Kanye West: Abortion and Seizures

Kanye West Edition #4. And not a moment too soon.

Recently (as in 25th of February), As promised for the New Year, I started following Kanye West on Twitter. I have to admit that I'm relatively ignorant about how Twitter works and also what my first tweet should be about. But I do have to say that having a Twitter account, and what's more following Kanye West is one of the best decisions I've made online this week. And for that, I'd like to thank Kanye for reminding me why I make these posts on him every month. Nothing do with him doing something personal to me, or really that I have a bone to pick with him. It's simply for the lulz. And Kanye reminded me that he is truly lulzy. And I think Twitter is good for him too. I've especially noted that it's one of the few internet tools where he doesn't write in ALL CAPS. Throughout the weekend I've been observing the...um, rather unique and rare insight into social affairs and the world at large that Kanye demonstrates when he's not making a rap song. For instance, he has rather interesting views on abortion, and seems to be on the same side as a certain Justin Bieber (and his mother). Although his, um, reasoning for this seems to be quite distinct from Bieber's, his mother's and even much of the pro-life movement in general. You see, Kanye West doesn't oppose abortion because he believes that a foetus has a right to life, nor because of God's as-of-yet unexplained plan for the world. He opposes it because he thinks it costs (people like) him money:

(1st lesson about following Kanye West's twitter: Be sure to capture anything he says that are offensive, funny, stupid or all of the above. I learned this the hard way and now it's gone. So thanks to Buzzfeed!)

Uh...It's a bit hard to fully understand what Kanye is saying here. Either that, or he legitimately thinks that there are some women who sleep with wealthy people just so they can take his money and use it for an abortion. Not only this, but he seems to imply that the abortion ridiculously expensive before that's the sole reason why these "gold diggers" will use the money for,...and not much else. Seriously, what on earth is this guy on!?

OK, so Kanye tries to clarify his earlier tweet with this to help those who are confused what he's on about:

OK, so this abortion thing isn't about him but someone he knows. A shame that this explains pretty much nothing.

In any case, for these posts Kanye's been receiving a lot of flak across twitter, most notable of which by Lily Allen. Lily, who's had the misfortune of receiving two miscarriages in the same year, really took Kanye's comments to heart. "Never has a tweet put me in such a bad mood. This is wrong on so many levels." Of course, as you might expect, I agree with Lily Allen, and I completely sympathise with her. Although, while a lot of people are royally pissed off at what "Yeezy" has to say this time, I've since long gone past that, and instead find it to be so insensitive stupid it's funny, if not that, then just confusing.

Nevertheless, I fell I should help Kanye, or rather "the people he knows" out on this abortion thing, because they seem to be little confused. Now I may not fully understand how people do things in America, but I do know how to look for sources on the Internet. A simple Google search like this:

...came up with 8,420,000 results. Now from one of the sources I used, I discovered that in between 6 to weeks of gestation, a woman can expect to pay is $350 at an abortion clinic or $500 at a physician's office. At around 16 weeks, the cost rises to $650 at a clinic and $700 at a physician's office, and at around 20 weeks, the cost rises to $1,000. Also, this source reveals to me that forty-two percent of women who have abortions have incomes less than 100% of the federal poverty level (that's $10,830 for a single woman with no children) and 27% of women have incomes within 100% to 199% of the federal poverty level. So Kanye and the anonymous (likely made up) person he knows need not worry about the cost of an abortion for a woman he, or that guy he knows, was involved with. I mean Kanye is a millionaire, so $350, shoot, even $1,000 is pocket change for him. Whoever told Kanye that an abortion costs "50G's" was clearly bullshitting must have been counting on him being a fucking idiot. In fact, I haven't found anything about an abortion costing $50,000, and all sources simply lead up to Kanye's own stupendous ignorance of the cost of an abortion. Or maybe I'm wrong and I didn't account for the possibility that Kanye and "the person he knows" does not live in America and actually lives in a location known only as "Ballin' Nigga's World", where abortions cost anywhere between $50,000 and maybe $100,000, and the only reason why a woman wants to get with a "ballin' nigga" is to spend his money...on an abortion.

