The New Model Can Clean Rain Gutters Part 2

Alright, let's get down to mildly disrespectful business: Steve Jobs died today, and I have a few questions. No no no no, stupid questions. Not reasonable things like "What happens to the company now?" and "Who's going to replace him at whatever job he was supposedly doing?" No, you don't come here for rational viewpoints.* You come here to be made extremely uncomfortable and leave spam in my comments section, so let's get down to business.

First of all, how long do you think the media frenzy is going to last? Now, there's always a lot of insanity going on after a really famous person dies, and occasionally it gets a bit absurd. For me, the breaking point was with Micheal Jackson. Seriously, they went on and on and on about that for MONTHS. And everyone acted real surprised about it too, didn't they? "Oh wow, Micheal Jackson is gone I can't believe it who would've thought he was so healthy etc." And then they autopsied him and found at least twelve varieties of narcotics and a small family of woodland creatures. I didn't have a blog at the time, but if I did I probably would've stopped regular updates altogether and just replaced them with a rephrasing of "Oh my God shut up about Micheal Jackson already" every day.

What were we talking about? Right, Steve Jobs. Now, I'm personally more concerned about how much this is going to affect the "Mac vs. PC" war. Oh, I don't mean in sales. I'm talking about the greasy manchildren who think that arguing over that sort of thing matters and have never heard of the term "personal preference". What I'm waiting to see is when the super anti-Mac people start taking cheap shots. That's going to be a lot of fun. How much you want to bet that someone is going to post something really offensive on Twitter, and the geek media is going to pummel the crap out of them? I give it a day.

*Actually, according to my hit statistics, you don't come here at all. This is basically just me shouting into an empty room here.

The New Model Can Clean Rain Gutters

It annoyed me how Apple made such a big goddamn deal about the whole "voice recognition" thing during the new iPhone unveiling,* for a variety of reason. First of all, yeah, that's kinda not really a new thing. There have been phones for what, five years now that have had voice recognition? And yeah, they sucked too. Hell, there are video games from the nineties that had voice recognition. They were terrible, but we had them.

Oh, but this is going to be good voice recognition, right? Not the kind where you ask it to take you to a pie shop and you end up at the adult bookstore trying to find cream filling in the BDSM aisle? Well, there's a bit of a problem with that boys. It's a little secret that I'm gonna let you in on: Nobody actually wants to use voice recognition software. Why? Because you look like a goddamn fool when you do it. No one wants to be standing out in public, talking to their cell phone. Not ON their cell phone, TO their cell phone.

But they say you could use it to spell out texts! So you can text while you drive, so it isn't dangerous! Sure guys, but you still got to READ the text, don't you? And really, I'll believe that the software is good enough to recognize full sentences, and include various dialects and accents, when I see it. And even if it could, you might as well just be talking on the phone, because you're already removing half of what makes texting so convenient in the first place.

Wait, why do I care? I'm not gonna buy one.

*Oh man, current events discussion. We are through the looking glass.

First Whatever President

It's gonna be weird if Obama doesn't win the reelection, and not just for the "Seriously? We're back to the Republicans again so soon?" reason that you're thinking of. No, I just think that after the huge deal we all (rightfully) made about the FIRST EVER BLACK PRESIDENT, we might still just go back to electing more old white guys. That seems just...odd, even though now that that record has been broken, we're not just going to ALWAYS have black presidents. I don't know, it's gonna seem so boring if the next president isn't a minority. I mean come on, we could at least get a Jewish guy, right? Wouldn't that be kinda cool? Or how about an atheist president? That'd be novel, although I doubt the public's ready. Okay, can we at least get a chick now? We're kinda overdue on that one, aren't we? Come on guys, SWITZERLAND already had one of those. We need to get it together if we, as a country, are going to keep pretending to be forward and progressive.

You know what else? It'd totally suck to be the SECOND black president. You know, because nobody's going to be impressed THEN. It's like yeah, sure, you're the president. We kinda already did that. Looking to get to the moon now. He'd have to have something extra, just to still feel special about it. Hey, how about a midget president? That'd be fun, right? It probably wouldn't inspire a lot of confidence, but hey, it would make political humor almost as easy as it was when Bush was in office, AKA the easy comedy golden age.

Of course, you know we're all waiting for the first openly gay president. Then again, if we didn't get a black guy until like fifty years after the Civil Rights movement, it's probably going to be awhile. And then all the far-right Republicans will cry themselves to sleep every night. Screw 'em.

Speed of Light and All That

I like how "quantum physics" is starting to become a catch-all explanation for anything we don't understand, regardless of whether or not it explains anything. This is probably mostly due to the fact that anyone who understands quantum physics can begin to answer any sort of science question with "Well, it's because of quantum physics...", and everyone will just believe them, because hey, do YOU understand quantum physics? Of course you don't, you know why? Because quantum physics doesn't make any sense. It is so completely disconnected from any sort of day-to-day, rational thought that trying to explain any part of it will result in at least one bystander suffering from spontaneous combustion. Of the face. And nobody wants that, so we just accept that it solves every problem.

