Blogger and Journalist are not synonymous

I came back from a short holiday from writing to find a comment on one of my hubpages (here) from someone calling themselves riley who was so overcome with whatever the hell they were feeling that they felt the need to put me in my place.

The first post was nothing worth thinking about but the persons second post did bring up something that I do kind of care about...

riley says:

26 hours ago

and way to prove her point for sustaining the belief that theres a video leak out there without fact-checking. oustanding journalism, you got going on.

This comment would be hilarious if it were not for the fact that it's not the first time I've seen someone complain that a blogger (and not just me) did not have journalistic integrity.

I personally don't - but that's just because I'm not a fucking journalist except in the loosest possible definition. I'm a blogger that writes about shit that I find humorous or that pisses me off or both. Pretty much 'fact checking' for me only goes as far as making sure I didn't completely make it up in my head and my integrity extends only to the fact that I don't make up a quote or story out of thin air.

Lets take a look at the definition of journalism;

• Main Entry: jour·nal·ism
• Pronunciation: \ˈjər-nə-ˌli-zəm\
• Function: noun
• Date: 1828

1 a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media b : the public press c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium 2 a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

So I guess if you go by 2C I (and alot of other bloggers) might possibly squeak by as journalists - keep in mind though 2C does not mention anything about; facts, academia, or news.

Definition 2C aside, when people talk about journalists and lofty notions of journalism I doubt very much they are talking about me or any of the other idiots that write (barely) entertaining articles that make fun of celebrities because we think they are stupider than we are.

I bet if you walked up to Dan Walters from the Sacramento Bee or Gerald Marzorati and referred to private bloggers as journalists they punch you right in the mouth. In the case of Dan Walters he would probably kick your ass until someone pulled him off - because I think that might be how he rolls. Hell for that matter walk up to Gordon Ramsey and hand him a grilled cheese sandwich and tell him about how you are a Chef too - let me know how he responds.

I know some professional journalists blog, but most of us are not one of them. If you self publish articles it does not make you a journalist and if you make up your own Internet 'radio' show it does not make you a talk show host any more than playing Mobsters on Facebook makes you a frigging mob boss. I read a quote from a novelist once that said essentially that if you are not cashing checks from a publisher you are not a writer - you're just someone who writes.

I guess 'journalist' is just going to be another of those words that have been watered down to the point of being pretty much meaningless - like calling reality contestants celebrities or calling anyone who disagrees with you a nazi.

Alex Da Silva - So You Think You Can Dance? Well sir you can certainly rape (allegedly)

Remember way back in April when Alex Da Silva was arrested for raping one of the dancers he choreographed? Well the D.A. declined to prosecute - see that pisses me off when the press goes all out on a celebrity when they are arrested but never let you know when they are exonerated....

Cops say Alex Da Silva was arrested this morning at his North Hollywood home, after the District Attorney filed an arrest warrant charging him with eight felony counts of assault.

That includes four counts of forcible rape, two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object.

The D.A. says the alleged assaults occurred between August 2002 and March 2009. The four alleged victims were between the ages of 20 and 26 and were all dancers or aspiring dancers who say they met Alex through his dance instruction classes.

Oh ... well ... I stand corrected.

Would it be in bad taste right now to point out how hot some of the dancers are on that show? Two of them were hot enough to make me willing to sit through Dancing with the Stars (and they are pretty liberal with the use of the word 'Star" btw) when they ended up on that show.

.... This post is going to a bad place and I can't see this ending well so lets just stop here.

Self Magazine and the Kelly Clarkson Cover - Why it is ok to lie.

Self magazine retouched the photo of Kelly Clarkson that they used on their cover; that's old news and in fact I ignored it when it first happened for two reasons one of which is that I don't care .... the other is ... well ok there was just one reason after all. The picture above is the magazine cover and a picture of Kelly from a performance that apparently took place on July 31st 2009 - so I am not going out of my way to be unfair.

Following the initial Internet furor (or whatever) an editor came out and said that the cover used an altered photo and that should have been the end of it;

Last Friday, the Internet was abuzz with the fact that I answered the question, did you Photoshop the September issue cover photo of Kelly Clarkson? with the answer: Yes. Of course we do retouching

Now however the editor is back to explain that by retouched she meant magically altered to show the real person that is hidden from us all;

She is, like her music, giving and strong and confident and full of gusto. Did we alter her appearance? Only to make her look her personal best. Did we publish an act of fiction? No. Not unless you think all photos are that. But in the sense that Kelly is the picture of confidence, and she truly is, then I think this photo is the truest we have ever put out there on the newsstand.

