Thursday, February 26, 2009

No Choppy!

Let's play a game of "What I Should Have Said Versus What I Actually Said." It's a game I just made up, one for which I should probably find a much shorter name. WISHSVWIAS starts with a setup:

Darlene from Roseanne
The other night I was mincing some garlic in my fancy, expensive Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob, so I could put it on the scrumptious pizzas I was making. The Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob looks just like a Slap-Chop but without the annoying headset-wearing white guy attached. When this modern wonder is in operation, it tends to make some noise. I mean, you can use the chopper thingumbob quietly, but only if you want your garlic to be gently caressed by the metal blades instead of, you know, chopped. So about five minutes into my garlic-mincing routine (this includes a break I took to peel some more garlic cloves), the doorbell rings, and standing outside my front door is the mysterious girl who for reasons unknown is living with my two-faced, often belligerent, usually passive-aggressive downstairs neighbor. This girl looks like a mousier version of Darlene from Roseanne, if she dressed like a sad little emo girl and wore glasses.


The next step in the game is to re-enact the conversation that the setup precludes, with What I Should Have Said in nice blue text, and What I Actually Said in orange text. Darlene's text is just plain ol' this color:

<I open the door>

What? It's garlic-chopping season.

Hello.

Umm, yeah, I was trying to work downstairs, and I keep hearing this banging sound...

Are you kidding me? You work from home and you're complaining? Look, it's barely eight o'clock, and I want garlic in my pizza. You gonna take some of your fancy work-from-home money and buy me some pre-minced garlic in a jar? Is it worth that much to you?

Oh, yeah, sorry about that, that was me chopping some garlic for dinner. Sorry about the noise.

Well, umm, it's really loud.

Hey, funny thing about that. My eighteen-month-old daughter is sleeping eight feet away, and she doesn't seem the least bit perturbed by the sound. Maybe you're exaggerating a little, hmm? How 'bout you go back downstairs and do another guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory while I enjoy my delicious garlicky pizza.

All right, sorry about that. I'm done now, so no worries.

mkay, thanks.

Hey, instead of coming up here and bitching you should appreciate the fact that I am in fact settling for coarsely-chopped garlic instead of the finely minced garlic that I really wanted, because mincing would take longer and make more noise, so out of consideration for my crummy neighbors I'm compromising and my pizza experience is diminished as a result!

<darlene goes back downstairs>

I swear, I am waayyy too nice to people. One of these days I'm gonna look social norms in the eye and tell them to drown in a vat of my hot Mexican-food butt-squirts so I can go around being mean and vile to people who tick me off, and then I'll feel bad about it and probably send some handwritten apology notes because I'm really not a mean guy by nature.

Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah. Fear not, Darlene. Taco Bell chopped my vegetables tonight. You and your skinny boyfriend can cut yourselves, and each other, in peace.

Aaaaand the moral of the story is:

No Choppy!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Reviewing the "First" Watchmen Review

Yesterday I learned that the so-called first review of the Watchmen movie had hit the web (but really, who's to say that it's really the first one? I bet there's another. Maybe as many as six of them). Of course, being the massive comic book geek that I am, I rushed over to read it. And no, I did not fear spoilers, because I've already read the graphic novel, so I know what happens. But for the record, I did want to stand outside theaters telling everyone how Titanic and The Passion of the Christ were going to end.

For the most part, the Times' review of Watchmen was positive. Go ahead and read it yourself, you'll see. I was glad to know that the more graphic parts of the original work were kept intact, and that despite the over-slick costumes, the characters seemed to be true to themselves. I was a little bothered by the last sentence, though:

But as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie,
Watchmen is, literally, peerless.

Someone clearly hasn't been paying attention. "First attempt" to make a post-adolescent comic book movie? All right, just off the top of my head, I can name several previous (and successful!) attempts:

  • Road to Perdition
  • Ghost World
  • A History of Violence
  • Persepolis
  • American Splendor
  • From Hell

All of these were based on comic books. That doesn't even count Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta, 30 Days of Night, Stardust, Constantine, or the Hellboy films. Also comic book movies, although their status as "post-adolescent" could be argued. Of course, that argument would be entirely subjective, hinged upon one's own definition of the term. Does "post-adolescent comic book movie" refer to a movie that is an adaptation of a post-adolescent comic, or a post-adolescent movie that happens to be an adaptation of a comic book? And exactly where are we setting the bar for post-adolescence itself?

