Joe Jackson Admits he doesn't "Really" want the kids.


In an interview that Joe will claim never happened (probably because it didn’t) Joe Jackson clearly acknowledged that his recent attempts to gain custody of Michael Jackson’s children is part of a plot to bypass the fact that he was left out of the will. Father of the king of Pop Had this to say:

“You don’t even know who I am do you?”
“I don’t want anyone else’s children.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”


It’s obvious that Jackson is suffering from some sort of mental illness and periodically forgets about his son and grandchildren. When we asked him about the family and how they are holding up he seemed somewhat angry as he said:

“My publicist told me I was here to talk about my music.”

We had some time to kill so we asked him about his music. What followed was a lengthy discussion about his fictional career. He claims to be a recording artist who has released 18 or more studio albums dating back to the Seventies. In our haste to get this article published we failed to verify any of this. We allowed Mr Jackson to talk and talk for about 45 minutes before we again asked him if he would honor the will left by his recently deceased son and he exploded into a rage saying amongst other things:


“This interview is over!”
“Are you a fucking moron?”


Once we finally calmed him down we asked him to pose for this photo and he very reluctantly agreed.
joejackson_site_intro

We were scared at this point and didn’t ask the remainder of our questions. As Jackson left he shouted the following back at us:

“If I am Joe Jackson, the father of Jacko, why am I posing in front of a piano?”
“I’m not even an african american!”


This was strange because I would have been thinking the same thing if this purely fictional interview had ever taken place. It of course never did. This is a total work of fiction. I’m totally super serial. However if you look closely you may be able to detect the family resemblance.



Making Twitter Better

I have some ideas for making Twitter better that I’d like to share with you. If you like these ideas please twit about this blog and maybe the Twitter folks will take notice and think about implementing them.

1) If you’re like me you’re becoming frustrated by people you’ve just blocked showing up with tweets. You un-follow them, you block them and you feel like that should be the end of them! They aren’t supposed to be able to follow you anymore but then you use some software to follow everyone that’s following you and WAMMMO there they are again. My solution to this is to use Tweetdeck to intentionally Ignore most people and focus just on people I have deemed tweet-worthy. Now I know what you’re going to say, “why follow a bunch of people that tweet things you don’t like to read”. Well it’s called the scientific process! You do a huge random sampling of a bunch of people and then go through a process of elimination by which you end up with only those you find interesting. Un-follow and Block are the mechanisms that should be making this possible, but they’re not functioning at present. Twitter needs to address this.

2) Tweetdeck has a rather nice feature that allows you to create groups, what would be even nicer would be the ability to converse with members of that group only. This would be a great courtesy to those who are following you but they aren’t part of the current conversation you’re having. These groups would have to be easy to create on the fly and it would also have to be easy to add new people to the conversation. There is a service that does something like this called “Shout em”. So I guess this would be like that but inside the confines of the Twitterverse.

3) I would like to see personal Twitter pages become more customizable. It would be great for people to be able to put more information about themselves, embed media etc. Myspace and Facebook are emulating some of the things that Twitter is doing I think turnabout is fair play here! It might make for more interesting conversations if we all had a little more information about each other. This would also be a great avenue for self expression as well.

All great web services and applications tend to evolve, I really feel that incorporation of these ideas need to be incorporated into the next evolution of Twitter.



Honour MIchael Jackson by learning from his life!

Okay folks, enough is enough! It’s been a couple days now and I think many of us are missing the point. Michael Jackson was a man who was literally programmed by his father to become a superstar. It worked. However all the money, the houses the exotic pets that his boatloads of cash bought him never gave him back his childhood. Those of you out there who schedule every second of your kids lives in an attempt to live your dreams vicariously through them should take serious note here. Let your kids be kids. If you don’t you will create an empty void inside them that can never be filled. Jacko literally destroyed his life in the attempt. That is one of the lessons here.

Another important lesson is for those of you who are on a path to stardom. People who tell only tell you how great you are and only say what you want to hear are probably lying to you! Keep your ties with friends and family who know who you REALLY are! This will keep you grounded in some sort of reality. This will prevent you from booking yourself on a 9 month 50 date concert series at age 50, when you’re so depressed you can barely move! It may also keep you from having to self medicate yourself into oblivion!

