To Barack Obama: Show us the *TRUE* Sonia Sotomayor.

For weeks, we’ve been fed propaganda from the Obama White House, praising Sonia Sotomayor, visuals of handshakes, smiles, poses, and accomplishments. Where are her failings? Real people have them. You expect us to believe your administration is being honest about Sotomayor, Mr. Obama. So, why not tell the public what her faults are? It’d be an act of good faith, especially now, when one is badly needed.

Where does Sonia Sotomayor need to improve herself? What must she work on, to better herself, as a judge? She can’t be perfect, as no on is.

I’ll tell you where I think she needs work. Following Constitutional law. She has ruled contrary to the Constitution at least once, that we can verify. She also isn’t very good with racial issues, it seems. This may be trivial, but studies and individual cases have shed light on the possibility that she brings racial bias into her courtroom. She also has claimed there is nothing wrong with her affiliation with an all-female club, then resigned afterwards. If there’s nothing wrong, why resign? If it mattered enough to join, why abandon it at the mere challenge that it may show discrimination? Seems freudian to me. More to the point, quitting an organization simply because of questions calls into doubt your character. What else would you abandon, to prevent people asking questions? If you’re this wishy-washy in your nomination, what does it say about your work, should you be confirmed to the Supreme Court? It doesn’t say good things, in my belief.

I don’t like people who tell me what I can and can’t say. Sotomayor has demonstrated that she is *AGAINST* freedom of speech. Some of her associations suggest she is opposed to other rights we have. Her willingness to throw associations away, in an effort to simplify her advancement in her career, suggest she does not have the values which make for a wise and thoughtful judge. Most important, if Obama and his administration are going to actively spin-doctor her life, I don’t like her for the job, not one bit. If Barack Obama can’t be honest about her, there must be more wrong with her than we’ve seen. I wonder what they’re hiding.

AT&T violates National Do-Not-Call List.

AT&T have been caught red-handed, in a little scheme that is all too common nowadays. Companies pay other companies to make harassing or annoying calls to you, so that when they get exposed, they can claim they didn’t know anything, thus avoiding any backlash.

The problem is, this time it’s not just any old company. It’s a phone company, the sort of people who are generally charged with blocking unwanted calls. These are the people you’d expect to take care of offenders, not *BE* the offending call party themselves. There has been this number showing up for several days in my caller ID. It says “210-331-5229″, and no other information. They don’t talk when the phone is answered, and leave no message. Being curious, I looked it up. They leave various ‘random’ snippets in the caller ID information, at various times, ranging from “West”, to “Private Caller”, to “Blocked Name”, to actually using “AT&T” in some form.

There are several pages of complaints by people who have been called, including some on the Nationwide Do-Not-Call list. One person has an AT&T service that is supposed to block unknown calls, and the number identifies as such in AT&T’s system for her, and she still got the calls. Ironic, since the company blocking the call is the company making the call, one might wonder if they weren’t ’selectively’ allowing the calls to connect, even though they should not.

Some complainants reveal that AT&T seems to have these people call you when you change or downgrade your service with them. One guy says they started when he switched to a DSL-based phone. Sounds like harassment reminiscent of MCI, and as I recall, they got reamed for it. One complaint claims that in order to be removed, you have to be placed on a special internal AT&T Do-Not-Call list. What? The national one isn’t good enough? For the record, some of the complainants have stated that they have AT&T services, which would exempt AT&T from being held liable for illegally calling them, but enough complaints are from people who *DO NOT* have AT&T, to make it a legal problem for them. In my opinion, AT&T should be forced to stop making unsolicited calls, especially when they are in direct control over anti-telemarketing measures that are supposed to stop them from calling. There is a clear conflict of interest. I doubt anyone signs with the service expecting AT&T to block telemarketing calls from everyone else, while allowing in-house harassment. Signature or not, it’s really bad business ethics. The funny thing is, they even call when their office hours identify them as being closed. They can’t call if they’re not open. Nobody’d be there to make the calls.

I have an idea. Anyone who gets a call from 210-331-5229, switch your phone service to anyone who *ISN’T* AT&T. I bet that’d stop them. If not, hey, then they’d not be affiliated with you in a business relationship, and by law they could be fined for calling you, if you’re on the DNC list. From the volume of complaints, I bet that’d be a ton of fines they’d be paying.

Illiteracy in journalism.

I was just viewing an article, I won’t say which, and not far from the top, I see the phrase “..as the cameras role..”, thinking to myself, where in the hell did these idiots come from?

