Bobman's Rants

Getting Sick

2010-11-16T15:57:00.003-05:00

People do realize that getting sick once in a while is normal right?

On one of the message boards I check out from time to time, someone posted that they had had a sore throat for two days, and :

I've been taking prednisone, proventil, albuterol, advair, nasonex, oscillococcinum, sambucus, some OTC "immune system booster", vicks vapo spray, and probably some random others for two days now and nothing is working.

Obviously this person is a) a moron and b) insane, but holy crap! He had a sore throat for TWO DAYS, and took, just according to the things he remembered, NINE different medications. And the thread in question is FILLED with people just adding other suggestions, with me being the only one saying "dude!." A lot of people were chiming in with "how about zinc, or echinacea," or whatever nonsense. None of which actually do anything, by the way, but at least they're not mixing a bunch of random drugs in a short period of time.

News flash everyone - you're going to get sick once in a while, and medicine will NOT solve it instantly. Take something so you don't hurt too bad, and fucking wait it out. Medicine doesn't "owe" you instant gratification, and mixing everything you can find is going to fucking KILL you. The kid in question is so aggravatingly stupid and stubborn I hope his liver fails.

Your Boss Knows You Drink

2010-05-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

There has been a LOT of hubbub lately about the whole Facebook Privacy concerns. Personally, I agree with the always amusing Matt Sussman on this topic - the Internet is public. Don't assume it's private and you'll be fine.

But one thing that HAS come out of this mess that continues to annoy me is the repeated assertion that your current or future boss may look to Facebook to determine what kind of employee you'd be. As an example, here's a piece of a conversation I had with someone in this Gizmodo thread a few weeks ago :

If you want to get a professional position you need to present a professional appearance. I have photos from 20 years ago that would absolutely humiliate the subjects if I were to post and identfy them on FB today. Depending on the nature of their job they could absolutely lose that position based on pics taken during a drunken weekend away from the barracks 20 years ago.

. . . .

Your behavior on your own time is of a concern to any employer that deals with sensitive information, or wants to maintain business secrets. If I see that you spend a lot of time partying and passed out drunk, I won't consider you for a position with a defense contractor. If you post repeatedly that you are (again) broke until payday, I get the impression that you can't manage money and won't put you in charge of the budget for your department. If you post that your medically fragile family member is hospitalized again and you will be out of the office for two or three weeks I'll raise your insurance premium and take you off the list for that promotion you wanted because I can't be sure you'll be there. You regularly post that you called in sick because you were cramping from the PMS again, I'll cut your hours

I can't say this person doesn't raise a valid point - they obviously do. I am NOT here to say that your current or future employers won't use Facebook to check up on you. Just last night I was told a story about someone who was suspended for badmouthing his company on Facebook. That was a stupid thing for him to do, and assuming that's the whole story, he deserves the suspension if not termination. You can't publicly badmouth the company you work for, Facebook or not. That being said, the parts of your personal life that don't affect your employer? Are you honestly going to live your entire life in fear of what someone may someday discover about you?

I mean, presumably your employer, prospective or otherwise, is checking to see if you might be doing something that would either hurt the image of his or her business or to see if your personality might not coincide with what he or she is looking for in an employee. In either case, if that thing exists, then you AREN'T a good fit for them, are you? The entire argument for privacy seems to be "I should be able to fool my boss into thinking I'm someone I'm not." I mean, look at the argument I quoted above. Take, for example, this section :

If I see that you spend a lot of time partying and passed out drunk, I won't consider you for a position with a defense contractor. If you post repeatedly that you are (again) broke until payday, I get the impression that you can't manage money and won't put you in charge of the budget for your department.

If you DO spend a lot of time partying and passed out drunk, you're not FIT for that job as a defense contractor. Right? If you're stupid enough to post those things to Facebook you're particularly not a good candidate for the job. Similarly, if you can't handle your own finances, someone would be a fool to hire you to be in charge of a corporate budget. You'd be a fool to think you'd be good at it in the first place. The whole argument is "if your boss knew the truth about you, they wouldn't hire you." Well.... be a decent person and the truth won't be anything that can keep you from getting a job. The whole crux of the argument seems to be a defense of dishonesty.

I assert that harmless pictures of you drinking with friends or going to parties - and I'm talking about normal, adult parties, not idiotic frat parties where you're running around naked - are perfectly acceptable. Provided you don't take pictures of yourself doing anything illegal - doing drugs, for example - no one gives a shit that you drink and have a reasonable amount of fun. Any person in authority who sees those activities and judges you negatively for them is a fucking asshole. They're either joyless dipshits or full-on hypocrites, and in neither case should you want to work for them. I've been to bars with my bosses. They ALL drink and have fun and act like any other drunk people. I guarantee everyone you have a professional relationship with gets drunk and is a normal person. This idea that we have to put up a facade in order to conduct business is just a retarded societal fairy tale that we all buy into, and consequently reinforce.

You can be professional when it's necessary, but you're still allowed to be human. Any boss or workplace that disagrees with that assertion is going to make you fucking MISERABLE.

Driving Roundup

2010-04-14T18:00:00.001-04:00

A bit of housekeeping to start off with. I haven't been blogging much lately. I won't say that I ran out of things to rant about, but I felt like I was getting repetitive. My biggest fear in this whole endeavor is coming off like an ignorant bigot, but close behind that is just coming off as preachy or unoriginal. So many of the topics I choose to rant about have been covered ad nauseum elsewhere so if I don't have anything to really add I'm not gonna regurgitate it.

That being said, I'm going to rant about driving and road construction, topics that everyone and their mother complains about. Figure that one out. I'm particularly angry about this one, though, so... that means lots of swearing. Caveat lector.

Now then, with all that out of the way... I live in NH. I work a good 40 minutes away on a good day, and most of my friends live a good HOUR away. Not only that, but thanks to the dog and my paranoia about asking anyone for favors, if I go out after work I usually end up driving home first, letting the dog out, and then driving back down past where I just was for work. So on a day like Tuesday, when I was meeting friends for trivia, I spent almost four hours in my car. Not a huge deal - I like driving, I like my car, and I have lots of music and podcasts to listen to to fill the time. I don't HAVE to live where I do, and there's no one to blame but myself - I choose to live in a state that doesn't treat its citizens like retarded criminals, but work in a state that does. My decision.

When it DOES become a huge deal is when the idiotic highway department closes ENTIRE STRETCHES OF HIGHWAY overnight, and puts up useless fucking detour signs. If I didn't have a GPS, I would have been LOST in central Mass last night for hours.

OK, deep breath, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with road closures. There is VERY little reason to close an entire interstate. Especially a road like I-495, which is three lanes wide, so even if you're paving you can easily close two lanes while paving them and let traffic go down to one lane. Unless there's a serious safety issue, NO NEED to close the entire highway. Even on nights when they don't close the ENTIRE highway, they'll often close off two lanes for like, TEN FUCKING MILES just for ONE BRIDGE CREW. So it's 11PM, and you're sitting in bumper to bumper single-lane traffic for 10 miles, driving by just EMPTY closed highway. The only thing you pass is a state trooper every mile or so, burning through overtime pay faster than their Crown Vic burns through Premium, all on our dime. Then you come to the actual construction - a crew working on a bridge. One bridge. One crew. I understand that there needs to be a buffer so they can park equipment and not get plowed into by some grandma in a Toyota that plows through the blinking orange arrow, but ten fucking miles? For ONE BRIDGE? What the FUCK?

Next, paving. Who decides what stretches of road get paved? There's a two-mile stretch of I-93 South, just before the I-495 merger, that is fucking torn to SHIT. I've driven on smoother gravel driveways. Every fucking day I'm bouncing along this piece of road, listening to it destroy my suspension, watching pieces of asphalt fly up in the air (which, when I'm on my motorcycle, is a fucking JOY to deal with). This stretch of road has been like this for YEARS, never having been paved, despite being one of the busiest pieces of highway in the state. And yet there are pieces of 128 that seem to get paved twice a year, evne when they don't need it! I've seen perfectly smooth highways get torn up and re-paved, just because it was seemingly time for it to be done, while these horrible pieces of shit just lay there being neglected. Why does no one speak up? Who is accountable for this?? All the tax money Massachusetts rapes from its citizens (and in my case, non-citizens) for supposed road work, and I have to drive through a post-apocalyptic minefield on my way to work every day?

Finally, detour signs. Seemingly the EASIEST thing to do. It has to be done ONCE, and just involves putting down a sign - DETOUR. Arrow. Done. Yet, inevitably, there will be one detour sign at the closed road, one more a little later.... and then fucking NOTHING. This is exactly what happened to me on Tuesday. 495 - CLOSED. Detour - arrow pointing left. Incidentally, the ONLY place you could go with the closed on-ramp, but whatever. A bit later, another detour sign, pointing you basically back where you started? It was night and I wasn't familiar with the area, but it sure seemed like I just went in a big fucking circle, and then just saw no more detour signs. Just driving along a random road in the middle of a town I don't know, with no direction. Thankfully a threw on the GPS, which took me through East Bumble before eventually rejoining 495.

Look, we have a BILLION of those stupid electric signs out there, 99% of them either sitting on the side of the road doing nothing, or telling you useless bullshit like "CLICK IT OR TICKET!" as if you're a retarded 8-year old. How about, when you have a detour, put one of those at the detour with a brief idea of where you're going? It doesn't have to be a novel, just a bunch of numbers. DETOUR - Take 86E to 43N to 495N. That way, if you don't see a detour sign, at least you have a fighting chance of finding your way back to the highway. Or maybe we can repurpose one of the 19 state troopers that are just sitting on the closed highway, or chatting with the construction workers, and have them sit where the detour signs should be to make it a little clear where the detours are? Hell, if we're gonna pay them triple time to sit in their cars and run the engine all night, might as well make a sign out of them.

None of this feels like rocket science to me. I'm sure there's a lot about highway construction that I'm clueless about, but I'm at least AS intelligent if not moreso than most of the other people inconvenienced, don't we deserve a little consideration? Especially when this shit happens EVERY NIGHT from March to November?

Food Revolution

2010-03-29T09:00:00.002-04:00

There's a new show on ABC called Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Please watch it. It's on Friday nights at 9PM on ABC; two episodes have aired and you can watch them on the website.

The premise is simple - Jamie (a British Chef probably most famously known as The Naked Chef) goes to Huntington, West Virginia (one of the unhealthiest cities in America) and tries to show them the error of their ways.

Of the two episodes that have aired thus far, the majority of his efforts have been aimed at schools. In particular he's been looking at the processed garbage that the elementary school is feeding the kids, and trying to substitute in fresh, healthy foods instead; something he had quite a bit of success with in England.

The thing that probably jumps out at most people when they first see this show is how resistant everyone is to Jamie. It's easy to immediately just label everyone in the town as ignorant hicks but I don't think that's really fair. I've seen that level of stubbornness EVERYWHERE; people in America don't like to even have a HINT that someone is telling them what to do. Nearly every giant debate we have in this country is over some group thinking that someone is trying to force them into something. It's just in our nature to resist that type of shit. You could say it's even genetic; the people who came to America in the 1600's were the people who said "screw this shit, I'm going for something better."

Anyway, getting off topic. The thing I've liked about the show so far is that Jamie honestly seems to care about what he's doing. Not only that, but he's focused very much on something that is easily attainable for the average American. My biggest complaint about movies like "Food, Inc" or "Fast Food Nation" (the former I really liked, while the latter I thought was garbage, but they both had a similar message) was that they focused on such a global problem. The industrialization of the food industry IS a real problem, and there are things we as consumers can do to combat it, but it's not going to change overnight. "Food Revolution" is focusing on things that could easily change overnight. He goes into a family's house and teaches them to eat healthy. He goes into a school and revises their menu and finds what works, AND he works with the superintendent to push these changes. He's making shit happen.

I won't say that anything I have seen shocks me, but it still fires me up. I don't even have kids, but seeing what kids are being fed in school, and the apathy towards it, is not just frightening but aggravating. While a town in West Virginia isn't necessarily a microcosm of the whole country, it's at least a microcosm of the attitude. Higher education in this country has always bothered me because it's treated more like a business than an educational endeavor, and I hate to see grade schools going down the same path. Everything, even down to the nutrition and health of students, comes down to the bottom line.

I don't understand why we're so focused on teaching kids reading, writing and arithmetic but can't be bothered to put any effort into teaching them how to be healthy. What's more important, both to the individual and to society as a whole? Not an election goes by without talk of education reform, test scores, blah blah blah, and in the meantime we cut gym class because of budgetary concerns and serve pizza for breakfast. I mean... fuck. We've all heard the "our kids are fat" argument ad nauseum over the past decade but we're not even fucking trying.

Yes, food and health education start at home, and it is ultimately the parent's responsibility to teach their kids to eat right and exercise and all that, but they still eat a large number of meals at school. It's not helping anyone if all those meals are chicken nuggets and pizza. I find it really inspiring that Jamie Oliver legitimately seems to want to change this and is using his fame and wealth to do so. Godspeed Jamie.

Health Care

2010-03-22T11:15:00.004-04:00

Since Congress officially passed the health care bill last night (what was all the fuss about Scott Brown derailing this again? Anyone?), I figured I'd weigh in with some brief thoughts of my own on health care.

First, I'd just like to point out that in theory I support a health care plan that lets the poor and disadvantaged get treatment. I will get into this in a bit more detail in a minute, but since I know some of you hotheaded morons out there will just see some of my points and immediately start flying off the handle about my being a "heartless Republican," I had better put it out front.

So. To start with, I saw a lot of comments over the past few days about this being a "basic human right." I think the fact that so many folks see it as a basic human right says a lot about where our society has gone. "Basic human rights" are things you should be ALLOWED TO DO for yourself. Not things that should be GIVEN to you. It would be a basic right for you to be able to get the health care of your choosing, but not for it to be provided for you by others free of charge.

THAT BEING SAID, since I can already hear the smoke coming out of the hotheaded liberal ears out there, I do actually believe that some sort of public health care plan is something we should strive for as a society. While "basic human rights" are things that should not be TAKEN from us by a free society, the reason we set up these societies in the first place is to pool resources for the betterment of everyone involved. Building infrastructure, defense, and taking care of the sick seem to all fall within that umbrella. The Preamble to the Constitution : "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare..." (hey, I did that from memory; not bad!). Obviously up to interpretation, but still, even the "heartless Republicans" out there on some level want to help their fellow man, I think they just worry at what cost (and get stirred up into a paranoid furor by the Glenn Becks of the world).

Really, I have a few major concerns. These concerns may even be addressed in the legislation itself; I don't have the time to sit and read the hundreds of pages or to convert it from legaleze to readable English, which is yet another failing of our government, but whatever. I also don't trust the overviews you get from the "news"; they're either full of ridiculous praise that ignores any faults or doom and gloom about Socialism and I just don't have the patience for that shit anymore. If you think this is a black and white, Democrat or Republican issue just put a bullet in your fucking stupid head now so we can stop listening to your idiotic diatribes about heartless Republicans or Socialist Commie Democrats.

Anyway, the issues. If I called my doctor today and asked for a physical, they would say that there's about a six month waiting list. God's honest truth, six months. If it were "urgent" I'm sure I could see SOMEONE today, but to see my doctor for a scheduled visit, six months. This says to me that providers are a very limited resource. Whatever problems exist out there with what things cost and insurance, there just are not enough doctors to treat every single person in America. So I truly hope that the current legislation also provides some kind of incentives for people to become doctors and nurses, and maybe some financial help for those who would want to go into medical school. We need more of them in the CURRENT system, with the new system we're gonna need even more than that.

And on the same point, I hope with the public health care option there is some deterrent to visiting the doctor for minor reasons. Someone posted on Facebook recently how she was happy about the health care bill because last month she had a sore throat, and couldn't go to the doctor because of a lack of insurance. But the thing is... she got better. She didn't NEED to go to the doctor. I HAVE insurance, but some of my co-pays, especially for an emergency room visit, are enough of a deterrent for me that if I feel sick, I better believe I'm REALLY sick before seeing the doctor. So I have concerns that people will abuse the system, even beyond the usual abuses we see with Medicare and the like today. Where medical staff are already a limited commodity, any abuse is going to put a HUGE stress on the system.

I also have concerns that I outlined earlier about the pre-existing conditions debate, and I won't reiterate those now, but read that post if you haven't.

Above everything else - the bill has passed. Being for or against it is a moot point, at least for a while, so I really hope people can stop pretending it's a black and white issue and really start debating how to make it work. I promise you this new system is no more perfect than the old one, and being complacent just cuz your "side" won ain't gonna improve it any more than being angry that your "side" lost is.

Signs of Idiocy - Driving Edition

2010-02-25T20:12:00.004-05:00

While crawling along in traffic this evening - it WAS raining, after all! - I realized that there are some things that people do on the road that doesn't just say they are bad drivers, but full on fucking retards.

This list is not at all exhaustive, feel free to add some in the comments.

It's drizzling, and you have your wipers on full speed. IN rare instances of heavy downpours, that fast setting is maybe necessary, but in most cases it looks ridiculously frantic and silly.
You have your high beams on... basically ever. I use my high beams like three times a year, when I'm on a dirt road in the woods or something. But on back roads, I guess I understand.... but why on the fucking highway? Or major roads? Or in fucking DAYLIGHT?! People always say that they "must not notice." How do you not notice? There's only ONE blue indicator on your dashboard, ONE, and it's the one that says "you're blinding everyone in front of you asshole." It takes a special kind of asshole to just not care about this.
You back up on the highway. So, you missed your exit, and realized it at the last possible moment. CRAP, you can't get over! And when you do, your exit is back there. You could spend seven minutes and go to the next exit and turn around, but FUCK THAT, pull into the breakdown lane during rush hour and throw her in reverse! It's only hundreds of lives at risk! My favorite is when a minivan is doing this, and you know it's full of kids. Just awesome.
You don't let people merge. Roads come together folks. The way driving works is we let people in. I understand you're stuck in traffic, but being an asshole isn't helping the situation.
You tailgate unnecessarily. Everyone tailgates once in a while, when someone is being a jackass or driving ridiculously slow. But I've had people tailgate me when I'm driving in the snow, or I'm in the slow lane of an open highway (a rarity, I admit). Have a clue, assholes, you're not doing anything but risking my life.
You stop at yield signs. Yield means you stop if something is coming. You YIELD to oncoming traffic. If there is no oncoming traffic, JUST FUCKING GO.

I really feel like this could go on for ages, so I'll hand it over to you now.

Media Monday : Top 5 TV Theme Songs In My Head

2010-02-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

My sister and I have decided that we have some sort of random radio receiver in our brains. It's constantly picking up the most random songs in the world, and they're inevitably songs that run through your head ad nauseum, making you go insane.

My favorites, as you can guess from the title of this blog post, are the TV theme songs. Shows that I have not seen in 15-20 years, and suddenly I wake up humming the theme. WHERE DID IT COME FROM??? No idea.

So here they are. Keep in mind these aren't by any stretch my "favorite" theme songs, just the ones that I most commonly find rattling around in my head. All links are to YouTube versions of the song in question.

5. Mr. Belvedere - Like many (maybe all) of the shows on this list, a show I haven't seen in years, can't remember a single thing about, but it has a catchy tune.

4. Dinosaurs - Bombombombombombom... bomBOMBOMbombomBOMBOM bahbahBAHHH, bombomBAHHH, bombomba bombbombombombom. (Speaking of this ridiculous show, have you ever seen the final scene of the series? It's the most depressing and dark thing ever, especially for a TGIF / family show!)

3. Airwolf - Probably the most recent addition, since I kind of forgot all about this one until kind of recently. It doesn't help that I immediately made it my ringtone.

2. The Odd Couple - But not the actual theme song (since I don't think I ever saw the series), but rather the rendition that Homer does in the Simpsons clip to the right. Ahhh, the Simpsons, is there anything they CAN'T relate to?

1. Sanford and Son - Yet another show I've NEVER seen, and it's not even close. This is probably the default song running through my head at all times. Of course, Turk was a fan of this show on Scrubs, and they did TWO separate renditions that I can remember, this one and this one. Oh, I miss original Scrubs....

So, how about you, any ridiculous theme songs running through your head?

Office Noise

2010-02-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

Why does everything in my office have to be so loud?

The guy in the adjacent cube is a nice guy, but he's also one of those guys who constantly makes noise (and presumably has no idea what a blog is, much less how to read mine). Aside from his loud gaseous explosions throughout the day, he constantly clears his throat, gets angry at his keyboard and gives a loud grunt before pounding on keys repeatedly, and gives exasperated sighs throughout the day. Then he tries to reposition himself in his 100-year old creaky office chair like a 225-pound hippo stuck in a bathtub. This was my sacrifice to sit next to a window.

My cube is also right next to a printer, and every time the thing jams or runs out of paper, people SLAM everything around. Open the paper drawer as far as it will go - SLAM!! Grab a ream of paper, and THROW it on the desk, SLAM! Drop the paper into the drawer from a height of 19 feet, and then do a flying kick to close the paper drawer with all of your might. Like what the fuck? You don't have to caress the fucking thing, but are you trying to let the people at Hewlitt-Packard HEAR you changing their paper all the way in Silicon Valley?

The other place people like to make a lot of noise is the bathroom. I won't get into actual bathroom noises -- no one wants to read about that -- but it's like everyone who uses a stall is ANGRY at the stall. I'm trying to take a wizz and all the sudden the door to the bathroom slams open and someone walks into a stall and shakes the walls when they slam the door shut. When they're done with their inevitably vocal expulsion of waste, you'd think the toilet paper roll was attached to an amplifier. For some reason when I get TP, it barely makes a noise, yet somehow everyone else in the public restroom manages to emulate a jumbo jet flying overhead with each yank of the roll.

The necessary noises at work are bad enough : the squeal of old printers, chassis pushing hundreds of cubic feet of air per minute, compressors and nitrogen tanks hissing and humming... do we really need to make it worse by pretending we're Neanderthals with no fine motor skills? I know I work with a bunch of guys and in general we're not "delicate" creatures by any stretch, but c'mon people, I really don't feel like investing in noise-canceling headphones just to avoid hearing damage while I work.

In case it's not evident, it's been a longish week at work.... join me next week when I talk about smelly foods in the office microwave! (not really)

Less Blogging

2010-02-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

FYI, I'm cutting blogging back to only two posts a week - a "Media Monday" and a normal blog post on Thursdays (instead of one Wednesday and another one Friday). Even I don't have that much to complain about, and this is supposed to be fun (and a bit cathartic) for me, not work.

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting. I'm up to almost a thousand hits a month, which is fantastic.

Media Monday : 5 Random Songs / Artists to Check Out

2010-02-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm awful at finding new music. I hate listening to the radio, with commercials and annoying DJs and crappy Top 40, so I stick almost exclusively to my iPod. The unfortunate side is, of course, that I rarely find anything new. Once in a while I'll hear something on a TV show or in a movie that I'll check out, or I'll try and navigate through Apple's "Genius" selections to find new songs.

Despite the fact that I listen to the same crap all the time, I'm always amazed how many people haven't heard of some of my favorite songs. So I'm sharing a random sampling of songs here. These aren't by any stretch my favorite songs or artists, just stuff that I like that I think a lot of people haven't been exposed to, or even may have forgotten about. None of it is "new," just hopefully new to you.

Most song links are all to Lala.com; if you prefer you can just Google the song names and get other options to listen online for free.

5. Blind Melon, Change - The only song most people have ever heard of from Blind Melon is No Rain, aka "That song with the video of the girl in a bumblebee outfit." Fair enough. But they made some other great songs before Shannon Hoon decided to OD on heroin. Change was always my personal favorite, but I'd say a pretty close second is Soul One. A friend of mine once saw these guys in concert, and said that watching him sing Soul One live was extremely moving. I believe it.

4. Stephen Stills, Johnny's Garden. Stephen Stills doesn't seem to have the name recognition of Neil Young, or even David Crosby, his cohorts from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Maybe having his name second hurt the cause. I don't know if I would call Stills my favorite of the group (Neil Young probably edges him out) but it's a close race. Almost all of the songs on the album Manassas are great, especially the aforementioned Johnny's Garden, Colorado, and How Far.

3. The Talking Heads, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody). I think everyone knows the Talking Heads for their weirder / more popular songs like "Burning Down the House", but they have some fantastic lesser-known (at least to some) songs. In addition to the one above, there's also Nothing But Flowers, Road to Nowhere, and Wild Wild Life. All these songs are on the Talking Heads' Greatest Hits album but I bet very few of you own that one.

2. Jamie Lidell, Multiply - My friend Sarah introduced me to this song via a mix CD a bunch of years ago. I've managed to never hear anything else by the guy but I just love this song. Note : This song isn't available on Lala, so the link is to the Amazon album

1. The Jayhawks - The Jayhawks have been around since the '80's, but I only recently "discovered" them myself. I can't decide if my favorite song is Blue or Save It For A Rainy Day. Both are just amazing, though. Probably the two songs I've listened to the most in the past year.

I Just Want a Phone That Takes Calls....

2010-02-12T09:00:00.002-05:00

Luddites drive me crazy.

I understand that some folks don't care about, or even dislike, technology. I have no problem with that. Honestly, I wish I could quit technology (that's right, a Brokeback reference... how current!) It would be a lot cheaper if I didn't have to pay for an iPhone, and a broadband connection, and a DVR, and blah blah blah. But hey, I like that stuff.

I guess the problem for me is when people don't just resist change, but complain endlessly about it when it is mostly inevitable. The most ridiculous example is with cell phones - if you have a cell phone, you've already adopted a pretty modern device to begin with. Do you really have to complain when it inevitably evolves? Just like the telegraph evolved into the rotary phone evolved into the touch-tone phone evolved into the cordless phone evolved into the cell phone, the cell phone is evolving into a handheld computer, which will probably evolve into something we can't even imagine.

