Now here's what's
impressive. None of my media is on the 4tvs server.
Not a video, not an mp3 - nothin'. I bought
seperate server space a year ago for all the big stuff
and my 4tvs host only hosts pages and pictures. So
hits knocked out my server. Of course this
would happen Saturday morning a full 2 days before
I can talk to anyone in tech support. In case you
were wondering, when you have a website you not only
have a limit on space, you have a limit on data
transferred. So if your limit is say 5 gigs a month,
and over 5,000 people download a 1 MB video in that
month - steeeeeerike three. Considering I don't
host 1 video on the site, well - you do the math.
Hmmm...just what could have drawn people to the
site?!?!? I'll start yesterday afternoon...
There was a part in
Sinbad's "Brain Damaged" where he described that at
one point as a man, all that matters is 'watchin' the
game'. It becomes the only thing you're looking
forward to getting any joy out of and you'll do almost
anything to just be able to space out and watch the
game. After having an HDTV for 5 years, I finally
got an HDTV cable box and this weekend there are so
many high def NBA playoff games I can't even
see straight. I could not wait to get home and spend
the weekend eyes agape watching LeBron's first
footsteps in the big dance...
...but
yesterday afternoon I decided to do a
search on "Let's Bomb Iran" and was
completely unprepared for what I was
about to find. I wanted infamy? I got
it... EVERYWHERE.
Truth
be told I was naively going to the
original sites that I uploaded the cartoon
to, to take them down as I wanted to
divert traffic to a new site (more on that
in Part 7). Little did I know that
within a week my ten uploads that
I featured in my last entry would
multiply exponentially across the globe to
the point where I actually got
tired of finding new sites about
it.
I will
never forget the next 3 hours of my life
as long as I live. Completely
overwhelming.
I
first came across more american sites that
picked up on the piece. Lotsa cool
comments, however several people thought
it was endorsing war. Man, what can
you do? It isn't. Irony seems lost on
today's youth.
Although
my plan of "taking down" my cartoon was
impossible, I was pretty giddy with
all the exposure.
This is actually
a blog from the UK...
And
thennnnnnnnnnnnn I stumbled onto this:
Wellllll that's
not english. Babelfished it (translation site),
figured out it was dutch. The comments were really
cool actually. They seemed to really like the
"I meant the game" ending.
"tis eigenlijk
best waar als je naar die bush kijkt denkt hij volgens
mij ook dat de hele wereld iets van risk is ofzo... da
einde is idd wel droog "i meant the
game..."
Loosely
translated:
tis in fact
best where if you look at to those bush he thinks
according to me also that the complete world something
of risk is ofzo... da end are idd, however, dry "i
meant the game..."
The discussion
seemed to revolve around whether or not I was pro
or anti war. A theme that I'm sad to say permeated
nearly every discussion. It has to be difficult to
understand irony in a different language.
LOL - the
tic-tac-toe picture is
AWESOME.
One of the Journey
Board members is from Germany and she said these were
all "Dutch". I know very little about how
Holland feels politically but the majority of the
sites seem to be posting the cartoon as "funny" so
that's good. It still made me uncomfortable that so
many people misunderstood the message.
"You have
perhaps still the idea in your head who you will
become very old on this world, but unfortunately we
must release you from that beautiful dream. You will
go out by the bird flu or one Bush Yankeeland will
start the third world war with Iran. The bird flu
hasn't persevered really in Europe, therefore we
gamble on one Bush and his army. Certainly after
seeing how Bush plays Risk with its
friends..."
Professional
net-surfers will recognize the guy's avatar from this
hilarious picture:
The
internet is so twisted.
Little
(well, big) Chris was probably a shy boy.
His mother was so proud of him on his
first day of school she took a picture of
him waiting at the busstop and shared it
with friends. He couldn't be more proud
that he was now a "big boy", and his mom
just wanted to share that moment, so she
takes out the camera and he smiles the
biggest smile he can muster...
...and
some fucktard photoshops "I fuck on the
first date" on his shirt. Heh.
Of
course I secretly wish I was
that fucktard because that is one funny
picture man. LMAO.
Anyway
- back to the story.
I could literally
post hundreds of these sites. I was pretty
blown away to say the least. Luckily smilies are
universal and I was able to garner reaction from that.
Allllllllll was going swimmingly on my
adventure abroad until I saw this:
That guy in the Iranian
Personals must get all the ladies.
