Shouting Grounds

Remember that FISA bill from the Senate Intelligence Committee that lets companies that spied on you and me to not have to face the responsibilities that such law-breaking would warrant? Of course you don’t, because you didn’t know it even existed and it certainly wasn’t as important as whether or not Hillary Clinton wept, or whether Mike Huckabee wants to change the Constitution of the United States to follow God’s law (fun-fact: He does!)

If you knew about the measure and wanted to support Senator Dodd in his fight to strip the telecom immunity provisions from the bill, then you’re TOO FUCKING LATE, ASSHOLE!

Criminals are putting their man-slabs through the ear canal of lady liberty, and it’s not a pretty site. It happens so frequently now that it amazes me that there’s anything holding her head together that isn’t covered in hedonistic pop wads.

Here’s to you, Government (for lack of a better word). For as much ass you fuck, you sure know how to keep yours out of harms way.

Update – 5:27 PM – 2/12/2008

There is a petition to support the RESTORE Act and for the House to reject the lame-ass excuse for a FISA revision the Senate just passed today. SIGN IT, and Please EXPRESS YOUR OUTRAGE!

CNN featured an article today titled Suit: Airport searches of laptops, other devices intrusive part of which told the plight of Pakistani-born U.S. citizen Amir Khan, and the various difficulties he’s gone through at the hands of custom officials while crossing the border into the U.S.. In fact according to Khan some customs officials have even gone so far as forcing him to reveal password protected and confidential information from both his bank as well as the company he works for.

Embedded ever so snuggly into the succulent meat of the article is the following quote made by one Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country. This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”

STOP!! REWIND!! PLAY AGAIN!!

“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country. This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”

Okay anyone not catch that? You want to come to America? Fine, all you have to do is give up your right to privacy! Done and done!

What disturbs me the most is not so much the absurdity of the statement (Neocon’s have been spouting horseshit like that for years) but the fact he claims all Americans expect this and thereby embrace it!

What’s even more appalling is when you consider that statement in the context of Amir Khans situation. Amir Khan is a U.S. citizen. Born in Pakistan yes, but a citizen of America none the less.

So what’s the moral Mr. Knocke wants us to learn children? Now repaeat after me:

When crossing the border back into the country of his/her citizenship, said citizen is expected to not only surrender his/her right to privacy but on top of that should fully embrace such a surrender.

According to Mr. Knocke it’s the American thing to do!

!!!BULL FUCKING SHIT!!!

Discuss.

People have been saying hip-hop is dead for years and up until recently I’ve been more or less inclined to agree with them. Starting in the early part of the current century and continuing up until the present the entire landscape of the genre has been littered with little-to-no-talent acts who couldn’t string a decent rhyme together if their over-priced and uncreative lives depended on it.

To be certain, since the early 2000’s we’ve had some bonafide talent, most notably with the likes of Kanye West and T.I., but by and large the music coming from the new crowd has been, to put it bluntly, complete and total crap. Occasionally something will hit with a catchy rhythm or hook that you can snap your neck to for a week or two but even then it’s just a slick beat with no substantial lyrical content behind it. As a direct result hip-hop has now entered the realm of the Super-Producer giving us such names as Swizz Beats, Scott Storch and Manny Fresh. You’ll notice I didn’t include The Neptunes in that list and that’s solely because I consider them to be the only new school producing group worth their salt and truly pushing the limits.

This all leads me to what I like to think of as hip-hop’s second coming. Yes, we’ve still got a solid stable of heavy hitters that continue to make semi-decent to good tracks, but in my opinion what the genre needs right now is some good, fresh talent. We need a knight in shining armor to liberate us from today’s over-played and underwhelming noise and whisk us back to those glory days of yesteryear.