If that's the case, then I have a suggestion for Kanye: In order to avoid the injustice of having to spend "50G's" at minimum on an abortion in "Ballin' Nigga's World", you can return to the United States of America, located on Planet Earth, where you can spend at least $350 to the woman "the person he knows" had a relationship with to get an abortion. Also, the possibility of getting condoms which aren't absurdly expensive, if the abortion cost on "Ballin' Nigga's World" is anything to go by. The choice is yours.

"Looks like Kanye's coming home, guys!"

Now speaking of mind-numbing nonsense, I'd like to relate a small story to you readers: 12 years ago, I owned the Guinness Book of World Records 1999. Back then, I was a fan of Pokemon like most kids, but then I learned in the Book of World Records that the anime I liked was responsible for having more children admitted to the hospital than any other programming thus far. The episode "Dennō Senshi Porygon", commonly translated as "Electric Soldier Porygon", featured the protagonists Ash, Misty and Brock in cyberspace battling the criminal organization Team Rocket. To fight off an anti-virus program, Ash (inconsiderate of the children watching his how) orders Pikachu to use "Thunderbolt" on the anti-virus missiles coming their way, creating an explosion, complete with flashes of red and blue lights. The result was that the Japanese Fire Defense Agency reported that 685 children, 315 boys and 375 girls, were taken to the hospital by ambulance with seizures. While most of them recovered during the ambulance trip, 150 of them were admitted to the hospital with two hospitalized for two weeks. A fraction of the 685 children treated were diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. It was then I learned that the things that I enjoy watching can potentially give you harm, and then it becomes a question of whether there are things so cool that they are worth getting a seizure over. 12 years later, I'm confident in saying that if it exists, then the video to Kanye West's "All of the Lights" is not one of them.


Now, Kanye West has made some decent, if not, brilliant tracks even since I've stopped describing myself as a fan of his. Shoot, he's made some decent if not brilliant tracks in his latest album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Tracks like "Power", "Runaway", "Lost in the World" are great. I might even tolerate "Monster". But "All of the Lights" is, at least to me, meh. Sorry. It's not all that. And I don't give a flying fuck if it had 14 artists on the track, squeezed into a 4-minute song. If you can barely notice well over half of them, then there's no fucking point, is there? No. So, usually brilliant video producer Hype Williams made a video to the single, managing to make it even worse. The video is an eye-searing, epilectic-inducing, ego-tripping piece-of-shit, and the only reason why if at any stage I found it likeable is apparently because Kanye and Williams had the decency to homage rip-off of the 2009 obscure French film Enter the Void.

Warning: The following videos may potentially onset an episode of seizures. One maybe out of awesomeness, the other...not so much.




While it's great that West at least seems to like that film, it makes no sense whatsoever to rip-off that film to that song. It's like having a fish-and-cheese sandwich. If anything, I'm amazed that Williams, as in the guy who made many of the greatest hip-hop videos of all time, each of them worth the massive budget put into it, especially the Busta Rhymes video "What's it Gonna Be?" featuring Janet Jackson, made this awful video. Dude, What. The Fuck!?





More than anything, I'm interested as to what explanations those in my Facebook (soon to be Twitter), and even those arse-kissing music websites have as to why a video which has seizure-worthy strobe effects, gives a "fuck you" to decent editing, and needs 14 or so people to make a song about having an injunction placed on him preventing him from seeing his daughter, which pays "homage" to a film far too awesome to put on this song? It's practically smack for the eyeballs. I've heard people pretty much say that they like it because of something along the lines of "it's a collab and-a-half". Yeah, and if Kanye had the bright idea to see if it's possible to put 76 separate artists on it, I'll probably hear from the same people practically masturbating to the supposed awesomeness the track would bring, as he magically managed to squeeze it into 7 minutes. "Awesomesauce!"...Yeah.


