Life, Liberty and the Making of Petitions

America is a great country. Here in America, we enjoy classic, unique pastimes such as eating apple pie, playing our nation's favorite sport, football, um, I mean, baseball, shooting things, watching reality television and spending valuable hours on Facebook. But there is no pastime as classic and as special to America as creating petitions.

Americans love to create petitions and protest stuff. I guarantee you - if you announce you are going to do something- anything - you will get at least two people willing to protest it. This phenomenon is even more pronounced in the age of Facebook where every issue spawns a group or two in protest. Here are a couple of my favorite most recent protests:

1. Breaking Dawn Petition. A group of Twilight fans (now former Twilight fans) asked that author, Stephenie Meyer, acknowledge the fact that many thought Breaking Dawn was an "EPIC FAIL." The best part of the petition is the response of Seth, Stephenie Meyer's brother - which is on the page in the link. (I honestly don't know who Seth is to Meyer besides being her brother. Is he her webmaster? Her assistant? I don't know, nor do I care.) I beg you to read it. Does it not look like it was written by an angry 15 year-old boy? It just reeks immaturity. Anyway, moving on...


2. Midnight Sun petition. Still in the Twilight spirit, we move on to the many petitions to keep Midnight Sun alive. Midnight Sun is part five of the Twilight "Saga." It's from Edward's point of view. She put up a rough draft of the first chapter a while ago and I recently read it. Shoot me in the face. It was like reading the secret diary of some 18th century emo kid. Anywho, if you haven't already heard, Mrs. Meyer went and handed out copies of her rough manuscript like it was candy on Halloween night and some very kind person leaked it to the internet for the world to read. Well, Mrs. Meyer was not happy about this so, she pouted, said she was putting it on hold indefinitely and then, said something to this effect: "I wish you wouldn't read it because I'm not done with it yet but I'm posting it on my website so you can read it anyway. If you were my real fans you wouldn't read it! *pout* But here it is anyway." Lots of sad 12 year-old girls read it and now want her to complete it. Why? Well, gee, I just don't know.

3. The "New Facebook" petitions. One of my favorite most recent petitions has been the many Facebook groups that popped up in response to the "new" Facebook. Now, I use Facebook (Probably a little too much...I need to work on that) and I was also a little confused by the new layout. But it didn't irk me as much as it did some. Some brave souls have threatened to cancel their accounts. Others have vowed to stop using Facebook. To me, the whole issue is ridiculous. I mean, yes, the new layout is kind of annoying and a bit unnecessary but, it's not that bad. AND it was gonna have to change sometime; couldn't be the same forever. It just makes me laugh to see people get all worked up over the layout of some site. Poor kids - they must lack lives even more than I do!

4. Half-Blood Prince Release Date Petition. This one also makes me smile. See, I'm a big HP fan and I too was disappointed by the delayed release of Half-Blood Prince. (Juicebox Rants was supposed to have a HP themed November!) What most disappointed me was that WB pretty much flat out said they're doing it for the money. Don't they have tact! Most other productions companies would be smart and lie! ("Uh, yea, we decided to re-shoot the whole movie...so we're gonna need a couple more months") But why protest? Does anyone seriously think that just because some people want to see it in Nov. that's gonna stop the WB from trying to rack in a couple more millions? Let me tell you something kiddies: Here in America we like money. Lots and lots and LOTS of money. So if some little fly whispered in the ear of the WB folks saying, "Hey, move the release to summer and you'll make LOTS of money like you did this summer with The Dark Knight," then the WB folks are gonna smile, get dollar signs in their eyes and announce a press conference.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Or maybe I'm not a real American. (What? Does no one else agree that baseball is almost as boring as golf?) But I really think that there are certain situations where petitions are useless. Sorry Twilight fans - Stephenie Meyer is too much of a baby to admit her book sucked and she's too much of an attention whore to forfeit the opportunity to raise another cash cow. So, don't expect any acknowledgment and look out for Midnight Sun sometime within the next 5 years. Sorry Facebook users - "New Facebook" is here to stay. Get used to it. And sorry fellow HP fans. We're just gonna have to wait a couple more months to see Daniel Radcliffe (aka D.Rad aka THE SEX).

Sometimes petitions are useful. Sometimes they're a genuine waste of time. But most of the time, they're just good for the lulz.

ciao.