I mean, what's the problem with something improving? You don't have to USE the new features, or buy the most complex phones. Having the features available if you ever change your mind? How does this hurt, exactly? What do you do with the other modern devices in your life? Do you get mad that your computer does more than just type letters? Do you refuse to use the heat, A/C, and radio in your car? Get disoriented and confused by all of the colors and definition on your TV?

Embrace change, folks, it's coming whether you like it or not.

The iPad

2010-02-10T21:00:00.000-05:00

this blog post is very late. Sorry! I had a hell of a day

I didn't want to devote a whole blog post to this, but I brought it up in Friday's post and wanted to go off on it, but it just didn't "fit" the theme, so here we are. I know there are some of you out there who couldn't care less about this stuff, so... sorry.

For those who live under a rock or who don't obsessively check Gizmodo 30 times a day, Apple recently announced a new tablet computer called the iPad.

Now, the tablet computer is NOT an Apple invention. They've actually been around for quite some time in various incarnations, but have failed to gain widespread public acceptance, for a bunch of reasons. But Apple (and others) thinks that technology has evolved to the point where it might be a viable product. For weeks there was buzz about what they might create, how they would innovate the platform to take it to the next level. Considering how many times this form factor had been tried and failed to flourish, they really had to put the Apple magic spin on it and create something new. And then a few weeks ago, they had a press conference and announced... the iPad.

Putting aside how RIDICULOUS that name is - the jokes about feminine hygiene products have been made a million times already, but c'mon now - what it essentially is is a giant iPhone, without the phone. Now, don't get me wrong - I have an iPhone. I LOVE my iPhone. Until VERY recently, there wasn't a single product out there that I would consider trading it in for (and even now, with the Droid and Google Phone as iPhone alternatives, I still think I'd stick with the iPhone), but that doesn't mean it's without its faults, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean it will scale well to a tablet device.

Let me quickly outline the major faults as I see them, before getting into why I give a shit at all :

Not Innovative - It's just dishonest for Apple to claim this is an innovative new device. It is almost exactly an iPhone, blown up. They did very little to tweak the UI from the standard iPhone interface, which brings us to...

No Multitasking - To those not tech-savvy, this means you can run one program at a time. You can't have your IM buddy list up and be surfing the web at the same time, you can't be watching a video and chatting at the same time, you can't be streaming a lecture for an online class and taking notes. On a three-inch iPhone screen with a tiny ARM processor, this at least makes SOME sense, but on something that's supposed to take the place of a netbook? No.

No I/O - There's no expandable memory, no removable battery, no USB port... though they'll sell you an add-on that you can use to add a USB port!

Apple Restrictions - My biggest complaint with my iPhone was the number of things Apple didn't ALLOW you to do with your device. I didn't even really realize the extent of these restrictions until I Jailbroke my phone, allowing me to install tweaks and non-approved apps. Suddenly I had a lockscreen that actually told me useful information, the ability to change the look of my iPhone, the ability to put apps into FOLDERS, the ability to install a simple program like Google Voice, the ability to change even sounds.... the list goes on and on. All of these issues will be carried over to the iPad.

You get the idea.

Now the question is : why do I care? There are a million pieces of technology out there that just don't appeal to me, and I simply ignore them; I don't spend 3000 words trying to tell the world why they suck. So why this crusade?

A lot of it is that, as an iPhone owner, I don't like how Apple ignores complaints from their users. Taking several years to implement simple features like cut and paste or MMS; insisting on sticking with their proprietary 30-pin connector when every other cell phone provider is working towards a standard micro-USB charging solution; keeping a stranglehold on the application market and setting up arbitrary rules blocking apps... the list goes on and on. To see them continue to maintain a rabid fanbase despite these tactics is annoying to say the least.

The aforementioned rabid fanbase is another sticking point. I can't stand when people defend a barely tenable position regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Politics is rife with this type of fault-blindness, and for some reason technophiles are subject to the same issue.

But mostly I'm just annoyed that Apple has built up good will by creating decent products, and they're using that good will to peddle a weak product to a gullible public. They realize they have a good image and an adoring group of fans, and they're exploiting that. Is that overstating it? Sure, but it doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me, and I wish it annoyed other people too.

Media Monday : Top 5 SciFi Series and Movies

2010-02-08T09:00:00.005-05:00

You may find this hard to believe coming from a giant nerd like me, but I don't really like Science Fiction.

I don't actively DISLIKE it, but where it seems that the stereotypical nerd lives for all things "space" and "future," I'm pretty lukewarm on them. The problem, from my perspective, is that more often than not the novelty of "space" and "future" are all that the show or movie has to offer. The writers figure, as long as they put things in SPACE, who gives a shit about things like characters, or plot? It's SPACE!

The other things i dislike about a lot of SciFi is how DARK it is. Not thematically, but literally - I can't fucking see what's going on. Throw in the fact that all dystopian visions of the future are inevitably cluttered and chaotic, and it just gives me a headache to look at.

So, with all of that, I'm always kind of surprised if I actually enjoy a SciFi offering, and a few on this list I REALLY enjoyed.

5. The Fifth Element - Way too fun and entertaining to fault it for being a bit too reliant on the usual sci-fi pitfalls of EVERYTHING having to be futuristic.

4. Stargate - the movie, not the TV show (which I never saw, so it may have been good). This movie kind of trails off about halfway through for me, but it starts out really good.

3. Alien / Aliens - These movies kind of suffer from my "too dark" problem, BUT they're also some of the greatest suspense movies of all time, so I can forgive that. Throw in the fact that, as my brother just mentioned to me last night, the first Alien was released in 1979... that just blows my mind. Those movies hold up better than any other movie I can think of.

2. Firefly / Serenity - I love everything about this series / movie (the movie was made after the series was cancelled, as sort of a swan song to a series that was abruptly ended). While it is set in a "futuristic / space" setting, it's all about the characters and the story and not reliant on wowing you with "future" and "space." If there's one thing Joss Whedon (who created the series, as well as Buffy, Dollhouse, and the awesome Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) knows how to do well it's make characters that you almost instantly care about and enjoy watching. On top of that, the stories in this series were emotional but still fun, exciting... I think there's only 13 episodes, it's well worth your time to check them out.

1. Battlestar Galactica - the remake, not the campy 70's original. I know it sounds goofy, but it is truly a masterpiece of television. The ending of the series... well, left a lot of people flat, but, as with Firefly, this was all about the characters. For four seasons this show continually improved, really delving into everything from politics to spirituality but never feeling forced. Aside from an overuse of the swear-substitute "frak", you truly forget that you're watching a show about spaceships and cyborgs ("cylons"). Throw in some of the best acting performances I've ever seen, in particular by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, and this show became not just my favorite Sci-Fi show ever, but one of my favorite shows ever. Seriously, even if you're not into Sci-Fi, it's worth checking this thing out some day.

Honorable Mentions : Star Trek: TNG (I loathe the original Star Trek, but I got into the Next Generation for a while), Star Wars (some may consider it ridiculous that this didn't make the list but I'm convinced I only like it because of nostalgia, not because it was any good), Blade Runner (good flick, obviously, but suffers from the "too dark" syndrome), Futurama (doesn't really qualify since it's a comedy/parody but I considered putting it on there anyway cuz it fucking rules), Spaceballs (ibid).

I'm sure I forgot something, so let me have it.

Ugh, and just as I'm wrapping this up I thought of Total Recall, which could totally take the place of... say, Stargate above. Oh well.

Debate by Attack

2010-02-05T09:00:00.005-05:00

I'm not talking strictly about "ad hominem" attacks, where one attacks the person rather than the issue. I'm more talking about debate where rather than giving any merit to your opponent's argument, you simply attack their argument as ridiculous. I'm sure this has some Latin name but I'm too lazy to look it up.

The most obvious examples of this happen every day in politics, but what actually brought this topic to mind was the new Apple Tablet, or iPad.

There seem to be two radically opposed camps on this product : those that think it's the future, and those that think it's a disappointment right out of the gate. While I find myself leaning toward the latter camp, I like to think that my reasoning is sound and I'm not just being a stubborn jackass. I at least recognize what Apple is trying to do, I just don't think they did it particularly well. But then I read this inflammatory piece of drivel that got a bevy of pageviews and comments on Gizmodo, and suddenly not only do I disagree with Apple's product decisions, I fucking despise them. That direct subversive attack turned me from a mild, reasonable person to an absolute hater.

The problem with being directly belligerent against someone is that all you do is reinforce their will to disagree with you. It's the same with politics : if someone is on the fence, a legitimate "middle of the road" person, chances are they're going to get attacked by the far right as being too liberal, or by the far left as being an evil Republican. As soon as that happens, the person being attacked immediately goes into defense mode - it's just human nature. Someone attacks you, even verbally, and you're going to defend your position. And that's where the real problem is - I read a study once that basically says that if you're forced to defend a position, all it does is reinforce your belief in that position. So if someone starts out on the fence but is forced to defend one side, they're probably going to end up more firmly entrenched in the side they defended. And the biggest irony is it's your forcing them to defend that side that put them there!

I find myself in this situation all of the time, and have to WILL myself to not fall prey to the effects. I really do consider myself moderate on a lot of issues, but if I see a radical statement on either side (even if it's not directed at me) I feel like I have to defend myself. It happened with the Scott Brown thing; I got into this giant debate with someone on Facebook because they were saying how stupid Massachusetts voters were. I'm not a fan of Scott Brown really, but I AM a fan of his throwing a wrench in the super-majority and causing Congress to have to at least THINK about what they're doing vis-a-vis health care. But the debate quickly turned into my defending Scott Brown somehow, and arguing against any kind of health care reform. How did THAT happen? I WANT health care reform, I just don't want THIS bill passing.

So anyway, look, I know it's easy to get passionate on topics. BELIEVE me I know. You've read the blog - I go way overboard on shit that doesn't even matter, let alone something like politics. I just wish we could all keep in mind that all our angry ranting is doing is causing a lot of people to get defensive, and ultimately it's having the opposite effect of what we set out to do.

Investigative Reporting

2010-02-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Is there anything worse than those smug assholes who you see on the local news as they badger some small business owner, politician, or random schmoe who happened to park in a handicapped space?

Let me be clear that I don't want to justify the actions of those who earn this type of coverage. I'd say about... probably half the time, the people being targeted in these spots deserve the treatment they get. Scumbags who scam money from the Medicare system, or trick old ladies into buying fake insurance.... they deserve whatever bad things come to them, for sure, and I'm glad there are people trying to uncover them.

But you KNOW a bunch of those stories are at the very least exaggerated, and at worst spun up completely by the jerkoff reporter doing the story. You've seen them, do they look any more honest than the swindlers they're supposedly investigating? I wouldn't trust that weasily douchebag on Fox 25 (pictured left) as far as I can throw him. And with my bad back, Ed, I really shouldn't be throwing anyone. FOX UNDERCOVER my ass. And while I understand that Fox in general isn't held up as a paragon of journalistic integrity, almost every local news team has their own version.

Honestly, even beyond investigative journalists, who I suppose are an easy target and have been maligned ad nauseum elsewhere, it seems like journalistic integrity just keeps getting worse. Every time someone dies under noteworthy circumstances, you see a news team camped out on the front lawn of some bereaved family, asking for answers. Imagine if someone in your family were murdered and someone shoved a camera in your face afterwards? I can't imagine how fast I'd be thrown in prison.

I understand the "rights" of the press, and I understand that they're just trying to produce a sellable product to the retarded public. I'm not one to hold the press up to some lofty expectations like they preach in journalism school, but the sensationalist garbage that news has turned into is just sickening to me.... and that's without even bringing papparazzi into the conversation.

Media Monday : Top 5 Desert Island Albums

2010-02-01T09:00:00.001-05:00

I know, it's kind of a lazy topic, but in moving on from my January "month of movie top 5's" I figure I'd delve into the music realm with something simple.

These albums definitely do not reflect my current listening habits, but I would still consider them the albums I could listen to the most without truly getting tired of them.

I admit that this isn't the most creative list; lots of "staples" on here, but what can I say? You can't mess with the classics. I'm sure Jack Black's character in High Fidelity would lambast me for being predictable, but, well, fuck him.

A side note : it's kinda funny how irrelevant this topic is with the advent of MP3s. I can't remember the last time I listened to an album straight through rather than just songs on shuffle. A modern-day twist to this topic might be "albums I still bother to listen to sequentially."

5. U2 - The Joshua Tree - This is probably the one I struggled most with, just because of how much I feel that U2 has plummeted over the past few decades (basically since Achtung Baby). But still, the "B Side" (another downside to the CD / MP3 revolution is that we no longer have clearly defined "A Sides" and "B Sides"; where would this album, or Abbey Road be without a B Side?) of this album is a freakin' masterpiece, and however I feel about Bono and U2 in general in 2010 is eclipsed as soon as I hear "Red Hill Mining Town" or "One Tree Hill."

4. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti - Because sometimes you just need to rock out, and Led Zeppelin is the greatest rock band of all time. Period. While Zeppelin II or Zeppelin IV might have been better choices, I can't imagine a world without some of Zeppelin's more epic songs. In My Time of Dying is my favorite, but Ten Years Gone and even In the Light deserve mention.

3. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds - I never really got into this album until much later in life. I always liked some songs on it, but it still always had some weird stigma with me. Maybe because I had this image in my head of the Beach Boys just being a goofy surf music band or something, I don't know. But I like to think I'm older and wiser now... and Goddamn this album is a work of art. If it only had "God Only Knows" on it it might still be on this list, because I love that song.

2. The Beatles - Revolver - Choosing a single Beatles album at this point feel like Sophie's Choice, but for me it always comes down to Rubber Soul or Revolver. I go with Revolver because it was the first Beatles CD I ever owned, but it could still easily go either way (with several other Beatles albums close on the heels; hell, if you're taking the "desert island" thing literally, maybe you'd want the White Album because it is the longest).

1. Van Morrison - Moondance - I had almost forgotten that I actually said previously that this would be my number one. I'm glad I had it slated for this spot anyway. It may not be as deep or innovative as Astral Weeks, but it's just so damned enjoyable to listen to, and EVERY SONG is great.

Per the usual rules of the "desert island" game, I didn't put any compilations on there, but you better believe that I seriously debated having Legend on the list.

Other honorable mentions : Manassas, After the Gold Rush... and probably more but I'll leave those up to you.

You Don't NEED....

2010-01-29T09:00:00.004-05:00

Did you ever hear this question from someone? "Why do you NEED so much horsepower in your car?" "Why does anyone NEED such a big house?" "Who NEEDS an SUV in suburbia?"

Ugh. Since when is everything in life based on need? Isn't that kind of the point of a modern society - so that we're not all struggling to meet our needs, but rather flourishing and going beyond our basic needs to the extravagances that we may WANT? It's the entire basis of our economic system - work hard, make money, afford the better things in life. Be able to afford more than you need.

I just don't get why people give a shit anyway. Is it just envy and jealousy? Why do you care if someone drives an expensive car, or lives in a mansion? If it's about the environment, then just focus on that aspect and don't go down the "they don't need that" road; it just makes you come off as either pathetic and jealous, or a pious douchebag.

Dishwashers

2010-01-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

I don't understand the obsession with dishwashers.

This post does not apply to people with families, especially kids, who go through a thousand plates a day. This is more for my single, and even childless, friends and readers. How many dishes do you POSSIBLY go through in an average day that it is beneficial to use a dishwasher? I was all excited when I moved into my current place, as it would be the first that had a dishwasher. Two weeks later I gave up and just went back to washing dishes by hand. Here are some reasons :

1. I had to rinse everything anyway. Unless you're like some people I know who, when they're done eating, leave their plate immaculate, chances are you have some crap on there that needs to be rinsed off before going in the dishwasher. So taking your dish to the sink and dousing it with water, THEN bringing it over to the dishwasher and putting it in there, and then taking it out when it's done.... haven't you done more work than if you had just washed it when you first brought it to the sink? How long does it take to wash a single plate, or two if you're eating with someone?

2. I'd run out of bowls and cups The only things I reliably use every day are bowls and cups - morning cereal and a glass of OJ. A week's worth of bowls and cups doesn't come close to filling a dishwasher, even with a few plates in there, so I'd either run out of bowls and cups or have to be wasteful and run a cycle of the dishwasher with the thing only a third full.

3. Some things wouldn't come clean This may be a failing of my dishwasher itself, but inevitably I'd have a few things that would have to be re-washed after being in the dishwasher. They fell over during the cycle, or got wedged up against something else, or just decided to be stubborn; whatever the reason, there'd always be something to be re-washed, so not only would I have to inspect everything before putting it away, but also re-wash the offending pieces. Seriously, HOW IS THIS SAVING ANY TIME?

Some people claim the dishwasher gets things "cleaner"... what are you eating, toxic sludge? Your dishes aren't being used for surgery, how clean do you want them? Why not just buy an autoclave and sterilize everything?

The vast majority of things take 9 seconds to wash in the sink, and the things that don't (pots and pans) usually can't be put into the dishwasher anyway.

Again, if you have kids... I've seen what those monsters go through in a single day, I can TOTALLY understand a dishwasher. But if you DON'T have kids... really evaluate the time you're spending with that dishwasher and whether it's worth it.

Media Monday : Top 5 Movies That Improve on Multiple Viewings

2010-01-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

I've really been slacking on the blog lately. I have lots of ideas jotted down but just not much time to write them up. Apologies for all the late or half-ass entries, if anyone actually cares.

There are a bunch of movies that I've seen that I was either ambivalent about or outright did NOT like the first time I saw them, but for whatever reason decided to watch again and liked much more. Usually on the advice of friends or general consensus that a movie was awesome. I like to think that I still made up my own mind about the movie but it's possible that my opinion changed just based on external forces alone.

5. Fun With Dick and Jane - The newer one, believe it or not. I still don't think it's great, or even all that good, but I outright HATED it on first viewing and at least didn't hate it the second time I saw it (after being repeatedly told it was hilarious by a friend). I still have yet to see the original though. This isn't one that is necessarily deep and requires multiple viewings, I just happened to change my mind on it.

4. Memento - A lot of people give this movie shit because it's a "gimmick," and I suppose it is, but God damn if it isn't a well-executed gimmick. But there's no way you can get it on the first time through. Even if it's for no other reason than your head is swimming by the end.

3. There Will Be Blood - This one only vaguely qualifies for this list, since I really liked it on first viewing, but Goddamn I LOVED it on subsequent viewings. And that's saying a lot since the movie is like 3 hours long; I swear I've watched it half a dozen times.

Also, everyone loves the "I drink your milkshake" line, but from that same scene, I think "DRAAAAAINNNAAAGGGGEEEE" is the far better "Daniel Day Lewis being insane" line.

2. Mulholland Drive - This movie is MEANT to be watched more than once, one would assume. I had to not only watch it a half dozen times, but also go online and read plot explanations and then watch it again knowing what's going on. I'm not particularly good at symbolism, and this movie is basically a two and a half hour master clinic on symbolism. And honestly even if you don't get it, it's a haunting film.

Don't read the plot explanation until you've watched the film two or three times and really sat down and THOUGHT about it, but unless you're a smart cookie chances are you'll still need some help.

1. Fight Club - I'm actually mad at myself that I disliked this movie so much on first viewing, since it is obviously awesome. I don't know if knowing the twist made it better on subsequent viewings, or if there was just something I was able to appreciate more... I don't know. It's a great movie though.

How about you? Any movies you had to see multiple times to truly appreciate?

Happy Birthday Mom!

2010-01-22T09:00:00.003-05:00

I'm super busy this week and haven't had time to write anything, so I'll use the Friday blog space to wish a Happy Birthday to my mom. I wouldn't have the fuel for these blogs without her :) (awwww)

Happy Birthday!

Partisanship, Redux

2010-01-20T07:50:00.005-05:00

Scott Brown (R) just won Ted Kennedy's (D) former seat in the US Senate. The people of Massachusetts voted a Republican to replace TED KENNEDY.

Am I happy about this? I guess. I like that it brings back a certain level of balance in the Senate. I like that Coakley's barrage of attack ads didn't work, not just because they were attack ads but because they were more of the mindless rhetoric people love to lob at any candidate with an R next to their name. "He's just like Bush!" "He is a racist!" "He hates puppies and loves war!" I don't catch many commercials, and yet still for the past month the only political ads I managed to catch were mindless "Scott Brown is EVIL" ads; not a single spot saying why someone should vote FOR Coakley, just why they SHOULDN'T vote for Brown.

And there's the problem with the two party system yet again. People pick a side, sit firmly ON their side, and vote for whoever their side throws at them. Then all a candidate has to do is convince a handful of undecided people not to vote for the other guy, because there's never more than two choices. It doesn't matter what you as a candidate stand for, it just matters that you can convince people that the other candidate is an evil monster, and you're in. Republicans call the Democrats Socialist Commies, Democrats call the Republicans backwards Bible-thumping warmongers, and the level of discourse plunges into the toilet.

Republicans are all celebrating today, because their guy won in Massachusetts, and they think this sends a message. A message that people are fed up with Obama, or Democrats in general. Why does it have to be a message? Why can't it be that Brown was the better candidate, or at the very least just that he ran a better campaign? Why do we bother having individual candidates if all that people take away from a victory is that "A Republican" won? I personally hope "A Republican" didn't win, I hope Scott Brown won and that he actually stands for something on his own, whatever that may be. Even if I don't agree with it, I just hope he has some conviction to not follow a party line but rather vote to best benefit his constituency, which is what he will swear an oath to do.

While Republicans are celebrating, Democrats seem to be in mourning. Scanning my Facebook page this morning, I saw lots of over-the-top stuff, but the one in particular that caught my eye was this one (apologies to the author for calling him out, but I can't resist) :

Amazing how an economic turnaround, a better economy, and lower unemployment rates somehow STILL make people think that our new government is failing. What more can Obama do? Maybe turning caucasian is the only way to please anyone...

Again, why is this candidate's victory in any way a condemnation of Obama? And playing the race card makes absolutely no sense. It was barely a year ago that people of this nation and in particular Massachusetts voted OVERWHELMINGLY to put a black man into the most powerful office in the world. You think that such a short time later those same people have suddenly become racist, and their way of expressing that racism is to fill congress with people who don't follow in lock step with the President's ideals? I don't think I'm overreaching to say that's a bit of a stretch. A bit. Besides, whatever happened to "checks and balances", the three major components of our government staying separate? If Congress is just going to do whatever the President says, why not abolish Congress and just have King Obama? That's not the way it works.

I know I'm kind of all over the place here, but there's just been so much nonsense floating around the past month or so with this election that I've reached my boiling point. I like to think that everyone reading this is smart enough to think on their own, and not to fall into the same tired arguments of D vs. R, because no matter how stupid you think the "other side" is, the fact that you are looking at them as the other side makes you just as bad.

Media Monday : Top Five Movies I Don't Get

2010-01-18T09:00:00.006-05:00

Note : Sorry this is late. Blame the snow. And the holiday.

This post is not about movies whose story I don't understand; if it was, it would just be a list of David Lynch films. No, this is more about films that are widely popular or praised that I simply do not like, and can't understand said popularity or praise. I'm sure everyone has a few of these (and I'd love to hear yours in the comments); the most famous example that I can think of from popular culture is Elaine's disdain for the English Patient in the Seinfeld episode of the same name.

Anyway, onto the list.

5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - This film was rightfully praised for its art direction, cinematography, and makeup. They did amazing things with Brad Pitt to make him age in reverse. Beyond that? Meh. The story was fine, it was a neat PREMISE (that, in case you weren't aware, was written in the 1920's by F. Scott Fitzgerald) and had a great cast (and an awesome directory in David Fincher) who did a fine job. This isn't about this being a BAD movie, just being WAY overhyped and overpraised. It was long, kinda boring, and they just didn't do that great a job of making the characters compelling, especially given their unique circumstances. To be up for Best Picture there should be more than just some pretty scenery.

4. Borat / Bruno - I've seen interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen where he is not in character - he's a funny guy. He's obviously a very smart guy. Beyond that, I get what he is trying to say in these movies; yes, he's trying to be funny, but it's also a social commentary thing about how people respond to awkward situations and blah blah blah. I'll even go a step further and say his characters are EXTREMELY quotable; even disliking these movies as much as I do, I find it hard not to say some Borat-isms even to this day.

That said, I just can't get over what an ass he comes across as. I like uncomfortable humor when it's either fake or comes at the expense of the person being humorous. But in Borat, it comes at the expense of some people who are completely innocent. Yes he makes fun of some closed-minded morons, but he also trashes some old lady's antique store, and takes a dump in a toilet at a hardware store. I know I'm a pussy for saying this but I just feel bad for those people, and in no way see that being anything other than mean.

3. Anything By Wes Anderson - I guess this isn't a movie so much as like, a half-dozen movies, but people who like Wes Anderson LOVE his movies. I've never heard anyone speak ill of Rushmore or The Royal Tanenbaums. But I've yet to be able to even get THROUGH one of these movies. I don't know what it is. It's inexplicable to me, but I find them boring as all hell and in some cases (The Life Aquatic) completely impossible to follow. They're supposed to be comedies but everyone has a dour look on their face all the time, and I can't follow the plot. Maybe I'm just an idiot. Plus, a bunch of them have Jason Schwartzmann in them, and I fucking hate that guy.

2. Michael Clayton - Ah yes. This movie and my number one are the real reason I wanted to do this list; the rest is just filler. Here's a question - do you even remember this movie? I'm sure the name sounds familiar, and you may remember the fact that Clooney was in it, but beyond that, does ANYTHING about it stick out in your mind? No? You know why? Because some form of this movie has been made about a thousand times before. There was absolutely nothing special about it. Sure, it was well made, and Clooney was his usual Clooney self, but this movie got nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Thankfully it didn't win, but it really didn't deserve to be even mentioned alongside No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Again, I don't think there's anything WRONG with Michael Clayton, I just don't see it as anything new or original, and yet somehow it got praised as a brilliant film.