So until next time readers. Oh, another thing: If there's one thing I want to commend Kanye West for, it's his masterful gambit to try and get his own album banned for the album cover. In doing so would only provide more attention for himself, and create more publicity. And we all know that Kanye is practically the Galactus of attention-whoring. Thanks for reading. In this instance, even this, and especially not the video can save him from that twitter bullshit. Kanye, you're...fun. But please, come back to Earth and stay there this time, please? Thank you.

An Apology Of Sorts...

Last week, my laptop was finally fixed. It's been a lengthy and frustrating month, until this happened and from then I had to do my blogging from other computers, and the result was fairly predictable. There were a few times that the posts were incomplete. As bizarre as this sounds I sort of of keep a mental timeline on when to publish posts up, so occassionally what would happen is that some are posted before I actually complete them.

Turns out the laptop neither had a problem with its memory of CPU. There was a lot of dust stuck inside the heat-sink, leading it to heat up and shut down whenever it got too hot. This...nuisance was later handled literally last week, and it's fine again. Since then, I realised that almost none of the writings that I announced I would do have been done yet. Most of which can be attributed to the highly inconvenient laptop fiasco, others simply can't and worse, I wanted to write on other stuff as well. Some of which only came to me recently. So, a slightly updated to-do list is in order:

Everything on the Happy New Year's Day article will be done this year as promised. Then there are also a few more nuggets to do:

The Arab protests of 2011
Scintific inquiry and ethics
The case for skepticism

And that's about it. So readers, I'm sorry for it took so long, and things will get better from now on.

Justin Bieber Has A Movie

Just writing this pisses me off so much, I hoped it'd be shorter than the Kanye West articles .

Two months ago, I wrote the article: Fred Has A Movie; expressing my bewilderment that someone as obnoxious and unenjoyable as the character of Fred was on YouTube, and suggested that several other popular YouTubers warrant a movie before Fred does. Today, I realised to have shot myself in the foot with this one and take back what I said. Yes, that's right: Grammy-nominated, 2010 American Music Award Artist of the Year and 7th most popular woman on the planet: kidrahul, better known outside of YouTube to the world as Justin Bieber, has a movie. The movie is a documentary called Never Say Never, detailing his rise to success by some fluke of a music executive discovering him performing on the tubes, home vids, and of his of-so-fantastic World Tour 2010. Now, as you possibly might expect, this post, like the Fred one before it, is going to less about about the fact that Justin Bieber has a movie, and more about almost everything else. Apart from one thing...

To be honest, I've tried really hard to not dislike the guy. Even settling for indifference altogether. I mean, I at least "dislike" a certain rapper for all the dumb shit he says and much of the post-2007 music he did. He gets his monthly share, anyway. But in the end, I ended up being annoyed by Bieber. Not because of his music, but because he's either a moron or an arsehole. Specifically for many of his views and actions; some of which relate to :(*sigh*, not again...) religion. Perhaps I should give you a clue of what I mean:

Now technically, this one doesn't actually from Bieber himself, but his mother. After reading the Guardian (or G2) column Lost in Showbiz; a delightfully, wise-assed, snarky column that gives mine a run for its money, written by Alexis Petridis (Alexis is male, BTW. He's Greek), I learned that his mother apparently believed that Bieber was sent by God "to bring light to the world". Granted, she didn't actually specify how Bieber would do this, and that sounds like something mothers say. But if we can assume that coughing tepid R&B tunes, then I feel confident in saying that he doesn't quite compare to the likes of Moses,  David, Solomon...you know, those guys, let alone, what was his name...oh yes, Jesus. But what do I know? I'm just a snarky, heathenous blogger making posts about things he declares to be bullshit. I mean, for all I know, Justin Bieber could become a special UN envoy or an ambassador of sorts, and bring peace in the Middle East through his music; with Israelis and Palestinians alike agreeing that the one thing they can agree on is that they love Justin Bieber (or perhaps hate as the case may be. After all, it wasn't specified if his music has to be liked to unite them).

