ray n's soapbox: Speaking Of

NOTE: As of this writing, many of the topics discussed in this post are currently in development. I may or may not amend portions of this post in the near future, depending on their development and importance.

"Brevity is the soul of wit." - William Shakespeare, from "Hamlet"

"Whatever, nigga." - Anonymous

Yes, this is going to take a while. Please bear with me.

Before I start, I'm just going to get this out of the way: Swine flu. It's all hype, people. It's just another flu that kills people, but not as much as the common cold. Stop panicking already. We have more important things to discuss.

The world has been going through a lot from the past few weeks and I haven't been able to comment on much of it. It's a shame, really. Well, I'm about to do a bit of soapboxing and add my two cents to the various events that dominate the news today. For starters, despite the "controversy" about affirmative action and racism surrounding Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I still believe that she will be a Supreme Court judge. Previous judges before her such as Alito and Roberts have gone through all sorts of protests, and it's all been futile. I just hope that Judge Sotomayor does her job well and by the book.

Speaking of judges, Samuel B. Kent (R-Texas) has been impeached unanimously by Congress today for his sex scandals. His trial will take place this summer, only this time he will be a defendant and not a judge. Also, not only is he a pervert, he is also a racist bigot. Enjoy your honeymoon with Bubba in prison, and don't drop the soap Sammy!

Speaking of racist bigots, paranoid far-right xenophobes from white supremacist militias have been appearing and committing crimes against other Americans, as evidenced with the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the assassination of pro-choice advocate Dr. George Tiller at a church. These radical hate groups are nothing new, but ever since the start of Obama's presidency, these domestic terrorists seem to be more active and in greater numbers. As of this writing, the high profile violence wasn't committed by the groups themselves, but by "lone wolves" who either work alone or at least subscribe to the groups' beliefs and regularly post in similarly racist message boards like Stormfront. Despite the fact that today we as Americans are generally accepting of others and that all peoples (with exception of the LGBT community, sadly) have equal rights, we cannot ignore the fact that there are still hateful people who just wouldn't accept others due to their ethnicity, nationality, or class and not their character.

Speaking of right-wing nut jobs, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) appears in headlines yet again for throwing a hissy fit over a joke told by unfunny comedian David Letterman. Eventually Letterman apologized to Palin, but people believe the joke was in poor taste. Sure, the joke was off-color and tasteless, but it wasn't even that funny, so it shouldn't even be that big of a deal. If anything, she should tell Letterman to be funnier. I really wish Sarah Palin should just shut the hell up and go back to Alaska to actually GOVERN her state for a change. On the subject of jokes against the family of politicians, to be fair, is pretty low. For example, someone makes a rape joke about Sasha or Malia Obama, of course it's going to be terrible, but it's still going to happen, and hell, some people might laugh at it. It's free speech and things will be said, whether you like it or not. The joke may be in poor taste, but Letterman didn't deserve this. If anything, Letterman was a saint compared to Anonymous. Palin should be angry at Anon for various shoops of her and Bristol in pornographic images or mocking Bristol's pregnancy. Hell, they even hacked her Yahoo! email account. But yeah, Palin in general is pretty unimportant to me. Why I wasted a full paragraph on her, I just don't know or care to know.

Speaking of former beauty queens, Miss California USA (aka, Carrie Prejean) lost her title. Ha ha.

Speaking of homophobia, the military. Just accept the gays, already. They'll fight for you and everything. Hell, they might even decorate your tanks if you ask them nice enough.

Speaking of killing innocents, 18 year old Tyler Weinman of Florida was charged with 19 counts of animal cruelty for killing off neighborhood cats. You've read that right: a serial killer who murders kitties. I thought Kenny Glenn was a sick kid, but goddamn... hate to see what kind of murderabilia will be sold after this case is settled. Other injustices in the country include a 99 year old DC woman who got an abnormal water bill of $1,181 (instead of the normal $30) as well as a 32 year old Minnesota woman and a mother of four who was sentenced to pay the RIAA $1.92 million for illegally downloading 24 songs. After just typing that, I am this fucking close to waging Jihad upon the RIAA. File sharing *may* hurt the artists, but if you think about it, many people still try to make ends meet and do not have the disposable income to buy music, especially during this recession. So what's a few downloads to a huge record company or a million-dollar recording star, anyway? The woman already has other things to worry about such as paying her bills and feeding her kids, and the music might help her relax amidst all of this madness. Now she has a debt that will consume her mind and bank account for the rest of her natural life just because the RIAA threw a hissy fit about "copyright infringement" and not getting about $24 for "stolen" music. There *are* far worse offenders out there--go after the piracy syndicates in Hong Kong or wherever, not this woman or any other person who's downloaded a few songs just to make their day a little brighter. Keep in mind that a good number of recording artists don't really have a beef with file sharing and that most of their fans do support them and have bought/will buy and album for them sometime in their lives. It's seems that it's just the RIAA who likes to stir up all of this trouble. Is there any compassion in the world? Apparently not if you're the RIAA or the Iranian government.

