Just to see if this program still workd

Any Muslim who thinks that anyone participating in any Drawing Mohammad day is akin to shitting on his grave, and deems that person a target of an assassination hit, has got to be the most thin-skinned melodramatic butthurt asshole I might ever hear about, and I pray to Allah that anyone who tries it gets shot dead in the process so that Mr. Peace Be Upon Him himself can flick you the bird and make you his bitch.  And I’m not even a Muslim.

Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki, I’m talking to you.  I just hope I don’t have to talk to all of Islam in the process.

This is the Internet.  Nothing is sacred.

Nothing makes a company more evil than suing their own fans for being fans.  That’s why I don’t buy Music CDs and consider the RIAA a bunch of pedophiles.  It’s why I say, if you don’t want people to make fan-works of your movie or comic book, don’t fucking make the movie or comic at all.  It’s why I use the Creative Commons license exclusively because I want people to make fan-works of my stuff—and plan to publish one such fan-work as part of the Scarlet PI cannon.

And it’s also why Disney isn’t exactly hammering down Cory Doctorow’s ass for his own Disney-themed “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”  They won’t exactly authorize it in the way they did the Kingdom Keepers series, but they accept it as a humorous and flattering take on Walt Disney World set in a futuristic setting.  I think—or at least I hope—they consider the same thing to Scarlet PI.  I’ve even mentioned this concern to various Disney fans and they pretty much say the same thing:  That I should be okay because I show Disney in a positive light.  Granted, the light is in the backstage areas and some of it is bent a bit (“Scarlet, Captain Sparrow’s drunk again in Adventureland!”) but it’s not demeaning or debasing to the company or the product they made.  In that light, they’re pretty much letting me go.  (And my offer still stands, I’d love to have Scarlet PI done in an more official setting, working with the company.)

There’s another company that apparently feels the same way.

Link:  http://kotaku.com/5585802/nintendo-doesnt-want-to-criminalize-obsessed-fans

Some would say that Nintendo is plagued with Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon fan activities, some of them could be as elaborate as the original works themselves.  So much so that some people wondered what the company’s official position is on them.  In fact, I could see someone in the referred Shareholders Meeting going, “Don’t your lawyers know how to use a fucking phone?” in a drunken doggerel voice while sodomizing the pre-teen girl they’re berating like a gangsta pimp for the audacity of watching Justin Bebier on someone’s YouTube site.  (Who let that RIAA asshole into the room?  Link, Bouncer Duty!)

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, answered with pure class in my book:

As the principle, please understand that the question is regarding a rather delicate issue to which no one can perhaps identify a clear-cut criterion. Of course, we cannot say that we can give tacit approval to any and all the activities which threaten our intellectual properties. But on the other hand, it would not be appropriate if we treated people who did something based on affection for Nintendo, as criminals. It is true that some expressions are detrimental enough to diminish the dignity of our intellectual properties, and others destroy our intellectual properties’ world-views by connecting them with something not based on fact. We think one of the criteria for deciding how to respond is whether the expression in question socially diminishes the dignity or value of our intellectual properties or not. Of course, it is very hard to have a blanket standard as this problem involves many complex elements that are very difficult to judge.

In these meanings, we cannot say OK to any and all such activities and, at the same time, it is not feasible for us to immediately respond to each small issue of this nature every time. However, these days an individual can easily transmit information through the Internet. Hearing your question today, as we cannot find these problems only by ourselves, we feel that a kind of contact window should be set up so that people can somehow report to us any inappropriate uses of Nintendo’s intellectual properties which diminish their dignities or values, so that we can respond appropriately.

(Emphasis added by Kotaku and Doubled by me)

See companies, this is how you do it.  As long as they’re not invoking Rule 34 or dragging people’s face into the dirt, don’t think of it as copyright infringement; think of is as free advertising.  Especially when the fans take the time and the consideration to link back to the company.  This is what I mean when I previously say that the Culture needs to be Libra—Free as in Speech—if not entirely Gratis—Free as in Beer.  Nintendo knows that if they squelch fan activities—all those fan web sites, fiction, costumes, and what not—to the point that the public would be worried about doing more than just watching the official movies or playing the official games, they might find themselves groping for people who would want to follow their narrow path of bring consumers.  These Nintendo fans are the company’s loyal—very loyal—customer base, and these need to be tended to and cared for if they’re going to keep on buying those motion sensing controllers and Metroid games created by the guys who make Ninja Gaiden.  You welcome their actions when they’re making fan pages so that you won’t have to deal with them putting up burn sites.  And if you criminalize fan activity, they will turn and burn you.

