Yesterday I came across a little news story about Senator John McCain and his myspace page. The concept of politicians attempting to reach out to younger audiences is nothing very new apparently since Bill Clinton did it during his campaign. However with several Presidential candidates jumping into the foray recently it’s quite annoying as they all seem to want to be hip. Unfortunately it just can’t be. If I get another friend request from Hillary or Guiliani I’ll report them as spammers.
I digress, back to McCain. See he’s jumping on that I’m hip-for-young-people too thing. Well, yesterday it was McCain that had some egg on his face when his myspace page suddenly had a new message about his stance on gay marriage rights and that he was all for it. The news media outlets and McCain’s camp claimed his page was hacked deliberately. Uh ok. For a moment, I figured that sucks. However, I ended up learned the truth behind what happened.
It seems Mr. McCain’s myspace web person decided to use a popular myspace template (not from a myspace company) by a guy named Mike who did a tutorial on putting a myspace page together with CSS. In that template it specifically requests citing the source if you use it. Strike one, McCain’s people didn’t do that.
In addition, they didn’t change out a particular graphic that relates to a portion of the template and were thus using an image being served off another server other than their own. In fact it was from the guy who designed it. And it was the ‘dummy’ image that was supposed to be swapped out. Strike two, they’re using an image they shouldn’t be using and leaching bandwidth. So the designer in question decided to change the image to appear as though it was a message from John McCain and something he stood for – gay marriage. Needless to say, you’d think McCain, or anyone running for President would hire someone who knows what they hell they are doing, in order to prevent stupid moves like this. Too bad they’re not taking the blame and instead trying to spin it as if they’re being attacked.
I think it’s time for politicians to have some resolutions about serving their people, and not the people serving them. Ok, I’m off my soapbox now. Oh, the link to said person’s blog and template: Mike at Newsvine.
Speaking of Resolutions. In an effort to find one of the quirkiest songs I’ve ever heard, I’ve started hunting through about 100 bands/artists a day. This takes time but I’m certainly finding a few gems in the bunch. Out of 100, I probably find 3 or 4 that really have potential for hit status – then it’s a matter of getting them to agree to being blogged. Yesterday, I found Jonathan Coulton and even though I realize this will never be a hit song, it is so original in it’s presentation to me that I had to share it with you. I understand you’ve probably been scratching your head the entire time.
In addition when Jonathan wrote me back about it. He mentioned that it’s probably the one song out of his “Thing a Week” series that is the least liked. From a pop listener ear’s view, I fully understand – it’s nutty as hell. But to me, a musician, I’m actually in awe at the creativity that went into creating this. I’m going to give you what I envisioned he did. First came the music, which isn’t much more than a mellow chord arrangement that repeats, so that’s a good vibe in the background. Next you use your computer (which I’m guessing is a Mac running OSX) to create the speech. I say a Mac because it sounds like the standard Mac computer voice. But then I’ve never heard any of the Windows ones.
The trick to this is he had to cut each word apart and edit it together for rhythm. I’m having trouble telling if he pitched it with a pitch corrector, but I don’t care. The fact is, it’s very inventive and I hope that Jonathan won’t be too bummed if I end up stealing the idea for something I do in the future – though I make no guarantee that I will. But it would be fun to experiment with. So if you ever want to know where I got the idea, here’s the proof that I didn’t invent it.
Jonathan has other stuff that is a bit more mainstream, but this was so out there I had to share. Do him and me a favor, buy it just to get in touch with your probably already forgotten New Year’s self.
p.s. – I think McCain, and a whole bunch of other politicians would be wise to follow many of the Resolutions announced in the song. It might help them to be better people.