Speaking of Iran, earlier this week an election was held there and the top two candidates were incumbent conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and independent challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Many Iranians, especially the younger generation, supported the reformist Mousavi while hard-line fundamentalists such as the Islamic Republic of Iran's government supported Ahmadinejad. Naturally, many Iranians, weary of Ahmadinejad's antics and Islamic rule that lingered on for 30 years wanted change. During the election, many Iranians supported Mousavi and voted for him but in the end Ahmadinejad won re-election with votes tallying 2-to-1 in his favor. The brevity of vote-counting (about 2 hours for millions of votes) and word of missing ballots as well as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei actively supporting Ahmadinejad gave the impression that the election was rigged in Ahmadinejad's favor. I myself believe the election was rigged. Naturally, Mousavi supporters were angry, but in the next day, all hell broke loose in the streets of Tehran. Revolution had happened. Iranians hit the streets and protested passionately and violently against the system. There were many marches, much violence, and much unrest. Aside from the eventual censorship by Iranian state media, martial law and even death threats by the Ayatollah, the people won't give up and continue protesting, wanting to change Iran into a real democracy. You know what? I admire them. I support the opposition in overthrowing the 30 year old government instilled by the Islamic revolution in a coup and I hope that democracy happens in the future of Iran.

Speaking of change, Obama. People are complaining that he's changing America. Well...didn't everyone vote him into office for CHANGE? Not all change is good change, remember. I mean, granted, he's in the middle of trying to fix Bush's messes, but if you must complain to Obama about anything, just don't whine about how he's a Socialist or that he killed a fly with his bare hands. He is no Socialist; just ask my friend Eric R., an actual Socialist. If Obama was really a Socialist, there would be more dramatic changes going on than what is happening now. Obama's methods are actually more Keynesian than Socialist. Plus, only PeTA seems to give a damn about the death of a fly. Hell, the motherfucker wouldn't shoo away in the first place, so it was asking to be swat. Myself, I'm wishing that Obama stops telling jokes during galas and takes a more active role in denouncing the Iranian election results. He might call it meddling, but I'm sure this time (unlike Iraq) that the people actually want our input for once. Ironically, the Ayatollah believes that we're already meddling in their affairs. You fail, Khamenei.

Speaking of fail...I stopped dating. Yeah, I know, too early too soon. And surprisingly, I wasn't dumped; I ended up the relationship out of my own accord for incompatibility reasons and that in the end, she was a kind, cute, and simple girl who had a hard time growing up without a proper father figure, meaning that she would mistakenly equate sex with a man's genuine love for her. It's happened before in her life, sadly. After much reflection, morality kicked in during the middle of our relationship, and knowing that I'm sacrificing possible sex and good times with this girl, I can't under good moral conscience let this go on. I still love her, but I also want her to find a man who will truly love and respect her and not just want her for "obvious reasons". I just don't want to be another guy who would want to be in a relationship just to take advantage of her. We are still friends, and last I talked to her, she took it well even though she has feelings for me. I can safely assume that it hurt for the both of us that night. So, A.W, if you are reading this, I'm sorry. The last thing I want is for you to believe that all men are scumbags. And I still love you.

TL;DR: The world's going to hell in a rocketship and all I can do is just bitch, moan and be ronery about it. Well, actually there is a way you can help out the Iranian people. Visit http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/irangooglemap/ and sign the petition so that Iran will update the Tehran maps on Google Maps and everyone can see that the Iranian people are truly protesting against the government in the name of democracy.

Good night and God bless,

PS: I apologize for not posting "Life is Strange #4" this week. It keeps getting delayed, I know. I'll finally post it next week...maybe. No promises.

Sources:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/99-Year-Olds-Water-Bill-Jumps-Almost-4000.html?yhp=1k

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090619/ap_on_go_co/us_federal_judge_impeachment

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525716,00.html

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/irangooglemap/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/06/10/2009-06-10_sarah_palin_attacks_david_letterman_over_sexuallyperverted_joke_on_late_night.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090531/ap_on_re_us/us_tiller_shooting

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31208188/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31354464/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090526/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_supreme_court

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests