Really Bad Parenting

*I apologize, the first story in this post has been removed from the site.*

On Oct. 21, 2010, I discovered a story about a man who sprayed a two-month old baby with pepper spray. The reports say the man and the mother of the baby were having an argument, when he decided to whip out the pepper spray, and spray it - somehow it  hit the wall next to the baby and it landed it the baby's left eye.
This whole situation is completely messed up. For one, why are they arguing in front of a two-month old baby? Babies pick up everything, and continuously arguing in front one cannot be healthy for is mentality, nor it's mood. When a baby is around panic and stress, it WILL cry.
Second of all, why the hell does the guy have pepper spray? Was the argument so intense that he felt like he needed to protect himself from the mother...by spraying her with pepper spray? Not only is it bad to be arguing in front of a baby, causing the baby's mother physical harm is just as bad. What a great guy. At least he didn't smack her across the face...

Gregory Tate, pictured above, is charged of one count of child endangerment. He should also be charged with attempted domestic abuse. There was obviously a reason he pulled out the pepper spray, whether I believe he meant to cause harm to the baby is one thing, but even having it visible midst an argument is also questionable.

But this isn't the only instance of poor judgment while around a baby. A few weeks ago, I took noticed about a story on Gawker about a couple who duct taped their 22-month old to a wall, as well as his sippy cup so that it was out of reach when he wasn't taped to the wall..

For more photos, click picture

What kind of people are getting pregnant and being allowed to keep their children? Well one, the mother, who is 18 by the way - I don't even want to begin on the issue of teenagers getting knocked up -  and the father of the baby were high. It's people like this that give marijuana a bad name. Though I am not admitting to have ever been under the influence of marijuana, it's not that harmless of a drug, and causes just as poor judgment as those who are drunk.
Back to the point of the story, these parents are by far not suited to be guardians of another human being - ever. This wasn't even a form of punishment for the kid, he didn't even do anything to deserve a form of punishment, and even if he had, this twisted sort of abuse is never okay. The parents just thought it was funny to tape their child to the wall. A friend of the teen was the one who turned her into the cops after seeing the photos. A friend! Thank God she has friends who aren't idiots.

The couple was sentenced to jail time - the mother, Jayla Hamm, was sentence to 10 days in jail and two years' probation and must have state supervision when with her child. Her boyfriend received a longer jail time, 36 - 60 months, in jail for separate charges of  burglary and possession of a firearm.
I just can't believe she has custody of the child, hopefully if something like this ever happens again, the child should be turned over to child services or its grandparents at the very least.

Kanye's New Album Cover: Inappropriate or Just "Douchey?"

Ladies and gentlemen, Kanye is at it again. This time he's not making toasts to douche bags, but instead, he's just proving to the world that he is still king of them.

This week, Kanye West revealed his album cover for his latest CD, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy which hits stores November 22, 2010. It is far too hard for me to explain what it looks like, because frankly, I have no idea what it is without doing research. As for the big picture, I'm pretty sure you can guess why it has caused an uproar.

In defense of his new cover, Kanye went onto Twitter to say, "In response to the reaction of my album cover... 'I'm deeply sorry if I haven't offended everybody.'" He knows he's an a** hole, and takes pride in being one. That's one of his ways of staying in the lime light..

The artist of the cover, George Condo, is no stranger  to twisted works of art and in all honestly, this seems to be the least controversial of his works which makes me wonder, why is it that inappropriate?

George Condo's Jesus (Partial)

Of course Kanye is going to milk the controversy for all it's worth, and that very well may be why it's been getting so much attention - because of Kanye's reaction to the people's reaction. Another post from his Twitter stated, "So Nirvana can have a naked human being on they cover but I can’t have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings.” Though he left out the part out about sexual positioning of the characters, I have to agree with Kanye - for the first time in my life.



He's not the first musician to have controversy surrounding an album cover and his is by far not the most controversial. On a website I found while researching Kanye's album, Flavorwire showed ten albums covers more controversial than Kanye's. When in comparison with the albums found on the website, there really isn't much to Kanye's except for that fact that it's something he can open his douchey mouth to and receive more attention.