Wait - so how the hell are all pictures an act of fiction? I've taken alot of pictures of people (sometimes with them knowing) and the un-retouched photo looks just like the person I pointed the camera at. The person may not like the picture but that's what they look like. How exactly is that a lie? For that matter if I then take a picture and retouch it to make them look like Wonder Woman instead of like Khloe Kardashian is that the truth because it shows her freaking inner spirit?

Does this also extend beyond pictures by the way? Because if it does than the next time I send out a resume I am going say that I went to Harvard and got my Doctorate in awesome, then paste a picture of me retouched to look like Optimus Prime - because that all shows my inner spirit of confidence and gusto.

If you really want to read more bullshit about why it is ok to lie you can see the article here.

Intercollegiate Quidditch Association - Dignity and Glory for the socially challenged

So it has been a little over 4 years since Collegiate Quidditch was founded during what I presume was a drunken party at Middlebury and it is now supposedly at 160 colleges including; Vassar, Princeton, and a bunch of other schools I probably couldn't get into.

Actually I cheated and posted that in from the article I wrote Here.

My wife reminded me after I wrote the article that I she actually told me about this a couple of years ago - but back then I didn't write humor I would hear something stupid and say a few witty things an never think of it again.

Now I put some of my thoughts here on the Internet for - surprisingly - hundreds of people to 'enjoy' or something.

Anyway - articles that do not fit my chosen subject matter here end up over at hubpages - just look for the KJWonka label to know that you are reading the very best that I could do in the time I would take away from competative masturbation.

LiveJournal users mad about the deletion of Harry Potter porn .... seriously.

Whenever I think that the internet has lost the ability to surprise me it will inevitably slam down it's bones and look at me with a smirk and say 'Domino Motherfucker' - that's right, in my mind the internet is a giant electronic version of Ice-Cube.

LiveJournal users who patronize sex-themed Harry Potter fan art and fiction communities--and a host of other concerned users--are revolting a second time over account suspension notices they say are unpredictable and trample on their free-expression rights..... The users' journal entries contained "drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations,"

The shock didn't come from the illustrated pictures of the presumably underaged Harry Potter characters naked and having sex with each other - no the shock came from the fact that there are people that are publicly pissed off that the people over at LiveJournal removed it.

In (one case), the offending image depicted an unclothed Harry Potter of ambiguous age receiving oral sex from sometimes-villain Severus Snape.

Seriously - this is the issue you want to stand up and be recognized for? You want to stand and be counted so you can protect the rights of people to see pictures of Snape pleasuring Harry Potter? I think even the most hardcore (non-insane) ACLU member is backing away from this hoping he doesn't get any sad on his shoes.

I've said several times that I am not by any means a prude (like here and here), but the frigging internet is making me feel like little miss moral outrage lately.

Domino indeed.

Heidi and Spencer Pratt classy up the G.I. Joe opening

Heidi and Spencer decided that the G.I. Joe movie was not enough of a parade of suck so they threw in their efforts to classy it up a bit. Believe me - nothing says classy like showing your wife on the cover of Playboy at the opening of a movie based (poorly) off a cartoon for kids.

It is heartwarming to see a man pimp his wife at every possible opportunity.

This is shorter than most of my posts but there is not much to say about these two whores, I suppose they will soon come up with some other stunt to get attention - maybe next time it will be something that I can write a bit more about or find some actual humor in.

John Hughes is dead

John Hughes died today at the age of 59 from a heart attack.

Like anyone in my age range I grew up on John Hughes movies, and they seemed not completely unrealistic to me back in Junior High and High School. I grew up in a smallish mill town so maybe that is why his movies had some feeling of legitimacy for me.

I am not really aware of anything he has done recently - for all I know I have watched a bunch of his movies in the last few years. I do know that whether or not there was any real social relevance to them for alot of us his movies were part of our formative years.

Leighton Meester Sex Tape Scandal; Leighton says it is fake ... maybe.

