"Mean Bloggers" Make Steve Harvey Cry

Warning, this is over 8 minutes long and watching the whole thing may be painful. Not in the "poor Steve Harvey" way or "Oh, jeez, grown man blubbering on TV. AWKWARD" way, but in the "why the hell am I watching this? Oh God, is this my life? I should go bang my head in the wall" way:


Firstly, I haven't heard of Steve Harvey since commercials for episodes of the Steve Harvey show back in 2002 or whatever. So I see this video and he's all "boo hoo, mean bloggers". Apparently he was being called out for being a bigot, among other things, and the internet is flooded with smack on the guy. Why?

Well, apparently not believing in God means a person has no moral compass. Note Tyra's uncomfortable rendition of the "polite titter":

[VIDEO ORIGINALLY HERE WAS TAKEN DOWN, BOO HOO.]
He also called atheists "idiots" on Larry King. Ironically, the transcript on that page has Joy Behar telling Steverino: "'Cause it’s a free country, thank goodness." Then Stevie wants to cry later about "mean bloggers"? I didn't see him considering any atheists' feelings. Don't dish it if you can't take it.

He has also profited from the above through a best-selling book, a paper brick with large font and a larger name full of gems like this one:

M]y girls and my concern for the future inspire me [to write this book] as well. They will all grow up and reach for the same dream most women do: The husband. Some kids. A house. A happy life. True love.

He forgot baking cookies, sewing ripped crotches on pants, and giving head dressed as June Cleaver.

Let me make it clear that I am not an atheist and don't really care what them or anyone else gets called by Steve Harvey, a person of modest celebrity that has never had a place of relevancy in my life. But sheesh, Steve, if you're gonna go calling a whole group of people idiots and dogging on their beliefs, don't be so damn surprised to find them biting back at you. What's more, who says you even have to read it? Doesn't your religion teach "turning the other cheek" or somethin'?

I will close with a quote from our pal Steve Harvey. Remember children, haters gonna hate, players gonna play, bloggers gonna blog:

You know, the Internet has become this place for evil to dwell. Y’unnerstand? They… people who blog… who have no sense of reality… they just blog about you–don’t even know you! I got kids, man, be reading stuff that ain’t true ’bout their father. You understand? I know you know. Because they–they–they–people just blog!

Frisco bans the Happy Meal; Fat-asses Rage

In case you haven't heard about this already, straight from the horse's mouth... the horse in this instance being a reliable old nag known as the Associated Press:


Or for the simpler, readable version, here's a quote from Top News Buzz:

San Francisco recently passed a law which states that breaks down the concept of giving away free toys accompanies with unhealthy restaurant meals for children. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the law last Tuesday and had an 8-3 vote. This law would take effect on December 1, 2010.

The crazy thing is that people are actually all, "Boo, our personal freedoms! Y!" HUH? Child obesity in this country is nuts, everybody knows that. Why should a business be allowed to profit from this?

From Happy Meal insanity:

"When George Orwell wrote about government control in his novel 1984, McDonald's hadn't even invented the Happy Meal yet."

I KNEW blankety-blank Orwell would come up somewhere. This is because Orwell supported the U.S. becoming OBSCENELY FAT. Four legs good, two legs baaaad!

In How Banning Happy Meals Could Make Kids Fatter, the guy's reasoning is that kids will get their fattening meal plus toy elsewhere. Um no, it's not just the Happy Meal, it's all kids' meals. Nice try. Unless little Katelyn wants to ride her Schwinn to Oakland.

From Fast Food, Happy Meals, and Legislating Personal Responsibility:

It should be your right to make bad choices for your child; send them into a lifetime of bad habits; foster your child’s life of gross obesity; and set the stage for your child’s early death.

Look, I am not a parent, I speak out as someone that was often tossed a Happy Meal when I was a child. My parents' idea of fostering healthy living was buying skim milk to go with my giant slice of chocolate cake and half-dozen Oreos. I rather wish that, when I was a child, SOMEBODY had made the available food choices healthier.

As a person who developed weight problems as a child and then had it balloon to 210 lbs. in early adulthood, no, I do not think it's okay to preserve a parent's right to completely ruin their child's health. As a little girl, I was never educated by anyone on what to eat or how much. According to public opinion, this is clearly because I didn't have any "personal responsibility". Sure, I was only nine years old when I started packing on weight, but I should've had personal responsibility and demanded broccoli! Since you can't see me, I'M ROLLING MY EYES.

