Bite me Word Cloud

Seven-headed dildozer. Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.Seven-headed dildozer.

Moving on to what?

I regularly get emails from MoveOn.org, a site that sends around typically left-leaning, socially progressive petitions. So earlier today I was all set to sign a petition to cancel Rush Limbaugh's radio show for his comments to Sandra Fluke. To recap, Fluke was set to speak about the need for women to have birth control subsidized by employers, but she (and all women, in fact) were barred from what became an all-male panel regarding women's health. Fluke spoke out about it and drew the ire of conservative media personalities.

So there I was, all set to add my name to the pool of normal, rational people who want what can only be described (in Al Frankin's words) as ten pounds of shit in a five pond bag off the ear, when I decided not to sign. Limbaugh isn't actually an enemy to liberals - he is one of our closest friends.

Social issues simply don't have the power to galvanize conservatives any more, particularly now that labor unions and health care (things conservatives enjoy as much as everyone else) are under fire. That being the case, Limbaugh's brand of bigoted commentary is not drawing in a significant number of new people to the Republican fold, and is most likely driving more people away. In an objective sense, Limbaugh is helping the Democrats win in 2012. Thanks, Rush!

In a more subjective sense, what one can infer from the backlash against Fluke (from personalities like Bill O'Riley as well) is that this is how conservatives deal with and relate to women. The only way to handle women, to them, is through fear and intimidation, relying on outdated misogyny like slut-shaming, where you warn a woman that if she has multiple sex partners or is perceived as having multiple sex partners, she will become a social pariah for not having "good moral character." When a woman doesn't do what you tell her to, it's permissible to insult and goad her into submission (the irony of the comments is that Limbaugh is saying that prostitutes are the only ones smart enough to practice safe sex. He should know, right?)

And I'll bet you cash money that Limbaugh et al wouldn't have a problem if their health carriers were made by the government to pay for Viagra. So it becomes the old hypocritical argument of, "I don't want to pay for someone else to have sex, but everyone can pay for me to have sex."

The latest polling show that women are leading the charge against the right, and Limbaugh and those who follow him in trying to scare women out of politics, scare women away from their own rights, are only ensuring their own defeat later this year. So Rush, I won't throw my name in to cancel your show just yet - just keep up the damn fine work.

UHF vs. Wayne's World, among other things

I've had the chance to re-watch one of my all-time favorite movies: 1989s UHF. It was Weird Al's attempt at putting his Dr. Demento-inspired humor on the screen and breaking out of being a parody musician.

My friends who like this movie often compare it to 1992s Wayne's World. The plots are almost identical: down-on-his-luck hero and goofy sidekick take to the airwaves and make it big. Here's a rundown of both movies to see where the differences lie.

Casting/Characters
Ironically the low-budget UHF has a much better cast than Wayne's World. Weird Al stars alongside Kevin McCarthy, Fran Drescher, Micheal Richards (in fact, it was his first starring role before Sienfeld), and Sopranos David Proval. Each character, while not realistic or made to be believable, has a detailed personality and the actors really show a good range.

Wayne's World is headed by Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey, both Saturday Night Live alumni, and is backed up by love interest Tia Carerre, who would go on to do a god-awful prime-time Indiana Jones ripoff and be "that kind of hot Asian chick" in a lot of movies. Despite having major studio money behind it, Wayne's World has a pretty small cast and the SNL-style comedy of Meyers and Carvey is sort of expected.

Setting
While shot entirely in California, UHF has a very clear Anytown, USA feel. The setting isn't a place that exists anywhere in the universe, but is a collection of run down buildings, crappy apartments and suburban wasteland that could potentially be your back yard.

Wayne's World takes place in LA, and that is literally all you need to know. It is a direct parody of LA culture and values in the early 90s. While most people remember 1992 as the year Bill Clinton became president and the time just before the economic prosperity of the dot com bubble, it was a pretty bad time for musicians (which Wayne and Garth are in the movie). The entire aesthetic, from Wayne's basement to Cassandra's spartan loft apartment, coupled with the constant references to 90s heavy metal, create a very bleak, bland, and downtrodden feel.

Both  movies use the ambiguity (or lack thereof) of the setting to help with the...

Parody
UHF shines in its insane representation of television shows, from Stanley Spidowski's Clubhouse (where lucky children get to drink from a fire hose) to a Nature-type show which replaces a handsome, bearded woodsman with a Mexican animal hoarder who throws poodles out of windows.

Wayne's World is less a parody of the content of television than it is on the industry itself. It's far more subtle, more relevant, but much easier to miss. It also throws in some nice parodies of the film industry as well, such as this "Gratuitous Sex Scene."

Overall
Ultimately the question as to which is better comes up, but I say screw that, see them both. Each film remembers a time, not so long ago, when any schlub with a few bucks could get a cable access show and broadcast almost whatever he or she wanted to the neighborhood. Before Clinton (you heard me; look it up) gave the FCC and Clear Channel almost unlimited power to buy and regulate the price of access to radio, and before cable TV was carved up between Comcast, Verizon and a bunch of shitty satellite companies, the airwaves literally belonged to the people, and the people could use them. Nowadays, we still own the airwaves, but we better already have a couple million in the bank and an army of advertisers behind us if we want to use them for anything. Good news is that this has largely been replaced with the Internet, podcasts and You Tube, and it's easier than ever to throw together a blog, video or record yourself talking for an hour. But the Internet's great flaw is it's advancement - the instant gratification of watching anything you want at a few mouse clicks, and being able to switch content at a moment's notice or just on a whim means that any content with actual substance, length or quality (like this) is usually overshadowed by leave Brittany alone guy.

It also bears mention that Wayne's World director Penelope Spheeris also directed two utterly fantastic indie films (back when indie films were indie films, not the steaming, over-budgeted piles of cat sick like Eagle vs. Shark) called The Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia. The former is a music-themed look at American in the 80s. The latter is a story of kids living in abandoned homes in a mid-western housing development, and while it does have the unholy taint of Roger Corman, it is thoughtful, heartbreaking, and has an ending that makes you yell, "Holy shit what the fuck just happened!?" in the best possible way.

Addendum
While many people like the humor of Wayne's World and the punk feel of Decline..., Suburbia went largely under the radar. If you read this and decide to see it, fair warning: there are some seriously gratuitous, violent and deeply disturbing scenes, one of them in the first five minutes. It is not for the faint of heart.

Politirant - Abortion Edition

10 states down in the primaries and already I'm sick of it, but what's surprising is that the sinking feeling that it's essentially the three same candidates and one crazy old guy fighting it out hasn't hit the rest of the populace yet.

When you think about it, what difference is there between Romney, Gingrich and Santorum? All millionaires, althought the other two are not quite as millionairey as Romney. All bending to the will of extreme minority of Americans who want war with Iran and further tax breaks for people other than themselves in the same of American exceptionalism. All take the same hard-line conservative view of social issues (again, at the behest of the 30% or so of people who still identify as conservatives and believe capitalism is the best system of government available).

News flash: 30% might win a primary, but it's not winning any elections. If the turnout in the primary states so far is an indication, I would be worried.

But there is another on which I wish to harp. A few weeks ago, Santorum appeared on Piers Morgan and the two discussed abortion. Well, it was less of a discussion and more a stunned British interviewer watching the embattled candidate double and triple down on his position with an internal fire that would make 17th century Spanish inquisitors jealous.

At some point, Morgan says (paraphrase), "If your daughter was raped, and became pregnant as a result, you would have her carry her rapist's baby to term?" Predictably Santorum says yes, but it's not for the reason you may think.

Sure, the guy is a religious fanatic, but the fervor by which he comes to this conclusion about his daughter's theoretical violent childbearing is fueled as much by economics as it is sheer mental retardation. Let's say that this exact thing does happen - his daughter is raped, becomes pregnant and carries the baby to term.

Does she have to worry about medical expenses? No.

How about the cost of raising a child? Daddy makes my yearly salary in one speaking event, so no problem there.

What about schools? Well they can send this kid to whatever school it wants.

Emotional issues? Already got the best psychotherapy and home care money can buy.

Is this going to be another child of violence, beginning life with a severe disadvantage and being thrown into an overcrowded inner city school with no psychological, emotional or financial outreach? Of course not.

My point in saying all this is that an unwanted or unexpected child of any kind is the ultimate nightmare for most of us, but not for Rick Santorum and family. Everything is paid for already. The family won't have to weigh the decision of selling their house to buy daipers or pay medical expenses, nor will the parents have to take extra jobs to pay for the daycare they need because they work an extra job, just to save a few pennies on the side. They aren't going to have to sell their furniture to make a car payment because all of their money goes toward the new, adorable, smooshy-faced financial black hole in the back room.