1. Field of Dreams - The Holy Grail of movies that people insist you have to like or you are a bad human being. There's so much hyperbole about this sappy dreck that I can't even begin to outline it here. I've almost never seen it referred to in a negative way. I've seen people, mostly guys, say that there's two types of people in the world, people who like this movie and assholes.

Again, this movie has a fine, and even touching, premise. Guy wants to have a catch with his dead dad. Summed up in that one sentence, it's tough to argue with. It hits at something very basic in every guy, harkening back to their own childhood and potentially some daddy issues.

But when you dig a little deeper into the movie, it's rife with flaws. First, it stars Kevin Costner. News flash : he sucks. I know he has somehow managed to be the center of a LOT of great movies in his career, and it's mind-boggling that those movies have somehow managed to be good despite him, but the guy can't act his way out of a paper bag. As Chris Griffin once said, "how does that guy keep getting work?!"

Second. While the basic premise as said above sounds just dandy, how about the REAL premise of the movie - a guy hears voices in his head and decides to build a baseball field in an Iowa cornfield, and then plays catch with a ghost. It's fucking ridiculous. I know it's supposed to be a happy ending because he got to see his (ghost) dad, AND because all the people came from miles around to see his stupid baseball field, but fuck that. He was a freaking nutjob who basically tortured his family because he heard voices in his head. The way it turns out is just such a hacky, forced, transparent attempt to make people weepy. It's so contrived and obvious I'm just amazed that it's so wildly effective.

Honorable mentions : Three Kings, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, Dr Strangelove (that one I get but just don't find as funny as everyone else seems to).

Any movies you don't get? Feel free to post them in the comments.

Privacy

2010-01-15T09:00:00.003-05:00

I believe in, at least in a vague sense, someone's right to privacy. There are situations, a lot of them, where you should reasonably expect that what you say and do is private. When you're in your home, you should be able to expect privacy. When you're a sports reporter changing in your hotel room, you should be able to expect privacy.

My problem comes when people think that EVERYTHING they do is private... even when they do it in public.

The most recent example of this was earlier this week, when Gizmodo posted an article detailing "unsettling" information about Facebook. Such shocking tidbits like "administrators at Facebook can see what happens on their site." Uh, news flash folks. Facebook is a public website. The entire purpose of said website is to SHARE INFORMATION. Yes, there are filters and whatnot so that most of your information is seen by only your friends (and, I would think anyone with a brain would realize, the people who work for Facebook), but in reality you should still be smart enough to realize that you're posting something in a PUBLIC FORUM. If you truly wanted it to be PRIVATE, why don't you NOT put it out for the world to see?

In a similar vain are the people who get all up in arms about Google StreetView. For those who are somehow unaware, StreetView is where Google has a car with cameras on its roof drive around and take pictures from the street, and correlates it with their maps. So if you need to find a house using Google maps, you can not only see a map but an exact IMAGE of where you're going. People went, and still go, CRAZY over this saying it's invading their privacy.... despite the fact that these images were taking FROM a public street in broad daylight. At the moment the Google car drove through, any other actual person could have driven through and seen the exact same thing, and you wouldn't scream about your privacy. Yes I recognize the difference between an instantaneous moment and one frozen in time through the magic of digital imagery, but still. Something you did that was visible from a PUBLIC STREET was caught on camera and you're upset about it? Keep your private life private if it's so important to you, don't broadcast it to the world and expect everyone to avoid you.

In addition to all of this, it's pure narcissism to think that anyone gives a flying shit about you or what you're doing, whether in public or private. If Big Brother starts installing cameras to watch our every public and private move, then we can dial up the outrage, but the shit I talk about above? Just give it a rest.

Complaining About Flying

2010-01-13T09:00:00.004-05:00

Can we just put a moratorium on complaining about flying? Seriously, WE GET IT. The seats are too cramped, the food sucks (or, nowadays, is nonexistent). You have to pay extra for bags. You might crash and die. Blah blah blah. All of these things are either vastly overstated or outright avoidable. Let's delve into my favorite type of writing - LISTS! - and hammer through a few of these.

- Cramped Seats - The most valid and toughest to defend, so I'll get it out of the way early. If everyone were normal-sized, this would be a small but manageable issue. But everyone isn't normal-sized, and so even if YOU are, chances are pretty good you'll end up sitting next to someone who isn't. People are fat, rude, smelly... it sucks. It's probably the one legitimate complaint about air travel. HOWEVER, I will say a few things. First, if you're pushing three or four hundred pounds yourself, while I personally don't care and think you have every right to be overweight, you can't blame the airlines for not catering to you. Ditto if you're 19 feet tall. On a recent flight I had to fly next to some guy who was probably 6'8". He was huge. And he was complaining the entire flight about how cramped planes were and how they don't account for people like him. Dude, you're a freak of nature! You can't expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate you. You should have to bend over backwards, since you're the irregularity. I feel bad for you, don't get me wrong, but we shouldn't all have to suffer. The funniest part was that he was flying Southwest, the ONE AIRLINE that doesn't allow you to choose your own seat. Any other airline he could have at least paid extra and got an exit row, but he HAD to fly Southwest? If you don't at least TRY to make things easier for yourself, you have given up your right to complain in Bobworld.

- Paying Extra for Bags - People get so irate about this one. A friend of mine said she'd much prefer they just raise the cost of tickets rather than having a stupid supplemental cost. I guess I see that from a convenience standpoint - it sucks having to pay for stuff as you're checking in. But other than that, it seems the fairest way for airlines to charge - you pay for what you use. If you want to bring a fifty pound bag on board and some other guy doesn't, you should pay more, shouldn't you? I dunno, that just seems like a logical way to charge for things. The other argument she brought up was that when airlines charge for bags people bring even more unreasonable bags as carryon, and while this is probably true, I always remember jackasses trying to cram giant bags in the overhead bins, long before they started charging extra for bags. I always bring a single bag that is small enough to fit under my seat so I'm never jockying for overhead storage; let all the other idiots fight it out.

- Shitty or nonexistent food - Bring your own. I know you can't bring drinks through security, and it's an asinine rule, but nearly every airport has overpriced junk food you can buy before getting on the plane. If you really can't survive 3-5 hours without stuffing your face with something, bring some snacks. But seriously, how long are you in the air that you can't just refrain from eating? I love to eat as much as the next guy (probably a lot more than the next guy) but even I can go a few hours without a full meal.

- Security - For this one all I can say is 'it is what it is.' Security at airports is asinine. Taking off your shoes and throwing away liquids more than 3 oz. accomplishes nothing; it's all about the illusion of security. But it is what it is. If you're not traveling with kids, then just go through the retarded motions and it's over in ten minutes. If you do have kids... complain to your heart's content, 'cuz every time I see people trying to get their kids through security I feel pity. THOSE people have a right to complain.

I know it sounds like I'm defending the asinine policies of the airlines, or in the case of security, our inept government, but I'm not. In reality, the above complaints are all valid. But constantly bitching about them ad nauseum accomplishes nothing. Unless you are actively DOING something to change these policies, then just shut the fuck up about it. I tell myself all of the above because, for the amount I and most people I know actually fly, it's enough to calmly get me through it. So twice a year I have to get crammed into a tight seat and go through stupid security screenings and get bad food... for how often it happens, I can tell myself all of the little justifications above and get through it without much stress, while everyone around me treats every single one of those things as if it's an affront to them personally, and they're miserable for it.

And honestly, if the seats are too cramped, fly Virgin America, or pony up the dough for first class. If you want food, fly an airline that serves food. Don't wanna pay for bags? Don't bring any, or fly Southwest.

Or, you know what? Just drive. Problems solved! If you're not willing to pay the extra and adapt, or at least get a prescription for Xanax, then just grin and bear it, and we'll all be better off for it.

Media Monday : Top 5 Movies That Get Me Choked Up

2010-01-11T09:00:00.006-05:00

This one is going to be EMBARRASSING. I know already. But whatever, I'm secure enough in myself to admit it. And like I've said a million times, I love movies that make me feel something, so if a movie can elicit a tear then it's accomplishing that task, isn't it?

In my case, I think "choked up" is the perfect phrase. I don't think a movie has ever moved me to actual "crying", instead it's the manly "I have a lump in my throat and it might be a little dusty in here." But either way, same idea.

By the way, pretty much all of these are spoilery so if you haven't seen the movie and care about spoilers, don't read.

5. My Girl - Full disclosure, I haven't seen this movie in YEARS, so I have no idea if it holds up as a film or, more germane to the topic, emotionally. But on the latter point, I'd have to go with "probably." I'm what is known as a "sympathetic crier"... if I see someone crying, in real life or in a movie, I'm done for. And this movie features a little kid crying over the death of another little kid. "Where's his GLASSes, he can't see without his glasses!" C'mon! Gets me every time.

4. Brian's Song - One of very few movies that men are allowed to admit they cry at, I guess 'cuz it's mostly about sports, but the part that makes people CRY isn't about sports so I don't really understand the logic. Random side note : every time I watch this movie I forget how short it is. It was basically a TV special, and without commercials rings in at only 73 minutes. ALSO, since it's kind of on the same topic (dying of cancer), if you've never watched Jimmy Valvano's speech at the 1993 ESPY awards, do it now. It's only a few minutes long; I can wait.

3. The Notebook - By far the most chick flick movie on this list, and that's saying a LOT. I know girls cry at this movie because of the love story. I don't really understand the "crying because something is sweet" thing, but whatever. No, what gets me in this one is the end, when old lady Allie wakes up out of her Alzheimer's haze for a minute... and then immediately falls back into having no idea who Noah is. God that is heartbreaking, and played so perfectly by James Garner.

2. Saving Private Ryan - C'mon, watching the old man cry over his lost war buddies, asking if his life had been worth the death of those men? Jesus that's some heavy shit. And really, this should be lumped in with Band of Brothers, another war story (in miniseries form) made by Speilberg and Hanks. This one shows interviews with the actual elderly veterans that are portrayed in the film, and holy Christ is it moving. I'd consider Band of Brothers to be one of the best things ever put to film, so if you haven't seen it go out and just buy it.

1. Turner and Hooch - First, let me say that I can't believe this flick only has a 5.6 on IMDb. Really? It's a decent story, it's funny, touching, it has Tom Hanks... Only 5.6/10?? Anyway, if you don't cry when Hooch dies at the end, you have no soul.

Honorable mentions : Forrest Gump (when Forrest is crying over Jenny's grave), It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Holland's Opus, that Futurama episode where Fry's dog sits around waiting for him forever.

How about you? Any movies that get you every time? I know Field of Dreams is going to come up, and I know I'm going to catch hell for it, but I just want to note that I hate that God damned movie. It's so overwrought and sappy, not to mention that Kevin Costner sucks ass. Yes the premise of Costner having a catch with his dead dad is touching, but the rest of the movie is overrated sentimental garbage. Maybe I just don't care because I don't have daddy issues or something, I don't know.

Side note : when searching for images for this blog entry, I came across this image of Dawson crying, and it made me laugh way too much.

Grocery Baggers

2010-01-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

I was at a grocery store a while back. I know this post is a little US-centric, and maybe even New England-centric, but either way. This store was obviously a little understaffed on this particular day, and they had only two baggers for maybe five or six open checkout aisles. And yet, inevitably, everyone who was checking out would just wait for either that bagger or their checkout person to bag their groceries for them, rather than doing it themselves.

I complained about this elsewhere, and my friend Chris told me that he would do the same thing, because the cost of the bagger is figured into the cost of your groceries... if you're paying for the service you'd better use it. As a general rule that's a valid enough point, but in this situation? What's your time worth? How about some consideration for the time of the people waiting in line behind you? I'm all about standing on principle, but when there's a huge line of people waiting for you, maybe your principle should be to be a good and considerate person at the expense of your overly strict financial hangups. Next time you're at that store, eat a couple grapes from the produce area without paying to make up for the six cents you wasted by not having your bagger wait on you, your highness.

Why we even have grocery baggers is a mystery to me anyway. I don't know where else this is prevalent, but this is not a difficult task. Chances are if you do it yourself you'll do a better job than most of the people who do it for you. It's one of those things we've gotten so used to that we've come to expect it, but if you stop to think about it it's yet another in a long line of ridiculously lazy and unnecessary conveniences.

Credit Card Signatures

2010-01-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

Is there a more useless method of identification than the credit card signature?

First of all, 99% of all people who look at it don't give a flying shit. I should know; my signature is literally a couple of squiggly lines. There isn't a single identifiable letter in it, and it could be faked by nearly anyone, even an epileptic in the throes of a seizure.

I use my card ALL the time. My signature varies a bit in the length and height of squiggles, and almost NO one gives it a second glance. Once in a very long while, someone thinks they're actually being useful, and they'll see that my signature is unintelligible and will ask to see my ID, usually before I even sign anything. In my life I've used credit cards (with permission) belonging to family members, friends, even girlfriends. GIRLS, with girl names; you don't even need to look at a signature to realize my name probably isn't "Nancy" or "Sarah."

I used to work with a guy who, instead of signing the back of his credit card, wrote "SEE ID." He said that maybe 5% of the people who looked at his card would ask to see his ID; most would either not bother to look at all, or would look, make like they were comparing his signature to the back of the card, and then hand it back to him, content with the fact that "SEE ID" looked enough like his signature.

And really, who can blame them? There are probably MILLIONS of retail employees out there, and nearly every customer will use a credit card nowadays; you can't train every one of those employees in the art of handwriting analysis. Hell, even if you could, COUNTLESS would slip through the cracks. As far as an identifying characteristic, it's about as useless as it gets.

In reality, I'm convinced ANY kind of passive identification would be mostly useless. Even a photo on the card -- which, by the way, a lot of credit card companies offer if you ask -- would probably be ignored or barely glanced at by the majority of people. Definitely more useful than a signature, but still not truly "protection." In my opinion, all credit cards should work like debit cards - with a PIN. Something that removes the human element completely and isn't trickable. Sure someone could figure out / steal your PIN when they steal your card, but that's at least a lot harder than scribbling out something that might or might not be your signature. At least it's SOMETHING, and when you're carrying around a piece of plastic that can distribute thousands of your dollars, "something" can mean quite a lot.

Ridiculously Bright Police Lights

2010-01-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

I understand that police lights need to be visible. Whether they're warning someone that they're coming up behind them, or from the other direction, or whether they're just stopped on the side of the road and don't want to get nailed by oncoming traffic, there is a definite need to be seen there.

But it really does seem like we've taken it to new heights with modern police cars, doesn't it? If I drive by a cop car on the side of the road, especially at night, I'm fucking BLINDED. And they're flashing and strobing, it's not only distracting, but it's disorienting! While it is accomplishing the task of making sure people NOTICE the car, it seems to be counter to the whole idea of being safe.

I don't think there's too much more to say on the topic, and I question my idea of making this into a whole blog post.

Media Monday : My Top 5 Favorite Bad Movies

2010-01-04T09:00:00.004-05:00

Who doesn't love a bad movie?

I figured I'd get back into the "Media Monday" blogging game with a month of top five lists. I've been listening to a lot of old episodes of The Film Vault so I felt inspired to mimic them, basically. And hell, they were just mimicking High Fidelity so I don't feel so bad.

Today, my Top Five favorite "bad" movies. Bad can kind of mean a lot of things when it comes to film, and this list encompasses a lot of them. Bad acting, cheesy story, bad effects, empty plot, etc etc.

5. Armageddon - It's a Michael Bay movie. The premise is about as stupid as it gets. It stars Ben Affleck. It features probably the sappiest and most repetitive song Aerosmith ever did. And yet I've probably watched it a million times and make no apologies about it. It makes me laugh, cheer, pump my fist, what can I say. Michael Bay may be a horrible filmmaker, but he's popular for a reason, and with movies like this it's just hard not to get sucked into the mindless awesomeness of it all.

4. Under Siege - I've actually heard from quite a few people that they like this movie, and I've also heard it referred to as the "only good movie Steven Seagal ever made," but it's still a silly movie. It still has Steven Seagal in it. But Goddamn if it isn't wildly entertaining. The rogue commando story is always enthralling (I mean, how many times have we all watched Die Hard? A million?), the setting of a naval ship is awesome, Tommy Lee Jones plays a perfect villain... it just works.

3. Gone in 60 Seconds - I'm talking about the remake here. The original has the same silly premise but isn't really considered a "bad" movie, but the remake... it's bad. It features Nick Cage well after he stopped doing good movies and turned into an insane person. Every one of his sidekicks in the movie is a ridiculous movie cliche, as are the villain and the cops chasing him. Ridiculously hammy dialog, action scenes that, while shot pretty well, are completely ridiculous and unbelievable, and as mentioned before, a premise that just makes no sense at all. The movie is just idiotic flash with no substance, and yet I love it.

2. Down Periscope - My entire family finds this movie hilarious. My stepbrother actually mimicked a line of it during his Great-Aunt's funeral. But to the rest of the world, it is just garbage. I don't know why it's quite so poorly received - sure it's broad and easy comedy, but it's not pretending to be anything it's not (unlike the movies above, who take themselves WAY too seriously). Sure it features people like Harland Williams and Rob Schneider in major roles, but the former is responsible for one of the funniest scenes in the movie, and the latter actually doesn't do too badly. All in all, it's a comedy and it makes me laugh every time, so it's a win for me.

1. Big Trouble in Little China - It's not even a contest. This one wins by a mile. Not only is this my favorite bad movie, it's one of my favorite MOVIES. It has it all - a silly story, horrible acting, overly dramatic bits, cheesy effects. And yet it is so Goddamned entertaining. I've seen it so many times I could almost recite the movie from start to finish, and when I do re-watch it, I'll often find myself doing just that. I've found fansites for this movie, and have actually considered buying merchandise. I have at least one T-Shirt already. It's the perfect bad movie, and I love it.

Honorable mentions to Striptease, Waterworld, The Money Pit...

Those of you who know me, can you think of any I missed? Everyone else, what are your favorite bad movies?

New Years

2010-01-01T03:06:00.003-05:00

I try not to hate on holidays. I'm of the camp that believes everyone should celebrate how they see fit; if you don't care about a holiday, don't celebrate it. If you think Valentine's Day is a corporate Hallmark holiday, don't celebrate it, or celebrate it without spending a dime. And my thoughts on Christmas are already public record.

So I'm not going to spend a blog post complaining about New Years, because it falls into the same category; if you don't like it, don't celebrate it. Or just use it as an excuse to have some fun with friends but don't put importance into it.

But that's where my blog post DOES come in - the people who DO put importance into New Years.

In general, when we think of New Years on the grand scale, we think of the resolutions. A new start, a chance to kind of reset and fix what's wrong with your life. Getting fat? What better time to start a diet than New Years Day? Want to be a better worker? Start in the new year! Want to read more, watch less TV, visit your parents more? Bam, a built-in start date. All positive things; any kind of motivation to improve your life is a good thing, right? How can I find fault in that?

That fault is in how much pressure and, for lack of a better word, symbolism we put on the date. They're different problems but they both kind of end up with the same result.

Let's start with the pressure. There's a lot of pressure built into New Years for people. Pressure to start on a new positive path as talked about above. Pressure to have someone to kiss at midnight. Even, as ridiculous as it is, the pressure to have a good time. New Years Eve has been built up as such a party night that if you don't have a great time it feels like such a let down. And nearly everyone I know has had more "disappointing" New Years parties than amazing ones. And what way is that to "start the year?" We've set up this arbitrary date as such a point of importance and yet we for some reason have set it up to be a failure. It's almost as if we WANT it to go badly.

Which kind of leads right into my other point about symbolism. All of these aspirations for the New Year seem to symbolically hinge on this one night, this one fresh start. If something bad happens on New Years, this whole positive outlook you've set up comes crumbling down; if your year started out like shit, it's just destined to be a shitty year. It's kind of like how everyone's Facebook status last night said "thank God 2009 is over, I'm ready for 2010." As if something magical happens at midnight and you're starting this brand new thing. But say on New Years morning you get in a fender bender, or your girlfriend dumps you, or you get sick, or any of a million other bad things happen? Suddenly this thing that you've built up to be the beautiful new beginning has become a portent of doom, and for the rest of the year you'll have this symbol of awful hanging over you like a cloud. So next year you can put your Facebook status to say how 2010 was doomed from the beginning, bring on 2011, and the cycle begins anew.

Listen, readers, January first is just another day. It's great if you're using it as an excuse to better yourself; it truly is. But please don't put any stock into this day. There's nothing cosmically connected to the moment of midnight (local time!) on January 1st. Your next 365 days are not made or broken on what happens in the next 24 hours. I promise you that no matter how today goes, tomorrow is a new day with the same possibilities as today. You'll wake up, and how you choose to move forward is completely up to you; there's not a little demon following you around making sure the rest of your year mimics how you started the year.

That said, I hope everyone's New Year started well; just remember that if it didn't, your New Year can begin whenever you want it to.

Hating Christmas

2009-12-23T09:00:00.004-05:00

There are a million reasons people give for hating Christmas. Non-Christians hate that it's so steeped in Christian tradition. Christians hate that it's strayed from its Christian roots. Nearly everyone hates that it's become so commercial and soulless. There's the stress of finding gifts, wrapping gifts, the stress of dealing with family, the stress of travel, the financial stress, the shitty weather. The stress of who to exchange gifts with, the stress of new relationships that aren't quite at the big gift exchanging level yet, the stress of single people being "alone" for the holidays. The list truly goes on and on.

But if you ask me, the list is bullshit.

It seems like humans can always find something to complain about, or to stress us out. Adam Carolla has a theory that we (we being white middle class Americans) no longer have real things to worry about, like finding food or shelter or running from predators, so we fabricate things to worry about, or even CREATE them. Seems like a valid theory to me.

But in reality, every one of the things listed above is either a gross exaggeration or something completely fabricated in your mind. A few of the more confounding ones to me :

- Families. Why people who hate their families insist on spending Christmas with them I will never understand. I'm huge into family, but only because my family is awesome. If I hated my family, I'll tell you right now I wouldn't be spending any more time with them than absolutely necessary. If your family makes you miserable, stay the hell away from them, and spend time with the people who DO make you happy. And if no one makes you happy, then you're just a miserable person and YOU'RE the problem, not your family.

- The religious stuff. Look, Christians, if you were really so into your faith, you wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all, as the Bible specifically says not to celebrate the birth, but the death and resurrection of Christ. The date and traditions of Christmas have little to do with anything Christian to begin with. Beyond that, do you have to spend so much effort shitting on everyone's good time? Take what you can get; the season generally brings positive feelings to people, "holiday cheer," good will, charity, and all that; if there's a God he should be happy with that. As for non-believers who get their panties in a bunch when someone puts a nativity scene on public land... really? Who cares? How does it affect you? It costs way more for the city to deal with all the lawyers and bullshit of you making a stink about it than it does for them to just put up a nativity that was probably donated. Let it be.

- Gifts and Commercialism. Look, folks, we live in a capitalist society. If someone wasn't trying to make money off of every opportunity, the whole system wouldn't work. But no one is forcing YOU to spend obscene amounts of money. If you truly care about the people you're exchanging gifts with, the dollar amount should not matter. I've spoken to nearly everyone on my gift list and we have agreed to keep it subdued this year, or even forego gifts altogether in exchange for doing something fun together. I know it's sappy but you shouldn't like your friend and family for what they give you. I think everyone reading this is mature enough to not need to wake up on Christmas morning to a huge pile of presents like an 8-year old. The whole gift-exchanging process is more so you know that someone gives a shit about you, and that doesn't mean they should take a mortgage off the house to buy you a Lexus with a bow on it.

But for those who do want to exchange luxurious gifts with each other... hey, hooray for them. Hopefully those things make them happy and if so what the hell are you bitching about? They're helping the economy and not hurting you at all. Oh no, you have to see decorations at the mall in November! The HORRORS! I wish my mall would remain its normal boring and sterile self for another two weeks so I wouldn't have to see this festive atmosphere!

I guess all I'm really trying to say is who gives a crap what Christmas used to mean, or what it means to someone else, or how anyone else celebrates it. Make of it what you want, and if that means doing absolutely nothing, then do that and let people have their fun (or be miserable, as the case may be). It's a good excuse to see family and friends (assuming you like your family or have any friends), eat some foods that are bad for you without feeling too guilty, and just feel festive. Why do we have to fuck up a perfectly fine excuse to celebrate and have fun?

Merry Christmas everyone.

Blog Hiatus

2009-12-10T16:59:00.003-05:00

I apologize for the lack of bloggy goodness these past few weeks. I had a good run there where I was able to pump out 3 posts a week, but right now between Christmas and a heavy work schedule (not to mention being on a pretty positive run where I don't have as much to complain about) I am unable to keep up such a feverish pace. As such I'm going to put the blog on hiatus (barring any random inspiration) until the new year, at which point I will hopefully have built up a bit of a backlog so I can reliably keep up some kind of schedule for my few but loyal readers.

Have a great Holiday season everyone.

Complaining About Free Shit

2009-12-04T09:00:00.002-05:00

It's amazing, if you think about it, how many things we get for free nowadays. Nearly every website is ad-supported and therefore "free" to the consumer (aside from the time cost of seeing the occasional advertisement, assuming you don't circumvent them. Television, while you may pay for cable, is still essentially free, especially with the advent of Hulu (again, taking advertising out of consideration since it does not cost the consumer actual money).

And yet, despite all this stuff we get for nothing, people never stop complaining.