Anyway, the presumption that "comic books" equals "super heroes" is annoying enough coming from my fellow (North) Americans, but I expected better from an article that was written for a publication in the United Kingdom. People in the UK should know good and bloody well that not all comic books are wedged into the superhero genre. Most of the best "non-cape" comics on both sides of the pond are penned by Brits.

In closing, I want to go see Watchmen really really badly. Good thing I get paid the day it opens.

Friday, February 20, 2009

F My Life

Today I discovered F*** My Life, a site that's kind of similar to One Sentence, which I've blogged about before, except on this one you can use more than one sentence, the stories have to be about horrible things that happened to you to make your life suck, and people cast votes on your stories, either showing sympathy or telling you "You deserved that."

A lot of the stories seem like they are either: obviously made-up, or told by complete imbeciles. It's surprisingly therapeutic to click through the site and tell these people, "You deserved that one." Try it, you'll like it.

I like to imagine the look on the face of (for instance) the fat girl who posted her tale of woe about how her boyfriend told her she was fat just because she asked him seventy-eight times in a twenty-minute period if he thought she was fat, when she revisits FMyLife and sees that 14,297 people think she deserved it, not for being fat, but for being fat and irritating, while only 114 people have read her story and said, "aww, I agree, your life sucks." I think of that face, and it brings a warm smile to my own.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 1

Franklin is a Canadian cartoon aimed at preschoolers, based on a series of children's books. It's about a little anthropomorphic turtle named Franklin who is, as near as I can tell, mentally retarded, and manages to wiggle his way into any stupid, easily-avoided predicament that may present itself at any given time.

The show also endorses genocide.

That's a shocking claim, but stay with me here. Almost none of the other characters in the cartoon aside from Franklin's stupid turtle family have names (and even then it's only him and his little sister). They are all just called by whatever animal they happen to be. Franklin's best friend is a bear named Bear. Other idiots he hangs out with are named Rabbit, Snail, Beaver, and Fox. The soccer coach is Mrs. Porcupine, and the teacher is named Mister Owl.

The very few characters who do have proper names are younger siblings (a couple of Franklin's friends have these, I think), fictional characters like Franklin's favorite superhero, and the occasional professional athlete or something.

What this leads me to believe is that in the twisted Franklin universe, the turtles reign supreme and have virtually wiped out all other species. Only a single breeding pair of each other type of animal has been allowed to survive, hence there being a Mr. Bear and a Mrs. Bear, for instance. With no diversity, what need is there for names other than a generic species identifier? If they were enslaving the populace they might at least have ID numbers and barcodes tattooed on them, but nope. The skunk is Skunk, the raccoon is Raccoon, all parents and authority figures are Mr. and/or Mrs., and that's all there is to it.

The fact that other characters with real names only appear in one or two episodes is further proof of the atrocities that have taken place off-camera. They're probably all being shipped off to concentration camps after their token appearances. Or maybe slaughtered for food.

I don't know why nobody has spoken up about this before. These hard-shelled dictators must be stopped at all cost.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Here's how much of a nerd I am:

Okay, the new Pepsi logo:

Pepsi Logo


bears a very slight resemblance to the Seamonkey logo:

Seamonkey Logo


So when I first started seeing all these Pepsi billboards that just had words written across them and nothing else, with the new logo in place of the letter "O," like this one here, I actually believed for a little while that it was a new Seamonkey logo... and I thought to myself, "Wow, where did the Mozilla Foundation come up with all the money for this big ad campaign?"


Clearly, I am not a Pepsi drinker.

Big Lots! has the best toys this side of the flea market...

On my way home from my dentist appointment today, I decided to stop at Big Lots! (you have to leave in the exclamation point or it's no fun) and shop around. I hadn't been in this particular Big Lots! before and sometimes there's some good finds to be... uh... found.

Quick tangent - I had just gotten my teeth all professionally cleaned and polished like ten minutes prior, and the first thing I wanted to do was hit the candy and snacks aisles of Big Lots!. How stupid am I, really?

Anyway, I wandered into the toy aisle and found some toys that only the kids on those Sally Struthers commercials would be happy to receive on Christmas morning. I wish I had a working data cable for my phone, so I could upload the pictures I took.

There was an inflatible Spider-Man mallet. I've read a lot of Spier-Man comic books and boy, let me tell you, without his trusty Spider-Mallet, mister Parker would have been in quite a pickle. A giant, city-crushing pickle. I'm glad somebody has finally immortalized the most trusty tool in Spidey's arsenal in the form of a cheap plastic blow-up plaything.