It’d be a poor rant, if it wasn’t so widespread. Look at your average newspaper, you’ll likely find at least one article on every page containing at least one error. When I was in high school, I passed the S.A.T.’s, and was told I was at college-level with my English and Spelling scores. I used to think that was impressive. Not so much, now. Not after I see all the people who surely had to go through years of classes, even more years of in-action job performance, and still can’t use common words in a sentence. Sadly, I blame the ‘digital’ age. Why bother learning how to spell? Why bother with punctuation? Just let a spell-check do all your work for you. Looking back, I feel insulted. My scores were obviously *ABOVE* college-level, when so many people with degrees aren’t even on par with my vocabulary. Have the standards lowered, or have people always been simply uninterested in language and communication? In some careers, the latter might make sense, but in journalism, isn’t the aim to connect with your readers? How do you do that, when they might misunderstand you?

At the opposite end of the spectrum, just to be fair, there’s something else that really peeves me in journalism. I guess it’s okay to call it hyper-literacy. This is pretty much where a journalist, for whatever reason, is writing an article, presumably read by the masses, and uses an obscure word that almost no one reading their article will understand. I’m very well-read, and even I have to look words up sometimes. Most of the time, when I do, it’s because of someone working for a newspaper suddenly deciding it’s time to play guess-what-I-mean. I don’t like guessing what the news people mean. I like them to report the news, on a universal level. I’d like to believe it is random, but I find the tendency to use ‘unfamiliar’ wording lies primarily in politically motivated articles. This could be a covert attempt at telling the truth, while confusing the readers as to what the truth is. I’m not sure. Either way, I find it annoying. I’m fairly certain others do, as well.

My point, is that the news, and journalism in general, should aim to connect on a basic level with everyone. When you alienate readers, viewers, and subscribers, how can you call yourselves a news agency?

Sonia Sotomayor should not be a judge, period. Supreme Court, or otherwise.

I’ve been reading this AP (Associated Press) article about the Republicans’ plans to call witnesses to Sotomayor’s character as a judge. There’s a pretty damning list. It includes people who have been discriminated against, who Sonia Sotomayor, as a federal judge, ruled against. There’s also Sandy Froman, an NRA (National Rifle Association) representative, who will produce testimony that Sotomayor is hostile to the Constitution’s Second Amendment, our right as citizens to bear arms. Democratic initiatives were working hard to paint her as unbiased, despite a recent independent review of her cases which proves otherwise.

One name I’m not seeing, though, is the one that is the most condemning of Sotomayor, in my belief. A lot of very powerful people in the federal government don’t like our Second Amendment, but Sonia Sotomayor is one of the rare judges that doesn’t like our First Amendment. She has sided with a panel decision which ruled that a student’s off-campus speech was made on-campus, even when it clearly was not, solely for the purpose of allowing the student’s school the right to discipline her for speaking her mind. For those who don’t understand the ramifications, this means Sonia Sotomayor supports court decisions that violate our rights as citizens to freely speak, without threat of being punished for our personal views. The student’s name is Avery Doninger, who was 17 years of age at the time she was vocally upset because her school canceled an annual concert for ’suspicious’ reasons. When she spoke on her blog, from her own home, she called for concerned parties to speak out, and keep up the pressure, in hope that the concert may be held anyway. For this hope, and this rallying cry, she was punished by her school’s administration, illegally. She was forbidden from running for student government, and the school even threatened other students who supported her in the student election. I’ve blogged more in-depth about the case in another post, so I’ll avoid going into complete detail here.

My point, this judge bends the law to fit her needs, and she has shown bias in her treatment of cases, and has made public on-record statements of inflammatory racial content. She even violates our most sacred rights to freedom of speech and expression, when it fits her agenda. Not only is she wrong for the Supreme Court, she shouldn’t even be a judge, at all. This is the United States. We like our free speech. We like our due process. We like having rights. Tell your Senators to vote no, especially Democrats. It would be absurd and a step back for democracy to vote Sotomayor into such an important legal position.

Richard Gere’s involvement in stolen classic tale.

I have always been a supporter of Richard Gere, both as an actor, and as a humanitarian voice. He campaigns for AIDS awareness, ecology, and is a supporter of the exiled Tibetan government. He has made many fine and varied films which are ‘classics’ of the big screen.

