Recently, a few of my friends have made comments to me about how I "hate Apple". I just wanted to take a moment here and clear the air on the subject.
I do not, in fact, hate Apple.
Am I critical of some of the stupid things they do? Sure. But I am that way for many things, including things that I really enjoy using / being a part of.
I do, however, hate Apple's throng of fanboys; that loud, angry minority of Apple users who will argue how great their new iDevice is while they're lugging it through the mall to their local Apple Store to get it repaired. But instead of going on and on about why I hate Apple zealots, here's a good real-world example (the first comment on this article from 9to5mac.com):
I'll stay with my two-year-old opinion. iOS and Mac OS X will never merge, but they will continue to complement in feature set (Mac to iPhone to iPad to Mac, and so on) and connectivity (iCloud, etc.). One day, iOS and Mac OS X will get canceled after Apple creates a new OS that reinvents computing. When they find a way that's got the precision and speed of the mouse and keyboard and the ease-of-use and mobility of the touch screen, they'll implement that input method into the new OS. I give it 5 years (up to 10) - otherwise, another company (I'm not betting for Microsoft - they never did anything extremely innovative, IMO) may become the new Apple.
I've bolded the worst part. The whole comment is bad, but the ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity that went into drafting that single bolded sentence is mind-blowing to me. It's like reading the words of a religious zealot. Totally ridiculous.
So long story short, I don't hate Apple; I hate its pretentious, die-hard fans. And just to keep things fun, here's a short list of other fanboys I can't stand, in no particular order:
PlayStation/Sony fanboys
Dallas Cowboys fanboys
Halo fanboys
Anyway, that felt good to get off my chest. Feel free to leave me a love letter in the comments about it.
So the other day I was playing Team Fortress 2, and someone accused me of being a "free-to-play noob". I was chided as being one of the newbie players who only recently got into the game because it became free-to-play, despite my owning and playing the game since 2007.
But let me back up a little bit. I was playing Team Fortress 2 the other day, and having a less than stellar round. Some people on my team, who had been playing on the server before I got there, were using their microphones to play the game. These players were being too vocal, to the point that I couldn't concentrate on the game because of all the "mic spam". Being annoyed at my repeated effort and lack of results, coupled with the inane chirps and squeals of the mic spam, I did what any right-minded online gamer would do: I told them to "shut the fuck up".
Bear in mind, I merely typed this phrase into the game's chat; most of the time, these messages are either not read by those they are directed at, since that person is too busy playing the game, or it is swept off the screen quickly by in-game announcements. My message was immediately recognized by the person who I considered to be the primary offender, however.
What was seconds before only friendly banter and playful chatting suddenly became a shrill torrent of insults, disagreeing with my command and demanding that I "shut the fuck up" myself. The tone of voice degenerated into what I could only describe as "ghetto". It's funny how quickly someone's world can come crashing down at the slightest bit of confrontation.
So we argued a bit more, me click-clacking away at my keyboard, and the annoying mic spammer answering my few messages with an elevating level of shrieking. Another player said I should get banned.
Then, the original mic spammer decided that the best way she could deal with me was to call me out as a "free-to-play nub".
A little bit of history, before I continue: back in 2007, Team Fortress 2 used to come as a standalone inclusion in the Orange Box, with Half-Life 2. After that, it became possible to buy the game separately. Finally, as of June of 2011, the game became "free-to-play", meaning anyone could download the game and play with everyone else. Since then, the newest, greatest community-spawned insult is to call someone a "free-to-play noob", meaning they stink at the game because they've only recently begun playing, since the game was made free.
Obviously, I do not fall into this category, and I stated that plainly. Ms. Mic Spam backed off rather quickly after this, and was quite quiet after. And rightfully so, since most of my characters in Team Fortress 2 are outfitted with either The Proof of Purchase hat, my Primeval Warrior pin, or both. These items show that I bought the game back when it was still for sale, and that I have been playing since September 18, 2007, respectively. They are not tradable, and anyone who has them is very obviously not a Team Fortress 2 free-to-play inductee.
