Reverse Graffiti

Awesomeness. These guys drive around cleaning grime off of public surfaces, and leaving art behind.

This video was filmed in Riga, Latvia. That’s probably why they were able to do it without some shit head confusing it with terrorism.

Boobies!

Move over, Coca-Cola. Hooters Restaurant (of bodacious tatas and BBQ wings fame) is suing some restaurant group called La Cima for theft of their trade secrets. La Cima wants to open up a bunch of boobie restaurants of their own called Twin Peaks. Source.

Apparently, Hooters’ former Vice President of Ops bailed to go be the CEO of La Cima Restaurants and (allegedly) took with him a bunch of sales, recruiting, and other stuff from Hooters.  Now La Cima is aggressively expanding into the casual dining industry featuring…boobies!  I doubt hiring cute girls and putting them in next to nothing counts as a trade secret.  In all honesty,  the case is probably more about hiring practices, marketing techniques, and other boring stuff like that but meh…boobies!

For the Record … Anti-Mormonism is not “bigotry” (neither is any other anti-religious sentiment)

James Fallows over at the Atlantic says, “Just for the Record: Anti-Mormonism Is Bigotry Too.”

No. No it is not.

Fallows sums his position up:

To be against Mitt Romney (or Jon Huntsman or Harry Reid or Orrin Hatch) because of his religion is just plain bigotry. Exactly as it would have been to oppose Barack Obama because of his race or Joe Lieberman because of his faith or Hillary Clinton or Michele Bachmann because of their gender or Mario Rubio or Nikki Haley because of their ethnicity. (source)

If a candidate believes in trickle-down economics, and you are against him for his beliefs, that isn’t bigotry. That’s looking at his views, realizing that they are incompatible with logic, and dismissing him because he’s an idiot.

If you are against someone for being Hispanic or Black, that’s bigotry. The color of someone’s skin doesn’t necessarily say anything about their beliefs or how they will behave.

But being against someone for what they believe, that’s not bigotry. That’s being a rational person. And there is no way I want someone leading my country if they believe that some snake oil salesman found magic gold tablets, that only he could see, and read some magic words from it, and discovered that people should wear magic underwear. Mormonism is stupid, and anyone who believes in it is too irrational to hold the remote control at my house, let alone the nuclear launch codes.

That’s not bigotry. A Mormon can wake up, smell the reality, and stop believing in bullshit. That day, the Mormon magically stops being a Mormon, and he starts being a normal rational human.

Marco Rubio can’t wake up tomorrow and say “y’know, I’m sick of being Cuban. I think I’ll be Irish now.” Hating on him for being Cuban — that’s bigotry.

Don’t mistake this for a post singling out the Mormons. Their beliefs are no less idiotic than those of any other cult. If you believe in a magic space zombie Jew, you’re not rational enough to be president either. At least not in my eyes. Islam? It doesn’t have any edge over Mormonism or Christianity.

The analysis gets a little tricky with Jews (sigh, doesn’t it always). You have to figure out if you’re dealing with a secular Jew or a religious one. Sammy Davis Jr. would have been unqualified to be President in my eyes, not because he was black, but because he believed that there is a magic space man who, after creating heaven and earth, decided that he didn’t want people to eat bacon, but he did want people to cut the tips off of little boys’ penises. Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Golda Meir were qualified to run things. Joe Lieberman? Fuck no.

If you believe in some magic voodoo shit, good for you. If it works for you, believe it. I don’t care if you believe in a magic pink monkey that flies out of the ass of whales with a blue bucket on its head singing show tunes.

If you believe in such things, you still might be the coolest guy in the world. I would fight with everything I have to protect your right to believe in those things — no matter how I feel about them. I might even want to be best friends with you. I have friends who believe in some of the goofiest shit ever, from Orthodox Jews to Christians to Muslims, and I even think I have a Scientologist in there somewhere. Being religious is no disqualification from being on my good side.

But there’s no damn way I’d vote to let them run the country — not until they wake up from their self-imposed delusion.

