"I had the sword extended, that's all!"

So a man breaks down his neighbor's apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought the porno he heard was actually a woman being raped and crying for help... what's wrong with that?

Come on, notice how CNN goes out of its way to mention that James Van Iveren, or All-American Hero as I like to call him, lives with his MOTHER, playing it up for humor, as if that's some sort of prerequisite for being a heavily-armed weirdo. It's not like he can get away with watching that sort of thing at home. Believe me, I live with *my* mom too. So sue him if he can't tell the difference between stereo and real-life acoustics, between "acting" and real acting.

I own a pair of nunchucks. So sue me too if I have a penchant for helping those less fortunate, if I dream of performing a truly heroic and selfless act like all those heroes I read about in books, comics, and see on tv and in film. Arrest me if I ever burst down your door, twirling my nunchucks and screaming at 2,000 decibels for you to show me the woman I've heard screaming in agony downstairs. She needs to be saved, and I'm just the man to do it. Don't get in my way.

James obviously descends from a long-line of heroes. The cavalry sword is a family heirloom he says, most likely carried down from a war-hero ancestor. He probably gave his life for his country, charging into enemy territory selflessly to save a woman from being raped, and James wanted to live up to familial standards of heroism. His father did it, as did his father before him, and I bet you could trace James' family history five generations back and discover his great-great-great-grandfather slaughtered 600 Native Americans because he thought their war-whooping was the equivalent of white-woman-raping.

It's time the police recognize this man, this Hero for trying to do the right thing and drop those unnecessary criminal charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. But I guess they're too preoccupied with rewatching those porno clips for "evidence's" sake.

--Cbake

Finally Joined the Masses

One of the more annoying functions on the six-degrees-of-separations-and-connections website known as MySpace is the ability to have a song automatically start playing for someone whenever they bring up your page. Why does this bug me? Usually I'm not spending that much time reading someone's front page, going through their epic tome of interests and "About Me"'s. I'm just there to see their pictures, see if they're single, read their comments, and see if they have any friends I should know. Hot friends especially.

Call me a voyeur.

While I'm doing that, however, I don't want to have some annoying pop song (which too often it is), one that plays on the radio far too often in a one hour period anyway, playing in the background of said MySpace page. It just gets in my way, and I instantly press the pause button to stop the madness.

Now call me a hypocrite.

I happily joined the masses today in thinking people are interested enough in me to wonder what kind of music I listen to and am arrogant enough to assume they will like the song I decide to play for them. The first song played on my MySpace is "Knights of Cydonia" by MUSE, a blend of hard rock and what sounds like an electronic kazoo that creates a song that seems to belong in a futuristic sci-fi western film (which coincidentally is exactly what the music video is like; Best Music Video of 2007!). It's a twisted sister song to the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", and it's awesome.

And yet, I have to complain about the way MySpace lets you place these songs on your page. Unfortunately, you can't pull a song from your own library and post it on your MySpace. You have to find the MySpace page of the band whose song you'd like to play, and then that decision relies on whether or not the band has that particular song playing already on their site. Usually, a band has about 5 songs that you can listen to on a little mini-player that sits on their page, and if you like one of them, you just click "ADD" and voila, it's playing on your page now as well*. Too bad most of the other bands I like don't have the songs I want to play on my space. I want my songs to mean something, to be good. I don't want to just pick some arbitrary song to play because they don't have the one I want available.

But what am I gonna do? Complain? Just did. Deal with it and find a song I like? Done too. Enjoy.

--Cbake

*IF you're over 50, I apologize for typing that paragraph completely in Greek