Daily Douchebaggery

Today I happened upon this picture, and I must nominate an unknown or unknowns for douchebaggery. Whoever the asshole or assholes were that thought it would be funny to cover a cat in duct tape and leave it wandering around should suffer the same fate. Such a prank is not only not funny, but cruel, unusual and downright mean. This may be how either fetishists or serial killers get started. If anyone in Philly knows the douchebag(s) that perpetrated this twisted act, they should seriously reconsider who they keep company with, and turn them in. Douchebag(s).

And while I'm at it, here's another douchebag throwing live frogs into boiling water on live television. This douchebag is named Glenn Beck. Is there no low he will stoop to in his insane efforts to expand his inane and ignorant fan-base? I guess not. Douche.

Sword Play

A few months ago, I posted about a couple of incidents where sword-wielding persons either inflicted harm on each other or robbed businesses with the unconventional weapon. The use of the sword seems to be becoming more widespread. A recent incident ended in the death of a man who broke into a college student's garage in Baltimore; another student in Texas attacked his roommates after finding a soda can in his room.
A quick Google search will bring up a dozen more stories from the past few years of this happening, with varied outcomes. Have guns and regular knives become passe? Or is this just a sign of the economic hardships plaguing our country's good citizens? Or are we just becoming just a little more psychotic every year? I'm definitely not crazy, but I have several friends that own samurai swords, katanas or other various menacing-looking weapons. As for me, I'll just stick to my baseball bats, knifes and asps, thank you very much.
I wonder what the Samurai would think of this. I really hope that crazy isn't contagious.

Rush Limbaugh's America

Some people live in a little world of their own creation, where logic, reason and reality don't necessarily have to jive wit their own perception. Normally, these people create cults or live in cabins deep in the woods and write manifestos; but sometimes they end up with radio shows.
Rush Limbaugh, never afraid to shoot his mouth off on the most sensitive of topics, has claimed that we need to re-institute one of our painful legacies of American history, the segregation of buses, as reported by Raw Story. This is in response to the beating of a white boy by two black students on a school bus, even though police have pretty much ruled out any racial motivation. Rush has again shown himself for who he is by uttering this string of words, a likely proud racist. Moving backward before the Civil Rights movement, when the white people were in power and told everyone what to do; where they could eat, ride, play, drink and urinate.
Rush is in support of this, so why stop there? Let's re-segregate everything; sports teams, restrooms, restaurants, all public transportation, drinking fountains and schools. Heaven forbid we mingle with other 'races' and gain acceptance of them, that will never do. I hear the KKK is doing well again, Rush, maybe you should throw your support behind the white hoods and call for lynchings of any black man who is caught with a white woman, eh? Send all the migrant workers back to the countries they came from, no matter if they have greed cards or work visas.
In Rush Limbaugh's America, we can all be free again to judge others by their race, age, gender, ethnicity and creeds. It would sure shore up that crumbling white Christian power-structure that O'Reilly is lamenting the loss of. Or we could go back even further, when we owned the blacks outright as slaves, and they had no rights, women either, and we pushed Native Americans off of their land into arid wastelands and only wealthy land-owning white males could vote, but we were still all created equally. That might work well for Limbaugh and his right-wing fanatical cohorts. I just don't know if I would want to live in Rush's America, I like my freedoms and equality with others.

Is a Public Option That Hard to Swallow?

A month ago, Obama declared that the public option was 'not essential' to the health care reform bill, mostly because the Repubs were fighting against it so heartily. Even a few 'blue dog' Democrats were against it. It seemed like the health care reformation would come without a government run insurance program. Fast forward to this week.
It seems that all of a sudden everyone but Dems are coming out in favor of a public option, including 73% of doctors, labor groups, and even Bill O'Reilly. Yeah, that shocked the hell out of me too.
So whether those in Congress fighting against it like it or not, it looks like the public option is back on the table. The insurance companies are going to fight it every way they can, and not because it means a poorer health coverage, but because they don't want the competition. Anything that will force them to be more honest, lose customers and profits, they are definitely going to be against. Do they really care that 45,000 people die every year because they don't have health insurance? Actually, yes, because that's 45,000 premiums they didn't collect before they canceled the policy for some obscure reason.
Insurance companies are not in the business to save lives, they are in it to profit off of healthy people as long as it is convenient for them, and dropping them as soon as possible when something crops up. I'm sure there a re a few smaller insurance companies that might actually give a damn about their customers, but I'm not aware of any. This fight against health care reform is getting ridiculous, and is led my stubborn conservative politicians who wont even bother to read bills they come out against. Maybe if someone tossed a hefty raise for Congress into the bill it might get passed in record time.
Until then, I just hope that I don't get seriously ill or injured in any way and cripple myself financially.

