a paid informer for the New York Police Department after 9/11; brought out some controversial aspects of the war against terror(ism) to light in this week.

From the article, or here, if you don't have Times Select,

• In July 2003, he became a paid informer for the department's Intelligence Division. He described how his police handlers dispatched him to mosques and cafes, telling him ''to keep your eyes and ears open for any radical thing.'' He told how he wrote down the license plate numbers of worshipers, talked to imams, prayed alongside other Muslims and, after each visit, reported back to his detective handler.
  
  In his opening statement, Mr. Stolar said the evidence would show that Mr. Eldawoody, who was unable to find work as an engineer and struggled, first as an ice cream vendor and cabdriver, and later in real estate and the restaurant business, became an informer for the money. He was paid nearly $100,000 by the department over the course of almost three years, Mr. Stolar said.
  
  ''We are dealing with a plot that never could have succeeded,'' he said, noting that the backpacks and the bomb were ''to be supplied by the New York City Police Department's confidential informer. So no one was ever in danger and no one was ever going to get hurt because it never could have happened.''
  
  

Shit, for $100K I'd through on my kufi and hit record.

Also,

• Shahawar Matin Siraj, a 23-year-old Pakistani immigrant, was secretly recorded over several months in 2004 declaring his hatred for America and talking about a plan to bomb the Herald Square subway station.

It is quite possible that an older Muslim coaxed a confused younger Muslim into a pre-planned plot that he only had to nod and follow along with to incriminate himself, or not.

There are witnesses that say Siraj was discussing some sort of violent attack on America before he met Eldawoody.

And peep some of his rants,

• Speaking to his driver, he derides a passing policeman: ''Hello, pig. Hi, pig. Bye, pig. Pig, you have a problem?'' Then, ''You, pig, will learn the lesson someday.'' And also sings -- apparently mimicking a song. ''Brooklyn Bridge is falling down. Falling down. Falling down. The black guys used to sing this song, remember?''

  The conversation was one of roughly a dozen played yesterday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where Mr. Siraj is on trial, charged with conspiring to blow up the subway station beneath Herald Square in Manhattan. They ranged from the sinister to the more fantastical.

  Among the topics: a discussion on the possibility of attacking the United States Army with nuclear weapons; killing Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, in order to damage the American economy; stealing nuclear material from reactors or, apparently, from the once top-secret base in Nevada known to U.F.O. buffs as Area 51 (although Mr. Siraj referred to it as Area 52).

Not exactly the Pledge of Allegiance there...

But I'm sure a lot of us wouldn't want our private conversations with supposed friends recorded for various reasons.

But we all know the American government wouldn't spy on its citizens without good reason right?
Ahem...

Anyway, for bringing the delicate rules of good snitching and its evil cousin, entrapment to light, Osama Eldawoody, you are the Snitch of the Week.

Star Went Too Far

(May your children always speak proper English and the gates around your property protect you from common ghetto trash)

I grew up listening to utter nonsense and offensive foolishness of Star and Bucwild. And by grew up I mean I listened to them in high school.

From their origins on NY radio as a one hour 5 A.M. radio show (that I really should have taped) on Sunday night (if 5 A.M. is still Sunday) where they were basically auditioning for a real show on Hot 97, to eventually establishing the best morning show NY had ever seen, these fools were beating Howard Stern in the NY market and spitting truth on the typically shit-ridden hip-hop stations of NY. Sadly, I left the NYC region for college, missing much of their Hot 97 run.

The original Star and Bucwild morning show consisted of Star; a confused bi-racial man who was sometimes brilliant and at other times infuriatingly ignorant, his alleged brother Bucwild; a perpetually high stereotypical Brooklyn negro who rarely showed up for work, DX 21, an angry black power/kill whitey Nation of Islam, God/Sun/Earth/Moon Muslim, Crossover Negro Reese; a black republican Jew with a white wife and tons of self-hatred to go around.
The show never had a steady female host, Ms. Jones (the ignorant bitch who made the tsunami song) and Prozac girl sat in at times, but the door was always revolving for the females.

