The "Can't Hold Us Down" Video

From MTV News

The battle begins when a loiterer makes a sleazy pass at Aguilera. No punches are actually thrown, but the words hit just as strong. "Call me a bitch 'cause I speak what's on my mind," Christina sings as the clash begins. "Guess it's easier for you to swallow if I sat and smiled."

"It's a real female empowerment song, so the girls are getting theirs," said David LaChapelle, the celebrity photographer who directed the clip, as well as "Dirrty." "Men objectify women all the time and it's no big deal, so this time the girl's doing it."

I just saw this video on MTV and the scene where Christina Aguilera walks by in some short shorts then gets her ass grabbed by the "loiterer" reminds me of a skit by Dave Chapelle which goes something like this

You know sometimes you are out at the club with your boys and you see a woman and she looks good. She looks good but not in the classical sense. She's got half her ass hanging out skirt, titties all mashed together, popping out the top of her turtleneck and shit. So you go to talk to her but you've been hanging with your buddies and have got a couple drinks in you so it doesn't come out right. You're like "DAMN!!! Look at them titties". She interupts you and says, "Just because I am dressed this way does not make me a whore.". That's true fellas. Just because she is dressed that way doesn't make her a whore. But you must understand ladies, that is fucking confusing. That would be like me, Dave Chappelle the comedian, going out in public in a cop uniform. People come up to him and they're like "Help me officer, we need you over here". Then I go "Wait a minute buddy, just because I am dressed this way does not make me a police officer". You see ladies, you may not be a whore, but you sure are wearing a whore's uniform.

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Death of a Dictator

When I look back and try to remember when my childhood ended I'm reminded of the scene in The Crow where Michael Wincott says mentions that he became a man when his dad gave him a gift that symbolized the fact that everybody dies. My age of innocence ended when I realized that unlike the movies the good guys don't always win and sometimes the bad guys don't get their just desserts.

Idi Amin is dead. When I was growing up in Nigeria, the movie The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin was fairly popular and was considered by many to be an accurate depiction of Idi Amin's time as ruler of Uganda. I was reminded of the movie by the following quote in the Reuters article

Exiles accused him of having kept severed heads in the fridge, feeding corpses to crocodiles and having one of his wives dismembered. Some said he practiced cannibalism.

One of the most graphic scenes in the movie actually does involve Idi Amin opening a refrigerator filled with the decapitated heads of his victims.

I remember how stunned I was when I found out that instead of coming to some gruesome end or spending jail time for his actions as ruler of Uganda he lived a comfortable life of exile in Saudi Arabia. Here was a person directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and he ended up living a comfortable life as a retired head of state. I never felt the same way after I learned this. Of course, I kept on seeing this situation repeat itself as I grew up and now I'm actually surprised when the evil people do catches up to them since I now realize that in reality this rarely happens.

I was going to post a comment critical of Saudi Arabia for granting asylum to the exiled Idi Amin until I realized that my dad's government is doing something similar. How does the saying about glass houses and throwing stones go again?

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Another RSS Bandit Sighting

I just found out that RSS Bandit is available for download at VersionTracker.com. It's quite interesting to me that these sites don't try to contact the authors of the application as part of the process of reviewing it.

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Using Job Listing for Industrial Espionage

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has noticed that one of the best ways to figure out what a company is up to isn't reading their press releases or attempting to get internal contacts to leak information but is actually keeping an eye on the available job listings for the various divisions in the company. Most companies have stringent rules about which information employees can divulge to the press or customers but these same rules tend not to be applied when describing available job listings. Not only can job listing surreptitiously leak information about the companies but they can also show which divisions are getting funded more than others.

There are a number of recent examples of folks using Microsoft job listings to infer the direction of the company. The top 3 on my list are

1. Microsoft Next Generation Shell by Slashdot
   
   
2. MS Looking for Graphics Software Architect by DonXML
   
   
3. Microsoft's Blogging Future by Dan Gillmor
   
   

I don't work with any of the teams mentioned above so cannot comment on any of the opinions in the links above but I do find it interesting just how much people can and tend to infer from job listings.

I especially find it interesting that Dan Gilmore was sent the links to the blogging related job listings at Microsoft by Chuq Von Rospach, an Apple employee.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

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Disclaimer: The above comments do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. They are solely my opinion.