Good for youuu!

One of the big yuppie things to do during the 2000's has been to own a hybrid, be it the ridiculously popular Prius, Toyota and Honda's other attempts, luxury hybrids or good old American made POS hybrids like the Ford Escape. It is a feel-good purchase, letting the owner believe that they are helping not just their status, but the environment. Not so fast.
Those massive battery packs in your hybrid? Nickel-metal hydride batteries full of nickel. That cool electric motor? Full of rare, difficult to mine metals like neodymium. All that stuff has to be mined, shipped, processed and fashioned into parts, which are then reshipped to places like Japan where they are built, and then shipped overseas to America's voracious consumers looking to out-green their neighbor or just show up how great they are for pretending to care about the environment. Another study done by CNW Marketing Research has shown just how inefficient it is to produce and maintain hybrids as compared to other vehicles. Even SUV's and many luxury cars are cheaper to produce.
And what do you get for all that extra cash you lay down for that ego boost? Only better city driving fuel mileage and a heavier, less efficient car. The Prius is notorious for its lack of interior space and poor highway performance. Penn and Teller tackled this one on an episode of "Bullshit!". The 'Smug' episode of South Park also went to great pains trying to get the message across that hybrids are not the answer, but just a step in the right direction. Hybrids aren't necessarily a bad thing, they are a testing bed for new technologies and an indicator that as a society, we're becoming a little more than dimly aware of our effect on the planet.
More fuel efficient car are coming out all the time, and ultra-efficient diesel hybrids are starting to make their way across the Atlantic where they have been driven for years. Volkswagen had brought out their L1 two-seater concept car that gets 170 mpg with a 1 liter diesel-hybrid engine. It's 3-4 years away from seeing the roads of America, but car companies are definitely on the right track. At least in Europe.
Next time you see some smug prick in their Hybrid flying past you on the freeway, don't get mad, just remember that they paid a whole lot more and most likely aren't getting any benefit whatsoever from that over-sized accessory. Not until they can figure out how to run a vehicle off of douchebaggery, anyway.

Hollywood Hates the Free Market

If there is one thing that Hollywood hates more than anything, it's people enjoying their movies for free--or as close to it as possible. One of the foundations of a free-market is that consumers decide how much they are willing to pay for something, and only the companies that can provide that service/object for that price cost-effectively will stay in business.
For far too long, Hollywood has decided how much we will pay to watch the garbage that sweep out into the theaters and video stores across this country, and has reaped huge sums of money. Since the advent of faster, more widespread Internet service has become popular, their revenue has been dropping, since people suddenly realized that they don't have to pay to watch some trite piece of crap in a theater or rent the DVD for $4-6 bucks. Multiple suits and harassment of the ISP's by organizations such as the MPAA has done very little to stem the tide of recorded or ripped videos making their way into millions of hard drives around the world. And that wont change anytime soon. But something else is agitating Hollywood these days.
There are these soda-machine sized boxes springing up everywhere around the country, in WalMart's, gas stations and fast-food joints. From them, you can rent a DVD for about a dollar a night, no questions asked. There's no one to ask them, the machines simply vend your disk and and transmit your cash into some large bank account somewhere. The most popular and easy to find is RedBox. McDonalds jumped on the RedBox wagon big time, even giving away free rentals with meals. They are simple, convenient, and most of all, cheap. Movie studios do not like this.
RedBox has proven to Hollywood that consumers are tired of getting raped every time they go to the theater, paying upwards of ten dollars, per person, to sit through two hours of nonsense, when they can just do it at home for a buck and change for the whole family. A weak economy and high unemployment rate have added to the problem, people are diverting their shrinking entertainment funds to cheaper sources. Mint.com has a great visual breakdown of the comparison between the most popular video rental chains. Basically, they're kicking some major ass, as I'm sure any customers of the machines are well-aware, the lines get annoyingly long, especially when that damn guy has no idea what he wants to rent. Asshole, they're the same ones in there no matter what screen you look at!
Anyway, Hollywood hates RedBox. So much so that they are trying to, and succeeding in, getting video stores and unions in on the game, claiming they're running ma and pa video stores out of business. Bullshit, Hollywood and and Blockbuster ran most of them out within the past few decades. Times are changing, and so are the ways we watch movies. Even NetFlix, although not demonized by Hollywood quite so much as the little video kiosks, are still on their shitlist, stymieing them whenever they can. Hollywood is not ready to change, and will fight, like the music recording industry, until they have to change to stay viable.
Here's a deal I'll make with you, Hollywood: how about you start making some better movies, something worth my time and money to watch, and I'll start going back to the theater again. Deal? Want me and millions of other Americans back in your sticky, overpriced seats? Stop pumping out the garbage and actually take some pride in what you do. Until then, I'll be at the 'Box more often than not.

