A few days ago I downloaded the first episode of the BBC TV show Primeval for free on iTunes. It’s a sci-fi show about a rip in time and space where dinosaurs, giant insects, and whatever else comes through from their time to present day. There is also a bigger underlying story about one of the main characters’ missing wife, who we find out went through this rip when she disappeared years earlier. It’s very cheesy, but in a good way. The special effects aren’t the best, but they aren’t terrible. I can imagine they will have some pretty good stories of different things from the past coming through. All in all it’s a good show and a quick hour waster. If you like sci-fi shows at all, check it out on BBC America.
I’ve always been a fan of all music. In fact, if you look at my last.fm profile, you’ll notice the diversity in music listed there. I have Miles Davis, Tupac Shakur, Frank Sinatra, Incubus, and CunninLynguists listed. My primary musical love has always been hip hop though, especially underground hip hop. When I got XM Satellite Radio, I listened to mostly the hip hop stations. The Rhyme was the channel I listened to the most, as they were an old school hip hop channel. Then I started listening to Ethel. Ethel is the Alternative Hits station. That’s all I’ve listened to in the past month or so. Now I rarely listen to rap. I find myself listening to bands such as Black Kids, The Ting Tings, The Kooks, The Shins, Peter Bjorn and John, M.I.A, Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers, Ludo, MGMT, Phantom Planet and The Raconteurs more than my favorite hip hop artists. One reason this could be is that my favorite hip hop artists haven’t come out with anything in a while. Or maybe it could be that there is some really good and catchy alternative music coming out lately. It could also be that because I’m listening to music a lot more now due to the nature of my job I’m constantly looking for something new. I wonder what other music I’ve missed out on in the past.
Everyone knows what a Saved by the Bell geek I am. If you didn’t know that then did you really know me? I mean, come on. As much as I love the show there are a few things that bug me. The biggest thing is when the tough biker chick Tori came on the show and Kelly and Jessie disappeared. Now, the story behind the switch is that NBC wanted more episodes after the final season was filmed. Tiffany Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley, who played Kelly and Jessie, already committed to other things and didn’t want to film any more episodes. So what did the network do? They filmed additional episodes with a new girl, Tori, didn’t explain what happened to Jessie or Kelly, and stuck them in the middle of the last season. So in the last season we see Jessie and Kelly, then Tori, then Jessie and Kelly are back in time for graduation. This bugs me because there was no explanation and these episodes were clearly inferior. Then I started thinking, is an explanation really necessary?
I think back at my life. There are definitely times in my life when the friends I hung out with every day suddenly disappeared and I was no longer with them. Then all of the sudden, they’d be back in my life. This happened a lot in college, with both college friends and high school friends. The people I met while I was in college never knew my high school friends and I rarely, if ever, talked about my high school friends, just as the gang never talked about Jessie and Kelly when Tori came around. Then after college I started hanging out with some of my high school friends and some of my college friends disappeared. True, they were still in the same school on Saved by the Bell, but think about high school for a minute. It wasn’t that long ago. Weren’t there times when you stopped hanging with particular people, for no particular reason, then started hanging with them again? Maybe it was a busy semester for them, or you. Think about the people you’ve lost contact with and then later became best friends again. They are your Tori. Or you are theirs. Either way, while completely inferior to previous and later episodes, the Tori episodes actually do make sense. Even though Saved by the Bell is nowhere near real, that’s one part that is. Everyone has been a Tori or had Tori friends. You can sit there and watch episodes with Tori and not wonder where Kelly and Jessie are, just as you don’t always wonder where your lost friends went. So, no longer will I judge these episodes for the wool that NBC tried to pull over my eyes. I will judge them based on how good they actually were, which, except for the school song episode, they pretty much sucked.
Blockbuster Online launched a new design today. The look isn’t bad but there are some things that concern me. First, each new page I go to I see a welcome back message at the top of the screen under the navigation. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but every time I go to a new page it welcomes back a different name. I’ve been Ken, Brandy, Daniel, Walter, etc. I just hope personal information isn’t readily available to other users during this design launch period.
