Take your “Real American” ideals and shove it.
September 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I posted this over on reddit and received quite a few upboats:
I live in NYC. I live right by the World Trade Center. I walk past the site every day, sometimes several times a day.
Ever since this “mosque business” started there have been a plethora of idiots all over the streets crying about it and screaming about “Real Americans”, whatever that means. My message to these people is always the same: SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY.
What really pisses me off is the people that come from out of town to protest. Why do you care? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do I come to your town and protest against building a new church? No, I don’t. Now pack up your shit and go home.
I, for one, fully support anyone who wants to build something in Manhattan that provides some kind of public space. Some people are trying building a community center a few blocks away from the 9/11 site with a prayer room. That’s it. Do you have any idea how hard public space is to come by in this city? It’s hard to find a clean place to shit with a door on it.
If you don’t live in NYC, particularly downtown Manhattan, you shouldn’t care about this. This isn’t a national issue. If you really care about stopping the spread of Islam, start in your own city. Hold protests all over your “Real American” city, but get the hell out of mine and stop taking up sidewalk space.
/rant
What the fuck is a, “Real American”? That term used to refer to honest blue-collar workers. Now it has been perverted, like so many things, by the Tea Party to mean: Anyone who is a white bigoted idiot. It used to be such that, if you were born in America it didn’t matter where you came from, you were an American. Now there are two classes of Americans: Real Americans and Not-so-real Americans. You’re a Real American if you’re white and subscribe to Jesus Christ. You’re not a Real American if you’re brown. You’re whatever makes you brown first (black, Hispanic, Persian, etc.), and then you’re a little bit American second. According to the Tea Party, if you’re a Muslim then you’re a terrorist first, and an American second. This kind of bigotry is already worming its way out of politics and into policy. Just look at the ridiculous policies in Arizona now—if you look vaguely Hispanic you’re an illegal immigrant first, and an American second.
*sigh*
What are we doing?
HBO GO – Who thought of this?
March 7th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
So, I’ve seen these HBO GO posters all over the city. One of the things I miss about not having a TV and cable is the ability to watch HBO’s original productions, so HBO GO seemed like an awesome solution. But even just looking at the posters I thought, “It sounds as if you might need a cable subscription in order to use it, but that would be the dumbest thing ever so that can’t be the case.” I went ahead and got home to go see what the deal was. Yeah, dumbest idea ever.
You have to have a cable subscription, with HBO, in order to use the service. Who thought this was a good idea? Why would you spend all that money for hosting and bandwidth to bring HBO ONLY to people who are already paying for it? My guess is that it has to do with their contracts. Verizon and Comcast would pitch a fit, and probably threaten to drop HBO all together if they started offering their service à la carte to anyone in the world willing to pay for it. You know what though? Maybe they should. HBO should piss off the major telcos. I’m sure someone will pick them up. See how many people drop Comcast and Verizon for DirecTV when DirecTV is the only one who offers HBO.
The reason I don’t have cable is because it’s too expensive and most of the things on TV are terrible. I’d gladly pay $10/mo for access to HBO GO, assuming it has a large enough library. I’m sure a lot of people would be willing to pay for such a service as well. But I’m not going to pay upwards of $50/mo for cable TV and HBO.