The biggest one, and the one that spurred this rant, is Facebook. Nowadays the majority of people I know at least HAVE a Facebook account, and a good number use it regularly. Facebook is absolutely free to use; it's not even particularly heavy on ads (again, not that I would really know). So despite the fact that Facebook puts up this wildly popular and useful site completely free, people ENDLESSLY complain about it. Every time a slight change is made - complaints, petitions. Every time something goes wrong, I see 19 status messages cursing out Facebook. My canned response is always the same sarcasm : "How dare this completely free service not be flawless! I'm outraged!"

It's not that you can't have an opinion about something, or even complain about something, if you don't pay for it. But you at least have to be REASONABLE. Something on Facebook will be messed up for a few MINUTES and people are just completely outraged.

Another quick example : I listen to the Adam Carolla Podcast most days. It's free from iTunes, and he has an occasional ad - at most one 30 second spot per 45-60 minute podcast. Percentagewise, miniscule. He puts out a product that tens if not hundreds of thousands of people download every single weekday, completely free, and yet, if you ever look at the comments to one of the podcasts, the vast majority is people bitching about it. Bad guests, bad audio, blah blah blah. Again, it's not that you can't have a valid complaint once in a while, but the CONSTANT bitching about something that costs you NOTHING AT ALL is fucking asinine.

Until you start shelling out some dough, take what you get and shut the fuck up about it.

Athlete Salaries

2009-12-02T14:18:00.003-05:00

Every time a new scandal breaks about an athlete or celebrity, the same canned responses pop up everywhere. The most common is "why do people care about the personal lives of celebrities?", which of course is ridiculous because to be in a position to ask that question you at least are paying attention to the story enough to comment.

I'm reminded of this as the Tiger Woods story stays atop the gossip news, and the online places I frequent are rehashing the same old arguments. But the one in particular that prompted this blog post was this :

My biggest problem is people pay him too much to watch him play golf. Yeah he might be an awesome player, but just like any other major sport he makes too much to"PLAY" and that is why he is in the public eye.
...
mean come on I think sports stars should be one of the lowest paying job, you are having fun. Make the owners pay for the "shipping" around of these players, and equipment needed. These guys make more than doctors who are here to take care of us. While the others are here to entertain us. What a messed up sense of worth of people we have.

It's not that it's not a valid criticism of the way society works - we value entertainment far more than we do things that are more important to survival. So his ending point that our sense of value and worth is a valid one in my eye. But I see this kind of argument all the time and it completely ignores how the free market works. People like the guy I quoted above have this idea that jobs and compensation are all based completely on level of difficulty or importance, or even more absurdly "level of enjoyment." As if someone who does an enjoyable job should be punished. A free market rewards people who provide goods or services that are scarce and in demand. Athletes of the professional caliber are very rare, and the product they provide is in very high demand. End of story. Their compensation reflects both of those things. If no one wanted to see it, the money would be gone in a flash.

So can we PLEASE stop bitching about this? If it really bothers you, stop watching sports and movies, speak with your wallet, maybe society will follow your lead. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Tryptophan

2009-11-25T18:00:00.001-05:00

ATTENTION EVERYONE : TRYPTOPHAN DOES NOT MAKE YOU DROWSY.

At least, not in the levels you would ever get from a turkey dinner, no matter how much turkey you ate.

There are a million sources that you can go to that will convince you of this - here's one at howstuffworks.com and another at about.com and of course the ever-present Wikipedia - but you still won't believe it. And every Thanksgiving you'll down a bunch of turkey (in conjunction with a bottle of wine, 9 potatoes worth of mashed potatoes and enough stuffing to feed a village in India) and be convinced that some minuscule amount of a random amino acid is the cause for your drowsiness. It's not. It's fun when you're 8 years old and think you've learned something new and scientific, but we're all (presumably) adults now and can let go of all the old wive's tales that are proven to be patently untrue.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vacation

2009-11-23T13:07:00.002-05:00

I'm taking Thanksgiving week off from blogging (save a mini Thanksgiving post) but I'll be back next Monday.

Not Owning a Car

2009-11-20T09:00:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine has a friend from work that he will bring around to events sometimes. This "friend of a friend" is a nice enough guy, with only one "flaw" that I can find : he doesn't have a car. Or even a license.

It's not for lack of funds or anything - he's an engineer with a steady job. He's just one of those folks who philosophically refuses to get a car. Which, while I personally find this ridiculous, to each his own... EXCEPT for the fact that every time he wants to come out with our group, he has to bum a ride from someone, both in and out, since none of us live in the city or on the T anywhere. It's one thing if you want to be a stubborn ass in your own life and refuse to acknowledge automobiles or their necessity in modern society, but the fact that you're constantly inconveniencing everyone else gets old FAST. If cars were as unnecessary as you believe in your fantasy world, why do you constantly need a ride?! There's a logical disconnect there, isn't there?

Obviously for people living and working in the city, having a car can be an unnecessary expense. But having a license, and being able to at least grab a ZipCar once a month? That's still too much for you? How is that worse than getting a ride in a car from a friend?

I guess part of this is my own personal neuroses; I hate inconveniencing people in even the slightest. Asking for a ride, especially a long ride late at night after a party or something.... it would be a nightmare to me. Even though I rarely ask my friends or family for anything, just doing it once would make me feel like a huge drag. So I just can't imagine the type of mentality it takes to be like that all the time, and apparently have not a care in the world about it.

Please note : This rant does not apply to people who have legitimate reasons for not being able to drive, such as DUIs or some sort of traumatic life event. I talked to the person in question - his decision to not own a car is solely preference based.

Flexible Spending Accounts

2009-11-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

A "Flexible Spending Account," or FSA, is, as fully explained by Wikipedia, basically a pre-tax buffer where you can set aside payroll money to be used for medical expenses. Essentially this means any medical expenses not covered by insurance are tax-free. Awesome idea, right?

Sure. Awesome. Except here's how an FSA works. You tell your employer, at the beginning of the year, how much you'd like to have deducted for that year. They deduct that amount from your paychecks (spread out over the year, obviously), and at some point you provide proof of your expenses and they cut you a check. Still sounds good so far.

Two problems. First, you have to decide beforehand how much you want to put aside. So any unforeseen circumstances -- surgery, for instance, or emergency room visits which tend to incur a lot of out-of-pocket expense -- are probably not budgeted for. At least this is understandable from your employer's point of view, as this money is pre-funded by them (ie, you can use all of it the first day of the plan, even though you haven't paid any of it in yet), but it's still a flawed system.

But by far the most ridiculous flaw is what is called the "use it or lose it" clause. This says that, if you put aside 1000 dollars at the beginning of the year, and don't actually incur 1000 dollars in expenses for which you get reimbursed, you LOSE the remaining amount of that money. It's not that it just becomes taxable - you CAN'T GET IT BACK. And even more ridiculous, that money that you can't get back? You owe tax on it. Oh, also, if you get laid off before you claim that money back? You also lose it.

This system is supposed to help people with medical costs - essentially assuaging the burden of these costs by taking away the tax. So why is it set up in a way that makes it essentially a gambling prospect? You have to play some half-assed guessing game to figure out how much you want to put aside, and then if you were wrong, you're either stuck with paying taxes for those medical expenses, or far worse, LOSING the money! Government is filled with rules and regulations designed to separate you from your money, but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with one more blatantly designed to fuck you over.

Media Monday : TV Critics

2009-11-16T09:00:00.002-05:00

Critics in general tend to get a bad rap. The vast majority of movie critics are perceived as overly critical snobs who only like arthouse movies and ignore the tastes of the little man. While not as often thought about, TV critics are often painted the same way, praising shows that no one watches while ignoring shows that are hugely popular.

For the most part, these critics don't affect us. There's no reason to really need them anymore, where movie sites like RottenTomatoes can just as easily give you an aggregate rating from both critics and "normal" viewers. They add nothing to your movie-going experience, really, and why should TV be any different?

Oh, but it can be. Several years ago I became a fan of Alan Sepinwall, a TV blogger for the New Jersey Star-Ledger. He didn't do what I had always thought of critics as doing; he occasionally wrote about new shows and why you should or shouldn't watch them, but the vast majority of his work was more a post-mortem discussion of what you just watched.

It started, for me, with the Sopranos. I didn't watch the Sopranos "live" until the very last season, when I had HBO, and in that season I stumbled upon Alan's recaps. I was a huge fan of the show, but God damn if those recaps didn't double my enjoyment of most of the episodes, by shedding light on aspects of the show I didn't catch or relating things back to earlier episodes. I was hooked - I looked forward to the post-episode recap almost as much as watching the episode itself. What did I miss? Who was that guy? Why did they do that? What was that song? Almost always answered in the recap.

For most shows, this sounds ridiculous. But for shows like the Sopranos (and later, Lost, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, etc) that have so much to them you can't even imagine how much they can enhance the experience of a good show. While Alan is not the only critic who does this, he's the one who does it for the shows I most often watch, and he's the one who tends to echo my feelings about those shows, and expand upon them. It's so common these days to mock TV for the wasteland that it is, but we are in a true Golden Age of television if you're willing to find the good stuff amongst all the bad. Sure there's more bad than ever before in history, but that's just because there's more overall STUFF than ever before. So while we are stuck with more crap to weed through, the true gems are better than they have ever been.

So, if you're a fan of good television, I recommend checking out Alan's blog, or even finding another critic who more closely echoes your tastes and thoughts. You'd be amazed how much more you can enjoy what you watch.

The Mayans and 2012

2009-11-13T09:00:00.002-05:00

We love to paint older civilizations with some absurd level of mystique, don't we? Various Asian cultures, Mayans, Egyptians, even American Indians. Something that is old seems to just inherently hold some sort of mystical power over us, as if those purer civilizations of the past could understand the world in a far more spiritual way than us modern idiots with our "science" and "reason."

And it's all a load of bullshit.

I could go on for pages about the nonsense of the vast majority of Eastern healing, and how many ways it has been debunked over the past several DECADES. Ditto for American Indians and their relationship with the land and mother Earth. It's all some form of vague religion, and while they all have a right to it and it's certainly interesting and alluring, it's not REAL, any more than Harry Potter is real.

But, in honor of the disaster movie 2012 coming out today (I wish I got some advertising funds for calling attention to that), I'd like to bitch about the people who actually believe in the 2012 phenomenon, as it's called.

Essentially, the 2012 thing coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar. Wikipedia, mostly from the article just linked to, says that even Mayan scholars, people who study this stuff for a living, say that the whole thing is complete nonsense, and that the year "2012" is just some arbitrary thing that someone picked up and ran with. But let's ignore even that fact, and assume that the Mayans actually did believe the world would end in 2012.

Mayan Civilization is a really interesting piece of history, much like the ancient Egyptians, in that they were advanced far beyond what we think of for people from that era. Their level of relative sophistication is what probably lends the most credence to the idea of their predicting of the end of the world, but what everyone conveniently forgets is that they were still a group of people largely living their lives based on religion and mythology. A religion and mythology that for most of the modern world is completely irrelevant. I personally argue all the time that most religion is just a bunch of fairy tales, and why we choose to label "Scientology" as crazy but believe that Christianity is perfectly reasonable is well beyond the scope of my understanding. But regardless, aside from the end of the world prediction, no one is following any of the other basics of Mayan religion, so aside from its portrayal on the silver screen, why do we think that they could predict the end of the world?

The fact is that the only reason anyone knows of any of this is because there's money to be made from it. The History Channel has a whole series about it, DOZENS of books that have sold tens of thousands of copies have been written, and now a movie is being released that will likely make 100 million dollars. While the movie is more overtly fictional, a lot of the prior works have purported themselves to be at least somewhat open to the idea that this is a true phenomenon, and far more people than even I would imagine have actually believe it. Much like any other blind faith, no amount of logic or reason will dissuade them from their psychosis.

While I doubt anyone reading this honestly believes that 2012 has any significance outside of fiction and ancient mythology, I do ask that if you DO believe it that you kindly refrain from procreation.

African-American

2009-11-11T09:00:00.002-05:00

Political Correctness as a rant topic has been so overused that I can barely muster the energy to rehash it here. But the other day I heard a black man from England referred to as an "African American" and I just wanted to vomit and laugh at the same time.

Here's the thing - most PC terms are created because the term they're replacing is deemed inappropriate. Most of the time the term isn't actually offensive by nature, but just has a negative connotation from historical use. "Oriental" is not inherently offensive as a word - it simply means "people from the Orient" - but is reminiscent of European and American Colonialism and is thus considered at best dated and at worst derogatory and inappropriate. Similarly, nearly every term to describe what some would love to label African-Americans - from general descriptive terms like "black" or "colored" to the increasingly ostracized N-word - can be looked at as vestiges of a bygone era of oppression over that group. While the word itself may have never been negatively brandished about, we can still picture some old southerner calling someone "colored" and it leaves a bad taste, I suppose.

I have a hard time just letting that go. I think it's an overreaction, but I'm also a white guy, so I can at least concede that those words, even when used in a purely innocent way, might conjure up some sort of bad blood. But I also believe that everything should be judged on intent, so if someone uses a word without the intent of having it be offensive, then who gives a shit what the word might have meant before? Language is an ever-changing entity, words change meaning all the time. And the only way "offensive" words ever get or retain any power over those they are designed to offend is if we keep them as a taboo.

So with all that being said, we come to trying to find a word that people don't find offensive. For "black" people, the term most Americans have settled on is African-American. Except that the people that are described by that idiotic moniker are not always of African descent, and they're not always American. Sure, you could look up the lineage of every person with dark skin before assigning them a label, but that's kind of impractical. We could do away with the labels altogether, but there's a reason they're necessary; just as "brunette" and "redhead", "male" and "female" are useful descriptors, so are vagaries about skin tone. 99% of the time when you're using those terms you're just trying to make a quick description of someone, not discuss their sociopolitical background.

I guess my point is, while saying "black" is no more accurate than calling a Caucasian "white" (my niece calls white people "peach-face"), when it's simply used as a descriptive term I just can't imagine a real argument as to why it's offensive. Focus on the intent of the word, not the word itself, and maybe we can all stop being so uptight.

note : I was originally going to use a picture of Al Jolson as an image in this post but thought better of it.

Grammar Snob : Begs the Question

2009-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

Jesus, this phrase is getting used a lot lately, and I can't remember the last time I heard it used correctly.

Listen carefully : begging the question is defined as "a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise." Basically, you're introducing some idea or theory, but your proof of that idea is simply a restatement of the idea. In particular, it is NOT raising the question, which is when a statement makes a question plainly obvious or necessary.

Wikipedia gives a decent example :

Person 1: He is mad right now.

Person 2: How do you know?

Person 1: Well, because he is really angry.

Essentially, you're never going to use "begging the question" correctly, so just stop saying it altogether. I have no idea why it's becoming such a popular phrase when no one knows how to use it, but just stop.

Media Monday : Eva Cassidy

2009-11-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

From last week's post on someone everyone's heard of, this week I'd like to highlight someone very few people have heard of : Eva Cassidy.

There isn't much music out there by Eva; unfortunately she died several years back at the age of 33. Based on the few things I've read, she was pretty unknown during her life but experienced a bit of a posthumous surge in popularity.

Eva is pretty unique to me, in that she never had any of her own songs, she didn't play any instruments... she just has a nearly perfect voice. You look through her list of songs and nothing jumps out at you as potentially being awesome, but you listen to it and are in awe.

Her most famous song is a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which anyone who watched American Idol a few years back will recognize as the arrangement Katherine McPhee used. If you only half-ass listen to it I doubt it will jump out at you, but give it a real listen sometime when you're in the mood, and you'll love it.

At the risk of this post just turning into a Wikipedia entry about Eva, I'm going to cut it short; in reality I just want to introduce people to her if you've never been exposed. She only ever put out a handful of albums that I'm aware of. The two I have are Songbird, which is a greatest hits compilation of sorts, and Time After Time. If you've ever enjoyed listening to a female vocalist, pick them up.

Guest Ranter Theater #3 - Bryan

2009-11-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

My step-brother Bryan makes his triumphant return to the blog

Cellphones in Movie Theaters

I went to go see "This Is It," the new Michael Jackson movie (say what you want, I liked it). Anyway, the person two rows in front of me has takes her phone out, and when there is a very dark room showing a film, you can see any distraction of a light that is not coming from the big screen. This friggin' lady was clearly bored with the movie because she went on Facebook and stayed on it for a good 15 minutes. Moving the phone around, laughing and showing her husband everything. At this point I was getting livid, I was just about to get up and say something but the guy in front of me was with his wife and leaned over and told her to shut it off because it's distracting.

It is fucking distracting, it's just like watching a movie at home and people come in the room and start talking, it pisses me the fuck off. I am a big movie guy, I love my movies, and I like them with no distractions so I can get the best out of the whole movie, especially when I pay to go see it in the damn theater. So when some douchebag whips out their cellphone to text or whatever it pisses me off because I can't help but look every friggin' time right at the light. This isn't the only time I have seen a person do it also, it happens in every movie theater all the time, kids pull out their phones to text or whatever. Turn the damn phones off you can live without the phone for two hours and suck it up you pussy.

My question is this: Are you that retarded that you don't understand that your phone lights up a shit load in a dark theater? It is fucking distracting. If you need to use it that bad hide it under your coat or just leave the damn room, do what you have to do and come back, don't distract other people and take away from the movie because you're an ignorant fuck. I just want to punch these assholes in the face.

Guest rants are the properties of their writers and do not reflect the opinions of the blog at large

Grass is Greener

2009-11-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

It's such an old saying, but still so apt today. Pretty much every cubicle dweller I know wishes they had a job that let them be outside all day. Every time we go and get our hands dirty, wrenching or doing yard work, we all talk about how fulfilling it is to get out, do something with our hands, see an immediate physical result to our labors.

But ask anyone who actually does that kind of work for a living, and they'll tell you how much they'd die to sit in an air conditioned office every day and not go home with a sore back and blisters. They'll remind you of the rainy days, the hot days, the snowy days....

And of course, the same goes the other way around. Any manual laborer will tell you how lucky you are to sit in a cubicle / office building all day, climate controlled and not busting your ass and coming home sore, but fuck if we don't find it boring as all hell.

The same goes for the vast majority of other aspects of our lives. Everyone is unhappy with their climate and thinks they'd be happier in sunny California, or in a place with seasons, or any of a million little things. The majority of people who live in a place are dreaming of another place to live, and the people in that dream destination are doing the same fucking thing.

On the one hand it seems to be an instinctual human trait to desire something different than what we have, but if you think over the course of history, for the most part people seemed content with their lot in life. Modern society, at least modern American society, is so focused on options, and ambition that I almost wonder if we've done ourselves a disservice. Growing up learning that we can do anything we want and be anyone we want, we've become jaded against what we are, instead always thinking of what COULD be. By telling everyone how happy they could or even SHOULD be no one focuses on how good they have it.

Not that we should settle, per se. The drive for a better life is what motivates us to do amazing things, both as individuals and as a society. But we have to balance it with an appreciation of the moment and, to go back to the original metaphor, how nice the green grass is on our side of the fence.

The Letter of the Law

2009-11-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

My sister told me a story a while back about a woman who was kicked out of a Burger King because her SIX-MONTH OLD BABY wasn't wearing shoes.

I think this is the perfect example of how moronic people are becoming. I mean, it doesn't take much of a genius to recognize how stupid this is, but it does actually point to a larger societal problem. Presumably, this woman was ejected on the grounds that the store has a "no shoes / no shirt / no service" policy. The point of that rule is to make sure people don't walk into your establishment looking like slobs; customers will think your place is dirty if they see folks wandering around barefoot. Putting aside the fact that they're in a Burger King to begin with, it's a valid rule. But a six-month old? Presumably in a stroller?

I'd love to blame a stupid kid behind the counter for not understanding why the rule is in place, but in reality it's more a problem of management, and even moreso corporate management. Large entities, like the Burger Kings of the world, can't manage 10,000 locations looking at cases on an individual basis, so instead they hand down mandates that things MUST be done NO MATTER WHAT. So when an airport bar says "we card everyone" and a 75-year old man with a white beard sits down at the bar, they card him. Not because they don't believe that he's over 21, not because they don't understand the rule, but because their idiotic boss would probably fire them if they didn't. For all they know that 75-year old man with the white beard is someone from corporate there to test the policy.

I rarely bitch about corporate culture. I don't mind large corporations, not from a philosophical standpoint at least - assuming they got to be large corporations through legal and relatively moral means, all power to them. BUT there is an obvious flaw in that model of doing business where the individual customers eventually fall through the cracks as a corporation grows larger and larger. As usual, I'm not exactly coming up with a groundbreaking discovery; I think everyone realizes that the larger corporations tend to forget the "little man." But I think stories like the one above really illustrate HOW it happens; not because they're all about money or whatever, but because the only way they know to maintain policies over such a large group is by setting strict, rigid rules and not allowing anyone to "interpret" them. And while this wasn't a huge deal 30 years ago, nowadays when rules get broken people get sued for millions of dollars (wow, look at that, another problem that could be helped by Tort Reform!)

I think nearly every thinking person realizes that this is not the direction we want to go as a society, but if we want it to change, the answer isn't NECESSARILY "down with corporations!" It's just that the people in charge need to learn to train and then trust their employees to interpret WHY rules are in place and to act accordingly. That's not just an edict for the bosses of the world, but everyone; don't just follow the letter of the rules and laws, but know why they're in place and interpret accordingly, and FIGHT BACK when people say otherwise.

Media Monday : Van Morrison

2009-11-02T12:24:00.006-05:00

In an effort to diversify my blog a bit, and also to not be so negative and / or preachy all the time, I've decided to devote Mondays to talking about music, movies, and TV, both in a general sense and also about specific artists, songs, albums, films, or shows. We'll see how it works out. Feedback is welcome and appreciated, as always

I think everyone knows at least one Van Morrison song. "Brown-Eyed Girl" is probably his best-known, but I think a lot of people know songs like "Moondance", "Crazy Love", "Tupelo Honey" and "Have I Told You Lately."

Don't get me wrong - those are great songs. I don't want to become one of those people who I complained about before, who try to say that you're not a TRUE fan unless you know an artist's entire repertoire. I just think that people are really missing out when it comes to Van Morrison if they haven't delved into more of his stuff.

Van comes to mind right now because his music epitomizes autumn for me. Not just because he actually has songs about the fall (in particular both "Autumn Song" and "Purple Heather" at the end of "Hard Nose the Highway"), but because a lot of his music in general just has a FEEL to it that is reminiscent of a cool day in mid-October. It could be a personal thing - music is often associated with specific periods of my life, so it's possible I listened to Van a lot in the fall - but I think there's really something to it. Some albums in particular - the aforementioned "Hard Nose," "Saint Dominic's Preview," and most of all "Veedon Fleece," feel like they were just MADE to be listened to while watching the leaves fall.

I don't fancy myself a writer - anyone who's read enough of this blog will probably agree - so I don't feel I can truly do his music justice with words. So instead I'm going to outline a few of my favorite albums and songs, bullet-point style, in the hopes that the uninitiated will seek them out. (Amazon oddly has most of his earlier albums listed as "discontinued" which I consider an affront to music and hope was just a searching mistake on my part).

Astral Weeks - "Astral Weeks" is Van's first solo album. It is such a masterpiece that I can't even attempt to try and describe why, but rather will link to someone who at least did a passable job of putting its awesomeness into (quite a few) words. For me it's always been an album that creates a mood, even beyond Van's amazing lyrics or distinctive voice. The whole thing just flows together and has a FEEL to it that you can appreciate without even really paying attention, and then when you DO dive in and listen there's so much more. "Sweet Thing", the third song on Astral Weeks, is undoubtedly one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time, and has a shot at being number one if I could ever make such a judgment.

Moondance - I've always said that "Moondance" - probably Van's most well-known if not bestselling album - would be my top choice for "Desert Island Album." Even given my praise for "Astral Weeks" above, I would maintain that position today, maybe not because I like it BETTER than "Astral Weeks" but because it's easier to listen to, and where some songs on "Astral" are more hit or miss with me, EVERY song on "Moondance" is a home run. It's like a Greatest Hits compilation, and it was the guy's SECOND album released. "And It Stoned Me." "Caravan." "Into the Mystic." Songs nearly everyone with even a passing knowledge of Van are familiar with, but like a lot of great albums, the best stuff is on what was once called the B-Side. "Everyone" and "Glad Tidings" are two songs at the end of "Moondance" that I'm always amazed were never hits, because they are truly great songs.

Saint Dominic's Preview - Like "Astral Weeks," I doubt this album would be everyone's cup of tea. Most of the songs are long (two over ten minutes) and kind of meander around a bit, but of all the albums by Van that I have this one is most reminiscent of "Astral Weeks"; it just has a cohesive feel from beginning to end that drags you in.

Veedon Fleece - As mentioned above, probably my quintessential "autumn" album. According to Wikipedia he wrote the lion's share of this album in 3 weeks in October, so maybe that contributes to the "fall" feel for me. It's also a much more mellow album - I know Van is most often than not considered "mellow," "Fleece" is a whole new level. His voice for the most part loses its distinctive raw sound, and while still very much recognizable, it's markedly different, but in a good way.

Days Like This - At the risk of just listing Van Morrison's entire discography, I'm going to skip ahead 20 years to Days Like This. There was a 2 year period where I listened to this album and Paul McCartney's "comeback" "Flaming Pie" pretty much on a back and forth loop. Where "Veedon Fleece" is a mellow, fall-like album, "Days" is much more of a jazzy, fun album. Van is joined by his daughter Shana Morrison on the vocals of a few of the songs and it really brings a whole new feel to his music. The title song I most associate with the movie "As Good As It Gets", as Jack Nicholson's character plays it to start their road trip, and to this day it has always felt like the perfect driving song to me.

As I said I feel like I could list nearly every one of his first dozen albums and shower them with praise, but these are the standouts to me, and if you haven't gone through a Van Morrison phase in your musical life yet, this is where I'd recommend you start.