The situation I've described is one that is all too real, and one I've seen happen many times to people who, frankly, don't deserve it. Kids are great an all but they fuck you up and they fuck up your check book even worse. Especially if you were raped and now have a pudgy little reminder of basically the most intense mental trauma one can endure crawling around your ankles and demanding food. But as I said, if it ever becomes an issue, Daddy Santorum can pay for that too.

Always remember that one's economic situation often trumps any beliefs they may have. Not always - but mostly. And saving people from personal financial ruin is specifically why we have contraception, morning-after pills and yes, abortions. While the Santorums can give any kid of any origin every advantage in the world, too many kids sit down to a dollar menu dinner with a heaping side of post-partum depression as it is. Adding more people with super shitty lives to the pool of people who already have super shitty lives is not the goddamn answer, and it isn't just Jesus saying so.

The hypocrisy comes full-circle when you find out Santorum's stance on social outreach, which is basically standing on top of its bloody corpse with a great spear lodged in its still-twitching spinal column. The life of the unborn is sacred, but once they're born, fuck 'em. It's a subtle way of saying, "It's your fault for not being rich or at least well-off enough to take care of an unexpected child." Or in a more direct way, we'll call it the "Fuck the Poor" policy.

Of course, very little of this is actually surprising, but the lesson is that I don't think it matters who gets the 2012 nomination because they're three versions of the same asshole. Ron Paul ever remains the exception but, yeah.

Come on.

Retroactively Correct

For the passed week I've been trying to write a piece about the (abysmal) state of the Republican primaries, but I feel like there isn't really anything I can say that isn't being said in the media already. As someone who follows politics, it's sort of refreshing to see that MSNBC actually makes a point I can agree with instead of spouting their usual meaningless "news" or gushing over whichever candidate promises to lower capital gains the most. But it makes writing about it that much harder because it tends to make the forum feel like an echo chamber. So let's talk about video games again!

I decided to see what all the goddamn fuss was about and downloaded a demo of Battlefield 3. I tried it at a friend's house last month but the Electronic Arts hub program (let's admit it - they ripped off of Steam and somehow made it worse) kept crashing every five minutes. Maybe EA should hire less lazy programmers and stop coding everything into web browsers. There was one amusing moment where the game crashed entirely and booted my friend to his desktop, but a large flashing icon read, "You are Playing Battlefield 3!" remained.

It brings to mind a terrifying vision of the future where we all just stare at blinking computer screens that tell us, "You are having fun, human unit 76,332,4-B! Isn't this fun!? Look at all the goddamn fun you're having, human slave, spend money!" And then I remembered that Farmville exists.

Here's why modern army games creep me out, and why the irony surrounding them is both delicious because of their relentless popularity, and terrifying when taken in context.

In any good narrative, particularly one where the hero must face death to complete his quest, the part that makes it good is that moment when we, the audience, think it's all over for them. And then, against all odds, the hero pulls the win out of his ass, trounces the enemy in the most spectacular fashion, and goes home triumphant. The most accessible example of this is, of course, the end of the first Star Wars movie when Darth Vader is about to shoot Luke's ship down. Just as our hero is about to meet his maker, Han Solo rescues him and the entire battle is decided in its final seconds. It's a very basic mechanic of storytelling that builds tension and keeps the audience rooting for the good guy, and if you pay attention, almost everything does it. And why? 'Cause it fucking works.

Modern military games, namely Battlefield 3 and the greater of two evils, Modern Warfare, kind of throw this aside. Or in their terms, shove bits of broken glass in it's mouth and then hit it with a golf club (yes, there is a YouTube link but it's 13 minutes of bullshit and I will spare you - look up at your own risk). My point is that, as the player, you never really feel sorry for the alleged hero, and there is not a sense that his life is in any real danger at any time. I mean, when you put a rag-tag group of guys in robes and tennis shoes against the biggest military in the world, squaring off against dudes with every weapon, ammunition, armor and resource imaginable available at the press of a button, feeling empathy for the latter is a little hard to swallow. With this in mind, the few minutes of the demo I played were just downright boring. I didn't care - there was some time establishing who the narrative wanted me to think the heroes were, and I didn't buy it for a second. This raises two points.

Another reason why having a symptomatic hero resonates so roundly is that it creates a connection between the fictional hero and the real live audience. We want to see someone struggle to overcome a challenge because we struggle to overcome challenges in our lives too. Sure, they aren't as dramatic as blowing up the Death Star, but the point is that it creates empathy and makes us feel that the narrative is speaking to us, on a personal level, even if it's not.

There's no reason to feel any sympathy for the player-controlled avatars of Battlefield, and the only way any kind of emphatic response can be generated is if you, the player, genuinely feel like you'd want to be in a position of that much power. So, instead of going the route that most narratives go, and playing to our sense of compassion, Battlefield kicks compassion in the taco and appeals to our inner mass-murderer.

Now before you say it, I'm going to explain why this is different than Grand Theft Auto.

In GTA, you can win in the game without getting into a single gunfight with the police, and you are generally encouraged to do so. What good is being a master criminal if you're always getting caught and can't walk anywhere without making scene? The things that got all of the attention in the news were almost exclusively the result of the "Hot Coffee" easter egg (where the player simulates having sex with a prostitute - but it was a joke [albeit bad and extremely sexist] added by the developers and not part of the actual game), and players using cheats to get an unlimited supply of tanks to fight the cops. These aren't parts of the core game and in order to play it within context, the player can't use them. If they do, the game stops being a game and becomes a toy - but that is another argument entirely.

Around the height of GTAs popularity, many people in the media were calling it a "murder simulator"; a term which goes back to the days of Doom. It was wrong in both cases and is generally wrong in the case of all video games. If GTA simulates anything, it is a very Goodfellas-inspired, Hollywood-stylized mob life. Whatever your personal objection to the violence (and believe me, I have a big fucking problem with it), it isn't the reason the game exists.

Battlefield, however, is about as close to the murder simulator as you're going to get. The most disturbing part of the game is a bit where you take the role of a gunner on a support aircraft. A battle rages in the sand of Generic-Muslim-Desert-Country-Stan (cough-Iran-cough) below, and you have to blow up enemy armor before it reaches the scene. At no time are you in any danger, and if the enemy tanks break through your covering fire, the game ends and you have to start over, so there is no dynamic environment - only victory or victory that takes slightly longer. You are so high up the entire battle is fought through a gunner's scope, and as little grey blips scatter from exploding troop carriers, your co-gunner giggles about the ones that are running for their lives, totally at the the mercy of you and an infinite number of machine gun rounds and bombs.

I guess my point is that I don't really understand who this game is for. I see the obvious appeal to 13-year-old boys and Ed Gein, but beyond that, there's no situation there except some kind of power trip with a big splash of ripped-from-the-headlines grit. There's no challenge in it, or context with how it relates to the narrative or anything else - just the simple joy of blowing some motherfuckers to pieces. And unlike Luke blowing up the Death Star, there's no way to even feel like the hero is justified in doing so. What threat do a bunch of dudes in pickups with 30-year-old rifles and limited supplies pose to a fleet of tanks, helicopters, artillery and heavily armored infantry?

I really hate to say this because, because I genuinely feel that gaming is a legitimate form of expression, but those idiots who complained about Doom and GTA have finally been proved a bit right. Which brings me to my last point: where the fuck is all the outrage? Where are the bobble heads and deranged parents going back and forth about how Battlefield and Modern Warfare turned their precious snowflake into a 5th grade Rambo?

Oh right, these games kill brown people in deserts, not zombies or monsters or fictional gangsters.

So we're cool.

Oh no!! The truck have started to move!!

There are only two situations in which I buy a present for myself when I am in absolutely no condition to afford it: Christmas and by birthday, which happen to be only a few weeks apart, so my wallet suffers greatly at my own stupid self-indulgence when I use a pagan holiday and the fact that I'm still alive to lavish myself in gifts.

So for my birthday I picked the Metal Gear HD Collection, and aside from being a sweet deal of three games for just over ten bucks each, they're also three very well done enjoyable ones (helps).

Hideo Kojima must be my nemesis. On the one hand, the aging Japanese game developer is a pompous asshole who hogs the media spotlight, and one of the worst writers in the history of writing. But he does make a damn fun stealth game. The fact is that stealth games, along with old-school point-and-click adventure games, are probably my favorites, which puts me in the extreme minority these days. And at least the Metal Gear series approaches a strong military theme with some thoughtfulness, as opposed to the 'roid-raging boyish bravado of Battlefield or Call of Duty.

Granted those thoughts are almost universally stupid, but the effort is there.

The thing that makes Metal Gear worth it is that the stealth does a number of things right, and follows a strict "do-and-don't" model which makes for a successful stealth game.

