No Title - RTOTD #871

Day 871

Happy birthday to Me.
Happy birthday to Me.
I'm better than everybody,
Happy birthday to Me!

So now that I've got that out of the way...

Anyone wanna go to Cheerleader's next Wednesday night? I won the X's December Birthday thing where we get an open bar at the titty bar from 8-10 and free admission for myself and 9 friends.

So if you're interested, let me know. 3 spots are already spoken for. So 6 more people are welcome.

A Resolution - RTOTD #870

Day 870

As we approach the new year, let's all promise to make a group resolution this year. Instead of everyone making their own resolution that we promptly ignore about eating less fatty foods or quitting smoking or no more office drinking on Tuesdays or whatever, let's make a group resolution.

And I have the perfect one:

We whole-heartedly resolve to entirely ignore any celebrities with no discernible talent, who are famous for being famous or for being the children of famous people who only got anywhere because of who their parents were, or anything of the sort. We promise to ignore their television shows, be disaffected by their advertising presence, and otherwise save our money when presented with the opportunity to buy any product they are affiliated with in the hopes that it makes them all go away. We will not allow brand-building for no reason.

Because I'm still perfect otherwise.

This Is Not Wonderful - RTOTD #869

Day 869

21st Century Hollywood is out of ideas. I mean, we all know this. When's the last time we saw them make a GOOD original movie that wasn't obviously derivative of another movie or book. A new story that wasn't just an excuse for Roland Emmerich to blow up New York City or Washington, DC? Seriously... the guy makes nothing but disaster porn. Go check IMDB. But an actual original movie that's not complete schlock or looks like it was filmed in somebody's back yard on a Go Pro? Good luck finding one.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Hollywood's lack of imagination has given us the Superhero genre and Marvel movies making enough money to finance a revolution in a small island nation every few months. Though it did also give us the Twilight series. So it's obviously give-and-take.

But Hollywood has done some good work with sequels and remakes and adaptations of works of fiction over the years. So the premise that it needs to be an original story to be a good movie isn't right.

However, there's some rumor about a sequel to It's A Wonderful Life.

Honestly... I just kinda don't have anything funny to say about that other than it being an absolutely atrocious idea.

But since this might actually eventually maybe sorta happen, we should get ourselves ready for sequels to random classic movies. We've already seen the remake-of-a-classic-movie thing crash and burn. Because I guess Hollywood thought that if you could remake cult or just random movies from back in the day and turn them into franchises (I'm looking at you, Ocean's 9723498234 movies) then taking a classic movie and remaking it should be a license to print money. Obviously the rather atrocious Psycho remake from the 90's or 00's or whenever that was disproved that.

But now they're apparently thinking about just making sequels to them. Hell, Star Wars VII is coming out in like 2 years. And continuing the story from Jedi. So it's not entirely unheard of.

So in that vein, let's think of some awesome ideas for sequels to classic movies:

I'm going to go with A Christmas Story II. In this story, the kid from the first one is an adult and has his own kids. And an eye patch like Nick Fury. Except he has become a militia member and has his BB gun framed. And his kid wants a machine gun. And instead of a slide in the mall, there's a death chamber. And a 45 minute scene where his kid gets his ass cheeks stuck to the pole while having flashbacks to some trauma with his one-eyed dad. Or something fucking dumb like that. And there's a nuke somewhere. Because we can't not make it an action comedy. Because ticket sales.

*EDIT* - HOLD THE FUCK ON!!!! THERE WAS ALREADY A SEQUEL TO A CHRISTMAS STORY? HOW DID I NOT FUCKING KNOW THIS??????

Fine... call it a Christmas Story: The Next Generation. Or something. Fuck it. I give up on life.

Here You Go - RTOTD #868.1

Day 868.1

Here's a picture of a bear in a Lamborghini.

Because you probably didn't even know this happened.

So to follow that up, here's an ode to bears and their strange fascination with cars.

 

 

 

Scalpel - RTOT #868

Day 868

I generally don't like most people. I know this is a shocking revelation to you, right? Yeah. Sure. So when I do like someone, I generally consider them a friend. Or at bare minimum, someone that I don't actively dislike and they become part of the white noise in the background of my life. We all have these people. We just often don't think of them like that because it seems insulting, but really... that's all that they really are. They're the buffer zone between the people we like and everyone else. And for that reason, they're the white noise.

And when an of those relationships reach its inevitable expiration date, I simply cut it off with a scalpel, not entirely unlike a gangrenous limb. I cut it off. I move on. I give very little thought to it again with only a handful of exceptions and I generally feel little to no sense of loss. Maybe it's a personality disorder. Maybe it's a coping mechanism. Maybe I'm just too distracted or disaffected  or cynical to care about any sense of loss when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that that's probably a sign of said personality disorder. That's probably that whole sociopathy thing coming back out again.

But in the end, I harbor no ill will towards the limbs that I amputate. I look at them not unlike a rock on a beach. It's there. It doesn't matter to me. And I keep walking.

So when I see people that feel compelled to get angry at the rock or the dead limb that has already been amputated and is rotting away in a dumpster or something somewhere, I don't entirely understand it. Will yelling at it or talking too much about it make that limb somehow come back to life and reattach itself? Will that rock turn into something that matters with enough quiet sniping or venom or whispered comments? Will it even care?