The last thing I’d like to say is that, in a way MJ was murdered. Slowly tortured and driven to suicide by his fans. I mean he wrote and recorded a song called “Leave me Alone” for a start. I’m sure he felt that the only time anyone ever listened to him was when he was singing. If you could afford 700 euros for a VIP package to one of the sold out shows I really hope that if you get that money back you donate it to a worthwhile charitable organization in MJ’s name. It would be a fitting legacy for the real man none of us ever knew.


Was Sarah Palin the cause of McCain's loss?

Are you out of your freaking mind? OF COURCE SHE WAS!!!! I think the video recorded by Matt Damon says it all (look for it on Youtube). Americans were terrified that if McCain fell Ill during his administration the entire country would be run by a soccer mom! Now, is there a soccer mom out there who could run a country ABSO-FREAKIN-LUTELY, Palin is simply not the droid we’re looking for!

Hindsight being 20/20 it almost seems like Palin was chosen because the Republicans wanted to lose. Your whole campaign is about experienced leadership and Palin is your choice for VP? Was your campaign run by Alfred E Neuman cause somebody’s logic is certainly cracked up here! I’m sure some people gave Sarah the benefit of the doubt and waited to hear what she had to say. They listened to that broken record play it’s long and languished tune over and over again. It kinda reminded me of those sound effects machines used by hack morning drive-time radio jocks, only hers only had about three buttons on it! Check out the Katie Couric interview (also on Youtube) for evidence of that!

At every turn Sarah Palin displayed a lack of experience, almost zero grasp of important concepts, and a strange air of arrogance one can only assume was borne of ignorance! Stop asking the question “Did Sarah Palin lose the election for the Republicans”. The real question is, “knowing how screwed up the economy was/is and how horrible US relations are with much of the world, did the Republicans intentionally lose the election in order to give the impossible task of governing to the United States first black president”?

Cause it seems like the Republicans are very good at making it seem like they’ve failed to execute a plan when in reality failure WAS the plan. Google 911 to see what I mean.


Palin v.s. Letterman - This time it's personal!

I really try not to follow entertainment news. I only watch TV shows when they come out on DVD in part to avoid the insanity. Until recently I thought a Kardashian was a type of cashew nut. I used to watch Letterman and Conan almost every night but I found that TV was just taking up too much of my time. However being someone who works with the internet on a daily basis it’s difficult not to get constant updates on the Sarah Palin / David Letterman saga that seems to get more absurd every day. I watched video of “the joke” and although it was an unusually low blow for Dave, I’ve seen pretty much every other late night host go as low or sometimes even lower. All the press surrounding “the joke” seems to be turning sheep into bloodhounds, pretending to run far afield to sniff out the truth of Dave’s intent and coming back with finely crafted republican false-logic in their ever gaping maws!

For the record just in case you didn’t notice, David Letterman is a comedian and a television talk show host. He is not a head of state or a political opponent. There are far more important issues to deal with right now but of course good ol’ Sarah who is still smarting from a crushing defeat has got her fangs out and there’s no telling who will wind up with teeth marks in their ass. This is a clear illustration of why Palin should not have been Vice President of the United states. America really dodged a bullet here. All americans should count themselves lucky. This woman has blown a joke out of all proportion for no other reason than to stay in the public eye. It’s a shameful display.Her camp invented the idea that Letterman was talking about her 14 year old daughter rather than the 18 year old daughter even though anyone with half a brain would know better! Is it any shocker that a bunch of people that voted for George W Bush not once but TWICE would take up the torch of stupidity once again to run this fools errand against Letterman?

I see blog posts and article comments from people saying they will never watch Letterman again. These people either never watched the show in the first place or are simply so easily swayed that something will sway them back in a month’s time. I wouldn’t be surprised if ratings are up due to this fake scandal. To give you an idea of how much of a joke most americans feel Palin is, I bet it would be quite a tight race if Letterman ran for office against Palin. I’d vote for Dave in a heartbeat given that Palin was the only other option! Before you ask, no it’s not because she’s a woman! If Letterman ran against Ellen DeGeneres that would be quite a battle let me tell you. Absurd you say? Either one would be a better choice than Palin by orders of magnitude and I haven’t even thought about what they might be running for!

