Six Dollars Till Payday

THOR review

2011-05-24T23:17:00.000-04:00

This summer is going to be expensive.

I usually can count on that based on it being summer, or based on having to drive ... anywhere, but this is especially true of 2011. Why?

Marvel bloody comics.

Ever since I was a kid, I really liked Marvel stories, especially their superheroes. I don't know if it was because they were located in real places, better written than any given Superman story, hadn't been run into the ground by half a dozen bad TV shows and two good ones like DC, or because Wolverine was a badass and Spider-man was a smartass. The fact remains, I loved Marvel. While I always held a spot in my heart for Batman, being the least lame DC hero, Marvel's always been better to me.

Well this summer should be a Marvel Fangasm. We have THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. There are other nerd-originating movies coming out, but those are for another time, when I fully decide if I want to move into the groundbreaking and original realm of movie critiques. THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA are both lead-ins to the upcoming THE AVENGERS movie, which has been in the works since IRON MAN. I'm not familiar with either one of those comic books, really, having been more of an X-Men fan, followed by not-much-of-a-comic-book-reader. So I can't compare, but I'm more of a judge-movies-as-movies person.

THOR came out at the beginning of May, which means I waited two weeks to see it. I heard plenty of criticism of it early after its release, but I'm fairly sure I don't give a monkey's about that. Frankly, THOR does a good job of telling a Thor semi-origin story and linking it to the upcoming AVENGERS film.

How should I do this? Hmm, why not a list. I know I like to jump right to the part I care about when I read reviews, so why the heck not?

Odin One-Eye: Sir Anthony Hopkins. I'd be an idiot to say Hopkins did a bad job with something. If he's not been good in a role, I haven't seen it. I wasn't really expecting the understated approach from a bloody Norse God, but given that he had to be conveniently in the Odinsleep for most of the movie, it worked. Nonetheless, I want to see BRIAN BLESSED play Odin Allfather at some point. The epic ... it burns.
Loki Lie-Smith: Tom Hiddleston. I have never heard of this actor before, but he has worked with Director Kenneth Branagh a few times, and after his masterful approach to Loki, I can see why. Hiddleston made me feel like Loki believed the lies he told, which is sort of crucial when you're pretending to be someone lying to someone else. In the beginning, he also convinced me that he was Thor's younger brother, stuck in the shadows their whole lives. This was told to us, naturally, but Hiddleston's performance drove it home.
Some Mortal Chick (Jane): Natalie Portman. I haven't had a complaint about Natalie Portman's acting since Star Wars, and I'm happy to see that trend continuing. Having heard her laugh at the Oscars, I'm sure she drew on her inner awkard girl for so many early scenes with Thor. Also, I was very glad to not see her as a damsel in distress, because it's 2011, people.
Stan Lee's Cameo: Yeah, it's there. It's goofy. It doesn't distract too much from the film, and nobody mistakes him for Hefner. Really, Tony?
Effects: What can I say about effects anymore? They're CGI but really good? Come on, you have to be a really low budget flick to not have good CGI anymore. They give away good CGI work in boxes of cereal. I did think to myself that as they were preparing to use the Bifröst, they should've shot that practically, with a bunch of Tesla coils. Maybe that's just because I like Tesla coils.
Direction: Kenneth Branagh, you are very good. I would say you're awesome, but you really annoyed me with all those 30 degree camera angles you used throughout the movie. I'm okay with using that now and then, but sparingly, please; preferably when something screwed up has just happened, or someone woke up from being hit on the head. In this movie, none of the slanted scenes were those situations, and it actually got noticeable.

But of course, the real test is the eponymous Thor. Played by Chris Hemsworth, which I keep wanting to type as Heimdall, Thor is completely believable as a character and as a spoiled brat of a stormgod. He has surprisingly good chemistry with Portman and you could almost believe they fall in love, despite knowing each other for two days in typical Hollywood fashion. By the way, can we do something about that? Maybe have people who haven't just run each other over with their cars fall in love? An actual basis for a love story? I know, it's a superhero movie, that isn't the point. I'm just throwing it out there.

I won't go into the problems that hardcore comic book geeks will have. This is in part because it's pointless to bother with addressing such things, and also because I don't know what they are. Again, I know almost nothing about the Marvel source material. So is THOR the best movie I've seen this year? Probably not. Is it a great precursor to what I hope will be a firestorm of kickassness that is THE AVENGERS? Oh yeah.

Guilt by association: Why I support the "ID Everyone for Liquor" law

2011-02-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

Hah, as always, I lied when I said "I'll be updating more often."

As a cashier in an Indiana supermarket that sells alcohol, I am reasonably aware of the current state of Indiana liquor laws. The basics include:

No sales between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
No sales on Sundays
You can only buy 2 24-packs (or equivalent) of beer, three giant jugs (or equivalent) of wine, and no limit on hard liquor.
Every person wishing to buy alcohol must show photo ID unless Amish (photo-exempt ID for the horse-and-buggy crowd).

Now obviously, these laws are all kind of stupid. The one that isn't completely stupid has a very large stupid loophole. However the only one anyone bitches about is the one that is always in effect, no matter the time and no matter how much alcohol you want: the ID law.

The law was passed to prevent underage people attempting to buy alcohol at places with lax store rules. A lot of places had rules where if you looked like you were under 40 you got carded, but apparently enough got through that they decided to make it so everyone gets carded.

Naturally, the people who are most pissed off are the super-old. I've been complained to about that law more than I ever thought I would. Seriously, assholes, I get paid $7.80 per hour. If I could do that without the extra effort and time of carding everyone with a mini-bottle of wine, I would. I am not the person to complain to about this. Or anything.

Since the new year, old people have taken up saying, "I thought they changed that law!" It takes an experienced mind to analyse this particular bit of bullshit, and I've had more than enough time (six seconds) to do it. What they mean to say is, "I read in a newspaper once that someone proposed changing the law because they were rich or powerful and were mildly inconvenienced by it and couldn't get past it with, 'do you know who I am?!' so they proposed changing the law." This is a far fucking cry from "changed that law".

Now, someone did propose changing that law. One state rep from my area said he was carded when all he wanted was change for a dollar in a liquor store. In the interest of being absolutely clear, I will not mince words:

That's not true. This man is lying or an idiot. Which one? Doesn't matter, the result is the same.

If you need change for a dollar, you go into the first store you see. If it's a liquor store, you think, "Eh, what's the next store?" and go to that. Furthermore, since I've been a child, the law has been everyone gets IDed upon entering a liquor store, and if they're under 21 they can't enter at all.

But I digress. The last news story that turns up in a Google search for "indiana repeal liquor id" is from 19 Feb, and it's about liquor store owners largely opposing the repeal. Before that, it's 4 Feb, a story about the House passing the bill. The Senate hasn't done shit about it.

But all this information is irrelevant, because at my store, we have to ID everyone regardless of state law. I am really desperate to just blurt out "nope, wrong" when they mention the law changing. I'm starting to enjoy carding people, just because they don't like getting out their IDs. And upon reading the "liquor store owners oppose repeal" story and learning that under-21s have mostly stopped trying to buy alcohol, I'm way more in favour of this law than nearly any other.

First category: generally useless

2010-12-30T22:03:00.004-05:00

Hah, as always, I lied when I said "tomorrow."

Anyway, the first category of twats is ... GENERAL USELESSNESS

The rules for this category are simple: the nominees cannot be professional in their uselessness, and they should not affect people apart from as a data point. For example, a movie critic saying Toy Story 3 was a bad movie would be a professional, and I would be obliged to disqualify the lying sack of shit. However, random internet people saying Toy Story 3 was a bad movie would not be professional, and would therefore qualify for this award. So without further ado, the nominees!

People who watch the Jersey Shore. These people are responsible not for me acknowledging the existence of these kind of useless bastards with spray tans, bad hairdos, bad clothes, no brains, and more diseases than a research lab. I knew, if only in the back of my mind, that they existed. However, now I can pick them out of a lineup, and that is just unacceptable. These people should be buried in the shittiest area of their Shore hometown. And I don't mean "bury" like a euphemism for "out of sight, out of mind." I mean "buried," like in the fucking ground. However, I blame the enablers more, because ... well, I used to be able to ignore them.
The person who sold their Penny Arcade stuff in some sort of shit-ass protest of this comic. Yes, rape is horrible. Yes, you should be against rape. But if you're offended at any mention of it, this comic has never been for you. Mazel tov on donating the proceeds of the auction to charity, but the eBay page (which is down, as the auction ended sometime in October or something) reeked of self-importance and enjoyment of offence. Trust me, that's something I know about - I have a tendency to hang on to something that pisses me off, because it's very good as a motivational tool. Under no circumstances, however, do I claim it gives me the high moral ground. Usually, it just makes me act like a twat.
People protesting governments' displeasure with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Now, many people may disagree with me on this, and I may even disagree with myself sometimes on this. But overall, leaking the horrible things governments discuss amongst themselves to the public is a good thing. I am in favour of transparency, except when ... well, except when I'm not. It's difficult. But for the most part, current governments seem to be made up of horrible people doing horrible things, ordering other less horrible people to carry out horrible things, and not-necessarily-horrible people experiencing horrible things. The only thing these governments have stopping them getting collectively castrated is the fact they're doing this all in secret. Naturally, governments are going to be incredibly incensed they got caught with their dick in the cookie jar, and since we already know from the cables they wanted to stay secret that they're evil and corrupt, they're going to use their power to punish those who caught them with their dicks in the cookie jar. Protesting that doesn't do shit. Taking down Visa and MasterCard, that did a little bit. But guess what, guys? Those assholes are still in charge, and they're still fucking those snickerdoodles.
Anyone who likes Justin Beiber who is older than eleven. I have a niece who likes Justin Beiber, because she is seven. I have not made much of an effort to correct this horrible behaviour, because again, she is seven. I liked some pretty shit-awful things, people and music when I was that age. However, once you get to the point where you can get into the average summer blockbuster (technically that would be 13 in the US, but nobody cares about two years and they'll see it on video anyway), you should be able to discern utter shit from cool. There is of course another level, which you reach when you achieve full sentience in your late teens, where you realise the stuff you thought was cool at 12 was really shit, and the stuff you thought was shit then, was even more shit. I'm not concerned with that third level of shitdom, because some adults haven't even reached the middle level. I wonder if they still brush their Barbie doll's hair at the office.

ADDENDUM: Just to make something clear, the Justin Beiber fan nomination also counts for any Twilight fan beyond puberty. In fact, you could use the whole thing as is, only removing the bit about my niece.

AND THE WINNER IS:

Justin Beiber fans of a certain age. Really, all the others were kind of weak contenders, but I still wanted to bitch them out. Jersey Shore fans are nonexistent in my actual life, I disagree with the ex-Penny Arcade fan but I understand, and people will always pointlessly protest things that governments do, to little effect. People will always also like shitty teen pop music, but the day I stop fighting that is the day I cultivate a comb-over.

Golden Cock - Twat of the Year

2010-12-27T22:51:00.004-05:00

I've been watching a lot of Top Gear lately, and they have a tradition at the end of the calendar year to award the presenter who's given a spectacular example of stupidity throughout the year with the prestigious Golden Cock award. Naturally, I think this is a fantastic idea for the rest of the world, even if I probably shouldn't use the same name.

So in an effort to get myself writing again (did anyone notice I wasn't aside from me?) I'm going to spend the next few days, and possibly well into January, picking LESTAQ Magazine's Twat of the Year (on that note, Mark Zuckerberg is disqualified, although sometime soon he ought to get a lifetime achievement award).

Obvious nominees include people I don't like, but I'll make every effort to include people whom I otherwise like but made a complete twat of themselves in the interest of fairness. This way, I won't spend the next several years awarding the thing to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and The Collective Employee Base Of (Insert Telecom Company Here).

Tomorrow, the first nominees and why!

How to get a letter to the editor published

2010-05-06T08:11:00.004-04:00

Seeing as today is the British general election, and we'll likely find out which arsehole is going to occupy 10 Downing St for the next five years, and it likely won't be the arsehole I support, I've decided to write about something else.

Out of a sense of habit or devotion, I'm not sure which, I continue reading my hometown newspaper, the Evansville Courier and Press, despite no longer living there. For a while it was because I was expected to keep abreast of Evansville news for a class, but in honesty I would've kept reading without that reason. My favourite section when I read the hard copy, and it continues to amuse me greatly, is the letters to the editor.

Now, in the United States, and especially in local papers, there is a formula for getting a letter to the editor published. First, you choose a recent topic. This seems obvious, so I'll not linger. The next step is to take an absurd position on it. If you cannot convincingly write on an absurd position, feel free to "express amazement" at the absurd position of another letter writer. If you are holding an absurd position, be sure to take that to its extreme. If you take it to its illogical extreme, so much the better.

Let's work with an example, shall we? Lately there have been a lot of letters about health care reform. First, we must establish the facts: Health care reform will require, in 2014, that all Americans purchase health insurance or be covered through their work plan. It also eliminates the preexisting condition's legality. This does not a good letter make.

If you want to write on the health care reform issue, you must use one or two of the following words: Socialism, government takeover, Obama, tyranny, unconstitutional, Obamacare, taxpayer, Big Brother. Don't use them all! Remember, you have a 250-word limit! If you use them all you'll go well over that. Next, be sure to use a slippery slope argument in addition to buzzwords. You can use other logical fallacies as well, but "slippery slope" is the easiest one.

DO NOT FACT CHECK YOUR WORK.

Once you feel you have sufficiently expressed your natural paranoia about whatever it is that Rush told you, add the information the newspaper requires of you and send in your letter. If you send it in early enough in the day, it may get included in next morning's edition. They love cranks.

Credit where it's due

2010-05-05T13:26:00.005-04:00

It's finals week, and probably the last one I'll take part in for a few decades. Needless to say, I'm very happy about that. Or rather, I was, until I was walking out of my class last night and talking to one of my group members.

My group member, whom I shall call Em, and I were rejoicing in the fact that we got the damn thing done, did a pretty good job if we say it ourselves, and survived the whole thing without major medical trauma. This is something I've done every time I've had a group project, and I'm very sure others have as well. As we turned a corner on campus, Em said, "And thank God, I forgot to thank him!"

Now, personally, I'm annoyed by that one. I mean, I did a lot of work on this project. M did a massive amount of work on this project. Jay, our other group member, did some work. But dammit, God didn't do shit. God didn't show up for one meeting or contribute a single idea by email. God didn't get his blood drawn, didn't do camera work, photos, video editing, writing and editing, interviews, or legwork. God, as far as I can tell, sat around like a lazy bastard eating grapes and enjoying the weather.

Not only that, but I don't even remember the class where God was added as a member of our group. I was under the impression that our group had three people in it. I'm not bothered by a group of four, but I would've liked the fourth bugger to contribute something to the project, because it wasn't fucking easy.

Maybe I misunderstood, and God wasn't a group member. Maybe he's Em's copy editor. If that's the case, then okay. But I'll be really pissed off if that lazy sod gets full credit without doing any real work.

Author's Note: I realise this is a vast misinterpretation of Em's statement. Nevertheless, I maintain that God had nothing to do with getting this project done and done well. Nowhere did we require supernatural assistance, because all we got done was due to hard work, skill, and perseverance; in short, us.

Vote Liberal Democrat

2010-04-30T17:51:00.004-04:00

Despite my strong feeling that nobody who reads this blog has voting rights in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and despite that the people who do read this blog are few and very far between, I spent my time at work thinking about why I support the Liberal Democrats in the upcoming British General Election.

Then I got home and saw the Guardian have beat me to it.

So read this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/the-liberal-moment-has-come

A love letter to early adopters

2010-04-23T16:54:00.003-04:00

Dear early adopters: I love you dumb bastards.

You know who you are.

If you paid $600 for an iPhone, and gladly, back in 2007;
if you have a five-year-old Blu-Ray player
(if you also have an HDDVD player come to that);
if you jizzed in your pants over the iPad despite having multiple computers and a Kindle already (Yes, Adam, I'm sort of picking on you here)
if you ever stood in line for the release of a console, game, or new piece of tech;
if you bought Avatar on Blu-Ray or DVD yesterday (although probably Blu-Ray).

If you did any of those things, you absolutely fit the definition of "early-adopter." You're the kind of person who can't be without New Stuff. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a very good position in society. But god dammit do you guys haemorrhage money.

I don't know where I'd be without all the early adopters in the world. Early adopters are the ones who tell their friends (or in the case of tech journalists, their readers) whether this hunk of plastic and silicon is worth the, um, plastic and silicon used to make it. They are the ones who tell us all the cool stuff that New Stuff can do. You lot are the ones who drive the tech sector of the economy of the First World, not just by buying these things but also by making others want these things more.

But my favourite purpose of the early adopters is this: you buy up the first several batches. You drive the makers to make better ones. And absolutely most importantly, you drive the fucking price down.

I remember when I got my first iPod (it was called an iPod Video if that helps). Two weeks later, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. My reaction was along the lines of "God DAMMIT." Then I learnt it was to be $600 with a 2-year contract with AT&T. My reaction was along the lines of "Holy FUCK that's a bad deal." But, as always, the early adopters bought the iPhones up. About a year later, halfway through that contract, Apple dropped the price to about $200 - still not a great price, but infinitely better than it was - and refunded the early adopters $100. More than one tech writer likened it to an angry john throwing a $100 note at a whore after he finished.

Now, the iPhone is down to $100 for the cheapest 3G model, or $50 for a refurbished one. The top-of-the-line model (3GS) is still $200. Meanwhile, the iPad came out and the cheapest version ... is $600. And the early adopters have jumped all over that shit.

Keep buying, early adopters! Your money spent makes that product more affordable for me.

Textbook Buyback Lotto

2009-12-08T16:12:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again on USI's campus. It's damp and dreary, everyone keeps their head down when walking to class, and they're all secretly panicking about that one final where the professor hates them and the subject matter is incomprehensible but it's required for their major so they're pretty much screwed. But soft! There is a bright side to these dark days, and it is called "Textbook buyback."

I've always enjoyed textbook buyback. I feel like I've won the lottery. You know, the kind of lottery where the cost of the tickets is six times your actual winnings. Oh wait, that kind of is like the real lottery, isn't it? And it's even more like the lottery because half the time, your god damned books aren't buy-backable because they're changing the text for next term (which they do just to aggravate you. Personally).

Having had a rather poor and constantly-driving semester, I was very happy to see a surprise $97 enter my hands on Tuesday. Technically I'm not finished with these courses, but damn it, I was hungry. I felt rather happy about that amount of money, because I've got it in my head after two straight terms of humanities a few years ago that I won't get more than half a dollar back for any given book, and that's if I'm lucky. If I'm not, the trash bin will be receiving a special gift for Christmas this year - it's that psychology text you've always wanted! What, you have three already? Well, you can never have too many, you ungrateful inanimate object! What? You got me a half-drunk, melted chocolate shake? Great. It's vouchers to Rural King for you next year.

I think the end of fall term is better for textbook buyback than end of spring term, partly because it's very rare to have a department completely change texts in the middle of the year. I have a theory that I just made up right now that while we're all getting drunk and flashing our bodies at some creepy thirtysomething who's made a living off of filming coeds flashing their bodies at him on spring break, the department heads stick around and decide just how many of their current texts they're going to say, "Screw it!" to. They may do this out of jealousy, or they may do this as a chemical reaction to red horns sprouting from their temples every spring, but I haven't established a control group or done the appropriate level of testing to say for certain, mainly because I suck at that.

I didn't bother selling back one of my texts because I had it in my head that first week, right after my professor said, "We aren't going to be using it, since you all used it in the prerequisite class to this," I would immediately ask for a refund. Naturally, I had better things to do like sleeping and playing Halo. That leaves me in the situation of having a perfectly shrink-wrapped textbook with the software code unactivated, and now I won't get the full price I paid for it, despite it being a) in mint condition, b) never removed from box, and c) the kind with the firing rocket that blinded a kid so they discontinued it the first week.

I suppose the bright side is we get money back at all. It won't be enough to buy gifts for all our friends, but after they spawn camped you last week, do they really deserve anything other than a dog turd? I didn't think so.

Use a real instrument, you twit

2009-11-04T20:42:00.004-05:00

Can we officially call the contest in favour of Rock Band please?

I found out about Guitar Hero in 2005 when I worked at Best Buy and we had a demo set up. Be honest, I found out about it when one of my under-18 co-workers spent the better part of a day he had off playing the stupid thing. I never quite understood why you would want to fake-play a guitar, unless you didn't have access to a guitar at the moment. I mean, the equipment plus game was about as much as a low-grade electric guitar.

Then they made sequels, and along with the sequels came competition in the form of Rock Band. This was clearly distinct as it wasn't just fake guitar playing, it was fake drumming (although with the advent of synth drums in the 1980s I'm not sure it's THAT fake) and singing. I for one thought this was a bad idea, because I'm an awful singer, my wife is an excellent singer, and I have absolutely no idea if any of my friends can sing worth an arse, but just in case I don't want to find out - primarily because I know just HOW bad my singing is. It is fit for nought but death metal in the car, alone.

But okay, you know? I had friends who did play the game, and they enjoyed it, so what harm would it really do? So what if it was a Playstation version of karaoke plus air guitar plus ... synth drums? They even (both, I think) did actual-guitar-based controllers - Les Pauls, Gibson SGs, stuff like that. That's when they started spinning off. They had band-centric versions of the games. Guitar Hero had Metallica version (which was sort of obvious when one thinks about it). Rock Band managed to get the Beatles, which I think is immensely good for them. Guitar Hero had Aerosmith, and will have Van Halen.

Then Guitar Hero took a massive shit on what little semi-credibility they might have had and did "Band Hero", what is clearly "similar but legally distinct" even though plenty of people could easily confuse them. Not only that, but they brought in Taylor Swift, famous for being 18 and blonde and interrupted by Kanye West. Really, I would have been happy to die without hearing that fucking song. Sadly, having had it on the muzak at work, that wasn't going to happen anyway.

So what's next, Guitar Hero? Avant-garde Hero? I'd like to see that - let me rock out on some video game controller sleigh bells to an indie pop-rock song. I want to play the shit out of a Wii tambourine to some Polyphonic Spree. Where is our harp-shaped controller, Guitar Hero?! Give me a xylophone, cello, or tuba, except, you know, for the 360. Or maybe instruments is thinking about it the wrong way. Give me Jazz Hero! You blow into your controller and improv, and whoever does the best gets the most Live points.

I suppose as someone who spent actual time and effort learning to play an actual instrument, I find it stupid to spend all that time playing a fake version of the instrument. I could be partly jealous because every time I've tried to play guitar hero, I've played the actual notes instead of "what the computer tells me to play," thus greatly fucking up the song. But I don't think that's it, because I've only tried to play twice, and I really don't see the point. I mean, I don't have to play Guitar Hero! I can play these songs for real!

Even the Taylor Swift song - it consists of smearing fæces all over the guitar, amp, and nearest power plug.

Milk (or: goddammit I need to write more)

2009-11-03T00:52:00.001-05:00

I saw Milk in class the other week. My immediate reaction was, “So that's Milk.”

Unfortunately, that sort of thing makes for terrible, droll reading, so I got to thinking about it more. My next thought was about some of the things the Christian Conservatives® said for why they were anti-gay and why gays shouldn't be allowed to do, well, anything. One of the most wonderful reasons in my view was given by a man who I don't remember much about, apart from what he said. What he said was this.

“You can argue with me, but you can't argue with God.”

