Week of 11/24/2014

Hey Morning Radio, Knock Off The Games!
– by David Matthews 2

This past week I was reminded of why I hate listening to morning radio.

I have to listen to the radio for two reasons: the weather and traffic.  My early-morning commute to my bill-paying job is hell, and I need all the help I can get to make it there and eventually home.

The afternoon drive isn’t as bad, because I’m going away from the city and I’m not under a clock like I am in the morning.  Plus I have plenty of music choices in the afternoon.

It’s the morning radio that gives me nothing but grief.

My most obvious choice is the local news station.  Or at least one that isn’t regurgitating the crap from their overpaid talk radio whores.  Unfortunately they seem to operate on this fixation that the universe ends just outside of Atlanta’s 285 Perimeter.  You have to have something burning or blown up before they even consider that life exists in the northeast area of the city.  And, of course, they have their own overpaid talk show whores that they need to hype up with snarky thirty-second sound bites.  And let’s not forget their sponsors either.  The same half-dozen commercials that are repeated every hour on the hour and don’t change except maybe every six months.

So I jump on over to one of several music stations… except that in the morning they all have their overpaid morning radio personalities that want to bore us to death with their pop-culture diatribes and their relationships. 

Music?  What music?  Oh, you wanted to listen to music?  Sorry; you must mistake us with a corporate-owned radio station that actually gives a care about what you want!

But every, so often, they do screw up and do play some music on a few stations, so I jump to those when I’m sick of hearing the same regurgitated “news radio” garbage.

So this past week, I’m jumping around and I hear that one of the female morning radio personalities will be posing nude for an art class.

Okay, you now have my attention.

I listen more into this, and apparently the morning personalities had this college football bet going where the loser would be posing nude for an art class.  The male host of the show was sure that he was going to be the loser, but it turned out that the female co-host was the one that ended up losing.  So they use the subject of Kim Kardashian (and her media) as a way for her to explain that she’s looking forward to posing nude herself for a bunch of art students and treat this as a way to empower herself.  And, of course, the guys tease her about the whole thing, saying that it’ll probably be a room full of old guys.

So this goes on for a day or two.  Every so often, I’d catch their little discussions about it in-between talk about music or movies.  A mention here and there that it’s going to happen.  And I’m wondering who this female co-host is and if she’s attractive, and if they will go through with it.

Then… this past Friday… the shoe drops.

Apparently her boyfriend, whom she’s in a long-term relationship with, didn’t know this was going to happen and he’s supposedly not happy about her posing nude for an art class.  And now everyone is apologetic because this could be a relationship-killer, and nobody wants that to happen (even though they’re not married).

Even worse, callers call in to defend her and now I’m made to feel guilty that she even lost the bet!

You know what, guys?  This has all of the signs of a hoax, and it’s one of the reasons why I hate morning radio in the first place!

First of all, I don’t buy the idea that the co-host simply didn’t tell her boyfriend that this could happen.  Especially someone supposedly in a long-term relationship!  Even if she didn’t lose the bet, I can’t see anyone staying silent about that kind of a wager.

Seriously.  You mean to tell me that all during the set-up beforehand she didn’t turn to her long-term significant other and say “Hey, honey, you’ll never guess what we came up with for the show!”  Right!

And then we have the whole matter of being made to feel guilty about her losing the bet.  I have to call B.S. on that!  Funny how the idea never comes up that the only woman in the group could possibly end up losing the bet.  Funny how nobody wondered if the guys had a significant other that might object to it.

Besides, the idea was yours, radio people!  It wasn’t mine.  So why the hell are you trying to get us to feel guilty when it was your wager and your stakes to begin with?

The answer to that, of course, is that it’s just a diversion.  A way to call off the whole game without feeling like the listeners are getting screwed, which I strongly suspect they are.

You know, a good friend of mine who is also a Playboy Playmate once told me about a wall challenge that she was invited to take part in for a local radio station during Spring Break.  The loser would have to run around the “party area” topless.  Of course the Playmates won, but not because they were faster at wall-climbing than the male deejays.  It was because nobody would have to be afraid of going to jail if the guys ran around without tops.  In other words, they knew going into it that it would be just a tease.

Let’s get brutally honest here… there is nothing more infuriating with morning radio than when they play continual games and scams on their listeners.  And I strongly suspect that I’m not the only one that thinks this way.

