coming to an illegally downloaded song very soon: product placement

Well well, I was talking about Fergie just yesterday, or rather I was quoting UrbandDictionary on Fergie yesterday, and now here she is again. I think I'm a bit slow to join this party but hey, better late than never. Besides, I'm one of the opinionated online bloggers who refuse to let an opportunity to make my onion opinion known slide.

Since record sales are declining or at least that's what Fergie is claiming, people who are like you and me (i.e. people who obtain illegal mp3s and only buy music that we really really like) should expect to hear jingles for Listerine cleverly worked into our songs by our beloved artists pretty soon.

If you're going "what the ...?", this article (via Post Chronicle) will clear it up.

Fergie is set to make £2 million by promoting a US clothing firm in her songs.

The 32-year-old Black Eyed Peas singer, who has become the first star to agree to product placement in her songs, will write and perform tracks endorsing fashion company Candie's on her second solo album.

An executive at Fergie's record label Interscope said: "With record sales in decline, you must find novel ways to make money out of the music. The trick is to make the brand part of the song so that it slips down easily rather than chokes the fan.

"Candie's will have no say over exactly what Fergie will sing, or when. Fergie does not sing jingles so it will have to work unobtrusively in the song."

Fergie - real name Stacy Ann Ferguson - has also agreed to appear in Candie' s TV adverts and allow Candie's advisors to style fans at her shows.

Some fans are outraged by Fergie's decision to promote a product in her music, insisting it tarnishes her and the Black Eyed Peas' credibility.

Rickie Durtado, who runs a Los Angeles rap website, fumed: "Since 1988 the Black Eyed Peas have been a socially responsible band who stood against the bling-bling materialism of rap.

"But since Fergie joined the group four years ago they have become more like a boy band.

"Fans are used to advertising banners at festivals, but making them part of the song is not cool. There is no escape."

First off, I'd like to express my obvious displeasure at this. If anyone really need more money from their music it's the struggling indie bands out there, not Fergie. This is just ridiculous, you have to pay to listen to jingle that Fergie get paid to sing (unless you download her songs illegally). What is the logic in this? At the very least we should get the song for free. Do we pay to see ads on TV? Do we pay to hear commercials on the radio? Oh yeah, we pay for the electricity to run the TV or the radio to watch/listen to commercials but I doubt that electricity companies share the money the get with the artist.

Secondly, I don't think any song by Fergie, with or without product placement, has ever or will ever go down my throat smoothly. I distinctly remember the sensation of having to cough water out of my lungs. I usually don't choke on water (which always just flow smoothly pass my larynx and into my oesophagus without any trouble) unless I see or hear something extremely ridiculous and attempt the impossible multi-task of laughing and swallowing water. The last time I heard a Fergie's song was the horrible "London Bridge". It wasn't really the ridiculous music, the retarded lyrics or the awful vocal as much as the humping dance she did to the poor London guard. Who ever came up with that dance is seriously mentally deficient. How is that supposed to turn anyone on? If I see anyone doing that to another person I would think that the dancer is on some sort of sex heat and needs to hump anyone/anything that is humpable.

Thirdly, how can having product placement tarnish Fergie's credibility when she doesn't have any to start with?

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Background material:
The ridiculous humping dance start at 0:48. Luckily, this time I'm fully prepared and am not drinking any sort of fluid or ingesting any solid. However, the song still refuses to go down my throat.

does it really need to be this drastic?

A video my sister came across on youtube. I don't know what she was looking for when she found this video but definitely not looking for glue to make double eyelids. Oh man, those Japanese women are crazy for double eyelids. I never really understand why, maybe just because I was born with double eyelids. Enjoy.

Book browsing

I went to see "Ocean's Thirteen" yesterday however, the movie wasn't the highlight of the evening. It was the time spent in Borders waiting and browsing books that was more interesting. I ended up buying 2 CDs and found 2 books that look quite promising. The first one is "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens. The other one is "The Atheist Manifesto" by Michel Onfray. What's with the religion bashing books huh? I didn't buy any of those since I still haven't quite finished "The God delusion" yet.

Another book that caught my attention was "Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture". It almost won the 'what the f*** book of the day' award had it not been for the metal clad bible I saw 5 minutes later. The guide to emo culture book is really a guide to emo culture. I thought it was satirical but no, it's a straight and narrow guide to how to be cool and yet so uncool at the same time. What I can say about that is, make up your damn mind. Do you want to be cool or uncool?

While we're still on the topic of emo. Let me introduce you to Emo Google. It's Google with an all black emo finish. It gives you the exact results as the normal Google, (sorry, no emo related search results yet) with the benefit of a seriously ugly black background on the main page to hurt your eyeballs and visual cortex.


The metal bible however was hilarious. So much so that I had to take some pictures of it.
The obvious question that popped into my head when I saw these metallic beauties above was "What can you possibly do with a metal bible?". I came up with an answer for that as well. Imagine this:

You are a proud owner of metal bible, you love it so much you bring it with you everywhere because really, you like to have a bible with you at all time and a normal leather bound volume can't withstand the stress and strain of being bounced around in your bag with mobile phones and all the other unholy modern crap like coins, keys and credit cards (but seriously, don't bring it with you all the time, the bible alone is heavy enough, add the extra hard metal cover it's as heavy as a four 30-gig ipods). One day you encounter a mugging and you decided that you will dissuade the mugger to give up his evil deeds by some cleverly chosen passages from your metal clad bible. (In my honest opinion, you gotta be crazy to think that but hey there are some crazy people running around all the time). But surprise surprise the mugger doesn't appreciate old sacred writ and turns the knife on you instead. What are you gonna do now? You have the perfect weapon in your hand. If holy words can't dissuade the mugger, heavy metal applied straight to the head can at least knock him out and give you enough time to run.