Mr. President, I made efforts in this blog to ensure you get a fair shake, but I have to side with the detractors in this one.  You really need to rethink what you’re doing with NASA.  This could really be the stained dress of this decade in my mind.  If you don’t turn from your current intentions, no matter how well intended they are, you might not be getting my vote in 2012:

Link:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/

In recent weeks, One of the admins of the TV Tropes site, of which I have a positive relationship with, found some of their pages way too negative and vitriolic, and decided to at first delete the pages, and then set up a cleaned—and locked—version of the above pages.  One such example would be Christian Chandler, of Sonichu fame.  Or rather infamy, more like it.  I’ve discussed him before.

Here’s an example of the previous version, as saved on one of the several sites (some fall into varying levels of burn pages) devoted to this psudo-gentleman.

And here’s the current TV Tropes article.

As some of you would expect, most of the people making the edits to the TV Tropes went into full on shit-throwing-monkey mode, decrying that Tv Tropes is becoming too sanitized and unfunny, that they have the right to dislike and hate something, and even invoking Goodwin’s Law by linking Fast Eddie to Joesph Stalin.  All in all, there was a lot of people acting like they’re twelve on the internet.

And maybe people like Fast Eddie don’t want to associate himself with people who act like they’re twelve on the internet, hmm?

I sided with the admins using the same principle as to why I stomp out flames and trolls in my DA page:  There are places for you to go throw your crap around and hate on CWC, Justin Bieber, The Shrub, Ba Rock, Twilight…me, oh dear lord oh so amio…but it’s just not appropriate anywhere else.  As what I posted in the comments pages.

This is not Wikipedia, I’ll give you that, but this is not Encyclopedia Dramatica either. TV Tropes is not, and should never become, a burn page. It’s here mostly to list the many tropes a Television Show, Book, Movie, or even a crappy web comic like the crap I made in the past, and describe each trope in depth. That’s where the draw is, and that’s why people waste their lives away reading this site. And if someone actually progresses as a human being, if not by talent, TV Tropes is not beyond putting that in there. Hell, they’d do the same to CWC if—HORRORS!—he suddenly woke up to be a normal fully functioning adult man who finds a well-paying job, moves out of his parents, and actually socialized like a normal human being at evenings. (After taking a shower, of course)

I’m not saying that you have the right to dislike, or even hate, something. It’s a free country. I’m saying that there are places on the internet to vent your dislikes and hatred. TV Tropes is not that place. The Internet _has_ a Hate Machine, but the Internet is not _the_ Hate Machine. I call for the civility to realize the difference.

It’s just a classic example of the right to throw your fist ends at the right for someone else to have his face unmarked.  Freedom of speech also means the right not to hear someone flaming on anyone else or see a burn page.  Or for that matter, have a turd of a comment get plopped on someone’s Art Archive page without that person daring to pitch it out with the ‘Hide Comment’ like, or get on Youtube and be able to watch some vids without some asshole hacking the site with evil code in the comments.  I’m not here puffing up my ego or railing against the trolls, I just don’t want to see them in my face all the time.  And I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Link:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/16/ariz-lawmaker-targets-illegal-immigrant-children/?=Send#

I have to toss a red flag to this rule.  It’s my number one sticking point to everyone trying to stem the tide of Illegal Immigration.  If you deny these so-called "Anchor Kids" their US Citizenship, what pray tell would they be Citizens of?  Mexico?  They weren’t born in Mexico.  They’ll be _illegal immigrants_ in Mexico.  And you know by now what Mexico does to Illegals there. To make them go home with their parents like they’re Mexicans would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

This kind of legistration will only end in tears, especially from the children who will apparently have no country to call their home.  At least the guy in the famous story where he’s kept in ships for the rest of his like knew what he lost.  Where will their home be?  The border?  Or would they just be dumped and abandoned in hospitals by the truckload.  And I’d love to meet the heartless bastard who’ll just dump them back on the Mexican side of the border and leave them to rot.

