Fox News Liberal

I often wonder why the people who complain about Fox News so much keep watching Fox News. I mean yeah, we get it, it's an embarrassment, but then why are you still watching it? You know, because SOMEBODY'S gotta be posting all those videos on YouTube. Taking the time to record all of it and everything? That's a lot of dedication to something you hate. It's not like there aren't fifty thousand other news channels on. Or hell, the internet. Or hell, pretty much anything else to do that isn't watching Fox News.

A lot of people argue that it's good to watch things like that, to see what the "other side" is thinking. But you know what? No. Fox News is not the "other side". That's like saying that the "other side" for conservatives are the PETA people. Yes, they're idiots, and they're fun to make fun of, but most people aren't actually like that. The "other side" is the actual smart, competent Republicans. You know, the ones that can actually articulate their beliefs beyond "Barack Obama is totally a gay Muslim". I think sometimes we forget that some of the people who disagree with our opinions aren't insane, racist bastards. Some of them are alright.

But I suppose it's pointless, since as long as there are idiots, there will be cynics like me to make fun of them. But I'm just wondering where all these people are coming from. Maybe they just LIKE Fox News, but they make fun of it because they want to fit in. Peer pressure is a harsh mistress.

If You Don't Copy/Paste This Ten Times...

You know, we're going to be totally screwed if somebody comes out with a chain letter that actually has mystical properties. Or I guess chain copy/paste these days, but whatever. You know, because somehow, there are apparently some people who still believe that if they don't repost that message, a ghost is totally gonna come to their house and pummel them with a 2x4. I don't think I've ever actually met any of those people in real life, presumably because they often die too quickly running into open traffic after being convinced that there would be candy under that manhole. But whatever, we let these people have their insane sputterings on YouTube, and maybe someday one of them won't repost enough times and they'll end up getting raped by the ghost of a gay cowboy, or whatever it is they say these days.

But that's the thing. If there were actually a chain letter that actually killed you if you didn't repost it, all of the calm, logical, rational people would DIE OUT. And the stupid, gullible ones would get to live! That's actually pretty brilliant, if you think about it. All the ghosts that I imagine are reading this, please don't steal this idea. I'm now planning on using it to get revenge on whoever inevitably kills me after mistaking me for a van. Or a quail. Basically what I'm saying is that I plan to get killed by the border patrol, or possibly Dick Cheney.

It's sort of like all those internet ads that offer you free stuff for no discernible reason. How many people still fall for those? And how many of them get sectioned every year. "Oh HEY! Advertisers have never lied to me BEFORE. Sweet!"

Please See This Movie Oh God

I think it's awesome that Tom Cruise still thinks that putting his name on a poster makes people go "Oh snap, Tom Cruise is in this! We gotta go see it!" Or rather, that advertisers missed that, since I'm about 97.4% certain that he didn't actually put together the poster for Mission Impossible 4,* although I imagine that situation might have come up, because he's probably crazy enough to insist on it. Apparently, they all didn't get the memo that pretty much everyone started hating Tom Cruise about three years ago when we realized hey, this man is dangerously insane. Also, he's a Scientologist,** and everyone hates Scientologists. Sure, there are plenty of them in Hollywood, but most of them at least try to keep it somewhat under wraps. Tom Cruise is the Scientology equivalent of those Jehovah's Witnesses who won't get off your goddamn porch.

But hey, maybe they're banking on the whole "crazy" thing. After all, people do love spectacle. That's why we so greatly enjoyed Charlie Sheen going completely off the rails a couple months ago. So I guess maybe they're trying to convince people that they might have accidentally left in the take where he went insane and tried to shank one of the other actors for hailing Xenu. Actually, that'd be pretty good. If Mission Impossible 4 has a blooper reel, I would love to see it.

At least John Travolta had the courtesy to already be a complete nutcase. Cruise just sort of slower went more and more nutty. Hollywood does great things to people, you know that?