This is a shot of the back of said bible. Strange how people say that you can find answers in the bible. I was at a crossroad of sort the other day during my exam. I was stuck on one question: Is Atenolol a beta agonist or is it a beta antagonist. I went home and try to look that up in the bible, guess what? It doesn't give out that sort of answer, it doesn't even give you any direction to where you can find the answer. I propose that we change the saying that "answers can be found in the bible" to "relatively reliable answers can be found on Wikipedia" instead.

Comment of the week

I'm being flooded with comments guys, it's unhandle-able and unbelievable, I've never thought I'll live to see a day when I actually receive a comment.

Ok, I've switched off the sarcastic mode now everything's back to normal so we can actually talk about the "comment of the week".


Today I received this comment from Chuck:

Dude, Chuck Norris is gonna kick your ignorant ass.

Mr. Norris' Christmas Message.

Anyone that took on Bruce Lee knows what they are talking about.

It's no wonder why this earn the weekly award for "most stupid comment of the week" which I reduced to just "comment of the week" for promotional reasons. Also, the author of said comment has made it to my list of "people who should be penciled down for a random visit by the Grim Ripper", alright, I'm being a bit too harsh here so I'm gonna rename the above list to "morons who ought to step onto dog shit every time they go for a walk". Happy?

This Chuck is going down for the following reasons:

1. Calling me an ignorant ass. I am not an ass and even if I'll be an ass in the future I will be a freethinking, authority-questioning ass. Ignorant is what you use for people who believe for the sake of believing. Ignorant is what you use to describe people who never spend a second of their lives asking themselves about the logic of their religions. Ignorant is what you use to describe sheep. So never, NEVER make the mistake of calling me ignorant.

2. Nobody can kick my ass let alone my alleged "ignorant ass". Ass kicking is for people who are compensated for their lack of brain tissues with muscle tissues, probably by their alleged God. You're probably thinking that this post is going to be a pompous reply to a comment I didn't want and I'm probably doing it to make my bruised, fragile ego feels better. You are so wrong. I can easily do that by just deleting said comment and never think about it again, but I won't do that. I will even give you the link to the post Chuck commented. How can an "ignorant ass" pass up on the opportunity so show oh-so-wise Chuck more of my "ignorance"?

3. Who the frak is Chuck Norris? Of course I know who Chuck Norris is, I watch movies too. What I meant was: who the frak do you think Chuck Norris is? The intellectual of the universe? A freaking scientist? No. Last time I checked he's an actor. Why should anyone in their right mind take what an actor said about evolution as evidence to refute reputable scientific studies? After reading the article that Chuck gave me I understand why.

Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: "There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live." It's funny. It's cute. But here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: It's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures.

By the way, without him, I don't have any power. But with Him, the Bible tells me, I really can do all things – and so can you.

Yes, I see the errors of my way now. Evolution is a lie because there is a God who made us in his image and who we can't see but we have to believe in his existence just because a book, which allegedly is his words, says so. How convenient. Everything makes sense. What do you think about Chimpanzees, Chuck? They're are so similar to humans in their genetic codes. Maybe they're God's failed human experiment?

Also, there is a God because Chuck Norris was created by him, just like you and me. And without God, Chuck Norris wouldn't be Chuck Norris coz he wouldn't "have any power". What power does Chuck Norris have anyway? X-ray vision? Invisibility? Any amazing superhuman ability that's inborn? Oh, you're referring to his martial arts. Correct me if I'm wrong but was he born knowing all about martial arts or did he learn it along the way? If there is a God, Chuck Norris would have been born knowing every single freaking martial art moves in the world.

What I'm talking about here is credibilities. The fact that Chuck Norris kicked Bruce Lee's ass doesn't have any relevance to evolution. Don't bring up Chuck Norris until he wins a debate against Richard Dawkins on evolution. (Yeah right, like that's gonna happen). Still on the topic of credibilities, whose words would you trust:
This ridiculous guy who obviously has no concept of evolution theory:


Or a world renowned ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University?


I suppose I can rest my case here but I'll present one more argument. Some people usually use something along the line of: "I prayed to God for (such and such) and I got it so God must exist". What is so wrong with this argument? I used to pray to God too and I didn't get anything. True I might have asked some very trivial things like a million dollars for my birthday present or please let me pass the end of year exams or something like that but people ask for trivial things all the time and some of them get their wishes. I did ask for world peace once and as you know nothing yet. People in other religions ask their Gods for things too and it all comes to this ratio: 50:50. 50% of all the people who prayed for something get what they want, the rest don't. It doesn't matter which deity you prayed to, it's all 50:50. How about this Chuck, try praying to Chuck Norris for a sunny day tomorrow. You might get your wish, you might not. However, praying to Chuck Norris does have an advantage over praying to God though. You actually know Chuck Norris exists.