So what's the lesson here, other than that I like to have petty arguments with stupid people while I am playing games?
Simply this: if you're going to be an asshole and toss around the "free-to-play noob" insult liberally every time you disagree with someone in Team Fortress 2, make sure you know what the hell you're talking about first. It's not hard to check out people's loadouts first. Unless of course, you're some kind of noob.
Also, if you want to chat with people constantly, start up a private Steam voice chat conversation, or use Xbox Live, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, or some other chat client. You can even play games while you're doing it. Just leave everyone else out of the conversation, because I assure you, we're not interested.
I haven't been able to update the blog as much as I'd like over the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about things to write about. Instead of letting all of my random thoughts go to waste, I thought I'd present them here as a collection. If you're just looking for a few moments of entertainment, you like reading the musings of the slightly insane, or you're looking for something to spark your pent-up rage, the following list is probably for you!
Never Too Zune
Each time I plug my iPod (5th generation) into my computer and it freezes up, I secretly hope that it won't come back on, so I have an excuse to buy a Zune HD. From everything I've seen online, these things look pretty nice, and I'd like to try something different than iPod for a while. I have absolutely no interest in the iPod Touch or an iPhone; the 32gb Touch is $110 more than the 32gb Zune HD and being tethered to AT&T again just makes me feel sick.
But I digress; the Zune HD looks slick in its own right. Wireless streaming capabilities and built-in HD radio are great, and I also like the idea of being able to output HD video and, of course, web browsing. If Microsoft opens up the Zune to user-created applications, it will become an even great alternative to the iPod. They seem to be making an effort to get developers to consider their other mobile devices, so I don't think this is too far-fetched. So far, however, they've been pretty tight-lipped about it.
Marvel Comics Feeling a Little Disney
Though I am not a huge comic book buff, I still felt as though I could almost hear the collective groan of fans as Disney scooped up Marvel Comics for a cool $4 billion early this week. Though both companies are distinctly American, and I am sure DIsney will handle Marvel with care, I still feel like Disney is starting to (or maybe already has) hit that critical mass where a company gets so big, with a reach so broad, that it ends up losing focus on all fronts.
There are plenty of companies out there who handle the multiple prongs of modern media quite well, but Disney has already been in danger of losing its grip on things in the past, and with yet another large addition to their stable of interests, I can't help but wonder what the future will be like for both Disney and Marvel.
Will Disney change how Marvel presents its franchises?
Will we see Marvel characters integrated with Disney's other mainstays, in titles like the Kingdom Hearts games?
Will we see another feud in Disney's management as these things happen?
Who knows? It could be interesting to watch, but it'll be a shame if either brand is hurt because of this.
All-Out Fallout
When I got sick a couple of weeks ago, I spent a few days laying around my apartment, relaxing and recovering. My girlfriend had some things to do up at her mom's house, and didn't want to risk getting sick, so I was all by myself for much of that time. Instead of doing anything productive, I used the time to get re-acquainted with my Xbox; I decided that there was no better way of doing this than by collecting all the achievements in Fallout 3.
I did all that I could with my existing character (why did Bethesda choose to make one bobblehead impossible to go back and get?), and then made another so I could focus on slightly different talents to pick up a few odd achievements, like the one for 50 speech successes, and also so I could hit the appropriate levels with neutral and bad karma.
I've now gotten every achievement in Fallout 3, as well as in Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, and have had a lot of fun in the process. I've seen a lot of things that I missed in my first go-round, and have grown to appreciate, for a second time, the vast world of Fallout 3.
Hackintosh is Dead
Though I usually get my fill of OS X at work, a few months ago I got OS X up and running on some old PC hardware I had laying around at home. I was mostly interested in trying my hand at iPhone App development, so I downloaded the iPhone SDK and got everything up and running without many problems. I didn't use the old rig often however, and I let it sit around for a while before firing it up again last week.