Look, I won’t blame Arizona for having enough with border jumping and all the crime they brought to the state, but you needn’t put a boot to the face of an innocent child who had no control over where he was born—or who his or her parents were—to do it.  It wouldn’t kill you to show a little compassion with your conservatism.

And no, it’s not because he found out that I’ve made him into a mongoose in Blood and Metal.

You want me to say one positive thing about Ba Rock?  It’s because he doesn’t go off unhinged and act pretty much like a Birther that you’d find on the news, or for that matter, some SCIU fuckwad who attacks Tea Baggers in front of their children.

Probably one of his best things going for him is that he remains cool and composed when the shit starts getting real.  When there was a racially charged incident that threatened to engulf a college town in flames, he holds a beer summit with the two people involved in the misunderstanding.  Israel setting up a blockade to keep the suicide bombing riff raff out?  While everyone and their cousin were giving Jews the Public School treatment for defending their right to exist, Barack goes on the stage and acknowledges both sides right to exist, and hopes for a peaceful resolution both countries will be happy.  Arizona passing a twelve-page law on Border Security that those who bitch about it refuse to read (Honestly, I think we voted illiterates into congress people, I don’t think they could even read Dick and Jane primers.) and Barack only criticizes over its need to maintain civil rights and hopes that their political process would iron out the kinks of this law he only calls “misguided.”  And when an off-shore oil rig went kablewie and became the Exxon Valdez of the Naughts, the President saved most of his ass chewing for the BP execs, but gave a “Cooler heads shall prevail” image to the rest of the world, much to the chagrin of the press and the elites of the world.

Such as anyone who is still blaming Bush for every little thing that goes down—even after he left office a year and a half ago, and would probably still do that in the afterlife.  At least, that’s the image Nancy Pilosi gives me.  That, and she can’t even read.

In spite of the company he keeps—with all the race bating, radical agendas, and Internet Fuckwadness that is just barely hidden under their skin, there are signs of Ba Rock trying his darnest to get people to mellow the fuck down and cool their heads so that they can better solve the problems instead of ripping each other apart because of it.

Maybe he should borrow a page from his home town and drive that point home with a baseball bat.

Now that’s a kind of Chicago Politics I’d love to see:  I’d love to see Obama get Hu Jintao and Ma Ying-jeou into a locked room and go, “I’m only going to tell this once.  I’ve got fifty Thompson Machine Guns pointed at this room from all directions.  Now you either start talking about resolving this problem over Taiwan, or the Tommies will start talking, and when they start talking, even the deaf and the dead listens.”  And then walk out and lock the door behind him.

I’d vote for someone like that tonight, regardless of what letter is beside their names.  Someone who’ll take on problems like Vinnie:  “You straighten this shit out or you’ll wake up in a trunk of a car, you understand?”

Or maybe he would delegate the bat use to Fareed Zakaria, so that he can get the rest of the press to mellow the fuck down.  And while he’s at it, he should guide everyone in the House to literacy class.

Oh, and by the way…

Here’s the BAM character I was talking about.

His name’s Taveed Rikaria.  Yes, he’s a mongoose.  Yes, he’s named after Rikki Tikki Tavi.  Yes, he’s inspired by Fareed.  And yes, that tail can stretch out a mile long when he runs.  And yes, if he sees an unevolved snake, it’s din din time.  He makes his grand entrance in the first pages of Book #2, where he hosts a nightly radio news show.  His International-based flavor and sharp wit made him pretty popular as an anchorman.  It also makes him drawn to Eric Krockett branching his scope to an interplanetary scale as well.  Expect to have him scurrying out and about chronicling Eric’s exploits during his tenure on Maatla.

And I hope Fareed doesn’t kill me for giving him this kind of treatment.