That's got to be one of my favourite reasons for a political position. I hope someone uses that in my favour someday. But the thing is, it absolutely is true for me. Seeing as I don't believe in any gods, I couldn't argue with such a thing. I mean, I can't argue with something that I don't believe exists, the very idea of doing so falls over as soon as I try. He was right on that point at the very least: I cannot by any means argue with his god.

There's another bit with a woman who is actually featured a bit more heavily (read: not very heavily but she talks a lot on telly in what I think is stock footage), saying many of the same things, “Christian heritage”, “upstanding morals”, “gays are bad”, and other stupid crap. It's always based on her religion, and the funny thing is, never anyone else's. It's not like Christianity is the only religion in the world that has a problem with homosexuality. One might think these people could all get together and hate on gays as one. Perhaps luckily, they're too busy hating each other as well as gays. But that's another topic.

Anyway, The problem with these religious arguments is, they're Constitutionally untenable, or as I prefer to think of them, “complete and utter crap.” There is the whole “establishment clause” in the First Amendment that sort of prevents such reasoning behind laws. Or so I thought, then I met the Christian Conservatives® (it really is like a brand name, isn't it?).

The reason I hit on those particular moments, or rather they stuck so soundly in my brain, is that I've been hearing this sort of thing since I can remember. It doesn't help of course that I spent thirteen years at Catholic schools, which only meant I heard even more of it. I heard these asinine arguments so much that I could refute them in my sleep – not that it helped, being, I say again, a Catholic school. But what I learnt from Milk is that the Christian Conservatives® have made absolutely no new arguments in the past 30-40 years.

I learnt if I'm going to be opposing them on this issue (and I shall), I'm going to have to settle in for a lot of repetition.

A terrible case of burying the lede

2009-10-10T13:00:00.003-04:00

I visited the US House yesterday. It was ... okay. I think I would've been more interested if they had been in session and it hadn't been the last day before a three-day weekend. Regardless, it had interesting moments.

I learnt that the crypt underneath the rotunda is empty because the Washingtons did not want the bodies of George and Martha to be dug up and reburied in the District, especially not 25 years after they died. I also learnt that the Supreme Court used to meet for many many years in the US Capitol. And I learnt that Congressman Robert B Aderholt (R-AL) is one of those people who never attended or paid attention to university-level American History courses.

He was the only one still present at Friday, 11 a.m., and was talking to what looked like a first-grade class of some sort. One of the teachers asked about "In God We Trust" on the money (it is carved above the Speaker's podium as well in the House). The Congressman went on this long, rambling talk about how it's on the money, no plans to take it off, there was one of the dollar coins with it on the rim, they moved it to the front (missing the fact that the valuable versions of those coins are MISSING the "In God We Trust" due to a minting error on the day), and then said something about how about 95 per cent of the founding fathers were devout Christians.

Anyone who's even HEARD of Thomas Jefferson knows he was nothing of the sort. I direct anyone who needs evidence to any of his writings on the subject, the fact that he has a version of The Bible without all the Super-Jesus parts, i.e., with all the instances of superpowers removed. John Adams was raised in Christianity but later in life had more of a neutral view of religion. He even rejected his father's request for him to become a minister because he thought being an attorney was more noble. James Madison wrote in 1792 that there was no specific religious sanction for American Government. Thomas Paine wrote (biased source notwithstanding)

The case, my friend is, that the world has been over-run with fable and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole nations against all other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers, has been a persecutor. Those who fled from persecution persecuted in their turn, and it is this confusion of creeds that has filled the world with persecution and deluged it with blood.

The amount of ignorance involved when people speak of the US founding fathers is staggering, albeit not necessarily exclusive to them. I have heard many times the quote of Albert Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe," which is a paraphrase anyway, used as "evidence" (for instances of evidence consisting entirely of quote-mining) of Einstein's belief in a god, or as he was fond of saying, "The old one." In fact, upon being asked directly by Rabbi Herbert S Goldstein of New York, he replied, "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He also said, "To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor." So while he may have believed in some sort of god (which I dispute on the grounds that "pantheism" is a sort of middle ground so as not to say "I'm an atheist" whilst still expressing wonder at the natural world), he certainly had no love for organised religion.

Maybe I'm rare in this, but I'm not terribly fond of misquoting, misinformation, or selective quotations. I am a fan of context, and if someone says something ambiguous, asking another question or doing more research is warranted. I really abhor when people ignore things that don't agree with their already-held beliefs or pet theories. Not to say I'm innocent of it myself (to say nothing of rationalisation) but I am aware of it and try to find reality. I certainly don't stand up in front of small children and tell them known lies.

An open letter to ESPN's editorial department

2009-10-07T12:21:00.004-04:00

Dear ESPN: All I ask is a little perspective.

On the front page of your MLB website, you have a photo of the Yankees jumping onto each other with the caption, "Their long, long title drought will soon be over. Why the New York Yankees are about to win their first World Series in almost a decade." Long, long title drought, eh? So long that it requires italics? Well, okay. Being from the Midwest originally I'm certainly familiar with long title droughts for my sport teams, but for the Yankees? Perhaps we can take a look at the record, yes?

Okay, the last time they won a World Series was 2000 according to Wikipedia (yes, I know, but it's quick and easy). Before that, they won in 1999, 1998, and 1996. Before that of course, the last time they won a World Championship was in 1978. Now THAT is a long, long title drought. Actually, no ... no it isn't. I take it back. That's an extended title drought, but not even a single un-italicised "long" one. If we take a look at other teams, I'm sure we'll find horribly longer ones, worthy of the italics and repetition.

To start with, let's visit Chicago's North Side. The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908 - that's 101 years. THAT, I daresay, is a long, long, long Series Drought. It's so long it's become infamous. The Cubs are still a very good baseball team, but they never seem to get past the playoffs. In fact, the last time they even PARTICIPATED in a World Series was 1945. Their losing streak is such a part of baseball that "Maybe Next Year" is the Cubs Fan's unofficial slogan.

Another team with a super-long Series Drought is the Boston Red Sox. Dubbed the "Curse of the Bambino," the Sox had not won a series since before the trad e of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 (the actual win was in 1918, throwing a bit of confusion onto the nomenclature, but anyway). The first time in 86 years they won a Series was in 2004 after they came from an 0-3 record in their playoff series against the Yankees to win, and then sweep the St Louis Cardinals.

Speaking of the Cardinals, before their most recent win in 2006 over the Detroit Tigers, they had not won a Series since 1982, a 24-year streak. Other teams with even longer failures to attain World Series trophies include the Cleveland Indians, San Francisco(New York) Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, and Detroit Tigers.

Some other teams in Major League Baseball have never won a World Series in their entire existences. These include the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos, and Seattle Mariners. Of those, only the Rangers, Nationals/Expos and Mariners have never even participated in a World Series.

So, dearest ESPN, if you would kindly do those of us who hate or don't give a shit about the Yankees the courtesy of cutting back on the hyperbole, we would much appreciate it. We do, after all, make up most of your viewing audience outside of New York and New Jersey. I expect to see reports of the Red Sox breaking their one-year losing streak, or even the Florida Marlins breaking their five-year streak, any time now.

Well, except for the thing about the Marlins, since they're not playing post-season.

Signed,

One of the 250m people who doesn't live in the New York area and is therefore sick of hearing about New York sports teams.

Guns are for dickheads

2009-09-16T20:43:00.005-04:00

In various places (read: the intertubes) I have seen rhetoric in favour of gun ownership or the 2nd amendment. I've thought about it quite a bit, honestly, and I really hate guns and the 2nd amendment.

Last fall in a political science class, a classmate of mine said then-Senator Obama was anti-2nd amendment, but that position doesn't make sense, because "How can you be against the constitution?" Well, I'm against that particular part of the constitution, because it is woefully outdated. Let's look at the text, first off.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Sounds good of course, until you remember that the State's official Armed Forces have more powerful weaponry than any mere mortal can acquire legally or illegally. Short answer, if the government becomes tyrannical, and it becomes a citizen's duty to overthrow it, we're fucked. I'm not saying we should ALLOW that, but the fact is the military could make mincemeat of any uprising.

Another reason I'm against the 2nd amendment is that it lets people carry around a metal stick that makes it easier to kill people. Now there may be laws that prevent average Joe the Plumber (ba dum tiss!) actually walking around armed, but simply owning said metal stick that makes it easier to kill people is largely equivalent to carrying it around. Simply put, owning it means one can go home, get it, and return in much shorter time than buying a gun takes.

But Matt, I hear you say (silently), you own swords, which are quite literally metal sticks that make it easier to kill someone! And every kitchen has knives, which are the same! Indeed, I own swords, and that is an accurate way to describe them. Frankly though if I want to kill someone with one of my swords or a knife of any sort, I must get really close to them ... say within arm's reach. And if I'm within arm's reach they can defend themselves. If I were to use a gun I could do so from across a field and they have no way of self-defence against it let alone necessarily know about it before their head explodes, thus it's not "just as easy". But enough with that straw man.

I know some people prefer guns for home defence. Frankly, that's one of the few reasons that would qualify as good. But my parents don't own guns apart from two deactivated civil war firearms which are little more than heavy-ass heirlooms. I don't own guns, and don't really have any desire to. Frankly, I'm afraid of guns. That's not entirely accurate - I'm afraid of people. I'm afraid of people normally, but give them something that makes it easy to kill me makes me more afraid of them. I'm afraid of police for that reason too. I once had to help a police officer at work, and he was very much still armed. I have never felt more uncomfortable. This is how guns make me feel. They make me feel AFRAID.

Let me make something clear: I don't think guns make people act completely crazy. However the kind of people who have some desire to own a metal stick with a handle that launches metal projectiles through the air at sonic force to penetrate other people's skin in an effort to end their lives are at least a little crazy anyway. I own knives for food preparation and I own swords for aesthetic purposes - I think they look good mounted on walls (which means I won't likely have them unsheathed, much less easy to grab and slash with). I sincerely doubt anyone would break into my apartment - I live in a shitty apartment, shitty block, and have little of value to steal. People breaking into homes to cause violence to those who live there is extraordinarily rare unless it's done by an intimate - like most crimes, someone you know is far more likely to do it to you. I don't fear my neighbours any more than I fear the average person. ed: I have moved since I originally wrote this, and my neighbours are super old and frail. I am even less afraid of them now. If I knew they carried a gun around, I WOULD fear them a lot more.

I keep seeing people on facebook or on various places online talking about how "if the gummint takes away yer guns then who'll defend yer famlee?" One facebook friend cited New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as an example - apparently the "gummint" took away people's guns and they had nothing to defend themselves as they were killed and raped. Unfortunately I can't find any sources that aren't the NRA, gun owner sites, or "angry man" websites with pro-gun leanings - that is to say no legitimate sources. The fact is, though, if the "gummint" decides to turn fascist and kill or imprison people for no reason, there is nothing anyone, armed or not, can do to stop it. Granted that's a piss-poor reason to go along with it but that is the damn fact. Hell, it's happened before, look at Japanese Americans in World War II.

I've never understood the desire to own, let alone carry around a lethal weapon. People who advocate for concealed-carry laws scare me even more. Why do you need to conceal it if you're so vocal about carrying it around? Why not just carry it around attached to your FOREHEAD for fuck's sake? I mean if every place was a place people could carry concealed weapons, I can't imagine any of these pro-gun people not wearing a t-shirt that said “yes I'm carrying a gun” (which come to think of it says a lot about t-shirts that announce things about the wearer as well as gun owners, but that's another entry).

Several weeks ago I heard a clip of Glenn Beck talking about how he went to see a movie with his concealed gun. He fully admitted he didn't have reason to, but he was simply exercising his right to carry a gun around in places with children and other law-abiding citizens (not including the teenagers sneaking into the R-rated film of your choice but I mean REAL laws). The fact is there's no legitimate reason he would need a gun. I don't think he lives in such a shithole that his local cinema's parking lot has frequent robberies or homicides. Within the cinema, there's probably a cop (when I worked at two different cinemas, the local police or sheriff's dept, whoever had jurisdiction, sent a guy to stand around and stop people being total assholes). Was he afraid of the violent liberals who were going to chant at him "learn to spell! learn to spell!"?

Or is he just woefully insecure and completely insane? I know he's completely insane, I'm asking more about the first one.

Joint Session drinking game/liveblog

2009-09-09T20:21:00.003-04:00

good points so far ...

Really liked "determined to be the last president to address this".

Gallstones he didnt' know about - just eliminate the phrase "preexisting condition" from the fucking dictionary, would you?

No-one should be treated that way in the USA - fucking well right!

numbers - I like numbers, but you're going to confuse the republicans. The only numbers they understand are dollar signs, and only when preceded by "pay to the order of" and their name.

SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM - light applause. End employer based systems and let people buy it on their own: fuckall applause.

"There are arguments to be made for both these approaches" - yes, and some of the arguments are made up of bullshit and WAAAAH I DON'T WANT TO PAY TAXES WAAAAAAH which when I think about it is quintessentially American, isn't it?

"Time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action." Good lines. Back it the FUCK UP.

Three basic goals - security and stability to those with insurance - provide insurance for those without - slow the growth of health care costs for families, businesses, and govt. Middle one is the super-important one I feel, with a close second being the first.

"Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. REPEATED." - Will make your insurance work better for you - against the law to deny coverage due to preexisting condition FUCK YEAH BABY! and I'll settle for THAT.

Illegal to drop your coverage or water it down when you become sick - I will also take that. No caps on amount of coverage - place a limit on how much you can be charged - (make that limit seven dollars and I'll be good thx)

required to cover routine checkups, colonoscopies, mammograms, preventative care - makes sense, saves money and lives - I like the one guy who keeps sitting on nails

if you DON'T have health care now - if you lose, change your job - coverage - if you start a small busines - coverage - insurance exchange to shop at competitive prices - see, that's bullshit because there are SEVEN companies, and they need to be prohibited getting together and agreeing on "well we'll go no lower than $fuckassexpensive.32

tax credits for small businesses - all companies who want access to these people have to abide by rules - in four years - can't get insurance today - immediate low-cost coverage if you become seriously ill - props to Sen. McCain and that it was his idea in the campaign.

May be those who want to take the risk and not have coverage - may be companies who refuse to cover their workers - costs the rest of us money - individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance just as states require you to carry basic auto insurance - businesses either offer health care or chip in to the cost - most small businesses exempt from requirements - can't have people gaming the system

only works if everyone plays - significant details to be ironed out (laugh)

broad consensus for all the above (really? You sure?)

Key controversies still out there: bogus claims of death panels. "It is a lie, plain and simple." OMG THE WORD LIE HOW DARE HE CALL DEFENSELESS SARAH PALIN A LIAR WHY DOES HE HATE TRIG

insure illegal immigrants - false (although it shouldn't be) - EDIT: that guy shouted "You lie!"

no federal dollars used to fund abortions (although they should not be excluded)

publicly sponsored insurance option - guiding principle is and always has been that choice and competition allow consumers to do better (and the republicans applaud that line) - in 34 states, 75% of the market is controlled by five or fewer companies.

"Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people" Are you SURE ABOUT THAT, BARACK OBAMA?

"No interest in putting insurance companies out of business" Why not? "I just want to hold them accountable" (oh wow, the re pube lick ans liked that too)

making a not-for-profit public option FUCK YEAH BABY!

only an option for those without insurance - less than 5% would sign up (really? hmm.)

taxpayers not subsidising this option - have to be self-sufficient and rely on premiums.

Relating private v. public universities - why do private universities succeed by costing 1000 per cent more?

should not be exaggerated - it is only one part of the plan -

co-op or another non-profit entity - there MUST. BE. A. CHOICE.

not sign a plan that adds to our deficit - fair enough, but pull us out of the middle east first to ease that option - spending cuts if the savings don't materialise - too many initiatives were unpaid for - tax breaks for rich and iraq war included - cut to stock shot of republicans sitting there with hats on that say "I'm a dickhole"

speaking directly to seniors - SPEAK UP!

not a dollar of Medicare will be used to pay for this plan - the only thing this plan eliminates is the $100bns to pad profits but don't improve care - doctors, medical experts identifying waste and cutting its throat over the fire

help pay for Rx drugs for olds - reducing inefficiency in medicare, medicaid will pay for MOST OF THIS PLAN

finally (finally!) - reps have long insisted on readjusting medical malpractice laws (because it helps the rich doctors stop being less rich doctors) - people booing and I'm not sure why? Awaiting "Grow up, fuckos" from POTUS

put patient safety first, let doctors focus on practising medicine - HHS Sibelius is moving forward on this today. Well not today because it's fucking 9 p.m. Tomorrow. Well, it's thursday ... next monday.

will cost less than both wars, less than the tax cuts on the rich. Suck it. Most of these costs will be paid for by money that is already in the existing health care system - greater security, not higher taxes - if we can slow the cost growth by 1/10 % per year - reduce the deficit by $4trn

serious set of proposals, I will listen - will not waste time with those who want to kill this shit for POLITICS. And you fucking should not, sir!

STatus quo is not the solution - if we keep it the same, everything will go into a pile of shit and Newt Gingrich will bathe in it

Reading of Ted Kennedy's letter - what we face is above all a moral issue - fundamental principles of social(IST) justice and the character of our country.

healthy scepticism of gov't - Kennedy's liberalism was a passion for big gov't - those who knew him (dems?) knew what drove him was something more - Orrin Hatch knows that! McCain knows that! McCain looks like an actual zombie btw. Chuck "I'm No Nail" Grassley knows that!

Hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by security and fair play - sometimes government has to help that shit along, yo

History lesson on Medicare now - John Kerry is twitchy and has RLS.

"Sceptical that Gov't is looking out for them" Why shouldn't they be, if you stay alive, you can pay more taxes to the gov't! Cyclical!

And it ... is ... over!

Nothign interesting in the rebuttal. I was editing because I'm DONE.

Back in time

2009-08-30T17:39:00.003-04:00

For the past three days, Terre Haute's fairgrounds have been host to a "Diesel Extravaganza". As it turns out, this consists of assholes with giant trucks accelerating hard all over town, primarily on Hwy 41 of course, and blowing black smoke out of their oversized tailpipes. Now these are not ordinary diesel fuel vehicles, they are modified to have big stovepipe-style exhaust pipes. They are also apparently never maintained or cleaned, so that I am not even kidding a little when I say big fucking cloud of black smoke.

I honestly cannot remember seeing this much black smoke covering the roadways in front of me since I was a kid. That's not specific enough though, I can't remember any vehicles spewing this many toxins into my face since I was in grade school. This, for those who don't know, was in the early nineties. When you combine this with the fact that Terre Haute has very few wi-fi hotspots, people who dress like they're waiting for the new single from Third Eye Blind to come out, and people who actually chew tobacco, I cannot believe I'm still in 2009. I'm almost certain I'm stuck back in time.

News flash, Kurt Cobain just shot himself! Well, we think he did, but his wife might have done it! Pearl Jam have announced they aren't making any more music videos! What will MTV do to fill the airtime? Babylon 5 just started their 3rd season, and it's getting more intense by the second! Star Trek Voyager is slated to begin production later this month. Apparently the captain is going to be *gasp* a woman!

Ugh, I can barely even make fun of this stuff without it causing me pain. I can't believe, with gas (and diesel) prices being what they are (and what they were this time last year), there are still people with big giant smoke-billowing gas-guzzling do-it-yourself monster trucks driving up the road. These people either have far too much disposable income or don't know how to properly spend the income they do have, like on education and dental work for their kids. I'm not the only one who feels this way, too. I've seen many other drivers waving the smoke out of their faces and coughing as these dickless jokers speed off to the next filling station. Those are probably the only people really happy about this event: gas station owners who sell diesel. It's gotta be like Black Friday for them ... although that doesn't necessarily refer to the ink used to write their sales, more to the colour of everything near a road.

In which a geek is relocated

2009-08-28T19:56:00.003-04:00

As usual, it's been a long time since I last updated this. Two weeks ago Liz was offered a store manager position for nearly double her assistant manager yearly wages. Only problem was, we would have to move to Terre Haute.

Now it isn't THAT bad, okay? We have a bigger, nicer apartment on the 2nd floor, keyless entry (yes, keyless entry - a keypad on the door locks and unlocks it), a short drive to our respective works, a shorter drive for me back to Evansville for school, and between one to one and a half hours to Indianapolis, where such things as Skyline Chili and Apple are located. Plus there's the whole "Extra money" thing. That's good.

After we found a place to live and determined that I would still have to go to school in Evansville, my dad decided since he wouldn't have access to the truck on weekends, to trade it in for the Cash for Clunkers programme. This is how I now drive a new Hyundai Accent. It doesn't have a radio, but I listened to my computer on the way up and throughout town I don't need it that badly. Apparently I can fuel the car with $20 and change. I put in a $20 yesterday from below a quarter of a tank and it showed "full" afterward.

Living on Eastern time is something that takes a little getting used to. I like it better because the sun rises and sets at comparable times to Britain. Despite this, my dad calls it "Indiana Pretend Time, where they pretend they're in Eastern Time." This joke wasn't as funny as he thought the first time, and the funny value has only depreciated with time.

The process of moving sucks. It's been two years since I last moved, and before that it was a couple months, then nine months, then something like a year except I helped two friends move in between that, then once from overseas, once to overseas, once the fortnight before moving overseas to move across town ... man, fuck moving. I'm not entirely sure why I can't just get all new shit. The only real problem in moving is the giant chest of drawers, which weighs approximately 2.07 John Goodmans. It also has edges that, when I pulled it up the stairs, pressed very hard into my forearm muscles, causing matching bruises that are still there two full days later. I'm going to try my hardest to just push the motherfucker out the window when next we move.

Something that I'm FAIRLY sure happens in Terre Haute but not Evansville: people with big-ass trailers, I mean trailers longer than their primary vehicle, towed behind their truck/car/motorbike starting through the intersection around the time the light changes from yellow to red. Something tells me, Mr JB Hunt lorry driver, that you are not going to make it all the way through, especially since traffic is backed up so much because of that stopped car and the three cop cars required to assist that stopped car.

We still haven't got internet yet, which means I'm doing a lot of driving from wifi hotspot to wifi hotspot. Once or twice I sat around at ISU's library, but they block chat clients, which is inconvenient. There's a Panera Bread just about a mile and a half from the apartment which works in a pinch. Just north of I-70, meaning a quarter mile from the mall, there is a Starbucks that sits just within range of the Drury Inn opposite it on Hwy 41. The problem with this location is the difficulty involved in getting out of the place through the 41/70 intersection traffic (which is only made worse by all the shopping within half a mile of the intersection).

With a quick bit of google mapping, I found a local coffee shop called Coffee Grounds, which somehow manages to sell its stuff cheaper than most coffee shops I've ever been to. It's a really nice place - semi-industrial brick walls with writing on them, a mural on one section of the wall, tables with messages and names carved in, and four drink sizes - regular, tall, grande, and enorme. Much like at Starfucks, I stick with saying "large."

Once again, I'm hoping to start using this space more. It's not like I haven't had the time, I'm just a lazy cunt.

Geek Homework

2009-07-01T00:48:00.002-04:00

This is directly from a "geek bio" thing I was asked to do for Inner Geeks.

My name is Lestack and I'm an alcoh- I mean, I'm a geek.