Also present were three packs of Noah figures that looked like they were supposed to be accessories to a Fisher-Price My First Ark playset or something. With no articulation they could hardly be called action figures, but Noah wouldn't need any kung-fu grip here, because all told I only saw three animals. Not three pairs, mind you. Three animals. One pack of toys was Noah and his wife, one was Noah with a giraffe and some kind of leopard (I think), and another was Noah's son (I guess), with a lion and what looked like two small yellow barrels. Or maybe they were giant yellow beer steins. I assume they were to be filled with Lion Chow or Honey Nut Cheerios or whatever. You need lots of Cheerios on an ark. It's a fact. Saw it on the History Channel and everything.

Great big Chinese-knock-off Voltron-Mechagodzilla-Power-Ranger-looking things! Saw some of those too. Seriously, they were taller than my daughter. Scary toys.

And what kid wouldn't be thrilled with Professional Bull Riders, Inc. toys? Not many, because they only had two left at Big Lots!. I kid you not, two different little plastic bulls, all posed like they had just flung off a rodeo clown and were getting ready to gore him.

Speaking of which, I also saw a four-or-five-pack of rodeo figures, including at least two clowns and, you guessed it, a pissed-off bull. I was too amazed by this next item to take an accurate count...

Rescue Heroes! Probably the most legitimate toys in the bunch, I think I've seen commercials for these things, but, much like with glamorous movie stars, seeing them in real life is another deal altogether. The first one to catch my eye was what at first appeared to be a Native American (I now realize he is supposed to look Asian) in a red sleeveless karate gi, like Ryu had gotten his dry cleaning switched up on him. He was partnered with a big black panther carrying something that resembled a black-and-red beer cooler with, I don't know...legs. This gentleman's name? Marshall Artz. It's a pun, see? Like, martial arts? Except he's a Marshall, that's his title. Like Wildlife Marshall. Or Grand Marshall at the parade. Guess which parade. And as luck would have it, his last name is Artz.

Anyway, the second Rescue Hero was cleverly named Hal E. Copter. And oddly enough, his accessory was an inflatible life raft that doubled as a waterproof MP3 player. You'd think with a name like that, he'd be some kind of helicopter pilot... Ha! Just kidding, he came with some kind of helicopter-backpack thing. Don't wave hello to the nice lady down the block who always wears a low-cut tank top when she's pruning the bushes outside her house as you fly by, Hal. You may accidentally lop off your fapping hand.

Oh, look, I found pictures on Amazon:

Marshall Artz!Hal E. Copter!
I don't know why these things strike me as funny.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Pucker Up, MySpace.

Be careful. Shield the eyes of your young children. You're reading a very "naughty" blog. Additionally, I am trying to spam you, phish you, steal your identity, and then infect your computer with viruses, spyware, adware, and other unspecified malware. Not necessarily in that order!

Or so MySpace says.

I discovered this morning that MySpace has blocked all links to my Blogger blogs, replacing them with this twaddle:

The link you are trying to visit has been disabled.

You have reached a link that is no longer in service. That means the link was very naughty, and, much like head lice, had to be eliminated before it spread.

You may be asking yourself, 'Hey, what was it about that link that got it in trouble?' An excellent question! Usually, it's one of the following reasons:

- The link was spam! No one likes spammers, and we don't like their links.

- You almost got phished! There are people out there who want to steal your MySpace password. They want to log in as you and send spam, harass your friends, change your profile, and generally run amok. Phishing pages are usually designed to look like MySpace to trick you. Other sites may also ask for your MySpace login information to customize your profile, insert videos or slide shows, track visitors, or any number of other things.Don't make it easy for them. ONLY USE YOUR MYSPACE LOGIN INFO ON WWW.MYSPACE.COM!!

- Viruses are not fun! Neither is adware, spyware, or malware. We cut the links to places that are known sources of infection.

If you really did want to check out some spam, viruses, or phishing pages, we're really sorry to have interrupted. We're sure you can find it elsewhere. There's plenty on the Internet.
What can I say, MySpace. You got me. My quasi-clever little ramblings about the antics of my 18-month-old daughter and the dumb crap I see on TV were really just an elaborate ruse hiding a nefarious plot to gather people's American Express card numbers so I can fraudulently purchase bigger, more powerful computers with high-def monitors so I can write even more pervasive viruses to infect my friends with so they will see pop-up ads for natural male enhancement every time they try to open Microsoft Word. Curse you, MySpace, for foiling my plot to build my own personal botnet and infect the world with the next Bonzi Buddy. I am forced to retreat to my underground lair and begin hatching another scheme. You can't see me, but I am furiously dry-washing my hands and maybe cackling a little bit.

