Funniest ANTM Moments

Well, I finally finished a side project I have been working on, The 100 Funniest Moments on America's Next Top Model. It generated a following of mainly ANTM fans, but I contend that you don't even have to be a viewer of the show to enjoy a lot of the best parts. (Hint - they rarely have to do with actual modeling.) For that reason, I wanted to share video clips of my personal top 3 moments with my general readership.

1.
Here is footage of the bar brawl responsible for one of my favorite catchphrases of all time: "Bitch poured beer on my weave!" Tiffany gets into an argument with girls who the show captions with flashing red text as "not models" (and then blurs their faces - who has time to look at non-models anyway?) and the fight escalates to the point of broken glass, blood, and yes, sopping wet hairpieces. When one of the other girls chastises Tiffany for resulting to violence, she responds, "That's great, Martin Luther King, but hey, I'm with Malcolm… Do unto others as I'mma do unto you!" Television gold!

2.
It's generally believed that you don't have to be smart to be a model, but Kathleen proves that their might be minimal intelligence requirement. When she's asked to pose as an anti-fur activist, she doesn't understand the concept in the slightest. And if you can manage not to laugh aloud at her ignorant views on how fur is made and the judges' subsequent critiques of her ("I do worry about Kathleen. You kind of want to take Kathleen home and look after her." "I don't!"), then you're a more restrained person than me. She may be one of the dumbest (but likable!) people ever on reality television, and that's saying something.

(Skip to the 4:40 in the video if you don't have patience to watch the whole thing.)

3.
There's never a good time to develop a mysterious skin disorder, but the worst time is probably during a modeling competition when you need to look your prettiest, which is precisely what happened to Michelle. Though it winds up being a harmless case of impetigo, that doesn't stop the other girls from diagnosing her with a "flesh eating bacteria." Seeing the girls devolve into hysterics is a hilarious example of how rumors compound and people are prone to overreacting.

Check out the ANTM Funny blog for extended commentary and 97 other amusing moments.

The Bit of Truth in Geraldo's Controversial Hoodie Statements

So let me be clear, I'm not a Geraldo fan. When he said, "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was," he proved himself a dingy once again. While I can't say with 100% certainty that George Zimmerman is "guilty", I've seen enough evidence that goes well beyond a reasonable doubt to say that he's responsible and definitely should have been arrested by now. At best, Zimmerman is a racist. His strange vigilante attitude also screams either mentally ill or delusional to me.

But as for the hoodie debate itself… I'll say something most people don't want to acknowledge:
I wear hoodies to look more intimidating. It's a conscious fashion choice I make when I'm walking alone in a place my friends worry is too dangerous or homicide-y.

I'm a non-threatening, short, white guy. Having a hoodie drape over my head disguises my identity and (hopefully) makes me look a bit more menacing. You're a lot less likely to mess with a guy whose face you can barely see.

For example, I was walking alone down a street at about midnight with a baggy hoodie on when I began to approach an old man also on a late night stroll. He looked over the shoulder at me and I can tell I frightened him. He tried to pick up the pace to get away from me, but he was old, so he was still going at a pace slower than I would naturally overtake him. At first I went slow so I wouldn't frighten him more, but I finally decided I just needed to go ahead and pass him to get the encounter over with rather than seem like I was stalking him for a prolonged period.

As I walked by him, he actually jumped in fear, so I apologized and pulled off my hood. He seemed so relieved to see my face… my smiling white face. Then he apologized for being so scared of me, though I'm pretty sure he would have had his fears validated rather than apologizing had he seen another race under the hood.

And there's the difference between me and Trayvon: I get to wear a hoodie and feel more secure, while for Trayvon, that hoodie signals open season, apparently. That, my friends, is what we call white privilege. What's more, I get to take off my hood and no longer look intimidating. But Trayvon? In or out of that hoodie, Zimmerman considered him a threat.

Jon Hammdsome?

Mad Men's return last night is an important event in my life. I fucking love that show. First, I love the social criticism of decades ago that actually subtly critiques today's society. Second, and more importantly, it is the ideal show for an armchair psychologist like myself. I love dissecting the characters' traits and flaws, which have all been carefully crafted. You don't have to like the characters to see how much thought has been put into it.