He’s been involved with a film listed as due out in August of 2009, called “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a classic tale from Japan, about a Japanese professor, and his companion, Hachiko, an Akita (Japan’s national dog breed). In this story, the professor dies, and his dog doesn’t know, so he spends the rest of his life waiting for his lost master, in Japan, at the local train station where his master always came from.

Gere’s movie, is a blatant ripoff, not because it’s a copy, but because it’s an ‘Americanized’ copy. As is common in such a copy of an established story, things are changed, usually due to some idiot’s whimsy. This professor has to be western. They couldn’t possibly have a Japanese story set in Japan, with Japanese actors. No, they have to change it. The professor needs a wife. The dog needs to be abandoned and taken in by Gere’s character. The professor also needs a child. There’s a train, but it’s not Japanese, and nothing is set in Japan. My guess is, they’ll call the dog “Hachiko” just so it’s not total theft.

I am tired of this trend. I really am. Come up with your own “dog’s story”. Stop stealing other people’s work. If I wanted to write a novel, it’d need to be mine. I couldn’t just steal someone else’s plot, alter a few key details, and become Stephen King. The author would likely sue me, assuming my prospective publisher didn’t notice the similarity and refuse publication. I can’t pass off another artist’s painting as my own. I can’t claim I invented Chevrolet. So, why are so many Hollywood studios stealing scripts, when they could just as easily create new work?

It’s not just Hollywood. The big television networks are doing the same. I can’t even count on all my fingers and toes the number of times I’ve seen a sitcom or drama plot re-used in the past few years. They’re not just re-using the quality shows, either. They’re ripping off the bombs, too. Guess what happens. The bombs keep bombing. Some shows just aren’t watchable. No matter how many times you tell a bad joke, it’s still bad. Of course, they also have a habit of canceling the good shows, usually they say it’s because they cost too much, or no one’s watching, even though everyone is.

So in conclusion, Richard Gere, if you have any dignity, you’ll make movies that aren’t cheap crap. Why couldn’t you play a tourist, in Japan, watching the original story unfold before your eyes? Or, produce it, if the story occurred at a time and place that would have made your presence unrealistic. Yes, there are plausible ways you could be involved, without cheapening the story. If you were looking for a paycheck, there’s really no excuse for making a cheap copy of someone else’s work. And, if you’re doing this for artistic value, be honest, there is some vanity here. Professor, husband, father, savior of man’s best friend. Pretending to be a thing, does not make you a thing. Pantomime is not the way to heavy your mark on the world.

Douchebag: Sheila Jackson Lee.

Yes, she’s trying to do a “good” thing. She’s a Texas Democrat in the house of representatives, and she’s got this legislation she wants to put through Congress, some kind of resolution to “honor” Michael Jackson. Yes, with all the truly important business in government going on now, she wants to waste time and money honoring an already world-famous (and infamous) celebrity.

I argue, Michael Jackson doesn’t need that resolution. He’d never ask for it. He’d accept, of course, because it would be the polite thing to do. It sounds so noble, until you realize the bill has Sheila Jackson Lee’s name all over it. It’s in a way kind of like what Al Sharpton does. This douchebag is trying to use a dead man to further her own popularity. She can deny it. She can lie about it all she likes, but people who author legislation get noticed, even more when their bills pass. It’s a “pork” bill. If no one tacks anything to it, it’s still pork, because Sheila Jackson Lee’s name is the pork. She brought a framed copy with her to the memorial. It hasn’t even been considered in Congress yet. That’d be like me framing a draft of a novel I hadn’t published. Something to wave to the crowd, and get applause, for herself. She’s every bit as much a vulture as Sharpton. It won’t stop with her, though. Everyone is going to crawl out of the woodwork and try playing the “close personal friend” game.

To those people, let me preemptively say, fuck you. Fuck you with a big pointy stick. Michael Jackson had fame, even after not one, but two trials for touching little boys. Even after publicly coming forward endorsing kids in his bed, he had fame. Even over ten years without an album or a new dance move, the guy could sell out concerts. So, anyone trying to leech on his name, you are worms. The worst kind of worms. You can’t even do a speck of what he could.

To Pepsi: Make ‘Throwback’ a permanent product!

I have been looking for ‘Pepsi’ and ‘Mountain Dew’ versions of Throwback for weeks. Not finding anything, I go to the web. Here, I find out they are officially only doing this for a limited distribution. What that means, is a few weeks, not everywhere.