Just the continuation of the realization that I’m not your average Tea Bag.  You’ve seen me post nice things about Ba Rock, almost to the point where some would think I voted for the man.  Well, if he had a little bit more experience and a lot less Race Baiting Sycophants, I would have.  And you’d also notice that I don’t follow every jot and tittle Glenn Beck says, even though his 9-12 Project inspired Blood and Metal.  I’m just an outside the box thinker, which I hope can bring people who are on the fence about the whole Tea Party thing to my corner, probably looking for someone to hash thoughts on and possibly buy the books.  (I’ll be a good listener, just don’t come on as a low cow or tell me that you’re too scared to remove the Epic Fail Guy mask.)

A prime example of this would be where I differ on this video:

I won’t debate you on the Nation Divided, it’s where the divide started that I’m debating.

The Woodstock era might be the onset of the Baby Boomer’s sharp turn to the Progressive area, but it wasn’t the time where we had that rift.  What happened in the 60s were more out of the tendency of a young generation to rebel against what they think is wrong with the previous generation and branch out and find their own identity.  You find this in any decade:  You have the rockers in the 50s, the Disco generation in the 70s, Heavy Metal in the 80s, and so on.  It was less a culture gap as it was a generational gap, as most people would think of when they research what the 60s rebellion is all about:

Hippies were part of a youth movement, composed mostly of white teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 25 years-old.  Inheriting a tradition of cultural dissent from the bohemians and the beatniks, hippies rebelled against established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of non-Judeo-Christian religions, promoted sexual liberation, and created intentional communities, leading some to describe hippies as a new religious movement. Hippies were against "political and social orthodoxy", choosing a "gentle and nondoctrinaire" politics that favored "peace, love, and personal freedom." – Source:  http://www.arikiart.com/Fashion/hippies-1960s.htm

The Summer of Love was more a rebellion against the strict conformity of the previous generation, a war that forced them to choose between being a criminal and a baby killer, and wanted to become part of a greater, more global community.  Most people, even those wearing suit and ties, can relate to that.  And in this time, it is still possible to bridge these two worlds together.  The Hippies of this day went on to become productive members of society, staring up companies, inventing major advancements, write epic books, raising children in a productive environment which was more open-minded than their parents, and so on.  But most of all, the two factions can even sit down and share a combined moment together.  No Hippie with a soul would look at the Moon Landing and not think, “Groovy.”  There was a gap between the Moonwalk group and the Woodstock group, but it wasn’t the split of this country Glenn talked about.  The Hippies were Questioning with Boldness the values of the previous generation, and some of those values actually passed the test.  That happens when a generation is trying to find their own identity.  Challenging something doesn’t mean that they’re completely repulsed by it.

And lets’ be honest.  The Hippies would get with their Square brothers and rebuild a Louisiana Sea Coast after Katrina or rebuild a groovy tower after it was struck down, just for the sake of coolness.  Hey, we might have our differences, but we’re all Americans, right?  We’re all living under this blue sky and sun and moon and stars, so let’s keep together, man.

So if 1969 wasn’t the point where America got divided?  What would be the year?  There’s a good chance that the memory is still well known for you.

Or to some people, it’s still a festering scab:

Say what you want about the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.  I will go to my grave saying that it was a Draw.

And no matter who you voted for, having it be decided in the courts would leave a sour taste in your mouth.  So regardless who won, there’s going to be a lot of people losing their shit when the winner was decided by a handful of lawyers and judges instead of the American People.

Granted, the divide didn’t start then.  There were a lot of people griefing Bush the Elder, and there were times when Clinton couldn’t even get the time of day from some people.  But then the courts broke this tie, you could actually hear the ripping of the earth between the Reds and the Blues.  And the bitter taste led to a bitter image of the other side.  This is when the country got so polarized as it is now, and the viciousness and vitriol just fed on itself until we can’t just see the other side and see them as actual Americans.  Think about it.  How many times did you see someone in Bush’s time and wonder what happened to ‘their country,’ and how they want it back?  How many do you hear it now, with Ba Rock in charge?

And this led to the slippery slope where we sometimes see in the uglier sections of the news.  When you no longer think of another person as an American because they voted for a different person than you, it’s not a far stretch to think that person isn’t even regarded as a person.  And you think accordingly.  And you talk to them accordingly.  And I’ve already listed here what happens after that.