Seriously. I had run into this problem before, but I was trying to use tinyurl links like I had done in the past on Facebook and Twitter. I can kind of understand MySpace blocking tinyurl links, because their opacity does make it easier to launch such phishing attacks or lead people to shock sites or whatever. I have never goatse'd or Rickrolled anybody, nor have I any intention to do so, but MySpace doesn't know that. So, fine. I used regular links, which worked well until probably a couple of days ago, I don't know. It only came to my attention today (thanks, Dena). All the links I'd posted in MySpace blogs that worked just fine at first are now blocked.

And it would appear that I am not the only one facing this problem. MySpace is blocking all links to Blogger blogs. Links to the Blogger home page still go through, but try to link to your own blog, and your browsing freedom gets the old MySpace clothesline. This is nothing short of censorship.

I realize that this may very well be the result of a poorly-coded or overly-zealous site maintenance bot of some sort, which MySpace has only recently deployed, and the issue might even be resolved soon, with a full apology. But I don't care. It's bad enough that MySpace gives you a big stupid warning every time you click a link that might lead you out of their dungeon of irritating corporate advertisement, but flat-out blocking anything, even with the best of intentions, is unacceptable. When it spills over into blocking legitimate links, it's abusive.

So, MySpace, I would like to extend to you a formal invitation to kiss my ass, and in fact, to kiss the collective ass of the entire Blogger/Blogspot community. Stop treating all your users like idiots. Many of them probably are, but not all of them. Phishing is nothing new. Anyone with a computer and enough of a clue to get on MySpace has heard of phishing and, if they're smart, they've already done something to protect themselves from it. They don't need your hand-holding, and we don't need your accusations of wrongdoing. Stop censoring your little corner of the Internet, because there's nothing stopping people from leaving it en masse. They're already doing so, in fact.

Frankly, I'm surprised that it took this long for the influence of Rupert Murdoch and the Fox drones to be felt.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

AT&T Disturbs Me.

I can't be the only one who's noticed how dark the AT&T Wireless commercials have gotten. I'm not talking about the mom with the stupid kids who don't want to use "old minutes," those are kind of clever. What I'm talking about are the "sorry I missed your call, I don't have any bars out here" ads. They started out pretty mundane but they took a very sudden, sinister turn. Here, I'll review:

  • Dad looking for his daughter at local "make-out point." -- Okay, no big deal, kinda funny, whatever.
  • Dude missing the Motörhead concert. -- Haha, stupid, Motörhead sucks anyway.
  • College guy getting stuck in a hostel with creepy Euro-techno-trash. -- Wow, I would hate if that were me, but still nothing catastrophic.
  • Hapless employee brings up the big corporate merger that was supposed to remain hush-hush, in a business meeting. -- That's probably going to affect a few 401(k)s.
  • Children's birthday party terrorized by man in tyrannosaurus costume. -- Well, I tend to find crying children funny, but I know most people don't. This is a ruined family moment.
  • Children traumatized by family's accidental trip to a nude beach. -- A more disturbing notion to some people than others, to be sure. But anyone would be traumatized at the sight of the senior citizens that insist on hitting the ol' clothing-optional beaches.
  • Guy falsely arrested for trespassing, and thrown in jail. -- Wait, what? That is harsh. And they even made a thinly-veiled reference to forced prison sodomy.
  • Man blows up his own house because he didn't know to thaw a frozen turkey before deep-frying. -- Hey, not funny... that was that guy's home. And he's all singed.
  • An entire news crew gets BLOWN UP. -- Holy sh*t. This is how we're selling phone service?
  • Special holiday-themed commercial features a snowman slowly melting away. -- Because nothing says "Season's Greetings" like a none-too-subtle reminder of the inevitability of death.
I'm sure I'm missing some, but the trend couldn't be clearer. I'm all for morbid humor, but this is friggin' scary. At least the Verizon commercials are just dumb; these make me check over my shoulder every time I use my AT&T phone.

I realize this blog is about three months too late to be considered even remotely current or relevant, but I don't especially care. Yes, there are already a bunch of parody ads on YouTube, but I don't have a video camera so I have to resort to this.

