News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:42 pm

The news that really astounded me recently is that Rage Against The Machine's Killing In the Name Of from 1995 or so is the UK's Christmas number 1 single.

For those not from the UK or who otherwise aren't aware, the history to this is that there is this reality TV show called the X-Factor where nice, family orientated, bland, but reasonably talented singers compete to get people to vote for them, and the winner gets to release a Christmas single that is guaranteed to become Christmas Number 1.

So this year the winner was a man called Joe McElderry, with the song Climb. It's bland and shit, and a lot of people hate it. So, a Facebook group was started to try to get this admittedly pretty awesome anti-establishment group's song called Killing In the Name Of from nearly 15 years ago to be number 1, from downloads alone. People I've talked to have bought as many as ten to twenty copies of it.

Astoundingly, against all predictions, the decade and a half year old song that only got to number 25 when it was released was number 1. And there was rejoicing across the land amongst students and other young people.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:51 pm

Why Killing In the Name Of though? They have better songs.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:10 pm

Cielingcat wrote:Why Killing In the Name Of though? They have better songs.

Because it would be too obvious to do Guerrilla Radio.

And honestly, it's because of the closing refrain "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me!" which is an iconic and entirely reasonable response to being asked to have the Christmas Single determined for them by a TV show.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:49 pm

Cielingcat wrote:I'm pretty sure that's exactly what we're trying to say, because Prak didn't seem to get that.

I'm pretty sure even I was saying that.... like I said, I have no fucking clue...

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 8:28 am

Well, it ruins young boys' and girls' lives when they're told they cannot do or be what they want. And the conservative theocracy wins.

-Crissa

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 10:19 am

I always wanted to be a housewife.

Not an easy career to get into as a man.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:07 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:I always wanted to be a housewife.

Not an easy career to get into as a man.

Easier than you think. You need to find a nice educated woman (like a doctor) and you need a nice job that looks letigimate part time (like computer programming; in part time mode you call yourself a "consultant") and voila, you are more available than she is to take care of the kids. Plus, being a "doctor" she makes more than enough money for everyone.

I knew a friend who lived that life. He was a part time Datastage consultant. He was also Jewish, which wasn't important, but it did add the crowning touch of irony to the old Jewish line of "marry a doctor."

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:11 pm

I could almost pull that one off. My wife makes enough as a tenured teacher that I could either not work or program part time. It'd probably be cheaper for me to not work and then not pay for day care, but we'd have to move into a smaller house.

I did seriously consider it for a while.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:46 pm

Hell, I've been urging my wife to power up her accounting work and get her CPA so she can make big bucks, then I can quit working and raise/homeschool our kid(s).

Unfortunately the only non-seasonal job she's landed so far was the most ridiculous accounting job where she got paid about as much as a cashier in addition to putting up with the other B.S. from that workplace (there is a long laundry list of reasons to avoid it). She quit last year. Last week they just asked for her to come back for even lower wages. We told them to buzz off.

Mebbe someday we'll get to trade homemaker roles. If not, I guess I can either take a bit more schooling and become an RN, or just ooze up the management track in my current department.

TavishArtair · Post by **TavishArtair** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 6:47 pm

My point wasn't that those concerns weren't, well, concerning, but I am far more disturbed, frankly, that Japanese has a culture wherein the language uses what are often identical words for Master and husband, than by there being virtual prostitution, or a setting where cute girls are used to sell things. There's actually a few different words that have that precise pair of meanings. My issue was that Moore failed to recognize the exact depth of meaning behind what he was just called, and his commentary reflected that... if he knew what actually just went on, I can only imagine his head would've exploded, given his other comments.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 1:18 am

http://conferences.ted.com/TED2010/program/guide.php

session 5: provocation - second speaker - moot - the founder of 4chan.

TED has moot as a speaker...

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 4:29 am

No, if he was on film, he didn't 'fail to recognize' he was recognizing that very thing.

Besides, he doesn't speak Japanese.

-Crissa

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 6:38 am

Cynic wrote:http://conferences.ted.com/TED2010/program/guide.php

session 5: provocation - second speaker - moot - the founder of 4chan.

TED has moot as a speaker...

Wow, there's a lot I want to see there. I see Ze Frank (Session 12: Wisdom), Sarah Silverman (Session 10: Play) and as usual plenty of interesting characters I am not familiar with.

It's a bit dated now since a lot of it was news oriented, but I thoroughly enjoyed following http://zefrank.com/theshow back when he did a year long 5day/week video blog lasting a few minutes per day.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:29 am

So, what's the deal with the LRA, anyway?

The wikipedia article just flat out says that no one knows what they really want. Are they just random terrorists/thugs putting children in military situations for no goddamned reason?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:11 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, what's the deal with the LRA, anyway?

The wikipedia article just flat out says that no one knows what they really want. Are they just random terrorists/thugs putting children in military situations for no goddamned reason?

