Archive for the ‘Confirmed’ Category
Target ain’t people
Many Constitutional scholars can’t agree whether or not corporations are recognized as persons in the eyes of the law. But somehow, over time, it has become the accepted standard that under the 14th Amendment, corporations are to receive virtually all of the rights that actual, individual human beings have.
This is fucking ridiculous. A corporation is not a person. Anyone who argues that it should be treated like one simply because it is made up of many is willfully ignorant. Here’s an appropriate quote from an essay that explains this nonsense better than I can:
People may not know exactly what Goldman Sachs is, but they know it is not a person. A person doesn’t have unlimited life or limited liability. A person is responsible for her decisions. If she makes a decision that kills or maims people she will go to jail. If a CEO makes such a decision she, at worst, receives a golden parachute.
Unlike a real person, a corporation lacks a conscience. It is guided neither by ethics nor morality but rather by laws that required its Boards to elevate the maximization of profits above all other concerns.
A real person is an independent actor, subject to many influences that affect how he votes. Warren Buffett, for example, thinks it is in his and society’s best interest for him to be required to pay more taxes. A corporation that made this decision could be taken to court by its stockholders.
Well, the Supreme Court upped the ante back in January when it ruled that corporations can spend an unlimited amount of money in our elections. Fan-fucking-tastic. Say hello to a new era of companies buying electoral results (well, moreso than they already do). And big companies have wasted no time in taking advantage of this ruling. In July, Target donated $150,000 to the campaign of the right-wing candidate for governor in Minnesota who happens to be anti-gay and oh yeah, anti-worker. (Wait, isn’t the Target corporation made up of thousands of workers? Oh yeah, those worthless peons are just necessary annoyances standing in the way of ever larger profits. So fuck ‘em.)
Well, a boycott against Target has been initiated by MoveOn.org and best of all, a small group of brave citizens brought the protest directly to Target, all in the form of a song. Rock on guys!
-Sam
Kings of Leon’s upcoming fifth album now has a name and a release date.
It’ll be called Come Around Sundown.
It will hit stores on October 19.
No word yet on whether the album will feature a song about the trials and tribulations of withstanding pigeon shit.
-Sam
Sometimes a Tweet is all you need to really sum up a situation.
This comes from Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, in reference to the band’s recent show in St. Louis:
“So sorry St. Louis. We had to bail, pigeons shitting in [bassist] Jared [Followill]’s mouth. Too unsanitary to continue….Don’t take it out on Jared, it’s the fucking venue’s fault. You may enjoy being shit on but we don’t. Sorry for all who traveled many miles.”
That really sucks for both the band and the fans. It’s too bad there weren’t any umbrella hats on hand that the guys could have strapped on to protect them from the fecal showers. I wonder if, in the future, the venue will consider doing what the Cincinnati Bengals considered when they had a similar problem a few years back.
-Sam
Whatever your thoughts are about Lady Gaga, I can’t see any rational human being siding against her in this particular instance.
You see, according to Rolling Stone, this past weekend Gaga had a show in St. Louis which was protested by the Westboro Baptist Church. If you don’t know who the WBC is, they are the people who picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard (with signs that said things like “AIDS Cures Fags”) along with multiple funerals of soldiers killed in action. They’ve picketed the funerals of Michael Jackson and Dio. They’ve protested outside the Holocaust Museum, calling the Holocaust “minuscule” and saying “Jews are the real Nazis.” A few years ago, after the Sichuan earthquake in China, they released a press release praying “for many more earthquakes to kill many more thousands of impudent and ungrateful Chinese Communists.” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Anti-Defamation League has classified this “church” as a hate group. And it’s sad to say that this group actually is a church because in reality it’s nothing more than the giant inbred family of Pastor Fred Phelps. And yet it still receives the tax exemption from our government.
Anyways, according to these worthless abominations, everything tragic that happens in the world is directly attributable to homosexuality. And Lady Gaga is well known for having a devout following of LGBT fans. So naturally, as the attention-starved whores that they are, the WBC showed up to her concert to call Gaga a “false prophetess” and warn that she and her “gender-confused, self loathing, tone deaf” fans are headed to hell.
According to their Myspace blog, Orange County goth-metal troop I Am Ghost have split. I don’t know how many people out there care about this, but I certainly do. The band made 2 very good albums before calling it a day, and it’s a shame that a bunch of such talented musicians have reached the end of the road.
I recommend you give them a listen if you’re into Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Nightwish etc
Everyone knows that MTV made the decision a long time ago to ditch actually showing music videos in favor of greased up guidos and about 300 shows about what it’s like to be a rich and/or pregnant teen. Hell, they even got rid of the “Music Television” tagline on their logo this year.
But wait, there is hope once again!
The New York Post is reporting that the seminal MTV show Beavis and Butt-head will be returning to the airwaves with all new episodes! The new episodes will still feature the boys as high-schoolers, but instead of flinging their cynical and moronic critiques at music videos from the 80s and 90s, their old cracked television will now feature current videos.
Some people might say that Beavis and Butt-head was the first step in MTV’s movement away from featuring music videos. That’s fair and it may be true. But couldn’t it also then be the first step in reversing that trend and leading the station closer to its origins? MTV is never going to be a 24/7 music video station again – the economics just don’t support it. But I’m sure they can get away with showing some, and if so, the return of Beavis and Butt-head is a sneakily awesome move in that direction.
And can you imagine what kind of comments those two will have while watching the “Alejandro” video?
-Sam
Linkin Park isn’t quite on the Tool-schedule of releasing albums, but they are close enough – taking three to four years in between each album release.
We knew that LP was hard at work on a new album, but prognostications had its release date pegged sometime around the end of the year or early next year. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait that long.
According to the band’s official site (which hopefully will be getting a make-over ASAP as it’s still stuck in their iPhone game phase), the group’s fourth album will be released on September 14th and has the title A Thousand Suns. The first single will be a track called “The Catalyst” and that will be released on August 2nd.
They also announced a pretty cool contest in connection with the album:
Remember when David Hasselhoff got absolutely blitzed a few years back and his daughter videotaped him as he lay on the floor of the bathroom completely out of his gourd, shirtless, trying to eat a sloppy hamburger all while proclaiming “This is a mess” and telling his daughter “fuck you.”
Yeah, that was pretty low.
But if anyone could top (drop?) that, it’s Courtney Love.
I’m just going to step aside and let Rolling Stone explain what went down during a recent Hole concert in Washington D.C.:
I’ve already touched on Paul Gray’s death a couple times on this site, so I suppose it makes sense to wrap things up by letting you know that the medical examiners have officially ruled his cause of death as an accidental morphine/fentanyl overdose. He did not have a prescription for the drugs.
According to the report, “Fentanyl is a synthetic form of morphine that may be hundreds of times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. . .Its effects are indistinguishable from the effects of heroin.”
You’ll remember that at the time of his death, he was found in his hotel room surrounded by needles and pills, so this finding isn’t exactly a surprise. It’s just another sad case of a someone letting their addiction get the best of them.
2010 has already seen a good deal of solid albums be released, and it doesn’t look like the output will be slowing down anytime soon. Here’s a roundup of some the most promising albums set to hit shelves later this year (or early next year):
* Kings of Leon are in the studio working on their fifth album. Their last album shot them into the stratosphere as far as fame and popularity are concerned, so it will be interesting to see how they follow that up. Initial word is that the guys are “exploring their progressive side” on the new disc.
* M.I.A.’s new album has received a title but had its release date pushed back. It will be called / \ / \ / \ Y / \ (aka “Maya”) and will be released on July 13 rather than the original June 29 date.