NIN vs MTV

Nine Inch Nails new song "Hand that Feeds" is apparently all about President Bush and not in the good way.

And apparently MTV isn't thrilled with Trent Reznor and NIN performing this song in front of a giant blow up picture of GW.

They voiced their opinion that they felt uncomfortable with Reznor's open political statement and wanted to keep the event as non-partisan as possible.

In response Reznor basically told MTV to go screw themselves and that they won't perform.
Foo Fighters will take the stage instead.

This morning everyone was calling in to the radio station I listen to and saying how NIN has the First Amendment to back them up and how dare MTV do this and yadda yadda yadda.
Yes, NIN has the right to free speech and they can stand in the middle of the street (as long as they don't obstruct traffic) and make known their opinions on Bush, the war in Iraq, Santa Claus, and their preference of Coke over Pepsi.

However, there is nothing that says MTV has to air it.
I think that people forget that part of the Free Speech deal.
You can say it all you want, but no one has to listen and no one has to be forced to print, air, or disseminate what you're selling.

Should MTV be able to take this stand? Sure. MTV has lost a lot of cred in terms of being hip and with it and edgy. Letting NIN perform in front of the big ass picture of the President might push them back into that territory. But they have every right to decide that this isn't a political statement they are ready or willing to make.

Psst...President Bush...

"Dissemble" means not to tell the truth, as you so put it during this morning's press conference.

"Disassemble" means to take apart.

You meant dissemble, not disassemble. Though the fact that you offered the wrong definition for the wrong word made up for the fact that you don't know the English language.

Bravo.

To quote our President:
"It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth"

Too Bad Paris Isn't Burning

Where Paris Hilton is concerned, I've always wished the phrase "if you ignore it, it will go away" would apply. But woe and alas, it's never that easy.

Or perhaps it might be that easy if people could learn to ignore her. But again...woe and alas.

She burst onto the scene by appearing in the now infamous "One Night in Paris", the nightvision sex romp that thankfully I have never seen. However, enough people did to elevate this rich party girl to celebrity. This newfound status paired with her already trashy reputation made her a media darling.

Her crappy reality series "The Simple Life" highlighted just how useless she really is. Pitted against hardworking Americans who have to work for a living, Paris and her then best friend Nicole Ritchie (daughter of Lionel "Hello" Ritchie) had to make their way without their credit cards or cell phone. By traveling around the country and mocking those less fortunate than herself, you'd think that everyone would realize that she is just a stupid spoiled whore. But now. She got several season out of Fox, repeating her idiot catchphrase "That's hot" while ruining the lives of everyone she met.

Thankfully, Matt and Trey of South Park fame saw opportunity in Ms. Hilton that apparently no one else did. They set an entire episode around her appearance in South Park to open a new branch of her store for girls "Stupid Spoiled Whore", a store where tweens can purchase clothes and paraphenalia that will make them look, smell and essentially act like Paris Hilton. Throughout the episode one girl, not caught by the lure of thongs and drug induced sexual encounters, kept shouting in disbelief "But what does she do?" Never is that question answered. Needless to say, the show ends with Paris being vastly out-whored by a gay man in leather and studs. A fitting end.

Now Paris is back in the news due to a Carl's Jr. commercial featuring her in a scanty black bathing suit, washing a car and eating some new burger concoction feature fried jalapenos. At the end of the commercial after Paris has sufficiently embarrassed herself, the car and the burger, the screen flashes the words "That's hot". Brilliant. With all the Christian Right groups now complaining about this commercial being aired on regular network television, it would seem Paris is once again involved in some sort of public sex scandal and back in the headlines once more.

I'm guessing the attention whore will never go away, whether or not we ignore her.

Sigh.

Listening is not Reading

According to an article in the NY Times, there is an increasing number of people who seem to feel the listening to a book on tape or audio book is the equivalent of reading the book.

As someone who majored in English Literature in college and who has spent a good portion of her life enjoying the written word, I truly beg to differ.

I've heard a book or two on tape, but that was mostly writings by David Sedaris or Jon Stewart. It would seem the musings of comedians do make for good listening.
However, I have also tried what you might dub real books as well, although they were sufficiently distracting, they were absolutely no substitute for reading the "traditional" way.

Now I'm not going to make an uber-judgement and say that those who read books with their eyes are superior to those who listen to books with their ears. Sure it's great that people are still accessing literature, no matter how they do it. True, I would never think of slogging through an of the paragons of the literary world by downloading it to my Mp3 player, but those who do are more than welcome to.

However under no circumstances will I call listening to an audio book reading. That's just crazy talk.

Cognitive Dissonance

For most of my life I have had a complex relationship with my father...to put it mildly.

When I was around 10 or 11 he succumbed to the same disease his mother had and slowly became a bi-polar lunatic. It wasn't overnight, but sometimes it felt that way. He had never been what you would call a model dad, but we had had our good moments till that point.
Once the disease hit, however, he was a changed man.

Despite the fact that he is a doctor educated at Einstein or the fact that he knew that his mother and other relatives suffered from this malady, when he started to evidence symptoms of manic depression, he did nothing and eventually the few good moments I now vaguely recall were no more.

I have not had any sort of relationship with him in eons. Once he, for lack of a better term, got crazy he was never anything but antagonistic towards me. It's the old story of the father never thinking his kids were good enough and nothing they did ever merited a positive word or hint of encouragement. So when he and my mother separated, it was for the best. He had been just as awful to my mother as he was to his children. The first few months after he left the house he still stopped by to do his best to remind us why we wanted him out in the first place. Eventually he stopped trying to get back into the house and our hearts and for the first time in years it was a pleasure to be in our house.

Six or seven years have gone by since he left and I've had possibly 1 "conversation" with him during this time. I say "conversation" since it was mostly him yelling at me and using a variety of curse words to get his point across. For the most part he has been out of sight and out of mind, and I have preferred it that way.

Today I found out that he had a stroke last night. He's alive, but slurs when he speaks and has no control over one side of his body. Since he has no medical insurance, he refused treatment since he doesn't want this minor blip in the road to "impoverish" him.

He has lived a life of gluttony, sloth, and the whole slew of deadly sins. He does indeed deserve everything he gets. And it's not really much of a surprise that he had a stroke; his main source of nutrition was a stick of butter and sweetened condensed milk. Not particularly the recipe for a long life of health. In fact I was waiting for him to have heart attack, or considering his penchant for walking around with a loaded handgun in his back pocket and pick fights with street denizens, I was waiting to hear he was shot by some random person after an altercation he himself provoked.

And yet, despite all this, despite the hell he put our family through, despite the joy I felt when he was no longer a part of our family unit, despite the dreams and wishes I had that he would just disappear forever and leave me and my family alone my emotions are mixed. For worse or for the minute better, he was the only father I knew. For the first time in years, early memories of county fairs and camping trips (all occurring during my single digit years), have hit me like a mack truck. Unlike the rest of my siblings, I do remember being happy to see him. Unlike the rest of my siblings, I do remember walking the streets of Greenwich Village with him, getting the ice cream cones that we never told my mom about. All the crap and all the pain that he caused me has still not erased these vestigial fond feelings.

And yet... I have no desire to contact him. I don't want him to contact me either. I don't want my siblings to have to deal with feeling sorry for a man who abused and then abandoned them. I don't want them to feel guilty for not helping him through this crisis or anything else. Tenuous happy memories aside, I want him to just disappear over the horizon and never dampen our doorway again, literally or figuratively.

Of course that will never happen and eventually I'll have to come to terms with this whole mess.
Till then, however, I'll just have to manage this chaos in my head best I can and hope that he slumps out of our lives without much more ado.