My geekiness began as a child when I learned all I could about the solar system. At that age, I wanted to be an astronaut. Naturally, my talents with maths prevented me becoming an astronaut as an adult. Also my abhorrence for military service, authority, and general lack of interest in learning an entire new language. This interest in all things geeky emerged when I learnt of sci-fi stories of time travel. I was introduced by the Academy Award-nominated film trilogy Back to the Future. To be fair I was introduced to the series via Universal Studios' Back to the Future: The Ride in Orlando. From there it was a short jump to Star Trek IV: The One With The Time Travel And Whales. The next year I saw the Star Wars trilogy on USA network on Christmas Day. For the younger readers, you must understand, many years hence, they used to play other movies on Christmas Day than just A Christmas Story for 24 bloody hours straight. After the new movies came out, or rather after Episode I came out, I fell off the Star Wars wagon, though never quite the whole science fiction wagon. I picked the habit back up one summer when I was bored to bloody tears and had a library membership. I read all the Star Wars books beginning with the Han Solo novels from before the original movie all the way to the New Jedi Order, which at that point had just grown the beard. Off and on I would become interested in other sci-fi franchises. I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy shortly after the death of Douglas Adams, The Colour of Magic on the recommendation of a friend, and The Lord of the Rings because the movies had come out (I'm glad I read them, but I watch the films a lot more). I also picked up the Harry Potter series after having seen the first two films and been greatly impressed with them.

I truly began to branch out from franchise sci-fi when I picked up Matthew Woodring Stover's Heroes Die based on my love of his Star Wars novel Traitor. Stover's writing is a darker territory than anything I'd read before, but it seemed to fit with my interests perfectly. I read his other books when I got a chance, and after the release of Revenge of the Sith (the novelisation was written by Stover), I picked up the Republic Commando novels by Karen Traviss. After enjoying the hell out of them, I picked up her original-universe novels, the Wess'har Wars series. Upon discovering she was writing a tie-in novel for the video game franchise Gears of War, I bought that book having never played a second of the game. To date, I own all the novels written by Karen Traviss, Matthew Stover, Douglas Adams and JK Rowling.

Currently, I am reading the Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson after having completed the audiobook to Dune and met Kevin J Anderson last fall. Attentive buggers may have noticed I lean heavily towards book-format sci-fi, but I am also a fan of Buffy, Angel (some of the series), Firefly, Dollhouse, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, the first series of Heroes, Torchwood, X-files, Red Dwarf, Cowboy Bebop, X-men, V for Vendetta, Shaun of the Dead, Watchmen, Neil Gaiman, Robert A Heinlein, World War Z, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (the first two movies as well). Pay attention, because there will be a quiz.

Outside of geeky things, I am a journalism major, I work at a clothing shop in the mall which shall remain nameless to protect my own ass, I am a major anglophile who wants to live in Boston on the grounds that I don't need a visa, and I use Mac products exclusively. Oh wait, that one was geeky.

Within Inner Geeks, I am the geek liason – I contact the members regarding their contact info and notify them about events and meetings. I also send out spam-porn emails on occasion, but usually only after I've been drinking a lot.

2009-06-24T23:13:00.001-04:00

So the wedding stream didn't work. I don't really wanna hear about it :p

Anyway, I'm posting this because R K Milholland said it was okay, and I think it is AWESOME.

Watch the wedding stream

2009-05-22T10:22:00.002-04:00

It's the day of my wedding, and I have none of this "nervousness" or "Cold feet" crap people keep asking me about.

Maybe it's because I love my wife-to-be, maybe I just go through with something when I decide to (although if that were true, I'd be out of school already goddammit). But the only thing I'm anxious about is spending any more time with Liz's family. They're leaving after dinner tonight, so it won't be a LOT of time, but last night was fucking too much. There was some sort of attention-whorish drama last night, although I haven't the slightest fucking clue what it was about. I don't really care, all I know is I was sitting in the car for an hour waiting for Liz to finally come outside.

She doesn't need this right now. Hell, she doesn't need this right ever. I used to not understand how someone can kill a family member or an intimate, but after meeting her family, I fucking get it. There are no shortage of lakes and ditches to dump bodies in throughout this great (ha!) state, and even if I got caught, I'm not terribly sure I would be convicted of anything, because these people are god damn awful. Liz has requested me to not kill anyone though, which has put significant dampers on my plans for galactic domination, but I'm respecting her wishes.

I could really do without the self-important attention-seeking childish behaviour from people older than I am, though. Adam, the minister, said we might need somebody on crowd control to keep people out of the way of where we're walking in. I suggested they have nerf guns or water guns full of paint. From there, Rose suggested paintball guns, which I vetoed on the grounds of cost. One of the groomsmen is a Tae Kwan Do instructor though, so hopefully he can pull double duty beating the shit out of stupid people and ... well, standing around. His girlfriend, however, is an MMA student and could probably do a bit of damage. Maybe Cindy can whoop ass.

Watch the action at http://tinyurl.com/wolberwedding - starts at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

2009-05-15T17:31:00.003-04:00

There is absolutely no reason for people to speak with accents that make words unintelligible.

Seriously, we're ten years into the 21st century, and I got bitched out at my dad's workplace because a fat stupid redneck rent-a-cop managed to say "Wait here a minute" in a way that made it sound like "Go on ahead". I can't even FATHOM what kind of accent that is that changes the entire meanings of words. The simple answer is he's a lying piece of shit who should've been an abortion, but I can only work with the facts as I know them.

With the amount of television we have, and the amount that radio is gentrified so that all DJs sound like they just did a line of coke during the last commercial, I can't imagine how people can swallow words and sound like Larry the Cable Guy. Certainly there's a remaining minority of people who claim that's "heritage", "culture", and "not raping your ears", but one would think they would at least accidentally speak like a human once in a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-accent. I love accents, they're fascinating. But ones that make people unintelligible such as "Southern idiot" and "Wannabe southern idiot" and "general idiot" should have died out by now. So I challenge my readers (all eight of you) to do humanity a favour: If you know someone who sounds like an idiot when they speak, kill them in their sleep. You might find that you've been paying an enormous psychic price for their existence, and the only way to prove this is to chart your increased health upon their deaths.

Or maybe ... nah, I'm pretty sure killing the stupid isn't a bad idea.

This Star Trek will go on forever

2009-05-15T03:14:00.003-04:00

It's official: There is a new Star Trek movie out that lives up to the hype.

Well, perhaps I should clarify: I don't remember any hype from any Star Trek movie. I remember being excited for Star Trek Generations in 1994, but in my own defence I was 9 and obsessed with Next Generation. I quickly dropped that particular obsession in time to barely notice First Contact and Insurrection. I worked in a cinema (two, actually) the year Nemesis came out, and so it became the second Trek film I saw at cinemas. I still don't know if it would have been better if I'd not been spoiled by a friend at school, but as it is, it was "okay" overall.

About two years ago I heard they were making Star Trek XI. As a subscriber to the theory that all odd-numbered Trek films are crap, I thought "ugh". When I saw the first teaser trailer, the one with the welder on the hull of the Enterprise, I thought "hmm, I might have to give this one a chance." Once I saw casting reports, I was definitely interested and all but guaranteed to see the film. Then I saw the theatrical trailers.

Holy assballs, batman, were those trailers awesome! My only concern was "Where the fuck does Baby!Kirk get a '66 Corvette?" and "Why are they skydiving?" These concerns evaporated a half-second later when the next shot was totally awesome. Then they showed the scene where Uhura is stripping out of her cadet uniform. Upon subsequent rewatchings of this trailer I noticed something I couldn't believe I'd missed before: These people are ridiculously hot.

Okay, sure, there were some pretty people on the original series, and seriously good-looking people on Next Gen, but nobody was NEARLY as hot as New Kirk (Chris Pine), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the film's baddie Romulan-from-the-future Nero (Eric Bana). The closest the original series ever got to these never-unphotogenic people was when they used soft lighting on the Lieutenant that Ricardo Montalban's Khan Noonien Singh ended up taking with him and marrying in Space Seed, and that was mostly SOFT LIGHTING.

Moving on from my desire to sex every single person in the film, I have to say the film itself was immensely ballsy. It changes so many details about the Trek universe, something that Trekkies might not like if it weren't for the fact that this film is completely awesome. Kirk is not the same character (although generally the same person) that he is in the original line, or shall we say Prime Universe (as Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha has taken to calling it). Spock is mostly the same albeit with several backstories changed. And I must allow myself one minor spoiler: Spock and Uhura are totally doin' it. Yes, I said it. Granted, we only see them making out followed by a terrible line delivered by Uhura (who finally has a first name!), but you KNOW there's some hot Pon'farr action going on ... every seven years.

As for how they get away with the changes, JJ Abrams and the writers make use of one of the oldest Trek plot devices: Time travel. Certainly the science is shaky, the continuity is wrong even accounting for the time-travelly alternate-universey wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey (read up on Star Dates. On second thought, ignore Star Dates completely. The writers always have) but don't let that stop you from enjoying an action-packed summer blockbuster about the importance of interpersonal relationships, especially that of children with their parents. I have seen it twice, and the second time was with my parents on Mother's Day. I think we all took something away from it, and that is the ultimate success of Gene Roddenberry's vision.

boredom leads to urbandictionary, urbandictionary leads to QFM

2009-04-14T15:54:00.001-04:00

If today is anything like what the summer will be like, I'm going to be very bored.

I'm working on classwork from home today, but since my internet connection is down I'm actually at the library. Oh, and because I'm a daft bastard I forgot my headphones. Basically, the only thing I can do is copy this audiobook to listen later and try not to kill the bastard in the nearest chair who won't stop texting.

I'm apparently worthless without internet or headphones. When the hell did that happen? What did people do before television, internet, and radio? A quick glance at history books reveals the answer: They went to war. I suppose it's not so strange an idea ... after all, it's taking me some effort to not garrote this chav in the opposite chair. I suppose if I get seriously bored, I can just give in to my anger ... only my hatred can destroy him ... whoops, sorry, started quoting Emperor Palpatine again.

Today's my day off work because I have class for seventeen thousand hours on Tuesdays, so that's what prevents me going to the mall. Also, my loathing of everything at the mall and everyone who shops there, that does play a part. I'm at the library because it's free to read, free to browse the intertubes, and free to just sit there and not do anything. Really, ask anyone using any chair there. All these things being free doesn't stop it being boring though, so I find myself looking out the window behind me, wishing today was tax day and the teabaggers were out. I'll have to come back tomorrow to watch the teabaggers.

Incidentally, I am simultaneously amused and confused by every news report I see on the teabagging protests. It boggles the mind that people can't use urbandictionary.com to find out the alternate definition of anything. For example, shoelace. The reason I chose shoelace is because I looked at my feet. A quick search on urbandictionary.com and I learn that shoelace is also a euphemism for the pattern of ... well, just search it yourselves. But don't say I didn't warn you ... I mean it is urbandictionary.com.

Half the stuff on there I'm sure somebody made up without there being precedent. After searching "Shoelace" it gave me nearby entries alphabetically, and one was "shoekakke". Upon reading the definition, along with that of "shoejob" (the act of a girl stimulating a man to orgasm with her cute shoes), I am reasonably confident that before someone typed all that shit in, nobody had done it before. Thanks to the laws of quantum fetish mechanics (the act of thinking up a strange new fetish causes it to be real) I am sure someone has done it NOW, if for no other reason than to try it out or to see if anyone they know is actually dumb enough to do this.

At least that's what I tell myself as I pour myself a scotch.

Hockey - a diatribe

2009-04-06T13:06:00.000-04:00

I have been a hockey fan for as long as I can remember knowing about hockey. Needless to say, I have several (thousand) gripes with the sport, despite maintaining it is the best sport in the history of sport.

First off, icing. What the hell is it? I have watched many hockey matches live, a few on television, and listened to none on the radio but nobody has ever explained this to me. Like any good researcher, I looked on Wikipedia first. According to the article on the subject, icing is “when a player shoots the puck across two red lines, the opposing team's goal line being the last, and the puck remains untouched”. Now I certainly can see why this dangerous act is worthy of penalty. Oh wait, no I don't. Yes, certainly it's boring, and not something players should do as a habit, but is it worthy of completely stopping play and having a referee arm signal? Besides, I thought that was “dumping the puck”; icing just gives the idea that we're penalising people for stopping suddenly in front of each other and causing ice to spray all over each other, and this is a sport where if they don't do that, there will be a lot more injuries than just from fights.

On the subject of fights, the NHL is utter crap. My first NHL game was a St Louis Blues matchup against the New York Islanders. This was back in 1994, when the Blues had Brett Hull, and were sort of somewhat good as opposed to just nearby. Anyway, there was real excitement in the air. There were hard body checks, there were fights, there was shouting and swearing – all a beautiful experience for a nine-year-old boy who is still afraid to say “damn.” Of late though, I have been hard-pressed to see much (if any) fighting on an NHL match. If I want to watch a beautiful game, I would watch football (real football, not American football. I know it can get confusing but I refuse to call it “soccer”). I want to see some action in my hockey, not skating back and forth. Throw a punch or change the name of your sport.

Of course, I have no idea when players stopped fighting in NHL hockey, because for several years now hockey has been almost impossible to find on television. I know in 2006 there was a player lockout which probably didn't help convince any networks to air hockey, and that decision carried over a couple years, but the thing with lockouts and strikes is they don't happen every year, or even every other year. If they did, they'd just declare it a holiday week and write it into the calendar. NBC/Universal must have grown some yarbles of late by starting up NHL Sunday, airing daytime games even during NFL season. Unfortunately I can't commend them too much because NHL Sunday airs just this side of not at all. The last time I saw it was in February, and there are still games to play, therefore games to air! NBC, as well as every other network with a sport division: air some hockey already. We fans south of the snowline are starved for a real sport, and this is the only one that happens in this country between January and April.

We're here to defend wealth

2009-04-04T14:44:00.006-04:00

I'm not sure when I decided I hated money, but I think it was around age ten. Yes, ten. I took a good hard look at the function of money in society and decided it was a middleman and therefore could be removed completely. I came up with my own simple way of acquisition of goods and job creation - everyone can go in and take what they need. Nobody steals anything because the idea is meaningless. Everybody works unless it's medically necessary to not work (that would include old age).

I'm well aware of how complicated this would be to do worldwide (because it would be necessary to implement it worldwide), however in our current system, people can go into debt and even bankruptcy before age 25. There is an entire industry based on high-interest short-term loans to people who are already living paycheque to paycheque. There is an entire second industry based on the first one that takes any and all information surrendered at the high-interest loan place and bombards the phone numbers with unsolicited text messages and phone calls at odd hours, and the email addresses with hundreds (at least) of spam messages (how spam messages make any fucking money for anyone I've yet to understand).

Money is theoretically how we determine if someone has worked hard enough to receive certain goods and services. When we throw CEOs, no-talent musicians, professional athletes, and all of Wall Street and the City into the mix, doesn't that completely bastardise that definition? I defy anyone to tell me how a stockbroker works harder than a minimum wage retail worker. I defy anyone to tell me how a professional athlete works harder than a factory worker who works twelve hours per day in dangerous and unhealthy surroundings, and then his bosses try to cut his pay to raise theirs. How the hell do Nickelback deserve all that money they make?

I won't even get started ... that's a fucking lie, I'm already started on the health insurance industry. When people get sick, the options include pay cash for treatment (usually an entirely too-large amount) or already have insurance before you even got sick. Isn't "insurance" a euphemism for "protection racket"? Anyway, the insurance doesn't even work that well because if you already have insurance, odds are it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't necessarily even cover what you need. And even if it does cover what you need, some shitbag at the company can just decide you don't really need this particular procedure. An insurance company isn't there to help its customers, it's there to take their fucking money.

Even if the insurance company DOES pay for some of your treatment, they probably won't pay for the whole thing (which makes PERFECT SENSE!). They'll pay for maybe half to three quarters of the bill, leaving you with a huge amount of money to pay them. Gods help you if you're really sick and need multiple procedures, and even more so if you're young and don't have a lot of money anyway.

Recently I've heard and seen a lot about a move towards universal health coverage. Some of this I've heard from representatives of doctors and insurance companies. The representatives of insurance companies I don't fucking trust - I'm completely certain they only want a law to make god damn sure every human in America has to buy a policy from their existing company, and they can still turn people away for procedures their doctors (you know, the people who are fucking qualified to decide if something is medically necessary) have decided is medically necessary. Frankly, I wouldn't be satisfied if that happened. I guarantee anyone with an existing medical bill will be totally screwed. The only thing I'll be actually satisfied with is full health coverage including psychological, surgical, and preventative treatment.

It worked for every other post-industrial nation in the world; I think we could pull it off.

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Now listening: Billy Bragg - No Power Without Accountability

2009-03-23T14:42:00.002-04:00

Walking around USI's campus I find myself wishing I had a big box of sidewalk chalk. One of the primary forms of student group advertising is writing on the sidewalk with multi-coloured chalk like many of us did as kids. Today I saw a chalkvert that said "Liar, Lunatic or LORD: Is Jesus who he says he is?" The chalkvert is from the student christian group, so I think we know which answer they want us to give. Disappointing, really, because I sort of wanted one of those controversial-views speakers to talk about how Jesus was just some crazy guy and piss off half of campus.

The more usual type of chalkvert is for events, like a stand-up comic or a movie night. However, the College Dems and College Republicans also make considerable use of this medium. Last fall I saw plenty of anti-Obama stuff, but strangely little anti-McCain or anti-Palin stuff (I fully expected no anti-Biden stuff because nobody cares). Even now, the College Reps have in their ads such things as "Tired of big government spending? Tired of socialist policies? So are we" and then the time and place of their next meeting. That's a pretty ballsy statement for people affiliated with a party that DID spend huge amounts of money on an unpopular war, and even ballsier considering this is a school with easy access to things like dictionaries, encyclopædias, and possibly even actual hard copies of The Communist Manifesto, all of which could easily define socialism as "not what's going on right now". Calling this socialism is like calling pub darts a sport: some things are similar, but there are too many more differences.

The LORD be with your botty

2009-03-19T21:18:00.001-04:00

Every few weeks, if not more often, I find myself wondering just how many crazy people exist in the world. I usually wonder this after seeing some news story about, well, crazy people. Frequent topics include public nudity and the kind of mother/40-year-old son who lives at home domestic dispute that one can expect to see on the Maury Povich Show, but one of my absolute favourite topics of crazy people news stories involves people seeing the face of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or Mohammad in a potato crisp, slice of toast, wall, or most recently, a chair.

The French island of Reunion, located in the Indian Ocean, is the source of this latest sighting of the Lord. Someone discovered one day that the rumples in the priest's cushion resembled the Son of God too closely to be a coincidence. According to an Agence France-Presse report, thousands have come to the island to witness the miracle that originated with somebody's bum.

This brings to my mind significant questions about the Divine Nature of Christ. It would appear that the Son of Man first appeared on foods, and now has appeared on someone's seat. Literally. I have been told throughout my life that God works in mysterious ways, but this just seems silly. If God wanted to send somebody a message, why not use the classics – a burning bush worked wonders for the Israelites in Egypt, after all, and don't get me started on the ten plagues! But I don't remember the biblical tale of King Saul seeing the face of Joshua Ben Nun in a plate of hummus, proclaiming it a miracle, and ordering all to visit to take souvenir etchings. Frankly, I think this is mere coincidence. If the real God wanted to send a message to his people, I think he has a better marketing department than one that would tell him to appear in somebody's butt imprint.

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Now playing: Rob Zombie - Feel So Numb
via FoxyTunes

Bitter ilstack is bitter. Also, fuck

2009-03-10T21:49:00.004-04:00

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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne - I Don't Know
via FoxyTunes

To quote the great Stephen Fry, "Bah, Poo, Botty and Tit." I was enjoying the weather this evening, sitting on the "porch" behind my flat with the screen door open and the cat on a leash, letting her explore where she would. I pushed the computer chair out there and was reading Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, when I thought I ought to get a picture of me and the cat doing this. I popped inside to look for my camera ... only to find FUCK ALL.

So I dug up a few things to look under them, opened a few things, threw a few things, checked the car, phoned USI security, Liz, and my friend Joe in Henderson, and yet no joy. Trust me with an expensive piece of equipment, I'll lose the fucking thing in three months. It was at this point I decided the only possessions I need at this time are a television, a computer, clothes, a car to get to work and school, a camera (EL OH EL FUCK ME), and a place to live. Hell, I don't even NEED my iPod, I think. Everything else I can borrow ... I have a library membership, I have access to bookshops, I have the computer ... WHICH DOESN'T WANT ME TO LISTEN TO MR CROWLEY APPARENTLY.

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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne -NOT MISTER CROWLEY THAT'S FOR FUCKING SURE
via FoxyTunes

Galactica fanboyism - it's totally justified

2009-02-28T17:46:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it's been a tenday since I wrote anything. To be fair I've been a little busy between work and school, but today I'm free. Just in time to fanboy out over Battlestar Galactica. Major last-night spoilage ahead.

For those who saw the episode last night, "Someone to Watch Over Me", you know this was simultaneously one of the best, most intense, most disturbing, and most ASLDJFALSKJDF (to use a computer curse) episodes of any television in ... ever. It was one of the most intense episodes of telly I've ever seen, plot-wise almost certainly. It was partly a Starbuck episode, one we've been waiting for since she found Char-buck on Erf (Yes, that's several fanon words but you'll have to get over it). Kara's drinking (big surprise) and she hears this guy incessantly playing a piano ... because he's composing. She goes over to help him because her father was a pianist and composer. In what we think is a one-off scene, she goes to Helo's place and gets a tape (cassette tape, yeah I know!) of one of her father's recordings, and Hera, AKA "Creepy Cybrid Kid" gives Kara a picture of what we think are stars. Later on, when Kara and the pianist, nicknamed "Slick", are working on the second movement, she remembers the stars drawing and puts it on a sheet of music. It works. They try it.

It's the Final Four theme - the "All Along the Watchtower" based theme music for the final four Cylons.

Col. Tigh and Ellen are sitting at the bar, and Tigh's face is completely fucking priceless. He goes over and demands to know where Kara learnt that music, and 1) she says she played it as a kid and 2) she looks over at Slick, who is no longer there. Slick is her Head-Dad character. What the frak.

Meanwhile, the Cylons on the Fleet Baseship want to try Boomer, currently in Galactica's brig, for treason. Chief Tyrol, who used to be frakking Boomer before she shot Adama (christ, this is like a soap opera!) wants them to not try her and execute her. He replaces Boomer with some random innocent 8 and lets her go free. She uses his good will to beat the shit out of Athena, frak Helo (Athena's hubby) in front of her while she's locked in a cupboard, and kidnap Hera, drug her, put her in a box, and take off in a Raptor to take her back to Cavil, proving that she's a god damn piece of shit all along.

All of it reads like a soap opera, certainly, except it wasn't like that. The one part that was VERY not like that was the "Boomer beating up Athena and frakking her husband" scene, which was very explicit albeit out of focus, and seriously fucking disturbing, because what we see IN focus is Athena, watching this other woman frakking her husband. The scene takes about a minute, and it's horribly painful to watch. What makes it worse is that Tyrol is an accessory to Boomer's kidnapping of Hera, because he actually helped her load the box into the Raptor, not to mention BREAKING HER OUT OF PRISON.

This episode is by far the best example for why Galactica is one of the best god damn shows on television, dare I say ever. Every time you think something could go right, guess what, it not only goes wrong, but it goes more wrong than you ever imagined it could. Given one episode, anyone will get absolutely hooked on this show and be irretrievably attached to finding out WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN HOLY SHIT.

Businesses = idiots who want my money

2009-02-17T20:09:00.002-05:00

Businesses must be, as a rule, run by retarded people.