1: Constant awareness of visibility
The player in Metal Gear is always aware of how visible he or she is. The crowning game of the MG series (I think), Snake Eater, has a pretty intuitive system of swapping camo uniforms to blend in to surroundings. Granted it gets annoying needing to pause the game every two minutes and get changed because the particular brand of brown wall meshes somewhat better with Chocolate Chip as opposed to Tree Bark, but it's a small price to pay for such a functional system. There are audio cues as well, though it's somewhat unrealistic for trained soldiers to proclaim, "WHO'S THAT!? ... I KNOW I SAW SOMEONE!" every time an errant fern jiggles.

Any game with a stealth element needs to have some way of letting the player know when they're well hidden, exposed, or about to sniffed out.

2: Make stealth a core part of game play, not a "section"
Most shitty games these days try to pull the "something for everyone" maneuver, and include chunks of different game play styles all glued together piecemeal. It's pretty common for most action games to try and break the monotony by including a stealth section, where you need to sneak passed vastly superior foes instead of just shooting them like everything else. It's like the romantic subplot in Transformers: it doesn't make the movie better and more deep and interesting - it just serves to make an already crappy film more schizophrenic and an even bigger piece of shit.

Here's a hint, by the way. If you are developing an action game and life-or-death gunfights get so boring and repetitive you need to spice them up with not gun fighting, you're doing it wrong.

Anyway, Metal Gear lets the sneaking take the foreground makes it relate to everything in game play. Stealth, disguise, or just shooting the place up are always options to deal with situations and the player is never locked in to just following the game's lead from point A to point B. Another game with a good stealth element is Fallout, which is not a stealth game, but always makes sneaking an option as opposed to combat, and has no mandatory stealth levels.

3: Don't punish the player (too much) for mistakes
Most games with stealth levels will fail the player for being seen, and chances are that if your game has a mandatory stealth level, the stealth doesn't function so well and players are going to get seen a lot. Metal Gear does have an optional mode to end the game in defeat if the player is seen (paradoxically called "European Hard" on the menu, which makes my juvenile brain think British porn [this doesn't reflect well on me as a person, does it? {anyway}]) but it's not mandatory. The worst you'll face in Metal Gear is running away from some heavily armored chaps until you find a house to crawl under and wait until they lose interest, also proving that the Soviet Union collapsed due to the Russian military not being able to pay attention to something for more than five minutes. The player can stay and fight if he or she wants but there isn't much of a point and it mostly ends as a big waste of ammo.

4: Complete missions without killing anyone
The point of stealth is not to be seen, correct? So in theory, the best stealth operative would be able to complete the mission and leave the opponents unaware that anything has even happened. The absolute best example of this is an old game from the late 90s called Thief, and the title pretty much sums up the entire game. The player can sneak into and out of a rich douchebag's mansion, bag all the swag, explore the entire place and leave without a single conflict, and the game actively encourages this. Metal Gear provides the player with a silent dart gun that can stun enemies as opposed to killing them. In Snake Eater, there is a wonderfully done and very Heart of Darkness-esque boss battle where the hero must face off against the ghosts of everyone he has killed during the mission. The solution? Don't kill anyone.

Games with designated sneak levels usually just have the player kill enemies in a different way than normal, and never address the fact that the trail of dead bodies might raise some serious questions about beefing up security. Games like Thief and Snake Eater actively discourage the player from fighting or hurting anyone (beyond a dart in the neck).

Of course the real failing of Metal Gear games, that keeps them tumbling down the jagged peaks of perfection time and time again, is the writing. I am currently working through Peace Walker, where the player assumes the role of an ex-CIA agent turned rogue Colombian insurgent. The heroism is layered so thick on this dude that it is difficult to keep in mind that, in the larger narrative, you are actually playing the bad guy. It could be that the writing is so intricate and that it uses point of view so effectively that it masks any sense of wrongdoing and creates true empathy for the character. Or it could be that it's yet another of Hideo Kojima's over-written bowls of rat pee and is so much of a literary eyesore that the player simply has no idea what the fuck is going on.

I'm gonna go with door number two.

Church and Poop

Ho boy, gotten behind on the bloggings. But before we get into my fun ass day, let's play a round of the hit new game show Well That's Presumptive of You, Starbucks!


For Christmas, X got me a Starbucks sampler thing with a couple coffees and teas and a package of hot chocolate mix. When I took the hot chocolate mix out, the box had this to tell me:

"Salted Caramel: The drink you loved as a child - now all grown up."

How the hell do you know what I loved as a child? Like most kids in the 80s, I drank Ovaltine. And I didn't have the inclination to pour salt in it because that sounds disgusting. A typical holiday drink at Starbucks already has more calories than a fucking Big Mac, and apparently they don't skimp on the salt content either. And just so readers are aware, the taste is something I'd imagine you could recreate by melting a gourmet sea salt chocolate bar in a crock pot and thinning with two cups camel ball sack sweat. Point is, Starbucks, don't assume to know what I like or assume that any normal healthy human being mixes salt into their sweet drinks. Well that's presumptive of you, Starbucks!

On to my day. Today I went to church. That doesn't sound so weird, so let me elaborate. Today I want to MEGACHURCH. There is a local mega-church that my friend D told be about - the kind that sends out amusing broadcasts containing some incredibly sexist rhetoric. Here's an example:

"Men are beer mugs, and women are wine flutes. It's a man's job to teach a woman to love her weakness, so she doesn't become a firefighter, because a woman can't rescue people from burning buildings."

Don't know what kind of chicks these people hang around, but some of my female friends could rescue Andre the fucking giant from a school of starvation-crazed hammerhead sharks. But that's besides the point. We didn't the good stuff today - the nutbag preacher didn't do the sermon. Instead we got this twenty-something black kid, and I only say black because I mean black in the way that Halle Berry is black, as in dark-skinned-but-not-African-looking-because-those-folks-scare-off-Whitey.

The "sermon," if you could call it that, started with the church band playing some Christian rock with the lyrics projected onto matching screens in a cheap purple-backed Power Point macro (no photos, sorry. Use your goddamn imagination). The entire hall was more like a community college theater than a church, and the facade of the building looked like a downtown Washington DC mattress outlet store. The only thing identifying the church as a church was a business style overhang with some hipster scribble of a Jesus fish that looked like someone's two-year old nephew got ahold of some markers and the owner just said, "Meh."

Anyway the band played some songs, then the young preacher got up and started preaching. I'd quote from the sermon but there really isn't any point - it was a wonderful display of perfectly circular logic. The point was essentially that, God doesn't care about your good works, only that you accept Jesus as your savior and get your sins forgiven at regular intervals. I felt kind of insulted with this little bastard in his Imma-Hit-The-Clubs outfit telling me not to aspire to everything because I'm shit, you're shit, he's shit and we're all just shit. There was some anti-science logic in there but it was so safe and under the guise of faithfulness that it didn't really turn into comedic gold (saying that we don't need to move passed the cross as opposed to launching into totally batshit loco theories about how evolution is wrong). The only time it got juicy is when this kid talked about how he traveled to the Middle East and totally told some Jews and some Muslims that he was like, better than them, which as D explained, is kind of the church's shtick. Overall it was pretty interesting seeing a bunch of forty and fifty year olds raise their hands in praise while they're getting yelled at by the most passive-aggressive community college sophomore in known universe.

Part of what freaks me out so much is the insistence that Jesus or God or whatever is talking to you and speaking to you through signs. Here's an example: I spent the last week vomiting my major organs out thanks to a nasty stomach virus. Interesting thing about my stomach virus diet of Gatoraid, rice, and Pepto Bismol is that it is not conducive to taking dumps, so after the virus I was a bit backed up. Today that ended, coincidentally, after going to the church sermon. Had I been a real believer, I'd think that basking in the greasy cornrows of the preacher man healed by bowels. But when you think about it for two seconds, it probably had more to do with the fact that afterward, I ate pancakes, Taylor ham and three fucking cups of coffee.

The religious mindset would dictate that Jesus felt sorry for my neglected anus and put the poor guy back to work, and even though to most religious people that probably sounds insane, that is the fundamentalist belief. That you take no credit for anything and that the mythic daddy in the sky does it all for you. No risk. No responsibility. No consequence.

Mega-churches scare me, as they should anyone, as should fundamentalism in any sense scare anyone. But when churches arrange gigs like this with unenthusiastic life music and debate team dropout inspirational speakers blaring hipster slang at a bunch of fucking soccer parents, you can't but giggle (I almost lost it during a song where the bridge had a vocal "oh-oh" and the projector kept showing the lyrics, "oh-oh"). It reminds me of North Korea. There is no way one can deny the kind of horror and human misery that exists in that nation, nor the fact that their militaristic presence in that part of the world destabilizes the entire Eastern sea board.