The second thing that bugs me is Blockbuster launched the download service. You can buy and download or rent and download movies now. They are late to the game with this. Netflix has allowed streaming for a year now. Blockbuster seems to have more new releases available to download than Netflix but you have to pay for them, even if you’re already an Online subscriber. With most plans on Netflix you get unlimited streaming as part of your plan. Like Netflix, Blockbuster’s download service only works with Internet Explorer on Windows. I’m tired of major companies not supporting other browsers and operating systems. I want to watch on my Mac and I want to watch using Firefox. With Apple systems gaining in popularity and Firefox having a 20% market share, it’s time to show some support. Netflix is rumored to support Macs by the end of 2008 so maybe I’ll switch back to them when that time comes. For $1 more a month than Blockbuster I’ll have unlimited streaming, which comes in handy at work.
I’m going to post this article in it’s entirety because the site where it was originally posted is loading slow because of the digg effect.
John McCain is a Racist By DOUG THOMPSON
John McCain, a member of the House of Representatives in the mid-1980s, often held court at a table near the bar at Bullfeathers, a popular Capitol Hill watering hole, telling jokes and matching hangers-on drink by drink.
As a Capitol Hill chief of staff, I often drank at Bullfeathers and was invited to join the throng at McCain’s table one evening. A few minutes listening to the racism, bigotry and homophobia of the Arizona Congressman told me all I needed to know.
McCain loved to tell jokes about lesbians, blacks, Hispanics and the Vietnamese community that occupied a large section of Arlington County, Virginia, just south of the District of Columbia.
Of course, McCain didn’t use polite language in the jokes: He used names like “fags” or “queers” or “dykes” or “niggers” or “spics” or “wetbacks” or “gooks.”
A typical McCain joke:
Two dykes are talking at a bar and one leaves. As she walks toward the door, the other watches her leave and says out loud: “God, I’ve love to eat her out.”
Two men are standing near by and one turns to the other and says: “I’d like to do the same. Guess that makes me a dyke.”
Or another:
Question: Why does Mexican beer have two “X’s” on the label?
Answer: Because wetbacks always need a co-signer.
When he ran for the Senate, I attended a gathering of GOP operatives at the National Republican Senatorial Committee where McCain outlined his campaign strategy:
I play to win. I do whatever it takes to win. If I have to fuck my opponent to win I’ll do it. If I have to destroy my opponent I won’t give it a second thought.
This is the man the Republican Party thinks should be the next President of the United States. What else should we expect from a party that promotes racism, homophobia and discrimination against anyone with a different skin color, sexual orientation or ethnic origin?
So we shouldn’t be surprised that McCain’s campaign strategy seeks to raise racial fear about Barack Obama, the first African-American with a serious shot at the Presidency of the United States.
John McCain is a racist: Always has been, always will be. Those who served with him in the Navy say he treated black sailors with disrespect and scorn. His collection of off-color jokes are riddled with racist words and sentiments. Advisors have toned down the raunchy rhetoric of his early years in Congress but close aides say his attitudes have not changed.
McCain opposed making the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King a national holiday. During his 2000 campaign for President, he told reporters on his “Straight Talk Express: “I hated the gooks (North Vietnamese). I will hate them as long as I live.”
Katie Hong of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who reported the remark, wrote:
It is offensive because by using a racial epithet that has historically been used to demean all Asians to describe his captors, McCain failed to make a distinction between his torturers and an entire racial group.
It is alarming because a major candidate for president publicly used a racial epithet, refused to apologize for doing so and remains a legitimate contender.
For his 2000 campaign for President, McCain hired Richard Quinn, founder and editor in chief of Southern Heritage Magazine, to serve as his spokesman in South Carolina.
Notes Salon.Com:
Quinn’s articles have called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” and King a man “whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul.” In another piece, Quinn said of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, “What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?” though he did condemn Duke’s bigotry.
Irwin A. Tank, author of Gook: John McCain’s Racism, notes a long and sordid history of racism from the presumptive GOP nominee, including:
* McCain’s use of the anti-Asian slur “gook” publicly for 27 years before dropping the use for his current Presidential run;
* McCain’s endorsement of George Wallace Jr., a frequent speaker at white supremacist events;
* His vote against establishing a holiday for Martin Luther King’s birthday and then another vote to rescind the holiday.
* In answering a question about divorced fathers and child support, McCain called the children “tar babies.”
The list goes on and on.
What else do you expect from a racist?