Liz and I opened a joint bank account the other day. This has caused no end of problems, not one of which was our fucking fault. First, her direct deposit tried to go into her old bank account, which being closed, would not accept it. This is a similar situation to what happened with my direct deposit fuckup except slightly better except not, because the bank account in question 1) existed at some point and 2) belonged to the person who was getting the money.

The bank people claimed she would be able to access our account via her existing online banking username and password. We would have appreciated it if the bank people had been so kind as to inform us at that time that they were lying to us. She is currently only able to access the account using my password and name. This is not a problem apart from the fact that the bank people are dirty god damned liars who lie to people and don't tell the truth when they do it. Also, her debit card doesn't work, which we kind of figured would happen and we never even bothered to ask about.

Today, and this is where the complaint against dumbasses running businesses comes in, we sat down to figure out why our account had got so low. We looked at our online ledger which showed us no fewer than fifteen pending transactions. When we removed from consideration the deposits, there were thirteen pending transactions. Many of these transactions are from Thursday, when we went to Indianapolis, or Friday, when we were in town, or the weekend. Now I certainly know that banks don't do a god damn thing on the weekends, and they had, for some inexplicable reason, President's Day off. But the fact that since Thursday none of our transactions have gone through is not the fault of the banks.

This indeed has happened once before - to Liz when she was closing her personal bank account. She had a pending four dollar transaction on her card, which was at Chik-Fil-A, the famous mall crappy chicken "fast" "food" "restaurant". She hadn't used the card since the first day of that week, and the day we closed the account was either a Wednesday or a Thursday. Either way, they'd had three days to take their money. Apparently businesses aren't in any hurry to be paid for things, which is odd, because if you actually try the Wimpy approach ("I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," from Popeye cartoons) they will laugh in your face and probably spit at you and call the police because there is a crazy person in their place of business and they don't have to put up with that.

And I thought debit cards removed the money from your account instantly, and credit cards chalked up a running tally for you to pay later. Maybe I need to redefine. Or they do.

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Now playing: Daft Punk - Face to face [Cosmo Vitelli rmx]
via FoxyTunes

I think I'm quitting driving.

2009-02-15T21:17:00.004-05:00

I hit a motherfucking SUV today. There was damage to my car, and there was a scratch (that came off with a little light rubbing) on the SUV. I fucking hate driving and occasionally life in general.

Here's what the car looks like now:

Emo Conservatives

2009-02-15T01:35:00.005-05:00

Now playing: Daft Punk - Robot Rock / Oh Yeah
via FoxyTunes

Oh, National Review, what won't you make up a "liberals destroyed it" myth about?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "War On Christmas," where "every" retail store "forbade" its employees saying "Merry Christmas" to customers out of a desire to "Discriminate" against "Christianity". Most of the examples of stores I've heard this myth about are Wal-Marts, and anyone who thinks Wal-Mart gives a rat's rotting corpse about anything other than cash is retarded. When I first heard of this, I worked at Best Buy. That year, we had gift cards with a Christmas tree on, as well as one with a menorah. The two years after that, I worked at Borders, where we had no shortage of Christmassy, and even Jesusy items for the season. At no point was anyone, to my knowledge, told to say any specific holiday greeting to anyone else, or refrain from saying a specific holiday greeting. I have never bought the utter horseshit idea of a "war on" any particular holiday. It certainly didn't help that it is notorious liar Bill O'Reilly's pet project from late October to whenever he gets tired of hearing himself talk.

Today, on Valentine's Day, the bastion of conservative circle-jerkery known as the National Review Online had a column on how awful Valentine's commercials are. I happen to agree with them, mainly because most of them are sexist and based on an ancient and irrelevent way of thinking. NRO, however, claim the problem is the same as the "commercialization of Christmas and the candy-fication of Easter". Okay, I don't like the commercialisation of Christmas either, mainly because I like to think of that holiday as one of family togetherness and sharing what we have in common. Easter is something I haven't celebrated in some years, so I don't care so much.

But then, the NRO went on to say that Valentine's has been reduced to "mail-order seduction by a nation of salivating Caligulas?" The obvious meaning is that Valentine's Day, in the modern tradition a celebration of love, has lost its original meaning, and this has happened recently as a result of the loss of "traditional morals", meaning of course since "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air. This is yet another example of tories being desperate for a time that never existed and using holidays that never or only recently meant what they want them to mean.

Much like Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day has its origins in a Roman festival. Lupercalia, yet another Roman fertility festival, was celebrated between the equivalent of February 13-15 and was abolished by Pope Gelasius I. According to Prof. Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, no link between a saint named Valentinus (the alleged basis for "Saint" Valentine's Day) and a celebration of romantic love existed until the time of Geoffery Chaucer, when courtly love became popular. In short (too late), Valentine's Day and its historic predecessors have been, and always will be, about fuckin'. And really, I'm not sure why conservatives have a problem with that. Maybe they don't like what they find at every branch in their family tree.

(Fuckin'.)

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Now playing: Daft Punk - Face To Face / Short Circuit
via FoxyTunes

Anna Nicole Shitty Music

2009-02-12T00:06:00.003-05:00

Today I'm going to talk mainly about my favourite place in the world: Britain. Britain has been called many things: a far-away colony, a damp little island, an empire, THE empire, and my personal favourite:

Britain, Britain, Britain. Why would you ever want to leave? Anybody who goes on holiday abroad is a traitor! I bloody love it here! Bloody love it! We produce the best films, the finest cuisines and our dogs are relatively rabies free. And this is all thanks to the peoples of Britain. Let us look at them in this program in which we now look at them now. Boom, boom, shake the room! - Tom Baker

That is an introduction from an episode of the hit sketch comedy show Little Britain. As noted heavily in the show, Britain is full not only of culture and history, but also idiots. Case in point: This news story from Britain's Guardian newspaper. Following on the heels of the Jerry Springer opera, which was the subject of an asinine obscenity lawsuit, one of the creators has decided to make a musical about Anna Nicole Smith's life. My only response is "ALKDSJFAKLSJDFALKSDFALKS" as that is what happens when I bash my head upon my desk without first moving my computer out of the way.

I'm glad I don't have to say, "This has got to be the stupidest idea for a musical ever," because I already know about the Jerry Springer and Batboy musicals (which incidentally had a long run on the West End). Granted, apart from stupid shit like this, the West End has Shakespeare plays and long-established old-ass musicals that most people have seen in one way or another before. When I was there, I saw Chicago and Fame, both of which are American. I didn't see any Shakespeare because ... well, I'm an idiot. I went for the cheap and easy ones I already knew about instead of LEARNING something about acting.

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Other topic: Who doesn't know "Muzak"? It's a widely-known term for that crappy music they play at every department store, mall, grocery store, and most other public places. They used to play instrumental shitty versions of shitty pop songs, until they got the idea to play the shitty songs themselves. They are the reason you hear crap like the Dawson's Creek song in the mall, and ... probably the only reason anyone under the age of should-be-dead-by-now heard even one Barry Manilow song before he started getting blown by Pop Idol contestants. At the risk of ripping off Best Musical Ever Sweeney Todd, "But not for long ... "

Muzak, based in North Carolina (reason 47,827 not to visit the American South), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Apparently they owe between $100m and $500m. The CEO believes this will give the company* the chance to regain control of their finances and continue torturing people with good taste worldwide. Or, the way it was put in El Reg: Muzak says that its "sensory experiences" reach 100 million people each day. That should be a fucking war crime.

*hideous conglomeration of auditory shit
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Now playing: Dogma Free America - Episode 76.5--Dogma Free America
via FoxyTunes

Free association - I need to write more goddammit

2009-02-11T04:03:00.006-05:00

Now playing: Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (D.O.S.E. Mix)
via FoxyTunes

I haven't updated in much longer than I'd like, and I figure the next few days would be perfect to remedy that. Tomorrow I don't have class because my prof has a family thing. He also won't be there on Friday. Meanwhile, due to Liz having a doctor's appointment in Indy on Thursday, I won't be in class THAT day. So I had two days of class followed by a three-day weekend followed by one (possibly more) day of work. I feel like I shouldn't be wearing a shirt and have stains of all sorts on what clothing I do wear.

I'm officially desperate for a new electric guitar now. I keep finding all these awesome metal songs I want to learn to play and I feel like playing them acoustically sounds retarded. Plus, as digital and electronic as Rob Zombie's catalogue is, it would be asinine to play "Pussy Liquor" on a Grandpas Guitars. On the bright side, I remember how to play, and I remember several of the songs I knew when I was first learning. I have made it a point to forget all the Creed and Nickelback (one song each) I learnt because I am not a pompous no-talent wannabe.

As for newly discovered music that I recommend to anyone: Wolves in the Throne Room is great symphonic metal. I say symphonic because these songs could easily be considered symphonies on the quality, length, and intricacy contained. Rammstein is a band I heard of ten years ago and I thought they were pretty good, but I never really got into them because I was into generic rap and things one heard on the radio. Liz started flipping out about the song Spieluhr and then she found the linked video that reinterprets the (almost identical) story of the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child". My fiancee, for the record, has excellent taste in most things - exceptions include Sex and the City and peanut butter sandwiches. Today I listened to a Foo Fighters concert recorded at Wembley Stadium in London, which was utterly fantastic and only confirmed my desire to see them play live. I add them to the list that includes Metallica, Flogging Molly, Ozzy, KT Tunstall (whole thing this time), Rage Against the Machine (before they break up again), Tom Morello (with or without a band), and anyone playing with Jimmy Page.

I hate people who tell other people what sport team they should support. I was recently yelled at by someone for wearing a Patriots hat. I wear the Pats hat (as well as Boston Red Sox hats) because I have a strong desire to move to Boston or at least the Massachusetts area, and I've always enjoyed watching both teams (Boston teams I do not support include the Celtics and Bruins, as well as any NCAA teams). I do not support IU, UK, ISU, USI, SIU, UE, PU, BSU, FU, FSU, FUAD, UCLA, St Louis, Chicago (any team), Cincinatti, etc, etc, etc because I do not enjoy watching them. The person who complained about my Patriots hat said I should support UK, at which point I had to mentally count to ten to prevent from slapping him for insulting me so badly. Really, life is bad enough telling people I am from Indiana. I would never seek to move down the evolutionary ladder via sports or anything else.

I've decided to start marking both the start and finish of my blog posts with what song I'm listening to at the time. There are several songs in between, but I think on the posts where I actually have something to say that would be horribly interruptive to the general flow and progression of my writing. After all, that is what I'm trying to do with my blog posts: become a better writer.

Obviously today was not a giant leap for writing-kind. I'm okay with it though, because it's some fucking content already.

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Now playing: Black Sabbath - The Sign Of The Southern Cross
via FoxyTunes

An edit! I nearly forgot - my friend Leah started a new jobs-related blog and twitter today. Check it out at http://leahsgotit.blogspot.com/ and http://www.twitter.com/leahsgotit.

Chock full of Galactica spoilers

2009-01-31T06:03:00.004-05:00

This entry is made in the spirit that people reading it are watching Battlestar Galactica and have seen the 30 January episode "The Oath". If you have not seen it (or you don't care about this stuff) plz do not read, because you will be spoiled (or bored).

I'm finding it hard to chart exactly how we got to this point from the beginning. Certainly something like this would've happened if we jumped straight from the Mini to series 4.5, but we didn't, and couldn't. It took a bit of thinking, but I think throughout the latter part of series 3 and the first part of series 4, we didn't see the point of view of the common man in the fleet much. In fact, I think we got too good a look at the cylon/cylon sympathiser (cylathiser?) point of view with Baltar being on the Basestar Sonatica, plus Athena's story. The story of the average Fleet denizen wasn't told ... and now it is.

The average fleet denizen ... well, I'd hate to say the average denizen is a racist shit-sucker, but ... on one hand, I'd say that's the case, based on how in favour many ships were of the anti-cylons-boarding legislation. On the other hand, I don't think any of those racist shit-suckers really wanted armed insurrection as a solution, as we saw when Gæta shut off (apparently still) President Roslin's wireless address. These people heard Roslin's voice for the first time in far too long and after comm silence from the Galactica, in itself a disturbing thing, and heard about the armed mutiny to boot, and the chatter is immediately addressed at the President.

Oh, and I hate Gæta for a variety of things: the racism, the betrayal (despite how unintentional it may have been) on New Craaaaaaprica, the huge betrayal of many people he's worked alongside for whatever he said, seven years, the arresting of Hoshi, his FRAKKING BOYFRIEND (hell, I'm gonna say the not-discussing this with his boyfriend - that's one of the first things I do if I have a Grand Plan™, discuss it with my fianceé - maybe he could've talked him out of this FRAKKING RETARDED MANOEUVRE), every single death, including the ones at the hands of Tigh, Tyrol, Adama, Adama, and Thrace, ... yeah, what a dick.

That said, this episode was fantastic and more than makes up for its set-up last week. Adama and Tigh being total action heroes, Kara shooting that assgoblin in the head to save Lee, then shooting the other guy when they didn't IMMEDIATELY believe she meant business (despite all being covered in Assgoblin #1's blood), Tyrol being the best person in history yet again (Tyrol is my hero by any stretch), and the Balcubines being the primary contra force were all highlights. But yes, definitely Old Ass Action Hero moments ... Oh, and if they throw in "I'm getting too old for this shit" in any of the DVDs or future episodes, I will scalp Ron Moore, because that joke was pitiful in Lethal Weapon 1.

This concludes my weekly fanboyish rant.

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Now playing: Beastie Boys - Super Disco Breakin'
via FoxyTunes

Edited to fix the title of the episode.

snow days

2009-01-28T22:09:00.003-05:00

Being trapped inside (or at least at home with nowhere to go) tends not to lend itself to writing moods. I prefer to sit around and videogame or watch The Empire Strikes Back. If it's especially pretty out, I'll do photos. This is what I did tonight.

Well, first, we got ready and tried to go grocery shopping. Well, tried to get into the car by chipping away at the ice with the hilt blade of one of my swords, and then I crawled through the boot into the back seat to shove the doors open rather than tug on tiny plastic handles to get the doors open. Oh, and then the fucking thing was stuck in the space, and some people who were stuck this morning at 5:30 came and helped us push the car out of the damn space. Eventually we got out of the car park and onto Green River to go grocery shopping.

That was a stupid idea ... mainly because the grocery store had no power. There were also a lot of people in that no-power-having grocery store. We decided I could just get food tomorrow when I come home from class (because USI WILL be in session tomorrow). That's when my parents rang to offer to take us out to dinner. I guess they didn't want to eat cold tins of soup (they don't have power). Afterwards, we saw one of the trees by the restaurant frozen the hell over. I didn't get that one, but I got quite a few more from around the block of flats.

And, what happens to HDTV during local weather clusterfucks:

WARNING: this post may piss you off.

2009-01-26T22:12:00.005-05:00

Goddammit, stupid people, stop breeding!

I mean you, {name deleted} of Fort Wayne, Ind., my future (I shudder to think) sister-in-law.

Let's look at the facts. You have two children by two different men. I don't have a problem with that as such, until there's the part where you don't care for them. That's the part I have a problem with. You're not a mother, you're a baby dispenser (a crude term, but it's becoming more true as time goes on).

The first child is healthy and a joy to be around ... until she got abused, and now she's scared as hell of anything remotely male. While pregnant with the second, you discovered you had a bleeding condition, causing you to need shots multiple times a day, every day. Your child is a special needs child whom you will have no chance of properly raising even if you could manage not to be a shitsucking fuckwit for a few minutes.

Then, you went to prison. You didn't even go for something fun, it was for CHEQUE FRAUD. Somewhere around then, you became a scary preachy evangelical Christian. All you need to do is change your position on Mexicans (that is to say, get off their dicks) and you'd be a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. After you got out of prison, you found out you had a uterine tumour ... of the same kind your sister, my fiancee, gets (except on her vaginal wall). The kind of tumour that feeds off œstrogen, one of the main hormones pregnant women practically shit out of every pore. Somehow, this didn't suggest to you that you should avoid having some tosser shoot his beans up your muff and you got pregnant AGAIN.

I'll admit your surroundings certainly aren't helping you. Your mother wants you to get a hysterectomy after the almost-certainly-doomed hellbaby is born. Perhaps I should've said "born", because there's no way that thing's gonna come out looking remotely human, sharing all that space with the tumours. Regardless, the medically not-fucking-idiotic course would be to get an abortion straight away, followed by the hysterectomy. Naturally, you won't do that, and your mother won't let you, saying she would disown you for an abortion. Never mind that she has no problem with her other daughter with this condition getting an abortion should she become pregnant ... I mean it's the same fucking reason, the same fucking procedure, what's the difference? Your mother wouldn't have to be there for Mrs Lestack's abortion? Or is she really that big a knucklefuck idiot?

Regardless, you'll either miscarry or die in childbirth. I don't think either one would teach you to STOP FUCKING WITHOUT PROTECTION, but just in case, I'm bringing you a gift next time I see you. Normally I would suggest getting you a gift card for a free abortion, but the problem with that is threefold: 1) I'm not sure they have those. 2) You wouldn't use it because you're a total fuckwit. 3) I need the money more than you do. So instead I bring gifts of a twelve-pack of condoms (that should last you a couple days), some RU-486 (same), and a wire coat hanger (that one is reusable).

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Now playing: Opeth - Death Whispered A Lullaby

via FoxyTunes

Frost/Nixon

2009-01-25T16:52:00.002-05:00

I just got back from seeing Frost/Nixon. I would have seen it much sooner than now, but no cinema in the area carried it. Milk was the same situation. I figured it would happen with Milk, this being Southern Indiana and thoroughly homophobic, but Frost/Nixon isn't even a divisive issue ... well, not now. Some may claim it's another instance of "liberal Hollywood elitists tarnishing the character of a conservative icon," but only if they haven't seen the film.

Frost/Nixon, based on the stage play that's based on the actual interview (and lead-up to it), gives a documentary-style account of David Frost's hard-hitting interview with ex-President Richard Nixon, only three years after his resignation. It is documentary-style in that the actors who play certain real-life supporting characters give occasional fourth-wall-breaking interview clips to the camera inter-cut with the story proper. Oliver Platt, known (to me at least) from his work on Huff (as Huff's womanising, drug-addicted lawyer) and The West Wing (as the womanising, four-times-divorced head White House Counsel) plays one of the political advisors and research assistants to David Frost in the lead-up. He also does a hilarious Nixon parody, for the record. Sam Rockwell, whom I must say is one of the best actors to grace the screen, plays another researcher, hell-bent on getting Nixon to confess to any (or all) criminal wrongdoing.

But Frank Langella's portrayal of Richard Nixon is, dare I say it, moving. Langella does what I never thought possible by making Nixon a more sympathetic character than his real-life counterpart ever appeared to be. There is one scene when the interviewers take a break in the filming for Easter, and Frost stays in his hotel to worry about financing, most if not all of which is falling through. He receives an unexpected call from President Nixon, who has had a little too much to drink. Nixon pours his heart out to the man who is supposed to be dead-set on asking hard-hitting questions and finding out the truth from this criminal of an ex-POTUS. Langella's performance in this scene is brilliantly stirring and even makes me feel for the real Richard Nixon, something I have never said before in my life.

Michael Sheen's portrayal of Frost is perhaps overshadowed by Langella's Nixon, but as an American I know more about the former POTUS than I do a still-living, still-working television presenter and interviewer. I have never seen an interview of Frost's, although I was interested to know he interviewed all British Prime Ministers up to 2007 and all US Presidents up to 2008 (I suppose it's a little early to interview President Obama). His acting was quite good from an objective point of view, however; virtually the whole film Frost is trying to get funding for this project and failing most of the time. Sheen's face throughout has a look of someone up against it, but covering it up to present a brave face to the world, something I recognise quite well from everyday life.

The true star of the film, of course, was Clint Howard. Clint, better known as Ron's Brother, always plays a bit role and does it wonderfully. Several years ago he won an MTV Movie Lifetime Achievement Award, an award that has never been more deserved by anyone than Clint Howard. Seriously, Clint Howard has probably the best career in the world. He is guaranteed camera time on his brother's projects and has been in other works with significant (if significantly minor) roles. Frost/Nixon is yet another impressive entry on an already-impressive CV.

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Now playing: Opeth - Ghost Of Perdition

via FoxyTunes

The twatty t-shirt

2009-01-22T10:26:00.002-05:00

Spring is around the corner ... no it frakking isn't, that's ridiculous. Spring is around the corner in the clothing retail world, where I work. Actual spring, however, is still a few months off. But since clothing retailers have to stay ahead of the curve so that people have their spring outfits all ready to wear in the spring (when they go shopping for summer outfits), spring clothes are in stores now, including the shittiest clothing invention of history: the polo shirt.

I wore polo shirts nearly every day for nine years in school, having gone to a Catholic school with those awful not-fetishy-at-all uniforms. As such, I think I can speak with some authority on this topic. Polo shirts are uncomfortable. Universally so. I have never seen, worn, or touched a polo shirt that didn't feel rough and coarse on my skin. Considering I'm intended to wear such a thing, coarse and rough (like sand el oh el star wars) is a bad idea. I prefer to wear clothing that is comfortable, not too tight, and made of fabrics that don't cause itching. Polos fail on nearly every one of those standards. It isn't like they make up for it in appearance. If polos made the ugliest person look like a sex god(dess) I would be able to ignore the awful construction. But no polo ever worn by a human has ever improved anything. They make the wearer look like a complete twat.

I have to wonder what kind of person would've made polos in the first place. The only answer I come up with is golfers. Golfers already look like fucking morons. They're hitting a small ball with a small stick 300 yards to a tiny hole that you can't even see unless you mark it with a flag. Depending on where you are when you do all this stupid shit, you'll be sweating buckets and unable to use a small electric car to get you from where you hit your ball to where the goddamn thing landed (hint: it won't be near that hole with the flag in).

But apparently whacking a miniscule ball all over the place doesn't make a person look stupid ENOUGH! No, this is the only sport in which the player wears khakis and a collared shirt. Button down shirts, the only collared shirts that don't look idiotic (by default) aren't the ones though, no, there's a special shirt, for those who can't bother to use ALL the buttons, but just a couple ones at the top. And it won't even be crafted well. We'll make it using the roughest spare fabric we can find, and we'll put it together so loosely you'll think it's mesh. The bonus of it being so loose is the first time you wash it (or step out into humid atmosphere) it shrinks three sizes, so you look like an even bigger douchebag!

Never in my life were polo shirts remotely popular until the past few years. That's when rappers started wearing them and popping the collars. Like many things rappers do, this caused even more people to look retarded. I hadn't thought the polo could look worse on someone than it did on everyone I went to school with until I saw motherfuckers popping their collars. Most of the people I've known throughout my life have been rich white kids, and when rich white kids dress like rappers, it only makes me wish they'd find themselves in the ghetto being shot at. Hell, when people wear polo shirts with popped collars it makes me wish they'd get shot at.

I think the time has come to remove the polo shirt from the clothing lineup. It does nothing for the wearer, it hurts the eye of the people who have to look at the wearer, and it doesn't even meet the basic clothing function requirements of keeping one warm or keeping one dry. Please, if you claim to have fashion sense, don't wear polo shirts.