Perhaps to strengthen his mother's case, there was a few months the massive flooding of the east coast of Australia. Bieber in response to the suffering experienced by thousands of victims, sent his prayers for them. A nice gesture. Although personally, I'd have thought a more direct response would be sending, you know, money. But then, given what his mother said of him, it's also possible that Bieber being the light of the world had his prayers answered, and God decided to alleviate the suffering experienced 35 dead lives and 9 missing later.

And then, there are these little nuggets on what he does when sufficiently peeved. Q: What do you do when some arsehole hacks into your Twitter account keeps prank-calling you? A: Well, if you're Justin Bieber, you get his phone number, post it on Twitter and encourage your 4 million followers, many of them rabid fans of his, dubbed "Beliebers", to call the phone number. Nice. Thing is, that sort of thing would get him banned from Twitter. Unless your name is Justin Bieber.

Look at how devilishly sweet he is...

There's also the bit when he chucked a water balloon at a police officer, and got away with it. Thanks to his bodyguard...or possibly God came through on that one as well. (Although this example is funny)

Now for Bieber's "astounding" insight into serious issues and the world around him:


On abortion: "I don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby."

...except it's not actually killing a baby. It's killing a potential human being i.e. "not-born-yet non-person". Now this might be a rather cold distinction, and I know the abortion debate is a little more complex than this, but I should note that well over 50% of fertilized eggs are discarded before they implant and 25% of pregnancies result in miscarriage. So if we followed specifically Bieber's pro-life reasoning, around 50%-75% of "unborn babies" die under God's watch. Just saying.

On abortion even in the case of rape: "Well, I think that's sad, but everything happens for a reason."

Wow. I'm just glad no-one asked him about in the case of life-threatening pregnancies, specifically ectopic pregnancies.

On politics & international relations: "I'm not sure about political parties, but whatever they have in North Korea, that's bad."

Yes, um, that's...bad. (Good Lady Haruhi! Hasn't he even at least watched Team America!?)
r wasn't reall
Now, some of you might be saying "You're too harsh of him! He's only 16!". To that, I answer there's some of things I realised when I was 16:

At 16, I wished I was allowed to vote for about two years. I thought Tony Blair was a lying sod, and David Cameron was no better. I was a bit curious as to how Menzies Campbell could maintain the policy of removing or at least a reduction of pension plans. I also witnessed Tony Blair step down as Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour Party, who was then succeeded by Gordon Brown...who David Cameron later succeeded as Prime Minister, three years later.

At 16, I was already aware enough of the principles of socialism enough to know that the Labour Party wasn't really socialist, and had an least basic understanding of what Marxism actually was (and for American readers, it is NOT Barack Obama's policies), the different varieties of Marxism, specifically Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism (the last two are almost interchangable), Luxemburgism etc. and was able to identify that North Korea follows the Juche system: a poltical ideology/pseudo-religion based on Neo-Stalinist thought, developed by it's founder Kim il-Sung, and inherited by Kim Jong-il. I also knew they have a practice of shooting citizens that are literally trying to run across the border to Chin...in frosty cold pools, and prior to him becoming head-of-state kidnapped a South Korean film director and throw him in a gulag for seven years simply to make a propaganda film.

At 16, I thought abortion was a little more complex than killing a person inside the womb, whilst when I was 15, the only way I could accept it as necessary is when the woman's life is in danger, or raped.

And finally, at 16, I began to question this "God" character everyone talks about. But that's here nor there.

Granted, I never went out in search for fame, especially by the comic strips I did in my spare time, but that was  leaving aside the episodes of depression, I was content.