Given that it's been a while since I've seen one of these creepshows masquerading as advertisement, I can only assume that AT&T has run out of grisly ideas with which to terrorize their potential customer base. As a loyal AT&T subscriber, I am rushing to the rescue with two new fully-formed scripts, free of charge:

  1. *beep!* "Hey, it's Staci's phone. Yeah, sorry we didn't get your call warning us that the guy Staci just met on the Internet and agreed to have dinner with, has a mile-long rap sheet full of sexual assault charges, but we don't get any bars out here in the dimly-lit roadside diner on the edge of town where Staci drove to meet this guy. So Staci's about to get violently raped and in all likelihood will be dumped in the woods ten miles from here, with even less chance of getting a decent signal. I guess when Mister Right's grimy, calloused hands are clamped around her neck and her dignity and self-respect are being pounded right out of her, Staci will wish she'd gone with AT&T instead. The thought that an AT&T phone could've prevented the soul-shattering humiliation, bruises, and internal bleeding will surely keep her warm on the long walk to the nearest free clinic to get a morning-after pill. Whoops, gotta go, the roofie's starting to kick in!"

  2. *beep!* "Yeah, Chad's phone here, sorry Chad missed your call, but there's no signal out here on the remote island paradise where Chad decided to bring his girlfriend so he could propose to her. So your frantic calls and text messages about the sudden military uprising currently erupting in this little impoverished Caribbean nation, the coup that will certainly lead to months if not years of ferocious civil war? Nope, we didn't get 'em. When Chad and Misty are caught in the crossfire of a conflict they have nothing to do with, I hope you'll send their family sympathy cards instead of calling them, because they don't have AT&T either. True, Chad survived the attack, but the last thing he saw before blacking out in that jungle was a group of guerrillas dragging his beloved away, laughing about the fun they'd have with her, and how much cocaine they could buy with that big, shiny engagement ring. Nobody's seen Misty since. Oh, and try not to stare at the stumps where both of Chad's legs, and his right arm, used to be, when you visit him in the hospital. He's a little touchy about how the doctors had to remove them because of the infection that broke out at the bullet entry points. Maybe while you're trying to console the hollow shell of the man that used to be your buddy Chad, you can mention the sweet rollover minutes he can get if he switches to AT&T."
Dear AT&T: You're welcome.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Magnolia Situation

Gonna take a detour from the blog I intended to write today to talk about the whole cluster-eff that has happened with ma.gnolia (hereby to be referred to as simply Magnolia, because I hate superfluous punctuation).

It is now day seven of Magnolia's outage, with no end in sight, and hope seems to be fading. Now, this isn't a national catastrophe or anything, but I had some really interesting bookmarks there and now I'm bummed that I may not get access to them again. I can't exactly stumble around the web looking for them all again, because I don't even remember what all was there.

I have been able to uncover a bunch of my bookmarks using the magic of Google cache, although I haven't started the process of transferring them to Delicious yet. So I'm happy about that. There are also a number of other recovery options being discussed on a thread that's been opened over at Get Satisfaction. I'm pissed at myself, though, for not being a little more forward thinking and having some sort of backup to my Magnolia stash. I never bothered setting up an RSS feed to dump into anything, and never once exported my bookmarks to a plain HTML file, because I'm lazy. I just figured, hey, it's an online resource, they've got to have their own backups if something goes wrong, right? Plus, at the end of the day it's only bookmarks. It's not like it's my bank account being compromised, and the content of those bookmarks is still floating around out there in the 'tubes.

I've learned my lesson, though: I pointed my Delicious RSS feed toward Google Reader, and I'll probably set up a reader on my own PC when I get home, to have a local backup. Kind of defeats the purpose of an online store of bookmarks, but I don't want to get burned again. I might check out other social bookmarking sites - Diigo was suggested by Magnolia founder Larry Halff, but it seems iffy to me. Lacks the simplicity I loved about Magnolia.

Anyway, the point of this post is to highlight a different posting, on the Get Satisfaction thread. Most of the conversation focuses on various methods of data retrieval, all from external sources like Google cache and FriendFeed, so people can get their bookmarks back. One guy, however, chose to go on a rant, quoting one of the first messages on the Magnolia homepage that discussed the severity of the outage. I'll just paste the whole thing here:


onionsformagnolia replied 9 hours ago

Larry, on your home page, you wrote:

"So far, my efforts to recover Ma.gnolia's data store have been unsuccessful. While I'm continuing to work at it, both from the data store..."

How is that possible? What is this "data store" you're talking about? Was there no back up?

"In this past year, many of us have seen much loss around us."

What does this have to do with the current problem, other than a lame attempt at deflection?

"While bookmarks seem small on the national or global scale, I know that many of you had built intellectual and social capital through the bookmarks, groups, and connections you made here."

A blinding flash of the obvious. So far, you've said many words without saying anything.