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Now playing: Audra Heaslip, Chuck Cage, Sean O'Hara - GWC Podcast #146: Two Hours With Richard Hatch

via FoxyTunes

I thought Rick Warren was bad

2009-01-21T22:01:00.003-05:00

Rick Warren is an asshole. Also, a boring bastard. Anyone who saw the prayers at the inauguration yesterday could see that. Rick Warren gave an invocation that was utter bullshit, coming from him. Inclusiveness, indeed! Unless it involves gay people having rights (apart from the rights to cookies and water, or whatever stupid fucking excuse he gave for how he loves gay people). Meanwhile, the man who gave the closing prayer, Joseph E Lowery, was fantastic. I know some who've asked exactly what religion has given us: I point to such things as the answer: black rhythmic preaching. Granted, they've also given us the awful, dull, monotonous old-white-man RC/C of E preaching style, but you take the good with the bad. Plus it works great as a soporific.

Speaking of religious idiots, there's this story from Oz. This is a story of a Muslim cleric giving a sermon (or whatever they call them in Islam) on "Keys to a successful marriage". One of which was if your wife doesn't do what you tell her to do straight away, kick the bitch's ass.

Perhaps "kick the bitch's ass" is too strong, actually, as he advised restraint - well, he said the husband cannot make her bruise or bleed. Then again, he certainly didn't draw the line at rape, because he said the woman must fuck her husband the instant he demands it. Now, in civilisation, we have this thing called "not being in the mood" and "choice". Both of them mean nobody HAS to have sex with ANYONE at ANY TIME if they don't want to. This guy is in AUSTRALIA!

He even comments about how absurd he thinks it is that a man can have sex with his wife without her consent and it is considered rape. Maybe all he needs is a dictionary. Maybe all he needs is a dictionary smashed about his head and neck. That's the very definition of rape: when one is forced to engage in sexual behaviour with another against their will. It doesn't matter if they're married, engaged, have had sex together before, planned to have sex together someday, or anything else. No means no (unless you're doing kinky stuff, in which case "red" means no).

Lost is back tonight. I remain one of the few sci-fi nerds who doesn't give a monkey's left ball about it. Don't get me wrong: I watched the first series and thought it was awesome most of the way through it. I enjoyed many of the characters and their stories. I just need a balance of character development and something actually happening.

The first series was something like 75 percent backstory. Now I'm normally fine with a lot of backstory, but frankly, when you have multiple one-character backstory episodes per season, and it's only the same four or five characters, YOU NEED SOMETHING TO HAPPEN SO BAD YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Which brings me to the stuff that DID happen. If you didn't watch Lost season one and want to sometime, stop reading now (all one of you who read this).

They crashed on an island in the South Pacific on the way from Australia to LAX. The plane was ripped in two in mid-air somehow, and there were about forty-something survivors. They kept getting a signal on the radio and eventually found it - it was some French woman. Then they found "The Others" (DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN) who were there much longer. "The Others" stole a baby or something, I'm not really sure. Meanwhile, John Locke (yes, that's his name), recovering paraplægic (thanks to the Island's MAGICAL POWERS) finds a hatch in the ground somewhere in the jungle. He spends about two months of episodes trying to get into the damn thing and then in the finale, GASP! THERE'S A TUNNEL INSIDE THE HATCH! It was about at this point that I decided I could give the entire series a miss. Oh, and there's some sort of monster that you never see (think of another JJ Abrams project, Cloverfield).

I've been told by many that the series really picks up around series three, but frankly, I'm a completist and I can't bear the thought of sitting through the boring seasons to get to the good ones. I'm already doing that with Doctor Who serials.

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Now playing: Audra Heaslip, Chuck Cage, Sean O'Hara - GWC Podcast #146: Two Hours With Richard Hatch
via FoxyTunes

I wrote this on an "illegal" copy of Openoffice.org

2009-01-19T22:28:00.001-05:00

A friend linked me to one of the dumbest stories of the year. The fact that the year began just over 20 days ago doesn't make me feel better about this situation.

The story's from a blog, so there's no dateline. There's also no dateline because the nice people at HeliOS didn't want to out a complete fucking moron to the entire universe. A teacher in the Austin Independent School District saw a student giving a presentation on Linux. The teacher confiscated the discs, called a “conference” with the student (as we all surely remember, “conferences” with teachers in anything lower than university-level would be more accurately described as dressings-down). She found out about HeliOS and sent an email to Ken Starks who runs the HeliOS blog. Among the utter idiocy published in this email:

At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

No software is free, is it? Hmm, that means I must have “stolen” my copies of Firefox, Opera, iSquint, Openoffice.org, Yahoo! Messenger!, TweetDeck, TwitterPod, VLC media player, iTunes (when I used Windows), Last.fm, AVG antivirus programme, iAntiVirus (for Mac), Google Earth, Handbrake, and Twitterrific. Damn, that's quite the list of charges, isn't it? I think if it weren't for Opera I'd be okay, but since I have Opera, it's a Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison!

[…] if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods.

What the hell do you think Linux is, lady? Is Linux the “L” in LSD? Linux isn't a drug, it's a fucking open-source software platform! I tried Linux on a trial version of Parallels once and guess what? The only problem was Parallels wouldn't let me connect to the fucking internet! I would consider using Linux if I didn't have a good thing going with OSX and if I could program things my damn self. The latter, by the way, isn't a deal-breaker. I'd figure it out on my own if I had to program.

[…] putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back. 

Now that's just fucking stupid. It's been approximately two years since Windows Shitsta came out and underwhelmed took a steaming shit on everybody who got it, and Linux is holding people back? I sincerely doubt learning to use a computer that works is going to disadvantage anybody. In fact, if more people were willing to try other operating systems, the so-called marketplace of ideas could stop being a capitalist's wet dream and become an actual way of determining what is good, what is bad, and what functions well enough for the time being.

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."

Even the idiot arguing for Microsoft Supremacy acknowledges that to “actually be of service to those receiving” these computers, they would have to be equipped with older versions of Windows. Now, certainly, old-ass software on old-ass machines can be of service. Okay, I'm totally lying. I've worked jobs where I had to use Windows 98 as recently as the past two years, and if there was one thing those machines didn't do, it was SERVE me in any useful way. Certainly I got to smack something around in a way I couldn't do to anything else at the job, but as computers, old computers with old systems are worth doo-doo.

Now I'm not a Linux or Mac evangelist. Well, I tell Windows users they need to get a Mac, but I don't go out of my way for it. I tell them this only after they've complained about how shitty Windows is. I offer them an alternative, and usually I get the same response: “I can't afford a Mac.” Linux is, in fact, free, and is, in fact, better than Windows. Granted that doesn't say a lot but it's true. Thanks to this idiot, I'm going to start trying to educate people who ask about the two significantly better alternatives. Thank you, Karen Namewithheld, for being so stupid to inspire me to action yet again.

Idiotic Adverts

2009-01-18T13:24:00.004-05:00

I'm watching the Rangers-Penguins game because it's the first time in a very long time I've seen hockey on TV, and it's in HD to boot. It's the first interval now, and I'm seeing some adverts I've wondered about for some time.

I'm sure nearly everyone has seen the poker website ads. There's one where a bunch of cards are trying to get on board a bus but they can't because there's already a hand on board. There's another similar one with the cards in a bar. There's still another where a guy is talking about how you're playing everyone until there's one left, implying he's playing himself (I think).

The thing these ads have in common is the website they're for. I don't know if it's literally the same website, but every one of the sites is "not a gambling website". How do you have a poker website that isn't gambling? What's the point? If I want to play poker Senate Rules, I'll download a freeware game. Apparently it's a learning website. Really? It's a "learning" to gamble website. I don't think that qualifies as "not a gambling website".

Another ad that utterly fails to convince me of the quality of the product is for My Bloody Valentine 3D. They're advertising it as a movie full of sex and violence. I'm actually in favour of advertising that, because that's what's IN the damn movie. I don't see it as a bad thing because it's a MOVIE. Anyway, in the adverts, there's a blond girl having sex, looking up into a mirror on the ceiling, and saying, "I'm SO hot." Nobody told me Paris Hilton was in this film!

Seriously, the girl is much more physically appealling than Hilton, but that makes her just appealing enough to be murdered in a horror movie. The part that makes the ad even more unsexy is when she's being chased by the murderer through what looks like a rural motel car park ... still bare-ass naked. Is there a rule now that says horror movies have to have a Tara Reid lookalike running about naked? I can understand why many view that as a good thing, but I would hate to see nothing but Tara Reid clones in horror movies. For one thing, Tara (and very probably her clones) cannot act for SHIT. Her most convincing line ever was in The Big Lebowski - where she said to The Dude, "I'll suck your cock for $1000." Best delivery she's ever done.

Naturally, the ad ends with Naked-Tara-Double hiding under the bed (still naked). Maybe I'm weird but I don't find naked blondes running in sheer terror through a parking lot to be sexy. I don't even find it necessary for a horror film - not even a cheap slasher flick like this is obviously intended to be (let's be honest, nothing says "cheap slasher flick" like 3D glasses). When a film has a naked blonde running for her life, it makes me think her performance was so bad but they already had her under contract, so they decided to throw in a nude scene so they didn't feel bad for casting her.

Don't get me wrong; I have no problem with gratuitous screen nudity. But sometimes it actually takes away from the film. I greatly prefer when gratuitous nudity is in a film as a BONUS feature (not on the DVD, I mean you go to the movie to see the movie and SURPRISE! tits). If your movie needs to advertise gratuitous nudity (in 3D or not) to sell the god damn movie, you are doing something wrong.

Skiing holiday

2009-01-18T02:56:00.003-05:00

I'm completely knackered after my dad and I went on a skiing holiday at Paoli. Anyone who's properly skied would laugh their asses off at this hill, but it's nearby and I like it. I'm not writing today because of all that, but instead I got some nice photos of other completely random people doing jumps and stuff.

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Now playing: MSNBC Rachel Maddow (video) - 01-16-2009-195223
via FoxyTunes

Time for a change

2009-01-17T00:02:00.004-05:00

Earth was the final straw. Laura Roslin has to go.

Laura Roslin as President of the Colonies has led us on a fruitless chase for earth. She has caused uncountable deaths of civilians and military men and women. She attempted election fraud which, if successful, likely would have doomed the entire human race. And she took hallucinogens and based her government off those hallucinations. Recently she wandered off on a selfish quest for "answers" (to what, we'll probably never know) on board a Cylon BaseStar, where, if the reports are accurate, she based even more judgements on hallucinations (this time from a Cylon Hybrid).

It has become clear to me as well as many others that President Roslin is unfit for the job of President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and should resign post-haste. The Vice President should also resign, in fact he never should have been in office. But when I think about it the Vice Presidency of a convicted terrorist reflects more on the judgement of Roslin than anything else.

Neither Laura Roslin nor her Vice President Zarek have ever been elected to the highest office in the fleet, yet we constantly find them on Colonial One. How do they keep ending up there? Certainly, Roslin's first term is excusable; the line of succession was carefully detailed in the Articles of Confederation. There should not have been a fight over whether the election should take place seven months after the destruction of the Colonies, but there was. It is clear from that incident, not to mention Roslin's attempt to falsify the election results, that Laura Roslin is anti-democratic. What, I have to wonder, is she doing in democratic politics?

There is one man who I think should be Laura Roslin's obvious replacement. It is not Gaius Baltar; he's busy with leading his new monotheistic cult. Not Galen Tyrol, the leader of the New Caprica and Fleet Unified Workers; he is still needed fighting for the working man (ironically against Laura Roslin's union-busting hard line). One man has worked as a lawyer, soldier, and politician, and therefore knows all the aspects of power and how best to balance it. He commanded a Battlestar, rescued us off New Caprica, has a long career as a Viper pilot (and Commander of the Air Group), successfully defended Gaius Baltar against one of the most controversial trials in the history of the Colonial Justice System. And most recently he has served the people as the Quorum delegate for Caprica and, when Roslin went on one of her vendettas, Acting-President of the Colonies. I speak of course of Leland Joseph Adama.

Adama is pro-union, pro-peace with the Cylons, yet is not above taking a hard line to do the right thing. He stopped Vice President Zarek's prisoner rebellion on the Astral Queen and still solved the problem Zarek brought up of elections. He helped prevent a possible assassination attempt on Cloud 9. He sided against Colonel Saul Tigh's military junta when then-Commander William Adama, Delegate Adama's own father, was under medical treatment after being shot by a Cylon sleeper agent. He almost single-handedly brought down the fleet black market under the control of a mob boss. He is a natural leader: tough at times, sympathetic at others, and always doing the right thing. Best of all, however, Lee Adama is not completely crazy like the past two presidents (one legitimate, one not, at least the second time).

I implore the people of the fleet to vote Lee Adama in the election.

Galactica pwns your face

2009-01-14T16:16:00.002-05:00

I, like many of my fellow geeks, have been amping up for the return and finish of Battlestar Galactica this Friday. Then my fiancee's boss has to commit the third-worst case of party-pooping in history and have Liz work Friday night. When the mall closes right when Galactica comes on the air, that's definitely NOT enough time to get home.

If you're reading this and are unfamiliar with Battlestar Galactica (the 2003 series) (yes, it makes a huge difference) I'll give you a rundown of any given episode. There is a Cylon opening bit. In series one it gave a brief history of the Cylons (they were created by man, rebelled, evolved, look and feel human, some think they are human, and they have a PLAN). In series two, they dropped the look/feel human and some think they are, because by this point everyone knew was a Cylon. In series three, the intro only changed the pictures used. Series 4.0 gave a shot of every known Cylon with captions about that (twelve cylon models, etc).

The next part is a "previously on" segment, which is fairly common in serialised television, and I don't have to explain it (thank gods). Then they have a cold open, or a segment of the show that airs before the main titles. This is frequently either a) action-packed and some of the best television ever, or b) heavy on character development and some of the best television ever. Then the opening titles play. Series four's premiere, "He That Believeth in Me," was a perfect example of this format. Hell, that cold open even managed to give us character development AND be action-packed.

What follows the first ad break is some of the best storytelling, acting, writing, etc, that has ever been filmed. Since the show debuted in 2004 (after a 2003 miniseries pilot), it has been nominated for a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) every year, winning in 2005 for the first series episode "33". In fairness, the only reason BSG did not win in 2006-8 for Pegasus, Downloaded, and Razor respectively is that those episodes were up against Doctor Who episodes penned by Steven Moffat, the best television writer in the known universe.

BSG has been critically praised and is probably one of the best things Sci-Fi has ever had going for them. Indeed, in late 2007 when their original remake of Flash Gordon was failing ... for good reason ... several Galactica mini-sodes aired during Flash Gordon episodes to draw viewers in as well as promote the upcoming feature-length episode, Razor. Like many things Galactica, the sodes (as they were known in fandom, coined by Galactica Watercooler podcast) brought up more questions than they ever answered. Luckily, that's just how Galactica fans like it. Among questions being asked about this final series include: Who or what is Starbuck, What's up with the final four Cylons, who is the final fifth, are the main group of Cylons going to come back and destroy Galactica and the humans, can the Cylons be trusted, and the ever-present question of Earth.

To quote Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly: "If you speculate and it turns out you were right, you will have retroactively spoiled me. Which means I will have to retroactively kill you."

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Now playing: Bear McCreary - Prelude To War
via FoxyTunes

What's the matter with kids today?

2009-01-13T02:00:00.003-05:00

Every now and then (roughly once a week) I have an off-day. I didn't sleep well last night, when I got back from class I went directly to bed, and now I can't think of a damn thing to write. In an effort to combat such days becoming anything more than an inconvenience, I use these days as an opportunity to watch telly and hope for a muse.

I'm watching West Wing series six and one of Santos's (Jimmy Smits) campaign issues is a longer school year. Personally, as a child I would've kicked this congressman in the tits for suggesting extending the (to me) already long school year. Now, when I see kids in the mall acting like little entitled shitheads who know next to nothing of literature, science, and maths, I think putting them in school year round, six days a week, is a damned good fucking idea. Hell, if you lock the shits in and don't let them go home at the end of the day I'm not horribly opposed to that.

I'm not a fan of kids in the best of times, and can count on one hand the number of children I actively like as people. I like them because they happen to have enough critical thinking skills to make them seem like adult humans as opposed to dropout-adults-in-training like I usually have to deal with. I only recently began actively considering having children of my own, with no small amount of pressuring from my fiancee. I had several caveats such as no faery stories pretended to be real (tooth faery et al), public schooling unless there's no other option, and under no circumstances will they be taught that one way is right and all others wrong without significant information on all levels.

This hasn't brought me any lack of worries that our children would have poorly-developed imaginations. In the end I don't think that's such a problem, as at least half the films in my DVD collection are sci-fi or fantasy. Plus at first glance, ... all of the books on my bookshelf are sci-fi or fantasy. And if there was ever a worry about imagination, we single-handedly ended it by deciding we would read to our child from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Voices and everything.
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Now playing: Rachel Maddow 01-12-09
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But cats EAT fish ...

2009-01-12T00:51:00.002-05:00

PETA did it again. They acted like fucking idiots.

This time it's fish. They want to save the fish. Of course, they say there's a PR problem with saving the fish, so they want to rename the entire phylum cordata to "Sea Kittens." I presume the scientific term would be felis aqueous?

Or maybe we should rename anyone having anything to do with PETA Homo Retardus. Seriously, Sea Kittens? I've crapped better ideas than this. I have shoes with more creativity. Plus, maybe they didn't know this little fact because they're anti-pet, but cats eat fish. In the wild, in domestic situations, big cats, little cats, house cats - they all love to eat seafood. Shrimp, trout, flounder, tuna, salmon, fish of any kind, my cat loves it. So has every cat I've ever met. That's why they make dry cat food fish-flavoured: to get them to gobble up what would otherwise be a bowl of Weetabix for cats.

I understand being against animal cruelty; I'm against it myself. I even understand being so against animal cruelty that one doesn't eat meat. That's fine. I would consider it myself if I liked any veggies. Hell, I'm even okay with not eating or using any kind of animal or animal-related product, although if I had to become vegan I think I'd just kill myself. The problem I have is trying to stop other people doing what they want to do when it doesn't actually hurt anyone.

Granted, overfishing is a problem. Granted, it's more ecologically friendly to eat vegetarian. But honestly, eating meat doesn't hurt anyone except the animal that's killed to make the food. That can be helped at least a little by making sure the methods of slaughter (that's a term that really helps) are humane. Buying kosher meats from a local butcher is probably the easiest, if a slightly more expensive, way of making sure your meat is killed humanely. Being a douchebag to an entire geographical area (northeast, northwest and Florida come to mind in this example) and attempting to put entire industries out of work is not a good way to get animal rights.

I live in the US. Nobody in this country has ever done something they didn't want to do without significant pressure. A non-profit organisation has never had enough power to put that much pressure on a person. Churches, corporations, governments, and local "culture" are the only things with the kind of power that can actually forbid someone doing anything or cause someone to think they have to do something. Until and unless PETA becomes that powerful, they will continue to have only "ha ha look at the retards from PETA doing another stupid fucking thing again" stories in the media.

Well, the media that doesn't necessarily follow their philosophy, at least.

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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne - Gets Me Through
via FoxyTunes

lol @ the irony of typing an anti-veggie post while listening to a vegetarian ROKK OUT

In what I HOPE is an unrelated note

2009-01-11T02:47:00.003-05:00

I went to see The Unborn with Liz and someone from the Sci-Fi club tonight. We got into the cinema right as the pre-show adverts began playing. I don't mean the ones for Pepsi and the National Guard. I mean the local ones.

Now, when I worked at that cinema the in-between-shows ads played on a constant loop. I guess the owner realised that's incredibly expensive, so now they play for the 15 minutes leading up to the adverts for Pepsi, the National Guard, and several sports and fizzy drinks. They include businesses right next to the cinema, businesses whose owners are friendly with the cinema owner, and the like. But there was one that made me react with shouting, and the only reason I wasn't ejected from the building was because Liz noticed and put her hand firmly over my mouth until the advert was over. The advert was a recruitment ad.

For the Evansville Police.

Maybe I'm off track here, but shouldn't the police have a higher standard than "Average Moviegoer"? Sure, a lot of those movies have cops in them. Some are mysteries that resemble real policework. Others are shoot-em-up flicks that only resemble policework done in cities hosting the Republican and/or Democrat National Conventions. But either way, most policework consists of filing reports, sitting around, and ~~executing black people~~ traffic duties.

This explains a lot, really. It explains how cops hang out at Starbucks for hours on end. It explains how they still turn on their lights to get through traffic or a red traffic light. It explains why there's a well-known cop in the area whose entire purpose seems to be busting USI students for drinking, even when they aren't drinking. The reason is because THEY DON'T HAVE ANY QUALIFICATIONS BEFORE GOING TO POLICE ACADEMY!

Police Academy is supposed to be the place where cops-in-training learn specifics and how to do their job, not where they learn ... you know, I can't even think of a comparison, because THERE ISN'T ONE. Police shouldn't be fucking psychopaths who enjoy shooting two guns while flying through the air screaming, they should be people who have an actual interest in enforcing the fucking law. I worry that this will continue to provide Evansville with an utterly shitty police force.

At least the film was good.

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Now playing: Atheist Community of Austin - The Non-Prophets 8.1
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Really?!

2009-01-09T20:16:00.005-05:00

Three stories on CNN. Three on MSNBC. Only one of the CNN stories even talks about the shooting, another is about the protests that turned to riots (I have heard due to "political tourism", that is outsiders coming in to wreck shit for fun), and one is about the cop who did the shooting resigning.

MSNBC is little better; one story about the riots, one about the tape of the shooting, and another about there being "Two stories" from the shooting. Apart from one story from the New York Times and one from the AP via the Boston Globe, I nearly didn't hear about this shooting.

Well, if it weren't for the blogs, that is.

I personally have a lot more respect for blogs as news sources now. Daily Kos and Shakesville both showed extensive sources for this criminal act. Shakesville even linked a video taken by a train passenger that clearly shows Oscar Grant sitting against the wall with three to four other men, then the police force him to lie prone on the floor while one cop kneels on him. Then the other police creature (I cannot call him a man; I know not what species one has to be to do such a thing) pulls his gun.

Multiple sources say the gun "accidentally went off". That is not remotely the point. He was doing nothing that could be interpreted by a thinking person (or even an extremely jittery, stressed, thinking person) as an attempt at violence or escape. Grant was struggling to be sure, but then again, he did have a cop's knee in his fucking back.

According to the CNN report, the fired shot (I refuse to use weaselspeak and say "Discharged round") entered through Grant's back, ricocheted off the floor and pierced his lungs. He died seven hours later. Happy fucking new year, incidentally, to his four-year-old daughter.

Throughout the period of wrestling Grant to the floor, which was not obviously justified, the people viewing and recording from the train were shouting at the police that their actions, to put it lightly, were not proportionate. One man can be clearly heard saying "That's fucked up" repeatedly. Then the gun goes off (whether accidentaly or not is frankly irrelevant, as the officer should not have HAD IT OFF HIS HIP IN THE FIRST PLACE), and there is a moment of ghastly silence and shock. Everyone begins to shout at the police (quite understandably at this point) and the train doors shut them into the car.

This is possibly one of the most hideous videos I have ever seen. If you don't want to be utterly pissed off, sickened, depressed, or shocked beyond belief, do not watch. link

Judge for your damn selves if it was justified. The police creature who fired the shot resigned Wednesday. That should not save him from at the very least, an incredibly long prison term. As the poster of the above-linked video says, "You don’t get to execute someone and just find yourself on the job market again." Grant was cooperating by all available evidence and is now dead for the crime of obeying a police officer's orders.

Damn the lot of you. You deserve Inquisition-level punishments.

