Prop 8

I’m not really sure why people are so surprised it passed. An almost identical proposition, Prop 22 passed in 2000 with 61% of the vote. And in 2004, San Francisco began doing same-sex marriages and shortly thereafter the California Supreme Court put an end to it.

It disgusts me beyond belief…if California is supposedly a liberal state and a garbage prop like this gets passed, what hope is there for the majority of the country? How can something that discriminatory pass?

I’m ridiculously happy about Obama AND the Massachusetts ballot questions (No, Yes, Yes — it happened!) but this Prop 8 business infuriates me.

Right now I’ve never been prouder to be from Massachusetts.

Clark Rockefeller

I had Tivoed the Clark Rockefeller interview on “The Today Show.” Man, was it weird!!! Gave me the creeps!

BostonNOW

Oh, and may I add that I absolutely despise BostonNOW? I made the mistake of picking one up to read on the train after my dollar coin fiasco.

1) Their film reviewer reviewed the new version of The Eye, and stated that the original was a Japanese movie. WRONG. The original movie was CHINESE. It was called Gin gwai.

2) Its obvious lack of fine-tooth editing.

3) An article stating that Nancy Pelosi should support Hillary Clinton simply because they are both women. An excerpt:

I continue to be amazed that professional and liberal women prefer to vote for any male candidate before they will vote for another professional woman. For example, one would think that Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, D-California, would support Sen. Hillary Clinton in the same manner that most Black-Americans are supporting Sen. Barack Obama. In my view, Pelosi enjoys being the most powerful female in Congress and would rather have Sen. Clinton lose than help her win the Democratic nomination.

I find that to be sexist tripe. That’s nearly as sexist as NOT voting for Hillary because she’s a woman. One’s gender should not matter when voting. The article was difficult for me to stomach.

4) Their celebrity gossip section is taken RIGHT off People.com. They do credit People.com, but come on…

What a waste of trees. It would be one thing if it were a blog, but it just does NOT work as a newspaper. I understand that it’s a free newspaper so it’s not as if it were the Globe, however, their standards are so obviously low that it’s painful. Don’t these writers want to be taken seriously? Don’t they take pride in their work? At least I know I am not alone. The Yelp reviews of BostonNOW are absolutely hilarious.

Old News

I was watching News Center Five News at Noon to see when this snow would let up. To my surprise, they announced that they were going to do a little segment on endometriosis. I have had endometriosis since I was 13, and I had surgery for it in 2006, so my ears immediately perked up.

News Center Five reported that there is a “new” link between endometriosis and cancer. New? As far as I know, this information has been out for several years. And it’s really not a strong enough link to be cause for alarm.

I did a little digging to see if there was a newly released study about the endometriosis and cancer link. Nope. I did, however, find this from 2003:

Dr Anna-Sofia Berglund said: ‘It is very important to keep these findings in perspective. ‘The overall risk of cancer does not increase after endometriosis, and where there are slightly increased risks, they are in some of the less common cancers. ‘For instance, in Sweden just under 20 women in every 100,000 develop ovarian cancer each year. ‘My study shows that for women with endometriosis, another eight women in 100,000 could develop it - and it may be even fewer than that.’

I thought it was bizarre that they would even address this on a mid-day news program. This is not new information! And even so, I frankly don’t find it as alarming as News Center Five made it sound. Imagine if I just got diagnosed with endometriosis, didn’t know much about it yet, and got upset from hearing this information!

I wonder if they filmed this years ago and didn’t have enough news for today so they dug up an old story.

I hate the news sometimes. Especially local, televised news. I really only watch it for snowstorm coverage. At least we’re lucky enough to live in a time where we can easily pick our news sources, thanks to Google News, etc. News Center Five is not on the top of my list.

The Nicest Guy in Rock & Roll

As I’ve written before, Matt and I were big fans of the local Beatles cover band, Beatlejuice. We saw them regularly and always had a lot of fun. They were scheduled to play a show last night and a show tonight, until lead singer (also of the band Boston) Brad Delp tragically and unexpectedly passed away.

Boston took their website down and just left this on their website: “We’ve just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll.”

It couldn’t be anymore true. After seeing Beatlejuice many times, we got to know the band. Every time we’d see them, Brad would make a point to wave at us, even if he was on stage in the middle of a song when we came in. He would always make time to talk to Matt and I after a show…he’d greet us with a hearty hug and genuinely thank us for coming. No matter how busy he was after a show, he’d always give us a loving greeting and talk for at least a few minutes. Matt had grown up as a HUGE Boston fan, so to get to see and talk to the voice behind “More Than a Feeling” was exciting.

I’ll always fondly remember hanging out with Brad last May at another friend’s band’s show, Velvet Elvis, where we just got to chit chat and be silly for a while. That picture was from that night. He was always so kind and friendly to us, and I always looked forward to the Beatlejuice shows not only because of they great music, but also because it was fun to talk to Brad.