I mean, shit, did you really expect my parents to do it for me? My dad's idea of a "snack" is pieces of breaded, fried catfish in between two slices of white bread. My mom's idea of desert is half a cake, a pack of M&M's, and an ice cream cone. (But only one because she already had cake.) Hyuck! "But it's the right of people like that to fuck up your health!" You know what? FUCK YOU.

Saying crap like "America, learn responsibility!" makes the assumption that everyone has the tools, knowledge, and ability to make healthy eating choices. Of course, upper middle-class and rich people are especially stupid in this regard since the bulk of them are ridiculously blind of their own socioeconomic advantages. This is a country where you can't even give away rye and pumpernickel to poor people! How much control do you think a kid has in a household with other obese people? Adults who refuse to change? No money, no support of any kind in the home, so what chance do these children have? Can we at least start with the damn kids' meals?

The notion that this is ruling somehow Orwellian in nature is utterly ridiculous. Nobody's made it illegal to buy junior a Big Mac with fries and a large Coke. Nobody's made it illegal for McDonald's the repackage the current Happy Meal as a Mini-Combo and sell the toy seperately. You can buy the toy on its own already. The nature of the Happy Meal is in that it's aimed at children. By packaging the toy, it is specifically branded to children. Why was it okay for them to nix Joe Camel (which I don't agree with at all, but whatever) but Ronald and the ol' Golden Arches can throw a bunch of breaded salt into a fryer and market that shit directly to children? The least that can be done is to make the actual meal healthier. Why should stuff marketed to children be allowed to contribute to serious health issues later on in life?

Why I don't like it when you drink...

If anything has added to my "lame" status over the years aside from my lazy excuse for fashion sense and generally quiet, anti-social nature, it's been when people realize that I'm pretty much a teetotaler. I swear, it's like you grow an extra head when you tell people you don't consume alcohol. You're a leper and no one wants to touch you. You can't "loosen up". I've been shown pictures of people boozing away and been "regaled" with stories of them vomiting and driving drunk and I'm supposed to clap and award these losers medals.

You see, I'm clearly not "living life" or so I'm told. I find this ironic considering the people who tell me that have been proven to drink to ridiculous excesses, presumably to escape the very life they so claim to luuuuuuuuuve livin'. If you need liquor to get over your inhibitions that damn badly, I hate to break it to you—okay, actually, I'd luuuuuuve to—but you haven't made any progress. You're like an old man and his viagra: needing a dose of something-something to get the job the done but still pathetically and woefully impotent.

Anyway, I digress. The fact is I just don't like it.

1. It tastes like crap. I like to call liquor "Bath & Body Works" because it tastes like some body spray I accidentally tasted. (HA HA ho, no.) I like to taste alcholic drinks out of pure curiousity and frankly I haven't found anything I'd consume on its own without using it in food or something. You may as well tell me you eat paprika by itself.

2. It ruined my birthday party. I was a little kid and a bunch of my relatives came over and got drunk. At a CHILD's party? I mean, I'd go to school and learn the dangers of alcohol and how it's killed people and then I get to celebrate my eighth or ninth or whatever birthday with a bunch of booze-hounds. That put a worse taste in my mouth than actually tasting the stuff as an adult. Beer and cigarettes do not belong at a child's birthday party and any time I see them there, I die a bit inside. And I thought getting packs of notebook paper one year for a birthday present made me a bitter pill.

3. No respect for moderation. "WHY CANT I HAS A GLASS OF WINE?" First of all, no one's talking about a glass of wine, stupid. This is clearly about people who just chug it away like it's water that's gonna win them a Wii, conveniently forgetting that woman died. Anyway, do you think me or anyone else for that matter gives a rat's ass about someone who only has a beer or two or sips a glass of wine with their dinner? Don't be retarded.

4. It's a ridiculous status symbol. Like a douchetastic pair of over-priced sunglasses or a groovy national landmark, people can't resist posing with it in pictures with a smug sense of pride. And then they actually publish these online! Do you see me smugly posing with a gallon of milk or a quart of juice, dumbass? You DO realize it makes you look STUPID, right? And unless you're an avid wine connoisseur or the owner of Budweiser or something, you don't need to pose with any alcohol.