A few years back, another morning radio show crew played an “April Fool’s Day” prank on their listeners.  Their host was supposedly unceremoniously fired.  The announcement was made in the middle of the Friday show, and some people thought it was simply a weekend stunt and he would be back on Monday morning.  Except he wasn’t.  And people started talking about it.  It even made the station’s news segment, which led people to believe that it wasn’t a hoax.  All week, people talked about it and wondered what the host did that warranted his termination.  The co-hosts continued without him, and every so often they would call their broadcast colleague up to get a comment, only to say that he wouldn’t be able to talk about it yet “on advice of his attorney”.

A whole week of this went by, and then finally he is “allowed” to make his “statement” about the subject.  He calls in, apologizes to everyone, then steps away from the phone and says to the in-studio microphone “April Fool!”

It was a hoax.  The whole thing, the firing, the news reports, the “controversy”, were all an orchestrated hoax on the listeners.

And while it would be “funny” if it really was an “April Fool’s Day” hoax, this happened in mid-May.  It was a time when people did not expect to be taken for the fools that they were for trusting that radio station.

Guess what?  That morning show and their hosts did not last long, because listeners stopped listening to them.  No boycotts.  No petitions.  No protests.  Just enough people turning off their radios for their corporate masters to say “okay, they’re done.”

And that is probably the best revenge for these morning radio people that think they feel entitled to take their listeners for granted with cheap stunts and emotional frauds.  That people stop listening to them.  Don’t call in.  Don’t complain.  Just stop tuning in when their morning show is on.  Big Corporate will do the rest.

This is something that the morning radio people need to comprehend.  They need us.  We do not need them.  Fool us long enough, mess with us too much, and we will stop listening to them.  And there is nothing “cool” about messing with our minds or our emotions.

The truth is that we do have choices when it comes to what we listen to in our own vehicles.  Big Corporate may own and control the radio stations, but they don’t own or control our dials.  If we don’t like what they give us, we can turn it off and put on something we do like.

New ventures in digital radio and the Internet helped end the “shock jock”.  It’s high time that the “morning zoo” personalities follow suit.

Week of 11/17/2014

Kim Kardashian Will Never Break The Internet
– by David Matthews 2

You know what I really hate?  Over-inflated pompous declarations that are hyped up in the media.

This is the ongoing beef that I have with the Huffington Post, because they are worse at it than even Fox News.  They get some Democrat to offer up a rebuttal against something a conservative says, and the HuffPo people then splash that on their front page with a banner saying “So-and-So Completely Obliterates Conservative Claim”, even though the rebuttal in question is about as scalding as ice water.

The latest ego-centered over-inflated pompous declaration concerns the overexposed media that is Kim Kardashian.

Yes, “that” Kim.

The one with the sex tape and the ongoing series and spin-offs on E! Television and married to the music star and the family that is more surreal than “The Surreal Life”.

“That” Kim.

It seems the media that is Kim Kardashian has posed for some fashion-slash-pop-culture publication called “Paper”, which, I’m guessing, is published someplace called “Building”, and sold in exchange for something called “Money”.  The cover image was the photographer’s recreation of an earlier masterpiece, where champagne unrealistically flows from a held bottle to a glass perfectly balanced on the model’s rear.

But that apparently was just the tip of the media iceberg, as the media that is Kim Kardashian then proceeds to remove the shimmering evening gown she was wearing to reveal her curvy well-tanned-and-oiled naked rear, and later show her equally curvy well-tanned-and-oiled naked front.

“Paper” then released the tamer cover image with the title “Break The Internet Kim Kardashian”.  It’s then mirrored in social media as “Kim Kardashian Will Break The Internet”.  This is then followed by HuffPo’s declaration that “Kim Kardashian Will Definitely Break The Internet With Her Nude Paper Magazine Cover”.

I’m sorry but… no.

No, the media that is Kim Kardashian can never live up to that claim.

Let’s get brutally honest here… Kim Kardashian and her media can never, ever, “break the Internet”, no matter how many times she decides to pose naked and flaunt her very curvy well-tanned-and-oiled body around.  She could spend the rest of her time doing nothing but that, and it still wouldn’t “break the Internet”.

