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Why Celebrity is Synonymous with Stupidity

CrazedPenguin

Part of my ritualistic Monday night House-viewing is turning on the TV and setting it to FOX, just to make sure I don’t miss a second of brilliance. This, of course, has its downsides, as I start cooking for House night around 7 (yes, an hour early), and FOX airs plenty of garbage before House comes on. The particular garbage I’m referring to in this instance happens to be The Insider. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it’s a way to keep up with the latest stupid shit celebrities are getting themselves into. All with a running commentary.

I feel I should clarify something before I continue: I do not care about the lives of celebrities, generally speaking. Yes, it is unfortunate when one of them drops over dead. However, it’s no more important to me than the dozens of people in the obituaries every single day. The rest is just them leading lives with considerably more money than the rest of us, oftentimes doing things considerably more ass-backwards than most of us (there are stupid people in every walk of life, so I can’t justify saying celebrities are dumber than everyone else).

Now, digression aside, I normally tune this out and focus on not burning my food (or setting the apartments on fire), but I heard mention of actual news on there this past Monday. News that, on its own, had already sent me into a fit of rage. The whole thing about the Salahis crashing a party at the White House. We’ll get to my thoughts on that in a minute, though. Needless to say, my attention was grabbed away from the task at hand to see what these nitwits could possibly have to say on the matter shy of “Oh, at least they were dressed nice but that was wrong.” Sure enough, they ended up debating whether or not the Salahis should be thrown in jail for this. Oh, but it gets better. Continue reading →

Sprint knows where you are, and so does the feds.

scaredpoet

sprint-family-locator-service1

Remember not too long ago, when there was a huge fervor over warrantless wiretapping?  Back in the bad old days of the Bush Administration (and maybe even today), Verizon and AT&T willingly participated in permitting the NSA to monitor communications traffic on their networks, without the need for silly little things like, oh, search warrants and due process.  And boy, everyone sure got all in a huff when they found out!  Despite it being an extension of legislation hurriedly rushed into law to appease a panicky public, the citizenry refused (as they often do) to look at themselves in the mirror for being panicky petes, and instead the “Big Two” carriers mentioned above got the brunt of the public’s ire.  Lawsuits were threatened and all kinds of punishments were dreamed up for the corporate actors in this conspiracy, all while the Bush administration pretty much got shrugged off by the general public for, well, doing what they always did.

Another company to get a pass was Sprint.  You just didn’t hear about what their involvement might’ve been.

But it looks like now more than ever, surveillance is alive and well, and Sprint is making it incredibly easy for Law Enforcement to find out where any use of their network might be.  So easy in fact, that Law Enforcement has tracked the wherabouts of Sprint users more than 8 million times in the past year alone!

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint’s Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

Consider that Sprint has about 49.3 million customers.  Even if you assume that some users were no doubt tracked more than once, that’s still a pretty astonishing number.  Are there really millions of sleeping terrorists chatting and texting on Sprint phones?  Or has the government continued to be way, way too willing to disregard the freedoms of its citizens in the name of homeland security, while Sprint passively sits by and allows it to happen?

And Another Thing?

CrazedPenguin

My copy of “The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide” occupies a space on my desk that is exclusive to it. Nothing else I own is permitted to take up its space, although my copy of “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac” seems rather intent on doing so when I’m not paying good enough attention. I regard the Hitchhiker’s books in the way that rabid Tolkien fans froth over the “Lord of the Rings” books (and I should note that there is nothing wrong with this).

Now, as I have a Borders card and a Barnes & Noble membership, I receive plenty of e-mails from each. Barnes & Noble at least has the sense to tempt me with coupons that will invariably result in me spending a considerable amount of cash that I would otherwise not be willing to part with. However, I digress. One such e-mail, not too long ago, arrived during one of my late-night Stumble!Upon sessions. I opened it up, curious to see what Borders thought I should buy, so that I may laugh at how wrong it was, only to see this:

And Another Thing cover

My immediate response consisted of something to the tune of, “What the [expletive removed] is this?” Having never read any of the “Artemis Fowl” books, I had no idea who Eoin Colfer is. However, as I have some level of reading skills, I can tell it isn’t “Douglas Adams”, and this is what I take issue with.