5. It makes you indignant of the law. My favorite one? When people are all bitching about going to jail or paying fines on multiple DWI offenses. "Damn the law! Trying to save innocent drivers by punishing me! It'soooooo unfair!" BAAAAAAAAAAAAAW.

6. It ruins sober people. I've met a lot of funny, smart folks at work and school. Or at least I thought they were. Get these folks liquored up and watch out, bro! "OHHHHH, but I'm just livvvvvin' life." Sad, because I liked you before you turned into a babbling, potato chip-spewing drunken asshat with no self-respect. Lots of awesome actors, singers, and talented people wasted by this crap. Come on, you know it. Rehab this and rehab that.

7. Point, stupid counterpoint. "But they do it in EURRRROPE!!" Then solve both our problems and MOVE TO EUROPE. "I can DIE for my country but I can'ts drink!" The fact that you compare the lost lives of our military men and women in service to our country to your legal inability to get hammered shows why you have not been deemed mature enough to drink. "Why can't I HAS A GLASS WINE?" Because in loads of lovely, retarded internet arguments, it always comes down to a damn glass of wine. Hey, I think we all know it's not about "a glass of wine" so shut-up.

8. It smells... like broken promises and dreams of Christmas past.

9. I do not feel safe on the roads on weekend nights. I really don't do it and it makes me a bit apprehensive when I am out there. "Fifty-four percent of all teen motor vehicle deaths occur on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thirty-five percent occur between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m." And those are just teens! Boo! I don't wanna die, homes.

10. My uncle almost hit me in the head with a plate. Drunk people + repressed problems is the recipe for a made-for-tv movie on Lifetime. Tons of people with crappy lives tend to turn towards firewater, denying the fact that once they leave Beer-Narnia or wherever they go, their problems will still be waiting for them. Hey, I haven't seen anybody's life improved by the stuff either.

11. People destroy themselves and then want free organs. Truth, I tell you, truth! These people whine and whine about dying and needing a kidney or a liver after forty years of hard drinking and get all bitchy when you won't let them farm you for parts. Then they get their whatever and don't curb their bad habits. Aren't there better people these organs can go to? If you want to destroy your liver, fine, but don't make it everyone else's problem. Don't make people pony up for your medical care when you didn't give a damn about your body in the first place. Speaking of which...

12. It wastes money. (1) How much more government bread are they gonna spend on "prosecuting" spoiled rich jerks when John Law doesn't even mete out any real punishments? Let's just leave Lindsay and Paris alone. Then, when they hurt someone or destroy property, sue their asses for a megaton of cash. Rehab is a joke. Jailtime is a joke. Ankle bracelets are a joke. Stop wasting tax payer dough unless you're serious. (2) If you're so damn poor, stop buying beer and pay your rent! If I bought $50 worth of gum each week for myself, you'd think I'd have a serious problem, right? $50 worth of beer isn't any better.

13. Ridiculous level of public acceptability. In an era of "Jackass" and other MTV garbage, it's no small wonder why these antics are lauded. There is no sense of shame anymore. In fact, it's a worse crime to be a virgin or live at home than it is to have a drinking problem. This is because people who drink, like shoplifters and constantly pregnant welfare moms, are just "livin' life".

Hey, if all that crap ^ is "living life", no thank you! :)

EDIT: Forgot one! #14. Free license to act like a jerk and talk trash. But you didn't mean it because YOU WERE DRINKING. Hey, you chose to drink sober and you probably really think those things anyway, so you meant it by proxy. Prefacing insults with "He's a really nice guy but" don't help either. Especially when you then crack a joke at his expense and expect the whole table to laugh. Boo.

Yeah, I know, I'm a jerk, too. Hey, at least I own up to my shit and don't hide behind a bottle.

Music Review: Florrie - "Introduction"

Florrie's first EP is already available for download at her website: http://www.florrie.com/. If you would like to support Florrie's endeavor to bring us bitchin' music, you can pre-order the EP from iTunes... or just wait until Amazon gets it because iTunes is a piece of crap.* You can also buy other fly Florrie merch in her online store. She has a neat t-shirt of the album art on her website that I'm this close to buying because I'd totally love to wear her face. So, onto the EP... Tracks are:

1. Call of the Wild
2. Give Me Love
3. Summer Nights
4. Left Too Late

Choosing a favorite would be like choosing a favorite child although I am childless but in theory it'd be, like, totally hard to. But yeeeeeah, ahem, I love "Summer Nights"! For some reason, I imagine myself on a yellow moped in Italy riding on a stretch of road overlooking the beach. But not near any volcanos like Vesuvius or some shit because I don't want to die. Want a remix, want want want!