Enter Lupe Fiasco! Hailing from my home city of Chi-Town, I first heard him on a Kanye West track (Touch the Sky) and I’ll admit wasn’t terribly impressed off the bat. However once his first big single hit (Kick Push) I found myself instantly digging his style and delivery. Thanks in large to Pharrell and Co. his beats are always top-notch but where he really shines are his lyrics, variable speed flow, and thickly layered content. When listening you can pick out his influences and it instantly becomes clear he’s a student of such greats as Nas, Common, and Q-Tip. He blends it all together, along with a portion of his own custom swagger, to produce a highly lyrically charged and versatile flow, that while not as smooth or honed as Eminem, T.I., or the king himself Biggie, is very distinctive in itself. His effectiveness is in his ability to have you instantly memorizing every line due to his dynamic and distinctive delivery. He infuses every syllable, word and sentence with a purpose and his lyrics are some of the most well constructed I’ve heard since perhaps Nas. While he doesn’t carry the word-smithing skills of Eminem or Kanye he more than makes up for it with the attention to detail he lavishes on his lyrics and content. And the music is fun! At times I find myself laughing out loud as he effortlessly uses his skills to lace his rhymes with double and sometimes even TRIPLE meanings! His flow is at all times saturated with a certain cockiness that distinguishes itself from Kanye’s “The world owes me” and T.I.’s “This is too easy”, but instead says something to effect of “I’m here to make my mark and won’t stop or drop off until the job is done”.

To date he’s released two mainstream albums: Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor and Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool and if you’re a serious hip-hop fan you need to own both! If this is the first you’ve heard of him and you’re interested in checking him out I would suggest starting with his mainstream hits like Kick Push and Superstar then move into some of the deeper stuff like Dumb it Down (currently my favorite song), Hurt Me Soul, Put You On Game, and Gotta Eat. Also if you wanna hear him give Twista and Bone Thugs a run for their money as the fastest flows in hip-hop give Go Go Gadget Flow a listen. While he may not be able to flow quite as fast for quite as long as the others I just mentioned the kid soundly holds his own and there’s no doubt he commands respect while doing it.

I can easily see a Grammy in Lupe’s future and I’m looking forward to many more albums from his camp. While not the best in the game his efforts thus far have already propelled him into classic status which is more than can be said for many of his fellow contemporaries.

So is he really the savior of hip-hop? Who knows for certain. I do believe, however, if not its savior then most certainly a prophet here to herald forth a new era in the game.

Take a moment if you would, to Google our asses…

For some more fun, google image our asses. DoubleLOL.

Nice work JT and Socrates to get our assholes up and in on that shin.

From time to time I’ve heard various rumblings about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Recently, however, Vanity Fair has published an very informative Article detailing many more specifics regarding the game.

I have to admit reading the article got me excited about the game and I can honestly say if this game turns out as good as they say, it will be the sole reason behind me purchasing an XBOX 360.

In any event check out the article as well as the trailer in the links I posted above.

Also, apparently they forwent using James Earl Jones as the voice of Vader in the game an instead went with some bloke named Matt Sloan who made a YouTube video called Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. The video, in itself, is fairly lame but I will say this guy has Vader’s voice and inflections down pretty fucking good. It’s not as good as the real deal, but I’ve heard worse.

Anyway, enjoy today’s daily geek fix.

I’m on the eighth episode of Deadwood, and I have to say I do indeed like this shit. And Powers Boothe just confirmed what I had always suspected, that he’s a stone cold mother fucker. From Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner to Curly Bill Brocius to Senator Roark to Cy Tolliver, it’s obvious that this guy would kick ass in any era. No, fuck that…he’d bend your balls around and stuff them into your throat through your asshole, then choke your shit until your nuts explode into your brain.

Yeah…he’s a badass.

I was recently given access to a full installation of Office 2008 for Mac at my job and was interested in checking out what new features and functionality were included in the new version. Since it’s the first in the Office line to be installed as a Universal Binary I was very excited to ditch the Office v.X copy that’s been languishing on my laptop for a few years. After the 30 minute install I was a little disgruntled to find that a new set of Office Aliases were copied into my Dock without an obvious choice to do so during the setup, but, that aside, I started Word to see what new stuff awaited.