You can imagine this lead to some interesting morning conversations.
This show had people who wouldn't be up before noon waking up at 6 A.M to catch the foolery of this group of characters.

At a time when Puffy and the jig(gy) crew were putting their foot down on the throat of hip-hop and everyone was gladly putting on their shiny suits, spinning in circles, covering 70's songs in Hype Williams directed music videos, Star come out as a black man unafraid to call out the shit of hip-hop and the ignorance of black people as well as anyone else who needed to be put on blast.

Star would bring on guests that would normally get fluffed on-air by Funkmaster Flex and Angie Martinez, while promoting their disposable trash single and James Frey (Oprah's bitch) them on the air.

He would talk over the Top 40 songs that the station insisted he play as well as cut them off after a few seconds if he had a enough.
How many times did I really need to hear Nelly and Mase in the morning?

He would play Rush, obscure funk records, random 80's pop and talk about shit people don't black people credit for being interested in.

He protested Jennifer Lopez using the word "nigga" in one of her shitty songs and then when he was meet with lackluster support for his efforts he began using the word indiscriminately and encouraging others to use it as well.

Star started his own downfall with the mocking of Aaliyah's death shortly after her plane crash. Although he wasn't fired for that he left Hot 97 shortly after.
He then went to Connecticut where he honed the show with a slightly altered cast, and made his way back to NY in January of 2005 where he enjoyed NY's number one radio show.

The show came back to a similar level of quality but it became more news-oriented which isn't always a good thing when the commentators spout ignorance as often as insight.

Gone were the petty fights with callers, the GNN (Ghetto Network News, the best satire of urban ghetto life ever) and skits that made the shows so original.

I have fallen out of favor with the show in recent months because the original Bucwild was replaced with an ignorant 19 year old black kid who fell into all the stereotypical modes of blackness without the humor or self-awareness that the original had.
Crossover Negro Reese quit the show and was replaced by Chris the Queer who was funny but nowhere as infuriating as a black jew republican.

He apparently got caught up in some kind of beef with a DJ from Hot 97 and a war of words escalated to the point where he tried to bait the Hot 97 DJ by threatening his daughter and his wife. Obviously he went too far, given the fact that he technically broke the law by threatening a child on the air and was actually arrested for his comments.

He put Clear Channel's back to the wall, they had to fire someone who was eventually arrested, but what the fuck am I supposed to listen to on NY radio?

His replacement, ironically was one of the people he Freyed (Can we make that a verb? If you are embarrassed in public, you have been Freyed) on the air so consistently, Big Tigger from BET.

Will he re-emerge in West Bubblefuck or move onto the land of satellite radio? His website is currently down and I can't find the official Yahoo! group.

Or will his ass end up in jail?

Despite the ridiculousness of what he said, I highly doubt anything would have happen. He's a radio host. He gets paid to talk shit.
Since I won't be hearing anything from him in the near future, I'll leave you with one of his on-air departures.

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Me, white man now open this god damn door."

The Shield is now on iTunes

(All TV pales in comparison.)

I may have caused a bit of drama with my post about the obscene prices of Apple computers but iTunes is now selling The Shield.

Anyone that makes The Shield easily accessible to the masses is my friend.
I am still in mourning over the end of the 5th season. But I don't want to cry while blogging, so I'll move on.


- Keeping with television, fuck a Prison Break.
I have put more time into that show than I have into most relationships.
60 minutes an episode X 22 episodes = A lot of time I want back

What the fuck was that ending?

Does anyone really want to watch "The Fugitive" on network television again?
Are they really going to outrun the police on foot with a 50 yard head start?
And why am I going to watch when it comes back?
Hopefully they rename the show now that everyone has broken out of prison.


- There is now G-Unit email.
I swear. (Don't actually click anything on the page.)

GGG - G Mail!!!


- Darfur Genocide: The video game

Not for PS3 but from MTV.

It may quite possibly the saddest video game ever.
You chose a villager and then you dodge Janjaweed militia trucks as you forage for water that you bring back to your village.

It's not meant to be offensive, you can tell it is an honest attempt to engage "the youth" in the Darfur crisis through a medium they utilize.
It's just weird is all.
But not as weird as...