Though I've been told it isn't a good idea, I've used the system update on my Hackintosh before, and everything's turned out fine. When I booted up to find a 300+ mb system update waiting for me, I thought nothing of it as I proceeded with the download and installation. Unfortunately, the update broke my installation, and for some reason I haven't been able to re-install it since. Either something has changed on my box (something which sticks around after multiple hard drive re-partitions?) or I simply can't remember the settings I used to install OS X the first time. It's a drag, but frankly I haven't had time to learn to code iPhone Apps anyway. I'll probably dig into this a little deeper one of these weekends when I've got nothing better to do.
Can't Take the Heat
Recently, I was playing some World of Warcraft on my desktop computer, wrapping up a dungeon with a group of others, when the image on the screen stuttered, a strange dot pattern appeared around my cursor and the UI elements, and then the computer locked up. After a quick restart, and about a minute of play, the same thing happened. In a hurry to get back into the game (and in an effort not to be the reason for the deaths of my entire group), I threw open my laptop and loaded the game up there. In-game disaster was narrowly averted, but it left me worried about my desktop machine.
In my experience, most graphical glitches of this kind are attributed to overheating hardware – the bane of all computer gamers.
So earlier today, I opened up my desktop computer and dusted it out. Then I turned it on and started World of Warcraft again, and let it sit. About 10 minutes later, I came back into the room to find the screen flickering and the computer frozen. Not good.
I guess this is a good excuse to get a new GPU, something I've been wanting to do for a while anyway, but my existing motherboard doesn't have a PCI-Express 2.0 slot on it, so I'm back to the same conundrum as before I assembled my current desktop - upgrading one part means upgrading two or three others as well. And since these are all the most expensive parts (GPU, CPU, motherboard), I might as well just splurge a few extra hundred bucks and update the rest of the hardware. But if my apartment is getting too hot (it's hot here lately, but not that hot), I'm not too keen on buying and subsequently ruining more computer hardware either. It's a problem, I guess.
That's All For Now
Anyway, I think that's enough of this rambling for now. I've been a bit of a scatterbrain lately, and now the madness shall spread!
Though I am not a diehard Google fan, I usually use Google whenever I need to search for something, and I take advantage of a few of the services they offer like Gmail and their online calendar. Lately though, I've been a bit intrigued with Microsoft's revamped Live Search, Bing. I've been frequently jumping back and forth between Google and Bing to compare search results, especially when I have trouble finding something.
So far, I've been pretty impressed with Bing - it almost always returns just about everything I would find on Google, and the image and video search function on Bing is actually a cut above those found on Google. And though I do enjoy the simplicity of the Google landing page, which is one of the reasons why I think it became so popular in the first place, I do find myself drawn to the Bing landing as well; they almost always have a beautiful image on display, and the fact boxes you can mouse over are usually interesting.
Bing has been running a contest over the last few weeks, in order to help them find a jingle for the site. The contest simply asked people to record their idea for a jingle, and then submit it to the Bing YouTube page, where the winner would be chosen based on number of views and quality of rating.
The winner was crowned yesterday, and while the video is odd and slightly disturbing, I have to admit - the song is kind of catchy. Catchy in the way that the simple tune gets stuck in your head for about an hour after viewing. Behold the winning video:
The winner, Jonathan Mann, has been creating (and posting on YouTube) a song a day, and the video he submitted to the Bing jingle contest was his 202nd creation. Sure, it's decidedly awful, but isn't that pretty much what's expected from contests like this? Isn't being awful a prerequisite for running a viral internet campaign?
Anyway, I got a kick out of it. And almost as big of a kick out of the sourpuss people posting about how terrible it is directly on the Bing blog. It's pretty easy to pick out the people who are seemingly just mad that Bing isn't the pile of garbage they hoped it would be. But their comments are funny, nonetheless.
Also, I'm happy to report that Twitter has been down for hours now. Apparently, it was taken out by hackers early this morning. Let's hope it stays down.
Update: It looks like it's tentatively back up now. The world has its largest collection of useless information back again.
