My Analysis of "Vietnow"

Here are the lyrics to Rage Against The Machine's Vietnow.
Here is my interpretation. I suggest you read the lyrics first, see what you think about the song, then read what I thought.

A Heated Debate

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=1465183&blogID=17657406

the debate is getting really long and is still going on! you'll have to go to the link on your own to read it though. way too long to post here.

Movie Review: Julien Donkey Boy

I didn't feel like there was all that much to Julien Donkey Boy. In fact, I can't even remember that much about it. Its one of those films that isn't really about anything and lacks a plot. This doesn't necessarily make a film bad, but in this case it didn't help the movie any. The story is of a schitzophrenic guy and his family. It is filmed in sort of a "home movie style." I like Harmony Korine, but this film just didn't do it for me.
2 1/2 stars

More Ignorance Discovered

the following ignorance was posted here by some conservative girl. I'll put everything she posted in italics.


March 8, 2005 • Tuesday

A Pointless War?...My Response

a lil response i made on another group forum...i was proud i wrote so much. Its kinda informal and i just wrote it all off the top of my head..so i hope you enjoy it or at least learn a little!

...but this is what i said:
in reply to the first lengthy comment by Alex's Angel, i have to say that i see where you are coming from but i also disagree. the fact is, if you were watching the elction day in Iraq you see how many iraqi men and women WANTED to go vote, they knew their lives were at risk...the terrorists made them very aware of what could happen to them if they were to vote. And i applaud them for their tremendous courage and bravery and will for their country. So, if there never was a just cause before, this is surely it.

The middle east has always been a source of contention among the world, well not always, but within the last centuries for sure. The fact is that Islam people, and the Koran actually are very tolerant of other cultures. They are taught to respect people with any religion that has a book they live by, i.e. the bible, and those of the like. So Islam itself is not at all bad, and they do not teach you to blow yourself up. They were taught that if a man dies in battle he goes straight to heaven, and leave it to the extremists to nab young children and virtually brain wash them into thinking Allah's plan for them is to blow these people up. They are very good at taking what the basis of their religion is and twisting it to make people believe that doing the terrorist acts are right.

I have to say, if we had a choice to win this struggle by war, or by "negotiating" and peacemaking, sure, we'd take peace. But we've tried that for years. Between Iraq and Afganhistan we have proven to the rest of the Middle Eastern world that the U.S. means business. Iran and other countries are already getting a little jumpy watching the fight for freedom unfold in Iraq. They see that its what the people want, and they see its working, its only a matter of time before most of the world catches on. Of course it's a shame that men and women's lives have been lost. But i believe it is for a good cause. because of what we do here today, our children, and the world will be a safer less corrupt place. Democracy allows balance, we arent imposing our beliefs or our government on them, we just want the people to be free. Just as you and i are. We want them to have what we have. They dont have to do it the same way. They should be able to chose who is leading THEIR country, and they should be able to speak out and have a voice if they dont agree with what their goverment is doing. Would you like to get shot in the back of the head just cuz you said something as simple as "i dont like bush?" I thought not. The people there will soon have the freedom to say as they feel, not as the should just to save their own life.

Another thing is, there were very few fatalities at the actually invasion of Iraq, it was extremely successful. I'd like to make a reference back to WWII. The Nazis were eventually knocked out of power (after a much longer deadlier stuggle)...but America never real heard much word about what happened there after. Truth is, there were still pockets of Nazis and those in the Axis, that were either never discovered or had escaped from our grasp. And they continued to strike out and rebel against people, and many more innocent people continued to die because of it. We arent fighting pansies, we are fighting willful, hateful, passionate groups that want to win as badly as we do, and some of them will not give up without a fight. And they are doing there best...even tho we dont want them too. So you cant expect them to just thow down their weapons like that (as much as i wish they would). We arent an NFL team playing against pee wees.

And it bothers me how people sure dont care that we threw all this money to tsunami relief to help those in need...but when we go to help those opressed in the middle east...we're imposing!...imposing on who? Saddam??? The only people who dont want us there are the extremists....you know the iraqis do, what are we gonna do leave em there? We gotta make sure that country gets on its feet the right way. Otherwise, all the time and money and lives that have been sacrificed on this thing would go to waste.