WTF??

Dinner with Sarah Palin. I don't think I need to say anymore, but I will anyway. This sounds like one of the most bizarre things to spend your money on, right up there with cat-feces coffee and gold-flavored ice cream. Could you get both of those at the dinner? The dinner comes with more than a price tag, an extensive background check and other stipulations are added at no cost! No more than four hours, could be less!
Now, if I just happened to have several thousand dollars just taking up space in my bank account, I would consider bidding purely out of morbid curiosity. I doubt I would pass the 'extensive background check,' possibly due to content on this blog. However, it's for a good cause (100% of proceeds?), and if I did hypothetically attain this dinner, the one question I would want answered is this: Are you for real? Seriously.
As of this posting, the bid stands at $39,702.99.

Daily Douchebaggery

Normally, if you were to rob someone, never having that person see you again would be ideal. Home invasion robbery is already enough of a douchebag activity, but to return two hours later like this Columbus, Ohio douchebag did, only to attempt to ask out the victim.
How does one go about that? "Hi, you might not remember me, but I was just here two hours ago with some buds, we trashed your place and took your things, and roughed you up a little bit. I was curious if maybe you'd like to go try that new Italian place on 1st with me."
Anyway, this guy had either some serious balls, a complete lack of common sense, or just such a deluded confidence in his own charm that he thought this would be a good idea. Of course, she recognized him and he ended up in jail, like all thieving douchebags should. And on top of it, he's probably a complete dumbass. Way to go, Stephfon.

Next: Identification Papers, Armbands and Relocation Camps

When you hear of a government coming out against its citizens intermarrying with certain groups, you might think of pre-1900's America, or maybe 1935 Germany, when the Nazi regime banned all marriages to Jews and nullified any current ones. But, no, this is from a modern democratic country, one supported both monetarily and ideologically by America. This country is, of course, Israel, who recently pushed their support behind a policy to report any Jew marrying a non-Jew, or 'in danger' of doing so. It is already forbidden to do so in the country, and only outside intermarriages are recognized. The purpose for this policy may be an effort to keep their bloodlines clean, a startlingly familiar tone coming from a certain piece of history called the Holocaust. The Israeli government's open disdain for the Palestinians is already well known, but now they are trying to push for a worldwide abhorrence of anyone marrying outside their faith. This falls right in line with some Nazi beliefs, and is frightening to me. I'm already pissed that millions of our taxpayer dollars are sent over there every year so they can buy more guns, jets and badass tanks with which they oppress the Palestinians. And kill them by the dozens. So I'm guessing the next step will be to move them out of Gaza and into some sort of internment camps in the desert, and tattoo numbers on them, but just to keep track. And those big ovens? They're just for flatbread.