If you disagree, you’re in good company. My view is totally screwed. I doubt we’ll ever have an openly-Atheist president. Not until there is a revolution.

As an Atheist, I don’t call that “anti-Atheist bigotry.” If you wouldn’t let me run things because I don’t believe in goblins, it doesn’t make you a bigot. It just makes you disagree with something that I have chosen to believe (or not believe, as it were).

That’s not bigotry.

Shocking revelation: Piracy hurts individuals!

By J. DeVoy

In a stunning revelation sure to be devastating to freetards everywhere, not everyone who creates copyrightable work is Lars Ulrich or some ponytailed douchebag driving a BMW 7-series while demanding that the RIAA sue more people so his fat, dumb and entitled daughter can have a pony.  The common plea from the anti-enforcement community can be summarized as: “How can you sue PEOPLE?!”

Well, it’s easy – people commit piracy.  We don’t let thieves and rapists off the hook because they’re people.  And while copying files is not analogous to either of those crimes, it is still an unlawful act, and one committed by individuals.  In fact, there is no one better to sue, and more deserving of a lawsuit, than the individual infringer.

Here’s an example why.  Athol Kay wrote a book about how to save and improve your marriage.  He’s been writing a blog for at least a few years now, and consolidated all of his knowledge into an impressive tome about how to keep your wife thin, happy, and sexual.  Pretty important stuff if you ask me, or even if you just don’t want to be one of the nearly half of married men who get financially pwned by divorce.  He sold a PDF copy for a modest sum of money – $10 – that let him keep a decent chunk of change for himself.

Kay knew that piracy of his book was inevitable.  He possibly even bought into the meme that free content generated sales.  He thought it would balance out because people would pay the $10 in recognition of his work in compiling a sizable and massively important book.  He was wrong.

40,000 illegal downloads later, Kay is out about $300,000 in royalties that he would have earned if people had purchased his book legally.  He did everything the freetards told him to – he optimized his model for portability and low cost, efficient sales.  He still got screwed by the basement dwelling turds who think everything should be free because the creator has not exhausted every last possible option in protecting his intellectual property.

To be fair, I would not have advised Kay to distribute a PDF copy of his book.  But he made a business decision with his eyes open.  He did not recognize, however, the extent of piracy for such a niche book.  Kay also recognizes that not every one of those 40,000 downloads would have translated into a sale.

Now I know that if people actually had to pay for the book, 40,000 extra people wouldn’t have purchased it, but if even 10% of them did, that’s still a fair chunk of change and to be completely blunt… I deserve it. (source.)

Indeed he does, and the Constitution itself even says so, as it empowers congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. U.S. Const., Art. I, Section 8, cl. 8

Not everyone who benefits from copyright laws is some fat cat raking in millions of dollars.  In fact, few are.  Most are just regular guys who had an idea, poured their heart and soul into creating it, and hope to get a return on investment for being smart and motivated enough to see their vision through to completion.  I’m sure Kay is flattered that so many people want his book.  But warm fuzzies don’t put food on the table – money does.  If creators cannot get it on the front end with sales, they’ll recoup it on the back end with litigation.

UPDATE 10/21 – As Mike Masnick and others point out, including Kay, his initial figures were way off due to illusory downloads stated in order to generate interest in the files.  His estimates were off, as were the stated lost profits.  Sorry, I was busy.

The cynic’s guide to living in Las Vegas

By J. DeVoy

I’ve lived in Las Vegas for about a year now and am ready to publicly come to grips with this reality.  Professionally, living in Las Vegas is the best thing that could ever have happened to me.  I have generally been impressed by the judiciary and the matters handled in the District of Nevada.  It will never be the Western District of Wisconsin or Eastern District of Texas, but the court has been primed to become an intellectual property litigation mecca in the future.  But who cares about that; nobody wants to read bragging and high praise.  So I’m going to focus on bashing Vegas for not meeting my idiosyncratic demands in several areas.

Vegas housing is terrible.