- Microsatellites with lasers

The best way to ensure peace and security in our fragmented world is to threaten vaporization from above with satellite lasers.
This is just the sort of thing I trust Bush with.

NSA wiretaps + Space Lasers = Crispy Muslims

Say "No!" to Helicopters

(Not a good look.)

In the last few weeks I have fallen ridiculously behind in the ongoings of the world, so in my process of binging on old headlines I came across several stories about the good news in Iraq and the Middle East that the Bush administration accuses the mainstream media of not reporting. Not to mention there have been a shitload of helicopter crashes. (Add Lebanon and Russia to the list copter crash stories below.)

- The first story involves Iraqi citizens in an assumed friendly part of Iraq, that cheered, threw stones, Molotovs and whatever else they could find at British soldiers who rushed to check on a British helicopter was shot out of the sky.
Damn.
I'm not adept at military campaigns, battling insurgencies and such but I'm pretty sure that's an indication that you're not welcome and that things aren't going too well.

- The second story is another tale of a crashed helicopter although this time it is American soldiers who were shot down in Afghanistan. The military denies it was shot down but they also did that last time a helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.
It's good to know that after running the Taliban out we have diverted that initial mission so far off-course that the Taliban are now taking Afghanistan back.

- The third story offers a glimpse into the level of disenfranchisement and alienation that was needed in order to cause Egyptians to launch terrorist attacks on their own country.
I wrote about something similar to this before but it seems people would still rather chase terrorists after they blow some tourists up, than to improve the hopeless social situations (like saltwater coming out of their taps) these kids fester in until they feel they'd rather die and take out a few people with them.

Peep the quote from the article,

"The animosity in El Arish is so deep that some people here say they admire the bombers. Some say they are resisting the government, others see them as bringing the misery of Bedouin lives home to foreigners who come on carefree vacations."

- The fourth story is one of those "What if it was me?" stories that makes me glad that the only war going on where I live is between the crazy old Jamaican lady and the loud school children.

This Iraqi government worker was warned to quit his job and when he didn't he was kidnapped, beaten and kept in captivity for days as dozens of people were constantly brought in and killed around him. They called and asked his family for a $50K ransom which was talked down to $20K. (Is talking down a ransom similar to talking your way out of a parking ticket?)

When people only make $1,000 a year a $30,000 ransom is like asking a $30K earning American for a million.
Anyway, they were about to kill him when they realized he was the wrong guy and they brought in another person in his place and shot him in the head.

Do I even have to mention how pointless it is to replace a government with one where people get killed for going to work?
Or how stupid replacing one famous despot for thousands of faceless and even more dangerous insurgents is?

Saddam is the only one who understands how to hold those fools together.


- I will throw in a bonus story and you can decide for yourself whether this is good or bad.
There is now an Afghani rapper.



Given that Busta Rhymes' security guard was recently killed, Proof from D-12 got shot in the head, T.I.'s personal assistant got killed, Snoop Dogg was arrested in London for fighting police and Gravy (a rapper trying to play Biggie in a movie) was shot outside of Hot 97, Mystikal was sentenced for rape, Game and 50's crew got into a shoot-out, does Afghanistan really fucking need rap music?

They shoot down helicopters in Afghanistan. How much more fucking hood can you get?
Women get killed for stepping out of line in Afghanistan? Can they learn anything from the misogyny of rap?

If anything rap needs to take notes from Afghanistan.

From the article,

• "His outsized jewellery, sculpted facial hair and gigantic camouflage pattern jumpsuits are clearly tastes culled from America's all-conquering rap music scene.
  
  Besho, whose real name is Bejan Zafarmal, is frank in admitting his considerable debt to controversial stars such as Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent; while his fluent English is littered with US street slang."
  
  "I want to write about my country and I want to write about love. I don't use swear words and I have even used texts from the Koran in my music."
  
  Besho admits wistfully that one day he hopes to include some of what is called "shaking the booty" into his videos. It is this sort of erotic dance that has the religious establishment up in arms.
  

And this is in a country where they banned Charlton Heston's "The Ten Commandments" for showing Moses in shorts and with girls.

