MySpace Sued For Touching Somebody'sSpace

Technology again proves to be a bad mother. At least in the eyes of some moms and dads. Check it out...

MySpace, for those who have fulfilling social lives, is like a second internet. It's like an ever-growing yearbook, full of people from your high school, home town, and people who slept with people who slept people who are now teachers back in your old home town. It is open to anybody who wants to share their stories, their favorites, or just show off.
You get a "Profile" that you build to suit your personality. Some of them are perfectly suited to the people who built them: All flash, no bang. Bare bones. Dumb. Hyperactive. Busy-bodied. Some even have backgrounds of a waist-up-naked Bea Arthur painting. I have blogs over there, too, many of which are a little more hard-edged than this one. None of them touch the edge on the face of a breezy Bea in her late-30s.

Mostly, MySpace gives anybody who wants one the chance to express themselves. And most of the time, the folks there meet expectations: They have nothing to say. Just a few pictures of themselves getting drunk, pictures they took themselves. Tongue-out, hands extended, friends on the arm. Over and over. Siiiiiiigh. Life was so much simpler before other people's lives became public domain. Then again, it's got kids of all ages, some famous people's profiles with tidbits, and the rest of the hoi polloi.

It's fascinating, it's weird, it's voyeuristic, and it's almost as addictive as coffee ice cream-flavored heroin sleeping patches.

MySpace, like any other piece of technology involving people, has little to no built-in screening process. All one needs is a computer and an internet connection and they are likely to get on it. I use it as another way to handle comedy and events. Lots of bands and others like me do that, also. But like any other people-connecting technosphere, perverts get into the mix and things get unseemly.

One of the best ways I ever saw to stop this was when a comedian, Doug Stanhope, would go into chat rooms and pretend to be an underage boy or girl and bait scumbags into inappropriate situations. Then he'd copy the text and paste it to his website, and spring the trap on the scumbag. If nothing else, it would nearly force infarctions on those bottom-feeders. But we have something worse now...

Kids on MySpace are getting baited into meeting people they communicated with via MySpace, and some of those kids have been beaten, molested, and abducted. The natural reaction of the parents, any parent whose child went through this terrible ordeal, is to... RIIIIIGHT... sue MySpace! MySpace has a lot of money, mind you, and it should really be a better parent. It should make sure everyone plays nice and brushes their teeth. MySpace should be held responsible every time somebody with an account on their has a car accident, DUI, or diarrhea!

I feel really terrible for those kids. Their lives are changed forever, and part of that equation was MySpace. I cannot tell you how terrible it must be for those kids to realize they get more attention from strangers than from their own family. That doesn't excuse what the scumbags who should rot in prison (in between games of "Prison MySpace Invaders") did to the kids. Nothing does. I just really wish that parents would monitor what their kids are doing on the internet. First it was the dangers of being in public. Now it's the dangers of being on the computer. I guess all that's left is the safety of low-income housing, with no malls and no internet connections.




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Act Locally

I understand that this may anger some people.
Fine. You're paying attention, at least.

But this was from a county manager in Colorado, printed a day or two after their recent, pre-Christmas monster of a snow storm. Obvious references to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina aside, I really attached to the section after "What did we do?"

THAT is how we will get through crises. Neighbors helping neighbors. The world is changing globally, in climates both natural and political. Looking out for each other is sometimes the best we can do, while our government decides the best plan of action on how to look out for us.

By the way, a LONG time ago, FEMA should have been handed over to Ty Pennington and the Extreme Home Makeover crew. They do more in a week than FEMA did in a month in New Orleans, per capita.

What's "capita" mean?

Please, read on.
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WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event---may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions"---with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
FYI: George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV .
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody, I mean Nobody, demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.
No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

What did we do?
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."

It does seem that way, at least to me. I hope this gets passed on. Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living.


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Seriously, He Said He Was Liberal

How is it that the self-styled "Liberal" in our society is the least-likely to be liberal about speaking their mind? Isn't freely throwing around your opinions and ideas, caring about the general welfare of all people and trying to help what being Liberal is about? Or am I confusing that with people who don't give a crap about which column they are lumped into on the news talkshows?

I say this only because I am finding that Liberal is, for more and more people, merely a label of "hip"-ness, and less the actual pragmatic iteration of balancing Social Welfare with Political Pull. I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative. I consider myself Logical, which is why I am forever banned from politics.

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America Has Spoken

Last week, I think, there was an awards show where Queen Latifah (sassy!) hostessed a night of giving celebrities some awards as voted on by "America."

These were the "People's Choice Awards." People none of us know somehow worked their computer or wrote their favorite band, actor/actress, movie, and chain-restaurant commerical onto the back of a WalMart receipt in crayon and cast their vote. Fewer people voted in our last primary than dropped their Heart-Dotted-"i"s on their "ballot"/Claire's receipt into a mailbox in an envelope marked "Hollywood!" and hoped for the best.

Here is a snippet of "The People's Choice"s.

• Favorite Band: NICKELBACK (I should stop right there, huh?)
• Favorite TV Comedy: "Two And A Half Men" (over the S-plop that is "King Of Queens" and the sublime genius of "My Name Is Earl"? )
• Favorite Movie Comedy: "Click" (didn't see it)
• Favorite Funny Male Star: (are you ready?) ROBIN WILLIAMS

I can't even go on after that last one. I will be comedically famous one day, I'm sure, but I hope it's because I am one of the least-liked comedians among people who think Charlie Sheen, Adam Sandler movies, and Nickelback in the iPod-clone equals "a great, if very lonely, evening."

Some people have spoken...
in a slack-jawed gurgle.


Oh... how I've missed you...
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