Dead or Alive

Sometimes I get some pretty messed up thoughts. Other times I get funny ones, or at least ones I think are funny. And occasionally these two wonderful areas intersect.

(Sorry about the blurry image. I made it in about 3 minutes on MS Paint at work.)

Anyway I was thinking about the death of Michael Jackson. This obviously not because I care, but because it is still ubiquitous in the news and pop culture scene.

That kind of got me thinking about how his death compares to Elvis's and Tupac's. I guess they're all kind of similar since their deaths were pretty sudden and unexpected and they seemed to have more to offer musically.

Now on a tangent that will connect soon enough, I've been on ESPN.com's Streak for the Cash and as a result have been looking at odds and prop bets to try to succeed (It hasn't worked. My best streak ever is a W6. Fail.).

So this got me thinking. A lot of people think Elvis/Tupac/MJ aren't actually dead and are either living regular lives somewhere wallowing in money or preparing to return. How many of these people would actually put money on it? And if they did, what would the odds look like comparing the likelihood of one star's return to the next?

Of course the chances of any of those happening are technically 0% since they're all actually dead (in my estimation at least, who knows), but that doesn't stop odds from being out there. Now I didn't actually actively look for (1 quick glance at the first page of a Google search) these odds, if they do exist, but I'd probably rank them like this (from most likely to be alive to most likely to be dead):

Tupac Shakur
Elvis Presley
Michael Jackson

There's a very simple explanation for my reasoning. In fact it is so simple, I will show you in pictures.


Now it is pretty clear from this first image here (henceforth "Exhibit A") why Tupac is the champion of the dead-but-maybe-not superstars. As you can see, only two of the suggestions even refer to him being dead with only one of those offering proof. A staggering eight suggestions of varying strength are about him being alive and even have dates (2008) and media outlets (cnn) attached along with the regular assertions of proof and facts. Not only that, there is even a negative assertion that he isn't dead, which is basically like saying he's alive. Actually that is what it's saying. Never mind. I don't know where I was going with that one.

Moving on from Exhibit A, Exhibit B clearly presents a weaker argument. There is not even suggetions of proof of Elvis's supposed survival. The questioning nature of a couple of those also are not as strong as the confident claims of Tupac. However, the King picks up some major bonus points. In the 4th item on that list, not only does it claim that Elvis is alive, but that he's also working at 7-11. That is the most specific statement yet which lends -- I don't want to say credence because that's not what I mean and it doesn't fit but I'll say it anyway -- credence to this Google search. Plus 7-11 is awesome and you can't fault that. And of course the last suggestion claims Elvis to be god, and while lowercased, I guess that's still better than anything Tupac or MJ put up. so there's that.

And finally Exhibit C. Obviously Michael Jackson is dead and even Google knows it. Only one suggestion hints at him being alive however another one says that he's going to die. So either he's dead or back but going to die. Doesn't sound too promising. Also, his Google search is connected to Islam which pales in comparison to Elvis's link to "god" and being Jewish. Not be racist or prejudiced, but the Jews do have Jesus on their side. Sort of. I mean He was a Jew. Anyway.

So based on careful research and mathematical calculations, Tupac appears to be about 3 times more likely to still be alive than Elvis and about 22.7 times more likely to be alive than Michael Jackson. But I guess that's not news. We all knew that anyway.

Not that his new releases gave it away or anything. For all we know, he might have written them a long time ago.

Not Racist vs. Racist

(Note: This post is not about me)

Sgt. James Crowley
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/23/officer.gates.arrest/index.html?iref=newssearch

Arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after responding to a possible burglary at Gates's house. Gates wanted to see ID and was allegedly uncooperative finally being arrested for disorderly conduct. He then claims that Crowley and Cambridge PD are racists, arresting him just because he's black (ugh...it makes me sick, but that's for another time).

Not quite.

Crowley has taught a racial profiling class at the MA Police Academy for many years having been handpicked and commended by the police commissioner, himself a black man. His fellow black officers who know him stand by him and support him.