But when they make it a state sponsored truism that the new dear leader learned to drive at 75 miles per hour down winding mountain roads with perfect accuracy at age eight, they are So. Fucking. Funny.

Not so angry at Lowes

Lowes recently pulled its advertising from a Learning Channel docu-series called "All-American Muslim," which sounds a bit like real housewives only with brown people, 94.5% fewer fake boobies and in the middle of nowhere. Also the show is actually about something.

The decision comes after a massive backlash from what I can only assume is the typical Lowes customer: a racist paranoid closeted mass-murderer. Red-blooded Americans across the country began boycotting Lowes stores, and the homegoods giant had to do something to appease the teeming masses, lest is not be able to plant its blue and white flag and break ground next to every motherfucking Home Depot in the motherfucking country. The humanity! Absolom! Motherfucker!

But this decision doesn't bother me so much, and it speaks to a somewhat larger issue in business, politics, and how us common mortals should form our opinions about our betters. Lowes is just doing good business to keep the profits high, and you can't really blame an overpriced retail store for doing everything in its power to retain customers. It just so happens that those customers are a bunch of racist, paranoid closeted mass-murderers.

But it isn't the principal that is disturbing here: it's the sheer lack of principal. Gone are the days when the insert of a Nirvana album would read, "If you're a racist, sexist or bigot, don't buy this album because we don't want your money." Now anything goes, and the people most likely to rob your store and shoot you because you're a different color than them are just more potential customers. It's this complete lack of principal that has defined career dick-suckers like Rick Perry or, most disappointingly, the president - standing up for nothing on their own, but standing for anything you want if the price tag is right. This is pretty much the modern American business model, with the noted exception of Chick-Fil-A.

Point is, if you really want this to stop, don't boycott the bastards in support of racism; boycott them because of racism. Don't shop at Lowes and make sure they know it's because they will help validate a mass of people who want to murder half of the entire fucking planet, and who think that learning is the deadly eighth goddamn sin. Eventually the racist, paranoid closeted mass murderers will come around, 'cause let's face it, where the else are you going to get drywall nails at a 400% markup at 7AM on a Christmas fucking day?

How to get people to rally against SOPA quick.

Better known as the "Internet Censorship Bill," SOPA is part of a two-pronged attack on free speech in the US (the other side being the National Defense Authorization Act, which effecively allows the police to to patrol the streets para-military martial law style. Good article (from a conservative source) here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/the-national-defense-authorization-act-is-the-greatest-threat-to-civil-liberties-americans-face/).

Since the bill is a little dense, here's what SOPA really does. First, it makes websites that post content from users (Youtube, our beloved and strikingly handsome Facebook, right down to stuff like Deviant Art, Livejournal and whatever other assorted slime molds one can scrape from the bottom of a barrel) and makes the hosting website directly responsible for it. Now, Youtube, for example, doesn't allow posting copyrighted material, but they also don't claim to be responsible for what people do with it. The website, like Facebook et al, presents itself more as a tool with which the user can do what he or she wants. There's some basic guidelines (nudity, violence, etc.), but those are the same as a hammer coming with the suggestion that you don't stick it in a wall socket. This freedom of use is what makes these websites so popular, dynamic, wealthy (Google, which owns Youtube, has one of the most valuable stocks in the country), and in a way, important. There is the basic guiding principal that one can say what one wants on teh Interwebz.

SOPA changes this by establishing a set of purposely vague content guidelines, but that is not the most insidious part. What really makes this law dangerous is how these guidelines are enforced. In summary, it allows the justice department to press charges against a hosting service for certain content, whether it is deemed in violation of copyright law, illegal or offensive. So a basic example would be that if you upload a video backed with Born This Way, Youtube must remove the copyrighted content or be faced with legal action. Now thing of how many videos backed with Born This Way are on Youtube right now. Like, woah.

Now as crappy as that it is, it does sort of make sense. It's a copyrighted song after all, and thirteen year olds everywhere who think they're being clever with Windows Movie Maker need to be taught that the law is the law. Here's where it gets interesting. Let's look at the video of the police officer pepper spraying sitting students at UC Davis. Don't you think that's offensive to the university? Aren't shots of the Davis campus copyrighted material? Doesn't the same apply to the video of the officer pepper spraying four unarmed women in New York? Or videos of [insert headline politican here] blatantly contradicting themselves on national television just a few years ago?

SOPA puts a stop to all of that too.

It is an attack of free speech and the freedom of the internet, which allows the average person to present these important and, frankly, world-changing events. SOPA will make it far more difficult. If not impssible.

But that isn't the purpose of this essay. All of these things aside, how do you get the John and Jane Everyman's of the world to rally against it? I'm sure lots of people say, "But I don't care about OWS or Laday Gaga or politics. I'm an upstanding citizen and don't download things illegaly, so how does this affect me?"

Answer: Porn.

Specifically, SOPA would also mean the end of free pornography on the internet. Just take a minute and absorb that. It's ok - I'll wait.

...

Like anything else, porn does not come from the goodness of one's heart as a salve for the lonely and maladjusted. People get rich off of it. To paraphase Spaceballs, "They're not just doing it for money; they're doing it for a shitload of money!" Porn is a multi-billion dollar business, if not more, and don't doubt for a second that they are frontline warriors on the battefield of copyright law.

Think about it. If SOPA passes, every producer from the Larry Flints and Hugh Hephners of the world, right down to every sweaty crack-addled scumbag posting "Make $2,500 a month from home!" signs around Paterson, New Jersey, will jump on the chance to take the legal gatling gun to the no doubt thousands, tens of thousands or more likely hundreds of thousands of websites that traffick porn at not cost to you. You know those tales of yore we all heard in grade school about how, once, in some mythic past before industry, fishermen wouldn't even need to cast lines or nets because the rivers and streams were so packed with fish, they'd just set to sail and let them jump on the boat? Just imagine the boat is your computer and the fish are naked ladies. This is where we are, and the evil, post-apocolypic and smog-choked future where the only fish left alive are swimming in fishtanks controlled by wealthy industry tycoons is the terrifyingly close future. Except now the fish tanks are computers and the fish are still naked ladies.

I don't want to say the following but I feel need to (this is the Intenet after all). I'm not trying to be cute, and I'm not trying to an advocate for porn in some way. But again, think about it. Porn is one of the top three uses of the internet, right up there with Facebook, checking your bank account and Googling yourself. And like it or not, it's a massive and powerful indsutry, and massive and powerful industries really only seek to become more massive and more powerful. And like it or not, people love their porn. Shows like True Blood or The Tudors are basically costume porn with writers (you didn't think a show about vampires doin' it got popular because of the plots, did you?) I didn't have a computer with internet capabilities until I was 16 and already had firsthand experience playing the what-goes-where game, but now that every budding pre-teen is online, porn takes a bigger role in sex education than sex education. Sure, we don't talkabout it in polite soceity; saying it isn't going to win you any friends, but really. Come on.

Anyway, that's my political stratgey for getting the public behind voting down SOPA. Change "The attack on free speech" to "The attack on free porn," and I promise you, late at night, when nobody's looking, people will sign that shit right quick.

Tragedy in The Last Exorcism

Hahaha, you thought I meant it was a tragic movie because a bunch of innocent people die and a demon is summoned from the belly of the underworld to walk amongst men? Screw that noise.

Here's the Thing.

And here's the thing. I have a huge soft spot for Biblical end of the world shit. Be it Diablo 2, The Exorcist, End of Days, whatever, there's something about a bloody pentagram on a wall that really sucks me in. Man, taken out of context that sentence doesn't sound too good, does it?

I went into The Last Exorcist not knowing anything about the movie, other than it was yet another handi-cam docu-horror in the style of The Blair Witch. So it's necessarily short and there are a good deal of shots that really don't contribute anything to the movie itself. Anyway, here's the spoilers, er, summary:

Ex-preacher wants to expose exorcism for the fraud that it is, so he goes to a backwoods farm where a dude has a "possessed" daughter. He shows the cameraman all of his neat tricks and gizmos that make the "exorcism" look "real." Afterward, daughter is still all messed up, the father goes berserk, and in the end, low and behold, she actually was possessed and gives birth to a demon.

Fact is that I was actually way into this movie until the last five minutes, where the entire thing didn't just jump the shark. This movie got on a white motorcycle with an American flag on the back and did some serious Evel Kenevel shit over a whole row of sharks. Twenty sharks! Maybe more! So let's look at the terrible last five minutes versus the actually good rest of the movie.