Frankly, I just don't understand why relationships end and then somehow continue as something else more negative. Is it Newton's Law of Relationships instead of Motion or something where it has to require an opposite emotion when it's ended? I mean... I generally hate human beings as a whole, but I don't make that kind of effort to be a venomous jackwagon towards everyone unless there's a necessity.

Or unless I'll get some form of amusement out of it. But then again, I'm a dick. Not everyone is willing to admit that they're a sociopathic prick like me.

And yes, admitting it absolves me of any guilt or responsibility for anything I do or say in the past, present and future.

I was probably going somewhere with this, but I kinda stopped caring. Maybe that was the point though... things end & giving more time to it seems pointless.

Merry Marvel Movie-going Experience - RTOTD #867

Day 867

So I've gotta just make a public service announcement here. I'll get to it in a moment but I gotta explain why first.

So I saw Thor twice over the past weekend. Once on Friday night and once on Monday night (so I guess maybe it wasn't twice over the weekend but fucking whatever. Close enough) and in both cases, the theater was packed. The audience loved it. They laughed, they gasped, they cheered for Stan Lee's obligatory cameo. All-in-all, a typical Merry Marvel Movie-going Experience.

But when the credits hit, almost 1/3 of the theater got up and made their way to the exits. Most of them made it out the doors before being stopped. The mid-credits scene hit. A number of them stopped, as if having a moment of clarity for an Alzheimer's patient and thinking "oh yeah, Marvel does this, don't they?" and standing in the runway exit or at the bottom of the stairs, they stood and watched. And when it ended, they continued to make their way out.

I was flabbergasted. Yes, I just used that word in a non-ironic way. But these people just left. I could only shake my head.

A few noticed that other people still hadn't even made an attempt to move. They looked at us and paused and sat back down. They were having an epiphany. They conversed and waited but as the credit screen scrolled past the soundtrack credits and the thank-you to Technicolor for existing or whatever that shit is at the end, they looked up and then it happened. The post-credits scene. Because Marvel ALWAYS HAS A POST-CREDITS SCENE!

This was a movie that was filled with people that have most likely seen most or all of the previous Marvel movies. The new Thor movie is essentially the 3rd movie in a Thor trilogy with Thor and Avengers making up the other 2. So by now, the Marvel formula is pretty obvious to most of us. But for some reason, people still don't get it. And here's where we get to the public service announcement:

To everyone that ever goes to see a Marvel movie:  Look for the fattest bearded white guy you can see and don't get up until he does. Likely one with glasses and/or a comic book t-shirt on. They know when the movie is actually over. Trust them. Let them guide you. I know this is racist and probably fat-ist or whatever. And definitely a case of profiling. But guess what? The fat bearded white guy that looks like he hasn't ever gotten laid and is probably a geek knows when the comic book movie is over and when there's more to come still.

So just trust them. Do you really have anywhere else you REALLY need to be anyway?

Childish Things. - RTOTD #866

Day 866

Today I want you to stop and remember your childhood. For at least today, I want you to stop putting away those childish things and start taking them back out to remember what made them special. What made them define us. And reimagine them for ourselves for our adulthood.

And maybe, just maybe... remember some of the joy we had that has been sucked out of our lives with age and responsibility and adulthood.

And never, ever, ever trust someone that doesn't tear up a little bit when remembering the joy of the first time they ever read Calvin and Hobbes.

Because even if they didn't grow up as we did, they did grow up. Eventually. And I bet they didn't let life drag them down. So don't let it drag you either.

Welcome Back - RTOTD #865

Day 865

Welcome back... welcome back, welcome back, wel-commme baaacckkkk

Sorry. I got the "Welcome Back, Kotter" theme song in my head. Or maybe it was a Ma$e song from back in the day. I don't remember. I think the one sampled the other for their track. Fucking time-traveling 70's tv show producers. Still stealing from the black guy, even if you stole it from him 40 years in the future. Assholes.

But so getting back to my point... the original porn goddess is returning. Jenna Jameson is going back to porn. No joke.

Why, you ask? Why does ANY porn girl go back to porn? She's broke as fuck again. Staying in LA after retiring and whatever the fuck she was taking that made her so obviously trashed on a morning show a few weeks ago probably costs a lot of money. And even being a millionaire doesn't last forever when you stick it all up your nose or in your arm or down your throat. So they go back to what they know. Fucking for money on camera. Hell, she's been away from it so long now and hasn't done a dude on camera in so long that she's almost a virgin again. But well... hahaha... yea no.

So welcome back, Jenna. I don't know who really wants to watch you fuck on camera anymore, but I'm sure someone does. Don't go broke this time. I don't think your body can handle the extra surgeries at this point and nobody is gonna want to see you try to do another comeback 10 years from now if you don't make all the bank you need this time around.

Soooo... wanna take bets on who hires her and how much she ends up getting? I got money that says she's gotta put out twice the product per year to make even close to what she was making before. And fuck dudes on camera again cause she had some rule about that for a while or something.