At our viewing party last night, the biggest hit was Megan serenading Don with the song "Zoobee Zoobee Zoo" (or in French, "Zou Bisou Bisou" - I had assumed it was nonsense initially). Gawker has a video of the fascinating awkwardness. Man, Megan has a nice set of… teeth. In celebration of this moment, my friends and I have now all agreed to take turns singing this song to each other on our respective birthdays.

One thing we don't all agree on (well, actually, everyone pretty much agrees on it except for me) is about Jon Hamm's attractiveness. I just don't get it, I honestly don't. That's not a "no homo" thing - I can give you a long list of men I find attractive, but Jon Hamm? Really?! I suppose my penchant for androgyny makes me disinterested in a guy like Don Draper who represents such a stereotypical manly man. No thank you.

Tonight I was at a sports bar where they were playing Bridesmaids (victory for women?) and the movie froze on this frame for several minutes.

I laughed and laughed. Are you telling me this is the man you all find incredibly handsome? Granted, it's just a split second and, to be fair, it's not Kristen Wiig's finest moment either (she looks toothless - show her how to do it, Megan), but come on. Y'all are just adding a fantasy on top of a fantasy to think Jon Hamm is as dreamy as you claim.

P.S. Bridesmaids might be even funnier with no sound and only captions to read. But maybe that's the beer talking.

Culture Clash

While at a barbecue attended by a good blend of friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike, I saw this hippie guy I had met once before start chatting up one of my good friends who was eating a plate of food. Knowing him to be an oddball, I decided to stand within earshot of the conversation to see what he might have to say.

[Note - it's been a while since this conversation happened, so it is paraphrased to the best of my memory.]

"I made that," he said gesturing to the meat.
"It's really good," my friend said, perhaps politely, but I think genuinely.
"Yeah, I got lucky, you never know what you'll find," the hippie said.
"Oh yeah, that's the fun of shopping," she said.
"No, I actually got this from a dumpster," he said.
My friend laughed.
"I get all of my food from dumpsters," he said.
"Haha, okay, yum," my friend said.
"Stores throw out good food all the time, it's such a waste," he said.
"Yeah, we should eat that expired stuff," my friend said sarcastically.
"Exactly! It's barely expired when they toss it, it's still good to eat, so I get stuff like this from behind the grocery stores."
My friend kept laughing. "Okay, well then it's the best garbage I've ever had."

After he turned his attention elsewhere, my friend came up to me.
"He was weird," she said.
Having met him once before, I assured her that he was being serious about dumpster diving for food.
"No way!"
"I swear."
"I thought he was kidding! This is really food from a dumpster?"
"That's how he feeds himself," I explain.
"I don't believe you, that's so gross."

Here's the thing: I have had a few friends who dumpster dive, and I think it's a fine personal choice. That said, serving up perishable food that's been unrefrigerated and in the trash at a party without giving any warning is not kosher. My friend couldn't even fathom someone actually doing that, to the point where she assumed he was joking each time he was trying to tell her the truth.

However, if you still insist on serving up your free dumpster food to strangers, then you know what? Don't tell them. What they don't know won't hurt them (aside from food poisoning, I guess), but don't go up to them when they have a mouthful of your food and say, "I fished that out of the garbage!" and expect everyone to be down with your radical politics.

In Defense of Heejun

I rarely vote for American Idol contestants, but I voted for Heejun nearly 100 times last night. Make no mistake, Heejun is the worst singer on American Idol, but his sense of humor makes him the most entertaining. And as a supporter of VoteForTheWorst, that’s right up my alley.

Look, I think pretty much all of the finalists are good this year, but they all stand up there and perform boring ballads, do what they’re told, and allow themselves to be commodified. Sing like this! Dress like this! The way Heejun met with Tommy Hilfiger, didn’t take him seriously, and then wore an ugly t-shirt anyway is commendable.