So what am I saying? Well, even excluding the latter which is pretty irrelevant, considering Bieber's ignorance of almost everything, I have to question the integrity of his marketing team, and how much they can squeeze out of him before he burns out.  And more importantly, before he notices anything. I mean, if they were able to convince him that somehow his life story so far, while impressive with Grammy nominee and American Artist of the Year and whatnot, warrants a self-promoting movie, who knows what gimmicky shit they'll pull off next with him. For all we know, his own cartoon or show (possibly reality TV) might be in the process of being made, and a possible comic-books, if they're silly.

"Hi there! True Beliebers!"

In any case, after they've extracted the marketing juice that Bieber gives off, when he does something ridiculous, he'll get dropped like a hot potato, and the adoring public aren't so pleasant anymore. (Shoot, half the public aren't pleasant to him already. Either they're just needlessly mean, or they've grown considerably sick and tired of the music industry's gimmicky pop-teen diabetic nonsense they churn out every two years) Or perhaps to give an example illustrating the cold and cynicism of the pop music/Hollywood market machine, let's look at the life of Britney Spears:

Her rise to stardom began when she joined the Mickey Mouse Club in the 90s, along with Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake. Out of those three, Timberlake seemed to be the one who did very well for himself. Not that Aguilera didn't escape well adjusted, but compared to Timberlake, well...


Anyways, Britney's first hit was "Baby One More Time" in 1999, at age 17, which topped the Billboard 100 List for two weeks, turned platinum and sold nearly half a million copies in the U.K., becoming the highest-selling single of the year and the 25th highest selling single of all time in Britain. And that's not even getting into the album of the same name. between her then four albums, Baby One More Time, Oops I Did It Again, Britney and in In The Zone, each of them with Spears delving further and further into her sexuality, she became one of the highest earning artists of the decade. After making hits after hits after hits, most of which in her early 20s. Then she randomly started marrying three guys at three separate times. Last of which was Kevin Federline, a dancer, who in his own ignorant, self-absorbed way, seemed like he was marrying his way into some stardom plan. Eventually after a messy break-up, Britney had a serious meltdown, following two cases she had to be admitted to the psychiatric ward and the incident when she decided that she could play an enraged Uncle Fester on the obnoxious pararazzi in the vehicle beside in the petrol station, and the cynical media that adored her so much turned against her.

And all of this happened, with this post written all before she turned 30. Although, she was lucky enough to bounce back. Partly because unlike Bieber, she actually writes her songs and decides which ones go in her albums and how they're executed, produces her own videos, and pretty much has reasonable creative control.

There's also the Lindsay Lohan example, but...I don't wanna get in that too much. The point is, Bieber is going to need a lot more staying power if he wants to stay on top. And being a naive little douche doesn't help. If I were him, I'd be either thinking of better songs to write that actually have an ounce of depth to them, or thinking about what would be a suitable investment plans. But if what I've shown is anything to go by, it's doubtful that Justin Bieber knows what an investment is. If anything, if all goes bust, Bieber's mother would probably blame everything on his manager, Scooter Braun, for being a typically manipulative, money-hungry Jew. As opposed to just possibly manipulative, and certainly money-focused. After all, she seemed to be initially dismayed when she found out that Braun was Jewish. Well, if all else fails, at least he can go back to making YouTube videos and playing hockey. Of course, at the possible risk to public safety, simply because of his music, he'd have to disguise himself from the world; preferably a disguise that inspires fear to those around him as he plays hockey:

So while I don't really care for music, perhaps a little media awareness would do the boy some good. Oh, and please, Bieber, please, please, please, please, I'll forgive you of everything that I find irritating about you if you'd just read a book. Thank you.

