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If you visit John McCain's MySpace page (as of 9am PST Tuesday morning), you will notice an interesting announcement from him. He's apparently reversed his position on gay marriage as well as revealed a bias towards attractive lesbians.
Why would a presidential candidate make such an important announcement on his MySpace page?
The answer? He wouldn't.
But I would.
You see, John McCain's people commandeered my world-renowned MySpace design template and did a few things wrong:
1. They did not credit me for the template, even though the template explicitly requested credit.
2. They used my own unmodified imagery, specifically for the "Contacting John McCain" table.
3. As if #2 wasn't bad enough, the McCain crew is actually pulling their image directly from my server on each page load. So every time someone visits the McCain MySpace page, my bandwidth is being used to deliver part of the page! Bad McCain!
So...
Numerous people have written me over the last few weeks to tell me that McCain has been using my code, but up until I realized he was pulling images from my server, I didn't really care. A lot of celebrities including Ryan "Van Wilder" Reynolds and the beautiful Nelly Furtado use my code and I'm totally cool with it.
But then I read the article in today's Newsweek about how politicians are all setting up MySpace pages in order to "connect" with younger audiences. McCain's MySpace page is listed, as are the pages from several other candidates. I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.
Luckily, I had already set up a special .htaccess rule on my server which served my real "contact me" image if the image was referenced from my own MySpace page, and served up a sample image if it was served from anywhere else. This is the whole reason I even figured out what was going on. I had my real image in cache and upon loading McCain's page, the real image showed up (including my special note that said "NO REQUESTS FOR DESIGN HELP PLEASE"). Thinking it was weird that McCain would get any requests for design help, I immediately realized what happened.
So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.
Abortion? The Iraq War? Probably too heavy to joke about. Gay marriage seemed like a more of a non-lethal subject to center the prank around.
So with a few minutes in Photoshop and a quick FTP, a new John McCain was born...
...and The Straight-Talk Express isn't just for straight people anymore.
from News Vine / Mike Davidson
For one gay punk band, it's MySpace: the final frontier.
Like so many struggling, independent artists, Toronto-based Kids on TV can't live without this cyber-venue for the networking and freebie advertising it affords.
But, as with any relationship, dependence has its downside: the Kids have become slaves to MySpace. They're at the mercy of its sensitive cyber censors and are nervous their setup could be yanked at any time.
The band, which encourages a "pro-sex culture" without archaic 20th-century "hang-ups" about sex, has three pages up and running right now.
Band members are trying to triple their luck of staying alive on MySpace, after their flagship page was spontaneously deleted a couple of weeks ago. Kerr says the pages show the same material as the original.
They're plastered with pictures of band members wrapped in tin foil and men in tight underwear.
"We're afraid, we're nervous, but we need MySpace to survive," says band member Scott Kerr, also known by his stage name, Minus Smile.
"It allows us to reach people we would never normally be able to reach. Our label can't fund us. We do our own promotion, we don't have the budget for anything else.
"It's like an electric shock to find it's gone."
On March 1, on the eve of the band's six-week European tour, the Kids on TV MySpace page, which was up and running smoothly for two years, was taken down – just like that, out of nowhere.
"We got an email telling us it was gone," Kerr says. "We lost contact with everyone ... we were cut off from 14,000 friends. We had no way of contacting people we were doing business with. It was all gone."
Kerr says the page didn't have any nude pictures and wasn't doing anything other pages are, such as plastering pictures of young women making pouty faces and throwing alluring stares out at viewers.
He guesses it may have been deleted because of complaints by MySpace members viewing the page or because of the concept as a whole.
"People complain about the message of our page," Kerr says, noting the page celebrates gay culture and urges people to shed their sexual inhibitions.
After repeated attempts to find out why their page was trashed, the Kids set up a "censorship" page on MySpace, encouraging others who'd also been dumped to speak up.
"We were expecting to get all stripes of people," he says.
They only got stories of deletion and woe from gay artists. But Kerr believes that may be "statistical gay bashing," which isn't actually a crime. Some gay pages may have more "sexually suggestive" material, which is a no-no, according to the MySpace terms of use.
After repeated attempts by the Star to get in touch with MySpace, a communications official emailed a brief response, saying the Internet host is investigating the Kids on TV incident.
According to a form email sent to Kids in response to the band's repeated queries, MySpace says the page was deleted because it was in violation of the terms of use, which prohibits "sexually suggestive imagery," nudity, violence and "offensive subject matter."
Kerr is concerned about MySpace's procedures of pulling the plug on a page without warning.
The terms of use are broad, he says, and aside from publishing adult lyrics to songs such as "C--k Wolf," he hasn't crossed the lines of decorum.
Kids won't say what their next move is or whether they're considering litigation.
"We're no different than any other (page)," Kerr says.