Round and round and round they go

2009-01-08T23:21:00.002-05:00

A friend linked me today to a story about Greenfield, Ind.'s mayor proposing four new roundabouts. To quote the webcomic "Questionable Content," I am in favour of this so much you have no idea.

You see, in my hometown of Evansville, Ind., we have an east side and a west side. These sides of town have developed their own segregated cultures due to the difficulty involved in crossing from one side to the other. There are only two roads. One is a six-lane divided highway (which shrinks to four lanes outside of city limits, but even so) and the other is a four-lane divided street that doubles as State Route 62. The latter is called Diamond Ave. within city limits, and is far too north of where I typically need to go. Thus, my only real option is the former, known within city limits as the Lloyd Expressway.

The Lloyd as it is known colloquially was named for an ex-mayor who was murdered by a woman who believed him to still be the mayor back in the early 1980s. The expressway was constructed in his memory (partly due to his involvement during his life and time in office, I believe). It runs from Warrick County to the east to Posey County to the west. All along its route are traffic lights approximately every half-mile to mile, apart from one two-and-a-half mile stretch of elevated highway. How, many have asked, including my father upon its construction in 1982, the hell is this a god damned "expressway"?

Matters only get worse, of course. In the mid 1990s, there was an extensive construction project known locally for its severe cock-ups. The project took over one thousand days to complete. Eventually, approximately ten years ago, the project was completed and all lanes of the Lloyd "Expressway" were open for traffic again, apart from minor construction issues that all roads face. This past year, two lanes (one each direction) were shut down and an off-ramp was constructed. The two lanes being shut down increased the amount of time it took to cross Fulton Ave. westbound, the location where all lanes reopened.

Come December, the eastbound route is still restricted to two lanes after Fulton until Wabash, then restricted again to two lanes upon leaving city limits (which causes one to wonder why the fuck they don't just cut it to two lanes for the time in between but never mind that for now), but the westbound route takes the newly-constructed off-ramp, stops at a newly-installed traffic light on South Fulton, goes to another traffic light at First Ave. (southbound), ANOTHER traffic light at First Ave. (northbound), then to an on-ramp and back onto the elevated highway portion of the Lloyd.

Now hypothetically they are removing the traffic light at Fulton Ave. and installing an on/off ramp system. This is something I approve of, however I would very much prefer if we didn't have to trade one traffic light for three in the mean time. If you can build an off-ramp, odds are you could also remove the need for three traffic lights and simply have a turn-in/turn-out space like other sections of the highway have. This would only limit it to two traffic lights at First Ave., but with a bit of effort they could be much better synchronised than they currently are. The ultimate up-side of this would be fewer people would think their city planners and road commissioners are stupid fucking assholes.

Or, we could replace half the traffic lights with roundabouts and let the stupid drivers die on them.

You fucking idiot

2009-01-08T00:18:00.003-05:00

Dear fucknut:

Your username is a Spanish-language pun on "Backwards", and it's never been so appropriate: it perfectly describes your thinking on nearly everything. You actually said, in a discussion on Proposition 8 and homosexuality,

The backlash against Mormons is not about them being "interlopers" it is because Mormons are minority that it is politically correct to demonize.

Would this be a bad time to mention that Mormons are allowed to do damn near whatever they like? Mormons are not allowed to marry multiple people, certainly, but then again neither is anyone else. Gay marriage would work as an equaliser: Everyone can marry one person of legal age of their choice, regardless of race, religion or gender. But the Mormons don't want that. Could they be jealous because they can't marry the twelve people they want? Honestly, I don't have a huge problem with polygamy either, so after gay marriage, if the Mormons want to push for poly-marriage, I'd be happy to support that cause too. I'll be happy to be the bigger person and support those who have opposed and even demonised my friends and those I've championed.

But currently, Mormons are the most persecuted group, or at least popular to be persecuted. Are they really? You really think so, Backwards? Let's go to Richmond, Calif. Richmond is on the East San Francisco Bay area, a few miles north of Oakland. You know, the same San Francisco Bay Area that is a central city of gay culture and liberal politics. There was a story in the news, not widely reported of course, because it was sort of a downer, that on 13 December, a woman was hit with a blunt object, forcibly stripped of her clothes, and gang-raped. She was left naked outside a burned-out apartment block (source: San Francisco Chronicle). She MUST have been a Mormon, right? Nope. She was an open lesbian. The crime is being investigated as a hate crime, probably because it WAS one.

A google search of "mormon hate crime" turns up two or three stories from Arizona newspapers of a Mormon missionary getting beaten up by an unknown assailant who shouted "Mormon" at him, and the rest of the results on the first page are attacks on buildings, not people, certainly not RAPES, many of which post-Proposition 8.

Now maybe I'm off-target on this, but I think rape is the most despicable thing a so-called human can do to another human (or non-human as the case may be, but let's stick to intra-species violation). Murder, assault, battery, emotional abuse, property damage, or dismemberment don't hold a candle in my view to rape. So the next time a Mormon missionary is kidnapped, mugged, and gang-raped, and the police treat it as if it MIGHT be a hate crime as opposed to an OBVIOUS hate crime, I'll admit that maybe Mormons are persecuted. As it is, anyone claiming Mormons as a minority "that it is politically correct to demonise" can go fuck themselves.

Dr Gupta (CNND) and the economy

2009-01-06T23:50:00.004-05:00

I'm really not confident in this administration anymore. I expected to lose confidence in the person I elected, of course, but I really wished I'd be able to watch the inauguration in peace first. So, gays: you're not a priority, we'd rather involve someone who hates gay people ... yet who claims he doesn't hate gay people, doesn't fear gay people, rather that gay people fear Christ (he said it. Yup, he did.) and ... you know, I'm not sure I can write about the things this guy has said. Having a functional brain and a severe lack of cognitive dissonance, I can't even begin to see where his line of thinking begins, let alone where it connects to other things.

Not only that, but now Sanjay Gupta, a CNN doctor, is proposed to be the next Surgeon General of the United States. Based on his previous opinions (a glance at his Wikipædia article comes to mind) this makes me very nervous. I am guessing (uneducated guess though it may be) that now health care, which you would have to be a fucking crackhead to say "it's in great shape", is not a priority either. What's next, are we going to say "Fuck the economy" too? "Americans don't need to have jobs" sound like a good policy? Granted it sure seemed like we were going to hear it sometime soon during the auto bailout hearings, which lasted two to three weeks (as opposed to the bank/Wall St bailouts which lasted ONE).

This leads me to something I really just don't understand: If people are losing jobs the world over ... who is buying the things these people make? Who is paying the people who still have jobs? Seriously, if the economy is going south, why do I see people coming into my job at the mall and buying things? I suppose, sure, if people don't keep buying things regardless of the state of the economy (Which is FAKE anyway) then the economy will get even worse(er) than it is. But isn't that just horrendously cyclical? It feels like we ought to be able to just start producing, people will start buying with all the money they're making producing all that stuff they're producing, which in turn will create MORE jobs, ad infinitum.

Granted, I know fuck-all about economics, but that's where I am.

Picking nits and taking names

2009-01-05T11:53:00.003-05:00

I worked arse-early this morning. I don't mind that, but somebody used a phrase I've heard before, and never really got. The phrase, a very common one, was "Kicking ass and taking names".

I honestly don't know what you need the names for. I was told by the person who said it that you need the names "For kickin' ass!" but that seems overly structured. I've never seen kickin' ass as an orderly, organised activity. It seems more to me like an activity engaged in at the last second, and with no particular order to it. For example, if one is kickin' ass, and someone is there, guess what? There's going to be a foot-ass connection. You don't need to make a list! Just kick ass! This isn't the fucking census!

This got me thinking about what other phrases confer a status of organisation upon a naturally rowdy or disorganised behaviour? Is a demolition derby a structured event? Do jazz and blues players plan out exactly what notes they play, or do they do what feels and sounds right? Did Randy Rhoads write his guitar solos down? Do improv comedians (not the ones on such programmes as "Whose Line", but ones in clubs) plan their entire routine? NO, IT'S IMPROV. You're supposed to IMPROVISE.

I really don't get the "taking names" bit. I would prefer to "Kick this ass, kick that ass, I'll KICK THE ASS OF ANYTHING THAT MOVES!" This isn't to say everything should be unstructured. But kicking ass bank-teller style doesn't really work as a mental image. Kicking ass Dentist-style makes me think people's fears of going to the dentist are well-founded. Kicking ass screenwriter-style reminds me of anything Michael Bay has ever done, as opposed to The Godfather. Activities like kicking ass should be free-verse as opposed to iambic pentameter.

Unless Shakespeare has some as-yet-undiscovered battle raps lying about somewhere in Stratford.

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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne - Trap Door (Album Version)
via FoxyTunes

IQ tests for drivers!

2009-01-05T00:32:00.003-05:00

Well, Mirta hates cats. It's official. So no new cat for us. However, with no god as my witness, I shall NOT let this deter my quest for a cheapass refurbished Xbox 360! Plus the boyfriend of the person whose cat we were hoping to take was playing Gears of War at the time we were over. And apparently all the time else. End Livejournally content, back to the writing part.

I remembered at the last minute today I was supposed to go to the library for PCMN movies. I pulled up behind a car on the way out of the lot, followed them in a right turn onto the main road, and stopped as they came to an inexplicable full stop no more than 15 feet from the exit. At first I thought maybe they were turning into the gym opposite, but they didn't have their indicator on and they didn't, well, turn. I began to reach for the horn when they remembered that they were ON A PUBLIC FUCKING STREET and drove off.

I really don't understand how people can come to a complete goddamn stop on a public, busy road without a living being in front of their car. Exactly what is it you are stopping for, idiot? Did you get lost? If so, there are SIX PARKING LOTS very near your current location! Pull into one and figure it out there, but the street is not the place for it!

My first thought was, "I wish I didn't have to drive places so I wouldn't have to put up with stupid shit like this," but then I remembered: I deal with this every time I walk into a place with a doorway. Maybe it's a Southern Bumfuck Indiana thing, but people love to stop and talk/read their receipts/put their money away/make sure the cashier didn't eat their clothes/dial their idiot box (a phrase that used to mean television, but I'm co-opting it for mobile phones). I don't think a doorway is the most useful place to do ... anything, really, except for WALKING. Maybe it's evolved to the point that these dumb motherfuckers actually think that roads are for dialing your phone/checking your bags/fucking with your wallet/reading/chit-chatting. If that's the case, I look forward to the mass deaths sure to follow and the return of Homo Sapiens Sapiens to the process of evolution by natural selection.

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Now playing: The Pirate Planet
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meandering thoughts

2009-01-04T03:06:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow, we're going over to a friend's apartment to look at a cat. Liz has been wanting to get a second cat since before we got Mirta a year and a half ago almost, but only now could we afford it (kind of). If Mirta and Monster (tentatively named Milo, or possibly something else) get on, we'll have a black cat with green eyes in addition to our half-siamese bratcat. Monster was abandoned at our friend's church and she took him home, fed him so he isn't malnourished anymore, and then her cat stopped crapping in the sand in protest. Hopefully, Mirta won't react the same way. Since we'd be getting MiloMonster for free (no adoption fee, already neutered, all shots) I told Liz that if we get another cat, she has to get me (or go in with me on) an Xbox 360. I will FINALLY PLAY GEARS OF WAR AND MASS EFFECT!

In other news, this evening (or noon depending on your global location) BBC Wales announced the actor who will be filling David Tennant's Chuck Taylors in 2010 as The Doctor (Who). Liz found out during the hour before she had to go into work today and complained about it because he has a super-emo-twat haircut at the moment. I honestly hope it's for a role and not his normal hair, or hair that he'll be wearing on set. Anyway, his name is Matt Smith, and at 26 he's the youngest Doctor ever. From the small clips they jammed into the Doctor Who Confidential they used to announce him, he seems quite an amazing actor, and I'm looking forward to what he'll be doing with the role. Liz relented and said she'd give him a chance on the condition that he doesn't look like the Doctor suddenly started to listen to Fall Out Boy and cut his hair like a goddamn moron in Hot Topic (my words, but I'm sure she'd second them).

Finally, (god, I've got to learn to tie this shit together) I've managed to coax my MacBook into ripping DVDs for completely legal fair-use backups again. The only part of the problem remains I don't have an AppleTV, but if I'm getting an Xbox 360 it should work largely the same way. I celebrated by finally backing up my copy of Old School, which is perfect for iPod use, as I somehow got the "full" screen version. I don't mind too much though, since it's not like Old School is a massive cinematic achievement that I bought for its intelligence, grand use of 1.85:1 ratio and Kubrickian Steadicam shots.

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Now playing: The Onion - Roomba Continues Gathering Evidence Against Human Captor
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I'm a retard

2009-01-03T01:21:00.002-05:00

I lost my phone at some point yesterday.

For years now I've seen people making facebook events called "I lost my phone, give me your phone numbers", and I've always thought, "how the hell do you lose your phone?! Well, now I know. Actually, I don't know because I still don't know where or how I lost the fucking thing. I know I got a call from my parents from outside my flat. I know I was sitting in my chair when I got it, and I know I hung up and got my coat on. I don't know where the fucking thing WENT! I was pretty sure I put it in my pocket, like I do every time I leave the apartment.

Editor's note: I'm a fucking retard. I looked just past my knee and saw the phone underneath a pillow on the sofa. It's been here the whole fucking time. Seriously though, I NEVER put it on the sofa for this very reason!

Guh. It's this side of myself I hate. This part of me has locked my keys in my car multiple times. How the hell stupid can I be?! I ... bollocksing shite!

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Now playing: Black Sabbath - Sweet leaf
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iTunes-related OCD

2009-01-01T23:42:00.003-05:00

I'm not really sure what gets into me sometimes. Every so often I will be in an excessively weird mood. I just finished organising, collectivising, and Album-artworking my iTunes library.

Yes, iTunes automatically organises tracks and downloads album artwork, but I listen to enough slightly obscure stuff that iTunes doesn't know where to find the artwork. Not to mention tracks I get from friends, from mix tapes, improperly labelled tracks, and really old random techno music from my first year in university, when I downloaded most things that popped up when I searched "techno" (half of that shit has never been properly labelled).

So anyway, I was organising, artworking, etc. I have no idea what causes me to do this. Is it because I just ripped a Black Sabbath album and it couldn't find the artwork? That makes sense; I had to go find it anyway, so I might as well keep wiki-searching and GISing all the other stuff. But that's not it, because when I put the entire Star Wars Trilogy of NPR dramas, I didn't think to properly title the tracks or relabel each disc so I only had one bit of artwork for the whole thing (instead of Star Wars The Radio Drama 1, it would be Star Wars The Radio Drama). (This blog is shaping up to be exciting as fuck this year, innit?) For Talib Kweli's Beautiful Struggle I got it from a friend, and some of the tracks weren't titled, and it took me six months to title them.

I guess I get into organisational moods, rather than being organised all the time. This makes me wonder if my New Year's Resolution to save receipts that could conceivably be work- or school-related so as to tax-deduct them will amount to anything past this weekend? I mean, I manage to let the dishes pile up in the sink until there aren't any cups and I want a glass of milk, I let the dustbin overflow until I have more than one aluminium can to throw away, and let's not even talk about the state of the floors in my flat. But every couple of weeks (sometimes once a month, it depends) I will go NUTS with cleaning.

This could be why I never gave a shit at Best Buy. When we were slow, they had us dust whatever surface we could find. We were occasionally so slow we had to dust the pegs upon which things hung. PEGS! Things that have next to no surface area on which dust can collect! And yet, we were supposed to dust them. I never got into it. I always half-assed the job, even after having to do it every day one week. I just didn't give a shit. Meanwhile, at my current job, I'll pile up returns on the small counter space until I can't put anything else there, and then when I get a free moment, I'll move that shit to where it belongs.

I'm not sure how it works, but maybe it has to do with it being on my computer. I flip out if I can't permanently delete things. I'm constantly trying to keep my hard disk more than 50 GB free. The only cleaning items I buy and use reliably are monitor wipes and canned air.

Or it could be that Liz was playing the second most boring bit of KOTOR II again and I needed something to occupy my fingers and brain.

The New Year

2009-01-01T03:40:00.003-05:00

Well, we've spent the first nearly three hours talking about how stupid our families are, boob pains, and general redneckery. Oh, and getting people we know laid. In the words of Death Cab for Cutie, "So this is the new year".

I don't know, I've never felt what the big deal was on New Year's Eve. The only time I gave a shit was on NYE 1999, when every fucking country had a big-ass fireworks display. They ... well, they planned to light the Thames on fire, anyway. This year, what did they do? They brought back Dick York ... no, Dick Clark! from retirement/stroke. He did well I thought, for the two minutes of his show I watched.

Regarding restaurants on busy restaurant nights ... Something like ten years ago Red Lobster stopped accepting reservations or call-ahead seating. I went in tonight and immediately concluded that it was the stupidest fucking decision they've ever made, upon learning the wait was 90 minutes. We went directly to the Acropolis afterward and got in within 30 minutes - and reservations were an option too! This may be an insufficient sampling size but I think having the option for reservations just might HELP.

As a final weird atonal note, I plan to write a hell of a lot more on here. I started earlier than the first of the year to ensure I get more into the flow of writing. I had the problem of not wanting to write some days last semester, and really all last year, and I'm going to do what I can to combat that, namely by writing whatever horrid bullshit pops into my head each day.

Happy new year, small amount of people who actually read this!

A letter to Apple

2008-12-28T18:50:00.003-05:00

Dear Apple: What the fuck, guys?!

I greatly enjoy your products. I have an iPod, a MacBook, and I want pretty much everything else. However, if my MacBook is anything to go by, I ought to make sure I have a shitload more money than I do before I even think about buying anything else.

You see, Apple, most of my Apple products ... nay, ALL of them, have cracks in them at this point. My iPod has cracks along the right side of the screen, like so:

This was tolerable for some time, as I have a habit of keeping my iPod inside a third party case (I have three). But then, sometime in the fall of 2008, I began to notice cracks appearing in the wrist-rest areas of my MacBook. Eventually, they became detached from one end and started poking me in the wrist, leading me to just remove the goddamn things, like so:

These were annoying but again, somewhat tolerable. I took to canned air-spraying my computer on a more regular basis just in case something got in through these new openings. But then, today, this happened:

What the fuck, Apple? What the fuck?

I'll be visiting one of your stores to see if I can get a "Genius" to recommend a course of action. I'm under AppleCare, so you motherfuckers really better do something. Srsly, I don't want this MacBook to end up like my old Vaio:

Fix my goddamn computer,

Matthew Wolber ("Lestack")

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Now playing: De La Soul - The Mack Daddy On The Left
via FoxyTunes

FUCK IT'S HOT

2008-12-27T22:00:00.002-05:00

I got ready for work this morning by watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special (awesome) and checking the weather. That wasn't hard to do because I was watching the special on my computer, and a weather thing popped up saying it was something like 70º. Liz and I sort of did a double-take at that, because yesterday it was round 45-55º and the day before it was just above freezing. Christmas Eve it was the same, and the day before it was icing.

What the fuck is up with the weather? I know, global warming and that, but seriously? And that explanation has its doubters! Mind, I don't see how, given ... evidence, but there we are. Are people happy about being able to wear shorts out on the Feast of Stephen? Is it a common goal of the public to have pools open throughout Christmas Break? Does no-one think THIS SHIT IS CRAZY?!

But enough about the weather. Every moron with a mouth talks about the weather, so I try to avoid discussing it at length. Instead, I want to follow up on stupid people. On Christmas Eve I bitched about people bitching about not being able to find exactly what they wanted on the last day before the biggest gift-giving occasion on the planet. Well, I think some of the returns shoppers might be worse.

Today, I was at work sorting the returns. This was my job for the entire day, that's how many returns we had. A side project of this job is to find and resolve price disputes when the manager is away from the front end of the shop. I did this for one customer and went back to find the sign that she was sure was there, saying that particular shirt was $9.99. I looked at the endcap she said it was on, looked on either side of the endcap thinking she might've read the sign for the items in the aisle, and double-checked, but to no avail.

She then stormed back there her damn self after I told her there was no sign. She claimed that there was "a sign there when I was back here" and stormed out of the shop. After shaking my head in disgust at her stupidity and arrogance, I went back to sorting the returns for the day.

Later, when I had but an hour left, I was reshelving some of the pre-sorted returns, and I found myself in an area near where she found her shirt. It was an aisle away and well inside the section (as opposed to near the middle lane), but there was indeed a sign saying that there were in existence, and in the shop, shirts for sale for $9.99.

The twelve rules of Christmas (shopping)

2008-12-24T20:00:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm back working retail for the holidays. Goddammit.

I actually like the job. It's easy, it's fun, and I'm surrounded by smartasses. That means I get to be a smartass in return! Huzzah! The downside is it is of course retail, with all the cultural trappings. This isn't a problem per se but it is certainly the source of amusing stories and reasons for me to yell at people, so the blog is back, baby!

Rule number one: You don't get to be an asshole on Christmas Eve. If you're an asshole on Christmas Eve, I'm going to spit on your clothes you just bought. Now, sure, you can just wash them when you get home, but that's effort.
Rule number two: Prank calling stores and insulting the people who work there is pathetic. When I heard about the prank call in question, I had a 'nam flashback where I was beating this douchebag's head into the wall of the jewellers at the centre of the mall while shouting, a la John Goodman in The Big Lebowski, "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!"
Rule number three: if you want a store credit card, you will have to supply your social security number. If you are unwilling to do this, you do not get the card, and you do not get the sign-up discount that comes with the card. You do not get to leave all your stuff there because you didn't get to save $12 and storm out of the shop crying because you are retarded.
Rule number four: No, you may not use the stepladder to get something down yourself, you god damned idiot. I'm this close to printing up ten half-assed liability waivers and having people who want to borrow stepladders sign them before they do.
Rule number five: if you can't find the size you need, tough. It's Christmas Goddamn Eve. You're lucky we HAVE stuff left to sell you. You're going to have to get the nearest size and tell your gift recipient to either gain or lose weight.
Rule number six: The mall always closes at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Don't phone up and ask. The closing times for the entire Christmas season, starting from one week before Thanksgiving to one week after New Year's Day, has been posted on every entrance to the mall since the day after Halloween. It is not our fucking fault if you can't read.
Rule number seven: Miley Cyrus should not be allowed to sing, let alone sing Christmas carols.
Rule number eight: same for punk bands.
Rule number nine: Only John Lennon can get away with singing kids. Similarly, only Paul McCartney cannot get away with using an 80s digital keyboard as his only accompaniment.
Rule number ten: you are under our control. We control how fast the line goes. If you are in a hurry, you should not be Christmas shopping. If you are an asshole, we will make the line go so much slower. If you're nice, we'll try to converse with you while the stupid register takes an hour to do anything.
Rule number eleven: Why do you all have to walk seven across in the mall seriously do you all have to talk to all your friends and can you even understand anything get out of the fucking way
Rule number twelve: in the immortal words of Sir Wil Wheaton, "Don't be a dick."

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Now playing: De La Soul - Betta Listen
via FoxyTunes

TV Licences

2008-10-28T12:47:00.002-04:00

Top ten reasons why a TV licence (The UK, specifically) is better than a bunch of commercials.