Lastly, id like to mention, or at least remind us, that America didnt have a pretty start either..after we broke free from the King all the states wanted to go the seperate ways, the Articles of Confederation (the first constitutional document lasting until 1787) were a load of crap, and the country was un funded, unprotected, and very very unstable. if any country would have chosen to come kick us when we were down, who knows, we might all be speaking spanish. but luckily for us, the Articles Of Confederation were revised, and we have the beautiful country we have here today. Thanks to the founding fathers...and the Bill Of Rights....every American has an equal voice. And the freedom to have that voice and live. We have the ability to grow and learn and create new things. We are all equal, no one born into rank. We earn it. And no matter how much money you make, your vote only counts once. We have the incentive to produce faster and better and smarter, and invent new things. Our country thrives because of its ability to be flexible. And with so many people, especially the media (who dont always report all the details)..we have the ability to keep our government in check. We're lucky we can even be having this discussion period. I'm not saying we are perfect, nothing could be, its impossible, just ask the commies. But we are what we are today because of the Revolutionary war, and the steps we took for the next 50-75 years, to make a good country, great.



*i just wanna make clear im not attacking anyone...when i say you, i mean who ever is reading this....just to make things clear.


7:28 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

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Grayson's response:
the only thing i agreed with was the paragraph about how islam isn't some crazy terrorism based religion. it only turns to terrorism when it becomes fundamentalist. just as in christianity. you said that weve tried peace in the middle east for years...no, we haven't. was the gulf war a war of "negotiation"? and before the gulf war, sadaam and the US had no conflicts. bush sr gave supplied sadaam with his access of weapons of mass destruction. people like you always critisize saddam for killing his own people.... wake up, that was while this country was friendly to him! america didn't care about that at all when it happened. only now it is brought up to be used against him. hey, i'm against sadam as much as anyone, but maybe this country shouldn't have supported him in the first place?? alright, now lets backtack to reagans presidency. the islamic fundamentalists were trained and financed by the cia, among them was, thats right, osama bin laden. why? because afgahnistan was a battlefield of the cold war and the islamic fundamentalists were against the communists just as America was. the enemy of my enemy is my friend. hey, maybe this country shouldn't have trained the islamic fundamentalists either. right? that would make sense. you know, NOT training terrorists. brush up on your history of the middle eastern region and its connections to America.

i dont believe that ANYBODY thinks that we shouldn't have given aid to the tsunami victims. the PROBLEM people had with our aid was the fact that it was something ridiculously small like 300 million dollars. sandra bullick gave $1 million dollars in aid in comparison. also in comparison, this government gives billions, not millions, BILLIONS of dollars to corporations each YEAR.... for no reason (actually, our politicians are paid to give them bailouts, tax breaks etc). maybe the wealthiest country in the world could have given a little more than the lent our leaders found in their pockets.

you said "we're imposing!...imposing on who? saddam???". no, we imposing on the people. you know all the innocent people killed by us bombs? thousands upon thousands. guess how many of our bombs hit saddam? ZERO. we imposed on a nation out of the fucking blue. its called an invasion because we INVADED their country. they didn't ask us to come there. last time we were there (the gulf war) the people started uprising against sadaam and we pulled out of the war and let sadaam put down the uprising. ever notice how NOBODY talks about why we randomly pulled out of the gulf war when sadaam was still in power? i could explain all this to you but im guessing it might be out of your political grasp until you read further on the subject.

also, you seem to be proud of the bill of rights, yet have no problem with it being trashed upon and completely EXTINCT to all those detained in guantanamo bay, cuba.

"every american has an equal voice"? are you kidding me? the poor have the same ability to get their message across as the rich right? heh. "nobody born into rank"? have you ever heard the term "class". people are born into these things called economic "classes". that means, being born into RANK. our votes only count once, but our money can go as far as we want it to. unfortunately we ARE born into different RANKS we DO have different amounts of money and thus different amounts of INFLUENCE AND ECONOMIC POWER. "we have the ability to keep our government in check"? i dont know if you've been watching the news in the last few years, but it wasn't all that long ago that a president took us into WAR for no reason, with no evidence and the people didn't vote on it. oh yeah, that certain president didn't even win the election in the first place. you seem to like the revolutionary war and its principals, i'm sorry but our founding fathers would cry if they heard the things you say in their name.

