I can't wait for Skynyrd's retaliation song

I've always liked Neil Young. Perhaps it's my fascination with odd sounding lead singers. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, his solo work, even some old Buffalo Springfield. I always took the lyrics of his protest songs with a grain of salt, just seeing them as simply a product of the 60's.

But now his anti-American rhetoric is pissing me off. Here's the lyrics to his latest song, "Let's Impeach the President":

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

Where do I start here?

1. Most of these lyrics are extremely strong exaggerations or outright lies.
2. What do you mean "our country" asshole? Last time I checked, you were Canadian. Maybe instead of "president", you meant to say "prime minister"?
3. Exactly what prompted him to write this song? Last I heard, he was writing "Let's Roll" in honor of the victims of Flight 93. Is the cash flow starting to dry out for Neil? Maybe he realized it's time for him to try to recapture some of his youth (and cash) by writing protest songs again. I'm sure he'd be able to regain some of popularity with the loony left by offering crackpot theories that appeal to them.

You don't like America? Stay in Canada and shut the fuck up. What? You want Toby Keith to start releasing songs criticizing the metric system, socialized medicine and Molson Ice? Yeah, I didn’t *think* so.

Note: I love Canada, and I love the majority of Canadians (although, as a Bruins fan, the Montreal Canadiens are my mortal enemies). I’d go to war to defend Canada if, for any strange reason, they were attacked. To me, Canada is like a family member...you don't always see eye-to-eye with them, but there's so many similarities between you that you overlook the minor disagreements. When the chips are down, we can count on Canada (don't forget the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979) and Canada knows they can count on us. I just don’t like foreigners proselytizing their beliefs, especially when they’re doing it under the guise of being an American.

When children's programming goes bad

Bert, Ernie, unavailable for comment.

Highest/lowest gas prices for your area

Feeling the pinch and tired of driving around looking for the best gas prices? Check out this link from MSN which allows you to search for the best prices by your zip code. I haven't validated the accuracy of this, so if you have any feedback...or have a better website...post a comment!

AP's complete misrepresentation of South Park

This tidbit from an AP story on CNN.com discussing last night's South park episode...

....................................

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the creators of "South Park" skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon's most recent episode.

The comedy -- in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians -- instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag....."

Later in the article...

"....The executive decides to strike a blow for free speech and agrees to show it. But at the point where Mohammed is to be seen, the screen is filled with the message: "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."

It is followed shortly by the images of Christ, Bush and the flag."

..............................

This is taken completely out of context. If you know nothing about South Park, or at least had just missed last night's episode, you'd probably be up in arms about this story...which apparently is what AP wanted.

I saw the episode and I assure you that the whole "defecation" scene isn't nearly as shocking as AP would have you believe (it may be somewhat shocking to unfamiliar viewers, but it's fairly tame by South Park tastes). What AP conveniently didn't elaborate on in their article was exactly what transpired to lead up to the scene in question. In fact the whole, curt line of "it is followed shortly by the images of Christ, Bush and the flag" reeks of deception and effectively rushes you along to their conclusion without giving a proper explanation of why Trey Parker and Matt Stone put them in there.

Since AP refuses to provide context, let me do it for you: after the airing of the picture of Mohammed in a "Family Guy" episode, Al Qaeda retaliates by airing a poorly produced cartoon mocking the common rich white guy in America. After some bad dialogue, the characters begin inexplicably defecating on each other. Shortly afterwards, Al Qaeda goes for the throat by introducing President Bush into the fracas, then Jesus. The joke here is that Al Qaeda tries to offend us on the same grounds that we offended them...only much worse...and they fail miserably.

But AP curiously leaves all of this out...probably because it would detract from their own article's shock value. And this is just a story about South Park. If AP isn't providing the full story here, exactly how many *other* stories are they feeding us with half-truths?

RIAA nails the Columbus Farmers Market

Here's a major local story which made the AP wire. Apparently, the Columbus Farmers Market...a popular location for many of us in central NJ...has been found liable for the sales of pirated music on their grounds. In other words, the RIAA just dropped a legal WMD on Burlington County.

I guess this doesn't really shock me...things like this have been going on for years. While I haven't frequented "Columbus" (as it's known to the locals, as nobody really goes to Columbus for anything else) much in the last decade, I can only assume that piracy has run rampant there since the popularity of MP3 files (in fact, I just now discovered that the place has been raided by police at least twice since 2000 for illegal music CDs). Much like "Englishtown" (the other local flea market known simply by the otherwise mostly nondescript town it resides in), I recall Columbus being the home of cheap pornos on VHS, knock-off "Sorny" stereos and cheapo rock t-shirts. The concept of someone trying to turn a quick, illegal buck at one of these places doesn't surprise me.

The most egregious offense I've ever seen was at a fair in Levittown, PA, where someone set up a table selling pirated movies. And we're not talking downloaded video here, we're talking good old fashioned guy-in-a-trenchcoat-with-a-camcorder videos of movies that just made it into the theater. When I asked the person I was with about this she said, "yeah, they're here every year". The worse part about this? This was a CHURCH fair.

So now I have to wonder about the future of the Columbus Farmers Market. According to the article they were found liable of damages that could range from $500,000 to $125 million. As big as Columbus is, I can't imagine them being able to pay out that kind of money. Columbus has been around for as far as I can remember but it wouldn't surprise me if this forced them out of business.

The person hardest hit by that scenario would be my father who searches these places endlessly for bargains. Hell, he seems to show up with a new "dollar" toy for Matt every other week. His house is 60% populated by singing, anthropomorphic novelty toys that make you want to chuck them out the window after three minutes. The worst part is that he doesn't buy just one, he buys *several* of them with the intent of giving them out to friends and relatives (wanna guess who the prime recipient is?) Well, if Columbus folds, at least he'll still have Englishtown to fall back on...unless the RIAA has targeted them too.