What really motivated me to vote was Steven Tyler’s critique. Though Tyler is paid to be a “judge”, he never gives any negative feedback, even when someone royally sucks, so the fact that he was so angry at Heejun for putting on a joke act is telling. It’s clear the producers are tired of his comic relief, and that’s all the more reason to keep him. And for the record, Steven Tyler, Heejun is not “taking a piss out of the song” by giving it an I-don’t-care-I’m-going-to-be-me performance, he was actually honoring the song’s meaning. (If you want to get up in arms about a singer misinterpreting a song, how about that probably gay long-haired kid singing “Only the Good Die Young” without any of the authority of a guy trying to pressure a religious girl into having sex?) But yeah, Heejun is taking a piss out of the show. Maybe if Tyler weren’t so busy getting loopier than Paula Abdul and hitting on underage girls, he’d realize that he’s one of the show’s biggest jokes of all.

(Side note: one time at Katy’s birthday party, Maddy and I stopped the festivities to serenade her with our duet of “My Life”. We hadn’t really thought about the lyrical content first, so there was a lot of cringing from her friends and family as we sang lines like “Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone”, but to her credit, Katy just fake smiled and clapped as if it weren’t insulting.)

Tonight, Heejun barely squeaked by in the results show. (My votes mattered!) The judges really read him the riot act for his antics, and I hope it doesn’t crush his sarcasm and make him try anything earnest next week. Heejun has a way better chance of leaving this show a comedian instead of a singer, so I hope he continues playing to his strengths. Whether he’s giving celebrity guests photos of himself, baffling Ryan Seacrest with his witty one-liners, flinging his microphone around haphazardly, or tweeting embarrassing photos, I want to see more of it. If he keeps treating this show like the joke that it is, I’ll keep hitting the redial button on my way to dodgeball.

On a side note, I can't believe Idol did a whole night dedicated to Billy Joel, and no one sang his best song (also the best Disney song ever): "Why Should I Worry" from Oliver & Company. This song is still totally my jam.

How I Will Die

This When & How Will You Die app is blowing up on my Facebook feed. Normally, I ignore that kind of stuff, but I rather enjoy thinking about my friends dying!

First I saw the one for Eric, who will die of a stroke. That's not so bad, because you know what's worse than dying of a stroke? Living with a stroke. Can I get an amen? Besides, he might not die at all: what is the 20th month? Granted, that could just be the European way of writing the date, but then why not have both dates written in the same format? What kind of shoddy death predicting software is this? That said, if it is a date written in the European form, that means he'll die on 4/20, which means they have Eric pegged more accurately than I initially gave them credit for.

Next I saw the grave for Zemie, who will die of "lungs cancer". Yes, it said lungS cancer. Getting cancer in one lung is sad, but getting it in both is just plain careless. Sorry, Zemie, but you have it coming!

And then there's Ryan who will die of "violence" on 9/11/22 . Maybe there's another terrorist attack? Or as Ryan points out, maybe he gets killed for making a 9/11 joke. Though at the rate he tells 9/11 jokes, I'd be surprised if he makes it another 10 years. 2022: the year Ryan learns that 19 years is still considered "too soon" by an angry mob.

At last, I was unable to resist the alarmingly crappy death predictor and gave it a whirl. The good news: I'm going to outlive all of my friends. The bad news: I'm going to be hit by a bus. Sounds about right. I mean, who looks both ways before crossing the street anymore. Do me a favor - even if I'm not killed by a bus (which admittedly is a big if) - please make sure my tombstone looks exactly like this one. I like the simplicity of "Kevin… Hit by a bus." It's a sweet way or memorializing me. Or if you want to play upon an old joke, you could always say something like, "Kevin died doing what he loved: blindly stepping in front of public transit."

See you in 25 years, Whitney!

My Bike Keeps Stopping to Eat Hay

Pretty sure you don't need a college degree to work for the California State Parks Department.

Girls Poop, Too

A while ago, I learned of this great article from The Frisky: “Girl Talk: Pooping Is a Feminist Issue”. Though it’s presented with a humorous voice, I’d contend that it’s not a trivial issue. Women poop just as much as men, but they’re not supposed to acknowledge it, and we go so far as to pretend that they don't. It’s no wonder that society has trouble granting women reproductive rights when we still shame them for the same biological functions that they share with men.