Posted by gnome chomsky on March 8, 2005 • Tuesday at 11:15 PM
[Reply to this]

The Insider and Business Flak

Micheal Mann's The Insider is the true story of Jeff Wygant, a leading tobacco scientist who has some very important and damaging information on the inner workings of big tobacco. Wygant is approached by Mr. Bergman, a source recruiter for the "60 minutes" television show. Unfortunately, Wygant's former employer, Brown and Williamson, has a strict confidentiality agreement with Wygant, disabling him from speaking out. Wygant is faced with the option of telling the public vital information, but taking this path will undoubtedly threaten his family's health care and safety.
Eventually when Bergman finally convinces Wygant to reveal the truth, Wygant subsequently looses health care and is left with dire family problems. In any case, CBS decides not to even air the program on account of the ongoing litagation that would inevitably follow. On top of litigation worries,the network is even less inclined than usual to run the piece on account of higher echelon heads of CBS standing to make a lot of money in the future sale of CBS to the Westinghouse corporation. Obviously, Westinghouse would be less inclined to purchase a network with the leeches of big tobacco attached to it. Word is handed down from above that the program cannot be aired in it's entirety.
According to leading media critic Noam Chomsky, mass media goes through various filters before it reaches your television screen (or radio, newspaper, etc). These filters include such things as wealth (the ability to own enough capital to run a network in the first place), advertising, dubious sourcing and flak. The blatent omission of vital public knowlege presented in The Insider is what Chomsky would call the "fouth filter" of the "flak filter" of the media. Flak is defined as "intense adverse criticism." It is not a surprising fact that the policy entrepreneurs of big tobacco will do anything in their power to oppose and critisize any damaging information targeted at them. It is commonplace for the mass media to ignore or bypass certain information to avoid such flak.
In a hyper-pluralist society such as ours, it is not uncommon to find political action comitees and interest groups that not only have influence on the media, but own the media. On the subject of capitalist America, it would be hard to debate against the elite class theory and it's subsequent dictation of the system. Chomsky's first filter, concerning size and ownership, now comes into play. In order to own a sizable and profitable media network that reaches a vast audience, wealth is 100% instrumental. The business class can be viewed as an interest group of its own once one considers its undisputable anti-labor, anti-government regulation agenda. Thus it can be demonstrated that the business class as an interest group dictating what information we are exposed to... and what information is kept hidden.
The story of The Insider is the rule, not the exception. Corporations have an agenda. The agenda is to profit and maintain profits. It is extremely unfortunate that we, as the American public, cannot expect balanced factual news from our media on the subject of capital, business and anything related that may or may not definatively effect our lives. The media corporations have always and will always keep us in the dark on business related issues that the public may dissaprove of. The business community is not suicidal, afterall.

Barbershop Joke

The following joke was posted here.
G. W. Bush and John Kerry somehow ended up at the same barbershop.

As they sat there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The barbers were even afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics.

As the barbers finished their shaves, the one who had Kerry in his chair reached for the aftershave.

Kerry was quick to stop him saying, "No thanks, and my wife Theresa will smell that and think I've been in a whorehouse."

The second barber turned to Bush and said, "How about you?"

Bush replied, "Go ahead; my wife doesn't know what the inside of a whorehouse smells like."