Demonizing Paganism, and the Hatred of Halloween

2009-10-30T09:00:00.004-04:00

Lots of people - mostly religious morons - hate Halloween. Usually this hatred is stemmed from a misguided idea that Halloween is merely an outdated "Pagan ritual," some going so far as to refer to it as devil worship.

I spend a lot of energy seemingly bashing religion, but it's usually just the over-the-top, ignorant religious zealots that my criticism is aimed at, and this is no exception.

First, a brief history lesson : the vast majority of Christian ceremonies and rituals are Pagan in origin. Look up nearly anything you associate with Christianity, and chances are it is a carryover from some Pagan tradition. Christmas trees? Pagan. Christmas Day itself, December 25, is largely believed to have been inhereted from the Pagan solstice celebration (it certainly has no relation to the actual day Jesus was born).

Halloween, similarly, does have some "Pagan" roots, but also coincides with the CHRISTIAN holiday of All Saints Day. It may all sound like semantics, and it is, but the point is all of these celebrations are fucking completely arbitrary anyway.

Beyond all that, as I rail about all the time, it's all about INTENT. No one - almost no one, at least - goes out on Halloween as a symbolic gesture. No 8-year-old kid is putting on his costume and thinking about worshipping the devil. He's thinking about having fun with his friends and getting candy. End of fucking story. It doesn't matter if the holiday historically is secular or not, it just matters what it is NOW. And right now it's about a night where kids get candy, and adults get a chance to dress up and get drunk (for the most part). Can we just lighten up about it? It's like every miserable fuck on this planet has to find religion and then punish everyone for enjoying themselves.

The Disney Vault

2009-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Disney is a company that, for all intents and purposes, is centered around entertaining children. Their entire raison d'etre is kid stuff, or at the very least "family-oriented" stuff.

As an evil capitalist, I generally have no problem with a company doing everything reasonable within their power to make money, but the level that Disney goes to to strangle money out of kids is too much even for me. And the pinnacle of this evil greed is the so-called "Disney Vault."

For the uninitiated, the Disney Vault is where Disney (metaphorically at least) puts all their popular animated films (and some other non-animated stuff). When a movie is initially released, it stays on the shelf for some period of time, and then Disney yanks it off the shelf, banning its sale for several years until the movie is "released from the vault." The only reason for this is to falsely create a demand for the product and allow Disney to charge a premium for these DVDs.

Again, from a Capitalist perspective, it's tough to argue with this business strategy. Disney is a public corporation, and thus have a legal obligation to their shareholders to do everything within reason to turn a healthy profit. They have a product that, in general, stands the test of time and maintains a level of demand years after its initial inception.

But Goddamn if this practice doesn't make me feel dirty. You're talking about kids movies here; as I said at the top, things designed to entertain children and families. The unashamed way that Disney exploits these children's products, withholding them from the public merely to keep their value up... ugh.

Road Construction During Rush Hour

2009-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

I see some asinine things happen during rush hour - people reading the newspaper while driving, putting on makeup, playing a musical instrument - but I expect this kind of behavior from individual idiots. Somehow, however, the State still manages to surprise me by having lane closures and other assorted traffic-inducing things happen at RUSH HOUR.

There are a million reasons to be mad at this shit, but here's my favorite. Politicians love to talk about the environment. Everything we hear about cars nowadays is how to keep emissions down, how we should all drive less, how we need electric cars, blah blah blah. But how many millions of barrels of oil would we save if the highways weren't stopped for 5 hours a day with cars idling and going nowhere? Or people sitting at "No Turn On Red" signs, or red left turn arrows that are completely unnecessary when there's obviously no traffic coming the opposite way? No matter what solution we come up with to make cars more fuel efficient and pollute less, it will take a LONG time to incorporate these changes, whereas just some simple policy changes on the road could easily have immediate effect on the number of cars that just sit around every fucking day.

Anyway, back to the point - highways are typically busy from, say, 7-9AM and 4-6PM. Probably a little longer than that, but let's just say, those four hours a day are by far the worst. That leaves TWENTY fucking hours a day for construction where the roads AREN'T at their busiest. So WHY THE FUCK is it that it seems nearly every day I'm out there and SOMETHING is happening that disrupts traffic during rush hour? Today, at like 9AM, driving south on 93 in New Hampshire, there was a backhoe driving down the fast lane of the highway at about... 7 miles an hour, with a police car following it. Note : this is a two lane highway. The breakdown lane was WIDE OPEN, but they chose to take this construction vehicle down the FAST LANE, causing everyone to drive along at ridiculously slow speeds and have to pass on the right. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

There is no excuse for shit like that. There's no reason that any project that can be done in less than 12 hours should EVER affect rush hour traffic. Overnight work may be more expensive - you have to pay people more, set up lights, etc - but it PALES in comparison to the cost of the time and fuel wasted when THOUSANDS of people sit in unnecessary traffic.

Confusing Legislation

2009-10-26T09:00:00.003-04:00

I have a whole rant coming up about legal-speak in general, but for right now I'm really annoyed by the confusing wording used in some legislation. Particularly ballot questions, which are meant to be read and understood by EVERYONE who votes (as opposed to normal legislation that is admittedly designed more for the eyes of politicians).

Here is the actual wording of Maine's "Question 1" :

Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?

So a yes vote rejects a law that allows same-sex couples to marry and allows people to refuse to perform.... how many contradictory terms can be used in one sentence? I'm a pretty smart guy and it took me three readings to be sure what a yes and no vote mean. California's Prop 8, which had a similar purpose last election, wasn't worded quite so badly, but I'm still convinced that had it been more clear the outcome would have been different. The summary for Prop 8 was

An initiative that changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California.

Clear as mud, right? Proponents of Prop 8 (those would be people looking to ban gay marriage) fought against the wording, saying it was prejudicial - particularly the term "eliminate the right" having a negative connotation (as it should - it's a negative thing). In reality opponents of the measure should have complained more. I feel like most people only think in summaries, so when they hear "the same-sex marriage thing", they think "I'm for same-sex marriage, I'll vote yes!" and of course they're voting to ELIMINATE the rights of same-sex couples to marry. Yes means no? What a country!

Obviously this issue is not limited to the same-sex marriage debate, those are just the two most recent and prominent examples that supported my argument. For the most part ballot questions are very straightforward issues, but somehow they always manage to be worded by some idiot lawyer or politician. I'm not thrilled with the prospect of idiots voting, and usually argue against catering to said idiots, but that doesn't mean you have to be intentionally obfuscatory.

The conspiracy theorist in me would love to believe that this is intentional, but I know it's not. The problem is I don't know WHAT it is. I usually have some kind of explanation for these things (even if it's misguided or outright wrong), but for this... I don't know. Is it just politicians trying to justify their educations by using big words? Is it the opposite - people with horrendous English skills writing this stuff up? Regardless of the underlying cause, the fact remains that this is yet another case of the government NOT serving the people. At some level every constituent with a modest IQ should be able to understand what its representation is doing, and CERTAINLY what they're voting for, without ANY undue confusion.

Anecdotal Evidence

2009-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

For all of you out there who have apparently never taken a statistics class, or heard of statistics, or heard of a thing called logic, let me fill you in on something : your single experience is NOT STATISTICALLY RELEVANT. Ever.

You see, there's this little thing called "The Scientific Method", which outlines the way in which you conduct an experiment and gather data so that it is considered relevant. Nowhere in this method is the phrase "this one time this guy I knew..." Global Warming is not proven by a warm day in December anymore than it's DISPROVEN by a cold day in July. American cars aren't suddenly ALL very reliable because the TWO you've had in your life have been reliable. In fact, your experience with any product or group of products DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER AT ALL, unless you can back up your experience with a statistically relevant number of corroborating experiences. I love people (um, myself included...) who have a SINGLE bad experience with a SINGLE product from a company and swear off everything that company makes, for all of time. People who had that shitty Nokia phone in 1998 who say that all NOkia products suck because the one they got for FREE, back when cell phones were BRAND new to the world, was bad.

Really we're all just so self-important that we think our singular experiences are the only things that fucking matter, but it's not true, so get over yourself.

Comparisons to Hitler

2009-10-23T09:00:00.003-04:00

There's an old nerd joke / observation called Godwin's Law that states that "as a ... discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

It's tough to argue with, isn't it? When's the last time you heard a discussion - especially a political one, but really ANY heated debate - where SOMEONE wasn't compared to Hitler, or called a Nazi? Naziism has been used as a catch-all for all evil at this point - it knows no political bounds, as both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been compared to Hitler ad nauseum.

At this point, it's next to meaningless. People don't even bother to argue about what a ridiculous overstatement that is 99.99% of the time. I'm not gonna give a history lesson here, but I'm sure you can do some Googling and read about the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated during WWII; it's gonna take a LOT to warrant a legitimate comparison to that.

Beyond that, doesn't whipping out the Nazi card HARM your argument more than help it? I feel like I've said this in a million different ways over the years, but most of winning a debate is making yourself seem balanced and reasonable so that the person you're debating will think you're worthy of paying attention to. The people who claim to be passionate about their topic but just spend their time ranting and raving are doing nothing to help their cause; they are in fact creating a farcical face and easy enemy. Claiming you think someone is Hitler just instantly labels you irrational and not worthy of real consideration, at least to anyone with half a brain. Exaggeration can be a powerful tool when used correctly but that is NOT how you do it.

Hazardous Materials

2009-10-21T09:00:00.002-04:00

The other day I was having a chat with my buddy Dan and his little brother Josh about Beer Pong (or, more precisely, Beirut). Josh was saying how unsanitary of a game it is - you use a rinse cup for when the ball falls on the ground, but the rinse cup gets DIRTY! I know this is kind of reiterating my earlier germophobia rant, but I'm going in a slightly different direction here. So I asked "who cares? a little dirt won't kill you." Dan butted in with "this is in our garage, there are carcinogens and stuff in there."

Ah, yes, carcinogens. Seems like every day we have a new random thing that causes cancer. Grilling meat? Cancer. Pumping gas? Cancer. Plastic water bottles? Cancer. With our litigious society anything that is even remotely linked to cancer is going to be immediately taken off the shelves - wouldn't want people suing! - despite the fact that in most cases the link is tenuous at best and you'd have to be exposed to record amounts every minute of your life to show an effect.

I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "well, with cancer, you really can't be too careful." Sure you can. You can always be TOO careful. It's a risk / reward situation. At some point the effort and misery you put yourself through trying to stay safe from these minuscule harmful particles turns your life into a big web of fear. You filter your drinking water - God forbid any imperceptible particles make it in! You could wear a helmet and five-point harness when driving - or better yet not drive at all! Why even leave your house, so much bad shit happens to people on the roads! You can't be too careful!

I know I'm overstating it a bit, but it just gets old that every fuckin' day we have to hear about some common household item, that in the right set of perfect circumstances and extreme levels of exposure could kill you. Fucking, mold that every single person probably has in their bathroom somewhere, THIRD-hand smoke, as if second-hand smoke wasn't bullshit already. Seriously, THIRD-hand smoke! People are already paranoid about some stranger WALKING by outside with a cigarette thinking they're instantly going to get lung cancer from those 6 molecules that made their way into their lungs. Now we say that if someone ONCE smoked near your carpet, your carpet is giving away cancer vibes? FUCK you scientists. Why don't you fix something instead of making everyone a paranoid fucking mess?

Political Cartoons

2009-10-19T09:00:00.004-04:00

The other night I was watching a Seinfeld rerun and it was the episode where Elaine sees a political cartoon in the New Yorker and doesn't get it (eventually learning that in fact NO one knows what it means). This episode is over a decade old, but political cartoons are certainly still around, and as moronic as ever.

For the most part, true political cartoons fit into two categories. The first is the kind that Elaine encountered in the New Yorker (and that I assume the New Yorker continues to publish to this day) : high-brow nonsense that makes sense to maybe five people in the world, but everyone is too full of themselves to admit they don't get it. While this kind of cartoon is annoying as all hell, at least it (usually) requires some amount of thought and intelligence. It's subtle, just, unfortunately, TOO subtle for us dumb people.

The other kind of political cartoon is the kind I hate, and I hate it because it is fucking lazy. This is the kind where the cartoon is just random things, usually involving a donkey or elephant ( HOW ORIGINAL!) and each of the things just has some WORD or phrase printed on it. 'TAXES'. 'HEALTH CARE'. 'DEFICIT'. They're as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, and they take ZERO creative talent to make. They're NEVER funny or clever, all they do is take some PAINFULLY obvious problem and illustrate it in the laziest way possible. "Hmm, we have a large debt... large... let's make it a huge anvil! And it's... CRUSHING the average person! Yeah, that's it! And I'll write the word "DEBT" on the anvil, and "AVERAGE PERSON" on the person being crushed! BRILLIANT!" Holy shit die in a freak manhole cover explosion you hack.

NFL Blackout Policy

2009-10-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

The NFL has a policy that says if a home team does not sell out tickets to a particular game, then that game will not be televised in that market. The reasoning behind this is to ensure that all games sell out, since a good chunk of NFL revenues comes from ticket sales.

From a Capitalist standpoint, this is a perfectly valid strategy. Why give a product away for free unless all "pay" avenues have been filled?

Here's the problem with that idea : the vast majority of sports franchises play tax-funded stadiums, stadiums that are in fact constructed for almost the sole use of said franchise. These days these stadiums cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Sponsors and team-owners often throw in - and in rare cases foot the entire bill - but by and large these stadiums are public buildings. The one that I most recently heard about, and that prompted this rant, is Jacksonville's "Alltel Stadium"... originally known as "Jacksonville Municipal Stadium". MUNICIPAL STADIUM. So the team's "home" is funded by taxpayers, and those very taxpayers are not allowed to watch the game that their tax money is funding. WHAT? That would be like the state using your tax money to build a road, but not allowing you to drive on it unless you paid some sort of fee.... uhh, bad example.

Anyway, if NFL teams are going to use tax-funded stadiums, they better do away with the blackout rule. And if they want to keep the blackout rule, then they better food the money for their own fucking stadiums. The NFL is a multi-BILLION dollar industry, I think they can afford it.

Vegans : Redux

2009-10-16T09:00:00.005-04:00

Pork chops are good. Bacon is good.
- Vincent Vega, "Pulp Fiction"

Many moons ago (more than FOUR YEARS ago, in fact, which doesn't seem possible), I wrote about Veganism. I was but a young blogger at the time and hadn't quite figured out how to write these things; while you could still argue that is the truth, I feel like I'm better equipped to bitch about this topic in depth now.

In reality it's not veganism itself that bothers me. People should eat whatever they want to eat. The problem I have with it is the reasoning, and the militant attitudes that typically surround vegans. Not only do they not eat meat, but they insist YOU not eat it. I'm focusing on vegans more than vegetarians here because while vegetarianism can at least be partially justified logically, veganism is pure lunacy and thus tends to attract lunatics.

So let's go through a few of the arguments I hear from vegans, and why I think they are ridiculous :

Humans Weren't Designed to Eat Meat - Probably the most common -- and most ridiculous. Most vegetarians need to take various supplements to get all of the nutrients their bodies are not getting from a more balanced diet. Yes, it is entirely possible through just vegan means to get all of the protein and iron and B-12, but it requires a concerted effort, while these things just come naturally from a well-rounded diet. Humans have teeth that seem to be made for meat and we have digestive systems that can handle it. And most importantly, long before anyone started thinking about these things, our instincts were to eat meat. Our ancestors hunted down wild animals and killed them out of pure instinct, because they naturally knew that that was where to get nutrients.

Scott Adams once argued on his blog (I can't find the specific post, sorry) that he knew he should be a vegetarian because when he sees a raw vegetable, he salivates, while when he sees a live animal he does not, as if the Pavlovian response was something ingrained in our very being rather than, as Pavlov himself proved, a learned response. From Wikipedia :
He thereby established the basic laws for the establishment and extinction of what he called "conditional reflexes" — i.e., reflex responses, like salivation, that only occurred conditionally upon specific previous experiences of the animal.
You salivate looking at a raw vegetable because that is what the vegetable looks like when you eat it; you don't salivate at a cow because meat, in modern society, bears no resemblance to a cow.

Meat Is Murder - Arguably the most annoying anti-omnivorous chant. I have never been able to engage one of these protesters in a logical and reasoned argument, but I ask what they think of wild animals that kill for their food. Is every lion a murderer? Humans are animals, and while we may have a higher capacity for rational thought, I don't think our morality should become a detriment to our very survival.

I'm of course not saying that you can't have moral a dilemma with some of the methods used to kill and keep animals for slaughter. While I would argue that that is a very modern and first-world problem to be thinking about, I don't find it as ridiculous as most PETA arguments. There's no reason, if we have the means, that we can't make efforts to be more humane; I see this is an entirely different argument than "meat is murder."

The Marketing Effect Many vegetarians and vegans will argue that the reason any of us want meat is because marketing has told us we do. The fast food and meat industry is no different from the diamond industry, they say; completely manufactured. This argument completely ignores almost every actual fact about our nutritional history. Long, long before Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald were slinging their disgusting excuses for meat products, people were killing animals for sustenance. Long before TV, radio, newspaper, even before the advent of the fucking PRINTED WORD, we were killing animals to eat them. No one had to tell us what we naturally needed to do to survive; our bodies told us "kill that thing and eat it" and we did. Case closed

We're More Evolved - The standard response to the "what about wild animals" question above. The argument being that we have evolved to the point where we don't NEED to kill, and we know it is wrong, and therefore we shouldn't do it. The notion that killing an animal for food is wrong is an entirely manufactured idea. You want to talk about the effect of marketing? PETA is the one marketing this fantasy. Before the advent of "marketing", whether commercial or not, the idea of vegetarianism did not exist. Certainly not as a humane endeavor. Throughout history animals have been food, plain and simple; evolution hasn't taught us we were wrong, it has just deluded us into giving our food human traits and characteristics.

Did You Know We're the Only Animal.... - A great line about milk products that you hear from vegans all the time : "Did you know that humans are the only species to drink milk after infancy?" As if this means ANYTHING. We're also the only species to drive cars, or brush our hair, or have cell phones, or use fire to cook. What a fucking meaningless thing to say, seriously.

Again, I don't really have much of a problem with someone choosing a vegetarian or even a vegan lifestyle for themselves; it's your body, put whatever you want into it, I don't give a shit. But first, don't try and convince me to do the same, and second don't pretend like you know the entire history of the animal kingdom and can use it as some sort of bullshit justification for your whacky decisions. If you think veganism will make you happier or live longer, have at it, but get the fuck off my back about it. Food is one of life's most simple pleasures and I enjoy meat.

The Purell Society

2009-10-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Germophobia used to be a thing relegated to whackos in mental hospitals who were afraid of everything. It seems that in the past decade these people have started to become the majority rather than the minority. I'm sure everyone reading this can think of at least a few people they know who carry around one of those little bottles of hand sanitizer with them everywhere they go. I even knew someone who brought their own silverware to restaurants.

Invariably, these people are the most sick people in our society. They have zero immune system because they're never exposed to anything, so as soon as something "gets through" their body freaks out and shuts down.

It's easy to be sucked into the allure of the Purell. It almost makes you feel like a superhero, carrying a little bottle around that supposedly protects you from all the nasty shit floating around in the world. It's similarly easy to get caught up in worrying about all that nasty shit. The news (fucking news) insists on scaring us every day with disease and outbreaks and stories of contamination that would make ANYONE want to live in a bubble, no matter how sane you are.

There's a great scene in "The Aviator" (a movie filled with great scenes) where Kate Beckinsale's Ava Gardner comes to help DiCaprio's Howard Hughes get suited up for his court appearance. They're standing at the sink and he's just staring at the water, and he asks her "does that look clean to you?" And she says "Nothing's clean, Howard. But we do our best, right?" Howard Hughes was a certified loony tune, but some 60 years later everyone carries around bottled water because they're afraid to drink out of the tap (which nearly every study out there shows is more consistently safe to drink than the unregulated bottled water, and significantly cheaper). Not exactly the same as locking yourself in a theater and peeing into bottles, but there's a serious psychosis involved here. But again you throw it back to the news and they have a special investigative report : "Is your tap water safe?!" God I hate the fucking news.

At the heart of it, we are all animals. We are not made to live in a sterile environment, our bodies are made to adapt to nearly ANY environment. They do this by being exposed to things and building up immunities. If you've never been exposed to anything because you try to Purell everything out of existence, your body has no idea how to fight for itself. Every year we hear people say that doctor's shouldn't give out antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, because the bacteria will adjust and create "superbacteria." And yet we're doing the same thing to every facet of our world, trying to purify it and in the process making the world MORE dangerous for ourselves.

Memory

2009-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

This isn't a rant, but just something for thought.

Does pain really matter if you don't remember it?

Say you were going to be tortured, but there was a magic "Men In Black"-type device that could wipe any memory of the event immediately after it. So you were tortured for an hour - and don't get me wrong, that would be a miserable hour - but immediately following it you had no idea it ever happened. Does that one hour of misery matter?

People always say they hope they die in their sleep or "quickly", but at the end of whatever kind of death you have, you're dead anyway. I mean, no one wants to suffer through years of a painful disease, but with a brief but painful death... at the end you're still dead, right?

It seems to me that most things that are painful, either physically or emotionally, are much more painful in your memory of them than in the actual time. Torture is so horrific not because of the hours you're enduring it, but because of the YEARS you spend remembering it.

I'm not going anywhere with this, just something I think about a lot. Time and experience is just so ephemeral. Whether you're dreading giving a presentation that you're terrified to give, or looking forward to a vacation, it seems like the only lasting parts of any of those are the seemingly endless anticipation and the memories afterwards; the actual moment goes by in a flash.

Co-Owning a Duplex

2009-10-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

I live in a duplex. It is owned by my mom (who lives in Seattle now), and she rents out both halves (one to me, one to some strangers), so she is responsible for the upkeep on the entire property. My entire neighborhood is filled with duplexes, but the vast majority of them aren't like ours; most are split into "condos" and each side "owns" their half of the house.

How can I know this, you may ask. Because when I'm out walking the dog, I look at every one of these homes, and there is a clear mark of delineation separating the two. The picture above is taken from my front porch. That is the duplex across the street. The person on the left decided to have the house "washed" - anyone with vinyl siding knows it can get gross. So some guys came out with pressure washers and washed the house.... THEIR SIDE of the house. Leaving a clear LINE down the middle of the house where one side is DIRTY, and one side is CLEAN. It looks RIDICULOUS. And while it isn't evident in that picture, oftentimes the lawn will be half-mowed as well. Look at that lawn. It's flat and takes... maybe 3 minutes to mow. Mowing one half of it is almost more work than just mowing the whole thing. It's obvious that not only are these people cheap, but they just don't like each other enough to even swap lawnmowing days.

But it's not like those two are alone. A good three quarters of the houses in my neighborhood (and there are DOZENS of duplexes around me) have similar inconsistencies. Half-mowed lawns, different colored front doors, landscaping on one side and not the other, SHUTTERS on one side and not the other. It's amazing not only that people can't get along enough to agree on a few minor things, but that they insist on living in a house that looks like freakin' garbage. And some of these people spend a lot of time doing landscaping... on their half. It's almost like they're trying to passive-aggressively shame the other half to do some work, but it basically just furthers the rift between them. And the only thing all your work accomplishes is making your house stick out like a sore thumb as being yet another half-and-half.

I never even really understood the draw of owning half a duplex. I guess cost - cheaper than a standalone house? Not by much - but other than that, just own the WHOLE thing and get some rental income from either one or both halves. Owning half and having to fight with your neighbor over every cosmetic thing you ever do is not only tiring but it makes you look like a jackass to everyone who drives by.

The Guy Gene

2009-10-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm missing guy gene, or at the very least that mine is somehow broken. I know this post is going to incite lots of mockery and being called a homo from people, but fuck you all.

I feel like every one of these could be (and might be) a rant on its own some day, but some quick thoughts on things that seem to affect all guys but me :

- MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), or as someone cleverer than me once called it, "televised aggravated assault." It's not that I'm "against the violence" of it or anything, I just don't get it. I'll bet no one's ever made this comparison before, but it's like soccer to me; people say there's some sort of strategy to it, but every time I watch it looks IDENTICAL. I hear Joe Rogan talking about how this guy's a grappler and this guy's a something else, but within 9 seconds both guys are twisted up on the ground punching each other in the face. Invariably. Nearly every guy I know thinks it's the shit, but it's like watching paint dry to me. How something that can basically ooze testosterone and action can be boring I'll never understand, but there it is.

- Fantasy Sports. It's not that I haven't had fun playing in the few "leagues" I played in. I gave up on it two years ago, but before that I did baseball and football with some friends, and it was fun, don't get me wrong. But it was fun as a) a social thing, and b) a diversion from work (oops), not an OBSESSION. And most people I know who are into it treat it as much more than a DIVERSION, and that, to me, makes it NOT fun. If I were in a league with people who took it seriously - fighting over trades, doing RESEARCH, spending REAL time and money on it - that takes the fun out of it for me. The fun for me was spending the few hours with friends at the draft, spending a few minutes a week choosing a lineup, checking your stats a few times during the games and getting that little rush of excitement if you were doing well, and then talking trash after. That's it. And there's something to all that, but really people have sucked all the fun out of it by turning it into this... INDUSTRY and complete suck of time.

- Bands like "Tool". Or "Sevendust." Even most "Metallica." I admittedly like some music that would be considered girly, but even beyond that, I do like rock bands. I like the Foo Fighters and Zeppelin and a bunch of other bands. But there is a class of hard rock bands that is often classified as "guy music" that I have never gotten into. I feel like an old fart but it just sounds like noise to me. So little of it is actually musical, but rather just hard guitar sound and someone screaming. For working out? Sure. To actually listen to and enjoy? Fuck no.

