Google v. China heats up, the awesomeness of the NCAA tournament's first two days and an idea for me to sue Lady Gaga and her former producer

- In case you haven’t been paying attention, Google is still in a pitched battle with China over censorship and other related issues. With the company threatening to shut down its operation in China and pull out of the Communist dictatorship entirely, those who would be affected by the economic fallout are worrying about how they will cope. A letter purportedly from 27 of Google's partners in China was originally posted on the China Central Television (CCTV) Web site but was removed the same night it was put up because questions are being raised about the letter’s authenticity. The letter addresses the search engine's threat to pull out of the country and warns that the company's Chinese advertising partners are being negatively affected by uncertainty about Google's continued presence in China. "We see all kinds of news related to Google coming out but cannot predict the future," the letter stated. "We see our business volume declining dramatically, but feel powerless to stop it. And we see our employees leaving one after another, without being able to persuade them to stay." However, when ABC News called 20 of the 27 alleged signatories of the letter, 16 of them had no idea the letter even existed and maintained that their company did not sign it. On top of that, no one is stepping up to take responsibility for being the originator of the letter, so we still have no idea who wrote it and who would be to blame for fabricating the signatures of the other companies whose names appear on the letter. I’m guessing that given the growing scrutiny of the letter and the criticism sure to ensue for whomever is behind it, that company will not be stepping up to face the firing squad any time soon. However, I also expect that sooner or later, the truth is going to leak out and when it does, the result won't be pleasant. Obscured in all of this is the fact that Google and the Chinese government are no closer to resolving their differences and the impact will not just hit the company’s corporate partners if and when Google pulls out of the country. Chinese citizens will also lose out because they will no longer have the same level of service they have come to expect from Google. There are no winners here, something we can thank the ever-oppressive Chinese government for…………

- As a big fan of public libraries and a not-so-big fan of encountering bats, I am certainly glad that I don’t reside in the general vicinity of the Pearsall Public Library. The library was temporarily shut down last week when its growing bat problem reached a point where the city had to hire a professional bat exclusionist. The Texas Health Department sent out a letter to all library card holders and posted a letter on the door of the library warning of possible health risks for anyone who visited the library in the past three months. Coupled with a warning from local health officials, that was enough to convince Mayor Ray Martinez to lock the library down until the bats could be removed. And yes, I said removed, not exterminated. Killing bats is against federal law, so a bat exclusionist (sounds discriminatory) waited until night, when the bats were out, and sealed off all the openings where the bats were getting in. The nearly 800 bats living between the walls of the building were shut out (and must now find a new place to live) and more than 200 dead bats, some just skeletons, were also found inside the columns of the library. Martinez believes the problem is now solved and once the health department gives the okay, the library will reopen. Prior to that, the city of Pearsall and the Texas Department of Health will holding a town hall meeting Monday night at city hall to address any concerns citizens may have about the bat infestation. My best wishes to both Pearsall residents in dealing with Bat-gate and the displaced bats in finding a new place to live……….

- I’m on record as saying that the first two days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament are the best two days of sports in this country, period. Now that this year’s first two days are complete, I challenge anyone out there to argue with me. Thursday in particular was amazing, with two of the first three games of the entire tournament going to overtime - including one to double overtime - and five double-digit seeds winning on the tournament’s first day. The 99-92 Brigham Young win over Florida in double OT was thrilling and seeing so many over-enthused Mormons in the stands and on the bench was enough to brighten anyone’s day. There was a bonafide buzzer-beater as 13th-seeded Murray State stunned fourth-seeded Vanderbilt with a long, contested jumper as the clock hit 0:00 for a 66-65 win. All of the things that make college basketball great - the atmosphere, cheerleaders, band, rabid fans, etc. - were on display even though the afternoon start times for the first wave of games meant attendance was low. Fact is, the overwhelming majority of basketball fans aren’t at games and watching on television, having a smaller crowd for the NCAA tournament is not a huge issue. The importance of the games themselves and the intensity with which the teams play more than makes up for it. The only real complaints that a person could lodge against these two days of sporting bliss have nothing to do with the games themselves. No, the primary beef would be the absolutely overexposure a viewer inevitably receives to certain commercials I won't name here (cough….KGB’s lame ads….cough…..Luke Wilson’s moronic AT&T ads…..cough). If you watch most of the action on either day, you’re going to want to punch Luke Wilson or the tools in the singing KGB ad in the face for 99 percent of the times you see their commercials. Also, announcing four games from their tournament site in a day tends to expose any real weaknesses in the broadcasters’ games, so over the course of a day you end up hearing the same catch phrases and verbal crutches over and over and over again. Also, having 16 different sites around the country in the first round means you get C- and D-level announcers for some games, but I’m willing to live with that for two amazing days of basketball from noon to well past midnight. Before I wrap up, I also need to give major props to ncaa.com for its live video feeds of all tournament games, which means users can keep an eye on three games online via live video feed (of one at a time) while also watching a game on their TV screen. Sure, the video quality isn’t superb and from time to time, the feed gets a little backed up, but it’s a free video service and it gives you a chance to watch the games you want instead of what your local CBS affiliate decides to show you, so that’s a winner in my book. Ultimately the positives outweigh the negatives by a wide, wide margin and the first two days of the NCAA tournament remain the best two days in all of sports……….