The Circle Of Life - RTOTD #864

Day 864

Today is Monday. Try not to shoot anyone today. You need those bullets for when the neighbor kids keep coming onto your lawn on the weekends. You don't want them trampling over your overgrown grass or disrupting the leaves. The environmentalists wouldn't like that very much at all.

So remember, when you open fire, you're doing it for Mother Earth and the natural circle of life.

Farewell, Blue & Gold - RTOTD #863

Day 863

Turns out my Blockbuster story from last week had great timing. The company announced yesterday that they were closing their remaining 300-ish stores around the country.

Man, this is just the next step as media stores all die.

First it was the record stores in the 90's and early 00's. Places that were dedicated record shops? They didn't last. The places that managed to transition from the record to the cassette to the cd didn't realize that the end-result of that evolution of music delivery was going to be the one that didn't include them. Digital. Big box stores like Best Buy that used media as loss-leaders to sell you a tv or a stereo were the first step. Napster and shit really put a beating on the record store even when 56k and DSL were the high-end of data delivery. The iPod and iTunes put another nail into them. Amazon and other non-traditional options for physical media really hurt them. And once we were all putting thousands of songs on our phones instead of needing to carry a 2nd device for music? That's when it was just a matter of shoveling the dirt back into the grave. It was dead.

And in a lot of ways? That's really quite sad. Obscure music becomes harder to find when you aren't thumbing through a row of import albums or checking out labels and release charts. Or in my case, checking the stuff out as I stocked the shelves in highschool. That kinda always made it easier. And as a consumer now? Finding "that guy" at the record store that knew every new album out and would recommend you this new thing that nobody else has heard about (like I spent most of late 99 and early 2000 doing with MUSE) and it would be killer? That guy doesn't exist anymore. You can't get that from iTunes. They don't have a "the record store guy" app or whatever to recommend shit. They just have their typical label shills that pay for ad space.

It was only a matter of time before it happened to movies. No, streaming hasn't yet reached the quality or market availability yet to truly be a viable alternative. There's far too many portions of the country that are missing the infrastructure and data speed yet to really replace dvds and blurays with streaming entirely. And while Redbox is great, it just doesn't replace a Blockbuster or whatever for old movies. A Redbox has no selection at all if the movie isn't under 2 months old. And adding games to them now just gives it less space for movies.

Good luck if you wanna watch Star Wars tonight and don't own it. Redbox doesn't have it. Netflix will give it to you in 3 days, but that's not tonight. None of the streaming services have it (amazon, Netflix, etc) and the only way you can buy it online is in the "all of the movies" bundle on iTunes and the like. At least before, if you wanted to watch Star Wars or Indiana Jones, you could head out the trusty Blockbuster and rent it.

So I guess those of you that want to rent it can pirate it and delete it. And those of you that live in the sticks and it'll take 4 days to download it from a torrent site? I guess you can make a trip to Walmart and buy it. But that kinda defeats the purpose of "renting it for $3 for 3 nights" thing. But that's about it for your choices.

So RIP Blockbuster. Your lack of a porn section and constant need to impulse sell candy and DirecTV will not be missed, but your ability allow us to watch some random 80's comedy or bad Wesley Snipes 90's action movie at our leisure will certainly be. Farewell, original blue & gold signage that BestBuy kinda stole. You will maybe sorta be missed. But you could always just make your not-Redbox machines at Sheetz like 3x the size and give us all of that selection again. We won't complain.

Yet another step down the road to a virtual-media only future where nothing is manufactured and all media is consumed and stored digitally. But if you people fuck with bookstores & comic book stores and make them disappear too, I'm going to start hunting people down. Books and comics are still infinitely better when consumed in physical format. I can sacrifice a tiny bit of audio or video quality to never have to wipe down another CD or DVD or get up to change discs. But if you think I'm going to live with not being able to file my comics in long boxes ore look at my bookshelf and hold and smell and see a real book with real pages and ink on them, well you've got another thing coming, fuckers!

DING - RTOTD #862

Day 862

I had a fucked up experience last night.

So many of you have been to my house. You all notice the stuff that makes you stop and look at it like a dog does when you're trying to explain particle physics. Or like well... most people when you're trying to explain particle physics. The doorbell in the bathroom. The weird nooks and crannies in all the built-ins. The laundry chute or the dark room. The hidden room or anything else.

So when I say it was a strange experience... it really was.

I had already gone to bed before ArtemisFallen or the girl got home last night, but hadn't yet fallen asleep. I was watching something on Netflix mindlessly and hoping to pass out when Regs heard her mom get home. And well, she wanted out of my bedroom because her mom was home. Because MOM WAS HOME!

She was excited.

So I let her out and went downstairs to get a glass of water before going back to bed when, just as I was about to open my bedroom door, I heard the strangest thing. A doorbell. But a doorbell that wasn't MY doorbell. I had to be hearing things because why the fuck was a doorbell that isn't my doorbell ringing in my house. That just doesn't work like that.

I took the few steps back down and caught ArtemisFallen also looking around with the same expression of confusion on her face that I had.

Me: "Did you just hear..."

ArtemisFallen: ".. A doorbell?"

