Amadeo Sogni

“I don’t have to be topical if I don’t feel like it.”
Amadeo

Politics

So Anonymous hacked one of Sarah Palin’s email accounts. There was a story out about the fact that she had a few and had been using personal ones to conduct work related correspondance. Which is illegal since she’s a Governer. Well one of them accounts was put out there and Anonymous hacked it and sent screen shots to wikileak. Seems like she did have some work realted things going on. This and another account were closed down afterwards, the other account was targeted by an activist under the Freedom of Information act. It could all come out to nothing, however since shes under invesitgation it could be considered destroying evidence.

Fun and Games

I bought The Force Unleashed the other day. It’s a comforting thought that I can have a long hard day and end it by throwing stormtroopers through the air with my (digital) mind. Or that I can levitate them and then charge them with lightening from my (digital) finger tips. Having the force would be valuable in my line of work…no need to escort someone out, just use my mind to lift them up and sit them outside.

Shenanigans

Why in the Bloody Blue Blazes is a phone for a Sprint account going to be cheaper at Best Buy then at Sprint? Especially if the price at both places depends on the same 22 month status? Get it together Sprint. I’m trying to make up my mind if I want to leave you or not. You pissed me off when I found out a new customer could get two phones for $50 when my 22 month discount would give me one of those for $125. Yeah new customers get better deals everywhere…but this is getting out of hand. Best Buy may have saved your ass this time…maybe. If I roll with the Blackberry you might be safe, but the iPhone is making me curious.

Telly

So Dr. Phil had an episode about the N-word and I’m not sure who’s idea it was but they had Paul Mooney on as an expert. Maybe Dr. Phil wanted to challenge his audience, but they sounded just like something from one of Mooney’s acts. Oh god, hilarity did ensue.

“You over-officious jerk!”
Marv Levy

No Fun League

So Chad can’t wear his new name on his jersey until he buys the 100k that Reebok already had made up before the season started. Bogus. It’s like the NFL got together with Reebok just to do something spiteful. I’m sure the better business move for Reebok would be to donate the Johnsons and write them off. P.R. and a tax write off? C’mon! The NFL hates this Ocho Cinco thing…well here’s something I don’t hear anyone mention in this whole debate. A while back the NFL Network had a commercial it ends with a shot of Chad Johnson in a dentists chair flashing his golds, in the background you can hear a chorus of voices chant “Ocho Cinco”. This was before it even caught on…NFL..if he has problems you were an enabler. Don’t try to take a back door route to get at him out of spite. What next will you fine him for not obeying the rules cause guess what?!?! It’s a rule that every player must have his legal last name on the back of his jersey! Whoops! Get over it NFL…he’s getting more attention which means you get more.

Pharrell = Bootleg Jamiroquai
It’s true. I bought a greatest hits of Jamiroquai the other day and songs I didn’t know had me thinking “why does this remind me of something else?”. Then I heard “Feel’s Just Like it Should”. Maybe it was in a commercial or something, but when I’d heard it before in passing I thought it was Pharrell. That sealed it. I will accept no dispute on this issue. Deal with it.

Semi-Crazy People Suck

So there’s this dude that sits outside of Starbucks in the morning. Actually he sits there, get’s up and walks away, sits around the corner, comes back, goes in and gets a free cup of water, sits for a while, walks away…wash, rinse, repeat.

For a while dude is cool. Every now and then (normally when a person walks close by) he bursts into laughter. He doesn’t do this with me just random passers by. I’m calling him and his ilk out. Semi-crazy don’t cut it no more. You are together enough to at least look clean, not smell, and know that you can get free water from Starbucks. So either go all the way crazy or just drop the rest. Like the lady that used to talk to herself and say random shit to me and others…outside of Starbucks (there’s a theme here huh?). She had the bag lady thing going…she did the crazy talk…but she wasn’t crazy when she would go to McDonalds and buy herself breakfast. I like my crazy people crazy…I mean “Will-I-have-to-hit-this-person” crazy. Like the dude that picked up the horseshit to dump and flush in Starbucks toilet. Just so you know…this Starbucks is the reason I now keep my digital camera with me at all times. But for real…either go all the way or stop the semi-crazy.