"In our case, we did play by the rules. It's not to raise a fuss. It's just to survive."
from The Star
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA - In Stockton 15-year-old Curtis Johnson learned about it from watching movies.
Ruben Alvarez III, 18, discovered a lot from friends growing up in Manteca.
And 13-year-old Danielle Gibson? The Stockton girl knows what she knows from embarrassing talks with her mother.
Most kids know about sex. Some learn about it in the classroom, where state and school district rules have adults keeping keen watch on what’s being taught. In San Joaquin County, condoms aren’t available on school grounds, because many parents say distributing contraceptives is like giving kids the OK to have sex.
Delta Health Care, however, has found a way around the rule.
Dawn Keithley, health educator and outreach coordinator for Delta, said part of her job is making sure teens have access to the information and contraception they need. When she’s at a school talking with kids, no condoms change hands.
But when the final school bell rings, Keithley simply walks to a nearby business, a big, pink bag full of condoms in tow. One by one, teens in the know make their way across the street to get contraception forbidden on campus.
Sometimes, Keithley will inform teens on MySpace.com that she will be at a local concert with “the big, pink bag.” Word travels quickly among teens who would otherwise not purchase condoms out of embarrassment or fear their parents would learn they’re sexually active. The health educator is unabashed about what she does and doesn’t see it as breaking school rules.
“It’s part of my job in outreach,” she says, “to go places where kids are and give them what they need.”
There is no age limit in California on condom sales.
California Education Code requires schools to begin lessons on abstinence, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy prevention in seventh grade. At least once in middle school and once in high school, all students must learn about HIV/AIDS risk and prevention.
Providing contraceptive devices is not part of the state requirement, nor is it directly in defiance of the Education Code. Schools in Stockton and Lodi, however, prohibit condom distribution on school grounds.
“Staff are not carrying contraceptives to give to students,” said Odie Douglas, Associate Superintendent for Lodi Unified School District. “It’s against our practice. That’s not something we’re doing at all.”
Delta, which recently announced it would close its Stockton clinic, has education centers at Stagg and Edison high schools. There Delta staff supplement regular sex-education classes by giving presentations on self-esteem, communication and how to refuse partners who may be pressuring them into having sex.
That kind of instruction is in accordance with Stockton Unified School District board policy, facilitator Deanna Staggs said.
“It’s taking it beyond anatomy and physiology,” Staggs added. “The schools teach them how the body works; we take that a step further by giving them decision-making skills.”
Ruben Alvarez Sr. said he’s not sure he would want condoms available in school bathrooms or where kids could simply take them. He would be open, however, to a qualified adult, counselor or licensed nurse distributing them in an educational environment.
His wife, Rosemarie, a Manteca labor and delivery nurse, said she’s seen enough teen mothers to know most kids aren’t practicing the abstinence taught in schools. Their son, Ruben III, said teens are more than aware of how and where to get condoms and contraception on their own, regardless of availability on campus.
Whether giving kids condoms is consenting to teen sex is a dilemma for both parents and school districts, said Robert Brownell, a psychologist’s assistant at Kaiser Permanente.
Brownell helps run the Parent Project, a support program for parents of behaviorally at-risk youths. When it comes to sex education, he adds, adults need to be consistent with the messages they’re giving their teens so youths aren’t learning misinformation somewhere else.
“Sexuality in general is a part of everybody’s life,” he said. “As teens get older, you need to open the door to that conversation.”
Stockton mother Veronica Gibson didn’t let the fact that daughter Danielle was only in eighth grade keep her from talking openly about boys, dating and sexuality. It was uncomfortable, Danielle admitted with a smile lined in braces, but when she sees friends dating, she’s glad she was schooled.
“You do that if you don’t know,” she said of her classmates at Fremont Middle School. “Since I know, it’s scary.”
from The Record
NEW YORK - The gay Brooklyn designer savagely beaten and left for dead in a bias attack near the Belt Parkway succumbed to his injuries yesterday, cops said.
Michael Sandy, who had his 29th birthday Thursday while lying brain dead at Brookdale Hospital, was taken off a ventilator at around 1 p.m. on the instructions of his parents, cops said.
"[Sandy's] future has been taken away by a group who apparently had a pernicious scheme to single him out because of his sexual orientation, lure him to a desolate area, and rob him," Mayor Bloomberg said while calling for "swift justice" in the case.
The three men already in custody in the assault will be indicted on charges of murder as a hate crime, said a spokesman for Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes.
John Fox, 19, Ilye Shurov, 20, and Gary Timmins, 16, are being held without bail. Police are still investigating the role of a fourth suspect.
Authorities said the suspects used MySpace.com to lure Sandy to Plum Beach, near Sheepshead Bay, where they robbed and beat him because he was gay.
In fleeing his attackers, Sandy ran onto the parkway, where a car ran him over.
from The New York Post