When the Taliban regain full control of Iraq, please believe the first thing they do will be to murk this kid.

Apple Computers, Don't Bite

(Don't do it!)

Coming fresh off of Apple Computer's legal victory over Beatles' Apple Corp and their new round of television ads declaring their superiority over Windows, I thought I would offer this bit of hype deflation.

A new MacBook Pro with identical features and specs to a Dell Inspiron E1505 costs $1395 more.

That is not a typo, a Mac costs almost a G and a half more than a damn near identical Dell.

For the computer nerds who can understand this here are the specs of the models I compared,

2.0 Ghz Intel Duo Processor
15.4" screen w/ 1440 X 1000 Resolution
1 Gig of RAM
100 Gigs of Hard Drive space
Media Center Remote Control (Both come with one)
DVD burner
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
128 MB Video Cards

Apple Weaknesses:

• You have to buy a separate modem in case you ever need a dial-up connection.
• You have to buy the full year of support because unlike Dell, Apple only gives you 3 months for free.
• Currently, the MacBook's DVD burner is 4X compared to Dell's 8X.
• Has 2 USB ports compared to Dell's 4.
• Doesn't have the ability to read 5 types of digital memory cards.
  
  

Dell Weaknesses:

• Doesn't have a built-in webcam.
• The Dell weighs 6.18 lbs. compared to the Mac's 5.6 lbs.
• The Dell is 1.5 inches thick compared to the Mac's 1 inch.
  
• Dell runs Windows XP which is an inferior operating system compared to Mac OS X and it doesn't have iLife.
  
• Also, you may have fight with Dell's Indian posse if you ever have a computer problem, whereas I envision breakdancing white hipsters answer your calls at Apple.
  

Apple Price: $2897
Dell Price: $1502

You can't link to the store, so click the pics for the images with the details of the prices.

Apple:



Dell:




Let's say you buy a ridiculously expensive $130 Logitech Webcam, and download a few basic free security programs to make up for the shittiness of Windows XP, the MacBook is still over a $1000 more expensive than the Dell.

Granted, you won't inspire the envy of all your $9 a cup coffeeshop friends with your shiny white laptop with a large fruit on the cover, but you'll have about $1400 to buy everyone a few rounds of venti grandi lattes as well as a few iPods.

Or you can pay the membership fee to join my cult.

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Sunlight and blogging don't mix

(The new Bjork?)

Between the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show on Wednesday, my brief weekend trip to PA that involved an XBox 360 and my final defeat at the hands of the Facebook, there was no time for blogging.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs destroyed the Roseland Ballroom (NY Times review) last week and I was able to witness the insanity that is Karen O in person.

Being the first half Korean/half Polish female rockstar, Karen O rivals Bjork's eccentric origins of being half Icelandic/half Martian. They both have the stage presence, charm and mental instability to hold the attention of the rock world.

Although Bjork has about 8 albums and the YYYs only have 2, I can see Karen O taking the throne somewhere down the line. NY Times review.

All Karen O needs to do is publicly maul a TV news reporter.

The first opening act was The Black Lips, an atrocious retro-garage rock, surf hop band that wore out their novelty status within two songs. Picture the 5.6.7.8.'s (The Kill Bill Woo-Hoo girls) except male, without the cuteness and a lead singer who rolled on the floor, wore a wig and tried to play his guitar with his teeth.
They are the reason black people don't like rock.

The second act was the Dirtbombs, another garage rock band, except they actually knew how to play their instruments, write a song and the lead singer was black. Call it rock affirmative action, but I tend to enjoy black rockers (TV on the Radio) that aren't Lenny Kravitz or Ben Harper.

And then YYYs came on. Most of the songs they played were off of their newest album, "Show Your Bones" which sounds much better live. The set was about 75 minutes and Karen O is a truly incredible performer.

A glimpse of her madness,








Then I went to my boy's house for a few days and was reminded of the joys of being in a small college town where everyone knows a little too much about each other's life. I will skip the lurid details.

The main story here was playing an XBox 360 on a 40" screen. The wireless controllers are on point, the connectivity through a home network is fairly seamless and the games render well.