No Zach Braff water commercials
no adverts for things that are nowhere near you, Boston Market
no miniature cliffhangers in shows, only real ones between episodes
no getting sick of what used to be a good song because you hear it sung by a phone and bluetooth earpiece that's attached to it
less chance of seeing Larry the Cable Guy accidentally
free
credit
report
dot
com

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Now playing: MSNBC Rachel Maddow (video) - 10-27-2008-194906
via FoxyTunes

The team plays awfully after Tuesday lunchtime - a question of the usefulness of sports statistics

2008-10-19T18:29:00.005-04:00

With how much I like politics, I'm kind of wondering why I don't pay more attention to sports. Not so much the actual sports themselves but the broadcasting and coverage thereof - sport coverage and political coverage have very similar tactics.

One of the main tactics I've recently noticed is the "inane statistics" tactic. In politics it almost makes sense, such as "sitting republican congressmen in heavily democratic constituencies tend to win due to name recognition" or "the bradley effect", and don't even get me started on polls which I, nor you, nor anyone you've ever met, have been involved with. But between last night's ALCS game six between Boston and Tampa and this afternoon's ass-whoopin' (if you'll forgive the term) of the Colts by the Packers, there's quite a bit of statistics going on.

For the baseball game there was nearly every batter's record against a right/left-handed pitcher (whichever it may have been), and when the pitchers changed, it would have the pitcher's record against Lefty/Righty batters. ESPN.com's live streaming, um, thing, had the likely winner for a long time before the end of the game, and the percent chance of said team winning. They also had percent chances of the batter hitting the ball into each area of the field.

I didn't think these statistics were inane per se until a few minutes ago when the CBS announcers for the Indy/Green Bay match commented on Indy being simply demolished by Green Bay by citing a statistic - Indianapolis haven't lost an October game since 2004.

Indianapolis have not lost a game that happened to take place in the month of October since 2004. Exactly what insight does this provide us about their playing in today's match? Is October the magic month in which Indianapolis can do no wrong, and this match could signal the end of a perfect October record? What's next, "Indianapolis haven't lost a game held on a Thursday since 1987"? Exactly WHAT RELEVANCE does this have to how they are playing today, apart from the fact that they are LOSING? Last I checked, people were more interested in such things as "Indianapolis haven't lost a game since October 2004", if they had a four-year winning streak that was about to break with this game. That frankly makes more sense than what was said.

But hey, I haven't seriously watched football in years now. I may have missed a shift in the fanbase where everyone started caring about the month, week, day of the week, and what time of day the match was held. I personally prefer the classic data: The weather, the location, injuries, and any sort of personal animosity between players on both teams (or fans of both teams). Those are the ones that I think actually have the possibility to affect the outcome of the game.

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Now playing: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
via FoxyTunes

Cars, buses, and books

2008-10-11T01:09:00.003-04:00

I'm officially sick of cars.

In honesty, I think I was sick of cars some time ago. Driving to Indianapolis roughly once a week, followed by driving across Evansville each day, will do that to a person. This is it, though. I'm avoiding driving whenever I can.

As I type this, [pause to make myself not a liar] I changed my wake-up time on my phone alarm clock from 8:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. This should give me time to do my usual morning routine, read the news, shit, shower, shave, eat, and get out to Green River and catch a bus around 7:30. I really would prefer if the bus routes were more direct to USI, but this town is a worse hell-hole than Scranton.

If nothing else, this new and brilliant form of transportation should give me time to read. I've recently started the Dune series, on the advice of a friend, and likewise on said friend's advice, started with The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. It's an extremely pre- prequel to the original Dune, but it was fairly good, and I enjoyed it. Yes, Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade absolutely lambasted it as crap, but since I only read Dune and Dune Messiah this summer, I think I'm coming at it from a different angle than he is. Plus I like the author and think he's a great guy.

The main reason a bus ride would help me read the Dune series is because the Dune books are incredibly long. The Butlerian Jihad was over 600 pages in hardcover. I'm used to 600 pages in paperback, but outside of Harry Potter I read few 400+ page books. There was a time I would've been saddened to read someone else say such a thing, but frankly I don't have the time to sit down and read that much anymore. Being gainfully unemployed has a few, very few, benefits. One of them is time to catch up on the thousands of sci-fi novels I've wanted to read over the years but didn't get round to. This isn't to say I don't want a job: in the unlikely event someone is reading this and is hiring for a position in Evansville, my contact information is listed. I'm interested and have a largely open schedule.

I can't think of a better year to have time to read though: my favourite authors are putting out quite a lot of work this year and a few of them I haven't got a chance to read yet. I still haven't picked up a copy of Karen Traviss's Order 66, and I haven't even read the final of her Wess'har series, Judge. Meanwhile, my first favourite author, Matthew Woodring Stover, has two books coming out: Caine Black Knife, the third of four Caine books, is out Tuesday. Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor comes out on Dec. 30. Yes, I'm not sure about the title either, but it's Stover, and even his least favourite of my novels, Shatterpoint, was fantastic. Besides, there's nothing I look forward to more than Luke Skywalker and some Moody Introspective Self-Loathing.

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Now playing: Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species
via FoxyTunes

video podwhinge

2008-08-15T00:06:00.001-04:00

I used to love video podcasts. I had two or three I would download every day until the BBC decided they can't allow foreigners to view their TV programmes. But lately I've got back into it with some American ones.

Okay, I've got one video podcast I download, but goddammit I like the idea of them. The podcast is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. For a very short period I included CNN's Today Politics podcast and ABC's Nightly News podcast, which had the best format of any of them. ABC Nightly News video podcast, you see, had chapters. If you were interested in the third story they did that night, you could skip to that by pressing the "next" button on your computer or iPod. I stopped downloading it because I prefer to get my news from the BBC and my comment from the US (I'm weird that way I guess.) But nights like tonight, when Keith isn't on Countdown or like last night, when some of the earlier stories aren't as interesting to me as some of the others, I want to be able to skip to the "Good stuff".

This brings me to my question: Why the hell don't more podcasters use the most advanced format they have? Okay, sure, some people don't have iPods, but everyone can use iTunes. Some of the people who don't have iPods have other brands of mp3 players. Well, that makes them stupid. Seriously, the Zune is the worst thing I've ever heard of. I don't want to listen to my friends' music because they have awful taste in music. The smaller ones, well, odds are they can't play video anyway, so it doesn't matter.

This isn't just video podcasts I'm annoyed by. I've only found two or three audio podcasts with chapters, which since I got a Mac with GarageBand, I've learnt is only possible if you record in AAC format. My main questions include yeah? and? so? what? I would really like to be able to skip callers for the odd call-in podcasts, and I'd like to skip to topics I like more than ones I don't. It's not that I don't like the podcasts, it's that I don't like PARTS of them. It's tricky to spool on when I'm driving ... or walking ... or even listening on my home speakers. It's one simple step in post! That's all I ask, one extra small step for convenience!

Or maybe I'm just a big tech geek who wants to have every feature available. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the one.

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Now playing: Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan - Unplayed Piano
via FoxyTunes

IT'S GONNA EAT YOUUUUUUU

2008-07-19T23:23:00.002-04:00

I work at a major one-end-of-the-mall department store (well, I say department store but the departments are almost all clothes these days). I'm usually on the second floor in the men's section, but occasionally I get called downstairs to do their jobs for them. Most of my co-workers take the lift downstairs for reasons completely unknown to me, because it's only one floor, and the lift is horribly un-air conditioned. Anyway, I take the escalator.

I got called down to do ... oh, something I don't care about and they don't pay enough for, and I had to stop short, because there was a family on the escalator. Of course, this is not a problem in itself but the fact that the oldest member of the family was hesitating before getting on the escalator WAS. It was as if he was afraid he would be sucked into the escalator and horribly mangled, like all those kids you heard about when they first installed the things in malls in the early 80s.

See, kids can get sucked into those things because they don't know how to tie their shoes. They also sit on the steps and occasionally have their trousers either too long or at their ankles. So do teenagers, come to that, but they know enough to get off the fucking thing at the top/bottom. Old people DO NOT WEAR THEIR CLOTHES LIKE THIS, and as such are in ZERO DANGER of being mauled by an escalator.

As Douglas Adams once said, anything that exists when you're born is part of the world and the natural order of things. Anything invented between birth and 30 is new and exciting and you can probably get a career in it. And anything invented after 30 is wrong and goes against the natural order of things. I know the quote isn't quite exact, but goddammit, I can't be fucked to go look it up. I just got off work and the book's way over there. Anyway, Douglas missed one period of life (possibly because he kicked off before he got there, sadly): anything invented after you turned 50 is GOING TO KILL YOU IN THE MOST HORRIFIC WAY POSSIBLE. This made sense for current old people's grandparents, because the things invented after they were 50 were nuclear. But escalators are severely unlikely to kill anyone above the age of 3, and even less likely to kill anyone above the age of 30. You, Mister Old Scaredy Cat, need to stop being paranoid and get on the bloody thing and ride, so I can go home.

Bumper stickers

2008-06-30T15:15:00.004-04:00

My parents were never bumper sticker people, but I on the other hand, am very much one of those assholes who uses every possible medium to tell people what I think. In 2004, I had a John Kerry sticker on my car. This year, I have a "Bush's Third Term - McCain" sticker, and I'm waiting for another one from Moveon.org that I can't remember. But it's probably similar to the McSame thing.

Anyway, some of my favourite topics on bumper stickers are the nationalistic bullshit stickers that are so in vogue since 9/11. The ones with an American flag SOMEWHERE on them are the most common, and rather frequently they say something that caters exclusively to suburban white housewives, who are the only people concerned about this: "These colors don't run." No, but they apparently fade and wash out when faced with prolonged exposure to sunlight.

One I saw on the back of a truck on the way to Indianapolis was sort of long (but it's a truck, so he's got room). "These Colors Don't Run, I Support Our Troops, My Country, Right or Wrong, No Aid or Comfort to the Enemy ... No Way!" This sticker wins the prize not only for most long and convoluted bit of shit, but also for most cliches squeezed into a run-on sentence and most unnecessary last line. Really, do you need the "No way!"? I'm pretty sure "No aid or comfort to the enemy" gets across the point that you don't like "the enemy", who I can only assume refers to the Dark Lord Sauron.

There are several "American Soldier" stickers that the military issues in boxes of Trix. At least that's where I think they come from, because when people have four or five of the same sticker on one car, it's either overkill or they felt bad throwing the damn things away. If they really have that many American Soldiers in their family, why doesn't the military make up a bunch of "Member of an Army Family" or something similar stickers?

One I haven't seen in a while is "Charlton Heston is my president". I haven't seen it for longer than he's been dead, so that's not the reason. And I live in an area surrounded by farms, with significant amounts of Republican-voting Christian Right suburbs, so that's not the reason. Maybe they figure they don't need to advertise that they carry a gun with them wherever they go. Or maybe they intentionally don't advertise it in the hopes that someone will try to pick a fight with them and they'll get to use their gun for the first time outside a firing range. This is a major reason I try to keep a lid on any road rage.

Despite all those nationalistic cliche stickers, I do enjoy reading the things. I actually will speed up to read someone's bumper stickers. It's definitely something to do when I'm trying not to think about how I'm in a metal box travelling at terminal velocity along a poorly maintained piece of composite-rock, with lots of other people in similar situations, except THEY are too busy on their phones to pay attention to the guy in the next lane whose car isn't as large as theirs and doesn't know they're trying to merge because they didn't fucking indicate it, or indeed look.

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Now playing: The Fiery Furnaces - Single Again
via FoxyTunes

TV is fun!

2008-06-18T01:29:00.003-04:00

I've been watching a LOT of TV lately. Granted, since I grew up in the golden age of basic cable, that's an unsurprising statement, but I've been upping the ante, despite the main networks being done with their seasons.

As far as properly televised shows, Law and Order: CI has two dedicated networks. Even if I don't watch the whole show, if I get there before the last ten minutes, I can get a really nice summing-up and it's like I saw the whole thing. I prefer SVU, honestly, but it just isn't on as much, so I'll go with the slightly twitchy, suddenly grey and fat Detective Goren. I have no desire to watch In Plain Sight though. Cable originals are a rare thing for me.

Speaking of cable originals, Battlestar Galactica's season 4.0 just wrapped ... holy crap! Every time I see an episode, nay, every time I see the cold open of that show, I think of the completely true and indisputable words of Dwight Schrute from the Office:

Do you watch Battlestar Galactica? No? Then you're an idiot.

The Office finished a month ago, and this season had its highs and lows. Although, I suppose if I was disappointed with certain things in the finale, it's because the writers are doing their job very well.

My lovely fiancée Liza and I managed to catch up with House MD this year. I think it may be one of the best shows on television, and because of it I've started adding other Hugh Laurie projects to my Netflix queue. A Bit of Fry and Laurie stands out, partly because I enjoy semi-nonsensical Pythonesque sketch shows, and partly because of the song "America".

Doctor Who is entering its final stretch on BBC One. New Who is excellent, but Old Who has a definite charm. I'm watching season 11 at the moment, which is the third Doctor's last season, and Sarah Jane Smith's first. I'm greatly looking forward to Tom Baker's tenure as Doctor Who, almost as much as I am looking forward to Rose Tyler's return in season 30.

Speaking of Billie Piper, I'm going to be checking out Secret Diary of a Call Girl whenever I get a chance, and its Shotime lead-in series, Weeds. I've heard good things about both, and I sincerely hope I don't get sick of it like I did with Huff, the last Shotime series I tried to watch.

Despite previous denouncements of non-Family Guy/Futurama/Robot Chicken series on Adult Swim, I've really grown to like such series as Venture Bros, Metalocalypse, and Boondocks. I've finished watching Metalocalypse series one, in the middle of Venture Bros series two rewatch, and I've just got Boondocks and it's queued up.

Liza introduced me (ten years late) to X-files, which we finished watching about two months ago. I say finished watching, but really we just quit after the first two discs of season eight, because if David Duchovny's not in it, I really don't give a shit. She did buy the Lone Gunmen complete series though, which is very amusing, although I can see why it didn't get renewed ... it sort of depends on Conspiracy-of-the-Week, which can get old if one isn't careful. Also, the pilot, which aired in spring 2001, can never be re-aired, because of the subject matter.

Throughout the summer, or possibly early fall, I'm going to pick up Babylon 5 from the library and start on that. I've heard enough good things, and I certainly can't rely on rewatching Galactica and Firefly all the time. There's plenty of good sci-fi out there, and it's not all in the same two series, dammit! If I get desperate I might try Stargate, but I sincerely doubt it.

The best thing ever is TV on DVD. Seriously, if I can watch a good show without constant panicking and scrambling for the mute button because that goddamn credit report advert is on and I'd rather commit harikari than listen to it, that makes the show so much better.

Indy (the city), Starbuck (the coffeeshop), and Dune (the book)

2008-05-28T11:57:00.004-04:00

Here I am in North Indy, at a Starbucks, writing in public on a Mac, sipping a chai. I'm one shot of espresso away from ultimate pretension.

Beth and I are up in Indy for a hematology appointment, blood work, and a free re-do of an MRI. Unfortunately, because of the MRI re-do, we had to be at the hospital at 9 a.m. Which means we had to leave home at 4 a.m. Which meant waking up at 3, except I woke up at 1 and couldn't get back to sleep. Luckily, I brought two Red Bulls and have downed one already (which led to my head quaking from the inside in the MRI waiting room).

Every time we come up here, I wonder why my dad went job hunting in Evansville instead of Indianapolis. I could've had things to do growing up, and I might not be spending my afternoon sitting in a fucking coffee shop typing on my computer. Hell, I might be out of university by now, with a real job, and typing on this computer for WORK. But no, I had to be surrounded by racist rednecks (and yes, they exist in Indianapolis too, but they get shouted down by more people) all my youth. Violent racist rednecks who made it plain that all liberals, nerds, atheists, gays, gay sympathizers, and anyone else different to them should have their ass kicked six ways to Sagittarius. So when I started noticing I didn't agree with them, I started being quiet, and withdrew into the internet.

I'm not complaining, really, because if it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't have my fiancée. I also would never have found out exactly which form of that word to use, and how it is spelled, and which way the accent goes. I really can't complain too much, h-uh?

On the way up here, I listened to some more of the audiobook of Dune. I've never read Dune before now, and honestly, it was because it's hard as hell to get into. Plus, Tatooine was my least favorite planet in Star Wars, and it pissed me off that they went back to it four times after the original film, so a book about events that transpire almost exclusively on a desert planet sounded fucking awful to me. I am once again happy to eat humble pie, because I'm really enjoying this book. I suddenly get a bunch more jokes from Questionable Content (mostly in the archive at this point), I get a bunch more in-jokes from all facets of pop culture, and I'm really enjoying the story to boot. Someone please remind me if I ever again say, "I don't care about (x classic sci-fi novel)," that I am a fucknugget and should read the thing anyway.

Indy, common cold, and the summer movie lineup

2008-05-22T17:46:00.003-04:00

Blarg. Colds are awful.

Honestly, I'm tired of people saying, "We haven't found a cure for the common cold yet," as if there are scientists trying to cure the common cold. The fact is, nobody cares about the common cold, because it is at worst a medium-level inconvenience. You miss one day of work, right at the beginning, when you wake up and hurt all over, and after that it becomes completely manageable. It is not something that is worth putting billions of dollars, pounds, euros, et al, to cure. Aids, cancer, neurological diseases, and immunological diseases are what we ought to (and do) focus on.

Anyway, last night, despite my drippiness and lethargy, I went to a midnight screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I really enjoyed the picture. I sincerely think there are things that people will complain about - Marion, for example, was kind of thrown in for nostalgia as far as I can tell. But those things do not detract from the overall quality of the film. Is this as good as Raiders? No. But what is? Raiders really is an impossible standard to hold every other Indiana Jones film to. It's similar to saying, "I didn't like Episode 3 because it was no Empire." Well, Empire was a unique film, and while comparing two films in a series made at two different times is completely valid, it is in no way enough to completely disregard the later film's status as a good film.

Especially in a time when more and more films are M Night Shyamalan pieces of crap, or feature Sarah Jessica Parker's aesthetically not-remotely-pleasing face in 50x75ft scale, we have to be able to take a good popcorn movie as a good popcorn movie. This summer, I think, will prove that a good popcorn movie can be as good or better than anything the Academy nominates. Iron Man has already grossed more than most comic book movies can ever hope to, and it was fantastic on a writing, acting, and storytelling scale. Dark Knight will only build on that precedent, and Incredible Hulk certainly can't hurt. Maybe it's the geek in me speaking when I talk about these movies being four harbingers of previously unseen quality, but that doesn't stop me being right.

Bring on the summer!

me tolerating Hillary's speech

2008-05-06T22:39:00.005-04:00

Broken the tie, eh? Already? You sure? Lake county still to be counted, suburb of Chicago, and you've already broken the tie? With the gap shrinking?

"Your loved one who served this country in war is ill-served back at home ... thanks to me."

And we're on to gas prices again. This is the dumbest fucking thing ever. "Temporary reprieve that will ultimately lead to higher prices! yaaaaay!"

The soldiers wouldn't be in harm's way if it weren't for your bullshit vote.

Where are you going with "champion" ...? And how do you not speak for the well-connected and rich? Again, anyone who has the means to lend her own campaign $5m out of pocket qualifies as elite about $4.8m ago.

Now THAT'S interesting ... they both say they'll work for the Dem nominee.

How does she say everything and sound condescending?

WHAT THE FUCK is with the fake accent?!

Bitch, Burma isn't watching! Technically it's Myanmar, and they're asking for help! Regardless, they aren't watching you!

"Didn't Chelsea do a great job?" sounds like she was in her school talent show!

Wow, all Hillary ever does is reactionary stuff. Plus she wasn't so keen on Florida and Michigan before she started losing.

I think we should punish anyone who mentions 9/11 anymore.

And is she playing Mellencamp?! He supports Obama! I wonder if he knows.

absent voters

2008-05-06T13:48:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure if it's due to the "vote early" campaigns, but when I went to vote an hour ago, almost no-one was there.

I really expected there to at least be a small queue, but I was the only person there. I saw two electioneers rearranging their "she isn't trying to destroy the party, honest" signs out by the road, but apart from that, it was me and eight poll workers. The guy asking for IDs was very quiet about it, almost like he was asking me for change.

Of course, it might not be the "vote early" thing. It could always be that Indiana voters aren't quite sure what the fuck's going on. I mean, this is the first Indiana general primary that's made a difference ... ever? I know I was confused. Or I would have been if I hadn't had three months to get used to the idea that this primary means something for once. What, I wonder, would it take to move the Indiana primary to Super Tuesday?

I suppose it doesn't matter that much. I say this primary means something, but it only means as much as all the other primaries, which is something on the level of nothing. Honestly, the fact that there's a Republican ticket ... I was pretty sure they had McCain locked up (well, he should be locked up, but that's something else). But no, Ron Paul's still going for it. Not sure why, Libertarians will never win anything as long as they keep pimping 1) letting people live as they will, and 2) marijuana legalisation (which is a derivative of the first). They'll never win the Republican vote with those positions, and the rest of their positions won't win any Democrats. They'll win Libertarians, people who want to be left alone, and people in favour of marijuana decriminalisation. That's ALL.

While I'm on the topic, I'm not sure why Hillary's still going for it. I'll admit, I would've supported her if she'd won the primaries and then the nomination, but I can't support her now. The only way she can win is by the Superdelegates staging a coup and ignoring the voters' will, which according to the current delegate count, is Obama08. This isn't political bias, this is basic maths. Anyone who graduated secondary school can figure this out, and I can prove it on an Etch-a-Sketch. The other reason I don't support her is her consistency with John McSame - promoting the same things, voting the same way on things ... honestly, if I wanted Hillary, I could just vote for McCain, who's GOT his party's nomination already.

Of course, I'd never do such a thing, because McCain is not the same McCain he used to be either. In their desire to be president, McCain and Clinton have changed positions so much that they are unrecognisable from the candidates they originally were. Clinton used to support Universal Health Care (which she says she supports again), but then she took a big sack of money from health care companies. McCain used to be a "Maverick" who was against his party and against Bush on several things. Now he's running on Four More Years. I'm not saying Obama is the best candidate ever, but godsdammit, he's consistent. Isn't that what Kerry's problem was? Consistency?

Unemployment woe

2008-04-29T12:16:00.003-04:00

Is it just me, or do employers LOVE hiring in a recession?

I, due to circumstances beyond my control, seem to be out of work. I came about this status by deciding there's no difference between being employed and not being scheduled, and not being employed. Combined with all the abuse I'd been taking at work, mostly by managers who couldn't come up with REAL problems and thus relied on months-old transgressions. So I'm looking for work.

I've applied more places than I can name, and I've only got two actual callbacks. All other progress I might have made is done through my own efforts. And this is my point: the places I've applied put up signs that said "now hiring" or "accepting applications" or did something similar on job sites, and once I applied, I gave it a few days before checking back. I tend to check back at least once a week at everywhere I've not heard anything. SO FREQUENTLY do they say "If you leave your name and number ... " I can only presume the end of that sentence would be "nobody will call you back, but we might put it on a cork board and laugh every time we walk past.

There's a Monty Python sketch that I think is more true than I ever assumed. I didn't realise this is what's (probably) happening until last night, when I put that disc in. Graham Chapman plays a man interviewing for a job, and John Cleese plays the interviewer. Cleese says "Good morning", to which Chapman replies "Good morning". Cleese asks him why he said "Good morning" when he knew perfectly well it's afternoon. Then Cleese rings a tiny bell and sings "Good niiiiiiiight dingdingdingding" then loudly counts down from five. After a few more similar humiliations and a freak-out, Chapman asks if he gets the job, to which Cleese replies "I'm sorry, all the positions were filled weeks ago." I have to wonder if some of the managers of these places are running a giant piss-take operation where they give people applications, put up signs, and hope they come in at the time they feel like doing a fake interview.