*I refuse to call it Ghost Protocol, because it's the fourth goddamn movie and all the other ones had numbers on the end.
**These two things are very rarely mutually exclusive.

Mobile Cellular Telophone

I like the direction the whole "smartphone" thing has been going lately. I mean, first we had the iPhone, and it's pretty cool. And then Google went, "Hey, we could do the same thing but with more accessible software and a confusing interface!", so then we got all the Androids. And those are pretty cool too. I don't buy into the whole "iPhone vs. Android" war, mostly because I find any sort of war between groups of people who like specific products (see: Mac vs. PC, the Console Wars, the Iraq War) to be incredibly disturbing, but also because they're pretty much the goddamn same and I don't care so shut up.

ANYWAY, I like the idea of everyone just walking around with a fully functional computer that can look up anything and play music and video games and brush your teeth and even occasionally make phone calls if you're lucky. It's a cool concept, mostly because it reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, except instead of just being Wikipedia, there's also porn. And other stuff, but mostly porn, because we're talking about the internet and that joke is obligatory with that territory. 

The only problem I see is that they can't pull the whole "Let's just keep making them smaller and smaller until they become horrifically uncomfortable to use" thing again, because the format makes it pretty much impossible. Which is good, because the whole "micro" thing pisses me off. So instead, they're just going to keep making those bastards faster and faster, until they're on par with the speed of our modern PCs. And then we can just plant a flag in the ground and declare that we have officially reached the future. I'm excited.

Tax Collectors

You gotta feel bad for meter maids and traffic cops. Or really, anyone who has a job that forces them to do stuff that pisses other people off. Like repo men. I mean after all, they're just doing they're jobs. I bet the guys who have to write people parking tickets get screamed at pretty much every day. You know, like some guy tries to park his car on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper while he goes out to buy string beans and you gotta go in there and write him a little piece of paper that says "Hey you know what? Maybe you should park ANYWHERE BUT HERE." And then the dumbass comes back while you're doing it and starts yelling about how there was a very important task he had to attend to. And then when you ask him about all the grocery bags filled with string beans, he claims that he was thwarting a robbery at the supermarket. And then he tries to sue you, and you drink a lot. Or at least, that's what I assume happens.

Then again, it'd probably take a certain type of person to pursue this kind of career in the first place. Like how they always portray repo men on TV as being soulless psychopaths who derive an almost perverse sexual glee from taking other people's stuff. Although I bet that probably wouldn't go over very well during the interview, unless the other guy was equally psychotic.
"So Johnson, what makes you think you're qualified for this position?"
"I LIKE TAKING PEOPLE'S THINGS! HAHAHAHA!!!"
Although even the psychopath might get a bit nervous once you start chewing on the desk and trying to remove his necktie by force. So maybe all repo men aren't kleptomaniacs, but it'd probably help. Also, I may have kleptomania confused with complete insanity. Oh well.

I Don't Actually Understand Science At All

I think we should push the whole genetic engineering thing as far as we possibly can. You know, just to play God and make everything completely ridiculous. See, because I don't believe the whole "tampering with the things man was not meant to" thing. I believe that if we have the technology, we should laugh in the face of nature and make as many affronts to God's design as we possibly can. When some other species shows up and takes over this planet,* we should make them REMEMBER THAT WE WERE HERE dammit! Every time they look at the apples the size of watermelons growing in the backyard, they'll remember the crazy bastards that used to live here.

Cus we're already kinda doing this sort of thing, just on a way smaller scale. Engineering enormous strawberries and dogs with horrific inbreeding. All that good stuff. I think we should have the balls to tamper with the laws of the universe and make unnecessarily huge dogs that live for fifty years. And cats that can talk. Is that a thing we can do? It should be. All that funding we put towards important stuff? Child's play. Those glow-in-the-dark pigs are just the beginning people. Soon we will have pets that make zero goddamn sense. And it will be awesome.

Okay, so probably not, but I would love for the "genetically modified food" people to shut the hell up. You wanna not starve? Eat your goddamn Frankenstein carrots and shut up. You people are holding up the future.