And that is why we can’t rebuild the Gulf Coast after Katrina, or that the World Trade Center will probably still be an open hole by 2011, or possibly 2101 for that matter, and that the oil slick could just reclaim the entire costal line of the Gulf of Mexico for all America cared, and some Islamic fuckwad would just toss a lit match into the whole mess with “Allah Ackbar” on his lips and a boner so hard he could bludgeon someone to death with it.  We are too busy going at each other’s throats.  And this has been happening since Florida became the poster child for Chads.

Glenn would say that America needs to get back to it’s founding principles and reunite together as a country.  But I would say that something much more personal needs to take place.  I would say that America would need to put down all this hatred and bitterness and remove the red-or-blue tinted glasses.  And see each other as their fellow countrymen first before anybody else.  We can debate policies or principles later, when heads are cooled down and where we can actually hash out a way where everyone can be happy with.  But we need to remember something that even a hippie could understand.

Or the person who run Woodstock for that matter:

It’s a free concert from now on. That doesn’t mean that anything goes….The one major thing you have to remember…is that the man next to you is your brother, and you’d damn well better treat each other that way because if you don’t, then we blow the whole thing, but we’ve got it right there. – "Chip" Monck, Woodstock announcer – Source:  http://www.calebrossiter.com/chapter2b.html . Emphasis mine.  Way Mine.

The person sitting next to you might not agree with who you vote for, but vice versa, but they’re both persons, under the same sky and sun and moon and stars.  And they’re both Americans with the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  And regardless of whatever a Creator endowed these on them both or not, they have them upon their conception.  This country, no, this planet, isn’t as big as some would think.  So please, put down the hatred and get along.  The Shrub has retreated into his Ranch, and if he’s smart we’ll never see him again.  And the occasional Radical who ends up in the directory app in Ba Rock’s Blackberry can’t push their policy through congress that well, even with a house who votes on bills that they refuse to read.

And we shouldn’t be overcome with the desire to kill ourselves—or our country—over it all.

And on the happier note:

One Note now a free Web App!

Speaking of boners, you now how much I had one for Microsoft’s famous note-taking program?  Now you don’t have to spend any money to use it.  A Cloud-based version of Microsoft Office is now live on SkyDrive!  And One Note is in the Suite!

Granted, it’s not as full featured as the version you’ll find in Office 2007, or 2010 for that matter, and you’ll have the best features when you finally get the upgrade which can connect to the generous 25Gigs of storage space granted by a Microsoft Live Account, but for those who would like to play with the app and find out why I’m saying that Bill Gates has redeemed himself in recent years, give it a try.

Besides, didn’t Google had a Web Based Notebook and in their wisdom took it down, much to my chagrin?  Google’s loss, pal.

I saw this on the Very Demotivational site and had a decent WTF moment.  I’ll just show it to you and provide a link:

Made for Sharing.  No Shit.

Link to Demotivational:  http://verydemotivational.com/2010/06/01/demotivational-posters-pizza-burger/

Remember when I said, “If it weren’t for Desktop Defender, I wouldn’t even be on Facebook?”  Well?  Remember what I said, “Any site who deletes even a passing image that could be even confused as Mr. Peace Be Upon Him, I would cancel all accounts and encourage a boycott, even if I’m a paying customer?”

Well, Facebook, you’re just like Comedy Central.  A bunch of Dickless Cowards.  And I will no longer need your services.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/31/pakistani-court-lifts-ban-facebook-site-removes-page-deemed-offensive-muslims/?test=latestnews

By removing those pages, you show that you’d keel over to a bunch of mindless, extremist assholes who would have wished you dead regardless of whatever you deleted those pages or not, and that you care more for a bunch of retards who pride themselves of never reading a book than someone who would shell out their hard-earned money—and I’m not talking about myself here—who could actually support you.  By kowtowing of some hypersensitive fucks who break out the torches and pitchforks if you so much as look at them cross-eyed, you cease to be a company worthy of my involvement.

I’ve already flagged my account for deletion, and after 14 days, all information you have on me should be officially removed.  And I do hope that others who value their own self-expression over fearing someone who’s on the other side of the fucking planet do the same.

Facebook:  Officially Dead to Me.