What doesn't make me feel better is the fact that were I in their positions, I would probably recreate the sketch verbatim with any fratboy who applied. I never said I was a good person, did I?

----------------
Now playing: John Lennon - Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
via FoxyTunes

Douchebag Day 2007 (and until a fortnight into the new year)

2007-11-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

I want to be honest: you need to seek professional help.

I am speaking to those who insist on sitting out in the freezing cold starting Thanksgiving Thursday at 4 p.m. until the shops open next morning at 5 a.m.

Yes, I understand that $15 each for the first 5 seasons of Smallville is a fantastic price, or it would be, if I thought Smallville was worth watching. You know they will still have that price at 8 a.m., when the sun is up and you can see where you parked your car.

At no point in my life have I ever felt the need to queue up a full day before a shop opens for anything. I am still holding out for the price on the Xbox 360 to go down. Hell, I held out for the price on the original Xbox to go down to $80, meaning I got a used box and can only buy used games. I guess I just do not have it in me to sit on pavement for hours on end to ensure I am the first one to get a computer for $300.

Oh, and when that computer breaks, you do not get to whinge. When they are out of them, you still do not get to whinge. When it takes you an hour to get through the shop for one DVD, you MUST NOT WHINGE. Not today. This is No-Whinging;-You-Knew-What-You-Were-Getting-Into Day. If you go shopping today, you are either stupid or incredibly patient, and from my experience working in retail, it is the former.

If you feel you absolutely must go shopping anytime before midnight tonight, do not be a dick to your cashier or barista or salesperson. Odds are they have been here longer than they ever wanted to, and still have a few hours left to go in their shift. They do not want to be here. They do not want the line to be this long. They REALLY do not want the bitch in front of you paying by cheque. That makes three things the two of you have in common, which is more than enough for you to have no reason to take a goddamned thing out on them.

If you feel you absolutely have to drive today, avoid commercial areas. Stick to back streets or highways when you can. If your route takes you through a traffic light, it is a BAD ROUTE. Your trip will be shorter if you walk. Your trip will be less expensive if you walk. Unless you are buying a shitload of lumber or a 60-inch TV, do not take a car. Hell, mass transit is a bad idea today, and I am a big advocate of mass transit.

If you do not follow these rules, do not be surprised if someone makes you their own personal toilet paper, because they do not want to be here either.

Forbes and advertising

2007-09-04T21:45:00.000-04:00

I never thought I'd totally discount a news source, but I was provoked.

Now I try to avoid Fox News unless I absolutely have to, and even then it doesn't work. I'm way too interested in how the current government are spinning the news. But I never flat-out blocked their site or ignored their headlines on news feeds.

But today, Forbes.com went well over the line. I clicked a link from Google news feed on a story about NBC selling TV shows on Amazon's online provider after they crapped out on iTunes. The first thing that comes up is a welcome screen. When I say welcome screen, I am being only partially misleading; Forbes.com calls it a welcome screen, but really it's a huge, full-window advertisement for something I can't afford. Normally that's okay, but after 30 seconds, Forbes showed no signs of letting me go on to read the article. You know, the only reason I was even looking at Forbes.com.

I clicked the (in)convenient 'skip this welcome page' link and it took me to the story. I hadn't even had a chance to start reading the thing when some middle-aged white guy with a suit and bad haircut starts talking at me about, according to the flash window containing the VIDEO ADVERTISEMENT THAT AUTOMATICALLY PLAYS, Fisher Investments. Addendum to self: avoid investing with Fisher Investments even if they're the only investment company on earth.

There is no legitimate reason to have entire pages devoted to adverts and then include a 'skip this rubbish' option. If you don't have enough faith in your customers to be interested in the product you're whoring, don't advertise it. You won't get click-through money. And there's even less legitimate reason to have any page open and start playing music or video (I'm looking at you, MySpace users and YouTube). And if possible, there's even LESS reason for such tactics to be used for advertising.

Commercials are on television for the person who is too lazy to change the channel or go to the kitchen during the break. Advertisements on web pages are there to provide smallish amounts of revenue to keep the site up. However, most successful ads, in my experience, are simple banner ads. If they're well sold, I'll click on it. I'll be incredibly wary about doing so, but I have clicked banner ads. I have NEVER watched an entire auto-play video ad, and I've never even clicked full-page ads if I had the option to skip it completely.

If you're a web designer, don't do these things. It's that sort of thing that makes people describe you as "a self-centered jerk who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes". If you're an advertiser, have the balls to push your product and don't allow us the option to not view you pushing it. Until fast-forwarding and DVR, we sat there and took it, and occasionally bought it. We didn't have the option to not watch if we wanted to watch that show. Keep doing your job and you might just get somewhere. Don't half-ass it. Don't be like this blog column.

University rules

2007-08-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

Well, it's a new school year at USI, and as usual, there is a large influx of freshmen. Many of them are reasonably intelligent people with an interest in their major and/or higher education. However, a large group of them are inconsiderate idiots who don't know how to conduct themselves public-wise. This entry is for the latter group. The rest of the class is free to go.

If you go to the library, turn off your phone. Nobody wants to hear that you have 50 Cent's new awful song as your ring tone, especially when we are trying to study and/or relax in a quiet place. 50 Cent is not conducive to studying or quiet. In fact,
Stop listening to 50 Cent right now. 50 isn't exactly conducive to higher learning, lower learning, or any kind of learning at all. If you want good music with a good beat for a good time, and you feel you absolutely MUST listen to hip-hop, Mos Def has at least three albums.
If you are on the phone as you approach the library, stay outside of the goddamn library while you finish your conversation! This is common sense. No library allows telephone conversations inside the premises. If you make it up to the second floor of the library without turning off your phone, you missed several areas to stop and talk. USI's New Rice Library, specifically, has the entire center stairwell, the Starbucks cafe area, and the cafe area on the north side of the main entrance, all of which are fantastic places to use your mobile phone.
The above three rules apply to laptop computers where applicable.
Books cost a lot. You will probably need three for at least one class, and they won't be available used. This is a fact of university life, and something you may just have to get used to. On the bright side, there are multiple venues for selling and buying used books that do not involve the university bookshops. EBay, half.com, amazon.com, and the classic "talking to your professor about previous students who are looking to sell their book" are great options to save money on those bloody things. If you can't find a cheap source of textbooks, you can always try to make friends with someone who has a book and share it. Try not to only be friends with them because they have a book. If this is unavoidable, try to not let on that the only reason you tolerate their existence is because they had more money for schoolbooks than you did. They won't like it.
If you commute to school daily, you might want to think about getting there something like one hour before your first class. This rule goes double if you're lucky enough to have your first class around 10AM or after. Anytime after 10:30 or so, all the parking spots will be taken, except for that one lot waaaay far away, like a mile or so away. You know the one I'm talking about. I think it's called "Z lot" or something. (You might think it's called Z lot because it's the last in the alphabet, but it's not. It's because that's where they keep the zombie horde, made up of former students who tried to skip all the classes and take the final, then complained because they failed the thing.)
Dry campus means don't get caught. Not really, dry campus means don't drink, seriously, it's bad and stuff.
Drink off campus if you can manage it. There are a lot of dive bars and a few really good ones just three miles from campus.
Don't join Greek life. Unless you're a Scientologist, then you'll fit right in.
The wireless network is fantastic.*
Don't stand around in the middle of sidewalks, footpaths, and aisles, because if I see you doing it, and you're in my way, I'm going to punch you in the balls/other sensitive body part.
Nobody really cares if you smoke right outside the door. Just don't blow your smoke directly into the doorways. It won't do anything due to the buildings effectively having positive air pressure, but it's rude.

I might do another one of these at a later time, but I only did this one because of some people who were pissing me off (see rules 1-6).

*When it fucking WORKS.

It would be easier to say 'everyone sucks major ass and should move to a continent that doesn't include me'

2007-07-31T00:11:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend works at a major international chain coffee shop that will not be named in this post, apart from the above. It's Starbucks. Anyway, due to her employment by the single biggest non-discount-price corporation, I spend a lot of time in said shop. It's not because I like the atmosphere.

Incidentally, does anyone really understand what 'I like the atmosphere' means? I've only ever heard it in reference to places like Starbucks and various booksellers, but I've never heard it in reference to places like Wal-Mart, JC Penny, Macys, Best Buy, or any "Bar and Grill(e)" restaurant. Do these places not have atmosphere? I've been inside them, and I can breathe (except when there are waaaay too many people and I get a little claustrophobic). I imagine the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2, much like the rest of the gods damned planet. And if it's a metaphor (which yes, I know it is), I would LOVE to know what makes one retail establishment more interpersonally accessible than another.

So the reason I spend a lot of time in Starbucks is because they have chairs to sit in, usually tables to set a portable computer on, and wi-fi, which my aforementioned lady friend gets at fifty per cent off. Normally I would prefer to sit at a shop with free wi-fi, like the locally owned coffee shop has (I think), but as this Starbucks stays open later than all but one other Starbucks in town, and is so very convenient to a) my lady, and b) my own workplace, I am willing to make sacrifices.

The problem (or one of them) I have with my own spending so much time in Starbucks is that when every other shop in the complex closes, all the teenagers, who on this occasion I find myself identifying as "Trendy MacPopcollars", flock directly to the inside of this shop. Now I realise it's summer, and they want to all hang out with friends. I just think that they should be able to find at least one friend who is willing to have drugs and alcohol to be consumed at unwisely high rates. Isn't that what being high school age is about? That's how it was when I was in HS. Or so I'm told, because I took the other option to massive intoxication, which was hanging out at home and talking online to like-minded people who picked "option B".

But I heard plenty of stories about getting drunk and high during the school year, so how am I supposed to believe that the same thing wasn't going on daily, or at least most days, throughout the summer? You have even FEWER places to be! And it's not like these kids have jobs, like some of my classmates did. (My classmates, being students at an upscale private Catholic HS, frequently had jobs at country clubs. I don't know exactly what they did, but I presume it was anything but kitchen work - you want the white kids to be visible and the "ethnic" kids to be in the kitchen and taking out the rubbish.) Now I had jobs where I could work in the evening, such as at a couple cinemas, a restaurant, and a Best Buy. I frequently did work in the evening. But that meant I didn't have time to hang out in fucking coffee shops until they kicked me out. And if I wasn't working evenings, I had to be in at 9 or 10 the next morning, so I was usually at home, either sleeping or making half-arsed attempts at sleep while actually playing video games!

The real problems I have though, aren't that they're there. It's that there's always at least five of them. Once the fifth member of the party leaves though, things quiet down thankfully. In the mean time, they're taking up large sections of the shop, and making lots of loud conversation at each other. Tonight one even threw another's Trendy McSandal across the shop.

(At this point, the author lost what semblance of a topic he had, and ends up yelling about individual things) ... (Or rather, he did that 20 minutes ago and is just now admitting it)

(I need an editor)

2007-07-18T14:12:00.000-04:00

I may have to completely give up on fandoms.

I'm not saying I'm going to stop reading Star Wars, or Batman, or X-men, or Buffy, or Sandman, etc; I'm saying I can't stand listening to fans of any of those talk about said fandoms.

In Star Wars, the stories have been getting progressively darker. This is in large part thanks to the general taste of fiction since, to pick a date at random, 9/11. Since the largest terrorist attack on US soil, fiction has been getting progressively darker, partly to reflect the state of reality. Reality gets darker, our fiction has to get darker for us to believe it. Meanwhile, there are still people who don't like this change, and turn to fiction for escapism. This is fine, but if they really want escapism in fiction, they're going to have to go to romance novels.

Star Wars has always had dark bits and massive amounts of conflict. In the first movie, Darth Vader enters Princess Leia's cell with what is clearly an interrogation droid, and proceeds to torture her in an attempt to get her to confess the location of the rebel base. In order to get a PG rating, nothing could be shown of said torture, and since the only rating above PG was R at the time, they wouldn't have made NEARLY the money they did if it was R. In the same movie, Obi-wan Kenobi cuts off a drunk walrus's arm. There is blood aplenty. All other lightsabre amputations are immediately cauterised.

In the second installment, Luke's hand is chopped right the hell off by Darth Vader, immediately before Vader reveals that he is Luke's father. In Return of the Jedi, widely considered the tamest of the original series, the Emperor tortures Luke with lightning for damn near a full minute before Vader realises "oh shit that's my son maybe I should not let him be electrocuted to death huh". That's not something I'd consider to be happiness and light.

As for Batman, I've never seen a good interpretation of the Dark Knight that wasn't, well, dark. Burton's Bat was semi-dark, and Nolan's Bat is very much dark. Batman, in fact, has only been not dark in my memory in the 30s, when dark was synonymous with EVIL, in the 60s on television (ADAM WEEST!) and in the 90s, when Joel Schumacher added exaggerated codpieces and armoured nipples. The only GOOD interpretations of Batman were always dark. Adam West's Bat was good when I was a kid, but if I look at it now, I weep.

My main point, I suppose, is that no-one will ever write something that satisfies everyone. I realise this, but it still annoys me when I'm hearing someone, even a friend, talking about 'you know it would be so much better if OMG THEY MADE ANOTHER DEATH STAR LOLZ', while the person sitting next to him says 'OMG THEY NEED TO STOP FOCUSING SO MUCH ON THE SKYWALKERS', which prompts someone else to say 'THEY NEED TO FOCUS EXCLUSIVELY ON THE SKYWALKERS OMG'. This all prompts me to stab myself in the ear until I don't have to listen to this shit anymore. So I think I'm ought to take care of that before I have to shed blood.

How are the mighty fallen

2007-06-22T00:15:00.000-04:00

I want to hang Paul McCartney.

In my defence, this is not a recent development. I've wanted to hang that twit since I first heard "Hey Jude" and "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" back to back. But his latest album, Memory Almost Full just takes the di'kutla cake.

The only reason I have any measure of familiarity with any of his post-Beatles work aside from the Christmas song he did, Live and Let Die, and Band on the Run is because I work at a bookshop. We have a very large CD collection as well though, and we have a muzak system. We used to be able to select our music based on whether it was something we liked and thought other people would like as well. Lately, we got a new manager who believes we should only play between four to six tracks from a selected twelve albums.

This would be okay to me if it was shuffled. I've made mix tapes with less diversity than our current playlist. However, all selections are played in 4-6 song blocks, which repeat in the same order. Which brings me to Sir Paul. Macca's latest album is one of the twelve current discs in the cycle. He's got a few decent songs on the record, but not the track our Macca Block starts with. This track is titled "Nod Your Head".

An iTunes search reveals "Nod Your Head" is also the title of songs by Will Smith, Ava Johnson, 617, Spun, the Kongregashun, and Neph-U feat. Dem Hoodstars. I would not listen to ANY of them. Macca's is no different. Contrary to my desire to avoid the hell out of this song, I will include lyrics to illustrate my point.

If you really love me baby
Better than staying in bed
If you really love me baby
Nod your head

...

Nod it up
Nod it down
Side to side
Round and round

What the hell happened?!

I'm not saying Macca knows how to write good lyrics. I never would say that, for want of never being called a stupid fucking liar. All you have to do is listen to "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" and you'll know "Nod Your Head" is kind of a step up. But I honestly think it's a direct result of giving up drugs. That or it's a leftover of all the drugs. I'm betting the latter, honestly, because "Yesterday" was good. "Ob-la-di" was when we knew it was all going to end in tears. But "Nod Your Head" is simply inexcusable. Its only saving grace is that it's two minutes long. But that doesn't help, because next in the queue is "House of Wax", which is all manner of cliché.

Just retire, old man. Even Pete Townsend doesn't make new music anymore. He knows he's past making anything good, and he never made anything particularly great in the first place. Just effing retire.

Spider-Man 3, or how I learned to stop making Dr Strangelove jokes because they really aren't funny anymore

2007-05-06T20:42:00.000-04:00

Last night, Elizabeth and I, along with several friends and half the city of Evansville, went to see Spider-man 3 in Imax. I enjoyed it overall; I would in fact say it was a good flick. But that's not what this review is about, is it? This is the review where I nitpick the stuff that caused me pain or just generally pissed me off.

The first problem was Peter Parker is not supposed to be such an annoying goody-two-shoes. Well, he is, but he shouldn't be the kind of goody-two-shoes that goody-two-shoeses want to beat the crap out of and steal his lunch money. When nerds want to reenact their own life story, starring themselves as the bully and the superhero as them, it's a step too far. I also never really remembered Parker being an attention whore. He seemed to thrive on the Spider-man attention, and it seemed either forced or out of character, or both.

Kirsten Dunst "can't fucking sing", to borrow a quote from KT Tunstall, who can. The song Drunkst does in the first scene is badly lip-synced to the point that I absolutely could not WAIT for it to be over. After the plot dragged a bit, we meet Topher Grace's character, Eddie Brock ... Jnr. Grace was AMAZING as a bad guy in the last act of the film, and awesome as a not-really-bad-guy-but-kind-of-a-douchebag in the rest. The black goop plotline took like INFINITY to develop. As I typed that last sentence I really couldn't remember what the hell took up so much of the time in the movie while the black goop thing wasn't happening, but now I remember. SAND GUY.

Yes, I called him Sand Guy, because I refuse to call him Sandman out of respect for the infinitely superior Neil Gaiman character. Sand Guy AKA Flint Marko is played by the guy from Wings who played the retarded mechanic. At this point of the story, he escapes the police by getting over the fence at a testing facility for a particle accelerator (which proves the writers sure didn't do ANY scientific research beyond "What sounds cooler than 'experimental nuclear reactor'?"

Basing my argument solely on the information in the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (I admit, I read that awful thing, but this makes a point), a particle accelerator would not only have to be something like 26 miles in diameter, but would potentially create matter as well as antimatter, which would then collide with each other and destroy everything made of matter in the area. Marko, instead of antimattering into oblivion, is hit by a grain of sand, which goes through his skin, stripping down to its silicon base, and bonds with his body somehow. He is torn the hell apart, as we'd expect, but then a three minute scene has him gathering his sand!body together and walking out of there. Irradiated sand still sounds better, dammit.

Eventually, the movie gets bloody moving along already, and Parker/Spidey is taken over by the black goop, which creates Black Suited Spider-man. Black Suited Spidey is quite naturally less of a pansy, and confronts Sand Guy, whom he finds out is responsible for Uncle Ben's death. This throws off the entire story, apparently, because every time over the past forty years that Spidey has wavered, he thinks back to when he let the guy go, and the guy goes on to kill Uncle Ben. It kind of makes sense, I guess, but I don't care. It worked for this particular movie. After a very cool subway fight (and I mean making use of the WHOLE subway, not just one car like most other films have to) Spidey returns to the surface and rearranges his hair in that god damn Connor Oberst style. There were groans.

He hides away the black suit and has his physics professor study the goop. Meanwhile, Harry remembers all the stuff he's forgotten (which consists basically of the first two movies and reel one of the third) and takes vengeance on Parker. All I can really say is he's GOOOOOOOOOD. He's the best villain I've seen since the first movie. He'd give Darth Sidious a run for his money. Naturally, this drives Parker into a vengeful rage and they beat the crap out of each other in the Osborn Family Study. Peter goes next onto a nice run of douchebaggery that, if it weren't for the painfully craptacular dancing in the street, pelvic thrusting, and gyrating, would've been a refreshing change from Pussy MacWhineyface from earlier in the film. But no, he had to walk down the street like he's John Fucking Travolta. I'm honestly surprised they didn't use the Bee Gees for it. Nonetheless, there were groans.

The "Fancy New Peter Parker" street sequence finishes with the stereotypical "main character walks into a shop and comes out wearing his new threads to reflect him getting his groove (back)" scene. Followed by more dancing. Followed by me shouting "DONE."

Not much else can be said without significant spoilage. Oh, there were cringeworthy scenes, few of which involved EmJay anymore, because her part in the movie by this point was of course the Damsel In Distress. But we get to see Sand Guy, Venom, New Goblin, and Spidey some more. We even get to see Spidey running past a strategically placed American flag.

There were groans.

Privacy in bookshops is completely imaginary

2007-04-12T18:05:00.000-04:00

I have no idea why people try to talk to me in public.

This isn't a frequent occurance, but sometimes I'll be sitting (usually in Borders or Starbucks) at my computer internetting and some dude will come up to me and tap me on the shoulder. At first, naturally, I'll think it's someone I know. This would be welcome, because many people I know come to Borders and I know few people who don't go to Starbucks. Nope! It's some dude. Just some random person I've never met and will probably never meet again. They will ask me things like 'Where'd you get that computer!?' or 'Where'd you get that jacket!?' or 'What are you listening to?!' (thankfully, the latter has never happened, but I'd not put it as 'unlikely as hell').

Honestly, I don't have a huge problem with this when it's prefaced by 'Excuse me' or 'sorry to bother you' or 'can I ask you a question?' or a combination of the three. However, this is rarely the case. It's usually 'Where'd you get that', lunging right into their bloody topic that I don't want to talk to them about. Then they proceed to talk to me even after I've answered their question (I tend to answer them in a fairly standoffish fashion to see if they'll go away; they don't.) usually for a minute or more. Yes, I know, a minute is not what one would call a long period of time, but damn it if I value my minutes, and especially ones in which I want to have my privacy.

Just because I'm in a public place doesn't mean I should have to sacrifice my personal space and listen to people talk about stuff I don't care about. I know for a fact that if I wanted to piss off random people, solely for the purpose of spreading irritability throughout the city for a day, I would randomly talk to people who are sitting in public places, minding their own business. I would walk up to families and say something random, like 'how about that weather' or something equally irrelevant that families eating dinner together wouldn't want to be interrupted for. I'd make it clear that I'm in possession of all my mental faculties and proceed with annoying the hell out of them.

On a tangent, why is it that when people see someone wearing a name tag and wireless with attached earpiece (the kind that only employees of stores wear in their workplace) they go up to them (not the problem) and say (this next part is the problem) "Do you work here?" Quite frankly, no I don't, I just enjoy wearing the name tag which I shouldn't have been able to get without first at least breaking in to the back room where they keep spares of such things.

This isn't something specifically related to my current workplace. This happened when I used to work at National Electronics Superstore. We were provided (and by provided I mean we had to pay for them out of pocket) blue polo shirts for the uniform. They had the name and website of our employer monogrammed on them, of course. Nevertheless, with that fairly obviously on the shirts, the shirts fairly obviously on the employees, and the bright yellow nametags also fairly obviously attached to the shirts, we would frequently be asked if we worked there. I just don't get it. It's not even the problem of people not reading, because the colours, I would think, should take care of it all. I know that when I see someone in there wearing the company colours, I sure as hell think "He works here; he can either help me or help me find someone who can".

omg u r0xx0r

2007-04-09T03:53:00.000-04:00

Muchos thanks to Devi/Ravenclawdevi/Katya/etc for setting up the feed for me because I'm either clueless on that level or don't have the ability or something :p

If it's a paid LJ thing, lemme know, I'll figure something out :p

Anyway, this is more a test than anything.

No, I would not like to type in hindi please stop asking argh

2007-04-09T02:51:00.000-04:00

I am going to be using this blog more often. I will still be using my livejournal, but I'll be Xposting as often as I can. I'm keeping LJ mainly because so many of my friends and interesting folk use it, so yeah. However, if you want to read new stuff sooner, this is where to find it.

If all else fails, I'll try to Xpost a link, or possibly connect a feed as soon as I figure out how to connect a feed.