*Either aliens or dolphins, really.

Rick Perry is a Dickhead

I normally don't do this sort of thing, but I talk about this kind of stuff all the time, and it's really pissing me the hell off at the moment, so I figured I'd discuss this a little bit. I would really encourage you to watch that entire video. Really listen to what this man is saying. Then remember that he wants to be the PRESIDENT OF OUR COUNTRY. This is a man that thinks that a pretty respectable population of our country are a bunch of disgusting deviants who shouldn't have the right to serve in our military. That pretty much proves to you right there that he's a massive dickhead. But hey, plenty of politicians are dickheads, right? Sure, but you should also consider the fact that he's a goddamn idiot. This is a man that thinks that Christians are a persecuted minority that get throttled down by the raging atheists that are running America. Here we have a guy who, again, wants to be the GODDAMN PRESIDENT, and he believes that there is actually a real, actual "War on Christmas". And he WANTS TO BE THE PRESIDENT.

And yeah, he thinks it's totally alright to basically say "If I'm president I will put the Christ back in EVERYTHING." Because keeping religion separate from government is an extremely alien policy when your head is shoved so far up your ass that you can now breathe in through at least four orifices. Ya can't do that, okay? If you want to run people's lives that way, how about you go back to Imperial England. Have fun over there, you lifeless sack of bastard.

Or, perhaps, maybe he doesn't think these things. In fact, he might not be nearly this insane. He'd still be an idiot, of course, but he'd be a bit less crazy. See, Perry knows that he's kind of screwed at this point, due to the fact that everyone, y'know, totally hates his bigoted ass. But you know who's just as bigoted and insane? Fundies. And you know fundies love this commercial. You know why? Because fundies are bastards, just like Rick Perry. And they laugh in the face of your so-called "separation of church and state".

Go to the YouTube page and flag this video as inappropriate for hate speech towards sexual orientation. And then tell Rick Perry to go eat a dick.

They're Sneaky

It's interesting how we put so much arbitrary trust into certain professions. Locksmiths for instance. You're basically giving a locksmith the means to break into your house and take all your stuff, and nobody ever seems to worried about that. I guess we're just too afraid of offending them. "I don't trust that guy with the only key to my house." "Oh Barbara, you're just saying that because he's British." You know, all those offensive stereotypes. Wouldn't want to be seen as a racist. So we trust some guy to make duplicates of our keys while we go over to the bar next door to get drunk. Awesome.

Same sorta thing going on with plumbers. You know, sometimes. The kinda guys that don't really have any idea what the plumber is actually doing, so they just go off to another room and hope that he figures it out. But we're very trustworthy of this guy in the trucker cap. He won't steal anything. And yeah, he almost certainly won't. Isn't that weird? By that I mean, isn't it weird that I think it's weird that he isn't going to take all your stuff? Does that make any sense? Probably not. What I'm saying is, society has basically programmed us not to trust anybody, because ANYBODY COULD BE A SERIAL KILLER YOU JUST DON'T KNOW. But sometimes, we just totally forget about that. I have absolutely no idea what the point I'm making is.

That kinda attitude is all over the place on the internet, isn't it? On the internet, anyone could be a pedophile. You just don't know. And they're all going to come and rape you. And you know, this would be harder to argument if the internet would stop proving it right every other week.

Cryptozoology

I wish we had more crazy adults who believe in Santa Claus. Why not? There's the Loch Ness Monster people, the Big Foot people, the Scientologists...why should we not also have the insane Santa Claus contingent? Just because something is provably non-existent doesn't mean there shouldn't be a massive number of people claiming that they've seen it. I couldn't even find a website for it. Talk about a let-down. It doesn't matter whether or not you can just say "No dude listen, that was just your dad putting the presents in the living room." There is no amount of substantial proof that can't be ignored by the right kind of person by sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming.