I need to qualify this statement.  If you’re paying more than $4,000 per month in rent, you can get a really pimp place in Vegas.  Since most units rent in the $700-$1400 range, though, I’ll center the discussion there.  For the sizable majority of people, the housing is uninspiring, if not soulless and awful.  Compared to New York, LA and San Francisco, it’s a bargain, but the houses are hellish.  Each is a soulless, wall-to-wall carpeted diarrhea fecal explosion of cheap-feeling, monotone Pottery Barn crap, designed to be as inoffensive as possible.  Many ostensibly “nice” communities are plagued with construction defect litigation as well, leading to serious doubts about whether the homes are even safe.  To make the most use of the desert land, most houses are packed together in a community plan like sardines in a can.  There are high-rises, and they are very reasonably priced compared to larger cities, but they have their own drawbacks.  About half of the high-rise apartments are on the strip.  Unless you work on the strip, or don’t work at all, this may be the most inconvenient location in the city.  The other option for high-rise living is Downtown – where, instead of traffic on the strip, one must contend with a zombie apocalypse-style infestation of homeless people and other ne’er do-wells.  I’ve never been on Fremont street without seeing the cops force someone to the ground and roughly arrest them.

Speaking of Downtown Las Vegas, check out this video of a 5-on-1 street fight.  This happened in the yuppie bar area I normally go to, right on 4th Street and Fremont, by Neonopolis, Downtown Cocktail Lounge (where I’ve taken several professional contacts) and a few hundred feet from the Ogden, one of the nice high-rise buildings aggressively marketing its apartments.  And Zappos is going to move there?

Being in a desert, I can understand the dearth of hardwood floors in the area.  But there’s no concrete?  No stone?  I want a house that looks scary and uncomfortable to live in, so that I can fill it to the gills with uninviting, black leather scandinavian furniture.  My living space should be a prop that I show to people so their blood runs cold and they neither want to stay there nor ever visit again – not some place for kids to feel like they can sit on the carpet and smear their sticky hands everywhere.

You have to drive… everywhere.

Las Vegas is not car friendly.  I cannot think of a single neighborhood or community where you could comfortably and efficiently live without a car.  In other places where I’ve lived, one could live without a car.  In fact, I had done so – but it was not always convenient, or a particularly good use of my time.  In Las Vegas, this is impossible.  The goal of life then becomes how to minimize driving, and finding a place to live in which one can reach every important destination without spending more than 20 minutes in a car.  These destinations re-prioritize with age, making it even more important to rent, rather than buy.

A scary corollary to this reality is that Las Vegas natives do not know how to walk.  Once one ventures off the strip, to a local casino or shopping area, watching the gait and shuffle of passerby will reveal who has spent most of their lives in Las Vegas.  People who have lived in the car-dependent culture for too long (and naturally without much exercise) have a certain heavy, shambolic step that reveals they do not actually know how to walk – a result of virtually never having to do so.  This leads to a host of other physical and pscyhological problems in both men and women, but I’ll leave such skewering to hellions such as Roissy, whatever he’s calling himself now, and Roosh, who have well-tread such ground.

That tiny water issue.

Las Vegas is just one of several cities living on borrowed time, stealing its lifeblood from the Colorado River.  Nevada has basically reconfigured the whole state so that its water table will flow into Lake Mead, which provides Las Vegas with most of its water.  In recent years, Lake Mead has had serious problems with falling water levels.  This year, rainfall had increased, and Las Vegas had stopped growing – and in fact shrank slightly – giving the strained lake a brief respite.  Still, strict water use restrictions remain in effect.  I do not believe this is sustainable, nor a viable long term solution – especially in the (unlikely) circumstance that Vegas recommences economic growth.

The transient, rootless people suck, and make the community suck.

For a city with about 2 million people in it, Las Vegas feels like a place with 500,000, and might as well be Milwaukee.  Just like Cleveland and Milwaukee used to be company towns with most of their jobs provided by steel and manufacturing companies, large gaming interests provide Las Vegas with its economic engine.  I do not see an intrinsic problem with this, although the casinos’ best interests are served by not improving or beautifying much of the area.  Rather, it’s the 1.5 million other people who transition through Las Vegas like a goth phase in high school that make it so inauthentic.