I have seen stories of a possible Leighton Meester sex tape floating around for awhile, and I honestly did not give a shit because I didn't have the first clue who the hell she was.

Now one of the other celebrity gossip hacks have made me understand that she is in Gossip Girl, which changes everything - or it would if I had ever seen it or had more than a vague notion of what it is.

I am now finally interested because of her recent comments in Harper's Bazaar;

"[The tape] is not real," she says bluntly, "so it makes me sort of sad. It's unfortunate that it got carried as far as it did." She pauses. "I definitely understand the nature of people better now and that the mere allegation of something like that could be headline news. People think it's real because somebody says it is." She takes a sip of her Coke. "By the way, [as for] me being 18 in those pictures, I don't believe I was."

Oh, thanks that clears up everything. You did not appear in a sex tape and that obviously isn't you - oh and you are pretty sure you were not eighteen yet in your sex tape that you definitely did not appear in.

This kind of reminds me of when Erin Andrews from EPSN (allegedly) starred in that peeping tom video a few months ago and no one had any clue until ESPN started totally denying it and sending out cease and desist orders like they were candy.

"That is totally not Erin Andrews so take that shit down now before we sue you for showing a hidden camera tape of Erin Andrews naked."

I saw it by the way, there were alot of script problems but the production values were pretty good for being filmed through a keyhole or whatever.

Harper's Bazaar Article is here by the way.

Thank God - finally a toy that teaches pre-teens how to breastfeed! Excuse me while I bleach my brain.

We all know that teen pregnancy rocks, I mean who doesn't want their daughter to get pregnant as early and often as possible?

Oh yeah - those of us that are not fucking insane. Of course there are those other guys;

A Spanish toymaker known as Berjuan has developed a breast-feeding doll that comes with a special halter top its young "mothers" wear as they pretend to breast-feed their "babies." The halter top has daisies that cover the little girls’ nipples and come undone just as easily as the flaps of a nursing bra would.

Seriously, I am not a prude - hell I am an insanely permissive person.

You want to watch porn? I say watch all the porn you can. You want to smoke weed? None of my business - help yourself to some crack for all I care. You are a dude that wants to marry a dude, screw it marry three of them and send me an invite to the wedding - we will buy you something nice.

You want to watch your preteen daughter pretend to breastfeed her doll that comes complete with a special halter-top with easy open nipple covers? Sorry there partner, I gotta ask you to leave because I don't want the 'To Catch A Predator' people to knock stuff over when they are here filming you.

Maybe I am not being fair, oh wait;

The halter top has daisies that cover the little girls’ nipples and come undone just as easily as the flaps of a nursing bra would.

yeah - I am being fair.

I really hate being in the position of expressing moral outrage, because keep in mind that I write stupid articles about even stupider celebrities and I mention porn in probably half my posts.

But this toy is freaking creepy.

I am not one of those people that hear about 'Pregnancy Barbie' and scream that it is going to ruin society and make a bunch of kids get pregnant. I doubt that pregnancy is going to shoot up because of pregnant dolls(but by all means kids, prove me wrong.) and for that matter I am also not against breastfeeding at all. It is when you combine the two - children's toys and breastfeeding - that I start to think that there could be a serious mismatch. Hell I would not even sweat a Barbie that breastfed another doll, but this is your freaking daughter breastfeeding a doll.

I hate being all moral majority and shit but this whole thing is just creepy.

Link so that no one thinks I am making it up;

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,537261,00.html?test=latestnews

Paula Abdul is off American Idol; where will contestants go for drunken rambling now!?

I could not be happier to be wrong, when I first posted about Paula Abdul having contract issues (here) I had cynically assumed it was just more stupid fabricated reality show drama but her twitter proved me wrong;

"With sadness in my heart, I've decided not to return to #IDOL. I'll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all ...being a part of a show that I helped from day1become an international phenomenon ... What I want to say most, is how much I appreciate the undying support and enormous love that you have showered upon me ... It truly has been breathtaking, especially over the past month ... I do without any doubt have the BEST fans in the entire world and I love you all."

I have to admit I don't give a shit about the show after they pick their top 10 or 20 or whatever it is they let people vote on. I only enjoy the sweet delicious tears of anguish that they serve in abundance during auditions and Hollywood week. Sometimes the chick I live with (my wife) makes me watch the rest, but I try my best to think about porn instead.