So here’s what happened in a nutshell. Dave told a groaner of a joke at the expense of Palin and family which is certainly nothing new. Palin and company took it as an opportunity to stir up some muck and go out with a bang. This might also have been an attack on CBS in general due to Palin’s deer in the headlights routine during her interview with Katie Couric, which some say had much to do with why the recent election was lost. They are probably sitting around saying “we may have lost the election but man did we carve that Letterman a new one”! If that’s really something to hang your hat on Sarah, you don’t deserve to be in charge of Girl Scouts much less Vice President of the United States!

I know it’s good for a politician to be a media whore, but then when the camera is actually on you it’s a good idea to have something coherent to say. The reason why Sarah lost McCain the election is because she kept repeating what needed to be done, “shore up the economy and make America strong again”. It’s great to say that, over and over again as if it were your name, rank and serial number, but you’ve actually got to have some sort of idea how to achieve that. At the very least you have to
look like you know how to achieve it!

One thing in defense of Sarah Palin. Anyone in politics that was offered a chance to be Vice President would jump at that chance. I’m sure she never expected to be asked, but it’s an offer you don’t refuse in politics. The reason for this is that the mechanism of political office often propels ones ego outside the boundaries of reality. Despite all good intentions and a real willingness to do some good, had she the aptitude to stop and assess her own limitations she would have declined the offer.



Follow Tons of People on Twitter Right now for FREE!

Ok folks, If you’re like me you’re getting sick and tired of all these rabid dog marketers selling solutions to follow or auto follow hundreds of people on Twitter. They claim that these software packages target specific people. Most of them just scan all of Twitterland and follow people who have used a certain keyword in one of their tweets! Let me ask you this if you’re selling chocolate do you want to follow someone who tweets the phrase “I hate chocolate”? I wouldn’t have thought so but that’s what people are doing when they use this software that they have paid good money for!

The thing is that if you want to target and follow certain types of people in the hopes that they’ll follow you back there is an easier more effective way and you don’t need anything more than your browser and the Twitter site itself. I’m going to lay this out for you and you’re going to kick yourself that you didn’t think of this. I am of course assuming you didn’t.

Following

Step one

Find someone on Twitter that has the same/certain interests or sells a similar product as you and has many more followers than you.

Step Two

Click the link to see their list of followers.

Step three

Click each person’s “Follow” button to follow all those people.

Step Four

Rinse and repeat as needed!

Un-Following

After a few days you will want to unfollow all those who don’t follow you. You can do this manually.

Step one

Go to your Twitter page and click the link to view your followers.

Step Two

Unfollow or remove the people you can’t send a direct message to. You see you can only send a direct message to someone you follow who is following you!

There is a free site that automates this process, you can find it at Http://www.Huitter.com However once you go over 500 followers it becomes a paid service.

Why do it this way?

You may be asking yourself why would I do it this way when I can pay some money and get 10,000 followers. The answer is simple many of those followers will be automated accounts that auto-tweet the phrases that the software is looking for. If you cherry pick only those people that someone your respect is following most of them will be real people! Bot don’t buy stuff!








Rapidblog for Rapidweaver - Half a Thumb up!

I recently purchaed Rapidblog for Rapidweaver. Let me say right from the start is that the only reason you would want this plugin is if you needed to blog via email or from a remote computer. It would also come in handy if you are collaborating with other people and you need them to be able to post to the blog as well. The basic idea behind this plugin is to mirror your blog on a blogger page so that you can add the functionality of the blogger page to your own hosted web site. You can redirect people who navigate to the blogger version of your blog so that they end up hitting your regular rapidweaver blog. Sound confusing? IT IS!

The folks at logohound have found an extremely convoluted way to give you less features. Here’s what you give up when you use Rapidblog:

1. RapidBlog has no podcasting module
2. RapidBlog handles date formatting differently
3. RapidBlog doesn't support smilies (tragic, I know)
4. RapidBlog doesn't allow custom permalinks
5. RapidBlog only supports 'categories'. The built in blog supports both 'categories' and 'tags'.

Not only that the direct links to individual blog posts look like this:

 http://www.ntopix.com/index.php?id=7164719949441523464 

That’s a big bowl of wrong! it’s the text equivalent of visitor repellent!

