However I'm not disappointed in my president, for a change. The man has been president for a little over three weeks now, and in that time he's done many of the things he said he would do, Most notably setting in motion the process to shut down Guantanamo bay, directing all intelligence agencies to follow the Army's field manual guidelines as to the treatment of prisoners (as in, no more hooking up car batteries to some dude's nipples or filling his lungs with water then saving him half a second before he dies,) and, for the love of God, instituting a timeline to finally end major combat operations in fucking Iraq. These three things already put Obama head and shoulders over the Bush thieves that have been eating away at our country for the last eight years. True he's done some things that I do not agree with, for instance maintaining the practice of extraordinary rendition, scaling up the conflict in Afghanistan, and allowing bombing raids into Pakistan. But you take the good with the bad. It's a misconception that all Iraq war protesters are also against the Afghan war too. violent retaliation is perfectly justified against Al Queda, in fact if we would have concentrated on that instead of the illegal Iraq war it would probably be over with by now.
Why I am disappointed is because the Democrats are still so fucking spineless, AGAIN. For the last three months or so we've all been talking about Obama's stimulus package. It's been headline news 24/7 since he won the election. It seemed to me that the news media would routinely bring it back during the waning weeks of the Bush administration, as if to give the people something to hope for between news of continuous layoffs and shutdowns - "Just sit tight and wait for Obama to get in there, and this stimulus package will be coming our way." Obama it seemed then went out of his way to get the Republicans on board. But when it came down to it the vote in the house was dead split along party lines. Not one Republican voted for it. We had almost the same in the senate, with a mere 3 of the opposing party on board. This is after the package was cut back by 100 billion - which was taken from the education and environmental portions of the bill I might add. We didn't see any cuts from the corporate fucking tax breaks section.
The major news media of course is just blind to all this as always. While the economy is melting down and thousands upon thousands of us are loosing our jobs those shitheads are busy blabbering about a swimmer guy who got busted smoking weed and some stupid bitch who had eight stupid babies at the same time. Yeah that's some real news there.
This sounds evil and dastardly, but the truth is the Democrats have always been the Junior party. Even though the Repubs got trounced in the last election they still continue to set the Agenda while the Democrats play defense. That's just how it works in Washington. This is going to be a pattern that we'll see a lot in the next four years. The democratic majority in the House is large enough that every Republican can safely boycott every bill that goes by and not have to worry about looking bad. In the Senate small concessions will be made to get the one or two Republicans on board that are needed to get anything passed. Things may change during the mid term elections but don't count on it. Truth be told it's probably better this way. One party shouldn't have too much power anyway, even if it's the people you voted for.
What's really disappointing me though is how fast and hard the right wing pundit assholes have made a 180 - two months ago they were defending the flag, mom, and apple pie, now they're calling for Revolution. Right wing radio is still reeling from the defeat last November and their response has been to froth at the mouth. The hate machine is turned on higher than ever, trying to blame Obama for all of Bush's failures - the one I really love is the line that the stock market tanking and the banks falling apart is somehow the result of Obama winning the election and not the culture of corruption we've allowed to fester for the last decade. Yeah, ok. I suppose he started the wars too, huh?
You notice that none of these people ever call him "President Obama." Limbaugh calls Obama "the Messiah." Mocica Crowly calls him "Da Bama." If they are forced to actually use his name they always make sure to include the "Hussein." It's Almost like they just can't bring themselves to say "President," like that would be admitting defeat. It's also a nice way of dehumanizing someone. A good drinking game (if you're ever home at 11am and feel like boozing it) is to switch back and forth between clearchannel stations and see how many demeaning nicknames you can spot.
This is all really funny, because even though they're all screaming crazy like wild animals about how much Obama is going to destroy the world their arguments (as always) hold very very very little substance. Instead of attacking any particular policy too directly, like say the stimulus package (probably because the Republicans aren't stupid and know we actually do need it,) they tend to focus on his "character," which so far has been impeccable. But that doesn't stop them from twisting it around - now the fact that Obama can like, actually speak and make sense on TV is turned around and he's a "demagogue." It's that same old line from last summer when they kept calling him a "Celebrity." Ann Coulter even attacked the first lady, calling her a "saint." What the fuck kind of an insult is "saint?" What does that mean, exactly? Is she too GOOD? Then, when Obama decided to include his middle name during his swearing in, Coulter actually demanded an APOLOGY from everyone. Are you fucking kidding me?
It doesn't take an earth shattering leap of logic to see that these names are all a thinly veiled substitute for "NIGGER." You know I'm right. That's why only redneck hillbilly truck drivers listen to this garbage in the first place. Did we call Bush names like this? Clinton? Not really, not to the same extent. It's a dehumanizing tactic so we'll instantly turn against anything he might actually be doing. Conservative media people have always been quick to point out how namecalling is a "liberal" tactic while always engaging in a healthy amount of the practice themselves. Then some half-cooked wackjob shows up at a Church play and starts gunning down "liberals." Well when you're fed a diet of hate speech 24-7 from fat drug addicted slimebags what the hell do you think is gonna happen?