Crap Logo

Gap has been around since 1969. And for the last 20 years, Gap has been remembered by it's sleek and simple clothes behind a logo that was simple, yet it made a statement. On Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, Gap revealed the change of logo to the public and a only two days later did an uproar over the Internet smash the idea into the ground. Bloggers and critics alike have claimed things like "something a child created using a clip-art gallery" (Advertising Age) and The Consumerist said it's "bland and uninteresting as jeans and a black t-shirt. It's not ugly, but it's not memorable or creative, either."

And I agree.

The new logo.

Although I've hardly worn clothes from the Gap in my 21+ years on the planet, I've always recognized the store by its logo. Advertising Age did a good job of mentioning that "of course a brand is more than a logo, but as far as logos go, Gap's is an icon"
Why change it now? And how long did it take the design team to come up with an idea?

The literally changed the type face and color and placed the famous blue square in the corner and made it with a gradient pattern. Any nine year old can do that. If they were going to change the logo, at least have more creativity than that. I stumbled upon a contest held by 99 Designs for a new logo and of Tuesday Oct. 12, 2010, more than 3500 entries poured onto the website. I searched and found particular interest to this entry:

 

Although this entry was not in the top entries of the contest, I believe it would suit the company well by changing it to this design. It holds true to the original design where all the letters are the same size and it also has the original color of the blue square. Not only is this a more modern version of the Gap logo, the "A" in the logo acts as a literal gap between the "G" and the "P," which is a nice play on words.

The contest is now over, but the runners of the contest have a week to choose the winner. You can find the contest entries here and decide for yourself if random people of the world are more creative than the design team of Gap - and I'll think you'll agree with me by saying they are.

With all the hype that Gap received by changing its logo, it makes me wonder if it was nothing but a pure publicity stunt. Facebook pages and even a fake Twitter account appeared, criticizing the logo, and the account holders of Gap's Facebook page went on to say they enjoyed all of the feedback they received from the new logo.

"Thanks for everyone's input on the new logo! We've had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we're changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we're thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we're asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we'd like to ... see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project." - Gap's Facebook page.

There is even a website called Crap Logo appeared within days, where Internet users can create their own "new Gap logo."

Alas, after a week of hype, the LA Times went on to report that Gap decided to change back its logo to its original form. Gap's North American president, Marka Hansen said the change was poorly executed, but the logo will change in the future. 

“There may be a time to evolve our logo," she said, "but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way."

So in the end I ask this question: Was the logo change a flawed and poorly executed idea, or a genius way of becoming the talk of the town again?

Unconstitutional and Unprofessional

 

"Welcome to "Chris Armstrong Watch." This is a site for concerned University of Michigan alumni, students, and others who oppose the recent election of Chris Armstrong - a RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST, RACIST, ELITIST, & LIAR - as the new head of student government."

This is what Michigan Assistant Attorney General, Andrew Shirvell has posted on a public blog about Chris Armstrong, University of Michigan's current student assembly president.

Armstrong was elected Spring of 2010, and in April of 2010, Shirvell started the hate speech on his blog against the election of Armstrong. Calling him a radical homosexual activist, racist, elitist and liar is not only implying false accusations against him, it's down right hate speech. 

I'm currently enrolled in a Media Law class where we are learning about rights and court cases. Hate speech as well as fighting words are not included in the protection of speech under the 1st Amendment. You'd think that Shirvell would have done some research, especially as a U of M alum before he started this blog. Doe v. University of Michigan found the content-based speech codes of public universities are unconstituional.

"It is an unfortunate fact of our constitutional system that the ideals of freedom and equality are often in conflict. The difficult and sometimes painful task of our political and legal institutions is to mediate the appropriate balance between these two competing values." — Judge Avern Cohn, in Doe v. University of Michigan, 1989. Source.