Me: "that wasn't our doorbell"

ArtemisFallen: "I know. What the fuck was that?"

Me: "I have no idea. What the shit was that?"

She was already down the stairs checking the front door before I even got the rest of the way down from my bedroom. She checked the front. I went to the back. It was pitch black. I checked the lock and then flipped on the back porch light. I glanced around and saw nothing. She was checking the side porch as well, although we don't even have a doorbell over there. But hey? We have a doorbell in the bathroom that doesn't do anything. Maybe we have a bell that rings without a doorbell? Makes about as much sense.

I thought for a moment and remembered the doorbell in the garage. But the garage door was closed. I even checked with ArtemisFallen since she had just gotten in and parked in the car port next to it. The door had been down.

I checked the garage bell and, pressing it, it did nothing as well. Though I might have maybe picked up an empty wine bottle to smash someone in the head if there was someone in my garage before I went down to check the bell there. But only maybe. I won't admit to anything.

And that was it. There was nobody at any of the doors. The sound didn't match any of the doorbells that we do have. And the other 2 doorbells don't work in the bathroom and garage.

So seriously... what the fuck? We've joked that the doorbell in the bathroom probably rings a bell in someone else's house. Maybe other people have doorbells that ring in mine? Because random dinging noises in my house are fucking bullshit, yo!

The Monster Squad - RTOTD #861

Day 861

It's Halloween and I've already saw something that gave me the urge to watch the Monster Squad today. It's almost a quintessential Halloween movie, isn't it? I mean... cheesy, monster-centric, for kids, and loses a lot of its magic but gains a lot of charm as you watch it in your 30's.

So that begs the question:

What are some quintessential Halloween movies for you?

For me, you have:

The Monster Squad (for all the reasons I mentioned above)

Halloween (Rob Zombie version, but only the first part. The 2nd part gets too incesty with his dead mother or sister and that horse thing. I never quite got it)

Nightmare on Elm Street (because...original)

Event Horizon (yes, it's a sci-fi movie but it's fucking creepy as shit)

28 Days Later (because zombies, man!)

What about you? What movies just scream "HALLOWEEN MOVIE!" to you?

The Back Room - RTOTD #860

Day 860

During college, I went through a series of typical bullshit retail jobs. Except that mine were actually on the moderately cool end (well, as cool as a retail gig could really get) of that spectrum. I didn't work in clothing stores or a candy store or shoe store or anything like that. No, I got to spend the end of highschool and most of college in music stores, record stores, movie stores and arcades. It was actually pretty not horrible for someone making $4.35 in 1998 or whatever the fuck minimum was back then.

I would work at a record store and volunteer to take out the trash (which consisted of a couple bags of plastic shit and some cardboard boxes) just to grab a smoke in the back hallways of the mall and then bang on the back door of the arcade before heading back, so that I could pop in and get blazed with my friends working there before trudging my way back in to sell Britney Spears records to idiot teenage girls, while trying to convince them that Speak No Evil's first record was probably one of the best grunge-inspired hard rock albums on the shelves.

I would play games like John Cusack in High Fidelity (a few years before that movie even came out) where I'd see how quickly I could sell out of the 5 copies in stock of Muse's first album when nobody knew who the fuck they were by playing them at the right times or counting the number of times I had to say "The label didn't release a cd-single of that. But the whole album is actually pretty good".

But I kinda had an issue with lying to people. I'd tell people when a record sucked. And I guess that's why I wasn't cut out for corporate record stores. But if I would have gotten commission at that gig, I would have made 4x as much at that job than my bullshit minimum wage salary actually paid. I could sell ice to an eskimo and not only would he like it, he'd come back and get a different flavor ice the next week.

I'd spend 95% of my shift smoking in the office of the arcade, occasionally glancing at the security monitors and getting pissed when some idiot kid smacking a machine because he was forcing me to put down my smoke and my beer to go out and fix whatever he probably broke in the first place. But it was only 1 or 2 of us at a time all the time, and we'd have long-running competitions on who could avoid letting kids actually cash in the tickets from the 2 or 3 ticket-shitting machines the arcade had for their 50-ticket plastic dinosaur or army men or whatever.

I never did quite understand why they even had that prize counter, other than just for appearances. I guess the owners really wanted it to look like Kennywood. Because that was really drawing people in. The pink fluffy teddy bear that nobody was ever going to win. That was the draw. Not the giant Super Mega Street Fighter XIV Turbo or Tekken fucking 47 or whatever other game was placed right in the front of the arcade. Nope. It was the prizes from playing 799073249 games of skeeball. Sure.

But the best was working in a Blockbuster. Yeah, I had to wear fucking khakis and a polo shirt every day. I couldn't just wear the cheap button-up hanging loose over my t-shirt like the arcade or the record store t-shirt or anything. But I loved that place. If for only 2 reasons.

The first reason is that I got a shitload of free movies to watch and I really became a movie freak because of working for that place. It was great. Free rentals, taking new stuff home before anyone else was able to rent it, and a few other perks. It was great.