Almost two weeks ago, I was at work, and had gotten up from my computer to work on some stuff, and the screensaver came on after a few minutes. I prefer my screensaver to be a bit more functional than merely saving the screen, so I have my work computer set up to read the news from CNN's RSS feed and display the headlines on the screen.
After a few minutes away from the computer, I happened to glance up at the screen and see something about Michael Jackson going to the hospital, possibly in a coma. Curious, I flicked off the screensaver. CNN was reporting that Michael Jackson had been rushed off to the hospital, but that details were sketchy. A quick trip to Digg, which had sucked the story away from TMZ, confirmed what I figured must have happened: Michael Jackson was dead.
That night, all the news websites and TV stations paid tribute to Jackson by playing his music, interviewing his peers and his fans, and talking about his life. Pretty standard fare for a celebrity death. As expected, it continued for the next few days.
The problem now, is that two weeks later, it still hasn't stopped. A quick peek onto CNN's website or TV station yields article upon article covering all ranges of the Jackson saga from the smallest, most mundane details of his life to the morbid memorial service.
Seriously. I've had enough. I'm tired of hearing about Michael Jackson.
About the only thing I hate worse than this non-stop smattering of tributes is the fact that in death, Michael Jackson seems to have been excused from every questionable thing he did in his life.
And I'm not saying that to take away from the man's accomplishments. The guy was an incredibly talented entertainer - there's no question about that. In his prime, back in the 80's and 90's, Michael Jackson simply couldn't be beat. But I don't think that, just because the guy died, we should forget about the many allegations of child abuse that were made against him. Or the horrendous mess he made of his face with excessive plastic surgery. Or even the whole baby-dangling-out-of-the-window thing.
We should acknowledge that Michael Jackson was a talented, troubled man, and that to some he will be missed. Now let's move on.
With less than a week to go until Father's Day, the ridiculous parade of allegedly dad-focused marketing is already well upon us. On the way to work this morning, I heard a countless number of commercials trying to convince me to buy my dad a new cell phone. On TV, I've survived a constant barrage of pleas to pick up new flat-screen sets, stereo equipment, and various implementations of carpentry hardware. Online, it's been cameras, camcorders, USB memory sticks, hard drives, and all sorts of other computer gadgetry.
Each holiday it gets worse.
I'm not against the idea of getting someone a thoughtful gift, either. I think that if your dad has been pining for something for a while and you've got the means to get it for him, then maybe you should. But isn't the whole idea of the holiday lost when you're stuck in some infinite loop of trying to one-up last year's gift with something more and more expensive and outrageous?
The idea of buying someone a cell phone as a gift is utterly absurd to me. A cell phone is a personal thing that you should shop for yourself, since you're the one who's going to be using it most of the time. Not only that, but if the gift receiver doesn't have a cell phone already, he/she's going to be stuck with a new monthly bill, thanks to your thoughtfulness.
The notion of gifting a new television is just as bad. As if people need another $1,000+ added to their burgeoning credit debt.
Since when did the idea of showing your appreciation for someone include buying them a menagerie of electronic gizmos?
While retail world is busy buzzing in peoples' ears about its newest pile of shiny garbage, I'll be taking a quiet trip up to the country to my parents' house. I'll probably end up wrestling with some technology anyway; I hear my dad's been having some computer problems. But I think that he'll appreciate the help a lot more than being saddled with an unwanted new cell phone.
Unfortunately, the balance of the entire universe will be thrown off anyway - because for Mother's Day, I only sent a card this year. Sorry mom!
Back in high school and college, I traded MP3's with friends. We burned each other copies of games. I was not a stranger to the occasional DVD copy. And I ran an illegal OS with illegal software for years.
Much has changed since those days, however. When I fire up my computer today, I'm pleased to see a completely legal copy of Windows XP appear on the screen. Every piece of software and every game I run on my machine has been paid for. And even though a few remnants of my freebooter past resurface now and then in my MP3 collection, the vast majority of the music I listen to was purchased from iTunes, Amazon, or ripped from a CD I bought.