The hero is an ex-child preacher with a disabled son. When the child almost dies at birth, he realizes that doctors and modern medicine allowed him to live, and that doctors and modern medicine allow him to have a basically normal life. He has a crisis of faith and comes to realize he doesn't really believe in anything he's been preaching for essentially his entire life. So he decides to hire a film crew and make a movie about how to fake an exorcism.

Contrast a film that is full of honestly interesting characters with the dumb ass twist ending of the girl actually being possessed by a 100% real demon. If this movie were a date, I feel like I just got a bottle of wine broken over my head and now I'm soaking wet and stuck with the check.

The possessed girl herself is pregnant, and there is some dispute of who the father might be. It might be the obviously abusive father, the troubled brother, or a previously unknown boyfriend from town. This plot point, if played with any sense of realism, covers so much ground, hitting abusive parents with religious values, incest, rape, and teen pregnancy as it relates to religion all in one go. Hats off to the magnificent bastard who nailed that plot point.

But once again, real demon. So none of that bullshit about sexual abuse or backwards sexual teachings has any bearing anyway.

My point in saying all this is that, as a whole, The Last Exorcism is a pretty goddamn awful movie. But the real sadness in it is that, at every turn, there is true greatness poking its meager head through all of the cheap shocks. If the movie had played realistically, think Kramer Vs. Kramer with religion instead of child custody, this would be a serious nominee for top ten favorite movies. Not many popular films tackle the dark underbelly of religion in the backwoods, where most of the time, it resembles nothing more than fear mongering and child abuse. The Last Exorcism spends a ton of time building on these very points, then shits itself in half with a cheap gore scare at the end that, honestly, isn't that scary at all.

It was also not very shocking that I saw the name Eli Roth crop up during the credits. Now there's a horror story.

Thoughts on UC Davis

Talked to A today, and she mentioned that she was in a facebook debate with someone over the UC Davis pepper-spraying of students. It really pisses me off to no end when I hear people my age saying things like, "The kids have a something-for-nothing attitude" and "the cops warned them and they didn't move."

First off, the students at UC Davis and colleges around the country and indeed the world are protesting recent and dramatic hikes in tuition. Some of them march under the banner of OWS but most of them just want to voice their distress over the fact that they may not graduate college based on the fact that it costs too damn much. That's not a "something for nothing" attitude you fucking douchenozzle. You have to live pretty far under a rock to not understand that college is cost-prohibitive to most people (including myself, who only paid through it thanks to one dead grandmother). Most students are looking at between 30 and 50 thousand bucks in loans; or more like $300,000 if you go to some of the top rated schools that my friends have gone to. Folks who graduated college 20 years ago are still paying off student loans, and that was during that magical time my generation remembers as the Clinton years, when all you needed to do for work was get an A+ certificate.  So in a climate of deregulated loan practices and an SEC that quietly looks the other way when grievances are levied on behalf of borrowers, how exactly does the average student plan to pay that shit down? Yet, they're the unappreciative little shits who need to learn to sit back and take it like men, right?

Second, and more to the point, cops don't need to use nonlethal weapons on peaceful protesters. A nonlethal weapon is used for non-compliance, generally when a cop has already arrested or announced his/her intent to arrest. People to go peaceful demonstrations or group trespassing knowing full well they can be arrested and someones even counting on it - mass arrest is one of the most powerful tools the public has at their disposal. It clogs the legal system with thousands of trials-by-jury and forces the issues of the protesters to be addressed. What the cops at UC Davis and around the country have been saying is effectively, "We won't arrest you but we'll beat the piss out of you until you leave."

What the hell kind of country has that attitude? North Korea? China? South Africa? It subverts the First Amendment in the most sadistic of ways: through fear of exercising the rights it provides. Sure, we all have free speech, and nothing is stopping you from saying what you want, but if you, plan on getting maced. The idea here is to scare people into submission, yet still offer the option. So nobody is taking your rights away - you're just going to be in for a world of hurt if you choose to take advantage of them.

If the cops really wanted the world to hate their fucking guts, regardless of the good and often heroic things they do every day, this is the fastest way to do it. Acting as the tools of idiots like Bloomburg or this chancellor of UCD just makes them look like the black shirts of 1930s Italy. Oh, and kicking the shit out of Iraq war veterans doesn't help so much either.

Peaceful protest and mass arrest are how people get shit done. The true mark of a country that does not give a flying fuck about it's people, that treats the populace as a marketplace full of consumers instead of a community full of people, and holds up the facade of free speech with one hand while duct taping someone's mouth shut with the other, is responding to protest with violence. My fear is that the level and frequency of violence on part of the police will increase, but my hope is that, as it does, the level and frequency of violence among the protesters does not. When I was on the high school debate team, my teacher always told me to try to stay calm and look rational, if the opponent starts acting irrationally. Escalating police violence will only serve to highlight those who are truly out of line.

GW Sucks; Super Soldiers are Stupid

Here a story illustrating why corporations are run by gigantic idiots.

My gaming buddies and I got together at a local Games Workshop for Thursday Deathwatch (a D&D-ish tactical role-playing game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe [more on that in a minute]). The store manager was a perfectly nice guy, and though I didn't know him very long, certainly seemed good at his job and had a massive hand in the central Jersey area gaming community. Also one of the most personable human begins I've dealt with in a while (take that assholes who think us nerds are all social failures).

About two months back the manager threw some racist douchenozzel out of his store for making fun of a black kid at a gaming event. Said racist douchenozzel wrote a letter to Games Workshop about how because he couldn't be a racist douchenozzel and got kicked out, and GW had lost his business forever. GW canned the manager, and with him lost about 90% of their customer base. Here's whats wrong with this picture.

1) Nobody wins in a situation where someone is acting like an asshole, so it's better to throw the asshole out and deal with them being an asshole than losing more customers who don't want to hang out with assholes (I used to work at a coffee shop with music events so I've down some throwing out in my days). Yeah you'll lose the asshole's business and maybe the business of assholes' asshole friends, but it's a hell of a lot better than letting the asshole gradually drive non-asshole customers away.

2) Gaming is a small community, and now that Warhammer 40,000 has some stiff competition from games like War Machine, keeping the community together not only creates something that all people into or having a passing interest in gaming can enjoy, but it also keeps your business alive. Now that the manager is gone, most of the central Jersey community has gone with him. Now gamers like my friends have pledged not to spend cash at the store but instead get game pieces online, often cheaper.

3) Jerk wads like me might post their address and may or may not direct people to make snide remarks when passing by. So save your good ones for when you are in the neighborhood of: Games Workshop at Echelon Village, 1120 White Horse Road, Voorhees, New Jersey 08043.

So a big fuck you to Games Workshop. It's bullshit reactionary capitalist thinking like this that has tanked the living shit out of our economy and will also tank the shit out of your store. To quote Kurt Cobain, "We will survive without you. Easily."

* * * * *

I had some thoughts about the Deathwatch game itself, now that I've gotten into it and have delved a little further than normal into Warhammer 40,000 mythoi (real word, I promise). It's one of the original things, along with the movie Aliens, that introduced the idea of capital-S- space capital-M marines. Only unlike the space marines in Aliens, they lack Micheal Biehn's rugged good looks and the thick James Cameron-esque air of parody (back when movies had more subtlety and less stupid goddamn blue hippies).

Also scratch one Sigourney Weaver from the Deathwatch's arsenal because Warhammer doctrine states all space marines must be male.

The whole thing is so juvenile that it could have been written by the most sexually frustrated and in-the-closet fifteen year old boy on planet Earth. The space marines themselves seem less like battle-scarred heroes and more like tragic figures: somewhat monstrous super-soldiers single-mindedly pursuing a hopeless war of galactic expansion; thugs for hire retaining just enough conscious thought to cling to a past of glory and honor on the battlefield (minus all the diarrhea and post-traumatic stress disorder). Super soldier stories always struck me as too implausible because of two logical errors: how do you control them and what do you do with them when the war is over. I guess the latter is solved by the setting being a universe that has been at war for ten thousand years and nobody has thought to step back ask if there was a better way to approach things besides fucking shooting them.

But I digress. Even if the game is kind of dumb, it's nice to share it with good friend and good players. Because with any collaborative gaming, you can't talk about the game without talking about who you play it with. The most intricately crafted rules and best game scenarios can (and usually do) fall to crap if the people you play it with are jackasses.

I've never been one much for games like Warhammer for Magic. There's a certain lack of narrative that makes the entire thing boring for me. I guess it's the writer in me talking. Or the prick (I almost assume there is some overlap).

Quick note about Penn State

This isn't usually the kind of thing I pay attention to, but X had the tee-vee on yesterday and I caught something that was so sleazy and transparent it pissed me right off. This is why I don't watch television, folks.