A lot of people posted comments like "bush rules!" and stuff like that so I added a comment of my own:

nice! i love how the opinions of so many americans are formed by "clever jokes" and misused words like "democracy" and "freedom" instead of reading about actual events, policy and history..... oh yeah, i love how you guys furiously debate over the two mainstream politicians with virtually the same platform and act like they are so different, when in reality the same wealthy elite and corporations fuel both their campaigns and the media networks that pretend there is a real "choice" in the election. the only part of the joke i enjoyed was how they both end up at the same barbershop, because since both politicians are super wealthy demagogues that shamelessly use our tax money to provide them with the utmost care for their precious little lives, they probably WOULD meet at a barbershop. And these pampered individuals wouldn't settle for anything but the most expensive barbershop, they'd see eachother there, share a cigar and laugh about how they are fucking each one of you idiots over while they are getting richer. ;-)

Movie Review: 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys is the Animal Planet sponsered remake of the classic Henry Fonda flick, 12 Angry Men. Instead of a controversial trial pushing 12 men to a debate whether a man is innocent or not, the plot consists of 12 monkeys in a jury room throwing feces at eachother for 2 hours and 14 minutes.... only kidding. The real plot of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is clearly based on the Chris Marker short, La Jetée. Gilliam virtually took the story set-up of Jetée, kept the ending as well, but added on a whole dynamic storyline inbetween, giving the movie it's own unique tale. 12 Monkeys is one of those flicks, like Fight Club, that makes you realize that you really need to see it more than once to get a good feel for it (I have actually only seen it once, but have taken the liberty to review it nevertheless). While we are on the subject of Fight Club, I must note the striking resemblence in Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys to his portrayal of Tyler Durden in Fight Club. I don't want to give too much away, but I just want to point out that you will definately notice a similarity in the personas of the characters right away. Willis and Pitt make great performances, as well as a bear that is unfortunately uncredited.
4 1/2 stars

Movie Review: Videodrome

I was somewhat disappointed after seeing David Cronenberg's Videodrome. It was pretty weird, I'll give it that, but it didn't add up to be as good as I thought it could have been. Nevertheless, it will leave you with some weird images in your mind and a strange dreamlike story to remember. The plotline is that a man starts getting interested in an underground extreme S&M television channel called Videodrome. Once he watches it for the first time, everything changes. He doesn't know what's real and what isn't. Is Videodrome even real? What is Videodrome? Why have I been given a slimey VHS tape made out of human flesh and blood instead of the normal plastic kind? Should I insert it into the giant hole that is now my stomache? These are the questions the man is faced with once he enters the world of.... Videodrome.
3 1/2 stars

Go To The Bookstop

I noticed today at the Bookstop (Central, Nob Hill next to flying star) that they have Russ Kick's Book of Lists and Greg Palast's Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Anything that Kick and Palast put out is always pure gold and I can't imagine anybody bringing these books in to sell. Nevertheless, they are more than half off the price it would cost to get them new and are in perfect condition. Why am I bothering to tell you? I'm not being paid to tell you to buy em, I just love those books so much that when I see that they are being sold cheap I almost want to buy them all over again! For more information on those two books, go click the links for them at my reading list. Also, if you want a good book detailing the working conditions of entry level positions in America, the bookstop has Nickel and Dimed as well, which is also on my reading list. But you can usually find that book at most used bookstores.

BURN!

I got some pretty good burns on the Blair girl today. I texted her to tell her why I don't want to date her or be her friend or anything and told her how decent people are nice and do things for friends. She freaked out and said that all the people at Dions think I'm insane... although none of them know me. She called me a "crazy fuck" so I felt it was fair game to tell her that when I asked one of these guys she said she was friends with how Kevin (her ex) delt with her for so long, he said that Kevin hated being with her and only stayed for the sex. Of course she freaked out and yelled at me a lot about how I'm just mad that she doesn't like me. So when I was talking to her on the phone and she was yelling I said "well I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." Then she said something like "now you are saying sorry?!" then I said "just kidding, I guess you didn't get my sarcasm" and I hung up. Then I texted her "After that night at Dions, you said that you liked me and wanted to take things slow... I said the only thing I wanted from you was the stuff I left at your house. But you can pretend that I still liked you if it helps you sleep at night. Now I shall turn off my phone so I don't have to hear from you again. And if you text me on some other day I will make sure to delete it without reading it. I hope to never talk to you again! Bye! :) "

and I do hope to never talk to her again. And if I do get a message from her, I will delete it without reading it. I think she is one of the craziest people I've ever met.