I’m not saying that the citizens of Las Vegas need to rise up and demand a symphony orchestra.  Community efforts have slowly but surely been effective in revitalizing the arts district.  Most people, however, do not contemplate the fact that the may be in Nevada for a long time.  This leads to things like the public schools being terrible, utter ignorance of things like Nevada’s underwhelming anti-SLAPP statutes, and the city being carved up into gated fiefs run by home owners’ associations and community-level master associations.  Rather than being created organically, Las Vegas is cultivated for landowners to make money off of employees of large casinos, who then spend their money at smaller, local casinos for diversion, after paying rent.  The system works, but it prevents the kind of creative and efficient land use that one can see in other cities with limited footprints, such as San Francisco or oceanfront Miami.  I do not think I’m alone in preferring coherent urbanism over a sprawling desert hellscape.  But without adequate planning and foresight, the urban vision has failed to launch.

A number of professionals and others I’ve met in Vegas tend to generally agree with my view.  Part of the issue is that a significant portion of Las Vegans do not suffer from status anxiety like residents of other cities do.  In Las Vegas, only 2 in 10 people have a college degree, which is markedly lower than other major cities.  While a college degree has poor (and increasingly worse) predictive value concerning economic success, native intelligence and business aptitude, there is a correlation between large populations of educated people and urbanism – a kind of nascent desire to be more like Europe.  If Las Vegas had more people with college degrees, regardless whatever kind of dumb rich kids held them and whatever for-profit toilet they attended, there likely would be a greater demand for urban living.  This is not to say that the majority couldn’t be persuaded, either – many would be open to and see the benefit of living in a denser, clean urban area where cars and driving were not merely optional, but unnecessary.  But, when so many people transition through Vegas within 2 years of arriving, it is hard to reach a bloc of people willing to stay and fight.  Even for people who stay for the long haul, there is something to be said for keeping to one’s self and focusing on a job, career or family within prevailing conditions.  I don’t agree with it or even respect it, but I can understand it.

Conclusion

My gripes aside, I’ve enjoyed Las Vegas.  If you actually work, can be reached by phone on Friday, and are smarter than the average bear, you will pwn.  The city does, however, have many faults that will not only exacerbate, but actually validate whatever arrogance you may feel from hailing from the West or East coasts.  While skeptical, I am told that there is more to life than work.  There are plenty of options in that respect too, and I have had many an enjoyable hike and/or bike ride.  There are, however, systemic problems facing the city that will not be resolved until the majority of its population is locked in for the long haul – even in numbers smaller than the total population count.

Marijuana really brings out the asshole statist in everyone, doesn’t it?

Federal prosecutors decided that it is time to make examples of the Californians who are supplying marijuana to willing customers.

Their rationale: People are making money off of it. Their heartstring argument, we can’t have people selling marijuana in stores near parks and schools. Yes, “what about the children?”

And a few states over, a Papa Johns pizza delivery driver called the cops on a guy who was smoking pot. (source)

Turns out the guy had a medical marijuana card, and when the cops got there they apologized for bugging him and left. Lets hear it for the Aurora police department!

On the other hand, Papa John’s seems to think that its driver, pissing on the very market that keeps the chain alive, was acting just as a “concerned citizen.”

“Papa John’s of Colorado wants to stand behind the decision that this delivery driver made. He was acting as a concerned citizen and for what he believes was the best interests of our community.” (source)

I don’t eat pizza from shit chains like Papa Johns anyhow. Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t buy a pizza from those Kentucky – based fucktards now. I’d like to encourage everyone to boycott Papa John’s. Stack your freezer with DiGiorno’s or something, and then you pay $3 for the same crappy pizza, but you don’t have some wanna-be TSA agent coming in to your home to bring it to you.