As I type this blog entry at 5:52 p.m. on September 30, 2010, in the middle of looking at Shirvell's Blogger page, the public access was suddenly denied. I was, however, able to keep the information from his very first post - which explains what the blog is about. And as of that date, his profile views were over 15 thousand - and for most Blogger users who are aware of profile views, that doesn't necessarily mean that's how many his actual blog had - which means, the hate blog had many more views than 15 thousand.

Although with the image produced on the page, I don't think much further information needs to be explained to let readers know Shirvell's blog is completely inappropriate on so many levels. 

(This image only shows half of the screen shot.)

Besides the fact Shirvell is a grown man and should know better than to create such libelous accusations about a college student, it doesn't help his image by being a state official. Armstrong is in college. What sort of relevance does Shirvell find that should ever allow him to belittle and spread hate upon a college student?

He appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN on Sept. 29, 2010 to try and explain himself and Cooper completely ripped him apart. Shirvell tried to explain it was a tactic in a political campaign to sway people from supporting him. Well, as Cooper pointed out - the campaign happened last year, he's already in office and for crying out loud he has no relevance to any national party. I'll say it again - he's in college! He is not so important to create an entire blog about. He's trying to spread the word about the gay community and be a rights activist. Since when did doing that ever become a criminal act?

Just listening to him in the interview is irritating. He is ignorant and an idiot. He doesn't know what he is talking about and is completely obsessed with ruining the college student's life. With over 15 thousand views in five months, I just want to know why it took this long for the blog to reach the presses.

Photoshop isn't that hard to use

I've been working with Adobe Photoshop since I was a junior in high school - I'm now a senior in college. That's close to five years of working with it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Photoshop, that means I've been working with it since it was version 2 (Photoshop CS2). There is now CS5 - meaning I have been able to adapt every year, with every change - and to be honest, nothing too serious has changed, just some minor skill techniques to make it more user friendly. So, you would think that since it is supposed to be easier to use, the people who use it would make less mistakes and the quality of the image would be better.

And you would also think, professionals, a.k.a, people who are paid to retouch photos like in magazines, would be familiar enough with the program and they would not make mistakes.

My first example of the horrific mistakes people have made with retouching photographs comes from the August 2010 issue of Cosmopolitan (America).

I'm a pretty avid reader of Cosmo even though most of the time their articles are recycled to be worded differently. I digress. But for each cover, a woman is usually featured, usually a celebrity who is scantily clad and posing like she's inviting you to bed.

Now, Britney Spears has been on the cover of Cosmo multiple times in her career, and because she is Britney Spears, she never looks flawless. Yes, I know, she has flaws, but when photographing celebrities, magazines have the best skilled hands at work to make every celebrity look his or her best.

Well, on her latest cover of Cosmo, that previous statement is completely....how shall I say, WRONG!

What the heck did they do to her? It looks like her head has been pasted on to someone else's body and been poorly shaded.
My theory is this: They took her head off of one image and placed it onto her body of another image. Her neck is clearly detached from her neck, and the only reason I know this is her body is from this image:

This photo has not been touched - you can still the wrinkles around her eyes and her arms and stomach are not as toned as in the photo before.

But this isn't the only recent case of a Photoshop disaster.

Jessica Biel recently posed for The August 2010 issue of Glamour (UK), and was interviewed basically saying she's not perfect. Well, obviously no one's perfect and it's clear she's not perfect if they had to Photoshop her body for a magazine spread.

But seriously, Jessica Biel has one of the most rocking bodies out there. Why does she need to be fixed for a photo? Whoever did this job, should be fired. Especially since her arm looks like it has the worst case of cellulite ever known to man. How can someone mess up THAT bad? Seriously? Did they have a person with  low blood sugar that day? Did they have a seizure in the middle of toning up her arm?

Why didn't any editor see these problems before the photos were published? Who in their right mind thought, "Yeah, that looks good. Send it to print."

I'm sure after these incidents, there will more than two eyes checking the Photoshop skills of the people working.