This entire album is poppy yet mellow. It's makes little happy marshmellows grow in my heart.

5/5 acorns.

Oh yes, and the offficial vid for "Give Me Love":


* I searched on Amazon BTW and it's there with Florrie's "Call 911" remixes for Kitsuné, it's just not available until November 15th.

Why Capital vs. Thomas is a load of horseshit.

"Lady, look out behind you!"
If you need some reading materials on the subject, you can go to either Single mom can't pay $1.5M song-sharing fine or The RIAA's latest victory over Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Here's an older article about the matter: Thomas testimony ends with tears, anger, Swedish death metal. The gist is that a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas-Rasset was using a file-sharing application, Kazaa, to download music. 

The nature of peer to peer file sharing means that while you download something, you are helping others download the same file through whatever pieces of the file you possess while downloading. Thus, whether you mean to or not, you are also sharing music. She apparently did this with over a thousand songs. After not paying the amount demanded by a desist letter, also known as toilet paper, the case went to trial. Over the years, she had been found liable for various amounts, with the latest amount being $1.5M. Despite the emphasis that Thomas-Rasset is a repeat offender, this lawsuit, formerly Virgin vs. Thomas, is not for damages from thousands of songs. It is only for 24 songs: 

 * Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain" 

 * Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last" 

 * Janet Jackson "Let’s Wait Awhile" 

 * Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You" 

 * Goo Goo Dolls "Iris" 

 * Journey "Faithfully"; "Don’t Stop Believing" 

 * Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery" 

 * Aerosmith "Cryin’" 

 * Linkin Park "One Step Closer" 

 * Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me" 

 * Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart" 

 * Bryan Adams "Somebody" 

 * No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People" 

 * Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run" 

 * Richard Marx "Now and Forever" 

 * Destiny’s Child "Bills, Bills, Bills" 

 * Green Day "Basket Case" 

 Am I the only one who finds the fact that a song called "One Honest Heart" is up there funny? Anyway, with the latest settlement, that is a staggering $62,500 A SONG. Even half of that, $31,250, is grossly unreasonable.

 

Let's take an example: "Bathwater" by No Doubt sells for 99 cents on Amazon. (I won't even see if it's the same price at iTunes because iTunes is a piece of crap.) Rounding down, that is 31,565 people that Thomas-Rasset would have had to share "Bathwater" with to even make the latest settlement halfway logical. This still makes some big assumptions though. 

 1. Would all 31,565+ people including Thomas-Rasset have ever bought "Bathwater" in the first place? I guarantee you that if all of those people were ordered by the court that they would have to pay for the song or get rid of it, over half of them would hit the delete key. Not everything that is pirated is something that ever would have been purchased to begin with!  Hey, I like the song, don't get me wrong. But the RIAA, Capitol, and all of those other monkeys need to accept the fact that shitloads of people would rather not have a lot of music than pay for it. Therefore, what money did Capitol lose from the people who NEVER would have bought it? And why should Thomas-Rasset be liable for it? 

  2. How do you prove that she even shared it with 31,565+ people? Now I'm no lawyer, but shouldn't there be a burden of proof here? Can they just pick a number out of their ass? I mean, they were willing to settle for $5000 dollars back in August of 2005. Why isn't the figure Thomas-Rasset is supposed to pay not $5000 plus court costs or something. In what universe is it okay for that to balloon to $1.5M? Shoot, I watched Judge Pirro today and some woman was suing her ex for a car that she had been in the process of selling to him. Her original price was $800. He paid $300, but not the rest. And this lady wanted more than $500! Judge Pirro called that shit out and I'm calling out this. RIDICULOUS, friend. No effin' way. 