Hailmaryjane.com summed it up:

You have two species that have been living in perfect harmony for centuries, the Pothead and the Pizza Guy. These two not only used to live in harmony, they NEED each other to survive. Stoners and Pizza Guys are the true circle of life, a perfectly balanced system that keeps both alive. Pizza Guy gets money from high people, high people gets pizza, the world is a happy place. When these two breeds start turning against each other, its time to build a mountain fortress and wait out the apocalypse. (source)

Federal/State Showdown

From Charles Platt

I’m sketchy on this aspect of Constitutional law, but isn’t the Justice Department strongly influenced by presidential policy, formally or informally? I don’t watch TV, so I don’t know how much play this story is getting, but doesn’t it seem utterly outrageous, bearing in mind that the Commander in Chief is an admitted former cocaine user?

From a British newspaper:

“Federal prosecutors have launched a crackdown on pot dispensaries in California, warning the stores that they must shut down in 45 days or face criminal charges. They also threatened to confiscate their property even if they are operating legally under the state’s 15-year-old medical marijuana law. In an escalation of the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the nation’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry, California’s four U.S. attorneys sent letters on Wednesday and Thursday notifying at least 16 pot shops or their landlords that they are violating federal drug laws, even though medical marijuana is legal in California.”

While you’re busy fellating Steve Jobs’ corpse…

Jonathan Mak's tribute to Jobs. Print it out and wipe your ass with it.

I don’t know if it is just my network of Facebook friends or what, but I’m getting a little sick of the public mourning in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death. (Edit – Clearly it is not just my friends who are fuckwits – see this gem sent by my friend, ADM) Honestly, if you left flowers at an apple store or stood outside one with an image of a candle on your iPad, you should be sterilized. Forcibly. Without anesthesia. You do not deserve to reproduce, and if your genes are actually carried forward, it will mean that mankind has devolved, even just a little bit.

A CEO of a big company died. You like the shit his company sold, and will continue to sell. Move on, you fools.

Don’t get me wrong, on some level I am indeed sad that he is dead. That level is pretty shallow though. He was 56 when he died. If I only make it that far, my kids will both attend my funeral while they are in high school. The thought of that makes me sad. So, on that level, I feel sad that he died… and that’s as far as it goes. But, that would apply to any 56 year old who died.

Meanwhile, it seems that at least half of my acquaintances are treating this like the dalai lama got hit by a bulldozer while he was giving CPR to the baby jesus, who planned to collaborate with him and Santa Claus to bring mankind to its final place of peace and brotherhood. Tributes, videos, weeping, that “here’s to the misfits” quote that he didn’t even write. I’ll admit, I like that quote:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.

As cool as it is, that was NOT written by Steve Jobs. It is a clever piece of marketing written by some faceless drone, or a team of them at TBWA Worldwide, which is part of the global marketing group Omnicom. You think a “rebel” or a “troublemaker” would make it at Omnicom? Or at Steve Jobs’ Apple, for that matter?

No, that piece of fabulous inspiration was written to con you — to make you say “yeah, that’s me. I’m different! I need a Mac!”

I’m not saying that I have a beef with Apple’s products. I’m writing this on a dual-screen iMac, and my iPhone doesn’t sit too far away. I use a MacBook Air at work. I have four additional MacBooks lying around here, and two iPads. These tools work for me. But, I’m no more going to mourn the death of the guy who ran the company that made them than I am going to mourn the passing of the CEO of Bank of America if he gets his comeuppance.

While the fanboy mourning and corpse fellating continues around you, especially if you’re participating in it (you fucking sheep), remember that commercial from 1984? The one where Apple compared itself to some mythical freedom fighter, breaking the chains of tyranny? I wish that I could pwn that view as resoundingly as Mike Daisey. Since I can’t, here’s his pwning.

Because of its enormous strength in both music sales and mobile devices, Apple has more power than at any time in its history, and it is using that power to make the computing experience of its users less free, more locked down and more tightly regulated than ever before. All of Apple’s iDevices — the iPod, iPhone and iPad — use operating systems that deny the user access to their workings. Users cannot install programs themselves; they are downloaded from Apple’s servers, which Apple controls and curates, choosing at its whim what can and can’t be distributed, and where anything can be censored with little or no explanation.