“Not for myself I make this prayer
But for this race of mine
That stretches forth from shadowed places
Dark hands for bread and wine”

Countee Cullen

So I went to the Governors Grants Conference on Monday. First I have to say…can we all stop with the themes? Jerry Macquire was a few years back so making the them “Show Me The Money”, while appropriate just kinda grates on my nerves. What’s worse is that was a pretty mild one compared to some that I’ve been to.

Anyway so inbetween writing down websites, figuring out who I can target for funding and going outside to smoke cloves, I actually did get some good information to share with all of you.

You can’t work in my field without keeping an eye on politics. Regime changes and new policies have an impact on where we will get money from and if we will be able to…not to mention how much money will actually be around. In addition to people from the state government we had a lot of people from the federal government.

First thing you would be interested to know:

Marcia Howard is the Director of Federal Fund Information for States…if you want to know what federal money goes to what state and how much you should call her…reporters I’m talking to you as well. Anyway she let us know that Sarah Palin (despite the record profits I keep hearing about from oil) has gotten more money for Alaska in recent years then any other state as received…save for two states in one year…Mississippi and Louisiana…I’ll let you figure out which year that was.

During lunch the Keynote speech was given by Ray Scheppach, Executive Director of the National Governors Association. He was a kind enough gent, but we all wondered if he sat at home staring at a picture of his family while holding a gun in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other. Dude basically has been interacting with every Governer in the country for the last 20 years. He spoke about what we could expect on state levels depending on who was elected President. I’ll spare you the details and just say you have a choice…bad or worse. The issue is that states aren’t going to feel what’s happening now until after the election. He basically said that going by the policies they have outlined things would be bad for us under Barack Obama…and even worse under McCain. We can’t avoid what’s coming and even with fairly responsible approach we’ll still feel the pinch.

Having said that I came up with an idea that, the longer I think about it, could potentially set my career…until I can get it moving I ask you all to send donations…not to me…but to my girl. That way she can be my sugar mama and I can catch Pardon the Interruption in the Afternoon. Thank you for your support.

“The tyranny of an object. It doesn’t know I exist.”
Deckard
I’m not going all artsy on you, but I could. I’ll name this blog Kamehameha and won’t talk about the King or Dragon Ball Z. Don’t push me. Anyway, I’m talking about a book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick Better known to the populace as the film Blade Runner. The two share some things, but like many adaptations some things were left out that, while I like the movie, make the book so much better. The things and subsequent themes that were left out don’t break the movie…it is more of a cult classic anyway, but they are actually quite relevant to today. I keep thinking about the contrast of Mercerism to the Internet. The view of the ownership of animals and even the thought of owning an electric one to keep up the illusion remind me of several things around me. The biggest difference I could point out is that the book is just more complex than the movie. If you like the movie you would love the book. If you don’t like the movie you may still like the book. I especially love the exploration of the disregard of Chickenheads (Dude came up with that phrase a decade before I was born) while stressing empathy. Even the androids who aren’t considered as alive disregard the Chickenheads. I know my man D.P. is down with the movie. I hope ya’ll get down with the book. After the movie came out they changed some printings to “Blade Runner”, but unless it says it’s the movie novelization you’re good.

WWWD:
“I’m a creature of the wild. I hate cities… hate civilization with all its idiot rules. Gimme the free, open, elemental spaces of my mountains where a man holds his fate in his own hands. No lies there. No deception, no compromise. So why, I wonder, do I love this land, this city? It’s probably the most structured on Earth, laced tight with centuries of tradition and ritual, covering every conceivable aspect of public and private life. I was born to one world. But I choose to be part of the other.”
Wolverine