Dihydrogen Monoxide

How did the word "chemical" end up becoming a buzzword for awful things happening to the environment and/or processed foods? "Oh, you shouldn't eat that, it's got chemicals in it." Well yes, I suppose it would have to, wouldn't it? You know, because I'm pretty sure you have to have water in your food. Unless you want to eat nothing but raisins and banana chips all the time, which may cause a bit of a problem considering the fact that banana chips taste like grilled cardboard sprinkled with the fine spice of misery. So yes, water is a chemical. Many, many things are chemicals. You can't avoid chemicals. Stop bitching about chemicals. Bah. Humbug.

But of course, I'm not trying to convince you not to avoid processed foods, and all that stuff. No, that mission is alright with me. It's the terminology that bugs me. Look guys, if you want to beat the evil, corporate science-y people at this sort of thing, at least actually know your science. I suck at science, and even I've got this one figured out. There's a reason it's called "chemistry" folks. And what's the first chemical formula most people learn? "H20". There ya goddamn go.

And I'd rather not get into it too much, because it's so absurd that I have trouble caring, but how about all of you New Agers shut up about "genetically modified food", okay? Because it's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. If you knew more about genetic engineering than scientists do, you wouldn't be lobbyists. You'd be scientists.

Terrifying New Technology

One should never predict the downfall of society, lest one end up looking like a massive tool that doesn't know what they're talking about. You know the types. The people who, back in the fifties and sixties, were convinced that rock and roll was the music of the devil and that every rock band on the planet was going to try to seduce all of their children to Satan. The people who blame all violence on television and movies because they don't want to confront the real problems. The people who are trying to do everything they can to make you terrified of society because...actually, I'm not entirely sure why. It's not like they're going to ever stop the relentless march of technology and ideas forward.

Of course, these people have been around for centuries. The Puritans, they were big on this sort of stuff. Salem Witch Trials. Apparently, pagans worship the devil. I didn't know that, but it's true. And then there were the folks in Ancient Greece who believed that the written word was terrible for society, because speaking was the one true way to relay information. Thousands of years later, we have the same type of people defending books and talking about the evils of...pretty much anything that isn't books. It's pretty hard to argue against reading. No one's going to vote for the guy who runs on the anti-reading platform. Well, maybe Texans.

These days, it's video games and the Internet. To the people that don't understand it, the Internet is a place exclusively for rapist, pedophiles, and pedophile rapists to come together and discuss kidnapping strategies. And yeah, that's totally happening. You know where else that's happening? The real world. Best to just keep your children inside and never let them speak to anyone but you. Otherwise, how are they gonna stay safe?

The Beautiful People

Why do TV shows and movies always portray the popular kids as the ones with a lot of money? Sure, you can totally use money to buy friends. I've seen it done. But being rich doesn't automatically make you popular, and it seems like writers are completely under that impression. I'm not exactly sure where that idea came from. Maybe there was one guy who went to a school where that was true, or he sprung from the earth at age twenty and just assumed that it was true, but it seems like everyone really liked that guy, because people sort of just started believing it.

There was a kid I knew in middle school that was absolutely loaded. Almost cartoonishly rich. This was a kid that owned five different guitars and couldn't play a single note on any of them. This was a kid that threw parties at his house on nearly every holiday and invited everyone just because he could. And you know what? Nobody ever came. You know why? Because the kid was a tool, and everyone hated him. See, there's sort of a stereotype of the popular kids being dickheads, and that's a bit of a misconception. The kids that everyone LIKES, the REAL popular kids, aren't jerks. Because they're likeable. What TV seems to THINK the popular kids are are just the ones that everyone knows. Everyone knows the jerk, that doesn't mean they like the jerk.

And yeah, sometimes everyone loves the dickhead, because sometimes people are stupid. And sometimes the nice kid gets the crap beaten out of him. And sometimes you have to do a lot of stupid things because you feel obligated to impress people you hate. This is called "high school", ladies and gentleman, and 90% of it is balls.

Pick Your Musical Battles

I don't like it when people talk about how they want to "kill" terrible pop stars, and how much they "hate" them. Guys, come on. I know the sound of Justin Bieber's music makes you want to dig your ears out with a tuning fork, but there are more important "downfall of society" things to worry about. And really, when you're screeching about how immature people are, and then talk about your vitriolic hatred for a teenager you've never met, you kinda sorta look like a massive tool.

And I think it's only fair that we give all these people a chance to not suck. Remember, Justin Timberlake used to be one of those terrible pop singers too. Then he stopped doing that, started being an actor, and we all found out he was really good at it, which was a disappointment to those of you who wanted him to keep sucking. And if you had "killed" Timberlake before then, he never would've played Sean Parker. Ya goddamn weirdo. Am I saying that Justin Bieber might turn out to actually have some sort of talent? It's possible. Not likely, but possible. It's far more likely that he'll fade into complete obscurity and drop off the face of the earth once he hits his late twenties, but it could happen. And then you'll all have to begrudgingly admit that he wasn't the devil after all.

All I'm saying is, hate the music, not the artist. I get it. Pop music sucks. But there really isn't a whole lot you can do about that, is there? That's just the way it's always going to be. If you don't like it, build a time machine and go back to a time when rock was commerically successful. And then get the crap kicked out of you by riot police.

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.