To the ‘good’ folks at Pepsi, I’d like to inform you of something. Millions of cola drinkers around the planet openly prefer sugar-sweetened drinks. Many have even resorted to buying ’smuggled’ drinks from south of the border. This should tell both Pepsi and Coca-Cola that the customers want sugar. Corn syrup is not making us happy.

I’d also like to inform you of something you’re aware of, already, and something you probably won’t like to hear. I drink a lot of tea. I brew it myself. I can sweeten it with anything. When I get the urge to drink a cola, Jones makes one with sugar. If you don’t want to give me what I want, as a consumer, I will take my business elsewhere. I will also tell all my friends they can do the same. If Jones became unavailable, for whatever inconvenient reason, I could always make my own cola, and sweeten it with whatever I please. If you want my money, you will make me happy.

I’ve been doing some reading, and it seems the majority of people who have sampled Throwback agree that it does taste better. If every one of those happy consumers, realizing you will end the distribution, and go back to using corn syrup, decided to switch to a competitor of yours’, you’d be losing a lot of money. I’m talking billions. You don’t like losing billions of dollars, I expect.

Understanding is important in the modern world. I understand a lot of things. I understand Pepsi is pressured to use corn syrup as sweetener. I’m sure for Pepsi, it seems like a good deal. But, if most people don’t buy a product sweetened with corn syrup, because they are aware of alternatives, that corn sweetened crap will sit on the store shelves, and make no one any money. I think it would be a really nihilistic thing to give customers a taste of a better product, and then throw it away. Especially when you’re marketing publicly what it is that makes it a better-tasting product. Sugar. They just have to look for a sugar-sweetened cola. There are several on the market not made by Pepsi, and not in limited-run distribution.

So, in closing, I’d like to ask Pepsi to make Pepsi happy, consumers happy, and most importantly, me happy. Keep making and selling Throwback. Make the product permanent. Promote it. You already have the results that prove it’s what we want.

No Punches Pulled: My Michael Jackson death theory.

Before any fans of Michael Jackson, king of pop, read on, I’d just like to say something. First, I deeply apologize if any of this offends or causes you pain. It undoubtedly will. But, it is what I’m thinking, and I have to let it out. If you are unable to read something critical of the person in this time of his recent death, I urge you, click another page, and do not read further. I make no excuses, but as you will note below, I have not been impressed by this guy for a long time. In character, or in performance.

I’m going to level with the public. I was not much of a fan after I grew up. The initial allegations of child molestation didn’t help the situation, especially after he made the decision to pay the family to make the lawsuit go away. In my opinion, you do not pay to make pedophile stories go away. That makes you guilty. Feel free to disagree, but I am of the position that the years of gossip, innuendo, did more harm than the ‘alleged’ stress of having to go through a court battle. It should have been more stressful to have paid him off, and look guilty in doing so. It would have been, had he been any other person. I was willing to let that one slide, largely because with the story out in the public, no one should let their kid anywhere near this guy again, guilty or not. Then came the antics. Dangling an infant out of a balcony window. The mardi gras masks, costumes, and veils. The constant need to get public attention, rather than make music. This solidified my opinion that Michael Jackson was *OVER* as a musical influence in the world. He was done. He had obviously no desire to make music anymore. And, to nail the coffin further, another family came forward. This time, they weren’t suing for money. They wanted him locked up in actual prison. This is what the first family should have done. But, some people want money. Some people, even in an intimate family tragedy, get greedy. Michael Jackson’s well-paid team of lawyers went to work, not trying to prove their client didn’t rape a boy, but that the family’s story was somehow altered, wrong, or they had greedy motivations. I guess they learned that much from the first case. The case ended, without conviction. I stopped watching mid-trial, so I can’t say what the verdict was. But, from what I remember, Michael Jackson never took the trial seriously. He made up a story about the police injuring his arm, only to wave it to the crowd mere minutes later, fully ‘recovered’ from his injuries. There was also him going on network television voicing his support for sharing a bed with children. It was almost as though he didn’t know what he was saying. Maybe he didn’t, but I’m sure his people did, and they didn’t even attempt to stop it. Later on, he could have been making music, something, anything, but he kept out of sight. Employee after employee had to sue him to get paid what was owed. He entered into a studio partnership with a foreign businessman, a fan of his, and them Michael Jackson took the man’s money, spent it, and dodged efforts to bring him to court over it. In the past few months, he was involved in a major concert promotion. I thought, great. Finally, this quasi-fossilized ex-pop-star was going to get off his moldy butt, and perform. Nope, he waited. News was released that he was in perfect health. Over 20 concert dates were announced. Time passed, and then Michael Jackson, honest fan-pleaser that he is, announces he was misinformed as to the number of concerts he’d be expected to work at, and wanted to shorten the tour.