Oh, and by the way, I’m not the one that is knocking the fact that she posed nude for this magazine.  I’m disappointed that she didn’t show this much eagerness when she posed for Playboy way back when, and I think that Hugh Hefner would have to be senile if he isn’t on the phone with Kim’s people right now to get her to pose for Playboy again.  I actually like the pictures and how she looks in them.

What I take offense with are the over-exaggerated claims that anyone like the media that is Kim Kardashian, or her music husband, or her family, could ever “break the Internet”.  I don’t care how many fans you have on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat; you can never be so self-aggrandizing that your actions could “break” this medium.  You are simply not that powerful.

I get equally bothered by all of the self-appointed “mean girls” that decide to hijack an infinitely short-lived subject to express their neo-feminist-slash-femdom beliefs.  And, yes, that includes all the pseudo-“funny guys” who think it’s cool to Photoshop a guy’s head on Kim’s well-toned-and-oiled body.  Those so-called “funny guys” need to Photoshop their heads onto the anus of a donkey, because that is what they really are when they pull that sort of crap… they are the ass of an ass!

The women that get all pissy about the media that is Kim Kardashian also need to get their heads out of their own anuses.  I get that you are not the media that is Kim Kardashian.  I get that you do not have and probably will never have that kind of body, never mind one that is oiled up and well-tanned and then enhanced by Photoshop.  But your own jealousy over what you can never have does not automatically entitle you to castigate the media that is Kim Kardashian and condemn her and her media for showing off what she has and built up.  I happen to be friends with some actual Playboy Playmates – no joke – and I know that it takes some effort to keep up that kind of body.  Not everything is Photoshop.  And don’t tell me that I “don’t know what it’s like” either, because I’ve actually been on both sides of the photographer’s camera.

I’m also annoyed by the person who thinks that he or she can create 3D models to prove it’s supposedly “unrealistic” that the media that is Kim Kardashian can pull off the pose.  This is the same loser that harassed Marvel Comics over their variant cover of Spider-Woman #1.  Tell you what, cyber-fake, your credibility was already shot when a real-live model successfully replicated the Milo Manara image.  Now you want to get all pompous and self-serving over a photo cover that was clearly Photoshopped?  Take your “precious” iPad and go back to art school and maybe even learn a thing or two before trying to replicate other peoples’ works with your daddy’s CAD software.

Actress Alyssa Milano decided to hijack the over-inflated hype by whining that her breastfeeding photos were treated with “hate” but supposedly there was no “hate” over the media that is Kim Kardashian.  Um, excuse me, Ms. Milano, but you were the one getting all huffy before because people were posting pictures of your breasts back when you used to show them on video, and then you turn around and post pics of those same breasts feeding your baby.  Maybe it has less to do with what some other pop-media personality is doing and more to do with your double-standard when it comes to your own body.  And, besides, did you actually look for the reactions to the media that is Kim Kardashian, or did you simply adopt the Fox News and Talk Radio method of screaming “persecution” and then hoping the truth will validate it?

As for the rest of the world… no, the media that is Kim Kardashian can never “break” the Internet.  You’re talking about a media based on a whole family that live their lives on Entertainment Television and TMZ!  They couldn’t “break” the Internet even if they wanted to.  They need it to survive!

But do you know what can “break” the Internet?

Big corporations that believe they are “too big to care”.  Telco providers that feel they are entitled to fleece their customer base like sheep and give them non-existent service while screaming bloody murder at common sense concepts like Net Neutrality.  Corrupt politicians that have been bought and paid for by those same big corporations to keep their amoral sociopathic practices intact in the name of god-dammed profits.  Info-brokers that feel entitled to collect every single piece of information about who we are and where we are and what we are doing at all times so they can sell our lives to the government and to advertisers for a big fat profit.  Anonymous hackers that feel entitled to steal every piece of information that these info-brokers hoard on our lives and then use that information to ruin our lives.  All of these groups can and are doing their best to truly “break” the Internet that we’ve come to know all these years.

But I suspect that none of them would look good both and in and out of a shimmering evening gown as the media that is Kim Kardashian.  Never mind appear on the cover of a magazine called “Paper”.

Week of 11/10/2014

Dems Won’t Do The Right Thing, Which Is Why They Are Losers
– by David Matthews 2

Well the 2014 Mid-Term Elections are over with and, true to form, the politically-retarded voters once again failed to do their bit to bring about the change that they claim they want.  They once again surrendered to the old scam that says that if one dominant political party just had a little more power in government over the other dominant political party that things would “get better”.