However there were some nice features that I did like. One of them was the interblog option which allows you to insert text, pictures or ads between your posts. This is something the regular Rapidweaver blog doesn’t do. The import feature was nice as well. The truth of the matter is that this had the potential to be a good product, it’s just not finished yet. I don’t know if Logohound is still developing Rapidblog but if they are I would hope they address these issues. One would think the idea would be to produce a plugin that does everything the stock plugin does and then adds some features. There are certainly easier ways to collaborate on a blog, you could use a password protected php form to allow others to blog for instance.

Unless you’re very tech savvy and can add code to right the wrongs it is my opinion that you should steer clear of this plugin. The really sad thing is that other would be Rapidweaver plugin creators might not be doing a blog plugin because they feel that between the stock plug and Rapidblog that base has been covered. For the time being at least it most certainly has not.











Death to Twitiots!

It’s been a couple weeks now since i got my Twitter account. At first I didn’t know how people could stand all the useless crap you have to wade through to get some useful information. The problem I see it is the lowest form of Tweeter, I am talking about the infamous Twitiot. These are people that tweet a play by play of a sporting event, or post 17 pictures of their cat. These are people that ONLY post to sell stuff on accounts that are completely automated for the sole purpose of following as many people as possible in order to gain more followers. Is there any area of our lives that can remain free of advertising. Is there anyplace left where you can escape some marketing person from getting at you in order to get you to spend money you don’t have?

I have news for those of you who look at Twitter as some sort of gold rush! People are becoming more and more adept at spotting automated accounts that are created for the sole purpose of marketing. Even the ones that get through are instantly unfollowed after the first tweet. The incredibly bad downside is that bands, artists and other creative people who want to create a sense of community around what they do often get lumped in with these rabid marketing dogs.

A quick web search will show you that there are tons of people out there selling all manner of services software and gimmickry to get you to give them money in order to get an assload of followers on Twitter. There’s a service out there called Widgetbox that has a service to get you 1000 targeted followers for $999! What that really means is that they are offering you 1000 suckers! People who are going to buy what you’re selling whatever it is! I really don’t think this is why Twitter was created. Besides when you’re dealing with people who are smart enough to understand what Twitter is, even if they are suckers now, they won’t be for long!

As I type this a web radio DJ has been tweeting the name of every single song she’s playing as she plays it. No commentary, or why she’s playing it. I just responded to one of her posts, I’ll let you know if she responds. Am I missing the point or is all this advertising just the price you pay for anything that’s “free” these days?

If anyone has any idea on how Musicians can create a community around their music while at the same time identifying themselves as an artist with something to share rather than a steely eyed marketing entity please clue me in! I could use the help.





Rapidcal for Rapidweaver - Two Thumbs Down

I recently shelled out the 15 bucks to buy Rapidcal a Rapidweaver plugin that is supposed to allow you to add a calendar to your Rapidweaver site in the same style as your chosen theme. I followed their instructions but could not get the trial version of the product to work when published. This led me to believe that this was a limitation of the trial software and that a purchase was required to see the calendar on the actual internet. So I paid my money and followed the instructions and nothing. I contacted Rapidcal, they sent me to the same instructions page that I had used to set up the program in the first place. I contacted them again and they were like a broken record. This apparently is their idea of customer service, I was not impressed.
My next step was to ask for a refund, they refused.

This is basically a scam in my opinion. They give you an extra long evaluation period which leads you to believe that the software is legit. At the same time they make the demo look like you need to pay for it to be fully functional. Of course once you pay you’re screwed.

On a positive note I found a free calendar php script that will work directly with your Mac iCal application. It has many more features, looks better and is easier to read! You can get it for FREE here:

http://phpicalendar.net/

It’s quite customizable and allows you to merge many calendars together. It even has the capability to display multiple calendars one at a time. The user simply selects from a menu which calendar they wish to view. It’s very well thought out and well executed.

This script comes with instructions which are easy to understand. You have to edit a php file and copy a few files to your server but its a piece of cake with any basic ftp program.

Who needs to throw away money when this awesome calendar script does an amazing job for free! It’s even RSS capable so your visitors can subscribe to your calendar!