The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt. (source)

Here’s to the crazy ones! Here’s to the misfits. Oh, and here’s to the outsourcing of jobs and miserable labor conditions! Yeah, everything you buy from Apple prominently and proudly states “Designed in California,” on it. Clever way to skirt around the issue that this “American” company saves a bundle by manufacturing its products in the same shitty conditions as everything else you buy except wooden toys from Vermont.

Apple’s rise to power in our time directly paralleled the transformation of global manufacturing. As recently as 10 years ago Apple’s computers were assembled in the United States, but today they are built in southern China under appalling labor conditions. Apple, like the vast majority of the electronics industry, skirts labor laws by subcontracting all its manufacturing to companies like Foxconn, a firm made infamous for suicides at its plants, a worker dying after working a 34-hour shift, widespread beatings, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet high quotas set by tech companies like Apple. (source)

But, this is all just profit-seeking behavior, right? A CEO has a right to squeeze every dime from the public he wants to. After all, that’s the point of a corporation – to make money and to dominate their market, if they can. Jobs was no different than any other CEO, and lets not forget that.

Oh wait, he was a little different.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is known for his obsessive attention to detail and iron-fisted management style. He is often accused of making his subordinates cry and firing employees arbitrarily. But Jobs’ subordinates remain loyal. Several deputies–even those who have left the company–say they’ve never done better work. As one Apple employee told journalist John Martellaro, “His autocracy is balanced by his famous charisma–he can make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God. (source)

So he was an autocratic, bullying, over-compensating, douchebag who brought plenty of evil to the world. He also was, in some part, responsible for creating the tools I use at work every day. So lets mourn him, just like we mourn the guy who invented the hammer or the wheelbarrow. Go about your business and stop being a fucking moron lemming.

Think different you fucking sheep.

Sexy Sax Man

And now, for something completely different… and awesome.

This is COLUMBUS DAY!!!

Pick another day, Crybabies!!!!

This is COLUMBUS DAY.

I’d like to invite anyone whose name ends with a vowel (Persians excluded) to raise their hands, extend their middle fingers, and flip off the Native Americans, the hippies, and everyone else in the International Association of Crybabies who has a piss and a moan about Christopher Columbus.

This is not “indigenous people’s day,” it is not “la dia de la raza” and it isn’t frigging “wear a beret, listen to Joni Mitchell, and wear patchoulli day.”

To the “Native Americans” who have a beef with Columbus Day — suck it. First off, it isn’t as though you sprang from the goddamned earth in Foxwoods. You’re immigrants too. You just wandered across ice to get here. We took boats. You were here first? I give a fuck?

There was a war. You lost. That’s how it works. That’s why the Celts wound up living in Ireland, Scotland, and every shitty rain-soaked crag in which they could cling to life — because they lost wars. That’s why nobody speaks Gaulish or whatever Vercingetorix spoke. They lost the damn war.

Sorry you crybaby fucks. That’s what happens when you LOSE A WAR. Trust me, the Italians know how you feel. We suck at wars. We used to be awesome at them. That ended some time around 400 A.D. Italians are the Chicago Cubs of warfare. (But you’re the Padres)

Tons of us came here to get away from the consequences of being really shitty at fighting wars. It worked out for us. We gave the world the thermometer, barometer, piano, electric battery, nitroglycerin, eyeglasses, the radio, and The Telephone.

We turned ghettoes into neighborhoods where people would kill to have a studio apartment. (Yes, I know that is the Gays’ job now, but it used to be ours) We taught the mayonnaise-faces what good food tastes like. We gave America 39 Medal of Honor recipients. We gave America Filippo Mazzei, John Basilone, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bruce Springsteen, Vince Lombardi, and Gino the Ginny. You know what their middle names are? “Fuckin” that’s what.

We gave America its NAME for chrissakes.