Let’s participate in a hypothetical exercise. Imagine taking your copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, in whatever incarnation that you own it in. Now grip it by the spine and hold it so the open side of the book is parallel to the floor. See that? It’s a book so laden with brilliance that it drips from the pages. Now, if you actually did this, and your copy is as well-loved as my original copy, you may also see some pages fall out.

As I have not read any of Eoin Colfer’s writing, I’ve had to depend on what I hear from others. The “Artemis Fowl” books have been deemed the apparent heir to “Harry Potter”, which I found enjoyable enough. Sure, I imagine that the final installment in the series could be classified as a potentially lethal weapon, but this is beside the point.

Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I would love to know what made Eoin Colfer even think to add to Douglas Adams’ masterpiece that is The Guide. Writing a fantasy series reminiscent of Harry Potter qualifies him to complete this task no more than my ranting about George W. Bush in the past qualified me to be President (though it should be noted that I have already bestowed the title of “Emperor of the Mother-Effin’ Known Universe” upon myself).

There are two authors I feel are even slightly qualified to undertake this task, which I feel was surely botched in “And Another Thing…” and those would be Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Perhaps Neil Gaiman moreso, although I’m willing to concede both writers are far better alternatives. I am willing to admit that I could be entirely wrong here, mind you, which is historical enough on its own.

I’ve asked for this book for Christmas, and intend to buy it should I not receive it that way. I’m going to give it a chance, despite wanting to find Eoin Colfer and beat him with this book. Maybe it’ll be good. Or maybe I’m right.

Don’t Twitter; Go To Jail?

scaredpoet

phonejail

So apparently, the city of New York feels that you can be thrown in jail for refusing to Tweet:

Police in Long Island, New York, have arrested a man for not using Twitter.

Someone named Justin Bieber, who apparently is a teenage singer, was supposed to appear at the Roosevelt Field mall on Friday, but stayed away because the crowd had become too unruly. Police asked a record label executive to help disperse the horde using the messaging service, and claim he didn’t cooperate.

The record label exec got charged with – get this – criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration.  All for not tweeting?

Okay… first off, has anyone in this crowd of raving lunatics listened to Justin Bieber’s music?  Thanks to the advent of iTunes web previews, you can get just enough of a sample to realize that “his” music is utter crap.  And I say “his” because there is so much Auto-tune and post-processing going on that what one is hearing is just not a human voice.  So, we all know what this is about: a fresh-faced looking kid being served up to a bunch of fanatical screaming fangirls who care not that the poor kid can’t actually sing.

Sorry kid.  But being audio-processed to death just ain’t singin’.

Anyway, back to my point… the bottom line is this: anyone who was a part of this stupid crowd pretty much deserved to be Darwin’d.

Second, apparently there were in fact tweets telling people to go home.  The crowd ignored them.  Gee, what a surprise!

So, what is the NYPD on about here?  Twitter is an interesting tool, but not a magic, Simon-Says, crowd-dispersing device.  And besides, keeping quiet was probably the best thing the record exec could’ve done, rather than sending out more tweets that would at best be ignored, and at worst caused a more inflammatory response.  What minor was endangered here?  What criminal nuisance did the arrestee cause?

Teenybopperism aside, this case could have chilling effects for speech (or, lack thereof).  So now you can get arrested if The State directs you to say something via your (or the person you represent’s) Twitter account?  Uhh, not exactly the road we should be going down.

Greetings from Cape May, New Jersey (Updated with actual photos!)

scaredpoet

IMG_1175

Update: Sorry folks, minor glitch. The photos now really do exist after the cut!

With the end of summer well upon us, my significant other and I recently headed to Cape May, NJ for a weekend to enjoy the last good-weather weekend of the year.  For all the flack New Jersey gets, there really are some incredibly nice places to visit in the state, and this little resort town is definitely one of the nicest spots I’ve ever been to.

The weekend we visited happened to coincide with some kind of outing by a local club of Chevy Corvair enthusiasts, which allowed me to get the nice retro-shot seen above.  In general, everything just seemed to kinda fall into place there, and just about every picture I too came out looking somehow awesome.

Of course now, the weather is colder and the town has pretty much battened down for the winter, though there are still a couple of bed & breakfasts and wonderful eateries in the area that might be worth a visit in the off-season.

The area’s most notable landmark though, is its lighthouse and the nearby park and beach.  The photos after the cut tell the story of that awesome-looking area.

Continue reading →