Cracked.com certainly loves its lists. Every time it shows up on Digg or any other source, it seems to be for another list. Usually, they’re incredibly funny. This particular list, however, has some humor, but also has some pretty sharp insight into the nature of horror fiction. Eliza Skinner examines the real world fears behind 8 famous movie monsters. Among the insights?
At first glance, modern zombie movies seem to be about a fear of disease – most of them feature the “infected” type of zombies, not the “crawled out of a grave to dance with Michael Jackson” type. But the really threatening thing about zombies isn’t their crazy diseased eyeballs, it’s their sheer numbers.
McCain’s been riding high, convincing the American people that by simple virtue of his being a Republican, he’s better on the economy – even though McCain’s major backers are the investment bankers and stock gamers who put us into the mess we’re currently in in the first place.
But while McCain keeps selling himself as good for the economy and just like the common man, there’s obvious proof that he doesn’t know what’s going on with his own family finances, let alone what the common man goes through economically. See McCain’s Mansions:
And when quizzed about how many mansions he owns, what’s McCain’s response?
“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
In a crashing housing market and a recession spiraling rapidly into depression with the devaluing of the dollar imminent, do we really need the economy in the hands of a business-first Republican with more McMansions than he can remember? He’s got his – and he really doesn’t seem to care about people who can’t afford theirs.
Advice for living in a McCain administration: If you don’t have a stock portfolio worth at least five figures and you live near a levy – move.
The lovely and talented Elske McCain will join Popcorn Theater tomorrow at noon (EST) for a full hour of chatter!
The vivacious star of screen and smaller screen will be joining us to talk about a career that has seen her turning up in such films as Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, Gimme Skelter, You’re Next 3: Pajama Party Massacre, Killer Biker Chicks, and the upcoming Jessicka Rabid. You can catch the show live at the episode’s page, and/or you can download it in mp3 form from blogtalkradio following the show. Help me kick off Popcorn Theater with a bang!
And if you haven’t added Popcorn to your blogroll yet, stop by the website where you can see news about who and what will be on each show, and catch episodes of the tv series uploaded for your viewing pleasure!
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately on my film review show. Now, in addition to posts at Anvil & Sprocket, you can catch me on television (in a select viewing area) or YouTube (Vimeo, too) talking about flicks. And you can also take a look at Blogtalkradio.com, where this Friday at noon my new film talk show debuts.
And there’s a new website to keep up with all of this independent media – go and add glenspopcorn.com to your bookmarks. It’s basic at the moment, but I’m working on it – and for the moment, basic still means you can keep up with what’s going on.
Over at Huffington Post, Cenk Uyger echoes what I’ve said about the political sex scandal issue – if it doesn’t effect their policies or fly in the face of their politics, then why does it matter to the public at large? Why isn’t it just a personal issue? If someone is a law-and-order politician, a moral watchdog, and then they’re caught with a hooker – yes, that’s a story. If someone supports anti-gay marriage amendments to the constitution and lectures constantly on how we need to enact rules against gays, and then they’re caught soliciting anonymous gay sex in an airport restroom or exchanging crystal meth to a male prostitute in exchange for “backrubs,” then yes – that’s a story. But someone whose main issue is poverty and justice has an affair with a campaign staffer? Sure, tabloid it up – but what does it ultimately do to their political career and why is it political news?
Then, Uyger does me one better. All right – let’s accept the narrative that sex outside of marriage=your political career is at an end. Then why is John McCain still standing?
Now, we get to the most relevant question – if John Edwards’ political career is done, why isn’t John McCain’s? John McCain had a well-documented affair on his first wife, with his current wife. He has admitted in the books he has written about his life that he ran around with several different women while still married to his first wife. And don’t forget that he left her for a younger, richer woman – multi-millionaire Cindy Hensley who is now Cindy McCain – after she had been severely hurt in a car accident.
So, why are McCain’s actions any more excusable than Edwards’? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?
The idea is simple. Under the “if value, then right” argument, if something can be shown to have value, then the creator of that object has the right to demand compensation for its use. This is used to justify some of the more heinous acts of companies like the RIAA or MPAA – the idea being that if you rip a CD or DVD to put on your iPod, then you have recognized further value than was initially included in your original purchase, and the creator (or the MPAA/RIAA, since the creators don’t usually see a dime in those cases) has the right to demand that you pay them for that further value.
Joho’s got 20 things he then confesses to “stealing” under this argument – including a Ding-Dong (by saving half for later snacking instead of consuming it all at once) and the lyrics to a song (by saying “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” without using air quotes).
I’ve made a list of ten things I’ve done that violate the “if value, then right” argument – can you think of at least ten that you’ve done?
I have used a porcelain piggy bank to hold down papers on breezy days in addition to using it to hold change.
I have used a hammer to knock errant objects other than nails into their proper place.
I have used a pocket knife not only for cutting, but also to clean under my fingernails.
Conversely, when found without a pocket knife, I have used fingernail trimmers to cut yarn and small threads.
To get a near-perfect circle while working on a design project in college, I placed the base of an Arizona Iced Coffee bottle on the paper and traced around it – using the container as a makeshift stencil.
Additionally, I refilled said container with water after the iced coffee was gone, and later gave it to a friend who needed a similarly-shaped bottle for a play she was staging.
On many occasions as a child, I placed a sock not on my foot but rather on my hand, tucking some of the material between my thumb and forefinger to fashion a crude puppet.
My bookends have not only propped up books, but also DVD’s, CD’s, and – on a couple of occasions – my door.
I have purposefully purchased items not only for the goods themselves, but also for the many uses I knew I could put their container to.
The bag I carry my still camera and its accessories in is, in fact, an old bag for a long-lost Kodak Super-8 film camera.
“You can’t own a song, maaan. It’s like, one of God’s creatures, y’dig?” – somebody, possibly me
Hey! Anybody out there use the Yahoo! Music Store? Anybody? Um… anybody?
Well, if you do, you’re royally screwed. Yahoo! is getting out of the music business, and they’re taking the keys to your music with them. (Link via Boing Boing)
Once the Yahoo store goes down and the key servers go offline, existing tracks cannot be authorized to play on new computers. Instead, Yahoo recommends the old, lame, and lossy workaround of burning the files to CD, then reripping them onto the computer. Sure, you’ll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn’t download it illegally or just buy it on CD!
No matter how you slice it or how many times the RIAA or MPAA try to tell you DRM is for your own good or that it allows the customer “to enjoy their music in the best possible way,” it’s just a bad idea. It destroys your ability to choose, and in some cases it also destroys your ability to own. No consumer asked for this. As Cory Doctorow told Microsoft, “No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, ‘Damn, I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in order that I may do less with my music.’”
Ars Technica points out that this same thing happened recently with MSN who, after public outcry, agreed to keep their DRM servers running until 2011 – so you get a full three years more to enjoy your music! Yay!
Of course, nobody seems to be remembering that DRM-encoded Google Videos got deactivated when they got out of selling content, or that the MLB has used its DRM scheme to turn off purchased (not rented) digital downloads of their games. Because, after all, those are video and not audio, and apparently the exploitation of DRM by greedy corporations who already have their money aren’t worth noting if they weren’t in your particular media.
Here’s the simple truth. MSN, Yahoo! Music, Google Video Store, and the MLB all demonstrate one simple fact. If you are a customer of a DRM encoding store for any kind of media, then you are not purchasing your content – you’re renting it. No matter what they tell you about how you just purchased your music free and clear, they all reserve the right to just turn your music/video/ebooks off and leave you with gigabytes of worthless data.
