Radio (and to a lesser degree- television) is being attacked by the F.C.C. and congressional "indecency" hearings. The hearings are to devise the "Decency Enforcement Act". This is a blatant attack our inherent rights of freedom of speech and freedom of press. Research it, get mad, write your congressman and write the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Here's what I sent to my congressman, Frank Wolf:
I've grown very concerned over the past several days about the ongoing indecency hearings in Congress. While many people may not agree with what “shock jocks” do on radio, the fact is that it’s a choice to tune in to a radio station and a choice to listen. I may not like what certain people say or do on television or radio but I do like the fact that we as Americans have the freedom to express ourselves openly and without persecution. I fear that if this trend of censorship from the F.C.C. and Congress continues our inherent rights and freedoms as free Americans will be damaged forever.
How can we as the people of the free world try to globally promote freedom of speech, press, and religion to the rest of the world while our own freedoms are being undermined by legislation and hearings like the “Decency Enforcement Act”? How many freedoms are destroyed in the word of “decency”? How many of Iraqi women, that we still fight to liberate, have been forced to hide and remain uneducated in the word of “decency”?
I’m disgusted at how many people are screaming at Congress to raise their kids and do their jobs as parents. When did it become socially acceptable to allow television and radio to become substitute parents? When did we stop encouraging freedom of speech and open civil debate and instead adopt the processes and attitudes of government sponsored censorship?
Well after almost 4 weeks, I finally got my laptop back from Best Buy today. It must be a sign of the times that I fully expected to get it back with nothing changed. Contrary to my beliefs, they replaced the motherboard and the mouse pad / arm rest part. It only took me calling the service center and yelling three times in last few weeks to get it done too!
The good news is they didn't touch the software - everything left in place, thank god. I did of course have to spend the day reinstalling the BIOS updates, etc to get it back to a none "freezing every two minutes" state, but that's not a Best Buy issue - that's a Sony blows monkey nuts issue.
After not having my laptop for the last few weeks my wife and I realized just how much we were depending on it. Scary really. Especially considering I have a computer upstairs in my office that is more than capable. It's just too damn convenient to have the laptop sitting there next to the couch in the living room. I do wish they had upgraded me in all my hassle so that I'd have USB 2 or a better graphics card or something but at least the laptops more or less working correctly now.
A buddy of mine forwarded me an email containing this: Alcohol With Out Liquid
I think it speaks for itself.... uh.... wow.
Goddamned best buy. A couple of years ago I bought a laptop from best buy (stupid mistake #1), it was a sony (stupid mistake #2), I bought the extended warrenty (stupid mistake #3). So, the laptop is the worst buy I've ever made, ever. It sucks beyond sucks. I decided that after both USB ports died and the mouse only clicked 4 times or not at all, I'd bring the damn thing back to best buy and have them fix it since I did pay for the warrenty after all. They told me two weeks, to which I thought - two fucking weeks! you incompetent bastards. It's almost three weeks now and they're telling me that no one's even looked at the damn thing yet. Goddamn little fuckers. I should have known something was going to go horribly wrong when I talked to the head "tech" guy at best buy and said: "under no circumstances shall you slick my computer, ok? It's not a software issue, leave the software the fuck alone."... I got a "huh?" face... "don't slick the hard-drive"... "huh?"... "don't format the hard-drive! OK?"... "huh"... "JUST DON'T DELETE ANYTHING!"... "oh, we don't do that."... sure you don't... wipe the drool off your chin monkey.
To make the whole thing worse, I apparently backed up everything I needed on my laptop EXCEPT my Palm data. My palm tungsten t (good buy) which in the year or so I've had it has NEVER died, randomly died the other day. Oh, I'll just resync it on my other computer... fuck, no backup. All my numbers, etc sitting on a laptop being drooled on by some best buy "tech" that probably failed out of I.T.T. Technical Institute. Fucking great.
So my buddy Bob and I have a tradition of getting together and having what we like to call "Bad movie night". This tradition has allowed me to watch just about every Vin Diesel movie, LOTS of bad horror movies (vampire movies being my personal favorite ESPECIALLY if they use the line "... it's not like in the movies... " which they always do...), most random dragon movies, and an assortment of cheerleader hot-tub movies, etc.
Well, for the last year or so, only one movie has ranked as the worst movie of all time in my book - Battlefield Earth. So Bob and I decided to put that to the test and rented Gigli. Everything I had heard about this movie said it was not only the worst movie of last year, but the worst movie of all time. Needless to say, I wasn't believing it... the conclusion.... the championship belt goes to.... Battlefield Earth, the reigning champion! I'm sorry, Gigli was bad, but it had moments and was better than thousands of "films" I've seen before. One, it had a retarded kid - ALWAYS funny. Two, the retarded kid talked about his penis "sneezing" and said "godbless you" to it... funny. Three, the retarded kid told a woman who had slit her wrists "God lady, you need band-aids." - funny. Now granted, the acting was horrid and most funny parts revolved around the retarded kid, but Ben Affleck had a couple of good moments talking about how relationships had a "bull" and a "cow" and how he was the bull, asking her if she wanted to see his "horns"... funny in that, you're a dumbass way.
Anyway, all this to say that Battlefield Earth is and will most likely always be my worst movie of all time pick. Nothing has even remotely come close.
Oh, also rented "Beyond Reanimator". If your a fan of the series like I am, rent it. If you're not a fan, rent it anyway and after you've watched it go to the special features and watch the music video "Shake your dead bones". Bob and I had to have watched that video 4 or 5 times in a row. It's shockingly funny.