"Ma.gnolia was approaching the third anniversary of its public launch; for me, it was the project and people to which I'd devoted most of my time, energy, and love for nearly four years. It's still a little too soon to give word about the return of Ma.gnolia the service and the future of the M2 project, but I will keep this site and our Twitter account updated as those decisions are made."

You have nerve to even talk about the return of Magnolia and M2, whatever that is/was. Forget it. This "business", if it ever was viable, is now dead all but in name. I wouldn't entrust anything to you any more because of the way you've bungled this. You've been quite evasive in answering direct questions posed to you about what happened. If you owe at least one thing to Magnolia users, it's an honest explanation.

At the moment, it looks like I've lost thousands of bookmarks that I've added over the last couple of years and I did not have them anywhere else because I was foolish enough to assume that Magnolia was being run by competent people! To say that I'm pissed off is an understatement. The irony is that I had evaluated and rejected Delicious and SimpPy for reasons that I don't even recall any more. I've lost something of tremendous value and by the looks of it, I will not be able to recover anything since none of the "solutions" that you have posted so far work for me. I'm working on the assumption that any competent system administrator would have been able to get a server running by now and restored from a backup, even if *some* data was lost.

What happened? Your server got seized by creditors? You had a nervous breakdown? Ex-wife got the server? Your dog ate the server? Your server got abducted by aliens? You had a disk crash and hadn't done a back up since, well, ever?

It's hard to imagine how you could look any worse so I suggest you just come clean. If it's a matter of money, I'd contribute toward a solution but not without knowing the whole, unvarnished truth. So, how about it? Are you going to explain exactly what happened or are you going to continue your "keep 'em in the dark and feed them horse shit" communications strategy?

Harsh. I won't say this guy (girl?) doesn't make good points, because they are very good points. I had the same questions myself, once I realized that this wasn't a case of someone saying "this issue may take several days to correct" just to prepare people for the worst, only to have the site back up by noon the next day.

But let's have some perspective. You're talking about using a free online service (those who did pay for Magnolia's "premium" services will receive a refund, according to Larry) to keep track of information that you found useful on the Web. When you use something that's given away for free, your complaint leverage is greatly diminished. Especially when the tools were always available for you to backup your thousands of bookmarks.

I had a little over 300 bookmarks on Magnolia, well short of Mister Angry's thousands, and while I am miffed about potentially losing those, I'm more upset that I didn't give myself a fallback option. No contingency. My fault. If I had thousands of bookmarks, and if they were all that important to me, I would have made sure to have a backup. It would never occur to me to go on this kind of rant against a guy who's watching years of his hard work circle the drain and is already fully aware that the situation has upset a lot of people. I mean, I can get on a pretty hellacious rant, don't get me wrong, but over this?

Yet within hours this rant was upvoted as one of the "best points" on the discussion thread (albeit by a whopping 6 people as of this writing), above and beyond the actual constructive suggestions, and is featured at the top of the thread. It's a fine illustration of the testicular-inflation effect of the Internet.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The One Sentence Blog

Recently I discovered a site called One Sentence that asks you to submit a true story from your life in the form of a single sentence, and I found the idea so brilliant in its simplicity that I had to share it in my blog.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Reality TV Memes

It is with great, agonizing shame that I confess to occasionally watching the circus that calls itself "reality television." I am fully aware that these shows are utterly devoid of intellectual, moral, or sociological value, but there's something almost therapeutic about subjecting myself to this assault on good taste. I can't help but feel better about my own life when I see a bunch of idiots volunteering themselves to be publicly humiliated for weeks on end, in the hopes of gaining some small measure of fame and/or fortune. However much of a fat loser I am, I will never be the guy getting into a drunken fistfight with two other guys over a plate of cold nachos to impress some skank with serious self-esteem issues and a third-grade reading level who, even if I should emerge victorious from the gamut of debasement that comprises this "competition" for her "affection," will only dump me a week after the cameras shut off anyway.

In short, Sheila and I make sport of laughing at morons. We take great joy in it. You do too, don't lie. I can't even count how many ridiculous and sometimes even slightly clever one-liners we swipe from these shows and use in daily interaction with each other, because making fun of stupid people doesn't stop when the TV is turned off. Oh, no.

There's the fake drinking game inspired by Whitney "I Shouldn't Have Beaten Anya" Thompson from ANTM (do a shot every time she says "I'm plus size"), which later morphed into the "I'm a retired model" drinking game that ended too soon when whatever-that-dumb-waif's-name-is was forced to drop off the Rock of Love bus due to health problems. I was looking forward to making fun of her some more. There's our impersonation of Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunters ("Well, we got some video where you can see an eight-foot tall apparition of some sort of ungodly goat-man, which pointed at us and said 'Hey, I'm a ghost, get the f**k out of my house,' and then the dining room table levitated off the ground and anally violated our camera guy, but I just don't think that's enough evidence for us to say this house is haunted"). Then, Real Chance of Love gave us "Fake-ass Puffy," which we declared to be the new "Nappy-headed Ho."

