Jaded Times

Entertainment Weekly has published the first video advertisement inside a print magazine this week, proving once again that useless excess is, indeed, fashionable.  The ad, a four page thick cardboard spread with a digital viewing area consisting of tiny speakers and a cell phone sized LCD, can apparently hold up to 40 minutes of video, which is 40 more minutes than the pages that surround it.

“This is an extraordinary way to refresh how we interact with consumers,” said Pepsi-Cola’s chief marketing officer, Frank Cooper.

Extraordinary.  Indeed.

Thus far the responses seem to range from “who cares” to “really? That’s retarded”.  I personally wonder where CBS and Pepsi get off thinking it’s wise to spend that kind of money and waste the resources involved at such a critical economic and environmental time.

$1.92 Million?  That’s a lot for some Rihanna and a coupl’a Britneys, but that’s the judgment that has been handed down to Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first guilty verdict in a case against a user of file-sharing services to go to court.  Excessive?  Yeah, maybe a little.  But whatever, filesharing is filesharing, loving it and claiming how it “should” be doesn’t make it any more or less legal.

The part that concerns me:

The Obama administration told a federal judge Friday the $1.92 million jury verdict against a Minnesota woman for sharing 24 music tracks on Kazaa was constitutionally sound, despite defense claims it was unconstitutionally excessive.

Now I’m no constitutional lawyer or anything, but I’m pretty sure the process of law works in the exact opposite direction.

The below video may appeal to me more because of my (oh so useful!) degree in folklore, but it’s still Jon Stewart, still funny, and still a great representation of what Congressmen do to earn their six figure salaries and lifetime pensions…

Chuck Grassley’s Sir Taxalot

Unfortunately, Senor W. T. Fayta saw his shadow, so we have eight more weeks of ridiculous partisan bitchery to deal with.

Earlier today California’s supreme court upheld the results of the vote on Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriages. As I haven’t really broached this subject directly before, let me try to sum this one up as best as possible:

1) Based on what I’ve seen of marriage, you’re an idiot to want to be married.

2) BUT, either all of us or none of us should have that right. Basic “equal rights” logic. So you’re a much, much bigger idiot for preventing anyone from getting married.

3) In a state that has been in severe financial crisis for several years, it’s a bit gross that so much money was spent trying to make same sex marriage illegal.

4) You don’t need a piece of paper to tell you that you love someone. But if that paper is offered to some, it should be offered to all. Again, basic “equal rights” logic.

5) For all of you out there who feel this even fucking matters, feel free to write in to explain why you voted for Prop 8 and why you feel it’s any of your business what other people do in their private lives. I’d seriously like to know.

6) And for all of you bashing the right wing over this, the best resolution I have heard to the issue came from an ultra-conservative relative of mine (though I have read similar ideas elsewhere since), who suggested:

SOLUTION–change the legal definition of marriage: make the legal end of marriage a “civil union”, and let religious groups ONLY perform marriages. What this means is that anyone can be together with anyone and have their union be recognized/receive all the same rights as current “marriages”, and let churches and synagogues and temples and mosques decide who should be married in the eyes of their god.

For the gay among us about to complain, keep in mind many churches were already performing gay marriages and it really should be up to them, not the state, as to what is acceptable in the eyes of their god. For the bigoted among us about to cheer, keep in mind that if you were not married by a priest or rabbi or the like, you have a civil union, not a marriage.

There. Done. Now can we move on to this whole “collapsed economy/people starving in the streets” thing, California?

You’d think someone at the BBC would have caught on to the problem with this headline.  The article is interesting too, until you find out that the experiment was conducted at a college, which leads me to believe that it was nothing more than an elaborarte scheme to get undergrad twins in bed.  Which, of course, is genius.

A man in Norway was arrested for driving while under the influence of, um, er, hmm.  Can we say multi-tasking?  Maybe coming and going?  Or how about fucking his girlfriend while driving 20mph over the speed limit?

After filming the exploit for evidence, they [police] pulled them over at a rest area.

Yeah.  For evidence.  Right.

See, Ice Cube, there are snakes out there this big.

So far President Obama seems to have done more in a few days than former president Bush (man, those words in that order just feel right, huh?) accomplished in his first year.  In a rarely seen political move, Obama has actually kept true to his word and signed the directive to close Gitmo and limit the army and CIA’s ability to torture prisoners, a promise many felt he wouldn’t fulfill.  His administration is already hard at work attacking the current economic apocalypse, moves that harsher critics might point out the Bush Administration could have been making for the past three months.  He has also reversed several unpopular Bush administration policies, including striking down the pre-suffragette throwback abortion funds policy (though the policy did warn that if he were to strike it down, it would become more powerful than he could possibly imagine) late Friday afternoon.

So while one could conceivably point out that the man is being scrutinized far beyond any reasonable measure, most Americans do have to admit that, after 8 years of Bush, it’s just nice to have a President who is actually fucking doing something.

It is rumored that his next move could very well be to overturn the Bush Administration’s highly controversial “Babyback Ribs Act”, in which orphans who have not found homes by age 9 are harvested for their delicious, delicious meat.

It is truly sad to see jobs lost and a production facility shut–especially on American soil, where we have spent so much energy moving our production centers to other countries that we barely produce anything anymore.  Well, other than debt, but thankfully the ultra-conservative administration is there to bail out their rich, white friends. Who says socialism is only for pinkos and liberals?

Whatever the bail-out, the workers are getting screwed.  And how much does it suck that the last car to roll of the ancient GM assembly line is the epitome of what has been killing the US auto industry?

www.foxnews.com

Way to twist the knife!  Fear not, my faithful, self-entitled, consuming masses–gas is back down to $1.75 a gallon!

While much of the country (nay, the world) celebrates our nation’s return to reason, many others are protesting the backwards steps some states have taken yet again this year in the continuing fight for civil rights.  California was the hot-bed for this battle, from police clashes at protests to celebrities condemning Proposition 8, which changes the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage in direct conflict with the summer ‘08 state Supreme Court ruling.  Most notable on the celebrity front is Melissa Etheridge, who has publicly stated she will no longer pay state taxes:

Etheridge declares that if she’s not “allowed the same right [to marry] under the state constitution as any other citizen. … I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes, because I am not a full citizen.”

The announcement comes as Governor Schwarzenegger, who has also spoken out publicly against Proposition 8, has called for tax hikes in the financially troubled state. Guess that hike will have to be a bit larger if others follow suit, especially Apple Computers, who donated $100,000 to the no on 8 campaign and who are one of the larger corporate tax contributors to the state (EDITOR’S NOTE–this is comedic speculation, Apple has not even joked about not paying their taxes). We at Jaded Times applaud Miss Etheridge, and will happily send a fruit basket (with requisite file) to her cell come tax week.

In other celebrity news, Leonardo DiCaprio has said he is glad to have dropped his “sex-symbol status”, which is news to us, as we didn’t know he’d had one.