- Who’s in charge down in Mexico? If I didn’t know any better (and some would say I don’t), I’d say that it’s the freaking drug cartels that have the ultimate authority over what goes on south of the border. On Thursday, a shootout ensued when drug cartel members blocked thoroughfares in two northern Mexico states to prevent military reinforcements from arriving. Five presumed cartel members and one soldier were killed in the shootouts Thursday and Friday. These were no ordinary, low-quality blockades, either; the cartels used cars, transit buses and tractor-trailers to block roads and streets in the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon in northeastern Mexico. Three of the gang members killed were gunned down Thursday in Tamaulipas and two died early Friday in the city of Monterrey. There were just two scenes where fatalities occurred, but the cartels set up at least seven roadblocks total, two on Thursday and five more before dawn Friday. The area in which the violence took place is, as usual, adjacent to the Mexican border with Texas. Residents there have to be used to the sound of gunfire at this point, what with the all-out war between the cartels and law enforcement that never actually ends or wanes. The latest round of hostilities kicked off January 18 when a Gulf cartel member killed top Zeta lieutenant Victor Mendoza. In turn, the Zetas demanded honor among drug dealers in the form of the Gulf cartel turn over the killer, but the Gulf group refused. That was a bad move, as the Zetas are composed mostly of former elite military troops and have served as armed enforcers for the Gulf cartel since 2001. They’ve been gradually branching out on their own the past few years and the battle between the two sides is growing more acrimonious by the day. On the one side are soldiers carrying out raids in cities such as El Carmen, Sabinas, Vallecillo and Paras and on the other hand are the cartels, looking to block their progress by cutting off major roadways and use violence if necessary. In this case, the gang members used tractor-trailers, buses and cars to close the Reynosa Highway and the road to Miguel Aleman. The highway from Monterrey to Reynosa was closed for at least two hours in both directions courtesy of armed gunmen forcing at least six car drivers and a tractor-trailer driver to position their vehicles across the road. And in one of my favorite anti-The Man tactics of all-time, they set three cars and a pickup truck on fire to close the Miguel de la Madrid Boulevard in Monterrey. In other locations, they stole cars to form their roadblocks. There is no surrender in the cartels when it comes to the war that President Felipe Calderon declared on the cartels shortly after coming into office in December 2006. While there are no official government tallies, more than 16,000 people are estimated to have died in the drug wars. Most of the dead were drug cartel members, but there have been a few civilians and soldiers as well. Taking all of it in, it does make you wonder who is calling the shots in Mexico and if it’s worth it to make a visit to our neighbors to the south, what with putting your life on the line by stepping across the border…………

- It has been too long since I tossed around the idea of suing a crappy recording artist solely because his or her music sucks balls, but perhaps the time has come to revisit that idea. I was inspired to change my thinking after hearing that Lady Gaga's former boyfriend, producer and business partner, is suing the freaky costume closet explosion gone wrong for $30.5 million. Songwriter-producer Rob Fusari alleges that he was pushed away after their failed romance after taking Stefani Germanotta from no one to "Lady Gaga" and switched her rock riffs with dance beats to her music commercially viable. Wait a second……maybe I’m thinking about suing the wrong person here. See, the worst thing about crap-tacular pop songs like Lady Gaga’s so-called “music” is the over-produced, dance-beat-heavy style. That’s not actual musical talent; it’s some freaking studio monkey creating an artificial sound that the artist isn’t talented enough to create on his or her own. It is 0 percent artistry, 100 percent bogus plasticity. So if Lady Gaga, or whatever she went by back then, didn’t originally use that garbage style of music and it was Fusari who pushed her that way, I should be suing him. Sure, I’m still pissed that a ridiculously horrible artist like Lady Gaga won two Grammys this year for her debut album, but Fusari is the one who set that train a-rollin’ down the tracks. It matters not to me how she treated Fusari after they broke up because my true concern here is the tragic effect these two have had on music, which I love, as opposed to themselves, who I hate. "All business is personal. When those personal relationships evolve into romantic entanglements, any corresponding business relationship usually follows the same trajectory so that when one crashes, they all burn. That is what happened here," the suit said. I would like for both Fusari and Lady Gaga to burn, so can we make that happen? Let’s not waste time dwelling on the past, such as Germanotta riding a bus from Manhattan to Fusari's studio in Parsippany, New Jersey, to work on music in the spring of 2006 and their partnership moving forward from there. This turned into the typical story of a recording executive taking an artist whose songs he or she did not feel were commercially viable and bastardizing them and making them sound like every other crappy pop song dwelling on the world’s top 40 airwaves (another reason I never listen to the radio for musical purposes). Instead of attempting to take credit for convincing Germanotta "to abandon rock riffs and add dance beats,” Fusari should be tarred, feathered and slammed in the stockade where he can be sufficiently mocked for a period of my choosing. This a-hole actually believes that the sound of a drum machine would not hurt the integrity of her (Germanotta’s) music." What the hell, bro? It wouldn’t hurt the integrity of the music? No, it would KILL the integrity of her and - and anyone else’s - music. Drum machines are pure musical bullsh*t and anyone with any musical credibility at all knows it. So I don’t give a damn who came up with the name Lady Gaga, whether it was Fusari doing so accidentally by text message, as he claims, or someone else. Nor do I care who was allegedly verbally abusive of whom or if Germanotta owes Fusari any financial compensation. For my money, both of them are owed a series of violent punches to the face and a banishment from the music industry for the sheer and utter dreck they have produced……….