As a child, I developed a potty mouth thanks in large part to a few female friends who shared a love of poop jokes. I sent them an email with the link to the article, commending them for tackling a feminist issue before they even knew it was one. What follows is the abridged email conversation. Part of me wants to warn you that it’s graphic, but the other part of me feels that that’s a patriarchal response to women talking about poop.

-------------------------------------------------------
FEMALE 1
BAHAHAHAHAHA!!! that article is hilarious and true. I'm trying so hard to suppress my laughter at work that I'm afraid a big gas is going to come out instead!

FEMALE 2
Hahah hilarious!!!
So wait - the article says if you hold your poop or fart, it will come out in their sleep. I have farted in my sleep and its woken me up but I'm proud to say I have never pooped in my sleep! But now I want to know - who has pooped in their sleep?!
I have pooped my pants when laughing in cape cod. Yikes.

KEVIN
oh, wow, FEMALE 2, that might be too much information. What a good feminist you are… I don't remember this incident.

FEMALE 2
I think I wa sin 8th grade? We were in chatham with [redacted]. We were at their place (not their usual cottage they would rent though) and I laughed and then farted and realized I had pooped my pants. [redacted] was not pleased and you kids all thought I had gotten my period since I was in the bathroom forever.

FEMALE 1
Geez, Kevin, I remember that story! Don't you remember how embarrassed [redacted] was b/c FEMALE 2 called out to her from the bathroom window, saying, "[Redacted]! I pooped in my pants!"

FEMALE 3
I just go back from class and had like 10 e-mails with the subject heading "Poop." A banner day!

I have not pooped in my sleep, although I once woke up from a nap and saw brown sticky stuff on my thighs. (Well, first I saw it on the toilet seat, then on my thighs). I then realized that I had fallen asleep with a bowl of oatmeal and melted chocolate chips. I immediately IMed FEMALE 2 about it and got a message back, "Hi, this is [FEMALE 2’s MOM]."

Also, when FEMALE 1 was 1, she was in her crib for a nap, and when her mom went to wake her up, she discovered that FEMALE 1 had opened her diaper, gotten poop all over her hair, and finger painted with it all over the walls. I think many comments were made that night about "shampoop."

FEMALE 2
Haha both great stories! Don't think I remember hearing when FEMALE 2 finger painted with her own poop. That must have been the start of her real painting. What a great way to get in to it!
------------------------------------------

These women are pioneers, true feminists. Now let’s all get shit-talking – and I mean that in the most jovial sense possible.

To Tell the Truth

Mike Daisey is in hot water today following reports that he fabricated details in his This American Life report on the working conditions in Apple factories abroad. Take into account the Kony profiteer getting busted for masturbating publicly, and it’s a bad day for fraudulent activists.

I’ve known of Daisey for five years now thanks to another publicized controversy with which he was involved. While Daisey performed a one-man show, 87 audience members got up and walked out of his show due to the “offensive” content, with one man stopping to dump a bottle of water on Daisey’s script. (See the video above.)

These 87 audience members were students and staff on a school trip from a public high school in a conservative area of Southern California. It’s worth mentioning that I was a teacher at a public high school in a conservative area of Southern California five years ago. I don’t like giving too many professional details on my blog, but it’s also worth mentioning that I am very, very familiar with these students and staff members. You can draw your own conclusions!

In their departure from the theater, one of the school authorities identified themselves as a “Christian group”, which is neither an appropriate nor legal label for a public school. That may have been the community’s general attitude, but not all of the students were Christians, like it or not. And objecting to the language used? Kids at that school hear the word “fuck” from their peers at least a dozen times a day – that’s not even a detention-worthy offense. Furthermore, the sexual content may not be in line with the school’s abstinence-only policy, but I think the number of pregnant students showed how well that was working.

To be clear, Daisey was not the controversial part of this incident. That can be chalked up to my dear acquaintances who proved that their “moral outrage” was entirely hypocritical by not only disrupting the show, but trying to destroy it on their way out. How Christianly.

