Favorite-est Bogus Interview Ever

It's a shame that the interview with former Nintendo chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi ain't the real deal. The Ballmer altercation is classic.

I suppose the dead giveaway should have been the interviewer's name, Jack Gleason, born in Brooklyn, New York. Get it.

The original link contained an graphic image of the interview, Minh's Blogs posted a transcription, complete with relative images.

Warren Ellis had the interview on his site earlier. Although he deleted the link, rather than follow it up. Anyway, the diepunyhumans content is now at warrenellis.com. Perhaps the name didn't sit right after the carnage left by the tsunami. An unfortunate name at an unfortunate time. Although Warren doesn't seem the reactionary type, so it may just be coincidence.

If you don't know Warren Ellis, read Transmetropolitan, then read one of the other million things he's written. He's quite good. And visit his blog, the stuff he links to when he's not writing is good, too.

I am apparently not that good a writer, since good is not such a good description of good. But I may good, since good is a brief, succint way of defining good. errr…spellcheck succint for me, wouldya? Right, it's succinct, I knew something looked not so…good.

Tsunami Relief Efforts

Visit the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog aka the SEA-EAT Blog, to follow the relief efforts, as well as resources for donation. Network for Good (Thanks, Angel) is also a great resource for donations and backgrounds on different charitable organizations.

It's also well-known by now that Amazon.com has been accepting donations for the American Red Cross right from its home page. But I've chosen not to make my donation through them after all the hullabaloo surrounding them about their timing of payments and donation allocations following September 11. I'm not completely sure how all that turned out, but I figure they are getting enough donations in without me, I'll give to one of the many other organizations.

It would be nice if the governments of our planet would allow debt forgiveness to these affected nations, so the countries could also contribute to their own rebuilding and devise systems for future emergency preparedness. If Bush can call for debt forgiveness in Iraq, he can call for it in Sri Lanka and the other disaster stricken nations.

What I'd also love to see, and sadly, I doubt I will, is credit card companies allowing consumers to make contributions to the tsunami relief effort on their Visas, MasterCards, and Discovers, without being charged any interest on those transactions. There's plenty of people here in a America carrying a great deal of debt. They all hate it. They all know they won't pay it off tomorrow, or even the next day. And, I believe, all of them want to contribute to the relief effort. They know reaching deeper won't kill them, they live with their debt every day like people with asthma or epilepsy.

It would be nice to see the major beneficiaries of tax reform (i.e. – large corporations, and more specifically credit card companies) give back to the world what's been already given to them through lobbying and legislation.

And we've all looked at our garment labels now and again and noticed where our clothes are being manufactured. I've seen Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Thailand, just about all these countries appear there. The public relations people would be wise to trumpet some philanthropical announcements of Calvin Klein (worn right now, manufactured in Kenya, yep they were hit, too), Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and whoever else is mass-producing clothes outside of the United States, making donations to the people of these nations, rather than firing them for not showing up to work that day to stitch my 5-pocket jeans, boxer shorts, or pocket T's. Is the firing comment a bit extreme? Yes. But I really don't put anything past a corporation, that's desperate to meet a bottom line and please shareholders. And is it too pie-in-the-sky to think a corporation would make a contribution in this situation?

And no, I don't want to hear how much their employee's contributed. I love how organizations love to make those big announcements of what their employee's have done. The employees are not rewarded in any way, but the company gains all the charitable capital (yes, that's a play on all the political capital talk that's going around these days). Bangladesh could use a bit of W's political capital he's talking about spending.

Sadly, a press release by one of these corporations making a large contribution, could cause a drop in their stock price, but I would believe that the public response and goodwill generated by community rebuilding could go along way. I guess the least a company could do for the people to whom they pay sweatshop wages is rebuild their homes and community, and then rebuild the sweatshop where they make their clothes.

I'd just like to hear somebody is doing the right thing.

I just contributed to Architecture for Humanity through Network for Good.

And I just did some searches to see what the corporate contributions have been like. The only clothing company I've seen so far is Land's End.

I'm done, I'm tired, I've been sick for almost a week. I've rambled. I've most likely steered off topic. I've ranted. I'm not sure if those rants made sense. I've probably spent an hour more than I intended to complete this post. I just want people to know where to donate, if they don't already, and to put some thought behind it. But now I just want to go to sleep.