Two reports came out today that I think need to be emphasized. I really do wish the Democrats would start fighting back harder rather than just rolling over and taking it, but what can you do.
The first is that 45 senators voted to block a bill that would promote less outsourcing. Now yes, five of them are Democrats (actually four, and whatever Joe Lieberman is) but still. These are people who are okay with taking jobs away from Americans. If that doesn’t scream “I’m paid off by big business” then I don’t know what does. There’s no way those senators are voting in the best interests of their constituents. And in those states where those senators are from, why can’t the Dems run ads saying “Senator X is okay with taking away your jobs and keeping unemployment high”? Just repeat that statement over and over ’til you win.
Number two – and this one is considerably more disturbing, I think – is that 112 78 of the GOP candidates running in November are against abortion at any time. That includes rape, incest, and cases when the pregnancy endangers the mother. One hundred and twelve. That is… absolutely staggering, and horrendously appalling. How you can be that cruel is beyond me. And don’t give me this “it’s God’s plan for us” bullshit – your Christian god isn’t nearly that cruel. I also find it hard to understand how the GOP/teabaggers’ claims of less government also translates to harsher laws, but whatever. Here’s another place where the Democrats should just spam an ad saying “Candidate Y is against abortion even if a person is raped”.
Just being louder about how far right these people are is bound to scare the moderates in the GOP. At best those people will vote Democrat, and at worst they’ll just not vote overall.
Seriously, Democratic Party, I really hope you’re reading this post. (Probably aren’t, though.) There is no reason why we should lose control to these people who have quite clearly gone off the deep end.
(update on oct 2: LGF originally reported 112, but rawstory looked into it and showed it was 78. so updated.)
Look, I don’t want to be the curmudgeon here, but I think I need to say what’s on my mind. I should first state that I agree with the general purpose of TwitChange. Raising money for a good cause? Great! Using Twitter for something other than inane bullshit? What a nice change of pace.
But come on, let’s face it: the general premise behind TwitChange is utterly depressing. Here’s the premise: you, a random Twitter user, place a bid on an eBay auction for a celebrity. If you win, you get all sorts of amazing things, like the celebrity “follow[ing] you on Twitter for a minimum of 90 days, will retweet one of your tweets and will send out a tweet including your @twitterhandle.” Whoa, man!! A celebrity will follow me for 90 days and echo my username out once!? For upwards of $500!? How is this not a bad deal for anyone involved?!?!!
I guess it just makes me sad that people feel the need to be validated by paying a bunch of cash to have a pseudo Twitter relationship with a celebrity. I love Nathan Fillion and Joel McHale and Felicia Day just as much as the next person, but I don’t go around with a handful of money asking them to be forced to interact with me. It’s a clever idea and a great way to generate money for a charity, but it’s predicated on exploiting people’s trite and awkward desires to be close to celebrities. And it’s totally artificial on top of it. Ryan Seacrest isn’t going to remember who you are the day after you win the bid.
Ah, it’s so nice to have the return of television shows. Castle was good as always, Community was great and 30 Rock was hilarious. I’m intrigued by The Event; it had a slow start but really built up, and I’m hoping the show goes somewhere (that is, doesn’t bomb like Flashforward where nothing happened). We’ve got Undercovers and SVU recorded but haven’t watched either yet.
Three days ago “Geek and Gamer Girls” was released on the Internet. Those of you who missed it can watch it here, but basically it’s a song where four chicks sing about how they’re geeks. The intention is good but ultimately misguided, and the song ends up really just being an enormous embarrassment. I admit that I spent most of the video cringing.
The first thing I noticed is that it’s less of a song and more of a list put to music. At its core, the song’s lyrics are just references to TV shows, video games, board games, and other things that are traditionally considered geeky. That doesn’t prove that you’re a geek – it only proves that you have a cursory knowledge of some things that aren’t considered to be mainstream. It’s probably hard to come with lyrics for a song like this, but maybe that’s a sign you shouldn’t be writing one altogether.
I think I’m questioning the need for a song like this altogether. Was it in question that there are a bunch of girls out there who play video games – and that a portion of them are good looking? Why does that need to be declared in a song? Yes, most geeks are still guys, but females are a still growing minority. There are far better ways to make such a declaration, anyway; take a look at Felicia Day’s The Guild for an example.
But the part that gets me the most is that, in a song about girls who are geeky, there’s a fairly lengthy rap session by Seth Green. I don’t understand why his cameo is necessary. I get that the original song (Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”) has a rap section with Snoop Dogg in it and maybe they wanted to reflect that in this song, but it seems contrary to the point of the song. Clearly the song is meant to be some form of anthem for geek girls, but then you have a guy perform in roughly one third of the song? The song is about empowerment, and having a guy in it waters it down, I think.
Ultimately I think the song falls flat and really just ends up hurting the cause (whatever you defined it as) more than helping it. And unlike other people on the Internet, I’m not insulted that the song references things that I like. It’s really just an unnecessary piece of fluff that sets back female gaming. The right way to do it would have put the girls in a Gears of War group, have them go around wrecking other teams, and then laughing over the mics.