You know what America gave us in exchange? A holiday. Good enough for us.

And you know what? America didn’t even give it to us, we took it. You know why? Because at the turn of the last century, Italians and other Catholic immigrants weren’t exactly what you would call “welcome” here. Yes, they used to lynch Italians too. So, the Catholics and Italians started organizations like the Knights of Columbus as a way to band together against the bigotry they encountered. They thought that by choosing Christopher Columbus as their symbol, it would show that if an Italian “discovered” America, then as Italians, they belonged here.

So you assholes can run your little left-wing crybaby agenda on any one of the 364 other days. I don’t give a damn if you managed to get every crap stained woodstock love child, fucking peruvian flute band, and liberal academic to weep with you as you look at the pollution on the highway. This is our holiday, and you can kiss my ass if you have a problem with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I generally have nothing but love for my Native American brothers and sisters. I think that they got a crappy deal. I’m with them when they get pissed off at the completely racist Cleveland Indians logo, and I don’t think you should call a team “The Redskins” if you wouldn’t call it “The Jigaboos” (yes, its the same damn thing). I think that America DOES owe the Native Americans a little something — and it ought to be something better than the right to build casinos. We owe them respect, help, and dammit, we ought to put a hell of a lot of effort into preserving their culture.

This guy is actually SICILIAN.

But you know what, Tonto? If you have a beef, its with the damn British, the French, the Spanish, and the white-bread assholes who kicked your asses. Lord Jeffrey Amherst gave you the smallpox infected blankets, not Al Pacino. You picked a fight with the wrong people, because the Italians never did jack to you. So get the fuck off my holiday.

Personally, I don’t know why we’re all down on the Conquistadors anyhow. Leonidas killed 20,000 ill-equipped, poorly trained, forced-to-fight losers and we call him a hero for the ages. A couple hundred Spaniards kick the crap out of an entire empire of human sacrificing, child-raping, savage nutbags who make Jerry Falwell look sane, and we think it was an awful sin?

Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and then your lives started to suck. Boo hoo frigging hoo. The Conquistadors followed Columbus and took all the gold. Yeah that sucks. I got news for you, your lives sucked before Columbus got here.

You know what else sucks? When you screw with our holiday.

So here’s the deal. Take out the calendar. No, not that stupid Mayan one that is going to be worthless next year, the REAL calendar.

You want a holiday? Be my guest. Pick any day on the calendar except October 31, February 14, March 17, January 1, or July 4. I don’t even care if you want Christmas, but picking THAT will be a marketing nightmare.

You know which day would be an awesome Indigenous People’s Day? How about the Friday after Thanksgiving? Most of us have the day off anyhow. The pilgrims wouldn’t have survived without your help. So, the day after Thanksgiving, as we’re all resting up and glad that we have four days in a row off, we can thank you. Thank you for saving the Pilgrims’ asses. Thank you for basketball, and chewing gum, and chocolate. Thank you for potatoes and tomatoes. Thank you for the windtalkers. Thank you for really cool art. Thank you for whatever the hell else you did for us. Thank you for not stabbing every person in a Cleveland Indians shirt. Thank you for not setting off bombs at Redskins games. Thank you for being pretty damn cool about one of the most royal screw jobs in the history of mankind.

But most of all, thank you for quitting your damn bitching about Columbus Day.

In defense of juggalos

By J. DeVoy

It’s easy to laugh at freaks made up like clowns, devoted to the rap group Insane Clown Posse, who call themselves “juggalos.”  It’s harder to serve up a cogent defense of the subculture.  Nonetheless, In Mala Fide serves up a detailed analysis in this recent post.

Psha! Public Domain Schmublic Domain.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I always feel like the nerd invited to eat lunch with the popular kids with the USSC hears an IP case.   Yesterday, the Big Dogs heard a nifty little First Amendment Copyright case that I honestly don’t know how to feel about yet.  But pay attention to this one, kids.  It’s a doozy.   Source 1.  Source 2.