Some jerkhole from Penn State was giving a press conference regarding the little problem their beloved football coaches seem to have with sticking their penises in young boys. Generally parents don't expect their snowflakes to come home and have had something more vile and disgusting than school lunches them, so the university has been gutting high-profile coaches and even the college president - so much so that it looks like they're trying to remove a brain tumor with a chainsaw.

One question flew across from a reporter: "What's the most disturbing aspect of this case?"

Answer? "The victims."

Uh, what? What do you mean, victims? Are the children disturbing? Is this some kind of child rape-shame, that they're now the dirty girls and nobody in B-dorm will date them? Does this asshole just hate kids? Sure, the case is disturbing, but it's also disturbing when priests and Republicans do it, so why does this merit some kind of special level of disturbitude?

Now let me preface this with the fact that the college is trying to show lip service to parents everywhere, hammering home the point, "At Penn State, staff will probably not rape you." But here are a few things related to this case that are endemic of how sick we are as a society and are far more disturbing than perverted old fuckheads with decision-making power.

First off, that is absolutely the most self-serving and safe answer possible. And it is tragic - those kids are probably going to be fucked up for life. But again, it is the best attempt to paint Penn State as a kinder, gentler kind of child rapist. You know, the kind that lets the kid keep the candy afterward. From this we can infer that Penn State cares the most about Penn State, and not some kid's sore ass cheeks.

Far more disturbing than what is essentially the Catholic's diddling problem in big shoulder pads and tight little pants (side note: I've always found the traditional dress of football a little gay - I know emo kids whose pants aren't that tight and they don't spend their time throwing themselves onto piles of other sweaty men) are some of the reactions. Supporters of beloved coach Joe Paterno side with him even after the scandal broke, wearing white to a game as opposed to blue.

Blue being the official color of child rape, apparently. Who makes this shit up? Anyway.

Loyalty has always been a kind of funny thing to me. I believe in it, but there have to be limits, and I'd say imparting a child with severe trauma he won't remember until he's 40 is a pretty big one. And I'm sure there aren't many Lions fans offering up their firstborn complete with a sticky note reading, "Go Nuts." So in a way, coming out in support of these ass-hats is saying, "Pork my kid and I'll fucking kill you, but do it to someone else's and we can still get drinks Friday."

It was my assumption that once it broke that you were a pedophile, the entire world turned against you, and if you came out in support of a pedophile as Paterno evidently has done, it just turned fucking faster. I guess that rule only applies to people who don't have glorified Nike-sponsored daycares named after them:

Someone call Alanis Morissette and tell her that this is the definition of irony, not anything in her toe-tappingly stupid fucking song.

There's also a new run of rape jokes flying around Penn State's campus. Now, it is a firm pillar of my entire existence that nothing is sacred, and all aspects of life no matter how disgusting, evil or tragic are ripe for parody, but rape isn't exactly the low-hanging fruit. As Facebook has proven, our prudish, overbearing nanny-state of social mores has forbidden us from publicly making jokes about race, religion, and stuff that generally tends to offend large groups of people, but sexual assault is still hilarious, and offending all women everywhere isn't a problem because they only think they're people anyway.

One must also understand that the human brain works in strange, generally offensive ways. Part of the reason "dark humor" exists is because when Joe Average is confronted with something so terrible his normal, raised-in-suburbia-on-Saturday-morning-cartoons-and-public-school can't comprehend, the mental defense is to laugh. It's why an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball throws herself down a flight of stairs is side-splitting in the context of physical comedy, but if it were to happen in front of you, you'd probably call the paramedics.

But let's be clear. There is a line as thick as a Buick between this and saying, "Know what's 9 inches and gets me laid? My knife." The former is a little perverted, but if you're willing to see passed the dick jokes you get that it's a play on advertising to children. The latter isn't funny. It isn't even a joke. It's really just a way of saying, "Yeah so, in all seriousness, you'll probably get raped."

I can't really tell if the recent attention rape jokes have been getting is genuine hatred towards women (something that is always present in society, even if it isn't obvious), pretentiousness, stupidity, or something that has always been there and is just now squarely in the media cross-hair. But all of that is beside the point.

Making a joke of something terrible does two good things at once. It makes the issue accessible to all, and allows for discussion by all - something George Carlin mastered better than any other comedian I am aware of. But the brand of humor that is now popular (if it could even be called humor) doesn't do either of those things. At best it's negligible and irresponsible, and at worst it glorifies. This is effectively the response Penn State has when beloved sons get caught putting their sexual organs in The Forbidden Zone.

So Penn State, there are things that are much more disturbing than "the victims" in this case (and I assume it's a very big headache for you that there are victims to begin with, yeah?) It is not often one has a chance to step into the limelight and say something meaningful that literally affects everyone, and you have a chance here, to speak about the culture of entitlement among public figures, of misplaced loyalties and about things that really aren't funny. But instead, you're choosing to do nothing but cover your own massive anuses and talk down to those of us listening like we're a bunch of fucking five-year-olds who need to get out of the kitchen because mom and dad are fighting.

Politirant, Nov. 11 Edition

Now with 20% more dick jokes FREE!

Thinking of making this a monthly thing, since I tend not to delve into politics much in writing anymore. And if it becomes a monthly thing, people will say that it was a thing, and that it just happened. Sounds cooler than it really is.

Anyhow, we're officially less than a year away from the presidential election, although good luck convincing the GoP and CNN of that. Not even rumors that Justin Bieber knocked up some 20-year-old chick back stage and is on the way to becoming every teenage girl's number one babydaddy has broken the constant and fucking monotonous coverage of the Republican explosion. (Thought it does beg the question, what fucking 20-year-old listens to that Justin Bieber? Was she deaf?) Picture a scene where a seventeen year old virgin nervously cleans the back seat of her father's convertible while her boyfriend sits on the ground crying and trying to get his pants back on. Now imagine you're the girl, quiet sobs and love songs from the radio around you, thinking, "What, that's it?". That's about how I feel toward the coverage in general. But because general doesn't say anything and that analogy sucked, let's get into specifics. Starting wiiiiiiiiiiiiiith...

The 2011

GoP Primary Contestant Breakdown Lighting Round Hootenanny!

Starring:

Herman Cain
Mr. Flavor of the Week. There are three separate but equally valid theories to describe this man's bizarre behavior.

1) He is a poor politician in general and has no concept of what it is to run a successful campaign. He has no hold in several key race states, is grossly underfunded, and seemingly has no organization whatsoever. His talking points are all over the place and he contradicts his own firm stances daily, sometimes in the same interview. In less than a week of rigorous talk show appearances, Cain has basically alienated everyone in the country. He reminds me of the proverbial dog chasing a car in two ways: he wouldn't know what to do with it if he caught it, and when he's chasing it, nothing else matters. Today he stated that he wouldn't be answering any more questions about the two alleged sexual harassment suits that may or may not have happened and that he did, didn't, may have or may not have paid one or more settlements on, and I sincerely believe he believes this will make the issue go away.

Or behind door number 2) there is the notion that he was not a serious candidate to begin with and ran just for shits and giggles. This actually goes a long way to explain his self-immolating behavior, as it's a pretty smart exit strategy. He can be forced out for his lunacy, leave the race and not have to admit any kind of defeat.

C) This theory is not my own - all credit to comedian Janine Garafalo. She says Cain is the "pay-per-view" candidate. His presence as the one black conservative other than Alan Keys (R-Fucking Insane Asshole) and his place in the presidential killzone makes the GoP look a little less racist. Although Cain's outright hatred of immigrants makes one wonder about his own views on race.

Of course there's always option D) the guy is a fucking jackhole.

Michelle Bachmann
Hard to get a read on her. The only opinion I can really form is that she is a lazy rich kid who honestly believes all of this Bible end-of-the-world horse shit and won't hesitate to throw you (yes YOU!) into the line of fire if she thinks it'll speed up Jesus knocking on her front door by a split fucking nanosecond. Her welfare kids and farm subsidy, not to mention a political career defined by social issues and reaction lead me to believe she is not a serious candidate in any arena. She's there to make money and kill the gays.

Because, you know, a bunch of dudes in hot pants marching through Times Square to the tune of Lady Gaga is the biggest threat facing America.

Rick Perry
The former golden boy (and not so name just because he can out-Boehner John Boehner in terms of fake tan grossness) of the Tea Party has two great strengths as a politician. He has an uncanny ability to sense the changing of the wind and foresee trends, such as sensing that Texas was going to swing way over to the far side of batshit in the 90s. His second strength is what I will call Sheer Tensile Anal Flexibility. He is a master of letting other people fuck him in the ass for contributions. Seriously, there's so many dicks in there it's hard to tell where dick ends and man begins. He's appointed donors to every possible position, from regents at universities to flat out making up bullshit state positions to give donors a kushy job at the taxpayer's expense.