Valentine's Day

If you've noticed that I didn't write "Happy Valentine's Day", but simply Valentine's Day instead, then how observant of you. This is because I don't care about Valentine's Day. And with all honesty, I'm curious as to why a holiday that allows you to be special to your significant other only once a year, deserves such warrant. It's rather reminiscent of Jeremih's "Birthday Sex". It's supposed to sound awesome, but it's not. as Todd In The Shadows said: "The only reason why 'Birthday Sex' would be so special, is if you were so bad at sex for the rest of the year!". Likewise with St. Valentine's Day. Come on! Seriously, folks. What was wrong with all the other days to show special affection? The anniversary of your relationship: Marriage or otherwise? (To be fair that might've been on Valentine's Day for some people), Your partner's birthday? (Again, might be on Valentine's Day) Special night out for being so special? Next thing you know, there'll be some R&B jackass signing "Valentine's Day Sex", or something, as if that has any special awesomeness to it. And thousands of teenage girls and boys will buy it like every other superficial, regurgitated commercial pop-crap they can't get enough of. But since I'm on the topic, I might as well explain where the (alleged) origins of the holiday came from:

The Legend of St. Valentine

According to medieval legend, St. Valentine was a Christian under persecution and interrogated by Emperor Claudius II of Rome in person. Claudius II or Claudius Gothicus was infamous for his penchant for cruelty, having rumoured to knocking out the teeth of a horse with one punch, and knocking out the teeth of his opponent when they grabbed his balls in (real) wrestling.And that's terrible. So, a cruel bastard like him interrogating someone would probably look something like a Roman-style Jack Bauer interrogation moment, or even Captain Vidal from Pan's Labyrinth. Claudius II was apparently impressed with Saint Valentine and tried to get him to convert to the Roman faith. St. Valentine refused, and instead tried to convert Claudius II into Christianity. For this, St. Valentine was executed by being beaten to death  with clubs, but not before healing (supernaturally, of course) the blind daughter of his jailer. Variations include St. Valentine being beheaded instead, and the jailer's blind daughter being St. Valentine's love interest, writing the first "valentine" card himself to her from prison before his execution, which read, "From your Valentine". Although no evidence for any saint named Valentine or Valentinus and a love letter existed.

The First Valentine's Day...sorta.

The first association of Valentine's Day with romantic love was in 1382 in Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

(For this was sent on Valentine's Day; When every bird comes to meet his mate.)

The poem that Chaucer wrote was meant to honour the marriage between King Richard II of England to Queen Anne of Bohemia. The treaty providing for a marriage was done on 2 May, 1381, with them marrying eight months later. They were both 15. In 1797, the Young Man's Valentine's Writer was published in Britain, in which several suggestions of sentimental verses for the young lover unable to form his own. Printers had already begun a limited series of cards with verses and sketches called "mechanical valentines", and as postal  rates got cheaper, more of these valentines could be produced and, better yet, able to be exchanged anonymously. And so, a holiday initially based on the myth of a sacrificial love of a victim of religious oppression became this commercialised cheap concept of love, in which companies and businesses make millions in profits selling flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals, cards, and other such crap under some pretense that true love is based on what you can buy them in mid-February. Pretty much like most Western holidays, actually:

Also, another interesting thing happened on the 14th February. No, not Salman Rushdie receiving his fatwa for writing the Satanic Verses (although that did happen). Ever hear of Al Capone?

A little conflict between his mob and the North Side Irish gang, led to five members of the latter, plus two non-members to be murdered within the garage of 2122 North Clark Street in the neighbourhood of Lincoln Park in Chicago. It is alleged that Al Capone ordered the hit on North Side gang members, and also that some of Capone's men and/or men that Capone hired from outside the city were responsible. Of course, "Stop Snitching" was already a burgeoning concept back then. When one of the dying men, Frank Gusenberg was asked who shot him, he replied "Nobody shot me"...even though he had 14 bullet wounds. So, if your significant other is into hip-hop, or quite fond of concepts and names being cheapened by commercialism, be sure to buy 50 Cent's Valentine's Day Massacre, for Valentine's Day. It'll be the most romantic thing ever.

"Oh, baby! This is the most romantic present ever!"

Have a great day, and try not to confuse any foreigner with the concept of "wuv".

(Sorry this took so long if you've already seen this,. Problems with the laptop)