But the 2nd reason is the reason that I loved that job. The best way to put it would be to call it "the bait and switch". Now, I guess that most of you have been in a blockbuster before. It's stuffy and corporate and most of the people there are worse than Best Buy employees where they swarm you when you walk in and the minute you have a question, it's like cockroaches when you flip on the lights; they scatter and disappear. I kinda tried to not do that. I'd say hey to people walking in or give a nod when walking around. But mostly leave people alone.

Believe it or not, but there was a time when I was actually a person that was moderately suited for dealing with the general public. 4 years of retail fixed that problem.

So while I was always wandering and leaving myself mostly available and trying to seem as approachable as humanly possible for someone that was not as horrible of a human being as I am now, but still kind of a dick, I had an experience that would recur far too many times during my stay in the movie rental business. This must have happened on a half dozen occasions over a 6 or 10 month period and each time, I'd try to find a more clever way to respond. But I still love my first response the most. Here's how it went:

I'd be walking around the store and doing my best to keep the "I want to murder every single one of you" expression off my face when a middle-aged white guy would come up to me. (Every single time it was a middle-aged white guy) But he didn't like walk up to me in that way that people walk up to a sales associate in a store. Instead, they would slide up next to me and never make eye contact. The first time this happened, it was quite disconcerting. This guy was standing there looking down at a rack of movies when, as I walked past, he stepped back into my path and never moved his eyes. Forced to a stop, I was about to just apologize (even though it was his fault) and walk around him when he spoke in a low voice.

Guy: "Hey, can you let me into the back room"

I was confused for a second. But only about a half a second, while I processed this and a bell rung inside my brain.

Me: "The back room?"

Guy: "Yeah. I wanna go back there"

This guy still hadn't looked up at me or even glanced in my direction. It was like he had found his definition of "discrete" from watching horrible spy movies. Was he going to drop a briefcase next to me next and wait for me to set mine down so that we can grab each others briefcases next? Or maybe there was some microfilm that is super important somewhere? The only thing missing was a trench coat and a low-slung hat.

Me: "Umm... *glancing around* sure?"

Guy: "thanks"

I walked in front with him following for about 15 feet before we reached the door to the back of the store. It was marked "RESTRICTED" and had a single small window in the top of it. I had to fight the urge to begin laughing already.

I stepped to the door and glanced around again. The guy still had his eyes downcast and wasn't apparently studying the distinct texture of the carpet or possibly his bellybutton. But that was about to change.

I pushed the door to the back room open slowly and as he heard the creak of the door, his eyes rose. I opened to reveal a mostly-empty room with a number of boxes along the back wall, and a conference table in the middle of the room.

Me: "Here you go. So that's some boxes and right there? Right there we have a conference table. It's kinda cool, right? And over there we have the office and a door to the bathroom. And in that corner there, right there, that's where we hang our coats."

The guy's face turned just shy of the brightest red I could have imagined without me believing that his face was about to morph into a Coca-Cola can. Quickly, he shuffled towards the front of the store and to the counter. He almost broke into a run at first, but forced himself to not do it. But if his embarrassed downcast eyes could have gone lower without starting to flip back up backwards, I bet they had. He was out the door from the back wall of the store in under 5 seconds.

I let the door close and lost my shit. Catching the eye of the other person on duty, she knew exactly what had happened almost immediately.

Her: "Back room?"

Me: "Back room!"

And we spent the next 15 minutes losing our minds laughing.

For that reason and that reason only, to embarrass the middle-aged white guys looking for Porn in a blockbuster, I loved that job probably more than even getting stoned for 8 hours in an arcade or listening to a shitload of awesome music that nobody had ever even heard of in a record store for hours on end and being paid for it.

Here's Your Trophy - RTOTD #859

Day 859

Some Texas highschool football team beat another team 91-0. What do you think the response to this was?

A parent of the losing team filed a "bullying" complaint with the district. I'm not joking. Needless to say, the charges were dropped and rightfully so. They had no merit.

I would say that I have no words, but well... come on. This is me we're talking about. I always have words for something that amuses me.

Have we really reached the point where getting your ass beat in sports is a "bullying" accusation? Are we really that much of a load of pussies in this society anymore that sports are now a source of bullying? When they snapped the ball and ran it and got into the open field on every 3rd play with a clear track for the endzone, were they just supposed to sit down and wait to be tackled because it would be nicer for the other team? Would kneeling down and letting yourself go 3-and-out every possession after it was 49-0 so the other team got a chance be better for their self-esteem?  Maybe mix up the teams and let them split the talent, because the other guys obviously suck and even if you let them score, they'd find a way to fuck it up. Maybe some own-goal type shit? Would patronizing them make them feel better?

Hey, I mean... we all knew there were those couple *cough* most *cough* guys on the football team in highschool that were pretty big douchebags. But if you're playing competitive sports at any level, you gotta sack the fuck up and learn to live with an ass beating. Even one of epic proportions.

And this is also why parents are horrible human beings that need to be tested before they're allowed anywhere near their kids sporting events. This should be the litmus test for that. I'll even make it multiple-choice:

"If your kids team gets handed a beating that would make the Old-Testament God envious of its severity, would you:
A) just tell them to quit after they stop crying because overcoming difficulty isn't a useful life lesson
B) give the kid a participation trophy
C) console them for a few minutes & then tell them to work harder so they never have to feel that kind of beating again or
D) complain to the school district that it's not fair and hurt his self esteem"

If you answer anything other than C, you're not allowed to be there anymore. Period.