I find, to my horror, that the Word 2008 for Mac looks damn near exactly like Pages ’08 (in fact all versions of Pages). See below:

The screen capture on the left is Word 2008 and the one on the right is Pages ’08. Apart from some minor differences in the interface, you’d have thought that these two programs were part of the same family or even the same software with a different configuration. Now this isn’t a full review of the software, I really haven’t had a chance to play with Word too much to give a proper assessment of its capabilities. It looks very powerful and from what I’ve attempted it functions very well and uses a lot of OS X features that were ignored for so many years. Of them, Spotlight support in Entourage, realtime options, but no CoreImage rendering. It seems Microsoft is choosing to go with their own engine for visuals over what’s readily available to any OS X developer.

Details aside, it’s very difficult to pay attention to this new application as it has so much in common with a bundle of applications you can buy for 80 bucks! Namely, iWork ’08. And is it just me or does Entourage 2008 look like shit? For something that you have to look at everyday, it sure needs some work in the usability/visibility area. Messages are clumped together and attachments are either exposed in this bulky pane with vertically stacked buttons that take up nearly all of the reading pane, or are collapsed into a read-only view where the files can’t be right-clicked or interacted with. The folder, to the left, hierarchy looks completely fucked together. Cluttered and confusing, with a series of view options visible by default which add nothing to average user. I know what you’re saying, “Leopard comes with default search views in the finder that I don’t use”. Well, I happen to use a least one of those search views daily, and there’s not fifty of them filling up the screen.

All I’m saying is that if I had to make the choice between buying Office 2008 for Mac and iWork ’08, I’d go for the $80 package that does 90% of what Office does and maybe a few things that it doesn’t. You can keep Entourage.

It looks like Apple pulled some good news out of their asses today, without much fan fair. iPhone and iPod Touch models are now available in capacities twice what they were offering yesterday. That’s equates to 16GB for the iPhone and 32GB for the iPod Touch. Both units are running for $499. Cool to see that in this short amount of time my hard disk based iPod (gen5) has been eclipsed by a flash memory device….with way more features. Gotta love progress.

Speaking of organs, little has been done about rampant organ abuse in this country and abroad. Let me end this little impromptu PSA with a video showing the true carnal horror that is the text book, chronic organ abuser.

Stop the abuse!

Magic John Stone here, with a PSA for all you negatives out there. I’ve long been a big hater of everything, and I’m proud to still be…but personally I’ve been relatively positive over the course of the first 1/12 of 2008…at least…positive about myself. Fuck Apple, still…

I’ve overhauled my lifestyle pretty significantly, from the inside – out, and am also focusing on bettering certain things outside of myself as well. The key for me has been looking at things as a sculptor would a slab of fresh marble. You know that the end result is in that damned chunk of rock, you’re job is to chip away until you find it. This is pretty simple and I can even hear you saying, “Hey, Magic John Stone, this is elementary…anyone that can form a thought knows this.” True enough, but having the wherewithal to apply it toward your everyday problems takes a bit of discipline, which is most easily obtained through motivation. Know you need to lose weight or face life-long obesity/heart problems/diabetes/heckling/need to buy giant pants? That’s some fuckin motivation. Apply that and see your big ass as a ripe hulk of marble that you need to chisel down to a normal goddamned human size. I’ve been a fat, angry bastard my whole life, but since the arrival of 2008, my goal has been to become simply an angry bastard. When I finally have a child, I want to be able to play with the little shit, and not be inclined to eat him. So, as a goal, I’ve committed to running in this year’s Shamrock Shuffle here in the world’s greatest city on March 30th…and goddamnit if it were today I’d certainly have a coronary. So I’ve made comprehensive a plan to chip away at my own self and make this happen. It’s not easy by any stretch…just today I ran for 18 minutes straight on a treadmill, but I will say that only 3 weeks ago I wouldn’t have been able to pull something like that off. It’s that little bit of progress that sustains my motivation.

But the plan is simple enough: realize your goal, logic out the path to it, and then put one fuckin foot in front of the other fuckin foot until you’re standing there ready to put ball to wall. Stop using the fact that you aren’t able to do something right now as an excuse why you’ll never be able to do it. That’s fuckin bullshit. Chart a course and set sail, goddamnit.

The Shouting Grounds is in no way responsible for the utterings of Magic John Stone, take his shit with a grain of salt as he’s usually trying to bash someone or something’s balls in.

3 misdemeanor’s, not too shabby.

Boo-ya!