These things are stupid as hell but they make us laugh. We started jokingly referring to them as memes. Really, the only thing that separates a stupid inside joke from a meme is the number of people who are in on the joke.

So our current brain-rotting poison of choice is Tool Academy. This show can only be described as awesome by way of pathetic. Plus, by the time the first episode was halfway over, it had served up two such "memes." In fact, I'd like to see these become actual Internet memes, because everybody should find humor in the things that I think are funny but really shouldn't because they are actually just stupid.

The first (and weaker) of the two is the transformation of the phrase "Mister Awesome" into an adjective. Is something so truly mind-bogglingly amazing that "awesome" alone is painfully ill-equipped to describe it? Well, then, it is Mister Awesome.

I shall present an example:

Dude 1: "Dude, did you see the trailer for Transformers 2?"

Dude 2: "Oh, hells yeah, dude, it was...
"

But the crown jewel in this regalia of buffoonery is: "Mega please." The words tumbled out of that heifer Margo's mouth and into my very central nervous system. To truly appreciate it, it must be understood in its original context, so if you haven't already seen it, check it out here. Suffer through the ad, jump to about the 6:45 point and enjoy.

This phrase (much like the entire show) exudes some kind of primordial, incomprehensible blend of idiocy and brilliance that it makes me want to laugh just thinking about it. It cries out to be meme-ified. Are you perusing your favorite news aggregate site, or discussion forum, or blog, when you come across an incredibly inane, implausible, or otherwise ridiculous comment made by some trollish fop (or, y'know, a stupid post like this one)? Hit 'em with one of these...





...and hear the "Oohhh, snap!" reverberating all across the interwebs.

I might just shop this around over at 4chan. Everyone knows if you want a meme to take hold, it's gotta start at 4chan. Every single Internet meme in the universe originated there. Even memes that existed prior to 4chan originated at 4chan. I don't know how that works. 4chan is a strange and frightening place, to be avoided at all cost. Unless you're trying to get a meme to take root.

I don't want to be that guy, though. You know, the guy who tries to force something to happen that really ought to just happen organically. The guy who makes up a random nickname for himself and insists that other people call him by that nickname in everyday conversation. You can't give yourself a nickname.

I also don't want to be the guy that people come looking for in six months when "Mega please" has run its course, is all over the Internet, and everybody is sick of it but people still keep using it and why won't it go away it's not funny anymore aahhhhhh!!!

So, like I was saying, this is the new Rickroll, people. You saw it here first. Well, no, come to think of it, you probably didn't.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Emily's Lunchtime Adventure

I would like to share a charming story.

This is my daughter, Emily. She's 18 months old.


And, y'know, just for reference, this is my lovely wife Sheila, and me. Dressed as ninjas.


Anyway, back to Emily. Like many children, one of Emily's first words was "no." Well, actually, it sounds more like "mmboh," but we get the point when she says it. Which she does. Frequently. Usually accompanied by a near-frantic waving of her hand from side to side, often in an attempt to slap whatever it is she's objecting to.

I had to stay at home with Emily for a day last week because she was feeling sick. At lunch time, I heated some chicken tenders for her and a big plate of tater tots for me (yes, tater tots as a meal, don't you judge me).

Everything went smoothly at first. I brought our food to the living room, plopped the little darling down into her playpen and started feeding her. After every few bites of chicken, I would give her a tater tot.

This is what the scientific community (of which I am not a member, but I signed up for their mailing list so I could get a free football phone) refers to as a "bad idea."

After a couple of tater tots, little Emily realized that this, indeed, is where it's at, and would have no more of this "chicken" business. Here is a rough (and abbreviated) estimation of the conversation that ensued:

Me: "Here, Emily, have another bite of chicken."

Emily: "mmboh."

Me: "What? You don't want more chicken?"

Emily: "mmboh." [points towards my tater tots]

Me: "Ohhh, no. Have a few more bites of chicken, and then you can have a tater tot." [offering another bite of chicken]

Emily: "mmbooooohhh." [waves hand furiously]

Me: "Eat some chicken!" [puts a bit of chicken in Emily's hand]

Emily: "..." [paces around playpen for a few seconds, looks at me, and drops the chicken on the floor]

Me: "Hey, don't do that. You gotta eat it." [I put another bit of chicken up to her mouth, which she grudgingly takes]

Emily: "..." [chews the chicken twice and spits it out] "mboh."