Participation trophies. No keeping score. Equal playing time for everyone. Charges filed when you win too convincingly. Or pretty much any of that touchy-feely bullshit. Can we find the people that started this shit and beat them with sacks filled with pennies?

The world is filled with that asshat highschool football player that tries to bully anyone that crosses their path that day. Deal with it. And that does not include going Columbine on them or crying to your mommy, daddy and teachers. Man the fuck up. Girls and boys get pushed around by other people all the time. You're not going to change them. You're just going to end up looking like a whiny bitch. You're going to lose at a game. You're sometimes going to get your ass beat at something so bad that Rodney King would think he got off easy. You're not a delicate special fucking snowflake and the sooner you learn that, the sooner you're going to learn how to exist in the world.

Except me. I'm a super special fucking snowflake that's specialer than the specialest special snowflake ever made. So when I bully you or insult you or make you look like you don't even belong in the same room as me, just remember it's because I have the right. I'm just better than you.

A Boring Tech Review Blog - RTOTD #858

Day 858

 

I upgraded my MacBook to OS X Mavericks yesterday because it was free. And thus far, I love it... with one big caveat:

 

For the first time, iBooks run on the Mac. In previous iterations of OS X,  you could buy iBooks through the iBooks Store that was inside of the iTunes store. You could manage your library. You could add other ePub format books that you... *ahem* Downloaded... and modify the metadata and transfer the books to your iOS devices through the iTunes app. But you couldn't actually read a fucking iBook on your Mac without a 3rd party ePub reader app. If you were in iTunes and double-clicked on a book to open it like you would a movie or song, it did nothing. It might as well have been an iOS app that you could also manage/view your library of iPhone or iPad apps, but that was about it. It was just there. A throwback to the days where you had to connect your phone to your computer in order to manage what music and apps you had on your device.

 

That all changed with Mavericks. iBooks has its own dedicated app now and when you first open it, it asks you if you'd like to migrate your library to there from iTunes. A dedicated app for just reading that actually lets you read the books that you buy for your iPad on your laptop. A dedicated app for managing your eBook library that is designed for books instead of being square-peg-hammered into the round hole of an app originally designed as just a music library manager and media player. A media player and library manager that couldn't actually run/open/play a number of the types of files that it managed.

 

iTunes, while still bloated and unnecessarily processor intensive, is a good media library manager for movies and music and tv shows. It's a player. It plays entertainment that you passively enjoy. The integration of iBooks management, while it makes sense in a "keep your whole media library in 1 app" sense, always seemed too somehow... not... quite... fit. In the same way that iOS app management doesn't seem to fit. Books and movies/music/tv shows are different in 1 very specific way. Books require active engagement with the material in order to enjoy. Movies, music and tv shows are passive. Reading requires thinking. Watching and listening don't. And that's before I even point out the uselessness of a library that simply lets you LOOK at apps that you can't even open.

 

But I'm getting off track here.

 

Artist names. Album names. Series names. Disc numbers. Track numbers. Compilations, durations and all of that stuff is great for metadata for music and movies. But for books? It doesn't work as well. It's that square-peg-round-hole thing again.

 

That's what's nice about iBooks. The problem is, you can't actually edit the metadata in iBooks. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I'm fucking weird about id3 tags and metadata in movies and music and tv shows. I want them to be as accurate as possible. Granted, I don't give a fuck about "composers" or some of the weird fields. But artist, album, track number, release year, etc... I want that shit to be right. And I can't do that in iBooks for some reason. There's no way to edit the stuff. So when it comes to a book genre, I've got some weird genres in there right now. For instance, there's a Vince Flynn book in my library that has a genre of "cookie429" because apparently that's a real genre and I can't change it. I can't drag & drop it into the right genre and it make the changes. I can't 2-finger click on it and get a thing to open and edit it manually. I can't do anything. It's stuck with a genre of "cookie429" until magic happens. And that does NOT make for easy library maintenance of over 1,500 eBooks.

 

The other problem that I see with it is one major thing that made the iTunes integration make sense. If you buy a book from the iBooks store, it's right there with the little iCloud logo every time you open the iBooks app on  your iPad or phone. Just click the iCloud logo and you can magic your book down onto your device. No problem. But if you have a book that you didn't buy from the iBooks store, and you have it in your library and want to throw it onto your iPad, you just clicked it, dragged it over to your devices and dropped it into the iPad option. Except that... oh would you look at that? There's no fucking devices that show up! There's no option on the 2-finger click. There's not even an option anywhere in the damn program that I can find. WTF?

 

So I'm back to managing books to my iPad by having to check and uncheck them through the sync options in iTunes when I click on the device that I want to stick a book onto.

 

Needless to say, this sucks. Granted, it's been out for all of about 20 hours now, and I'm pretty sure that's one of the things that'll get fixed pretty quickly. But still... in the meantime? It sucks.