You know, clear channel laid off 1,850 people in January. This article says the new parent company is looking to cut about $400 million in costs. Hey, guess who got a $400 million dollar contract with Clear Channel last year? Looks like the wrong fat got trimmed. But people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Micheal Savage, etc all, they do not see the connection between their own ridiculously over bloated salaries and waves upon waves of blue collar layoffs. That's why you don't hear these assholes saying much about how the banks just ripped us off for $350 billion last October. The analogy is just a little to close to home for these people. To them this is survival of the fittest. To them, it's YOUR fault that you have the shitty job you have, it's YOUR fault your job doesn't pay enough to have health insurance, or has shitty benefits so your CEO can make 800 times what you make. They say it's YOUR fault if your job doesn't have benefits at all (like say, mine) and it's YOUR fault if your job gets shipped to India so they can pay some poor schmo 5% of what they used to pay you. It's also your fault if your whole company goes under because some pencil necked bean counter was cookin' the books through off shore shell companies so the CEO can snort coke off a hooker's ass during a company trip to Thailand. They don't give a fuck, because each time something goes wrong they get to write another book about how it's all the Black President's fault.
These people do not care about you. The line we keep hearing from them is we should just cut taxes down to zero and shrink the government down to nothing, and somehow this will magically create a super duper unstoppable economy and everyone will get rich. Well besides the fact that such a notion is complete bullshit - I mean, what the fuck have we been doing for the last 8 years - but it's doubly ironic since the person they bent over backwards for over the last 8 years is the one who got us into this fucking mess in the first place. Remember the Bush $1 trillion dollar tax cut, and how that was supposed to make us all happy and wealthy? Well I don't know about you, but the $1200 I got spread out over 8 years kinda disappeared pretty quick. Kinda wish we had that Trillion dollars now, huh? We were supposed to be farting through silk by this time. Remember how back in 2002 they wanted to put Social Security into the stock market? Arent'cha glad that shit didn't happen? What other bad ideas do you right wing shitmonkeys have for us now? Invest Medicare into Jackalope farms and lunar cheese mines? Put our college funds into furry trout fisheries? Any other schemes that will let the top 1% rip off even more wealth?Where the fuck is your Free Market now?
It's truly disgusting when the hatemongers and the carpetbaggers get to run free while the good people who keep our world together are trodden down. The fact is these people want us to fail, becasue they're afraid the "change" everyone keeps talking about might be us changing the channel.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Elections Make You Stupid
It's that time again. Time for you to turn off Halo 3, get up off your fat behind, put down the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and slog your disgusting self down to the school house to choose which thieving slimebag is going to rob us blind for the next four years. I love democracy.
Something I've noticed is that the reduction of the intelligence quotient of hardcore party supporters is directly related to the distance of election day. As that date grows closer people always tend to get stupider, regardless of their political affiliation. But I'm sure I'm not alone when I say as far as "stupid" goes, this election takes the cake.
I make no secret of the fact that I'm a lefty tree hugging pinko liberal, in fact I rather enjoy the label. But just becasue I'm a registered Democrat does not mean I just blindly follow and do what I'm told. Seems to me that liberals in general tend to hold their own people to a higher standard than Conservatives. We actually do things like protest against our own party, unlike the conservatives, who close their ears and vote for whatever sleazebucket that happens to have the big "R" next to their name. Not only that, but it seems that the closer the election gets, the more rediculous the claims conservatives tend to make about the other party.
It's standard procedure in American politics to make up total bullshit about your opponent. The lies and rumors don't actually convince anyone of who to vote for, people usually make up their minds in this regard far in advance of the election. What they do is allow people to justify in their minds as to why they're voting for someone they don't like by demonizing the other person. So you've already decided to vote for candidate A even though he's been busted for fraud and embezzlement, so you bullshit yourself into thinking it's ok by believing some total crap rumor that candidate B is a cannibal who eats babies. Whoever can get more people to bullshit themselves wins the election, that's how these things work.
But this time, oh man... we've entered fantasy land a long time ago. Since we now (thankfully) live in an environment where societal pressures make it taboo to not vote for someone becasue of their race (openly that is,) instead the slime attacks against Obama have taken on a very surreal xenophobic flavor. Here's a few things I've noticed:
- First and foremost, we have the "Obama is a closet Muslim" rumor. In forums and such, people always include his middle name when mentioning him. So it's always "Barrack HUSSIEN Obama," just to reinforce the idea that sometime in ancient fucking history, one of his ancestors might have worshiped the same God as you but in a funny dress five times a day.
- Of course, even though he's a Muslim, that doesn't stop him from having an radical Christian preacher that spouts anti-American things. Guess he's not much of a Muslim in the first place, huh?
By the way, we don't see much in the news about McCain's antisemite preachers, or Sarah Palin's speaking-in-tongues, God-wants-that-oil religious beliefs, do we? I mean we would, if the fucking McCain/Palin campaign would let the newsmedia actually talk to their supporters. So I guess fundamentalism in government is OK as long as it's YOUR fundamentalism?