I don't know where the contestants are going to turn for meaningless pseudo-optimistic drivel now that they cannot rely on Paula (and Jack Daniels) to 'critique' their singing and tell them how truly special and gifted they are ... what will Paula cry for now that she can no longer do it for armature singers!!??

The only thing that could make this story better for me is if instead of a twitter she posted a you tube video so we could see both the crazy and the defeat in her gin blurred eyes.

Yeah - I do know how freaking mean I sound right now - but the sad and crazy of this woman has made me that way. If they fired this woman into the sun I promise you it would still be funny to me.

Kim Jong Il Pardons Reporters; Cinton asks for a wet-wipe for his hand

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Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il; When attention whores collide

So the reason presented for Bill Clinton deciding to pop over to North Korea is to see if he could negotiate the release of the two reporters (Laura Ling and Euna Lee) that work for his ex-veep Al Gore.

I guess no one told these two broads that communist countries hate when you hang out and try to interview people fleeing their iron clutches. It also is a bad idea to drip scalding hot wax on your genitals, but I think I would do that before I would hang out on the border between North Korea and China - who, ironically, after catching you drip scalding hot wax on your genitals by the way.

Anyway....

Since I really like pointing out obvious stuff let me just mention that we all know that perhaps the main reason for Bill Clinton going to North Korea, and the reason he has been welcomed, is because he and Kim Jong Il are both huge attention whores that hate feeling irrelevant. You might not have noticed during the last election cycle but Bill Clinton REALLY likes attention, even more than most politicians - hell even more than most Hollywood 'celebutantes' (I hate myself for using that word) ... basically I am saying that Bill Clinton is like Paris Hilton without a vagina.

As far as Kim Jong Il - what the hell can you say? The guy makes his citizens worship him like a God and eats pizza and watches porn while his people are starving. The guy has actually kidnapped actors and directors to try to make them do his film projects for him, seriously he is like a villain I would make up if I were really drunk - he is 'space emperor cult leader' crazy.

This meeting is the best thing to happen to these two in awhile, both of them get to pretend they are as important as they both desperately want to be. Just add Lindsay Lohan to this and it basically would have been the dream team of sad, self absorbed, attention starved whores.

Oh - and I am sure the reporters will get released by the way, Kim is basically getting a ransom paid to him with attention as the currency. I am glad they are probably going to be able to come home, I just hate the fact that an ex-president had to go give a metaphorical hand-job to a crazy ass dictator to do it - and I hate even more that the former president was probably happy to do it.

Travel tip: they whip you for wearing pants in Sudan.

At least they do if you make the mistake of having a vagina. A journalist and some other women discovered that fun fact when they were arrested in Sudan for wearing pants - the Fox news article says 12 but I think that is a typo; I guess they just don't have the same high standards as IPHY.

Apparently when broads make the horrible mistake of wearing pants out in public Allah or Xenu or whoever rules over the people in the Sudan has decreed that they have to be whipped 40 times. Which is perfectly fair and reasonable if you are fucking insane.

Possibly also insane is the stance the pants wearing journalist is taking;

"If I'm sentenced to be whipped, or to anything else, I will appeal. I will see it through to the end, to the constitutional court if necessary," she said. "And if the constitutional court says the law is constitutional, I'm ready to be whipped not 40 but 40,000 times."

She works for the U.N. so she has immunity but she has waived it to prove a point.... the point being I guess that she thinks something might change if she gets whipped for wearing pants.

I hate to break it to her but no one is going to care five minutes after the whipping is finished, in fact no one is going to care by the 7th lash. It's not news to anyone that Muslim countries by and large treat women like shit, I think I extend more rights to my German Shepards than most Muslim women have. I know I whip them a hell of alot less and I would not get all pissed if one of them started wearing a jaunty pair of pants.

Since 'The West' has decided it's intolerant to point out how much another culture sucks, no matter how fucking backwards and barbaric it is, I would not hold my breath on anyone in the first world getting too worked up over this for long.

So basically Ms. Lubna Ahmed Al-Hussien is going to get whipped for wearing pants and nothing is going to change... sucks.

Eh - turns out I did not create any humor with this one, I should have skipped the subject just like I did when that woman ate her baby last week.

Link to article;

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536261,00.html