It sort of reminds me of the story of two strippers that would try to vie for the attentions of a sad and lonely repeat customer, each of them seducing him and promising him the time of his life if only he would spend all his money on one of them.  Of course the “time of his life” was just a figure of speech.  They would never give him what he truly needed or wanted, no matter how much money he had to spend on them.  It’s an even sadder and pathetic tale for me because I used to be that customer.

So now the voters – both those that bothered to vote and those that were too retarded to even bother voting but still “voted” by their absence – have made their choices and we all will have to live with their choices and I will remind them that they are to blame for their choices and the future misery and frustrations that will follow from their choices.

But that doesn’t mean that the players themselves in this continual con-game are completely blameless.  It’s one thing to give it your best and fail.  It is another thing entirely to be simply the “fallback choice”, which is what the Democrats have become.

Let’s get brutally honest here… the Democratic Party, the so-called “Party of Jefferson”, has become a sad and pathetic shell of a political party that serves as the perpetual “fallback choice” when the GOP becomes too arrogant, too incompetent, too corrupt, and/or too fascistic.  And it really doesn’t take much for the GOP to be either of those.

Sure, the Dems have their special interest groups, and that’s apparently just enough to keep themselves relevant and hold on to some modicum of political power.  But that’s like calling yogurt a three-course meal.  All the other times, they’re just waiting for the GOP to screw up, or to have some kind of charismatic leader step up for them to follow.  It’s no wonder why they’ve been losing over and over again!

I’ve often referred to the two parties as a duopoly, but really what we have is one dominant fascistic party with an enabling co-dependent “alternative” whose only purpose in this universe now is to simply keep the seats of power warm for the GOP when they get off their fascism high.  That is what we really have in the United States.

So how do you change that?

Obviously the first way to change that would be to replace the Dems with a new party.  But that would require the voting masses to stop choosing to be retards and actually vote for the change that they want, and that’s not likely to ever happen.

So if the Democrats want to stop being losers, if they want to stop the slow bleed of their own credibility, then they have to take some concrete steps on their own to change things.

Let’s start with a very dramatic acknowledgement that they need to fix things with the resignations of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and soon-to-be-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid from their respective failed leadership positions in Congress.  They don’t have to leave Congress, but they certainly should step down from their so-called “leadership” positions.  These two joined President Obama as the poster children of Washington failure as painted by the GOP and Fox News and talk radio, and they need to accept responsibility for their part in the failure.

There’s good precedence for this: back in 1998, it was House Speaker Newt Gingrich that accepted responsibility for the GOP’s failure to cement their dominance in the Congress and stepped down.  Of course there were some other factors that were in play behind-the-scenes, but just the act of Gingrich stepping down was a public sign that the party hierarchy was aware of their failure and wanted things to change.

That is precisely what the Democrats need to do if they want to survive and not just be a perpetual failure machine waiting for the GOP to screw up just so they can get a nudge ahead.  Pelosi and Reid need to step down and let others take over their minority status and take the burdens.  They can keep their cushy overrated election positions with their undeserving lifetime pensions; they just need to stop being the poster models for perpetual stagnant failure.

Of course, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.  Pelosi and Reid refuse to admit they did anything wrong, never mind recognize that they’ve been scripted by Fox News and talk radio to be part of the “Trio of Evil” along with Obama.  Pelosi didn’t acknowledge her own failure when she lost control of the House in 2010, she hasn’t admitted to any kind of failing since then, and I don’t see her doing anything different in the near future.  And Reid only seems to care about his own cushy seniority, so as long as he can count on his loyal group of political retards to keep him in office, I also don’t see him doing anything different now that he’s going from Majority to Minority Leader.

This is why the Democratic Party will continue to be the party of losers.  They don’t look at the big picture when it comes to voter dissatisfaction.  They’re only focusing on their own special interest groups and their own elected positions and expecting the GOP to self-destruct so they won’t have to put up anything that shows they care about what’s going on in the country.  The GOP plans and agendas may suck and they may be destructive in the long-run, but they’ve managed to convince the politically retarded that they’re the only ones with a plan, and the Dems have not done anything to change that opinion.

But, then again, this is what you, the great self-retarded voting masses, voted for this past election, isn’t it?