 3. How do you know 31,565+ people didn't already own "Bathwater"? How many of these people already had "Return to Saturn", "The Singles Collection", or the "Bathwater" single and for whatever reason just wanted a digital download from somewhere. By saying Thomas-Rasset is liable for "Bathwater" being shared without compensation, the courts are also saying these people should have bought a digital copy from Amazon or Asstunes of SOMETHING THEY ALREADY OWNED. I mean, we're still allowed to rip our CDs for our own personal use, aren't we? If my copy of "The Singles Collection" is at home and I'm a friend's house and want to sync "Bathwater" to my MP3 player, why the hell should I have to pay AGAIN? What's wrong with just snagging it online? Not to mention the folks that liked "Bathwater" so much they went and bought a CD or digital download. Where are they in this equation? Yes, they initially took it for free but is a subsequent purchase 100% meaningless? Furthermore, if my computer, MP3 player, or copy of the CD is stolen, shouldn't I be able to replace a song I've already bought? 

Now this case is too complicated to make proper points on every little issue. Although Thomas-Rasset has been accused of playing the "single mom can't feed mah keedz" card, I have no idea what bankrupting this woman is supposed to prove besides that Capitol and the RIAA are insanely greedy and effin' nutso. She stole music, she got caught. And people are like, "well, if she shoplifted a purse, blah blah blah". 

Digital media is not comparable to shoplifting a goddamn purse or a dress. People who want a song but don't want to buy it can rip an MP3 from a friend's CD, get an MP3 from a relative, or rip a CD from the library. You can't borrow a freakin' purse at the library. Purses don't have the ability to multiply beyond the realm of control. Get real, folks. One of the comments for the MSN article said something like if Thomas-Rasset had shoplifted all of the CDs these songs came from, the penalty would be NO WHERE near $1.5M. And while peer to peer file sharing has the ability to share from millions, the fact is that millions who are stealing songs like "Bathwater" are not ALL using a single source like Thomas-Rasset for all of their music needs. It's like they're trying to make her pay for every single theft of the damn songs. 

I do not believe it would be correct to merely find her liable for the initial cost of the songs, around $24. If she perjured or did anything else to affect the outcome of this case, she should be fined. Penalties and violations of the law are due for the thefts; Okay, I get it. But in a lawsuit for 24 songs, over a million bucks in damages is ass no matter how you slice it. There's no way that many people at a time want "Bathwater" or any of those other songs and that they all happened to take it from Kazaa AND from Thomas-Rasset. The MSN article points out that while the legal minimum is $750 per infringement, Thomas-Rasset has been found liable for well over that amount multiple times.

When a reporter pointed out that three juries of her peers had decided that she should pay well above the minimum, she said there's "no rhyme or reason to the numbers" but she respects jurors for doing their jobs.

Frankly, stuff like this leads me to believe that this woman is an idiot and "three juries of her peers" were in fact three juries of other idiots, which makes perfect sense. A jury is not doing its job if it truly believes this result is just. There are killers that aren't found liable for this much in civil damages for taking a life let alone a single mom taking her some music. Is it really so horrible that she needs Gwen Stefani to sing about washing herself "in your old bathwater" to forget that she's the mother of four kids who works as a natural resources coordinator? And she's Native-American so, like, didn't America already take this woman's land? Can't this shit just cancel each other out?

Then there's this tidbit from Cara Duckworth of the RIAA: "People forget about all of the individuals who work really hard to make music for a living," she said. "These people are negatively impacted whenever music is stolen and distributed to millions of people." I have hard goddamn time believing that Thomas-Russet cost No Doubt $187,500 ($62,500 * 3) in damages, let alone that she caused their songs to fall into the hands of millions of people. This isn't the ending to the last Harry Potter book where no one else had something that was distributed to the detriment of the source. "Bathwater" was out for a good five years before Thomas-Rasset decided to help herself to a free copy with many other songs on the list of 24 out for far longer. One of the millions of people who BOUGHT "Bathwater" was how Thomas-Rasset got the song in the first place. 

 And if Capitol and the RIAA are so concerned about "the individuals" who make the music making a proper living, why don't they give Gwen, Tom, Tony, the rest of No Doubt, their mixers, whoever else worked on and marketed the song some of that cheddar that was instead spent on this stupid lawsuit. If Thomas-Rasset had paid the initial $5000, how much of that would have even made it to Tony Kanal's wallet? Why doesn't Capitol spend money looking for ways to profit off this digital wave they have no hope of stopping instead of trying to get money from people who can't pay? 

I mean, Thomas-Rasset couldn't buy the music legally so what makes anyone think she can pay for it thousands of times over? This isn't teaching thieves a lesson, this is just being cruel and unfair to one who got caught.