Random Thoughts for 05 November 2003, AM Edition

Email: GooseTownMail@yahoo.com

--Not that I was eagerly awaiting its arrival or anything, but could the new Britney Spears song be any worse? I actually manage to get angry when it comes on the radio. Why do we constantly have to wait for her to skip to soft-core porn? Is there anyone that would deny that a third-rate acting career and a Playboy spread are already ingrained in her near future? The girl can't sing and this collaboration with Madonna gets my vote for the Exxon-Valdez Man Made Disaster of the Year Award (TM).

But I'd still let her f*ck me.

--Along the same musical lines, is it possible that Lifehouse is the best band of the last twenty years? (EDITOR'S NOTE: If you have a Sarcasm Meter hanging in your office, I apologize for just blowing it off the wall.)

--Got another IM from the previously-mentioned Karyn, continuing the gymnastics debate:

>>"i agree... its just disheartening to feel that it is not a sport... because somehow not have the "sport" label seems to make it less in value"<<

Not true in the slightest. It doesn't lessen the value, it just makes it a different kind of event. Now if somehow they made gymnastics into a contest wherein you comepted against another individual flipping through an obstacle course, with the winner completing the event in the least amount of time, well....you've got a Sport there. And that I would watch. Take into account that, though a NonSport, gymnastics is more physically rigorous than just about any Sport out there. And feel fortunate that you are probably bendy. Very bendy. Actually, We should all feel fortunate for my buddy and former roommate Kyle, Karyn's boyfriend. Good show.

And mad props for using the Vocab Word "disheartening" in a sentence and spelling it correctly.

--Did anyone watch the interview on MTV between Ja Rule and Louis Farrakhan? Is there a more psychotic African-American leader besides Al Sharpton? If you are a minority, are these really the people you want speaking for you? It's the equivalent of me announcing my unwavering support for Jesse Camp.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: If Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, whom I actually like most of the time, had a child, is there any doubt he would grow up to be Don King? Any doubt?)

The whole time Ja, as I like to call him, looked very, very uncomfortable. Why? Because good 'ol Louie sat him down to discuss his escalating feud with...Fitty Cent. Fitty. Farrakhan called for the meeting because he didn't want to see--and this is a quote--"another Tupac-versus-Biggie-type agitation that would further divide the African-American community." Members of the black community, your leaders have so little faith in you that they believe a rap showdown could tear apart the ties that bind your entire social structure. Good call.

Safe to say that few African-Americans hold Farrakhan as a "leader" in their community, but I'd like to hear thoughts on the issue. He's certainly no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. He's more like a religious Bryant Gumble, only black.

By the way, I want to get this out there: I hate Political Correctness and Hyphenated Americans. If you are black and request that you be called African-American, then fine, I'm willing to do that, but I want you to know I think it's dumb as hell. I would be beaten if I asked to be called "Irish-American" instead of "white", even though white people need just as much a distinction made of their ancestry as blacks, possibly more. I've never been a minority, so perhaps there's a much deeper issue there that I'm not seeing. But there was a guy I once knew from St. Maarten (which is in the Caribbean, for those of you not geographically inclined) who insisted on being called "African-American" even though at least as far back as seven generations, by his own admission, his family was on St. Maarten. I mean seriously, alligators and crocodiles people, let's pick our battles.

All for now, I have a big thought in the works for later today....