This story was just one of many I included in my award-winning Masters thesis about why I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. It really did win an award. I think the Education professors thought they were being progressive by recognizing a thesis that poo-pooed on their profession, but the plaque I received fell apart within an hour of them giving it to me if that tells you anything. My advisor even encouraged me to publish it, but I couldn’t do that, mainly because I had fabricated an interview with a student’s parent. I couldn’t get the parent to talk to me, my university told me it was a graduation requirement and to find a way to make it happen, so boom, I added some sentences and pretended I met with a parent I never met with.

I don’t feel that bad about lying in this instance because I was put into a corner, but I also wouldn’t have that work disseminated to the public knowing that it contained a lie. Never mind that it contained a lot of truths that I think would be valuable for those in the education profession to consider – by including a lie that could be uncovered, it discredits the whole piece.

And that’s where Daisey went wrong. His intentions were probably good, and his Apple factory piece is still probably mostly true, but no one can trust it anymore, thus undoing any of the good it did. We all have that friend who is a chronic exaggerator whose stories we can’t even take seriously anymore. We all have moments where we find ourselves so caught up in the story that we’re telling that we start adding hyperbole without even realizing it. But we shouldn’t let exaggeration get in the way of something when the honest-to-gosh facts can do the job alone.

If you look at how Daisey captions the earlier YouTube video, he says that the Christian group “physically attack” his work. He’s overstating what actually happened, even though the video speaks for itself. I suppose we should have seen this exaggeration coming.

The Lorax

The Lorax is a great book with a great message, but I preemptively soured on the movie version when I learned that the film had over 70 corporate promotional tie-ins. Calling it hypocritical for a book that is anti-corporation and pro-environment to lend its characters to a car commercial is an understatement. Viewing it as willfully ignorant of Dr. Seuss's central thesis, I was so apprehensive to see the movie, that I insisted on getting three sheets to the wind first.

Maybe I was liquored up enough to be forgiving, but I'm pleased to report that the movie itself is not a bastardization of Seuss's work. Evidently the marketing team didn't bother to watch the movie when they took over, but as far as the screenplay goes, it clearly illustrates unrestricted capitalism's destruction of the planet.

My friend Alex argues that it's important to look beyond the hypocrisy and just be thankful that big companies are still willing to make a movie about environmentalism at all. While the issue is a little more gray than that, I can agree that I'm glad that this message is out there. I say that as someone who got so worried about the earth that I had to leave a K-Pop night club early this past weekend. My friends were having a discussion about how much longer the human species could survive with the way we're destroying our own planet (consensus except for one: we're screwed soon unless we act on a massive scale, like, yesterday). I'm not upset the conversation happened, we need to talk about these things more often, actually, but I couldn't transition back into a place of "let's do shots and laugh at Korean pop music videos."

We're polluting, destroying our own food and water supplies, and using plastic like it's not a major problem. We protect the right for a small number of individuals to make money over our collective right to live. Today's big shots seem to forget that you can't make history if we don't have a future. Plus, even though we'll face an overpopulation epidemic soon (which I suppose climate change, famine, and disease will wipe out in time), this country is still subscribing to beliefs that make practicing birth control immoral and global warming is propaganda. We need to come together and use our intellectual capacities to solve these problems rather than listening to the fictions of the elite, but even that is increasingly unlikely as we let our educational system erode and promote a society that is discouraged from thinking critically.

I feel like the more I pay attention, the more depressed I get. I'm definitely not as "fun" as I used to be. It's a weird situation where I know I could just choose willful ignorance and have a relatively good, happy life. I could live in the now and let future generations deal with the problems that will hit them even harder. However, I can't shake my sense of responsibility. The Lorax is right, it's time we all start caring a whole awful lot.

Where Do Broken Hearts Go?

Oh my goodness, I found the best video on the internet, y'all.

So I've been thinking a lot about Whitney lately, which in turn made me remember Me First and the Gimme Gimme's cover of "Where Do Broken Hearts Go". If you're in the mood for pop punk, their version still holds up. Which led me to this YouTube vid...

There's something about the pairing of these images with the song's lyrics that led me to laugh out loud several times. Sometimes they're clever. Sometimes they're stupid. And sometimes I have no idea what the videographer was thinking. But I do admire running the credits in the middle of the song. Way to decolonize how we think about credits. And I especially admire the images he chooses to represent the word "me" - the first time it's a tribal dancer or some sort, and the last time it shows some nerdy dude cuddling with a bear statue. Which one is the real him? I'd like to think they're both aspects of his clearly bizarre personality.