I will miss Brad very much, and Beatlejuice, too. My thoughts are with the family, friends, and band-mates of Brad.

Rest in peace, Brad. Or at least, start up a rousing jam session with John and George.

Students using IM lingo in essays

Man, check this out!

“Middle school teacher Julia Austin is noticing a new generation of errors creeping into her pupils’ essays. Sure, they still commit the classic blunders — like the commonly used “ain’t.” But an increasing number of Austin’s eighth-graders also submit classwork containing ‘b4,’ ‘ur,’ ‘2′ and ‘wata’ — words that may confuse adults but are part of the teens’ everyday lives.”

Geez. That’s pretty bad. I can’t imagine having turned schoolwork in like that in high school…or even junior high school for that matter.

Look at this:

“Fourteen-year-old Brandi Concepcion, a pupil of Austin’s, said wit, da and dat — used in place of with, the and that — sometimes creep into her homework.”

Wit, da, and dat? AHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Duck survives being shot and in a refrigerator for two days!

From CNN…

• Perky stops breathing on vet’s operating table, but is revived
• The duck earlier had been rescued after two days in a hunter’s fridge
• The one-pound female is not likely to have further surgery

Check out the full article! Very weird!

Air America

I was in New York for a few days only to return and find out that Boston’s Air America station has turned into a Spanish speaking station. I only started really listening to it last month, when my car stereo stopped reading CDs. I know Air America had previous filed for bankruptcy, but the fact that they can’t even make it in Boston doesn’t really bode well for them.

Apparently it’s happening all over, though…because Clear Channel isn’t really doing much promotion for the station. (No ads, billboards, etc) It seems that a lot of advertisers refused to let their ads be heard on Air America too. See list here. None of them really come as a surprise if you’ve ever been to Buy Blue.

I really liked the shows on Air America, but a lot of times they’d lose me during their lengthy and frequent commercial breaks.

Another complaint that I read about Air America (in Boston, anyway…not sure how it is in other cities) is its lack of live, local shows. Sure, a lot of the syndicated shows are good, but it would have been nice to have something live and local to listen to sometimes.

Air America’s signal was also pretty weak. At night and early in the morning I could hardly hear it and even during the day it was pretty spotty.

From Media Nation:

Here’s my theory: Clear Channel had a long record of donating huge sums to right wing causes, and when they wanted to buy some more stations last year, they knew they would get lots of opposition, so they wanted to show the FCC they were a bit more balanced; they threw progressive talk on some of their weakest signals and hoped it would seem as if they were now a more moderate company. The couple of stations with strong signals, interestingly, ended up getting good ratings and are still running the format. But now, CC is divesting of 400 stations, and there’s no longer a need to seem like they are behind progressive talk. Thus, they are pulling the plug in a number of cities.

Oh, Kramer…

OK, by now everyone has heard of the Michael Richards outburst. Obviously, I think that what he said is beyond awful…I was reading Huffington Post today, and there were a few posts about it. I was wrong when I thought there might be some thoughtful commentary on the situation. Instead, I saw some of the most despicable anti-Semitic comments I’ve ever seen in my life. It made me both livid and nauseous, but some of the comments were so DUMB that I almost laughed!

First off, is Michael Richards Jewish? I saw that on Wikipedia, as well as another source at some point, that he is Catholic.

Look at some of these snippets of the comments:

-By the way, is this Richards a hebe or is he White?

-This is TOO funny! A hook-nosed jewboy calling a n***** a n*****! [snip] And what gives Richards the idea that he’s white?

-So Richard may be Catholic, but his actions are Jewish, so critiquing him for his ‘Jewishness’ is rational.

- A racist jew? Yeah. Im not surprised. Chosen people…supremacy….genocide of the palestinians….hates blacks…yeah, it all fits together to paint a picture of a racist people.

-is he even jewish? He’s awfully tall

And then of course there are people claiming that Kramer’s career will bounce back, but Mel Gibson’s will not because Gibson insulted the Jews and the “Jews run Hollywood.”

The initial thread then devolved into:

Person 1: “Michael Richards is Jewish! All Jews are racist!”

Person 2: “No, YOU’RE racist!”

Person 1: “All Jews hate everyone!”

Person 3: “Michael Richards isn’t even a Jew!”

Person 1: “I don’t care! Jews are racist and bad!”

I’ve NEVER seen SO much anti-Semitism in my life as I have on Huffington Post today! These people are spewing hate on a political blog using anonymous names. It’s so depressing. I feel like things are going backwards sometimes. :-(

Yaaay!

Congratulations to Deval Patrick, the House, and the Senate! :-) I’m a happy camper.

And now for a Mitt Romney quote: “Being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention.” [at a GOP audience in South Carolina last year]

Awww, Mitt. You’re such a card. I doubt you’ll be missed, though!