Today's Playlist - RTOTD #857

Day 857

I haven't done a "What am I listening to right now" thing recently. So I figured I'd give you a taste. A tiny bit of obscure. A little bit of a mix of genres. But all-in-all, it mixes together well.

Never Walk Alone - Megadeth

Conquistador - Thirty Seconds to Mars

Cereal Killer - Method Man & Redman

Sweat - David Guetta vs Snoop Dogg

Wide Awake - Gravity Kills

Candy-O (Cover) - Powerman 5000

Pour Me Another - Atmosphere

Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin-Geddon (Teddy Bears Remix) - Marilyn Manson

The Preacher - Brother Ali

Numb/Encore - Jay-Z & Linkin Park

Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown - Rob Zombie

Second to None - Styles of Beyond

Acid Wolfpack - Coyote Kisses

A Freak Gasoline Fight Accident - Zebrahead

The Outsider (Apocalypse Mix) - A Perfect Circle

The Phoenix - Fall Out Boy

Mz Hyde - Halestorm

Street Fighting Man - Rage Against the Machine

I Came to Party - Deuce

Behemoth - Static-X

Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza - Volbeat

Big Man with a Gun - Nine Inch Nails

Meet the Creeper (Pink Pussy Mix) - Rob Zombie
Holdin' On (Skrillex & Nero Remix) - Monsta

Frankenstein - DMX

Parabola - TOOL

 

 

I have no idea if any of these embedded videos work because my damn phone won't show them and YouTube is blocked in my office. So I can't test them until I get home later. So if they don't work... well... tough? I guess?

Pocket Change - RTOTD #856

Day 856

We at one time had a 2 cent coin,
because 2 pennies was too much work.

You know what the world needs? A 97 cent coin. Because I can't count how many times I've needed 97 cents and have to use a dollar for it. What happens? I end up with 3 pennies that end up in my cup holder and then eventually, after the next 3 dozen times I need 97 cents and end up with 3 pennies back, I've filled my cup holder. And I like being able to put my cup/bottle in the cup holder.

So we need a 97 cent coin.

It's like the $2 bill. I still want a $3 bill because it would make more sense anymore based on the change I always get when I buy things with cash.

And on an unrelated note, I discovered today that the US still occasionally prints the $2 bill. Last time was in 2003 but they're still being printed. Weird. I always think of them as a product of a long-gone time.

Trials & Tribulations - RTOTD #855

Day 855

So I'm going to do a chronicle of the failure that has been roomie hunting with some of the best parts of it so far:

I already chronicled the 2 failures where the applicants came and saw the place, loved the place, filled out the application, passed the credit checks and then just bailed at the last minute. So I'm going to skip these and go right to one from last night:

I had a girl call me yesterday to come and see the place. She said she was going to be there around 4:30. Cool. That would work for me. Gives me time to get home and make sure the place is cleaned up. So I told the girlfriend & ArtemisFallen about it and they made sure the place was ready. But see, apparently nothing about this monumental cock-up of a roommate search was going to go well. So I'll just break it down:

4:30 - Nothing. No show.

4:45 - Phone rings. It's this girl telling me that her ride got into an accident on the way and she had to move it back until around 6. That's cool. Whatever.

6:00 - Oh look, another missed appointment.

6:45 -  I get another call to ask if she could come around 7:00. Now, I was starting to get confused here. The different calls sounded like different voices. Similar, but not exactly the same. And I couldn't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that through the different calls, the girls gave me different names. Now I was really confused. Was this the same girl that just used different names, like a nickname that she went by and her given name? What was going on? Was it 2 different girls? Was I accidentally scheduling 2 viewings at the same time to different people?

In the meantime, I had gotten another call and another woman that was planning to stop by around 7:40.

7:00 - In the least shocking discovery of the evening, this girl still didn't show up.

7:40 - The other lady showed up and I began giving a tour.

7:44 -  My phone rings. It was this girl again. She had to cancel and reschedule for Wednesday. Fine. Whatever. I'm busy anyway.

7:47 - My phone rings again. This time I hear the different girls voice and figure this out. It's sisters. The one sister was supposed to bring the other and she still wanted to see the place that night for her sister. Fine. I tell her that 8:15 would be the best since I had someone looking at the place at the moment.

8:20 - Miracles of miracles, this girl finally arrived.

8:22 - She comes in with 2 random dudes. That's cool. I mean, she's a small girl. Probably under 5' and looked like she was 20 or so. I'm a guy and she's in a random house she doesn't know. Safety is always a good policy. She asks me if she can record on her phone to show her sister the place. I don't care. I'm not really a huge fan but whatever. I wanna get this place finally fucking rented out and get a new roomie.

8:26 - We're looking at one of the rooms when she drops a bomb. She and her sister were planning to move in together somewhere. I'm confused. I'm renting a single room and leaving 2 rooms empty like it was when Diotima was here. She wants to move in with her sister. Are they sharing a room? W
hat the fuck? I think it's better to just wait it out and see if she gives more information. I can always broach that subject later. I'm observing to feel her out and see if she's even someone that would be cool to live with.