There are probably more - in particular attitudes towards the opposite sex that I'm saving for a future blog post - but these are the three I feel like I run into most often. It's just funny to me that they can be so universally liked by almost every guy I know and I just want to say... huh? Really?

Sitar Music

2009-10-07T09:00:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty much convinced that no one in Western culture actually enjoys sitar music. Instead it's high atop the list of "things people pretend they like so they are thought of as the type of person who likes that thing."

Confused? Good, then I can probably flesh this thought out into a whole blog post.

I feel like there are a whole list of things that very, very few people actually like, but instead they feel like vocally liking that thing says something about THEM. Kind of like owning a Prius - you may not really give a fuck about the environment (and your little contribution is negligible at best), but you know that people see you in your Prius and think "heyyy, that dude is into the environment." So can it be with hobbies, and in the case of this post's title, music tastes. You're not into the sitar REALLY, it's just that people who ARE into sitar music are usually open-minded hippies and you want to be perceived as one of them.

In high school, I was like this with the Grateful Dead. There are a few songs by the Dead that I enjoy, don't get me wrong ("Ripple" is still one of my favorite songs), but in truth most of their stuff SUUUUCKS. Their live performances where they just pointlessly jam for hours on end... blech. But I got "into" them so I could wear the cool shirts and put dancing bears on my car, cuz I was into hippie culture and I wanted to be perceived as a Deadhead. If I was gonna go home and privately listen to music on my own, it wasn't gonna be the Dead, but an outside observer would think that's all I listened to, because I wanted them to think that.

As a better modern example, I would say most hip hop and rap followers are guilty of this. For the most part, the only songs in that genre that are even remotely musical are the ones that sample someone else's songs. Once in a while I'll hear something on the radio or TV or from a passing car and think to myself "hey, that's kinda catchy.... oh wait, that's cuz that's Ray Charles in the background." Anyway, the point is, very few people hear that garbage and say "man, this is awesome, it really makes me happy to sit and listen to this." No, they hear it, they see the image that other people that listen to it have, and they want that image. Whether it be a tough thug or a rich baller or whatever; it's all about the image that liking that music portrays rather than any enjoyment gained from the music itself. Which is also why people into that shit always put giant subwoofers in their cars - they're just announcing "this is what I'm into, aren't I cool?"

It's just such a pathetic play for attention and acceptance, and the sad part is I'm sure the vast majority of people don't even realize they do it. They convince themselves that they're into that thing just because they find the associated lifestyle or attitude so appealing.

Sad, really.

Spoiler Alert!

2009-10-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

I hate spoilers. Not the kind in the picture to the right (that's a pun) but spoilers with regards to TV / movies. I won't even watch previews for "next week on Lost" or any other such show because they tend to give away major plot points in those things. Battlestar Galactica used to begin every episode with flash cuts of random scenes from the upcoming show, and it drove me BONKERS; I would literally COVER MY EYES during that part.

A lot of people find this trait annoying. Matt Ufford, who writes the TV blog Warming Glow for Uproxx.com, calls us whining babies all the time. Well I'm here to defend my position as a spoilerphobe.

Obviously, not every television show or movie is designed specifically to be suspenseful, but I would say the vast majority of them contain some element of suspense. Even a good comedy will usually have some sort of romantic subplot (think "The Office" with Jim and Pam, or various pairings on "Friends"), or at the very least some awkward situation that derives its comedy simply from not knowing how it will turn out (pretty much everything Larry David has ever been involved in). It's not that these things are particularly ruined by spoilers, but the impact is lessened. Any media is designed to make you feel some emotion, whether it's through laughter or fear or suspense, and diminishing any of those by spoiling the joke or spoiling the outcome diminished the experience as a whole, at its most basic level.

Aside from simply changing how you experience the particular moment that has been spoiled, some spoilers can change the entire way you experience a show. They don't even have to be spoilers about an important scene. Going back to Battlestar Galactica, which opened each show with essentially still images from the upcoming episode, just seeing one of those images would be enough to change an entire episode. I would spend most of the time watching wondering how they would get into the situation I saw, rather than enjoying each moment for what it was. Knowing, even in the most vague sense, how things would turn out makes everything that comes before it feel so much less important.

Before the current season of Mad Men came out, a still was posted on various websites of Don and Betty on their front steps with a baby in tow. Pretty inconsequential overall - they ended the last season with Betty pregnant, so it follows that she'd have a baby right? Sure. Except before the season Matthew Weiner (the creator) said he didnt' want people to know going in what time frame the show would be on (last season they skipped over a good 18 months between seasons). Knowing Don and Betty brought their baby home in the upcoming season pretty much spoiled that. But beyond that, especially on a drama as deep as Mad Men, any of a million things could have happened that were immediately invalidated by that one still. Betty could have lost the baby somehow (considering she spent her entire pregnancy smoking and having occasional drinks and being stressed out, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility). Don and Betty could have split again (they had already spent significant time apart and on the road to separation or divorce). Hell, even Betty could have had complications in childbirth, however unlikely. And this is a show that, while it has a mystery element, isn't based around suspense. It's just that the point of watching is to experience everything first hand, to try and experience every event as the characters would experience it. If you don't want to do that, why not just read the reviews online after every episode of the shows you like, rather than watching them yourself?

I'm sure to some people this still sounds ridiculous, and I fully admit that I am a bit more serious about this whole thing than most, but I hope now at least you can see WHY.

Guest Ranter Theater #2 - Chris

2009-10-03T09:00:00.002-04:00

My buddy Chris shares a brief rant that I think nearly everyone can agree with.

Anyone who would like to post their own rant, use the email address at the upper right of the page

So in the continuing wussification of the children of america; I was behind a bus this morning as it was picking up kids for school. We've all been there and it's annoying having to stop every couple hundred feet, but this morning was absurd. The bus stopped at the corner of a street where it looked as if kids either had to get rides to the end of the street or walk to it and wait, normal right? Then the bus travels about 50 feet and stops again to pick up another girl. I look in disbelief because it was 50 FEET! Oh and it gets better. So because this house is on the same corner as the last bus stop what it really means is the last bus stop is at the other corner of her yard! Really!? She couldn't walk to the other fucking corner of her yard to get the bus!? 3 Kids have to walk or get a ride down the street because the bus doesn't go down their street, but somehow this girl gets to wait in her driveway because she's too fucking lazy to walk 50 feet across her own yard!?

And while we're on the topic, what's with parents waiting with their middle and high school aged kids at the bus stop? When I took the bus at that age, my parents weren't even home let alone waiting with me at the bus stop. That ended after 3rd grade. By 4th grade I was walking to school with no adult supervision. And don't give me the "we live in a different time now" I wasn't born in 1950 we're talking about the fucking 90's here. You're telling me there's exponentially more creeps out there now than 15 years ago? Tell your precious little snowflake to suck it up and walk the 50 feet to the other side of the yard and wait by herself!

Guest rants are the properties of their writers and do not reflect the opinions of the blog at large

Drivers : Stop Being "Nice"

2009-10-02T09:00:00.003-04:00

Say you're sitting at a four-way stop, and miraculously it is going as it should be. People are going in some sort of reasonable order. Your turn is coming up, but you look over and see a little old lady, and you decide that you're going to wave her on.

STOP IT! STOP RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

First of all, she's not gonna see you. You're gonna wave to her, and she'll sit there oblivious, and you'll wave again, or flash your lights, and she'll continue to sit there. The person behind you will beep - "It's your turn, asshole!" - and you'll say "fuck it, I'll go," but by now the old lady has realized what's going on and has started to go, so you do that thing where you both start and stop and start and stop 9 fucking times.

And it all could have been avoided if you just WENT WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO.

Just the other day I was leaving work, and I came to the end of the street, and was taking a left. Traffic was heavy out on the main street off of my work street, in both directions. Someone on the OTHER side of the street decided to be "nice" and wave me on... but I still had to wait on the closest lane of traffic to open up, which, even nosing my bike in, took a while. And this person just sat there and waited, with a giant line of cars behind her, until I could get through to her side of the road. It's not that I don't appreciate the effort, but is it really worth holding up the 10 cars behind you for a few minutes just to let some dude go? Don't worry about me, I'll be fine, just keep fucking traffic moving.

There are times when you should be nice. Someone standing in a crosswalk? Go ahead and stop and wave them on. Someone desperately trying to get into your lane for an upcoming turn? Go ahead and give them a little space. But when you're in a situation where things are going smoothly and you're being "nice" for no good reason? All you're doing is fucking things up for everyone else! And for what? So you could let someone go 15 seconds before they would have gone anyway? It's pointless! GAH.

ATMs

2009-10-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever gone to an ATM that just requires you to "swipe" your card rather than actually sucking it in and keeping it? Sure you have. And have you ever had that ATM finish a transaction, say, getting cash, and ask you "anything else?"

How fucking stupid is that system? How many people every day get their cash, have their card (cuz all they did was swipe it) and just turn and walk away? Someone did it TODAY, right in front of me at the ATM. I walked up and it said "Will there be anything else toady" with two options : Yes, and "No I'm Done." The guy was long gone, I could have walked up, and just tapped "Yes" and stolen 200 bucks from the guy (or whatever his withdrawl limit is), or maybe something worse. Luckily I'm a decent human being and hit "No" and went about my own business (careful to hit "cancel" 19 times after I was done even after hitting "no" just to make sure).

ATM's* have been around for 70 years, and people haven't figured out some of the most BASIC flaws like this yet? I'm not one to make excuses for someone being too stupid to do something correctly, but leaving a gaping hole in the security like this.... wow. In my eyes this would be the equivalent of an ATM not masking your PIN when you type it, or rather than feeding you money just opening a door to a roomful of cash and trusting you to take the right amount. Fucking LUNACY.

(*for you grammar nerds, yes it is generally acceptable to use an apostrophe to pluralize an acronym such as ATM, so keep the corrections to yourself.)

Music Snobbery : True Fans

2009-09-30T09:00:00.002-04:00

I ranted about Food and Drink Snobs recently. The gist of the rant was that as long as someone enjoys something, who cares what the experts or "true fans" think? Well I'd like to expand that argument a bit to include music snobbery.

This is one I'm probably at least a little guilty of myself, so it's tough for me to rant too strongly about it, but stick with me here. There are bands I love - Led Zeppelin and The Beatles come immediately to mind - who have songs that are so overplayed, both on the radio and in various other forms (film, commercials, etc), that I don't even like them anymore, despite knowing they are good songs. "Stairway to Heaven", "Whole Lotta Love", even "Let It Be" or "Yesterday" - all REALLY good songs, but overplayed to death. So when someone says they're a fan of Led Zeppelin because of "Stairway", I get mad and tell them to listen to some REAL Zeppelin. I mean, "In My Time of Dying" is a Goddamn masterpiece, and you like "STAIRWAY?!" And thus I become what I hate - a music snob.

Someone once told me, in response to my complaining about overplayed songs, that songs were overplayed because they were good. The songs by a band that get the most press are the band's best songs, so what am I complaining about? I don't think that's true, however; a band's BEST songs aren't necessarily their most popular songs, but rather a band's most ACCESSIBLE songs are their most popular - the song that appeals to the widest fan base. Sticking with Zeppelin, just to be consistent, I doubt many Zeppelin fans would say "Stairway" is their favorite Zep song, BUT it's the song that people who AREN'T fans of Zeppelin will listen to despite their apathy or even dislike of Zeppelin in general. Make sense?

Which I guess kind of sounds like DEFENSE of music snobbery, but as with the food snobbery argument, I have to think that if someone enjoys something, who the hell are we to get all uppity about it? It's not like it takes me EFFORT to be a real fan of a band; if I like someone, I'll listen to their shit, and if I don't, I won't. I'm sure there's a MILLION songs that I like by bands I don't necessarily like, and fans of that band would probably turn their nose up at me, but do I give a fuck? Of course not; I enjoy the song, but don't enjoy other songs by the same band, so sue me.

Off the top of my head, the band that has fans that seem to exhibit this trait the most is GUSTER. Everyone knows Guster for the song "Barrel of a Gun." But any fan of Guster will get MAD at you if you even bring that song up. To the point where someone once told me she went to a Guster concert, and the first song they played was "Barrel of a Gun," after which they told anyone who came for that song that "they could leave now." The BAND said that! They were snobs of their own music! Can you imagine how much money that song has made them in their career, and they turn their noses up at fans of it?

On a slightly different side of the argument, I knew a girl in college who loved independent bands, but immediately turned on them as soon as they became popular. It wasn't a matter of "selling out" - another concept that I find asinine - she just literally didn't like being a fan of the same music as other people. As if being a part of the crowd was inherently a bad thing. I can certainly see where she's coming from ; most people are fucking retards, who wants to be associated with them? But still, the idea that you no longer like a piece of music simply by virtue of its being popular... it's ridiculous, right?

I guess the point of all this meandering nonsense is - if you like a song, just enjoy it, and if someone else likes a song LET them enjoy it. It's one thing to try and expand someone's musical horizons but ridiculing or getting actually angry cuz someone doesn't like the RIGHT songs... God it's so fucking stupid.

Pre-Existing Conditions

2009-09-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

Anyone who has ever had to switch health care providers knows what a pain the "pre-existing condition" clauses is. It basically says that any condition you had before signing up for insurance is not covered for some grace period (usually 3-6 months).

This has been one of the biggest examples of private healthcare trying to fuck people over. And I agree - it does fuck people over. Like I said, everyone has had to deal with this at some point in the past. I'm certainly not going to defend the insurance companies here - for the most part they're scumbags, no doubt.

But it's not so simple to just "do away with" any kind of clause for pre-existing conditions. In a world where people can choose their health care provider and aren't required to have one, the pre-existing condition clause is crucial for the survival of the insurance industry as a whole.

Here's how insurance works : you pay for it. They hope you don't ever use it, or at least don't use anywhere near what you pay in. If you DO need to use more than you paid in, they use the payments from someone ELSE who DIDN'T need their share to cover it. From a business perspective, that's all there is to it.

Now pretend there's no such thing as a clause against pre-existing conditions. Why would you have insurance in the first place? You just wait until you get sick, and then sign up for insurance that day to cover it. Why would any healthy person pay insurance premiums if they could just "sign up" for insurance as soon as they needed it? Enough people do this, and the entire business model of insurance goes to shit (everyone who is paying in is taking out) and bam, insurance is pointless.

Even not going to that extreme - say the government required you to have SOME sort of insurance, in order to prevent people from doing what I just laid out. Seems like a reasonable response to the problem. But in a multi-provider system, there will be different options with different prices. So in this "must have insurance" model, why wouldn't a healthy person just get the cheapest insurance possible, until they get sick, and then they get the BEST insurance possible? "Ooops, I have cancer, I'd better get good insurance, and they have to cover me." No one would pay for the "good" insurance while well, and their business would fail because of it. And with a very cheap "government" option, this is where every "healthy" person will turn, in essence bankrupting the "good" options.

Obviously there needs to be reform in the way insurance companies do business, and the way pre-existing conditions are handled is one of them. This whole scenario as laid out above is a very over-simplified dissection of how such a complicated industry works, but so are the ridiculous arguments people use AGAINST insurance companies. Our personal health and that of our loved ones is a topic that's rife with emotional response, so it's hard to sit back and think logically about the issue, even if you're perfectly healthy. But we at least have to THINK a bit before insisting on these changes that don't make any logical sense.

Guitar Hero

2009-09-25T09:00:00.002-04:00

I don't think there's ever been another video game that brings out the snarky asshole in more people.

I guarantee you, my reader, falls into one of two categories :
1. People who have played, and most likely enjoyed, the occasional game of Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
2. People whose first and only reaction to those games is "why don't you just learn to play the guitar for real?"

If you fall into group two, go fuck yourself. Hard. With something sharp.

What is it about this particular game that prompts EVERYONE to respond the exact same way? Nearly every video game mimics some behavior in a fantasy world. Is it just because guitar playing is a pretty accessible hobby, as opposed to, say, a WWII shoot-em-up? It is admittedly tough to find Nazis to gun down in this modern day and age, but I promise you you could if you looked. But seriously, I'd say the most popular games among older gamers are sports games, but it's FAR rarer (though obviously not completely unheard of) that you hear someone say "why don't you just play REAL football?" I mean, I've heard it, but not to nearly the extent I've heard it about Guitar Hero. Maybe it's because those games have instrument-shaped controllers. Maybe if Madden '09 was played with a football shaped controller, the complaints would become more prevelant.

Look, idiots, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are GAMES. Guitar Hero in particular has FIVE buttons total; a standard guitar has 6 strings and 22-24 fret positions representing 12 notes per octave and a total of about four octaves. Not to mention the fact that you should probably learn music theory or at least some basic note-reading and spend hours practicing.... or you could buy a freakin' game that is fun to play at parties where colors light up on the screen and you mash those colors on your controller. Seriously, VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT REAL LIFE. Guitar playing is infinitely more complicated than its video game counterpart, and they fill completely different spaces in the average person's life. SO SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

This Car Climbed Mount Washington

2009-09-23T09:00:00.002-04:00

Is this the stupidest bumper sticker of all fucking time?

How is this a badge of honor? Unless you BUILT the car with your bare hands and a welder, all you had to do to get it to the top of Mount Washington was drive it on a paved fucking road. Show me a bumper sticker that says your car climbed Mount Lafayette or something (which is a random mountain withOUT a road to the peak) and I'll be impressed. I have a T-Shirt that says "this BODY climbed Mount Washington," (and it did) which I do find to be an impressive feat, if I do say so myself. I had to expend some calories to get up there, not just pay my car loan and fill my gas tank.

Seriously, does anyone have a justification for these bumper stickers? At least on modern cars? MAYBE I can make an exception for an old jalopy, or something you've done a lot of wrenching on, but when I see an XTerra with that bumper sticker I want to run them off the road. "My car survived being run off the road by Bob." Now there's a bumper sticker I want to see.

The Cost Of Things

2009-09-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

This rant is not going where you think it is, I bet.

Every time a popular new tech toy comes out, within minutes someone has purchased it and disassembled it. It's the way of the new nerd world; people not only love their technological toys, they love to know what makes 'em tick. Can't find TOO much fault in that, though it does take away a lot of the mystique.

Inevitably, one complaint arises from this type of disection; "if you add up all the parts, *device* only cost $180 to make. How dare they charge $400?!" As if some piece of electronics is merely the sum of its parts, and not only should it be sold for cost with no profit, but no one who designed, tested, assembled, shipped, or sold said device should be compensated.

Really? I can't believe how often this happens, and worse, it happens on nerd sites like Gizmodo, where people should know better. I work in this industry; we sell computer boards to the government and they sell for tens of thousands of dollars but cost about half of that to actually manufacture. Where does the other half go? My salary. The salary of the people around me. The building we all work in, and the utilities for that building. The UPS truck that picks the shit up and ships it to you. This really is not a hard concept to grasp. So much more goes into the creation of a product than just slapping together a bunch of parts, especially in electronics, where not only does a ton of R&D have to go into everything, but if you don't come up with a new version every six months you get left in the dust. That innovation costs something.

Try to remember that next time.

Wallpaper Sucks

2009-09-19T08:13:00.001-04:00

I finally heard ONE valid reason why wallpaper is a good idea - it hides imperfections in the wall.

To which I say - big fucking deal. Even my father swears by wallpaper, which is mind-boggling to me, claiming it holds up longer than paint. While in an ideal world that may be true, "holding up" is kind of a relative term. Yes, it will still be there in ten years, but it's pretty much guaranteed to be peeling up in the corners, have a few nicks in it, and be faded to shit. And the worst part is the most common place to use it is the BATHROOM! Where steam and shit makes it peel up almost instantly! You know what you use to remove wallpaper when you want to? STEAM!!!

This topic doesn't deserve real paragraphs, so here's a bulleted list of reasons why wallpaper sucks :

It's Impossible to Remove - Maybe not literally impossible, but it's a pain in the fucking ass. You know what you do when you have a painted wall and you want a new coat / style? You MAYBE throw a layer of primer on, and then you paint it. You know what I had to do to paint where there was once wallpaper? I had to peel the paper off, then strip all the glue and shit off, then sand away the rest of the residue, patch a bunch of areas that people didn't patch before (because wallpaper covers everything!) plus a bunch of spots that got fucked up by the stripping process, sand THAT, and THEN go through the priming and painting process. What would have taken two days (accounting for time to dry) with paint over paint took six.

It's Not Repairable - If you put a nick or a scuff in a painted wall, you go get the leftover paint from when you painted that wall (or buy some more if absolutely necessary) and you paint over it. Done. If you do the same for a wallpapered wall? At BEST you have to take off that entire SHEET and replace it with a new one.

It Peels Up - When paint gets old, it just fades a bit, maybe looks a little dirty from years of hands on it or whatever. Barely noticeable. When wallpaper gets old? It peels up in the corners and edges. Yeah, good luck ignoring that.

It Looks Retarded - Your walls don't need fucking floral patterns. Pick a color, maybe stencil in a border around the top. The stupid things I've seen people wallpaper their rooms with is MIND-boggling ; just because you CAN put a pattern on the walls doesn't mean you should.

Seriously, if you ever wallpaper a wall, kill yourself.

Food and Drink Snobs

2009-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I just can't understand why people take some of the most simple pleasures in life and feel like they have to turn them into huge productions. And the worst part is that those same people look down on those of us who still enjoy something in its simple form, because we're not enjoying it "right."

I know that makes no sense, so I'll just jump into the example that spawned this thought (and that I'm trying unsuccessfully to expand into a more general problem) : coffee. Gizmodo (a gadget blog) recently ran an article about how to actuallymake coffee. The word "actually" is really there, and really italicized. The opening paragraph of this 2200 word tome immediately seeks to insult anyone who hasn't delved into the world of real coffeemaking :

You probably brew coffee, like most people, the most insipid way possible: Using a Mr. Coffee that you fill with pre-ground coffee from the supermarket. There's a million other ways to make coffee, and they're all better.

Insipid!

The article then goes on to tell you all the ways that you could waste HOURS of time and THOUSANDS of dollars brewing the perfect cup of coffee. Bullocks.

I know this topic is kind of funny coming on the heels of my rant about caffeine, but the fact remains that people do ENJOY coffee, even those who aren't addicted to it. My grandfather used to enjoy throwing Folgers into a cup. I know we've had a coffee revolution in the past few decades, but why do people get so up in arms about enjoying the more basic versions of things? Why are the only "real" fans of some food or drink the self-appointed "snobs?" Beer snobs, wine snobs, coffee snobs, cheese snobs, steak snobs... I mean, fuck. If I want an iced coffee, I go to the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru, and for $2.50 I can have an iced coffee in 25 seconds. And I enjoy the shit out of that iced coffee. It's not a HOBBY of mine, it's just something I enjoy once in a while.

I'm not really trying to fault those that turn these things INTO hobbies. I'm really not. If you like coffee, or wine, or any of those things so much that they become your hobby, that you spend countless hours and countless dollars finding the perfect way to make this thing you love so much.... good on you. I hope it's time well-spent. I just have a problem when those same people no longer seem to enjoy the thing for what it is anymore, and moreso, they insist on trying to make everyone else not enjoy it. I live in a FAMILY of coffee snobs, and when I come by with my Dunks iced coffee, I get shit about it. "I don't know how you drink that shit." Umm... cuz I like it? Just because you found the Xanadu of coffees doesn't mean I have to change, does it? Just because you found a rare 1961 Bordeaux that tastes divine doesn't mean I can't enjoy my $6.99 Australian Cab, does it? No.

So just lighten up a little on the food snobbery. If you're not a food / drink snob, good on you, try to ignore those that are. And if you are one, try and remember what made you be one in the first place, the simple enjoyment of tasting something you like, and try and let other do the same, even if their tastes aren't quite as refined as yours, will ya?

Empty Apologies

2009-09-16T09:00:00.002-04:00

The British Prime Minister recently apolgozied to Alan Turing, the "father of computer science," for something his government did in the '50's (namely, chemically castrate Turing because he was gay). The apology was in response to a petition signed by over 30,000 people.

First, I have to ask who is even signing that petition? I shouldn't have to clarify this, but what happened to Turing was horrific and ridiculous and I am in no way justifying the government's actions back then. But it happened fifty years ago! NO one involved is still in power, or likely even alive. It's an empty apology designed to placate people who have nothing better to do.

The same goes for all the apologies to the descendants of slaves from the descendants of slave-owners; or the descendants of WWII-era Jews from the descendants of Nazis. You are responsible for YOUR actions, not the actions of your forebears, unless you specifically continue their legacy. Any apology coming from you is not only meaningless (since you did nothing wrong and can't speak for those who did) but it's insulting. Granted I cannot relate to those who have had horrific things done to them or their people, but some empty apology decades after the fact from someone who had nothing to do with it? What is that accomplishing?!

An apology says "I (or people who I have control over) did something wrong, and we are sorry." Once the people responsible are gone, the time for apology is passed; they can no longer be sorry, and YOUR being sorry in their stead doesn't make them any more sorry, and doesn't change the past.

I feel like I'm talking to CHILDREN sometimes, seriously.

Hazard Lights

2009-09-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

Here's a tip - if you have your hazard lights on, and your shitty piece of shit vehicle can only drive 30 MPH, how about you find a different route that DOESN'T INVOLVE THE FUCKING INTERSTATE! At the very least get into the Goddamn breakdown lane, instead of clogging up a travel lane DURING MORNING RUSH HOUR with your '84 Toyota truck going 25MPH with the flashers on. Yes I beeped at you. You gave me the "what, I had my flashers on!" look. You're still a moron! Gah.

Droughts and Wildfires

2009-09-14T09:00:00.005-04:00

I hate when people panic and act surprised about something that happens every single year. Every year I see signs all over New England urging people to only water their lawn on even or odd days. During my daily lunchtime walks, inevitably someone will say how much we "need rain", as if we're still some agrarian society, and despite the fact that this year we had one of the wettest summers in recorded history. Every year we're going to need rain at some point, just like every year there's going to be a stretch where we get too much rain.