Golan v. Holder is the name of this little gem and it centers around a conductor who can’t afford to play Peter and the Wolf anymore thanks to Congress yanking it (and myriad other foreign works) back from the public domain.  Google, the ACLU, and the American Library are calling this an abject disaster that violates the First Amendment.  The government and the MPAA say this is necessary to protect US authors overseas.  And something or other about the Berne Convention.  Imma go find Peter and the Wolf on YouTube right now and listen to it. Twice.

More on Nevada’s anti-SLAPP law

By J. DeVoy

Can Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statutes, for their many flaws, thwart a privately brought federal claim?  Why yes, they can.

Anti-SLAPP laws come in two flavors: procedural and substantive.  Substantive anti-SLAPP laws, such as the previously proposed federal anti-SLAPP law, provide qualified immunity for protected statements and create or crystallize the speaker’s rights.  In contrast, procedural anti-SLAPP laws provide a mechanism to dispose of abusive litigation – normally with a Motion to Dismiss.  The extent of these procedural protections vary from state to state; Massachusetts’ procedural anti-SLAPP law, for instance, cannot be applied in Federal Court. Stuborn Ltd. Partnership v. Bernstein, 245 F.Supp.2d 312 (D. Mass. 2003).  Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute, however, does not preclude its application in Federal court.

Like Massachusetts, Nevada’s anti-SLAPP laws are procedural, and is not restricted to use against state law claims. John v. Douglas County Sch. Dist., 125 Nev. Adv. Op. 55 (Nev. 2009), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 3355 (2010).  The facts of that case, which warrant reading because of how strange they are, hinge upon a school district employee being suspended for harassing other employees and video taping special ed students, recording sexually explicit narrations to the videos that were then shown to others.  Subsequent misconduct with confidential student records led the district to terminate John.

After exhausting EEOC remedies, John sued the school district in Nevada’s state courts, alleging violation of federal employment discrimination statutes.  The school district moved to dismiss John’s Complaint under the anti-SLAPP statute.  As John’s action was based on the school district exercising its right to communicate with the EEOC about a matter pending before it that concerned the district, the remedies in Nevada’s SLAPP statute were available. NRS 41.637.

The Nevada Supreme Court upheld the District Court’s dismissal. (N.B. – Nevada has no intermediate appellate courts.)  The state supreme court expressly found that the anti-SLAPP statute can apply to substantive federal claims, as it “does not undermine any important, substantive federal interests.”  Moreover, the court stated that Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute is “procedural and neutral” in nature.

Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statutes still are limited to an unfortunate degree.  However, the range of claims they can defend against – in the rare event the statutes can be applied – is quite broad.  How this would play out in Federal court remains to be seen, as it creates a tension between Rule 56, state law and the Erie doctrine.

In Defense of Doctor Who

By J. DeVoy

At The Spearhead, I have a new post about The Doctor.

If you have not watched this season of Dr. Who, which concluded on Saturday, cancel all of your plans for this coming weekend and buy a season pass on iTunes or Amazon.  I powered through about two-thirds of the latest season this weekend, courtesy of crippling sinus pressure (my body had forgotten what it was like to actually experience weather).  Steven Moffat – the show’s main writer – is a genius, and I wish my legal writing could embrace the kind of dizzying forays into a million different directions that Dr. Who travels under his tenure, only to resolve with a crushingly obvious and brilliant conclusion.

Gimme back my copyright, beyotch!

A recent addition to what could be the next tsunami of copyright suits,  Jim Peterik of 1982 Survivor fame is contemplating getting the rights back for the gloriously awesome song “Eye of the Tiger”.  Source.

Termination rights are covered in Title 17.  Long story short, if you licensed or assigned your copyright to someone after Jan. 1, 1978, you (or your heirs) can terminate that license or assignment after 35 years (provided you gave proper notice).  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  The basis for termination has been around for awhile, but no one really cared about it because…well….there seemed to be a tendency to go all Scarlet O’Hara and say “Well, I won’t think about it now.  I’ll think about it tomorrow”.  Fiddle dee dee!  Welcome to tomorrow.