In addition to a record-setting 300:1 dick-to-asshole ratio, it is impossible to tell where Perry's principals lie. The man knows no limits and draws no lines in the sand when it comes to his beliefs. The best example of this is a plan to mandate girls in the 6th grade get Gardisil shots - a vaccine against HPV - which is known to cause cervical cancer. This clashes with the fact that most of Texas only thinks unchaste women get STDs and that Trojan condoms are manufactured on the upper-west side of Hell. The plan fell through, but Perry's departure from the almost priest-like devotion to his beliefs was due to Gardisil manufacturer Merck snagging $120 a shot, all at the expense of Texas public schools.

Here's a little analogy to remember every time you think of Rick Perry:

"Perry is to investors as a cheap Herpes-ridden hooker is to the crew of the Battleship Enterprise on the first day of shore leave."

This is what makes him so terrifying as a candidate. His prime supporters are the Tea Party, and worse, the super-paranoid lunatic fringe libertarians with itchy trigger fingers and a whole lot of ammo. Perry's only guiding moral in life is "spread ass cheaks, insert penis," and the length to which he is willing to go is basically unlimited. So in closing...

Dude would fuck his sister for money.

Mitt Romney
Who. The fuck. Names their son. Mitt.

That aside, Romney is an old hat conservative rich boy who thinks wearing a five hundred dollar Land's End jacket and posing in Maine swells one's testes to lumberjack size. He will also be the most likely to win the nomination when all is said and done. He's also into being married and reserving the right to fuck other women (I mean, really, is there any other reason for the Mormon's to exist? Let's just cut all this God loves the USA in the butt bullshit and admit it - some dude like the whores and needed an excuse to continue liking the whores).

Otherwise there is little remarkable and not much we haven't heard before. He's a flip-flopper of epic proportion who'd say, "Good morning," to you when it's clearly 9pm and your dog just died. This can actually be useful for progressives since Romney's stance on economic issues can lean left, depending on the need. He also comes from a background of being pro-choice and pro-gay, which has not exactly warmed the hearts of the swaths of bigots that turn out at these pay-for-entry no-cameras speaking events the candidates try to pass off as public forums.

And what is up with the plastic surgery? The guy looks like the least successful run of Ken doll Mattel has ever known. So bad were his sales figures the designer went home and shot himself.

Rick Santorum
Who?

Ron Paul
The fact that seemingly smart people buy into Ron Paul's ideology amazes me. If right wing rhetoric is one gigantic stream of urine, then Ron Paul is the last little bit that dribbles down your leg.

It's well-known the man is a gigantic racist, and things like taking massive contributions from a group known as Stormfront - the largest neo-Nazi organization in North America - are not doing much to change that image. His anti-government rantings and cries for anarchy in the streets really strike a chord with young people, but it's not the kind of freedom anyone actually wants. Ron Paul, on a personal level, does want anarchy. Around him. But as far as actively participating, fucking forget it. He wants state-sponsored protection from the people he would willing take social, legal and medical protection away from.

This really strikes me as the attitude of most of Paul's followers as well: a bunch of quasi-sociopaths too fucking absorbed with themselves, willing to strip down the trappings of functional society to a base "everyone  man for himself" level, yet somehow exempting themselves from the need to live in fear that their neighbors are the ones conspiring to steal their beans, and strutting around with the faux-intellectual, self-congratulatory bravado of a thirteen year old boy who tells everyone at school that Suzie Hicks just gave him his first blowjob.

Here's my advice for people thinking of voting for Ron Paul.

Step 1: Take an ordinary number two pencil.
Step 2: Place it between your index and ring fingers on your left hand.
Step 3: Align your left fingers in a plain, holding the pencil gently.
Step 4: Squeeze all four of your left fingers together using your other hand. Do this for ten seconds.

Did that hurt?

Good. That means it's working. Do this every time you think you might vote for Ron Paul.

Jon Huntsman
It is ironic to me that the only candidate on the field with a shred of political credibility (like working as Obama's ambassador to China) probably has the smallest likelihood of winning the nomination. While I personally would not vote for Huntsman, I give him that he is the one candidate who has not gone and hung two crosses from his nipples and swung them about in the public's face in what must be the most uncomfortable strip tease in history.

It's difficult to know where Huntsman is going. On one hand, he may just quietly fade to background noise as he has been all along, or he may jump to the front of the polls once all of the other candidates crash and burn. My feeling is that his future as a candidate depends on what others do around him, considering that he's already been told to fuck off by both Fox and CNN.

And finally there's Obama, and what a dissapointment that motherfucker turned out to be.

I'll conclude with a thought about Occupy Wall Street.

OWS is terrifying to politicians on all sides of the field for one reason and one reason alone. For years now, politicians have lived in the bubble of red vs. blue. No matter what evil has been committed, you always have a ready-made scapegoat, and the underlying issues are quietly kept out of sight. And sure, the battleground is alight with flames on social issues: abortion, gay rights, gun control, racism, and so on, but in a time of economic crisis, where are the jobs bills, and why is everyone trying to rob social security?

On economic issues, Dems and Reps are basically in agreement. Democrats come up with national bailouts, and Republicans laud them in public, and in private pass similar measures of a smaller scale. Outsourcing is bulletproof. And you just have to have Superpacs and unlimited campaign contributions. And while they're at it they might as well kick unions in balls a few more times, for good measure. On foreign policy, same deal. Education? Drug war? Obama's plan to get the troops out of Iraq isn't even his: it's a legacy of the Bush years when his approval rating was lower than Nixon's and he needed a last minute bump in the polls to ensure a graceful exit. Might as well be a team of synchronized fucking swimmers.

OWS instead directs its anger toward business, which doesn't know a red and a blue, only a list of who can be bought and for how much. This has both sides of the party shitting themselves. The reds are trying to shamelessly brand OWS as racist, anti-Semitic and privileged, while the blues are trying to assume leadership of the growing mob and direct the anger toward congress.

Both of these are separate but equal efforts to destroy any power OWS may have, and stagnate any chance of real change. Obama claims he supports OWS, but his voting record is obstinately pro-Wall Street and anti-regulation. And the feverish anti-poor people attitude in Congress is a symptom, not a cause. Obama's version of OWS would be like a doctor giving you Asprin for a headache while you are slowly dying from pneumonia.

All of this is endemic to what I believe to be a key flaw in modern politics. Leaders understand that their job is to get re-elected, not to actually lead. And in a climate of deregulated elections, it becomes an all-out no-holds-barred slug fest, and any notion of honesty or sincerity is thrown right out the fucking window.

We're also still a year away from the election, and I really wish everyone would shut up about it already.

Monkey crotch for all!

So I am two days into this organic cleanse that involves eating a rice dish made with moong beans (pronounced "mung," sounds like dung [for a reason]), some kind of spiced tea that tastes like monkey crotch and apples. This thing is supposed to last for seven days, and so far every indication points toward me not being able to do it (also giving me one more fucking reason I never want to visit India).

Of course, I'd imagine the Indian folks I know would be pretty offended to have this associated with them. It's more like an Indian-inspired weight loss tactic with a bunch of spiritual horse shit padding it the same way Micheal Bay is padded in bad movies. It's very obviously targeting white people who want to live a "healthier lifestyle," but to be honest, I don't know how much this will benefit me since I feel like 90% of this stuff is crap to begin with. I mean, I get the science behind it - me drinking a pot of coffee a day and subsisting on preservatives and grease isn't good, and anything to help me break those habits is good, but I think my doshas will be fine without a few gallons of jock strap sweat and twigs.

I am not a spiritual person. I don't sign on to any major religion and steer clear of the "spiritual but not religious" lifestyle. Do I believe in supernatural things? Yes. Do I believe in a higher intelligence in the universe? Well if it invented dinosaurs then maybe less than intelligent, but since it invented the platypus, it might not be smart but it sure is awesome. Do I believe in a mythic father figure up in the clouds who wrote a book about how to die right and punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous in the afterlife? No. Not at all. And not in any sense, since Eastern religious are basically a variation on the theme rather than a different way of seeing things. It's still a social institution that puts man at odds with nature rather than accepting that man is part of nature and all of the natural stuff we do maybe isn't so bad (everyone else is doin' it man).

So for now the cleanse continues, though the only thing it may be cleaning out of my body and mind is my sanity.

Positive note: one week without coffee, first day without a headache.

Progress?

Trolling Sucks Ass - Please Stop

Even before I knew what it was, I thought that trolling was a pretty useless, socially maladjusted activity. Well, last night some people educated me, I learned all about trolling. And I have to say that this new knowledge has caused my opinion on the subject to stay exactly the same.