The same goes for the California wildfires. Every single summer for as far back as I can remember, there has been a month-long story about the California wildfires. How under control are they? How many people have been evacuated? What level of hero are the firefighters? Everyone, please send money / prayers / thoughts to the people affected. IT HAPPENS EVERY FUCKING YEAR!! If you don't want to be affected by wildfires, MOVE OUT OF WILDFIRE COUNTRY. I can see being surprised by large earthquakes; at least they happen rarely enough to warrant news coverage. They don't happen regularly during the same time of year in the same region, almost without fail. This is why I don't feel particularly bad for the New Orleans crowd; you insisted on living in a place BELOW SEA LEVEL where you knew hurricanes were going to hit; you were given ample warning. Move the fuck away!

I'm not saying I don't feel bad for those affected by wildfires (or floods or any other predictable natural disaster). I certainly don't want MY house to burn down, and I feel bad for those who have to evacuate and whatever. But the constant news coverage is seriously out of control. And really it's just a larger example of news media sensationalizing the most mundane things. Every heat wave is covered ad nauseum, with film of kids running through hydrants and stories about air conditioner sales and the elderly dying. Every snowstorm has a giant graphic at the start of the news (BLIZZARD '09!) warning everyone of what to do, and how to prepare. And this shit happens every year, usually more than once a year. There's always a heatwave in the summer, there's always at least one big snowstorm in the winter, there's always a water shortage in the summer and there's always a wildfire out in the California hills in August. It's like being surprised every morning that you wake up and have to take a piss. OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!
Can we just tone down the hysteria over it?

People Who Rule #3 : Bryan and Christie Bishop

2009-09-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

Warning : this post is a bit long, and a bit sappy. Read at your own risk

As I've mentioned a few times, I was a big fan of Adam Carolla's morning radio show. It wasn't broadcast locally, but I managed to stumble across the podcast version and listened to it for quite a while via iPod while driving to and from work. Really anytime I was in my car, I was listening to that show. It was comprised mainly of Carolla himself ranting and raving, but he also had two "sidekicks" : Teresa Strasser who did news and occasional commentary, and Bryan Bishop, aka Bald Bryan, who was in charge of sound effects ("drops") for the show, but who also chimed in with the news and talk and games they played on the show.

I always felt a bit of camaraderie (a word I never would have spelled correctly in a million years without looking it up) with Bryan, not only because of the natural affinity one gets from listening to the same morning talk show every morning (which I talk a bit more about in my Carolla tribute) but also because I could relate to him; we're both about the same age, both nerdy guys who enjoy movies and blah blah blah. This sounds gay, I know, keep reading, it gets better.

When Carolla's show went off the air back in February, he started up a personal podcast which was essentially a microcosm of the radio show. Since he was funding the podcast himself, obviously he couldn't afford to pay for Teresa or Bryan to come along, so while they'd have occasional guest spots they fell into the recesses of my brain just like the co-star of one of your favorite TV shows might after the show is canceled.

Then, in May, Bryan's name popped up again. Adam brought him up during one of his podcasts, breaking some sad news : Bryan had an inoperable brain tumor (a low-grade glioma in his brain stem). A 30-year old, healthy guy, whose wedding was planned for the upcoming summer, and he got what he thought at the time would be a death sentence. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't only relate to Bryan because I was used to hearing him on the radio, but because we were similar in age and... lifestyle, I guess? So hearing this news was not only like hearing someone I knew was afflicted, but almost reminding me that I too could befall some horrible twist of fate.

Fast forward to now, and Bryan is married to his new wife, Christie, and is doing well and going through treatment. You can read all the dirty details in Christie's blog, An Inconvenient Tumor, and LAIst.com just had a nice article that condenses the story well.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing all this, aside from calling attention to someone who could use some help if you've got a few extra dollars to donate to his cause (both Bryan and Christie are recently unemployed and cancer treatment ain't cheap), is actually just as much about Christie as it is about Bryan. I don't even know Bryan - he's a stranger I know from listening to him on the radio - and I certainly don't know his new wife. The entirety of my knowledge of her is from the Inconvenient Tumor blog and a few passing mentions over the past few years on Carolla's show. But reading through that blog, and reading that story... I guess I'm just in awe that there are really great people out there. The amount of support and sacrifice Christie has given to Bryan leaves me speechless. The news and media are filled with so many stories of murder, divorce, hate, cheating, jealousy, and lies that I guess it's just really refreshing to hear about a couple who get dealt one of the hardest Goddamn hands you could be dealt, and rise to the occasion together.

It's one thing to be strong for yourself when going through something horrible; I'm not saying it's easy, but every day people get fucked over by the world and battle back with an inner strength they never would have imagined. But to me it's twice as inspirational to see someone so selflessly do that for SOMEONE ELSE. We could all only hope to have someone in our lives that would be half as generous of themselves.

So, if you're so inclined, read through An Inconvenient Tumor, or at least the laist.com story, and throw a few dollars towards a couple of people who not only need it, but deserve it.

I Didn't Need That Bill of Rights

2009-09-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

Well, the swine flu "epidemic" has officially reached the breaking point for me. I'll let the WND article give you the gist :

A "pandemic response bill" currently making its way through the Massachusetts state legislature would allow authorities to forcefully quarantine citizens in the event of a health emergency, compel health providers to vaccinate citizens, authorize forceful entry into private dwellings and destruction of citizen property and impose fines on citizens for noncompliance.

If citizens refuse to comply with isolation or quarantine orders in the event of a health emergency, they may be imprisoned for up to 30 days and fined $1,000 per day that the violation continues.

Read the whole thing.

I don't know how much I can rant and rave about this. It is so fucking frightening of a piece of legislation that I can't even get mad, I just stare at it in utter shock. It amazes me that the PATRIOT Act got so much airplay but things like this, which grant the government FAR more power, are completely ignored. It's like a laundry list of Bill of Rights violations. You're talking about a bill that specifically states that officials may enter your home without a warrant, and take you into custody just on suspicion of a health scare. You thought TERRORISM was a vague reason? How is no one talking about this?

Second Amendment opponents always ask "why would normal citizens need to own firearms." Studies show that most people who have a firearm in their home for self-defense are more likely to be shot with it themselves than they are to shoot an intruder, etc (an irrelevant stat when it comes to individual rights, but whatever). THIS is a perfect example of why we need an armed citizenry. Cuz I'll tell you right now, if a health official came to my home and entered without a warrant, they WILL be met with an armed resistance. These are EXACTLY the types of rights violations that the drafters of the Constitution were thinking of when they put in the Second Amendment. Hell, these are exactly the types of rights violations that caused us to fight for our independence in the first place.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another....

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Paying Your Debt to Society

2009-09-09T09:00:00.006-04:00

Michael Vick was recently released from prison on dogfighting charges. The NFL decided to suspend him for a few more games after his release from prison.

A lot of the sports bobbleheads have been complaining about the NFL's decision, claiming that it is unnecessary and just a way for them to flex their muscles; that Michael Vick has "paid his debt to society" by going to prison, and should thus not be punished further. I heard this phrase NUMEROUS times, and I think everyone who is reading this has heard it ad nauseum through their lifetimes when referring to ex-cons.

I don't know when we got this idea in our heads that prison is some sort of "payback" system. "Well, Mr Criminal, you wronged us, so it's time for you to pay us back." In what way is being in prison "paying back society" exactly? It costs society money, especially in the case of someone like Michael Vick -- were he not in prison, he'd be paying millions in taxes on his income, rather than costing us $50,000+ a year to keep incarcerated. That's a pretty significant differential. So... if there's a debt to be paid to society, consider that debt still outstanding.

But seriously, prison is supposed to, in my eyes at least, serve two purposes. First, it is supposed to be a deterrent. If you're a bad guy, and you wanna do bad shit, the idea that that bad shit will lead to prison time is supposed to make you think twice about said bad shit. "I could rob this store, but I don't want to go to jail." For the threat to be valid, of course, people have to be put in prison, and prison has to be someplace that people don't want to be. I think the latter has become more and more irrelevant as prison life is glorified within criminal societies. "Gangsta" culture almost requires someone to have gone to prison to earn any street cred (similar to the Italian Mob culture with people "earning their wings" by spending some time in the joint). The modern style of wearing baggy pants that hang down below your ass is supposed to mimic prison, where you're not allowed to have a belt. Criminality is a culture, and prison is but a stamp of acceptance for that culture.

The other thing prison is supposed to accomplish is rehabilitation. This is kinda the same as a deterrent, but more severe : now you KNOW what it's like in prison, and you don't wanna go back. There's also the idea that you have time to reflect upon what you did wrong, but considering the sociopaths that comprise the criminal element I don't think that's much of a valid goal. It takes more than "time to reflect" to fix what's broken with most of these people.

Of course there is a third use of prison, which is to remove dangerous people from general society. Murderers and rapists who get "life in prison" are not here to be rehabilitated, they're there so they don't kill or rape anyone else. They're not really relevant to the current topic, though.

Anyway, back to "paying your debt to society." Why am I saying all this? First, to remove that phrase from the common vernacular. If Michael Vick wants to pay his debt to society, he should literally be PAYING. Either cash, or time. And so should any other criminal. In the case of non-violent offenses, I do not believe in prison as anything but a last resort; community service should be FAR more prevalent in our legal system. This is how people pay their debt to society, not by costing us money on incarceration but by providing a service that is valuable. Preferably with a task commensurate with their crimes. I know this is not as simple as I make it out to be, but I would love to stop spending billions to keep people in prison when it accomplishes nothing.

Celebrity Politics

2009-09-07T09:00:00.003-04:00

I swear I have ranted about this before, but a search brings up nothing. Yup, I have to search my own blog to figure out what I've already ranted about.

Can someone explain to me why we put any credence in the political ramblings of celebrities? Seriously, the two groups of people who, in general, are the most dumb and practically useless members of society are actors and sports figures. Not to say that they don't provide some value in the form of entertainment, but if society were to collapse tomorrow, where would their function be on the hierarchy of importance? Who are you going to ask for help constructing a new government, Brad Pitt, or someone who actually knows something and can read at higher than a 4th grade level? No offense to Brad Pitt or anything, just picked a random example.

Look, it's easy to put famous people on a pedestal. They're typically attractive, which studies have shown time and time again people inherently associate with trustworthiness. They're usually good at public speaking (it's kinda their job). They're good at conveying emotion, and convincing people of their emotion (again, their job).

But for fuck's sake, their entire career is based on LYING. They make a living pretending to be someone else. How can any thinking person look at an actor, someone who's only visible skill is playing dress-up and make-believe, and say "they MUST know what they're talking about." I mean, screw people with EDUCATIONS, people who spend their time contributing to society, I'm gonna believe the pretty person who plays a doctor on TV.

Or even worse, someone like Rainn Wilson, who is a hilarious actor and probably a really nice guy, but most people know him as Dwight from the Office. Essentially a backwards hick sociopath character. Funny yes, but not someone ANYONE would trust, and yet he spouts his nonsense opinions about Pfizer and people are supposed to listen? And they will!

Not to mention, most celebs these days are liberal as they come. Which is fine, but the whole mantra of that liberal / progressive movement is usually supporting the "little guy." Universal health care is about helping those who can't pay for insurance or health care on their own ; welfare programs for the poor ; feeding African babies who are starving and don't have clean water. The list goes on and on, all of these causes for the poor and downtrodden. And yet, the advice is coming from MILLIONAIRES. Not only millionaires, but millionaires whose industry notoriously pampers the shit out of them. These people typically have to do nothing; assistants do most of their grunt work, they probably work 5 months out of the year on some movie or TV show and take the rest of the time off, and get paid in the top .1% of all people in the country. I mean, how in touch with the commonfolk can they really be? Sure, it's noble, if you're rich, to want to help the poor, but that doesn't mean that their advice is PRACTICAL. They have no idea what it's like to live like a normal person, and yet we're choosing our leaders based on their advice?

Look, I have nothing against celebrities. Despite the fact that this whole rant seems to be about what awful, spoiled rich people they are, I really couldn't care less. They get paid what the market will bear for them to entertain us. And typically, they're good at being entertaining. But entertainment does not translate into political savvy, and it CERTAINLY doesn't translate into intelligence. So let's take the advice of the smart people who know what the fuck they're talking about, and let the celebs keep us entertained in the meantime, OK?

Personality Tests

2009-09-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

Why do people take personality tests? Do you really not know what kind of personality you have?

My friend Dan said to me the other day "every time I take one of these things I get a different response." And he's talking about the Myers-Briggs tests, the one that supposedly has some scientific merit.

This has all become INFINITELY more relevant of an annoyance for me because of Facebook. Every day, depending on who your Facebook friends are, you see a dozen notifications of quizzes people took, from "What color are you?" to "What Twilight Character are you?" to "What phase of the moon best describes your personality?" I know how tempting stupid Facebook diversions are, but those ones bother me the most, not because people waste their time on them so much as they're POINTLESS. 75% of them, the person who took it just says "not me at all." Or "I think I'm more of a ...." Then why'd you take the quiz?! Why do you need someone else to tell you what you are, ESPECIALLY if you're not going to agree with them? I can understand having an existential crisis, but FUCK man.

I admit it, this blog entry sucks, I apologize. I'll relegate it to a Saturday or an off day or something.

Drug Companies

2009-09-04T09:00:00.003-04:00

Rainn Wilson, the guy who plays Dwight on the Office, has been ranting on Twitter the past couple days about the drug company Pfizer. His idiotic ramblings were prompted by this story that Pfizer will have to pay 2.3 billion dollars in fines for illegal drug promos / marketing tactics.

First off, I'd just like to remind everyone of the insanity of taking celebrity political advice. Why we put so much weight on the opinions of these people is utterly incomprehensible to me, but I guess that's a rant for another day (I could have sworn I had already ranted about it, in fact...)

Anyway, back to Pfizer and their ilk. People love to put the drug companies at the forefront of health care crisis. They rake in billions of dollars every year selling drugs to the people who need them, for sometimes a VERY large sum of money. Most see this as unfair, especially those who need those drugs. Why should someone have to PAY, maybe even go into financial ruin, for a drug they need?

The simple answer is that because if they didn't, that drug wouldn't exist in the first place. Look, people don't like to admit or acknowledge it, but the vast, vast majority of innovation is not done for love of humanity, but for love of money. I wish I could say that companies like Pfizer truly want to make people's lives better, but in reality they want to make their OWN lives better with billions of dollars. The only way they can do that, however, is to sell people drugs that work at a high price.

Be honest with yourself. You honestly believe that drug companies would work as hard as they do to come out with new cures for the world's maladies if there wasn't MONEY in it? If Obamacare manages to take the profit out of the drug business, you honestly believe the drug companies will have the motivation to work as hard as they do on drug research and testing? There's not a chance in fucking hell.

Seriously, I love that the people who need these drugs the most are the ones complaining. Things that were a death sentence ten years ago are cured by taking a pill every day, and people have the gall to bitch that they COST too much? How much is your life worth to you? If the last guy didn't pay that money, that drug company wouldn't have bothered to produce your cure.

Look, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending groups like Pfizer, here. This latest lawsuit shows that they are obviously doing illegal things, in particular with their marketing. I'm sure their business practices are RIFE with corruption, lies, and all manner of bad things. These things should be fixed. There should be more oversight into their business practices, into testing. And for Christ's sake let's do something about lobbyists getting loopholes for all this nonsense. But just having a flaw in the system doesn't mean we have to throw out the system and start over with something that is almost guaranteed to produce worse results; not to mention the fact that a government takeover of pharmacology would result in less corruption? HA!

So yes, look at these large companies with a critical eye for the things they do wrong, but I wouldn't fault them just for making money. The promise of that money is probably keeping millions of people alive.

Rebellion Through Conformity

2009-09-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

A while back, I was with my cousin, and we drove by one of HIS cousins wandering in the street. Dressed in the full punk attire, this kid looked like Sid Vicious wandering the city. Every piece of his ensemble was carefully selected to meet the style - skinny jeans with patches and holes, boots, crazy hair, piercings, a patchwork leather jacket with buttons. If you were going out on Halloween as a stereotypical punk rocker, this would be your costume. To a T. And yet, it wasn't a costume; people who dress like that typically do it as an act of rebellion, to buck the system. To say "Fuck you, I'm not conforming to your society MAAAAN!"

So you don't conform to our society by conforming completely with some other retarded style? I mean, conformity is conformity. If you really wanted to be "nonconformist", why would you pick a popular style and conform to it so perfectly? Shouldn't you be dressed in a purple dinosaur costume? Or wear pants as a shirt? Isn't essentially wearing the uniform of a specific movement the definition of conformity?

My favorite example of this retard phenomenon are the Harley guys who dress in the full goofy leather outfits. Studded rivets, patches with skulls and flames and bulldogs drinking beer. It's so ridiculous, trying to look like a badass by wearing a costume that's been mocked for 50 years already. Just the fact that these guys who are trying to show themselves as "real men" and tough guys are concerned about fashion at ALL, and that they have most likely spent hundreds if not THOUSANDS on their clothes and accessories... I mean, if you think about it it's retarded right? These manly men going out shopping for leather vests and jewelery to go with their bikes, and then coordinating their little outfits before going out on the town (with their loud pipes so they're sure people will see them)... it really goes against everything they purport to stand for, no?

All Animals are Equal...

2009-09-02T08:47:00.004-04:00

... but some animals are more equal than others.

I don't usually post links to other blogs here but this one just tickled me.

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

(via Bruce at No Looking Backwards)

Caffeine and Energy Drinks

2009-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

It seems to be an American trait that we like to be proud of our vices and shortcomings. I kind of touched upon this when talking about people's inability to sleep, but I think it is even more obvious when you look at caffeine intake.

People LOVE to brag about their addiction to caffeine. And I'm not just talking about the energy drink craze which is both terrifying and completely fabricated (most of the components of energy drinks have been proven to do nothing aside from have some caffeine derivative in them). While energy drinks seem to be the realm of the young and retarded, coffee addiction is widespread.

I would guarantee that you know at least one person who VOCALLY insists that they are useless before their first cup of coffee. Or you have that guy in the office who says "don't mind me, I've only had one cup of coffee" when you talk to him in the morning. And if you only know ONE of these people I'd be amazed; I'd say a good fifty percent of the population has a very well-publicized caffeine addiction, and another 30% keep it to themselves but are truly slaves to the stuff. While those numbers are entirely made up, they're still terrifying.

It's not so much that we're all addicted (I don't drink coffee for the most part, and even when I do it's usually decaf, I just like the taste of iced coffee). It's, again, the pride over it. While people bitching that they're useless before their morning coffee isn't usually thought of as "boastful," people are actively calling attention to it, and obviously trying to gain some sort of badge of honor for the shortcoming. I guess it's a "my life is so busy look at what I need to keep going" type of thing, but really? I mean, I take pride in the fact that I DON'T need coffee. Shouldn't that be what we're striving for? No one likes the guy who just hops out of bed in the morning chipper as a cartoon character, but really, needing some drug to get you going every single morning is a good thing? What happens on the mornings when you can't get coffee, for some reason? You spend your whole day miserable? And this is fun for you?

Look, I'm certainly aware of addiction. I smoked cigarettes through most of college, and it was a bitch to get off of that. I have gone through my stints of coffee-drinking as well, and certainly see HOW people get addicted. Once you come to expect that little jolt, you need it in the morning. But who WANTS that feeling? Yeah the feeling of HAVING the coffee and getting that "fix" is great, but you really WANT to jones for it? That's what seems to make caffeine and coffee in particular so unique. Most drugs, people become addicted because they crave that feeling it gives them when they take it. Caffeine junkies seem to crave the CRAVING more than the feeling.

It's a strange little psychosis and for some reason it's totally accepted.

Freaking Out Over Booze

2009-08-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

The famous DerrickVee sent me a nice little rant from some wine mailing list that mentioned a new law about to go into effect in Maine. The law essentially says that wine "taste-testing activities must be conducted in a manner that precludes the possibility of observation by children." Here's an article in the Kennebunk journal about the law.

Before I completely flip out over this, can I just point something out? What percentage of Maine residents do you think would support this law if it were brought to their attention? If it's over 10% I will literally bleed from the fucking ears. People, this is not a government of the people anymore. I know this is just a local Maine law, but this shit happens everywhere; laws are passed that people have no clue about and would never agree to, and yet no one does anything.

Anyway, the larger issue is obviously the mentality that created this law in the first place. For some reason American society has been terrified of booze since our Puritan ancestors first decided to call this place their home. There are bars everywhere, everyone drinks and it's not a big deal, and yet for some reason we still treat it like the redheaded step child. Massachusetts is still coming around to modern thinking, only recently allowing liquor sales on Sundays, but still having ridiculous laws about grocery stores not being allowed to sell spirits except in random and completely inexplicable instances. Even my beloved New Hampshire only allows liquor to be sold by state liquor stores (though beer and wine is pretty much everywhere); one assumes this is only for revenue purposes but still I'm not a fan.

I understand that drinking is a "vice" and all, but for those that do it responsibly it's not much of one. I don't think there are many left that believe some spiteful God with smote them with a lightning bolt for partaking in a little booze. So what's the hangup?

And what does this retarded law hope to accomplish anyway? What is it about a tasting in particular that deserved the attention of the legislature? There are a million other scenarios where a kid is going to be exposed to drinking, and certainly in a much less controlled and civilized manner than at a WINE tasting! Sports games, family and community barbecues, amusement parks, even at dinner with their own parents, either at home or at a restaurant. Should we have special "booze free" rooms at restaurants so children aren't expose to the horrors of someone responsibly enjoying a cocktail with dinner?

Look, my brother and sister-in-law have two kids, and being normal, thinking people, they are not afraid to have beer or wine or even liquor in the house, and they're not afraid to partake in it to a responsible degree with their kids around. We have cookouts at their house all the time, and usually there's a beer or two consumed during the cookouts. And yet their kids are perfectly well-adapted, normal children. So why does my brother have to live in fear that his daughter may mention that he had a beer and some uptight ninny will throw a conniption and send in social services?

Hell, even when I was younger, I was in cub scouts. My parents were relatively young, and had a basement that was essentially a rumpus room; it had a pool table, a bar, a bunch of fun stuff. One time they offered to host a cub scout meeting, and the parents were APPALLED that we had a bar in the house. APPALLED! It's not like they were serving the KIDS!

I seriously don't get it. It's a distinctly American thing and it is up there with our hangups about sex in things that do not fit our purported ideologies of "freedom" in the least. As soon as someone says that they're thinking of "protecting their children", any counterargument is deemed moot and the most ridiculous and pointless legislation flies through without a fucking thought. THINK GOD DAMMIT. This shit is far, FAR out of control at this point.

Cyclists

2009-08-26T09:00:00.004-04:00

Is it me, or are cyclists the most entitled, annoying people on the face of the Earth?

Full disclosure : I have a bicycle. I don't ride it much anymore, but at one point in my life I was pretty active on the thing - before I had a car in particular, but even in college when I was living in Everett I would take my bike into school a few times. Nowadays my riding is mostly restricted to trails, not roads, and even then we're talking a handful of times a year in a GOOD year.

But Jesus Christ, have you ever been stuck behind a bicycle before? It's a pain in the ass. They rarely are over on the shoulder far enough for you to sneak by if there is traffic in the other direction, and often times they're not even going all that steadily so you feel you should give them an even wider berth. They love to pretend they're cars, so they'll get into a turning lane in the middle of traffic, meanwhile everyone who actually IS a car is freaking out because there's a GODDAMN BICYCLE in the road.

All of these qualms PALE in comparison to when you ask them about it though. "Dude, you're in the middle of the road and holding up traffic." The INEVITABLE response : "We have as much right to the road as you do." Uggggh. Let's go through all the reasons why this is such a ridiculous assertion :

1. Unless you're drafting Lance Armstrong in the mountains of France, chances are you can't keep up with cars in 99% of situations. Therefore you're slowing traffic.

2. Ratio to cars vs bicycles on the road? 100000000 to 1? Somewhere around there? So MAYBE roads are more focused on and designed for the majority instead of the tiny, tiny, tiny minority? Maybe?

3. Average car? More than 2000 pounds of steel. Average bicycle? 25 pounds? Who wins if you stand your ground in that fight, cyclist?

Seriously, all those Goddamn "Share the Road" signs and cycling magazines have given cyclists this complex where they feel as if they've been given the blessing of the world to gum up the roadways. WRONG. I have no problem with you being out there. And I'm not dissing the hobby - it's relatively healthy (aside from the fact that you'll most likely get ED if you're a guy), it's ecological, it's ecoNOMical. It's a fine hobby. But get over the idea that you own the roads, or have just as much right as cars. Being in the minority, and being that roads were not designed for you, you are the guests of cars, and should ACT as such. If someone in a car wants to go around your slow ass, make an effort to get the fuck out of the way. Hell, if you spent half the energy getting out of my way as you do bitching about what assholes cars are, we wouldn't have any problems.

Soccer Moms and SUV's

2009-08-24T12:34:00.007-04:00

Did you ever notice that the vast, vast majority of people who complain about "soccer moms" are 23-year old guys who have no kids? How often have you heard some moron say something like "why the hell do you need a giant SUV just to tote around your two kids?" when that person has no idea what it's like to take care of kids?

Don't get me wrong - I don't know what it's like to take care of two kids either. But I do know it ain't fuckin' easy, and whatever helps mom (or dad) get their kids to shut the fuck up and behave while they're driving down the road is just fine with me. I wish there weren't so many giant tanks with distracted moms driving them, but honestly, if mom's going to be distracted by her kids does it matter if she's in a 6000 pound vehicle or a 2000 pound Corolla? Not really. The distraction is the problem, not the mode of transportation.