The game selection is not where it could be, but with the PS3 nowhere in sight and its expected price of $83754, all Microsoft has is time.

While in the midst of the small-towniness and the Xbox 360 festivities all anyone did was check Facebook. Drunk girls in the middle of a house party were checking Facebook, men in the middle of XBox 360's "Perfect Dark" were checking the Facebook.

This shit was truly ridiculous and so I gave in and joined the fun. Now I can find the kid who used to pee in the water fountain from kindergarten as well as the girl I used to play footsies with in 3rd grade.

I can also shamelessly promote my blog.

If I can stomach MySpace's schizophrenic and offensively ugly web pages, then I will have 15 year old webcam girls reading Start Snitching by the end of the week.

Accidental Plagiarism? Indian please...

(We don't believe you, you need more people.)

I was recently shattered when I discovered that the melody of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," quite possibly my favorite song, was plagiarized from "He's So Fine" by 1960's girl group, The Chiffons.

Harrison admitted he was inspired by the song "Oh Happy Day" when writing "My Sweet Lord."
Combine that with an LSD trip and his infatuation with Hinduism and you can see how he ended up getting sued for copyright infringement.

Not long after that, it was revealed that Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, who signed to a 6-figure book contract two years ago at age 17, stole shitloads of material from at least 3 authors for her debut novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life."

She claims she has a photographic memory and that she read one author's work so many times that she internalized what she read. She hasn't responded about stealing from the other two authors yet.

The publisher cancelled her book deal, every newspaper she every worked for is raking through her work, Harvard may expel her, Salman Rushdie is gunning for her (when an author who is literally being gunned for, takes the time to gun for you, things are bad) and now the book is more popular than ever.
You gotta love America.

Anyway, it got me thinking about this whole idea of accidental plagiarism.
And there seems to be a word for this phenomenon, it's called cryptomnesia.

Can you be so impressed upon by art that it just becomes a part of your collective consciousness?
Can you have the same exact idea as someone else?

This girl appears to be a psychotic liar, so she isn't the best example but for some reason I kind of believe George Harrison.

It's possible, but it seems to be very illegal and expensive.
Oh well.

_______________________________________________

Other nonsense

-Snoop Dogg was released from a London jail, after he and his weed carriers got into a fight with airport security. This of course is the same dumb bastard who gave this memorable quote,

• We can't stop [the violence...but we can] try to be as positive as we can and do good things with our lives. I just know that every time somebody gets killed in hip-hop, we should look at it as a tragedy. There's nothing we can do to stop it as hip-hop artists, but be who we are and continue to make our good music."

Indeed.


-My(Corporate) Space users seem to be to stupid or busy posting semi nude photos of themselves to notice that the site was purchased by Rupert Murdoch and that it is now another revenue stream for his News Corporation.
The company and advertisers are still in the process of figuring out how to squeeze some revenue out of the site.

Article says,

• The bigger opportunity, however, is not so much selling banner ads, but finding ways to integrate advertisers into the site's web of relationships. Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, for example, created a profile for the animated square hamburger character from its television campaign. About 100,000 people signed up to be ''friends'' with the square.

Jesus Christ. Can I be friends with your corporation too?



-MTV continues its trend of making hits out of shows that people hate. The newest example is "Super Sweet Sixteen," which is about disgustingly rich kids crying until they get what they don't deserve. Most parents pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for these things.

Peep the mentality of the children these parties produce,

• We both want to lose three pounds," said Priya, who received a Mercedes convertible and an assortment of diamond jewelry for her birthday. Her sister's graduation gift package included a Bentley, diamonds and two homes in India.

  "I was really surprised," Divya said, "because I was only expecting a Bentley and one house."

  Just last month they gave a preparty where invitations to their coming event were handed out by body builders whom Priya ordered not to smile. "Assistants are not supposed to smile," she explained.
  