Which is your favorite lyric - picture pairing?

Naked M&M

Dear Mars Incorporated,

As a Christian father, I am outraged at your latest commercial portraying an M&M in a state of undress. I generally monitor the television my children watch, but didn't think there'd be any offensive content in an M&M commercial. Imagine my shock when I heard my young daughter ask, "Daddy, daddy, is that M&M naked?" My daughter is not yet at an age where I can explain anatomy to her, let alone candy anatomy.

This same ad also features a song by the band LMFAO. I would like to notify you that I researched this series of letters by typing it into Yahoo and found that the phrase this acronym stands for includes not one, but two curse words.

Unfortunately, I cannot make my daughter un-see a male M&M gyrating nude beside a female M&M, but I can help her to never think of it again by no longer giving her M&Ms. If I were looking to corrupt my children with candy, I'd buy the suggestive-sounding Skittles, or Mike & Ikes, which appear to promote a homosexual agenda. Meanwhile, until this naked M&M scandal is resolved, I will be providing by family with something else that melts in their mouths and not in their hands.

Disappointed,
Ronald Jackson

P.S. If the people who do your commercials are the same guys who make those the ads about bears with toilet paper stuck to their butts, please tell them I'm disappointed in their obscene content, too.

Why Facebook Is Like the Zombie Apocalypse

The impending doom of having to get a Facebook Timeline stresses me out. Being on Facebook is like living through a zombie apocalypse. Every time I look, a new friend has been turned. "Not Brian!" "Damn, they got Terri, too." As much as I want to grieve these perfectly good Facebook Friends who have been taken to the dark side, with zombification happening on such a massive scale, all I can really do is be thankful that the Timeline hasn't infected me yet.

But it will eventually get me - the writing is on the wall… the Facebook Wall. These zombies have made it clear that we will all be Timelined one day. In the meantime, I'm going to keep trying to evade getting bitten while watching my friends fall by the wayside. Some of these friends have stupidly done it to themselves, agreeing to the transformation since it's inevitable anyway. Others have been infected without their consent, and unfortunately there's nothing I can do to help them.

Although I wish the zombie apocalypse were not a reality, I do perversely find pleasure in outlasting my friends. The longer I go without being Timelined, the more I feel it speaks to my survival instincts. I'll consider it an accomplishment if I can be one of the last to keep my profile from mutating.

Granted, I have already considered what my top banner photo will be when my time(line) comes, but don't mistake that for being in any way excited. It's akin to me choosing the music I want played at my funeral ("Turkey in the Straw" played on banjos): I'm just making the best of a bad situation.

Joseph Kony: An Update

I'm hearing that the specific charity the video I posted last night promotes is a dubious one. Can't say I'm surprised. As I pointed out before, the video lacks concrete facts and relies mainly on an emotional appeal. When I went to the website last night, I was like, damnnnn, that's a lot of money for "supplies" - I'm going to need to know where this money goes before I do anything like that. Reports say that they give only 31% of proceeds to the actual efforts, meaning that some people are profiting big-time off this cause. That's reprehensible. Maybe not Kony-level reprehensible, but come on.

We've got to beware wolves in charitable clothing. Have you seen those Bank of America ads that portray itself as a philanthropic organization? Never mind that their charitable giving is a piddly amount compared to what they take from us. Never mind that its reckless practices are largely responsible for this country's financial woes, that it regularly takes homes from people through illegal foreclosures, that it nickels and dimes the poor with bogus fees. Ultimately, people want to believe that BoA is good when it tells us it's good, so we don't bother to question it.

I, too, should have explored this Kony video more before sharing the video. I got caught up in my passion for mobilizing the masses via viral video rather than bothering to give a sniff test to this particular cause. Mea culpa. But that doesn't mean we need to give up on the Kony cause altogether. All of those methods the video outlines are still relevant, minus the giving money to a branded Kony 2012 campaign. Tell your friends, make your own posters, and tweet it out. I stand entirely behind my previous post, but it deserves a disclaimer to be wary of the Invisible Children "non-profit" itself.

