First category: generally useless

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!

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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

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

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

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

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

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.