Here is something I think is true:

People who make puns, or wordplay in general, aren't clever. In fact, it's a social disengagement; a reaction to the content of one's sentence rather than the substance or meaning.

I think it's partly a selfishness thing, like saying, "Well, that's nice, but let's talk about me now." It's also a way to avoid the consequence of actually interacting with another human being, which is a little scarier. They say the mark of a good politician is someone who can talk a lot without saying anything. If this is the case, these trolling motherfuckers could all run for Emperor of the Goddamn Multiverse.

I have not participated in anything really related to internet culture in a long time, and this makes me very happy that this is the case. Holy shit.

Dear HP

You may not remember me, but I was a lower-level employee in a Compaq production plant on Center Square Road in Swedesboro, New Jersey. After you took over Compaq, you closed the plant. Thanks a fucking lot.

But I digress. I write you today to say that status bars are not the most difficult thing to program. Please consider using them on your installers so I know the difference between installing updates for an hour and when the program is hanging because it's fucking broken.

Thanks.

Jerkface.

Things

"I'd like to thank Absecon Middle School for providing the entertainment tonight, thank you."
~ E

Aside from the fact that it's over ten dollars to get into a movie after 5 PM these days, I forgot that going on a Friday night to see a horror movie around Halloweentime is basically asking to get pelted with teenagers. As if they're being launched from the menacing, revolving barrels of a prepubescence cannon, each shot self-propelled by a fuel reserve of douchyness and tipped with a warhead filled with obnoxiousness and pimple juice.

Anyway.

John Caprenter's remake/sequel to 1951s The Thing From Another World, shortened to The Thing, is one of my all-time favorite movies in the history of anything ever. It's right up there with Big Trouble in Little China, Halloween and, well, just about everything else Carpenter has done with the noted exception of Starman. So I was understandably skeptical when the new one was announced, but there are some positives here.

Remakes might be evil, but there is a right and wrong way to go about it. The wrong way is easy to illustrate with movies like Fast Five, Spider-Man, and the greasy, pulsing monstrosity that is Footloose. In both cases, I'm pretty sure I've found things in my crisper older than any of their inspirations. 2011s Thing starts on a high note by not re-using any characters - it takes the concepts from the 82s Thing and builds on them. There is an incredible amount of detail - myself, X and E all took turns pointing out where certain bits were constructed shot-for-shot from 82, including the ice block room, the hole above the space ship, the exploded storeroom, and others. Also, the plot devices from the first are used, but not copied - there's a remake of the infamous test scene, but the test is completely different and holds with it different ramifications.

Then there's the Thing, the real star of the show. The computer effects are done well, particularly one scene where the monster only partly absorbs a member of the crew. The way the creature hunted reminded me a lot of the incorrectly named velociraptors from Jurassic Park, which, in comparing it to the original, actually makes it less scary. More grotesque maybe, since there is no shortage of the monster running in front of the camera and hogging all the screen time Dead Space style, but on the whole, the movie was much less frightening.

But my biggest complaints have more to do with the writing than anything. First, there is no sense of pacing. Ever since the success of American-made Japanese horror movies like The Ring and The Grudge (not originals Ringu and Ju-On), all notion of building tension for anything more than a few seconds before something goes "Boo!" is gone. 82s Thing has quite a few action sequences, and the monster is just as much a camera hog, but it all builds up to a final confrontation as a doomed Kurt Russel blows up everything in sight in order to kill the monster. The big reveal at the end of 2011s Thing doesn't carry the same ultimate confrontation weight. We've already seen the monster in all of its viscous glory, so where else is there to go? And without giving away too many spoilers, the last five minutes don't completely jump the shark, but the dude definitely smacked his balls on the dorsal fin if you get what I'm saying.

The second complaint is that there is a good deal of wasted screen time. Much of the alleged "dramatic tension" does nothing to make the audience feel one way or another toward the characters, with the exception of the leads. In 82s Thing, scenes were cut because they over-explain the situation, and the movie's downtime really built the characters - the pothead pilot, the hip dude on roller skates, drunk-ass hero MacReady, Wilford "Diabeetus" Brimley, and so forth. In 2011s, there isn't so much a cast as two leads, two supports, and a bunch of throwaway Norwegians. Most of the cast don't even get names. The heroine is accompanied by the only other American on the base at the end; a fact which nags at me. He's possibly the least interesting character out of all of them, and yet takes up a huge part of the third act. I say that because the two of them trade the most useless dialog throughout.

What is with the trend for modern movies to condescend to their viewers? Most of the dialog just describes things that the audience already knows, like when the two remaining survivors walk into a room that is clearly destroyed and one says, in paraphrase, "It looks like there was fighting here." No shit. He might as well have said, "Hey it's cold out," when the movie clearly takes place in Antarctica and there's a few tons of snow outside and the passed three conversations have mentioned an incoming blizzard. I'm not stupid, movie, so stop talking to me like I am.

The last poor mark the movie gets is the fact that it simply isn't scary. I'm hammering this again because horror is a genre very close to my heart, and cheap thrills and jump-out moments just aren't frightening. Sure, I jumped in my seat a couple times, but it has more to do with the fact that sudden images of a dozen playful kittens rolling around in a pile of downy feathers would be fucking terrifying in a dark room with a 500-decibel BOM-BOM-BOMMM. And once you get shocked at a movie the first time, the same trick stops working. And nothing ages faster than computer graphics. As I said, the creatures reminded me heavily of Jurassic Park, and with all of the CGI in movies these days, anything rendered in Full-3D-Out-The-Ass Vision just looks bad anymore, whether it's dinosaurs, aliens or blue hippies. 3D graphics are so pervasive in films that we're desensitized to them. I imagine this movie is going to look really bad in the next year or so, but it's also the reason why 82s Thing and movies like Alien have help up against the years so well. Good horror movies need to play on the audiences fear of the unknown. Once something is known, it ceases to be scary. And the quickest way to do that is to throw a bunch of animated alien monsters in front of the camera so often you'd think it was a grotesque alien monster fashion awards.

At the end of the day, 2011s Thing is pretty good. And I say good in the sense of nearly falling down the stairs and catching yourself at the last minute. It avoided the common pitfalls of remakes and there was a ton of attention paid to making it fit with the 82 inspiration (and keep fans happy). But at the end of the day, it's just another remake. Of a remake.

Facts & Figures

I'm writing this as a response to a comment I saw on Facebook by a group I'm part of. I'm not posting directly because I genuinely support what said group is doing and the people in it. Unfortunately, the group relies heavily on statistics from the "We Make This Shit Up As We Go Along" department.

I am all for funding public education - both in terms of mandatory school and public or state colleges. And I'm also of the mind that every American deserves a shot at college. Not that schools should just hand out degrees from overly-specific programs, but at least everyone should try it. And it is true that one stands to land a better-paying job and have a higher quality of life by getting a college degree.

That being said, a figure was quoted stating that the average starting salary of a college grad with a bachelor's was somewhere around 50K a year, and that figure reeks of bullshit. Personally, I've never had a job that pays that much, and I have both a college degree and job training/certs in computer programming. People I know with degrees who have been at their jobs for years don't make 50K. Even my friends who were lucky enough to land really great jobs with unions and benefits don't make that much, so where the hell did this number come from? Time for a lesson in how to fine-tune a Bullshit Detector.

First, check where the info comes from. In this case, the 50K figure comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. I don't know who they are either, but since it's a conglomerate of schools who want new students and employers who want new talent, of course they're going to make going to college as appealing as possible, even if it means lying.

And yes, they're lying. The 50K figure came from so far up a marketing executive's asshole its still got half-digested taco stuck to it. More reliable gauges of how much people make are available from sources, like, I don't know, the US Census? According to last year's, the per-capital household income in NJ is 34K a year. That's pretty far off 50K if you ask me, and by the way, that's a few thousand higher than the national average. And by the way again, that's for a household of 2 to 3 people.

Bullshit detected! Shields up!

To one who is passionate about education, it is really upsetting to see that college isn't marketed differently. It's one thing to take a legitimate state school and bring it down to the level of daytime TV nursing school infomerical, but pulling bullshit statistics from disingenuous groups nobody has ever heard of with extremely clear agendas just creates an illusion for potential students. Not that colleges should be all Debbie Downer and pee in everyone's cereal, but there's a better way to go about it. Maybe if schools stop treating themselves like worker drone factories and practiced a little more honesty instead of promising the world to a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen with dollar signs instead of pupils, and helped them to become more well-rounded and worldly adults instead of more productive workers, more folks would be pissed off about the state of things in this country, and just maybe we'd get some of the change everyone has been screaming for.