James Crowley: Not Racist

Officer Justin Barrett
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/30/gates.police.apology/index.html

Apparently a member of the National Guard who didn't like this article in the Boston Globe by columnist Yvonne Abraham. He decides a mass email to other members of the National Guard and the Boston Globe was the proper response and in it refers to Gates as a "banana eating jungle monkey" as well as calling Abraham's column "jungle monkey gibberish."

His attorney has stated that Barrett isn't at fault because his comments were taken out of context. Basically he said that he was just saying that Gates's behavior was like a jungle monkey, not that he actually was one.

Now, I'm a person who think that some people can take offense to supposed racial slurs too easily and often overreact. For the record I don't think this situation is one of those times, but more importantly I know that just because that's what I think doesn't mean it's okay to be throwing around slurs and name-calling constantly. You can't toss around terms like that willy-nilly and pretend like everything's okay.

But my favorite part was the Story Highlights section of the article on CNN.com:

• Police officer sends mass e-mail criticizing Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
  
• Officer Justin Barrett uses phrase "jungle monkey" four times in e-mail
  
• Barrett issues apology, says his friends are diverse and he's not a racist
  
• Police commissioner suspends Barrett pending termination hearing

The 3rd bullet in particular is a gem. The classic "I'm not racist because I have black/Asian/Mexican/etc friends." That's right up there with the "I'm not racist because I'm black" statements in the inane and irrelevant hall of fame. Just because you know one black guy doesn't mean you can be calling another black person a jungle monkey (or saying his actions were like one of a jungle monkey, whatever). It's crazy what the logical thought process of some people must be like. I just don't get it.

EDIT: Ah yes, here's the magic quote. "I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist."
...Yeah.

And yes, part of the reason I posted this was because I think Barrett's picture on CNN kind of makes him look like a dbag.

Justin Barrett: Racist

The Worst Door in the World

I'll be honest, I did almost forget to make a blog post today, which would have been an epic fail one day after I said I would update every day.

Luckily for me, I remembered now and I'm not on Eastern Standard time so it's all good.

Anyway there's something that's been bothering me for a while and it's this door I walk through almost every day to go to work. Specifically it's the door on the west side of the GO1 building at Southern California Edison's Rosemead location.

Like most entry points there, you have to swipe your ID card to get in. That's all well and good -- except that this particular entryway is a revolving door. Realistically you can only have one, maybe two at most, people go through at the same time.

I guess it somewhat makes sense since it's not the most used entry point, although maybe that's because of how impractical it is to have a revolving door where you have to swipe through.

I didn't really think much of it until today returning from lunch when we had about 5 people trying to get either in or out of the door. That's the other main problem with it. Not only can you not have multiple people go through, you really can't have more than one direction of movement. If someone's going in, no one can really try to get out lest they get stuck in the door and vice versa.

It's kind of surprising that that door is still there. I've never heard anyone talk about it and it's really not cost effective just to replace that one door. But that doesn't stop me from complaining about it.

Especially when I'm already struggling to hit my one post a day quota.

Reboot V. 2.0 for real this time

It's amazing how my brain doesn't connect certain things all the time. I've been having a lot of random thoughts recently and each time I think, "If I only I had a means of sharing this with people and didn't care whether or not they thought it was interesting or not."

Apparently I do and it's this blog which I've been keeping up as well as...not very well.

I've also kind of been getting the itch to write something, anything. It's something that never really went away even after declaring a business major.

And yes, being the egotistical person I am I do think that maybe someone out there would find some of my thoughts entertaining or thought-provoking or at least not entirely idiotic. So there's that too.

Add this all to the idle time I have this summer and I felt like I should start updating this again. So I've decided to update this blog with a post every day, just to keep myself honest (as opposed to doing it just to spite you the reader, which I guess is something I would do).

A lot of it will just be brain dumps and most of it probably won't be anything interesting at all, but I'm hoping that somewhere in the shuffle will be some tidbits that are intriguing/entertaining/stimulating or something like that. Maybe not quite gems, but at least a neat looking rock. Maybe a smooth one you can skip across a lake or something.

So to reiterate what I think I may have said in the first post of this blog a long, long time ago, you can expect a variety of things here and even moreso now that I have to think of something to put every day. I like sports, video games, pop culture and complaining. In general, I'd expect at least 97% of the posts here to contain at least one of those elements.

So I guess we'll see where this takes us...