It makes me feel good. But now, I seem to find myself on the opposite side of the fence from many of my fellow internet users.
Recently, the crew behind The Pirate Bay website was put on trial and subsequently convicted of "assisting in making copyright content available," with a total of $3,620,000 in fines, and each member of the team facing a one-year prison sentence. It's hard to say whether or not the verdict was just. On the one hand, The Pirate Bay is brazenly obvious about the purpose of its site. The pirate theme has been taken on in name and symbol, it organizes torrent files by media type (music, movies, programs, etc.), and a cursory search of the site will reveal that the vast majority of the content being traded among users is not legal. But on the other hand, The Pirate Bay doesn't explicitly host any of the files in question; they merely house the torrent files users download to find peers in their BitTorrent client. So, it could be argued that it is the site's users who are in performing the illegal activity, and not the site itself (dubbed the "King Kong defense").
I happened to read this news on Digg, and many people there disagreed with the verdict. What disturbed me though, was that the majority of these people didn't care about the legal intricacies or implications of the matter. They seemed only to think that piracy should be legal, and that it was in the best interest of everyone to continue pirating movies and music in protest.
Here's a few excerpts from the comments section of the submission I read:
Let's all stop going to the cinema for one year!
Truly a sad day...I'm gonna watch a torrented movie now :'(
95% of teenagers generation uses file sharing; they will be the ones in a few years who can vote and be in power.
The majority of people in power at the moment have more than likely never truely used the Internet; for them it's just about profits.
Stopping bullshit.
If you release an album of music, have all the songs good. There is no point in having an album with one good song and the other 50 tracks full of useless songs for padding.
Same with copy-paste Hollywood blockbusters and Video Games.
A real torrent user with pay for anything that is worth of value. Half-Life 2, Super Mario Galaxy, The Dark Knight, these were barely affected by piracy because they were...you know...actually GOOD so people bought them.
So basically, the MPAA and the RIAA are pissed because they will have to get the Entertainment Industry to work harder and actually make a majority good content, which is the exact opposite of their business plan of "take a dump in a bag and net one billion dollars."
And that is exactly the problem with the RIAA MPAA and this witch hunt. All they are trying to do is protect their ability to get money for producing steaming piles of bullshit! Period.
Surely I couldn't be the only person who reads comments like this and just shakes his head in disgust.
First of all, just because something isn't good by your count, doesn't mean that you are entitled to take it for free. In fact, I personally don't understand why you would go to the trouble of taking it for free if it's not good to begin with. But one of the best things about MP3 stores like Amazon is that you can almost always buy individual songs and leave the rest of the album behind, if you so choose. Under most circumstances, that'll only set you back a buck, too.
And if that's not good enough for you, then look at piracy figures for games like World of Goo or Demigod. Both games have gotten good reviews, and both were released without anti-piracy measures in place. At last count, World of Goo had an estimated piracy rate of 90%, while Demigod, after only being out for a week, had hit about 85%. I'm no fan of heavy-handed copy protection measures, but if you think that good content doesn't get pirated, you might just be an idiot.
Secondly, I find it absurd that some people think that music, movies, and art in general should be a free service provided to everyone else. Yes, many artists (myself included) produce work purely for others to see and share with each other. But we also ought to be able to make money from our work, and if the legal system doesn't help protect us, then what incentive do we have to do work? If your passion is carpentry, should I expect you to build me a house pro bono just because you like doing it?
But let's take this idea to the extreme for a moment - imagine that the judicial system has decided that music, movies, and other artistic works should be free for the public to copy and share. Essentially intellectual property, patents, copyrights, etc. would be no more.
Creative work would be pointless, because anyone would be able to take anything you made and reproduce it without consequence. By an ironic twist of fate, large companies, being in the best position to market and sell media, would benefit the most from this arrangement; they would be able to take any idea they spotted among independents and replicate, package, and sell it without giving a cent to the original creator. Where is the logic in that?