When I was a kid, SUV's or minivans didn't really exist. It was Jeep or nothing, and Jeeps aren't exactly family vehicles. But my mom had a giant boat of a station wagon. Most parents had some form of station wagon it seems, and those that didn't WISHED they did. We used every inch of that wagon when we went on trips, and if SUV's (or minivans) had existed and we could have afforded one, my mom would have jumped on it in a heartbeat. So would have yours. So would nearly ANY parent. If your kid has any sort of life, I would imagine it makes it a hell of a lot easier, and until you've tried it, shut the fuck up already.

Another personal favorite gripe that you hear all the time : "good thing you have an SUV for all that off-road driving you do." Who said SUV's have to go off-road? What, just because they're capable of it? Hell, they barely are capable of driving off road for the most part, and no one really said they were except for the Jeep commercials. Ford doesn't show the Escape driving through the mountains in their commercials, they show it trucking kids around on roads, or in the snow. Especially around where I live, having a four-wheel drive vehicle in general, SUV or not, is a GODSEND in the winter. Yes you have to still drive cautiously but that doesn't mean it's not nice to have.

Besides, do you use every feature of YOUR vehicle, jackass? How many of these comments come from yuppie Prius owners, who fly down the highway at 85MPH all but negating any of the effects of the hybrid they love so much? How many douchebags with sports cars that can do 190 MPH do you see on the road? Do they take their car to the track and open her up? Doubtful, but people aren't complaining that they're not using THEIR vehicle to its full potential. What kind of car do YOU drive, Mr. I-Bitch-at-Every-SUV? Are you using that roof rack that looks so cool? All you do is drive on the highway to work, couldn't you have just gotten a smart car with 87 HP instead of your sedan with way more horsepower than you'd ever use?

So let's see, talking out your ass with no frame of reference to what you're judging? Check. Blatant hypocrisy? Check. Yup, you're a moron, shutup already.

Audiophiles

2009-08-21T10:19:00.009-04:00

Many years ago, I bought my first pair of Polk Audio speakers. They were some cheap bookshelf speakers, and I only bought them because they were on sale. When I buy something new, I compulsively fill out registration information (don't mock, you'd be amazed the improved service you get from companies when you do this), and in their registration information was a link to a forum - Club Polk. A message board for Polk speaker owners to discuss audio (and other things). I signed up - why not? - and have been a member since. It's actually a really nice community of people and they have some great discussions.

But some of them are batshit insane.

I think we all have come across some of the more outrageous audiophile products in our lives. I'm not talking your overpriced Best Buy Monster Cables for 100 dollars, I'm talking about the stuff you see in the Audio Advisor catalog, stuff like 3200 dollar turntables, or even worse, 4000 dollar CD players. Stuff I can't imagine anyone buying, but at least it looks nice and is a piece of electronics you can show off.

But there's stuff out there you would not believe. I'm talking about a 4000 dollar POWER CABLE. Just the thing that goes from the wall to your piece of electronics - four grand. The audiophiles - seemingly sane people otherwise - rail on and on about these kinds of things, and how they provide "clean power" and that they can hear the difference. From a power cable.

But here's where it falls apart. I'm not against the idea that an expensive power cable COULD in fact make some difference, and if you're that serious about it and have infinite money, if it improves your stuff, go nuts. But, the thing is... it doesn't. Here are the arguments you can make to an audiophile, and their usual responses :

Q : How can a power cable make a difference in the sound? Don't devices have filters in them to clean out any noise in the power? Isn't input power mostly irrelevant since it is all converted by your amp anyway?
A : I can hear a difference.

Q : Well, can you measure this difference? Cuz I don't hear it. Let's get an oscilloscope.
A : Well, it won't show up on any instruments, but there are nuances to sound that electronics can't measure. The human ear is far more advanced than electronics.

Q : Hmm, fair enough. But how do I know you're really hearing what you say you are? Isn't your opinion biased? Let's try a blind A/B comparison - I'll play something with a five dollar cable, and something with a four thousand dollar cable, and you tell me which is which.
A : No no, blind comparisons have been proven not to be accurate.

I swear to you I have gotten this response not once but several times

Q : Well, even if that's true, NON-blind comparisons are far LESS accurate. You see there's this thing called the placebo effect....
A : No, because I've bought an expensive cable before, and compared it to the cheap one, and liked the cheap one better, so obviously I wasn't biased that time.

Q : That's science then?
A : No, it's just the way hearing works. It takes time to study the nuances that you get from new cables, so an A/B comparison is just not valid.

So it's all completely made up, is my point. There's no evidence that these things make a difference, there is no objective way to determine that the listener even hears a difference, and yet I have seen essays of THOUSANDS of words claiming that changing the FUSES in a CD player, or upgrading a wall outlet, or changing a power cable added "depth" and "fullness" to the sound that just wasn't there before.

For fun, I have substituted a slightly different scenario from the one above which I believe demonstrates the absurdity of audiophile claims. I'll be the insane person, you be someone capable of rational thought.

Me : Hey man, check out this CD. It's a whole new type of music called "subliminal music."
You : Uhh, all right, pop it in, let's give it a listen.
Puts in CD, presses play
Me : Awesome eh?
You : Uhh, I don't hear anything dude.
Me : What? I hear it. You gotta really LISTEN, man, it's subtle, but rich.
You : I really can't hear anything. Let me get my SPL Meter

You : Yeah, see dude, the SPL meter doesn't register any sound. This CD is blank.
Me : Nah man, you just gotta have the right set of ears.
You : Well, how about this : you close your eyes. I'll "mute" this CD, and then take it off mute, and you raise your hand when you think I've shut off mute.
Me : Nah, that has been proven to be inaccurate.
You : What? I'm just asking you to tell me when you hear this music you claim to hear.
Me : Yeah, but that doesn't always work.
You : So... how do I know you're not just making this up?
Me : If you don't know, you don't know you don't know. You just don't have the ears for it man.

And SCENE. I swear to you, this is almost identical to the arguments audiophiles give, and they just see nothing wrong with their "logic."

It's a frightening world we live in sometimes.

Discrimination

2009-08-19T16:00:00.003-04:00

I just learned that my home state of New Hampshire has one of the smartest policies in place - drivers over the age of 75 have to be retested every few years for their drivers license.

Someone recently told me that they're considering repealing this law because it is discriminatory. Whaaaat?! It's a fact of life that eyesight, reflexes, and general mental acuity fade with age. Is it discrimination that 8-year-old kids cant drive? Ageism! Of course not; it's a fact that 8-year-old kids do not have the motor skills, strength, or maturity to operate a vehicle safely. Eventually, they grow up and are deemed suitable by society to partake in those activities.

Similarly, when we get old, inevitably we LOSE some of those things that made us eligible to catapult a 2-ton piece of steel down a highway at 80MPH; eyesight, reflexes, even strength. It's a FACT OF LIFE. The body deteriorates. It's not discriminatory to acknowledge that fact. Especially where the law just says that people over a certain age have to be re-tested, not automatically disqualified.

This phenomenon, unfortunately, is not strictly reserved for the elderly drivers of the Granite State. People love to assume that everyone is equal and should be treated as such, even when evidence clearly points to the contrary. This is the very thing I was ranting about in my We Are Not All Equal rant; there are groups of people who are demonstrably different, and it is not discrimination to acknowledge that. It IS discrimination to PROHIBIT someone from doing something without giving them a fair chance; if driving over the age of 75 were OUTLAWED, I would expect outrage. Or, in the case of the prior rant I just linked to, if women were DISALLOWED from being firefighters, I would expect and even DEMAND outrage. But saying that the elderly need to be checked out again due to the ravages of time is not discrimination, it's logic. Having less than 5% of firefighters be men is not discrimination, IF everyone is given the same test and only that many women pass said test; it's just genetics.. Just like it's not discrimination that the NFL is like 90% black; for whatever reason, those are the people that rose to the top of the athletic pool. Maybe genetic, maybe societal, who knows and who cares?

I think we all want to believe that the only reason for the failure of a person or a group is because someone is trying to keep them down, rather than just acknowledging that the reason they were clumped into a group in the first place is because of some difference. Acknowledging that difference is not discriminatory or prejudiced, it's just being observant and reasonable.

Idealism

2009-08-17T11:27:00.000-04:00

It's tough to be negative about idealism. Some of the greatest social visionaries in our country's, and the world's, history could be viewed as idealists, at least to an extent. Martin Luther King was an idealist; he envisioned a world of racial equality that was all but unheard of in his time. JFK could be seen as an idealist, or Lincoln; all people who believed in something good to almost an impractical level.

But the impracticality is where idealism kind of falls apart. For all the historical people we remember for putting aside reality and truly believing in some noble pursuit, there are hundreds of others who did the same but were proven wrong. I'd love to unequivocally believe in something good, and put aside all doubt and all evidence to the contrary and just plow ahead, but my brain doesn't work that way.

Why am I bringing this up? "Universal Healthcare." First, I'd like to punch anyone who calls it "free" healthcare. NOTHING IS FREE, IDIOTS. Doctors, hospitals, nurses, pharmacies, drug companies, medical suppliers, all need to be paid. The money for that comes from SOMEWHERE. No matter what you are told, you're paying for it somehow. Or at least SOMEONE is, and it's YOUR healthcare, so why is someone else paying for it?

Sorry, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Idealism. Obama, and people like him, can be seen as idealists. And because that concept is such a lofty and noble one in our culture, people tend to idolize, even deify Obama and his ilk. And I can understand why; as I've said before, I don't think someone is evil just because philosophically we disagree, so I can't get on the side of the extreme right who just see Obama as an evil socialist. I guess I have my own kind of idealism, and I really think what he is trying to do is what he thinks is right, and what he thinks is best, for the people of America and the world.

The problem is, I think, I could even say I KNOW, he is wrong. I won't go into things like wait times and blah blah blah, because it inevitably turns into some sort of "he said / she said" type argument. "Well my friend in Canada says they have to wait a year to see a doctor, and the doctor was a leper." "Yeah, but my friend in Canada says she had to wait 4 minutes, and was given a unicorn at every office visit." I don't believe any of it, and I'm sure, as Snopes talks about, experiences vary wildly in places like Canada where healthcare is more socialized.

So no, I won't get into the specifics of what I think will "happen" if they get their way and get "universal healthcare" pushed through, because ANYTHING could happen. I, and you, have no way of KNOWING how it will turn out, at least not specifically. What I DO know is, and as I've said in other rants, very rarely does the government take something over that it doesn't fuck up. It's pretty much guaranteed that the more they try to "help," the worse things get.

And this is where we come back to idealism. Idealists believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the lessons of history, their plan is the one that will work flawlessly. Obama and his ilk believe, despite all the failings of our government, despite the fact that the US is in an insurmountable amount of debt and can't even manage the money we already give to the government, that they can tackle healthcare and it will work out perfectly. THAT is truly ignoring the facts in favor of your own vision; THAT is idealism. And it ain't gonna end well.

Horoscopes

2009-08-14T14:00:00.003-04:00

I think everyone who's smart enough to read this blog knows that horoscopes are complete bullshit. Some writer is paid to write them for a newspaper or website, and chances are even THEY don't believe what they're typing; even if they do, they're whackjobs and wrong. I won't argue about this one. Just complete and utter nonsense. You can be as "spiritual" as you want, but there is NO truth to astrology. None.

I guess most people would ask "well what's the harm? It's just a fun little distraction" or whatever. The harm is when I see horoscopes like THIS one, which is actually my friend's Scorpio horoscope for August 7, 2009 :

Don't fold under pressure. You can find a way to do what you want if you are secretive, manipulative and focused on your goals. Stop helping everyone around you and start calling in favors owed. It's your life and future. 5 stars

A horoscope actually advising people to be SECRETIVE AND MANIPULATIVE. Again, you're a moron if you follow the advice of a horoscope anyway, but this is why they are harmful - people who ARE stupid enough to listen to them will make decisions that could be detrimental to their lives based on that kind of horoscope! You can find a way to do what you want if you are secretive, manipulative and focused on your goals What the FUCK?! I hope the bitch that wrote that is accidentally run over by a car driven by a loved one.

fake cause of death shamelessly stolen from Jim Norton

Sportswriters

2009-08-12T11:34:00.000-04:00

I have a quick beef with sportswriters. I don't follow much sports media; I'm missing that guy gene that makes me turn on ESPN and watch SportsCenter three times a day. But I do watch PTI every weekday, because it's a good and entertaining way to keep up on the top sports stories in a half hour. The two main hosts of that show, Tony and Mike, are very entertaining, and opinionated, which is why they're so popular I guess.

Now, I know sportswriters aren't really held to the same code of journalistic ethics as most other journalists; sports just aren't important enough to merit that level of scrutiny. But still, someone who is reporting any type of news to you should at least maintain an ILLUSION of impartiality. And it seems like sportswriters, for the most part, don't even fucking TRY. I can't tell you how many times during EACH PTI EPISODE where Tony or Mike or one of the guest hosts mentions that they "know and like" a certain newsworthy coach / owner / player, and then proceed to defend some stupid fucking thing that person did. And we're talking some of the most egregious personalities in sports:

Matt Millen, who is possibly the worst GM in the history of sports and deserves to be lambasted, instead gets the kid gloves by Tony and Mike about his landing not one but TWO jobs as an analyst. "Well, he's our friend, so we think he'll do great." FUCK THAT. He's not your friend right now, he's a news story; if you can't put aside your friendship enough to point out what an abject failure that asshole is, then just don't even fucking mention it.

Al Davis, aka the Skeletor-lookalike owner of the Raiders, a joke to most people and at the very least a man too old to be handling the affairs of a football team. Again, Tony and Mike say they are friends with him, and therefore, rather than just saying "we have nothing to say," make excuses for his ridiculous actions, to the point of defending them! Whaaaat?! Why bother even pretending to be discussing sports candidly?

Honestly, I can't think of any more off the top of my head, so maybe a bulleted list wasn't the way to go, but there are definitely more of them, all similar to the examples above. I just don't understand why they're allowed to get away with this without ANY criticism. People just glaze over it because it's essentially an opinion show, but that opinion still shouldn't be based on personal relationships with those involved, it should be based on your knowledge as a sports professional.

Grammar Is Not Useless

2009-08-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, I can be a bit of a grammar snob. A lot of times, if you make a point about grammar, or spelling, people (many, MANY people) will insist that grammar doesn't matter, as long as you get your point across. "You understood me, didn't you?" is the rallying cry of the grammar hater.

Well, I'm here to say it most certainly DOES fucking matter. I know this is ironic coming from someone who swears up a storm, which is not something you associate with excellent English skills, but just hear me out here.

There are two big reasons why grammar matters:

1. So you don't sound / look like a moron. Seems pretty basic, but it seems to be the one thing anti-grammar folks don't quite get (or adamantly insist they do not care about). How you communicate tells people a hell of a lot about you. If you refuse to capitalize sentences and use punctuation in a work email, even if you're Albert fucking Einstein and the best worker in the company, people are going to notice (at least subconsciously) and judge you for it. Probably not on purpose; especially if they know you outside of that email, no one's going to consciously re-think their co-workers intelligence based solely on their grammar. But it still has an effect, and if someone you DON'T know ends up seeing that email? I guarantee they're going to form an opinion of you more based on HOW you write than the content. It's just the way it is, sorry.

2. Language is nothing but a set of rules. Yes, those rules change over time to reflect common usage, which is fine. Things are always going to change, slang is going to develop, words come into and out of favor; all fine by me. But the only reason we create language is so we can communicate most effectively. If you decide to use your own rules, yes you're mostly understood, but you are not understood as effectively as you could be. It doesn't make you a conformist, it just makes you efficient. I mean, one of the things the majority people worry most about when expressing themselves is being misunderstood or misrepresented, and yet those same people consciously choose to use a form of the language that is most susceptible to those problems. How does that make sense?

Even the most basic grammar faux pas can be distracting. If I'm reading something, and someone refers to "they're new set of golf clubs", I know what they mean, but it definitely fucks me up for a second. Not because I'm anal retentive (or at least, not SOLELY because of that) but because my brain has to take an extra second or so to process something that's so blatantly wrong. Not to mention - what if I was deaf? I can't imagine how hard it is for a deaf person to read and write without having the sounds of the words running through their heads, but I'm sure it's made significantly worse by idiots who don't understand how homophones work.

So that's my grammar spiel. And don't go looking through this post for grammar errors. I am aware that "seems pretty basic" is a sentence fragment, and that I start a lot of sentences with "and", and there are probably a few other little errors in there. The point isn't to have PERFECT grammar; you can make grammatical mistakes either by accident or in the case of things like my previously mentioned sentence fragment, for effect. My point is simply that disregarding any kind of grammatical advice wholesale isn't doing you any favors. So knock it off.

Guest Ranter Theater #1 - Bryan

2009-08-08T09:00:00.004-04:00

I'm trying a new feature on the blog, Guest Ranter Theater. Anyone who would like to post their own rant, use the email address at the upper right of the page. I'll try to get one up here every Saturday, if I get enough submissions.

This week's guest ranter is my step-brother Bryan.

Fashion industry sucks and so do ignorant women

I have to say this because my girlfriend was talking about this today. She got on the subject of Christmas and what she wanted. Purses and carry bags came up and she got all into it with her friend about the different types and bags and prices and the more they got into it, the more pain was building up in my head. She is talking about purses (which I know), then carry bags, something called a tote, a wristlet (which apparently is a small purse that only holds some money and a single card... pointless concept to me).

Anyways, the point of all of this is to show you how these friggin' fashion assholes are bloodsuckers who are ruining the economy as well. So apparently, this wristlet thing can cost up to $100 and that blew my mind. Why the hell would I spend a hundred dollars on something that won't hold shit. Also, a purse that can costs $400... are you kidding me? The carry bags apparently are in the $800 range. What the fuck is everyone thinking? AND then they complain how they have no money... hellooooo, why don't you see if there is any money in your wristlet... oh wait that's right, it doesn't have enough room to hold money... god damn. To add on to the explosion going on in my head, she tells me that she wants $150 jeans. I almost threw the chair at her (but I didn't because I don't hit women).

Give me a pair of jeans from TJ Maxx or Marshalls for ten bucks, they will last just as long. I think that companies who created these "knock-offs" are the smartest people. They aren't just getting around the fashion, but they are making our economy better, because people aren't taking out credit cards and loans to pay off their fashion bills that they spent on the damn wristlets and totes. These companies are making a fortune on ignorant people. They put together a bag, purse, friggin' wristlet or jeans that cost them minimal and make a fortune on the sale. Keep fucking up our society douchebags.

Guest rants are the properties of their writers and do not reflect the opinions of the blog at large

Looky-Loos

2009-08-07T11:30:00.000-04:00

There is a lake by my work. If it weren't for some trees, I could see this lake from my office window. On Wednesday, someone, while boating at night, fell into the lake and presumably drowned. Awful story, no doubt.

For the past few days, there have been search teams in the lake, with divers looking for the body. News crews have been hanging around for the entire time; it's quite a zoo. Now I can understand, if you're someone driving or walking by, slowing down and craning your neck to see what's going on. It's human nature to be a little curious, for better or for worse.

My problem comes with the people who are fucking CAMPED OUT at this rescue. This whole situation has obviously been a topic of discussion around the "water cooler" here at work, and we were comparing notes about the people we saw there. There was one group of people, A FAMILY, with a fat guy, a woman, and a little girl maybe 6-8 years old, who were there watching at various times during the day. Everyone here at work noticed these people there at different times, meaning either they were constantly coming back and sitting there, or more likely were camped out there for hours at a time. One guy at work said he even had lunch across the street, and observed these people staring out at the rescue for the full 45 minutes he was at the restaurant.

What the hell is wrong with those parents? You really want your young child to see a bloated corpse pulled out of a lake?! This is what passes for entertainment, you sick fucks? There are cops all around, can't one of them say, "hey, idiots, if you bring that kid here again we're taking him away from you on the grounds of attempted mental abuse." I don't have kids, but I have a niece and nephew, and kids remember the most random shit. When she was very little, my niece got a bee in her ear; to this day she remembers that and is terrified of bees. Can you imagine how seeing a drowned dead person would affect a kid?!

Even beyond the kid, what all the other dozens of people who are standing around watching want to see is beyond me. There's a CROWD over there. What is this, Stand By Me? "You guys wanna see a dead body?" Holy crap what a bunch of weirdos.

Paranoia

2009-08-05T15:00:00.002-04:00

I follow a bunch of random celebrities on Twitter, just for the shit of it. One such celeb is Alyssa Milano (no, really!), who usually just posts little baseball pieces or whatever, but is also a big fan of posting links to Twitter-related stories. One such story is this little nugget on 10 things not to share on social networking sites.

I figured the story would be things like your address and your password, and those are on there, but there are some real doozies on the list as well, shit that really annoys the hell out of me. I've posted about the ridiculous paranoia over identity theft before, but this is more of a general slam on the pervasive paranoia that seems to be inundating the stupider folks in society.

In particular one thing on the aforementioned list that I see a LOT of - posting "pictures of your kids." Is this really what we've come to as a society? Not wanting the world to see pictures of our KIDS, for fear that there is some sexual predator lurking around who will find these pictures, be so enamored with the pictures of YOUR kids in particular that they will hunt them down and abduct them? And what is it about the Internet that you think is going to draw these weirdos out? Do you not let your kids out in public with you either? PEOPLE COULD SEE THEM!! It's just ridiculous.

Moving on from that silly link, it seems like paranoia has gripped everyone in society. The media is partly to blame; when nothing big is going on, they like to overinflate some health scare or terrorist plot. Swine flu being the obvious most obvious and recent example, but there are a million other examples. But however much I'd love to, I can't blame the media. People seem to enjoy worrying. Adam Carolla has a theory that I've been becoming more and more a fan of; basically, there is a part of us, as humans, that is reserved for this type of fear. Evolutionarily (is that a word?), it's there so we fear predators, and are on our toes. But now, we have NOTHING to worry about, at least in the hunter / gatherer sense. Sure we think we're inundated with problems, like the economy and health care and disease and bills and debt, but in the grand scheme of things, those are all pretty small compared to "eat or die" and "hide from lion or be torn apart." So instead of worrying about things that matter, we're forced to find something ELSE to worry about, and we create things. And thus is born second hand smoke, swine flu, having your child abducted, SARS, and a million other bullshit things that people waste calories shitting their pants about.

It just ain't that bad out there, people. We're safer, more prosperous, more healthy and living longer than ever before in recorded history, and yet we seem to be more miserable and terrified of everything. Let's just lighten the fuck up and enjoy it.

Intent

2009-08-03T15:30:00.001-04:00

Here's why people should almost never be insulted / offended / hurt by a joke : intent.

If someone's intent is solely to make people laugh - and there ARE jokes that are meant to make people be insulted / offended / hurt, so those obviously don't count - then getting all pissy about it is retarded.

I'm not going to sit here and try to define comedy or explain what makes something funny, but a significant part of comedy is often shock value, catching people off guard, or bringing light to something that may be kind of taboo. Nearly everything you find funny is going to offend SOMEONE, it's the nature of comedy.

But even beyond comedy, intent is important. People go crazy when someone inadvertently says something offensive. If you say something to your wife / girlfriend that you intend to be nice but she takes as calling her fat... if you didn't MEAN it that way, who gives a fuck what it COULD mean? I feel like this is an argument a 5-year old could easily understand - "I didn't mean it that way" - and yet every day I feel like I hear of someone, either personally or on a larger scale like in the media, who is getting their ass handed to them because of some innocent or humorous comment.

So, to everyone out there : grow up. Understand what people MEAN and how they mean it rather than looking for the worst possible interpretation in everything.

Not Sleeping, and Proud Of It?

2009-07-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

First, what's up with NO ONE being able to sleep? I feel like every other status update on Facebook is someone at 3AM saying they can't sleep, or saying how tired they are because they couldn't sleep.

I have a hard time really sympathizing because I pretty much sleep like a log. When I go to bed at night, I'm usually out in 5 minutes, and wake up at 7AM pretty much automatically, no matter what (rare exceptions like nights when I party and get home at 2AM may push the internal alarm to 8AM, but seldom further). I seriously set an alarm maybe once a month, when I have to be up especially early for an appointment or something. On the rare occasion when I do have trouble sleeping I feel like absolute ass, and I just can't imagine dealing with it for an extended period of time.

So seriously, what's the deal? Why all the sleeping problems? Is it that people are afraid to try any of the solutions to this problem? Exercise, meditation, medication, therapy..... Or is it that we, for some reason, like to suffer and brag about our suffering? Doesn't it seem like there's a really fine line between public complaining and some sort of demented boasting? Like it's some holdover from being a kid, when staying up late was naughty and cool, where now if we stay up late, even against our own will, we feel the need to let the world know? Sure, it's often disguised as complaining but I think that's bullshit. It's that "topper" syndrome, where everyone always tries to one-up you, even on the bad things.

It's one thing if you tell someone you got a 1300 on your SATs, and they say "yeah, well I got a 1390!" That person is a douchebag, but at least you can understand that they're proud of an accomplishment and just being boastful. But if I say "I only slept two hours last night", why is it inevitable that someone will respond "oh I know what you mean, I slept 6 minutes!" Is it really that important to "beat me" in the race to sleepless misery? What do people get out of proving that they're more miserable, and more tortured than others around them?

It's a really strange phenomenon and I just don't understand it.

One From the Vault - Sports are Silly

2009-07-30T16:31:00.002-04:00

Just because of the news of Manny and Ortiz testing positive for PEDs in 2003, I feel like I should post a link to my post from last year about Sports being a bit silly.

I swear it's getting harder and harder for me to care about my "local" sports teams. I feel like I'm going to be stoned by an angry mob around here if I say it out loud....