  

Now peep how cheap bastard L.A. Reid flipped his party,

• Aaron Reid, son of the music mogul L. A. Reid, took five months to plan his party. He had just moved to New York from Atlanta and was eager to make a name for himself at his new prep school, to establish himself as more than L. A. Reid's son. His invitation was an MP3 player. At his party, held at Jay-Z's 40/40 club last November, the producer Jermaine Dupri was the D.J., the rapper Kanye West performed, and Diddy, Aaron's godfather, made an appearance. Poppa Reid clearly pulled some strings.
  

  "Everybody else spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I didn't spend anything," Mr. Reid said proudly. "I got my friend's club. I got my friend to perform and I got my friend to D.J."

  "There's absolutely no way that I would ever spend that type of money," he continued. "I think it's over the top and sickening and a real poor representation of wealth."

Ah, that hustla spirit.

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I come in the name of Jesus. Repeat it after me bitch.

Forget about "Lazy Sunday," "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch" and all those Internet sensations.

I have found the one Internet star to rule them all.

My man, Dallas Penn put me onto this and I am just passing on the good word of the Lord.

There are too many quotables in this video to even list, but I'm going to go with, "I make my ass very available."

Be warned, this shit is crack. Try not to watch it as many times as I have.

It's too bad there wasn't a YouTube in 1997 when this guy was on community access in L.A.
He would have taken all of Flava Flav's reality shows.

The State of Stupidity

(Still Haitian...)

George Bush wants the National Anthem sung only in English.

Not because he wants to appeal to the anti-immigration rednecks out there, but because he barely understands it as it is.

Now, I understand why he wages illegal wars, tortures 'Rabs and spies on Americans.
He doesn't understand the founding documents of this country.

Next on the list of documents Bush wants translated to English are,

The Declaration of Independence
The Bill of Rights
The Emancipation Proclamation

Speaking of the Emancipation Proclamation, Condi Rice got big and disagreed with plantation head, Dubya, in public.

• "From my point of view, people expressing themselves as wanting to be Americans is a good thing," she said in an interview on CBS television's Face the Nation programme.

  "I've heard the national anthem done in rap versions, country versions, classical versions. The individualisation of the American national anthem is quite under way," she said.

  The chief US diplomat suggested the language of the national anthem was less an issue than the growing polemic about immigration reform in the United States.

Who gave you a point of view, nigro?
Do you know where you work?
Bush will not be pleased when she returns to the field on Monday. The last negro to disagree with Bush in public was Colin, um, what's his face, Powell. Yeah, him. Wherever he is.

Exactly. She's about to get Colined, why don't black people learn?

More article goodness,

• Bush took a harsher view of Nuestro Himno, which has been recorded by Latin-American artists including Wyclef Jean, Olga Tanon, Ivy Queen and Carlos Ponce.
  
  "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English," he told reporters.

At first, I thought a few polylingual anthems might be a nice gesture towards the multiculturism that Americans like to bury so far under the nation's carpet.
But then I read the phrase, "Latin-American artist Wyclef" and saw that Aventura, the Latino Backstreet boys were singing along, and I realized that this is nothing but the newest music industry marketing scheme.

When Hispanics outnumber whites and blacks Wyclef will have a friendly new majority racial group to sell the Fugees reunion album to. Maybe he should focus on helping Musiq Soulchild remember the National Anthem.

Article time,

• In the Spanish version, the translation of the first stanza is relatively faithful to the spirit of the original, though Kidron says the producers wanted to avoid references to bombs and rockets. Instead, there is "fierce combat." The translation of the more obscure second stanza is almost a rewrite, with phrases such as "we are equal, we are brothers."

Very bad idea Latino people, almost as bad of an idea as having students cutting high-school, dancing to Daddy Yankee on top of cars waving the Mexican flag during the immigration protests in L.A.

Maybe the protestors weren't exactly doing that, but that's what waving foreign flags looks like to racist anti-immigration American.
These immigrant rights groups need to work on their P.R.
Holla at the Resource.

Listen to this musical monstrosity here.
Jimi Hendrix's "Banner" this is not.

So for those keeping score at home, Bush wants Dubai, a terrorist sponsor, to controls American ports and now build American military equipment, but doesn't want Latino people to sing the anthem in Spanish.

Consistency is the key people.