I now understood
why I was getting emails from Iranian Americans
who were upset about my URL. Case in
point:
"I THINK YOUR
URL ISNT RIGHT ANYWAY, AND I DONT LIKE
TOO
MY PEOPLES ARE
OUT OF THE ISLAMIC GOV'T BUSINESS SO THEY SHOULD NOT
BE THREAD LIKE THIS, AND AS I SAID THIS URL DOSENT
MEAN RIGHT ANYWAY
PLEASE DO OUR
FAVOR AND JUST CHOSE MORE CREATIVE URL
"
What I was
not prepared for however, was this:
Gulp.
I know our media has painted the islamic
community with such a negative brush that
seeing arabic writing is actually
SCARY...but seeing my lyrics posted on an
islamic site - with a link to a video with
ME IN THE VIDEO saying:
"LETS BOMB IRAN" freaked me out.
Badly. I called
my daddy I was so
scared.
LOL. See, let's say their Iranian PCs are
havin' trouble with windows media player
that day, and ALL they got are those
lyrics. Read 'em. They're not too funny.
I'm pretty sick to my stomach to say the
least.
The problem is, I
can't understand anything and I have no idea if
they understand it or not. I wrote to a few of them,
but haven't heard back. The way the muslim community
reacted to the mohammed cartoons certainly is not lost
on me and the fact that there are computers in the
middle east playing this video RIGHT NOW, is
harrowing to say the least. Especially because
there's been miscommunication even from Americans on
the meaning of the song.
And no one is
gonna take the time to read my journals. There's no
link in the video to LetsBombIran.com so I'm totally
screwed as far as that's concerned. I can only
hope people google my name, and then find the site
(which now has a disclaimer on it). It just sucks man.
I'm now literally getting attacked from
BOTH sides. Slammed for being a liberal, slammed
for being a war monger... for fuck's sake. Alas,
there's still more:
My
love affair with Japanese culture is well
known, so I must admit: THIS is
fuckin' cool. The hat and goatee guy has
invaded Asia.
Again,
I can't READ any of this. The translation
sites don't help at all. You get like 4
words and as well, Japanese, Chinese,
Mandarin... it's tough to figure it
all out. I'm pretty sure the stuff to the
right is Japanese but hell... I don't
know.
And
what do they think about it?
I don't believe
that's Japanese, but at least they use that picture.
THAT was what you were supposed to take from
it. (sigh)
What the fuck, is
that GREEK? They link to totallycrap.com which is
amusing. And that's where this gets so mind blowing.
You now have 30-40 sites hosting the video.
Then, you have THOUSANDS of sites linking to
those sites, and more blogs linking to
those sites... and, well now you have the
internet. This is what the internet does.
And it's just like
the US video sites. You have sites that act almost
like robots - scouring the net for videos and then
listing them numerically on their page just trying to
get hits. From just the views I could count the
cartoon has over 100,000 views and in reality is
probably close to 1/2 million in about a week's time.
Overwhelming doesn't begin to describe
this.
Now look ahead a
bit. I'm no doubt contacting the news next week to try
and get my message across that this is not pro-war.
But what if I actually do get invited onto a news
show? Remember that little show: "America's Got
Talent"? Do I really want the world to know me as this
radical crazy man first? I mean if people took
time to understand the message, by all means -
I support the troops, want them safe or fighting
the appropriate war and am angry as hell at our
president. He has a 33% approval rating, so it's not
like I'm exactly alone here. But no one will take the
time to read or understand all of that. If I'm lucky
I have a handful of seconds to make the
point...
...but I alienate
myself completely with the NBC show. I guess if
I get on and America votes me off because they
think I'm un-american... well so be it. But
"America" is in the TITLE, so I may have
just screwed everything. And we all know the truth
doesn't matter, it's only the message received that
counts and when you decide to protest something - you
will be labeled. There's a guy at work who completely
thinks I'm unpatriotic and anti-american because
I went to the march last fall. I can't
change his mind. He will not listen to a word I say.
I even brought up the "Cindy Sheehan" entry
on his computer where I rip the whole "civil
disobedience" fiasco (which he would've agreed
with) and he basically skimmed it and said: "Tell your
girlfriend Cindy I said Hi". Ignorance is bliss. It's
too fuckin' difficult for him to even wrap his head
around the idea that everything doesn't fit into the
neat little categories he's made up in his
mind.
Look at those 3
stories. Whew. I'm now part of the political
scene.
So like it or not,
I'm in this thing. I have a voice. The next thing
I do will be paid attention to on an
international scale and I will take that responsibilty
very seriously. Now I just have to see if I
fucked my chances on "America's Got Talent" because of
what this could balloon into in the coming
weeks.