I just hope a bitch glitch like this one doesn't in any way derail people from new media activism in the future.

Internet Activism

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Hey, watch this video. It’s pretty good, focuses on an important topic, and is something that made me cry.

Granted, I can get nitpicky about the film. I feel like I still couldn’t tell you enough about who Joseph Kony or what’s specifically going on in Uganda, but I’m nonetheless convinced that it’s awful and that this movement is a righteous one. Also, do we really need a cute white kid to hypothetically put in harm’s way to illustrate the point that the situation in Uganda is inhumane?… Maybe we do, it is an effective technique.

The main reason I recommend the video, however, is that I want to see this succeed. As much as the video is about using the most influential nations’ sway to arrest Kony, its thesis actually seems to be about activism in the new millennium. It’s about how the general population, made to feel unimportant by societal design, has the ability to make demands when its voices unite. I have no doubt that we can stop Kony through this crowdsourcing, just as I have no doubt we can use this same approach to tackle other injustices.

Make no mistake, this is why we’re beginning to see bills like SOPA and PIPA surface. Social and new media is changing the game, and those with power want to squash what is a clear and present danger to their elite standing. It’s not that they mind these tactics being used to oppose Kony - by now it should be obvious that they don’t give a damn what the outcome is in regards to him - but best believe that they know they’ll be the target of similar activism down the line. They see the writing on the wall, and they want to eliminate that threat before we even have a chance to realize just how threatening we can be.

The internet itself is a populous movement. The internet has the ability to educate and liberate us. Let’s start here by ending the terror in Uganda, and then let’s keep the ball rolling.

UPDATE: Be wary of the specific charity advertised in this film. See further explanation here.

How Michael Jackson Perpetuates Pedophilia from the Grave by Having a Hot Daughter

Yo, we have a problem. Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris Jackson, is a total fox. It's not that I'd do anything illegal with her (because gross!), but it's obvious that she's going to grow up to be a stunner. The fact that she's already objectively one of the most attractive people I've seen in a while at only 13-years-old is definitely disconcerting.

Do you suppose that this is Michael's punishment for (allegedly) touching little kids? Having a daughter so attractive that he's got to be paranoid about other ChiMos (allegedly) like him?

In addition to the whole Whitney Houston fiasco in Las Vegas the other week, I played blackjack with a Michael Jackson impersonator for a while. He was a fun dealer because he'd make us sing MJ's iconic high-pitched "Hee Hee" when we got 21 and he enjoyed punning back and forth with me with song titles.

While I played, some guy came behind me and contemplated sitting down next to me, but couldn't decide. "Play with me!" Michael said in a child-like voice. Trying to help, I added, "You can't pass up an opportunity like this, usually Michael Jackson only wants to play with children." Upset, Michael slapped my hand hard. "That's not what I meant by 'Hit me.'" I told him.

Surprisingly, the man opted not to sit down with us.

Soon after, Michael dealt me four twelves in a row, which is not a good blackjack hand.
"Why do you keep giving me twelves?" I asked.
"It's 'cause you think that's what I like," he snapped back.
Touche.

Overall, though, I was winning a lot of hands and more than doubled my money. It was almost as if I was a real child - play with Michael Jackson for a while, and you're bound to walk away with a lot of dough as settlement. Unfortunately, my friend Matt lost a bunch of money at Jackson's table. His girlfriend, Jessica, noticed his depleted collection of chips and expressed concern. That's when Michael, in a squeaky evil voice, informed her, "I fucked your boyfriend."

I cracked up, but Jessica was not pleased with Michael's statement. I thought it was pretty obvious that he meant he fucked Matt by taking his money, but Jessica took it as some sort of threat to her relationship. It seems to me that a pasty, cosmetically-butchered Michael Jackson lookalike would only be a threat if Matt had some unlikely history of being attracted to Jacko impersonators.

Oh wait, you mean to say that Jessica has impersonated Michael Jackson before? Innnnteresting. Well in that case, we can only hope that if Dealer Michael were to have "fucked" Matt, it would result in a kid half as beautiful as Paris.