Really, I just want someone to mount a mission to the North Pole to try to find him. Wouldn't that make a great story? They did something like that with Nessie, and it was hilarious. Sonar and everything. Turns out she wasn't there. I was shocked, personally. But what I really want to see is somebody start a video blog, showing all their preparation and research for their massive North Pole excursion to finally conclusively prove the existence of Santa. Tell me you wouldn't watch that. I would, but I'm also dangerously insane, so I might have a bit of a sampling bias there.

If anything, we could probably get all the Occupy people all over it, since the elves are all apparently working slave labor. That'd be fun, right? Get a bunch of rebels to go in and beat the crap out of Santa. We should get in on that. Best Christmas ever.

The Twenty Dollar Man

I'm a bit worried about the day that it becomes possibly for me to wire a USB port into my arm. Probably because I know myself a bit too well. See, I'm all for the cybernetic improvement thing, no matter what Deus Ex tells me, because it's going to be totally awesome. So I know that as soon as it becomes economically feasible for me, I'm gonna get that port installed. And then about a week later, they're gonna find me in my apartment, completely emaciated, with a fully charged iPod hooked up to my arm. "I just need a bit more battery," I'll tell myself. "I got enough money for food."

Yeah, that's basically just my insane fantasy that we'll be able to use the energy from our own bodies to power electronics. Mostly just because that sounds incredibly cool. And imagine what a great weight loss technique it would be! Just hook up like six laptops and wait until it starves you to death. Actually, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work like that at all, but a man can dream. And if that man's dreams just have to involve being able to bring a USB sandwich press everywhere so that he can make paninis whenever he damn well pleases, then so be it.

I'd also be interested in the opposite. You know, hooking a cable from yourself to the wall and recharging yourself. Creepy as hell? Absolutely. One step away from the Matrix? I'd imagine so. Still, it'd be cool to be able to stave off sleep by plugging yourself into a wall outlet. Aww screw it, let's just make everybody robots.

Our Crap is the Best Crap

I like that there's like a thousand different companies that claim they have the best treatment for acne. It shows that, really, we either have absolutely no idea what the best way to cure acne is, there are way too many different ways to do it, or it's different for everyone in the world. They all seem equally likely, and probably aren't mutually exclusive. But apparently, if you just tell people "No no no, THIS is the real bird feces you have to spread all over your face. WE'RE the only ones who have got it all figured out." There's probably one company that actually HAS got it all figured out, but everyone just makes up their statistics anyway, so nobody's ever going to figure out the difference.

It's the same sort of crap they do with weight loss "supplements" and diet pills. Every single one of the advertisements for weight loss "miracle cures" claim that while every other horrible scam won't help you at all, THIS horrible scam will finally help you lose weight without having to actually do any work. The Americna Dream, basically. Exercise is for squares.

And like I've said before, I don't even know why they advertise medicine on TV in the first place, especially prescription meds. No one actually cares about those commercials. Except Viagra. Everyone loves Viagra.

I Don't Want To Ride the Polar Express

I don't understand the whole epic struggle to make computer generated animation look like real life. Does anyone else see something horribly wrong with that? Isn't the whole point of animation to depict characters and situations that couldn't possibly exist in real life? So what's up with all these motion capture CG movies that are practically identical to reality except for all the cold, lifeless eyes? Tell me something, if you want to make it look like live action, why didn't you just SHOOT IT IN LIVE ACTION? Seems like it would probably save a hell of a lot of money. And you wouldn't have to make Tom Hanks wear that goofy-looking suit with all the ping-pong balls on it.

I wish they still had to build ridiculous-looking puppets to put monsters in live action movies. Doesn't make you kinda sad to know that if Gremlins was made today, Gizmo would've just been CG? That totally sucks. I don't usually bitch about this sort of thing, but it really is a lost art. Nobody ever builds elaborate sets in order to hide the fact that the little goblin guy is a robot. I like crap like that. I like those documentaries showing how they do it. Nowadawys, it could be about five seconds. "I did the whole thing on the computer." Lame.

And if anything, it'd give Universal Studios more robots for their terrifying tram rides. The world needs more of that.