Me: "Can't have tater tots until you eat the chicken. These are mine and those are yours."

Emily: "MMBBOOOOOHHHH!!!!" [more hand-waving]

Me: "All right, then I'll eat them all. Nyah." [shoving tater tots, one after the other, into my mouth] "Are you gonna have some chicken before I finish all the tots?"

Emily: "mmboh!" [points to the swiftly-vanishing tots]

Me: "Nope, not until you have some more chicken. [offering the chicken plate to Emily] Have another bite."

Emily: "mmboh!" [flails at the chicken, points to the tots again]

Me: "All right, then I'll eat all those too." [chowing down on some now-lukewarm chicken] "Daddy needs protein too. Are you sure you don't want any?"

Yes, I sometimes talk to my daughter with my mouth full.

Emily: "mmboooooohhhhh!"

At this point there is exactly one tater tot left, and several pieces of chicken.

Me: "Look, Emily. There's one tater tot left. You can have it after you eat a few more bites of chicken."

Emily ponders this for a minute, and suddenly she can't have enough chicken. I give her one piece, and as soon as it's in her mouth she's reaching to the plate for another. She's shoveling cooked bird into her face with both hands like it's the last meal she'll eat until puberty.

When every last scrap of chicken is gone, and only then, she turns and points to the plate sitting in my lap, bearing the last survivor of the ruined tater tot empire. True to my word, I gave it to her. My friends, you may think you know what it is to see someone chewing away happily at a morsel of food, but you do not.

I am amazed at just how well she understood what I was telling her, and how stubbornly she refused to eat the stupid chicken until her last hope of having another tater tot was almost gone. It makes me wonder how many other times she's fully understood what I was telling her, and just played dumb to see how much she could get away with. For someone under the age of two, that's pretty devious.

This girl is going to be trouble.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

This doesn't bode well.

Okay, so I was writing my last post and wanted to find a good synonym for "dislike." You know, one that wasn't quite as full of vitriol as "hate" or "loathe." So I typed "dislike" into the embedded search bar in my Firefox window, and before I could change the search engine from Google to Meriam-Webster, Google (which as we all know can have a very toddler-like exuberance towards being helpful and friendly) gave me the top ten most popular search terms that begin with "dislike."

Lookie:
I'm not sure what to make of that first (and by definition, most popular) one. Or the fact that Sarah Palin still registers on someone's radar enough for that person to Google her at all anymore, even if it is in the context of not liking her.

Draw your own conclusions.

Okay, you can stay on my lawn, just stop humping the garden Gnomes.

This is a follow-up of sorts on my last post, and an attempt to not just look like a crusty old man yelling at the neighborhood hooligans.

As much as I object to MySpace and Facebook, I do like the kernel of the idea of what they set out to accomplish. That said, if one absolutely must have their social networking fix, I think Virb is really a better option. I've had a Virb account for several months, haven't done much of anything with it because I'm lazy and boring, but I like the site. It's not as widely used or as popular as MyFace, and it doesn't offer much that Spacebook doesn't already have available, except for the absence of everything that makes MySpace and Facebook so very, very annoying. And that's enough for me. Virb is kind of minimalist and for the most part it doesn't get in your face. I like that.

Also, I feel compelled to share that I absolutely love social bookmarking. If you haven't already experienced the joys of sites like del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, then you should, like right now.

(Except not ma.gnolia, because their servers are down at the moment and they've experienced data corruption/loss. Which really truly sucks because I prefer ma.gnolia to del.icio.us and I feel lost without access to all my ma.gnolia bookmarks.)

These sites rock because sometimes (often) I'm at a computer which I do not own and happen upon a cool, informative, or otherwise interesting site that I want to bookmark for later reference. Well, Foxmarks is great but I don't (for example) have Firefox at work. So, I turn to my trusty Ma.gnolia bookmarklet and all is well... when the service isn't hosed, at least. :( Social bookmarking not only lets you keep a repository of all your favorite sites on the web, but it is a phenomenal resource for finding information on whatever topic tickles your fanny. In some ways it's superior to using search engines, because search engines just give you whatever matches their algorithms decide are relevant, while with social bookmarking you can see what other people who share your interests have decided are actually relevant. It's like asking your buddies what movies they like instead of reading the stuffy newspaper reviews. Or something.

But you probably already knew all that. And if not, now you do. So, there. I've promoted something social. I'm not a curmudgeon.