8:30 - I'm still showing her around and we're talking as we go. She is asking about the ugly room and about decorating. She and her sister love to decorate. I don't really care. It's the ugly room. It needs drywall at this point and I really want to just gut everything about it except for the built-ins and totally re-do it. If someone wants to pretty it up in the meantime? I don't give a fuck. It lets me put off re-doing the room until I have the extra cash or until after the bathrooms are redone and the fence is finally up.

8:33 - We're in the basement and she is gushing about the place. She loves it. She thinks her sister is going to love it too. Great. I'm still confused on this sisters-living-together thing but it can still be discussed and if they really want to share a room and pay 2/5 of the utilities, who am I to argue? I don't care if it's a couple in there. It's not a college dorm room with bunk beds, but whatever. Not my problem.

8:34 - The next bomb gets dropped. They've got an "agency" that is handling paying the first months rent and security deposit. She starts telling me about the situation and it starts sounding suspiciously more and more like a Section 8 situation. Nope. This is an absolute dealbreaker for me. I am not signing up for that shit. The headaches associated with that are not worth the payment. But hey, I could be wrong. It could be a trust fund for all I know. I don't have the details yet. I'm not going to make assumptions. I'll wait for the application

8:34:30 - The final bomb. Oh.. wait a second. First it was some girl. Then it was some girl and her sister. I'm still confused about that part but whatever. Now what did you just say? Wait... her sister has a daughter too? And has custody of her niece? Um... wait... fucking WHAT? So now there's 4 of you? And 2 of them are kids?

OH FUCK YOU NO!

So let me get this right... you and your sister and your sister's daughter and you're sister's niece are going to be moving into 1 bedroom? Yeah... um... are you fucking high? Do you think you're going to just turn 1 of my other spare bedrooms into a nursery or kids room or something? And not pay for that bedroom as well? You think that "the other empty bedrooms are common areas" means that you can turn them into your kids room and you're... oh fuck it. Just fucking NO.

Bitch, you need a house. And you're sure as hell not renting half of mine for you and your 2 kids for the price I want for just 1 bedroom in mine. And I'm going to lay money that you're not going to like paying 4/7 of the utilities plus double rent to use 1 of the spare bedrooms.

And fuck this. JUST NO.

See... this shit is the reason why I just wanted to kidnap Diotima and keep her here under a different name and pretend that that wasn't really her when her parents started searching for her. Because this is the shit I've been dealing with when it comes to finding a roomie to fill in for her.

It's Been Real - RTOTD #854

Day 854

So after this bullshit faux-Halloween party that you all wanted so that you didn't have to make a decision about the actual Halloween party that is not being rescheduled, my birthday and maybe New Years, I'm no longer interested in throwing them as an open thing for anyone that feels like coming.

I have no desire to compete over party dates. I don't have interest in "meeting the needs of the community". I don't care about working around the schedules of everyone out there so that I fill in an "open spot" on the schedule of shit going on and I don't care about saving you from making decisions about which events to attend.

I simply care about enjoying myself and being around people I feel like being around. I am no longer doing that. I've been getting asked to work around schedules and rearrange what I want to do to suit the desires of everyone else. And I'm simply not interested in doing that or being in that position. When friends start asking me to give up having things to do with them on celebratory dates so that they can attend things that I wouldn't attend without a gun to my head is when it dawned on me: You all thought I was doing this for you. I'm not and I never was. So rather than spend a bunch of time and what will only end up sounding like bitching, I'm just going to let you know that we won't be doing them anymore.

Not sure what else to say. I might still occasionally throw something, but it'll be invite+ guests only. Thanks for coming out for the past couple years and you're welcome for giving you something to do when there were virtually no other options. It's just become too much of a headache. So thanks and you're welcome. It's been real.

For those of you that donated furniture for the past few years and would like to have it back since it'll only be accessible a few times a year, let me know & we can work something out to get things back to you. It'll give me an excuse to build some stuff anyway since I've been lazy about that for the past few years.

That's Probably A Bad Thing - RTOTD #853

Day 853

Coughing blood is probably not a good thing, right?

Well, not like a LOT of blood and not like EVERY time, but maybe a little blood most of the time?

Hmmm... I've been down this road before. It only leads me to things that I don't like to hear. Like "dying" and "you should stop treating your body like an amusement park" and "you're not 17 anymore" and "give me back my stethoscope" and "that's not a toy!" and "no, I won't give you 37-refill prescriptions for vicodin and Viagra" and "NO, I DON'T HAVE A GIANT BLUE PHONE BOX! GET THE FUCK OUT!"

So fuck that. I'll be fine tomorrow. Or maybe next week. Or something.

Meet Mulligan - RTOTD #852

Day 852

Bailey has a new little brother/cousin/something that I'm not sure how it works with pets ... fuck it... Bailey got a Puppy!!

Technically it's not mine and it's not his. My parents got a puppy because they were tired of not getting often enough visitation with Bailey. So today is nothing but a bunch of gratuitous puppy pictures of the new baby. His name is Mulligan.

 

 

He is 13 (almost 14) weeks old and weighs about 16 lbs. So he's a tiny little bit smaller than Bailey was at the same age, but still SUPER FUCKING CUTE!!! He also learned how to do steps... kinda... yesterday.