Covert Geek Weekend

I spent the weekend in Seattle, attending the Penny Arcade Expo at the behest of my significant other, and driven by my desire to visit this part of the country. Seattle lived up to its reputation as gloomy and wet, and PAX came through with a wild assortment of one of the nation's (and some of the world's) most poorly understood and highly exploited demographics: the Gamer.
Those of you familiar with the 'scene' may already know what I'm talking about, as I mixed with the pale, portly and petulant segment of our society that only seems to get a face when comic-book-store-type stereotypes are used on TV or when some psychopath kid shoots up a school and someone shoves his copy of GTA under the media's nose.
I've never been an avid gamer myself, I'm more what you might call a casual gamer. It is more of a social event for me, unless I get some goal in mind, like trying to beat Halo II alone--on legendary. Still working on that, and if you have ever tried, you know why. I can pretend to play with the veterans, but my skills are always lacking, particularly in anything head-to-head.
There are as many types of gamers as there are games, with various levels of commitment to the way of life. That IS what it is, a way of life. The hardcore gamer can give you a rundown of his gaming experience starting with the first time he/she picked up a controller or grabbed a joystick. They usually immerse themselves into gaming, it is their life's work. Clothes, friends, conversation, they all revolve around gaming. They understand why it's still okay to play Pokemon when you are in your thirties. And don't get them started on console vs. PC gaming.
During this convention, I constantly made snide comments and wisecracks about the other attendees, much to the annoyance of the gf. Being the smartass that I am, it's hard not to say something when you see a 250 lb Princess Peach. Or the six-four, 150 lb guy ogling the booth models. And can I really be blamed when I wonder out loud who is manning the West's comic-book stores, drive-thru's and IT help lines?
I did manage to somehow fit in despite my relative physical fitness, relationship status and inability to finish most games. My scruffy beard and Threadless t-shirts definitely helped. Since Due to my ability to infiltrate, I was able to observe the various geeks and gamers in as close to their natural habitat as you can get without spooking them. Black clothes, white skin, immaturity and acne abounded, with a pervasive awe and general lack of concern for personal hygiene. Seriously, one guy smelled like cat food. However, all these people had managed to leave their basements across the nation and congregate in one place, all drawn by their passion for gaming. The lines to test some of the most anticipated games of the year never abated, and the wait was up to one and a half hours just for a few minutes of gameplay.
I must had it to these people, they really do enjoy what they do, which is hard to say for most people. They may lack in areas such as refined social skills and ability to play actual sports, but they could sure kick your ass in the digital version, and make jokes at the expense of your sexuality and your mother while doing it. I even managed to enjoy myself, although I really didn't get to play anything but Plants vs. Zombies, a relatively simple game.
The market that gamers represent is huge, and gets bigger every year. People will eventually quit making fun of or worrying about people that play way too many video games, as they realize the power that they wield as a consumer and social group. No longer is a gamer a kid who wastes quarters on Pac-Man, but someone who invests hundreds of dollars yearly into something they are passionate about, even to the extent of dressing up as characters in games, something called costume-play or cosplay, and it has nothing to do with Halloween. It's a type of commitment that goes beyond Star Wars/Trek geeks. Way beyond.
Gamers are becoming more omnipresent, powerful and mainstream, and for a weekend, I was one.

Evil See, Evil-doer

As you may know, the Bush Admin. was very enthusiastic about 'enhanced interrogation.' No, it isn't torture, just like death isn't an 'enhanced coma.' Right. Well, the chattering about these issues has been getting loud again, mostly due to the ACLU pushing the CIA to release documents in its quest for the truth on the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects. Claiming that such documents would harm national security, they are openly violating the Freedom of Information Act. But, hey, if they told us, they'd have to kill us, right?
McCain gets another gold star for sticking up for Americans who believe that torture isn't cool, and another for bashing Cheney's assertions that it is. McCain, like many others, understands that torture never provides reliable information, like this former military interrogator openly admits. (Also, watch Shepard Smith get seriously pissed on the matter.) Just try explaining this to any high-level Repub trying to cover their ass on a stance that was even argued against by their White Messiah Reagan. Liz Cheney doesn't think we did anything wrong torturing innocent men, either.
The evidence shows that, if anything, torturing has only prolonged these two wars and given the terrorists more ammunition for recruitment. No information has been gleaned that could have stopped an attack. And the opposition are quite fond of torture and go after it with a gleeful abandon. Anyone who sports one of these or any similar bumper sticker should spend a couple minutes being waterboarded. (And whoever designed that page should be sent to Gitmo.) If we continue to torture prisoners for the slight chance we may be able to get some bit of useful information, then we are no better than the evildoer's themselves.