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

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

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

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.

1. 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,
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. The above three rules apply to laptop computers where applicable.
5. 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.
6. 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.)
7. Dry campus means don't get caught. Not really, dry campus means don't drink, seriously, it's bad and stuff.
8. 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.
9. Don't join Greek life. Unless you're a Scientologist, then you'll fit right in.
10. The wireless network is fantastic.*
11. 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.
12. 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'

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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.