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.