Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Rest In Peace


















I'll confess, its not like I ever really listened to James Brown, I'm one of those younger kids that got to know him secondhand through the music he influenced, namely hip hop,and to a lesser extent,funk. A musical giant and genius, and from the highlights I've been seeing, one hell of a live performer.


Rest in Peace.

Monday, December 25, 2006

More news

Oh my god, they just did a piece on the "Left Behind" video games (based on the Christian book series of the same name). You convert or kill non-believers and are apparently battling a satanic army led by Mohammed something something.

But don't worry, lest you get the idea that you think this game might promote violence in a religion I was raised to belive to be pacifistic, they quote a game developer saying that using violence actually decreases your "spirit points" and that its far more effective to use prayer and your bible to convert people "when possible."

You can't make this up. What's the point of satire in a satirical world?

Oh, and ABC News now just went to a black guy I've never seen before doing a sports update from ESPN. And I watch a lot of ESPN. I'm not sleeping until I see a Native American. Or maybe the Latina counts as both.

I really should sleep.

I just heard a white news anchor say "raw funky style," referring to James Brown with a straight face.

Christmas Morning

I cant sleep so Im watching ABC News Christmas episode
which seems like its on endless repeat. The co-hosts,
each in different cities, are some Indian guy and a
Latina, neither of whom Iv EVER seen on TV. Its
amazing how news programs become like the UN on major
American holidays. I guess its nice to know we have an
ample supply of colored journalists just under that
glass ceiling.

HOLY SHIT! They just said that James Brown died. He
had checked into a hospital last night with pneumonia.
Damn.

Rest In Peace, Godfather of Soul.

Wait, doesnt seem like the shows are just repeating
themselves, its actually one loooong overnight show. I
just saw a bit on men shopping for lingueries that
wasnt on an hour ago. They stuck these two schmoes
with the overnight shift! How ass is that? Well,
hopefully this isnt the only airtime theyll get all
year, there are other holidays.

***********
The future already exists

Jorge Luis Borges

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Sunday, December 24, 2006

Men in Tights

Dennis found a wikipedia of comic books, comicvine. I checked out the entries and the character profiles are really thin. I also don't know how big a fan I am of the rankings and that they're based on user voting. Is Mr. Fantastic indeed the smartest comic superhero on the planet? Yeah, the FF beat Galacuts waaay back in the day but that's only because Uatu the Watcher hooked them up with the Ultimate Nullfier. Otherwise Earth would have been toast. And Spider-Man is smarter than Galactus? Peter Parker is a bright kid and won some science fairs, but making a couple of high-pressure web-shooters doesn't really stack stack up against building machines that enable you to consume whole planets and imbuing numerous other lesser beings with God-like powers (Silver Surfer, Firelord, Nova just to name a few).

After checking out comicvine I went on Wikipedia to look at their comic entries and I found two things that have been providing me hours of fun. A list of 1) black superheroes and 2) asian superheroes. I didn't get to the latino heroes list but that's next up. And for more fun with racial stereotypes in comics, I checked out the Superfriends list. As stereotypical as the characters were, they also rarely appeared in the show next to the white mainstream ones so I guess that mitigated their harmful impact on my young impressionable asian mind. And if I remember correctly, they were in fact rotated, so that each espisode would feature one guest minority hero, but you would never see them all at once.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Santa Baby...

One of the nice things about doing 7ARTS is that I get to try new things I writing that I’ve never done. Even though I’m an “artist” by training I learn new things about myself all the time doing the writing stuff alongside the students. Don had us free write a letter to Santa and I just bugged out, taking off from a joke that Dennis and I used to make that shutting down Christmas might be the best way to really start the revolution based on the amount of sales that retailers depend on in the holiday season. I was shocked to learn how much retailers’ success/failure in the year is really determined by this intense one-month period. So I went off and had some fun bitching out Santa:

Dear Santa,

How ya doin? I know you don’t exist. In fact, when I was in church, my youth pastor used to call you “Satan Claus,” I earnestly asked him if you were a demonic manifestation.

You are all that is wrong with American capitalism and the politics of consumer consumption. There are protesters throwing rocks at World Trade Organization meetings, the International Monetary Fund. Those cats have it all wrong. YOU’RE the problem, in your furry red coat with your cherub cheeks and gleeful smile. You are capitalist oppression at its absolute worst. What kind of working conditions do you have those elves in anyway? Are they union? When was the last time your factories were audited? Do they get a living wage? Fuck Wal-Mart, you make them look like a benevolent ruler.

We bring you down, we bring down capitalism, ushering in a new Marxist utopia. Stores would shut down; factories would cease operations-the ripple effects throughout our global interdependent economy would bring commerce to a screeching halt. Che had it all wrong trying train guerillas to overthrow two-bit South American and African dictators. He should have had his eyes set on the North Pole. Though with your elves, abominable snowman and harsh climates, you may have coup-proofed yourself better than Saddam Hussein. Or is it CIA money that funds your operation? Crack in the inner cities, overthrowing democratically elected socialist leaders, and you, forcing us to buy shit that we don’t even need. It all fits. Or maybe you’re NSA, secretly wiretapping us to find out who’s been naughty or nice. Maybe its Halliburton, is Dick Chency on your board?

All I know Kris Kringle is that I’m on to you. I’m on to you.

Sincerely,

Jason

PS Can you hook me up with a digital camera this year?

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Ode to Dennis

Like monkeys given infinite time and typewriters eventually writing the complete works of Shakespeare, my dumb ass has somehow created a blog that has an exponentially higher ad rank than my friend Dennis.

According to him, I am living proof that Google’s ad ranking algorithms are deeply flawed. I don’t even know what an algorithm is. Dennis is an internet junkie, knows everything about Google and spends hours on his blog writing entries about random products for extra money and yet somehow his ad rank is lower than mine. He can’t figure it out. I haven’t posted in months and two people, maybe three, link to my blog while Dennis posts regularly and 60-80 people link to his. So he offered me five bucks to write a blog entry about him and to create a couple of links to him.

So in full disclosure to all my loyal readers (all two of you), I am being compensated for this entry. I guess he gets more for his pay-per-post entries if his ad rank improves and one way his ad rank can improve is if a blog with a higher ad rank links to his. Its all in the algortithm. Algorithm. Uh yeah.

Also, because one reason people hit his blog is because he has entries about Rachael Ray (apparently hating Rachael Ray is a big internet phenomenon). If I add a link to his Rachael Ray entry that will really help. I don’t hate Rachael Ray though. She’s overly perky and probably has more success and exposure than her raw talent really justifies but I’m not going to hate on her hustle.

I was also going to turn this into a creative writing opportunity to write about Dennis but I’ve met my two-link obligation. I will just say that Dennis is one of my best friends, he’s really smart, really bald, really funny and I’ve known him since our fat-awkward eigth-grade days at Hunter. He’s also quite the salsa dancer. All you hot ladies religiously reading my blog, get at him. He’s in business school too. Word.