I hope that someday, it'll be like how "The gods did it" used to be a suitable explanation for anything. Just you wait, in a few years, every single question you ever had about the universe will somehow be explained through quantum physics.* Gravity? Quantum physics. UFOs? Quantum physics. Socks going missing in the laundry? Quantum goddamn physics. I am willing to mindlessly believe any field of science that says that objects can be in two places at once, and that things can behave differently depending on whether or not you're looking at them. Theoretical physicists are clearly dark sorcerers, and thus deserve our admiration and fear.

That sound you heard was someone's head catching fire.

*Or possibly dark matter.

There Is Probably No Appropriate Title For This

Here's something I probably shouldn't be talking about: American Indians.* Now, here's the thing that I find so strange: I totally get WHY we do things like allowing them to basically have no problem getting into any college they want to and the massive tax breaks and things like that, I just find it really strange. I'm not against it in any way, because yeah, America totally dicked over the Indians for centuries, but the thing is, I think it's weird to repay in kind for something that somebody's ancestors did. No wait, hear me out on this.

Okay, imagine you're a white guy. That shouldn't be too hard, especially if you already are one. Okay, so you're at your house, getting drunk or setting TVs on fire or whatever it is white people are supposed to do these days. Anyway, the police burst into your house and arrest you. When pressed for the reason, they explain that your ancestors from 200 years ago were slave owners, and you're being punished for it. That'd kinda suck, right? So yeah, the Indian thing is like that, but backwards. 200 years ago, THEIR ancestors got massively screwed, forced off their land, and killed, and now they get to benefit from it. That's cool that we're at least trying to make up for it and all, even though we never possibly could, but trying to do that by helping out people who they never even met? That's nice of them but...yeah. I actually don't really have a conclusion or anything. I don't want them to stop it, I think it's a good thing but...yeah. It's weird. Bring on the hate mail.

*I'm going to call them "Indians", because "Native Americans" is apparently not any better to them. And the whole "political correctness" thing is just so out of hand at this point that it's easier to just keep things as simple as we can.

I Always Preferred Doodle Jump Anyway

Why is everyone so obsessed with Angry Birds? Okay yes, it's a fun game, I'm glad we're all in agreement on that, but it's not THAT fun. It's got charm, sure, but there are what, millions of games on the App Store these days? I just don't see what makes it such a big deal. Now there's commercials and crap. Where the hell did this come from? It's not like it was even a very original game in the first place. By my last count, there are about 10.3 craptilion "fling the thing at the pile of physics objects to not stuff over" games out there, and Angry Birds certainly wasn't the first. It's a fun version of it, and it's well-presented, but it really isn't anything special. Am I missing something? I've played it. It's pretty alright. But apparently, it's better than Tetris.*

And on a semi-related note, what's with this crap where it costs a dollar for the iPhone, but is free-to-play on the Android Market? Did Rovio just decide that it's now officially making enough money from plushies and t-shirts that the actual GAME doesn't really matter much anymore? And if so, WHEN DID WE REACH THE POINT WHERE THAT WAS EVEN POSSIBLE? I'm not ANGRY about it, it's just...goddamn, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? It's just a stupid Flash game shoved onto a touch screen phone! EVERYONE STOP FREAKING OUT!

Anyway...

I think we've officially reached the point where it's allowed to blow over and be forgotten about. At least, until the inevitable release of Angry Birds 2. Oh shut up, you know it's coming.

*Yeah, Angry Birds has now officially outsold Tetris. EVERY VERSION OF TETRIS. Goddamn.

Burn the Witch

I think the "Obama is the antichrist" theory is my favorite conspiracy theory ever. It's rare that you get to combine the inane stupidity of conspiracy theorists with the balls-out insanity of religious fundamentalists. Come on guys, if Obama was the antichrist, do you really think he would've run as BARACK OBAMA? Hell no, anything that hurt his chances to become emperor of the universe wouldn't be something he'd probably be doing. The antichrist is supposed to have superpowers, right?* So if Obama was the antichrist, he probably could've gotten the Health Care bill passed a long time ago, right? After all, the Health Care bill is the work of the devil, right? If not, then Obama's deliberately not getting it passed, because he's the antichrist. It can't be both. QED, Obama is either not the antichrist, or fundamentalists need to start supporting Health Care.**

I prefer it when they just go around saying he's the devil. That's a lot easier, isn't it? Yeah, okay kids, Obama's the devil. Now why don't you go outside and play so we can work on grown-up things, okay? None of that crap where we're not entirely sure if the antichrist was even intended to be a thing by the writers of the Bible, or what exactly it is. The devil is the devil. He wants you to sin because he's the devil. Basically, the devil is a massive tool, and probably the most black and white villain of all time. If the Bible was a TV show, people would complain about the bad guy not having any motivation besides "because he's evil".

So yes, Obama got elected president because he's evil. Also, this has nothing to do with the fact that he's black. No sir. That would be racist, and surely Christian fundamentalists are anything but racist, right? Right? Guys?

*I am of course referring to what modern Christians THINK the antichrist is like, not what the Bible actually SAYS it's like, that being anyone who preached against Christianity, or possibly a giant monster. It's not really clear, actually.
**I bet nobody's ever written that sentence before.