Don't get me wrong here; I'm not siding with big business on this issue. I'm no proponent of the DRM schemes they've tried to use to protect their content, typically to the detriment of paying customers. But when I see the ridiculous sense of entitlement people have towards media, coupled with the outrageous piracy rates of games like World of Goo, I can't help but think that there must be some kind of "happy medium" between producers and consumers. And there is, by means of systems like Steam, which seem to be getting things mostly right so far. But we've got a long way to go. It's important to me that we arrive at that destination though, because I am an artist and a creative person, and I want my work to be protected, like everyone else.
For now, I'm just happy to report that despite my years aboard the massive vessel of media piracy, I'm no longer part of the problem.
If you were asked to attribute a specific name to the shallow, and often ill-conceived articles that appear on game-oriented websites when real news is in a lull, what label would you give them? Would you merely call them 'filler'? Or would you go further and use more descriptive words like 'garbage,' or 'stupid,'?
In the case of GamesRadar's article, The Fugliest Games Ever Made, you'd likely use those words and a lot more, peppered with profanity, and probably with some vague threats of violence. This list of games is so inconclusive and arbitrary, it almost seems as if they were drawn from a hat. Here's the list of the "fugliest" games of all time, according to Justin Towell, the author:
Toejam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron
Nucleus
Streets of Rage 3
Earache: Extreme Metal Racing
Sabre Wulf
Sonic & Knuckles
Mirror's Edge
Sega Rally Championship
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
I've only played four of the nine games on the list, but of those four, none of them deserve to be dubbed the ugliest game ever. And looking at the screenshots and commentary for the others, I get the feeling that the other five games are just as undeserving of that title as well.
First of all, I'd like to point out that style isn't a bad thing, and style certainly shouldn't be confused for poor design. Games like Toejam & Earl or Nucleus employed a unique style to make their game worlds memorable, and the designers should be congratulated for that, even if they weren't always a complete success. According to Towell however, we should look down upon these games; in his opinion, we should hold the style of all past games to modern standards:
"We didn't realise how garish this game is until we downloaded it off Virtual Console recently. Squiggly wiggles in scrolling backgrounds no longer say 'cool'."
We're rapidly moving towards a time where most games are starting to look way too similar to each other, and the best GamesRadar can do is go back in time to trash past games that tried something a little off the beaten path? Forgive me, but that seems counter-intuitive.
Another thing I find particular offensive about this article is that it makes the mistake of equating the technical limitations of game platforms with bad graphics.
Streets of Rage 3 used a dot pattern to simulate transparency. The Sega Genesis didn't have the capability to do hardware transparency, so developers had to find ways around it. This was a common technique at the time.
Sega Rally Championship was a 3D racing game on the GameBoy Advance. The fact that Sega even got a 3D engine working on the GBA is so incredible that I think the low resolution of the rendering should be overlooked, at least in terms of "fugliness".
Sabre Wulf was created in 1984 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the UK equivalent of the Commodore 64, by a two man team. The ZX was an 8-bit system running on a Z80 processor (a slower version of the one inside the original GameBoy), so naturally, the graphics it pushed weren't particularly amazing. They literally couldn't be.
Towell, speaking of Sabre Wulf:
"At the time of the game's release, the screen was so busy we couldn't work out what was going on.
Now, of course, that lushness has wilted somewhat, especially in the face of games like Tomb Raider Underworld, to the point where its colour palette now looks like someone ate a load of cheap confectionery and barfed it all back up in 259x192 resolution."
Apparently, Mr. Towell didn't go any farther than Wikipedia for his "research." Kinda makes you wonder if he's ever played Sabre Wulf, doesn't it?
Of course, there's nothing wrong with finding appreciation for the current graphical limitations of games by playing older games now and then, so long as you remember that most of those games could not have looked better than they did because the technology (and oftentimes the expertise) just wasn't there yet. Context matters!