So, irreverent as this might end up sounding, I think in complete honesty that Michael Jackson willingly, intentionally, killed himself. I think he realized that all he had left in the world were the fans who remained to believe in him, mostly because of memories and events that hadn’t been current for over 10 years. If he bailed, like he bailed on his partners and employees, he’d have nowhere left to run. There would be no place on earth that would accept him. A suspected pedophile, a thief, and a quitter. He’d be the joke on late night television all over again. Only, this time, it wouldn’t go away. No one would trust him to come into a studio. No one would trust him to perform live. He’d be unstable in a marketing partnership, as well.

I think, when all was said and done, the pressure just got to him, and he said “I’m done. Let me rest.” I can’t say I blame him, really. If it were me, or any of us, I think we might do the same thing. Am I sad to see him go? Yes. But, not for the reasons you might think. His fiasco with these recent concert dates left me feeling two things. On one side, I wanted him to finally fail big, so that he’d be forced to take a good hard, humble look at his life, make changes. On the other side, part of me wanted him to shine, like he did so many years ago. I wanted to see if he had any class left in him. Maybe a new dance move. A new song. Something. Anything. Now, we’ll never know.

Shocking: Perez Hilton calls someone a gay slur and gets punched out!

Perez Hilton, long known as a person who seeks attention by calling other people ‘gay’, has finally seen the consequences of what that can do. There’s no secret that he has been offensive in reference to members of the Black Eyed Peas, on more than one occasion. On this particular occasion, Hilton was harassing Fergie and Will.I.Am at a Toronto nightclub. He was punched outside of the “Cobra” nightclub by Black Eyed Peas tour manager Polo Molina, after Hilton called Will.I.Am a “faggot” to his face.

Now, I’m not a big fan of violence in response to verbal, but I can absolutely understand Polo Molina’s position here. Perez Hilton has blogged that Molina had no right to hit him. I respectfully disagree. Hilton would be correct, had he not been ‘hounding’ the band in print, and hadn’t continued behaving in an escalatory fashion toward them at this particular time. He cannot claim innocence, here. Also, as injured as he was, Hilton made a point to immediately hit Twitter with a comment about how he was bleeding and needed to file a police report. If I was bleeding, I’d want to get a doctor to check me out, or call a cop, not tweet about it.

So, Perez Hilton has managed to ‘create’ news yet again. Had he not brought it on, intentionally, he wouldn’t have gotten hit. I certainly hope he’s learned a lesson from this, though. Calling some people “faggot” gets you hit in the face. I hope he’s learned, because, a punch in the face isn’t the worst that could happen. You’re a grown man, Perez Hilton. You learned in grade school not to call people names, didn’t you? If not, you seriously need to re-think your behavior, before you get worse than a punch. Some of these guys carry weapons. Some of them have fans in the club, who would get even angrier than they would. You seriously need to stop going to clubs, if you can’t behave yourself. Also, take this night as a hint, that calling people gay at random when you get agitated, as a gay man, makes you look pretty ridiculous.

Electronic Arts uses bogus protests and fraud to hype upcoming 2010 game “Dante’s Inferno”.

At this year’s E3 convention, showcasing new games to enter the market, Electronic Arts (EA) pretty much played the fraud card in advertising a game called “Dante’s Inferno”, presently set for release sometime in 2010. They had a fake on-site protest, as part of a marketing stunt which included a phony website. Their attempt has angered genuine religious groups, who don’t like being lied about. The faux protest was largely seen to mock the Catholic and Christian faith.

Personally, I think having to deceive people a whole 2 years before a game is even coming out, tends to signal the conclusion that your game sucks donkey balls. EA has been known for staging elaborate ’stunts’ before, but there is something just filthy and wrong about having people pretend to picket your exhibit. I hope it leads to gamers protesting EA’s marketing campaign, and by protest I mean not buying EA products. Over the years, I’ve heard many stories of how EA does business, and none of it was good. They’ve been caught red-handed in their lies, and have so far failed to issue so much as a generic statement of apology to anyone their fraud and hype may have offended with this particular stunt. Good job, EA. Just keep telling yourselves it’s okay to lie to sell games.