The Lord's Resistance Army is officially speaking a biblical literalist movement. As such, child slavery and rape are OK, but adultery, idolatry, and a bunch of other crap are punishable by stoning to death. A friend of min as taking care of a girl who had been forced to stone her parents to death for Sabbath violations or some shit before she escaped.

Aside from that, it's really pretty standard warlord crap. They come to your village and then then they rape your wife, burn your house, and kill your dog. The thing where they then boost their own ranks by kidnapping your children , hopping them up on drugs, and then fore them to kill you or get shot in the head is pretty fucked up - but it's nothing we haven't seen out of the RUF.

Like barbarian hordes from the biblical times they claim to represent, it's basically a pyramid scheme. Each "soldier" runs into a conquered village or captured convoy and then hauls out all the loot they can carry. Then they burn the rest. Each soldier with loot then turns over most of it to people higher on the chain, who in turn keep some, distribute some to their underlings, and send the rest up the chain. Joseph Kony basically gets to rape a different girl every day.

-Username17

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:20 pm

OH SHIT DID MY PRAYER FOR DEATH BACKFIRE?

Oh and hey, Michelle Bachmann is a Welfare Queen. And so are a few other Senators that have been railing against "Obama's Socialism".

Remember kids: privatize the profits, socialize the losses. That's the Conservative way.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 7:49 am

right, so a nigerian national took a plane from London to Amsterdam, stayed there a while, then took a plane from there to Dallas and tried to blow it up because "Al Qa'ida told him to"

story

but basically, my... incredulity here is that Fox News and the politico they were talking to said this is why we need the Patriot Act.

ummm.... what? What exactly would the patriot act do to stop terrorists who've never set foot here? I mean hell, if the gov't wants to tap phones in other countries, one piece of paper's as good as another....

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 9:52 am

Actually, what's so annoying about this story is that we don't even know if he just had his lap catch on fire ala bad cel phone battery or if he really was trying to blow the plane up.

Flight 253 terrorist shows moving Gitmo to Illinois is a bad idea.
New York Times didn’t say that the pseudo-bomber was a Muslim and instead simply called him a “Nigerian man.”
If Bush were still President this would never have happened.
TERRORIST THREAT LEVEL RAISED! All the way from “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” to “Hakuna Matada.”
Obama administration will charge the passenger who assisted in subduing the burning passenger with hate crimes.

Normally I just give these links to Frank.

-Crissa

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:11 pm

Crissa wrote:Actually, what's so annoying about this story is that we don't even know if he just had his lap catch on fire ala bad cel phone battery or if he really was trying to blow the plane up.

.... what are you talking about ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8431732.stm

It's not like you can just dismiss the BBC as right-wing kooks...

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 8:30 pm

Honestly, everything Crissa posts in a link is apparently a lie.

Her "Obama charges whatever with hate crimes" is so fucking stupid for like eight reasons.

1) Obama can't charge anyone with anything.
2) The article isn't even about anyone being charged.
3) It's not even speculation about someone being charged. It's just some talk about the guy.

So literally nothing Crissa posted in that one is true.

So I can only assume that the battery thing is also completely untrue, and her link is to a story that has nothing to do with batteries.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 8:55 pm

The Vigilante wrote:.... what are you talking about ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8431732.stm

It's not like you can just dismiss the BBC as right-wing kooks...

All of the articles I linked to were written before US law-enforcement released that information.

Kaelik, what the hell are you talking about? Yes, those are idiots. That's why I linked to them.

-Crissa

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:28 pm

Crissa wrote:Kaelik, what the hell are you talking about? Yes, those are idiots. That's why I linked to them.

The point is that the link you linked to didn't say that the guy was going to be charged with hate crimes, it didn't say he should be charged, and it didn't say that Obama wanted to charge him.

Therefore, the things you said in your link text are absolutely wrong, and not even remotely close to what the thing you linked to is about.

It is pretty much just you going:

A bunch of people who murder children

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:03 pm

Crissa wrote:
The Vigilante wrote:.... what are you talking about ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8431732.stm

It's not like you can just dismiss the BBC as right-wing kooks...
All of the articles I linked to were written before US law-enforcement released that information.

I'm not talking about your articles, I'm talking about your statement regarding his presumed culpability. I don't know what the media's been saying in your corner of the world, but around here the story's pretty much been the same since the beginning, and believe me when I tell you we really aren't quick to jump on the terrorism bandwagon...

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:11 am

Kaelik, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Vigilante. in the United States someone is presumed innocent as a matter of law and propriety, even if they were caught with the weapon in hand.

US media generally let the blowhards blow long before there was an official report from law enforcement.

-Crissa

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:19 am

Sure there is. But there's also something known as common sense. The guy detonated the same stuff that that other british dude had in his shoe years ago, was just coming back from a trip that screams 'terrorist training camp' and had recently greatly radicalized according to his own father.

I mean, I believe in presumption of innocence and all, and of course other details might emerge later that will prove he is the target of some conspiracy or something, but for the moment I don't think it's much of a long shot for the media to call him a terrorist, especially since he's claimed membership in al qaeda himself.