But now, even as I've gotten past GamesRadar's complete ignorance of context, technology, and style, I find myself asking: why are Sonic & Knuckles and Mirror's Edge on this list? S&K's graphics were good for the time, and are in my opinion, still some of the best you can find in 2D platformers. Mirror's Edge isn't ugly at all. Does Justin Towell truly believe that one psychedelic background effect can ruin a game? If a handful of people get motion sickness from a game, does that make its graphics bad in any way?
"The screen's just a mess of colours and glowing white orbs. But wait… this is the bonus level after all! And it's horrible. Everything's pulsating like the lightshow you get from a migraine."
How am I supposed to take commentary like this seriously from a guy who, only a few paragraphs prior, lavished Geometry Wars with praise ("bonfire night explosions of colour and joy")?
Maybe I shouldn't expect so much from GamesRadar, but I can't help it; articles like this give me the feeling that they simply don't care what passes for content these days. Or perhaps this is merely the result of a lazy viewership who never questions the veracity of the articles it consumes. But how is it possible to publish an article like this, without harboring at least mild contempt for your site's viewers?
It's truly a shame when articles like this, which contain nothing but dopey opinions and half-baked zingers, make the rounds and generate ad revenue for sites like GamesRadar. I just hope this model of online content-sans-content doesn't become the norm, especially with many major news publications taking their magazines onto the internet and leaving print behind. There's enough garbage online as it is.
Jokes aside, I'd like to take a timeout from my normal routine of game-oriented material to write a quick note about how important the upcoming elections are, and how I'm voting on a few key initiatives. There are important propositions on the ballot for California, and of course, the general election for the presidency.
Yes on Prop 2 - Improved treatment of farm animals
I can't see how anyone who has seen the horrific videos that have surfaced over the last few years of sickly cows being bullied around with forklifts and birds being force fed gross amounts of food couldn't be concerned about the handling of our nation's food supply while it's still living and breathing. Animals who are raised for human consumption deserve better, and Prop 2 is a step in the right direction for that.
No on Prop 4 - Forcing pregnant minors to wait 48 hours and obtain parental consent before having an abortion
Conservatives have been trying to slowly chip way at women's rights and women's right to health care by throwing these kinds of laws at voters, without a worry for the real people affected by them or the problems they pose. Pregnant teenagers in troubled homes would be forced to make matters worse, and potentially violent, by being required to inform their parents about their pregnancy before having it terminated. Prop 4 only serves to make hard times worse, and further erodes women's rights in the process.
No on Prop 8 - Altering the definition of marriage in the California state constitution
Prop 8 seeks to change the definition of marriage in the California state constitution from "two people" to "a man and a woman." The fact that this state recognizes same-sex marriage from a legal standpoint does not weaken the religious institution of marriage. It does not force churches to recognize or perform same-sex marriages. And it does not mandate teaching of same-sex marriage in schools.
I'm not gay, and I have very few friends who are, but anyone can see how plainly an encroachment this proposition is on basic civil rights. This kind of legislation is one step away from disallowing couple of different race to marry, and I am completely disgusted that this legislative trash gets put on the ballot every election.
Barack Obama for President of the United States
Over the last 8 years, the United States has been on a collision course. Our country used to have good-standing and was seen as a pillar of strength and democracy in the world; now we are despised by many, and are viewed as the source of much of the world's strife. Our president is not respected at home or abroad. Our economy is in shambles. And many of our young men and women who placed their lives and faith in our military are stuck in Iraq, fighting a war which has no conditions for victory.
The United States needs a president who brings something new to the table, and who gets there without grinding people together to create division and disunity. We need someone who will bring our troops home safely, and without leaving Iraq in a worse condition than it was before we invaded. We need someone who has a good plan for restoring the economy, and for the future of the nation as a whole.
We need Barack Obama. And tomorrow I will be casting my vote for him. I hope that you will join me, and that we might push this country back in the right direction and create history in one fell swoop. So let's fix America! Don't forget to get out and vote tomorrow if you haven't already!