- We have the "Obama's birth certificate is fake" rumor, even though it's been proved phony people keep bringing it back. I mean come on, does anyone really think the DNC would choose someone who isn't a citizen? Please.
- How about the "Obama cocaine and Gay sex" rumor? So if one jackass on Youtube makes a video, then it's automatically true? Get the fuck out of here.
- Or maybe the "Terrorist Fist Bump" fiasco. Yeah, that's really fair and balanced. What a fucking joke.
- Speaking of Terrorists, what about the "Obama is best buddies with convicted terrorist William C. Ayers" line? Oh yeah, he's really a terrorist. I mean, he was out there with Ayers bombing buildings when he was eight years old. Too bad Ayers is a respected tenured professor and a force in Illinois politics.
This is like saying, oh... I don't know... Bush is a Terrorist becasue he has business ties to the Bin Laden family.
My favorite rumor by far however is the "Obama is the Anti-Christ" line. So now not only are we voting for a secret-cocaine-snorting-radical-Christian except-he's-really-a-Muslim-gay-terrorist, he's also the spawn of Satan himself. Notice how all these dumbasses call him "The Messiah?" Wanna know why they do that? First off, becasue Rush Limbaugh calls him that. No link needed for that, just hit google. Second, it's to capitalize on the anti-Christ figure in Tim Lahay's Left Behind novels. Wow. Just, wow. You would think there couldn't possibly be anyone so fucking stupid as to actually pick this up, but you'd be wrong. Goddamn conservatives eat this shit up.
Yet despite all of these rediculous rumors, as of this writing (10/7/08) Obama is wiping the fucking walls with McCain. In some battleground states some of the polls put him ten or more points ahead. Seems like people are smarter than the GOP whisper campaigns are giving them credit for. One gets the feeling that these heaping helpings of sleaze are starting to backfire, especially when people like your own vice presidential candidate start repeating shit proved to be false nearly a year ago.
Sarah Palin... good gravy covered shitballs, where to start with that woman. I could go into all of the reasons why such a person is so completely not qualified to run our country, but I won't. What I will do is the one thing that other people will not do: Attack her becasue of her religion. That's right, the rest of the lefties are too PC to take this route. But since I'm on a blog with a readership that can be counted on one hand, I will do it for them.
Her religion is the reason she is not qualified to run the country. She's from the far, far right evangelical field. These are the kind of people that believe that any day now the trumpets will sound and suddenly they'll all disappear, leaving just a bundle of clothes behind (I've always thought it funny that heaven is supposed to be one big nudist colony.) She goes to a church that tries to "cure" gay people. She personally believes that Alaska itself will play some pivotal role in the end times.
Because people of her ilk are standing around, waiting for the world to end, that completely justifies in their mind any kind of pollution that commercial exploitation of our natural resources might entail. That's why Sarah Palin doesn't believe in Global warming and why she likes to fly around and shooting wolves and Polar bears from helicopters - becasue according to her, God is going to come back and put everything the way it was, so might as well use it in the meantime. Guess it doesn't matter that there's thousands of three legged frogs running around, or a continent sized Sargasso sea of plastic fucking bottles floating around in the Pacific. God will take care of all that, so go ahead and shoot those endangered red footed falcons. He'll make more when he gets here.
Not that any of these people would even understand the severe environmental damage we're facing, becasue that takes like, an understanding of science where dinosaurs didn't coexist with mankind 4000 years ago.
Most evangelicals blissfully ignore the corruption, fundamentalists, and anti-environment angles and focus on morality. True, she seems on the surface to practice what she preaches, like making her daughter marry the loser who knocked her up. But this shotgun wedding bescumbles the fact that Palin's unwed teenage daughter is having a baby in the first place. To us, the loony lefty liberals, teenage sex is not a big deal. But Palin and her ilk come from the Abstinence only crowd.
So what, may I ask, is her daughter, who by her own beliefs supposed to be celibate, doing with a bun in the oven in the first place? Sounds to me that such people practice that valued American tradition of saying one thing and doing another? Could it be that somebody is full of shit?
What else are these people lying to us about? Here's one - that everybody is responsible for their own financial situation. You know, the ol' "You're poor becasue it's your own fault" routine. This is the excuse they give us to cut funding to things like health clinics, welfare, and education for ghetto children. It's sprung out of some bullshit 13th century belief that God himself determines who is rich and who is poor based on faith alone. You hear that term "Wealth Redistribution" being thrown around, like it's some kind of South African land grab to provide people with food stamps.
Too bad when it really comes down to it such people don't seem to give a shit about financial responsibility, not when it comes to redistributing seven hundred billion of our dollars UPWARDS to the rich people who ripped us all off in the first place. Where's your fucking "fiscal Responsibility" talk now, huh? Never mind the fact that this republican administration took the only projected surplus in the last 40 years and turned it into the largest deficit in fucking American history. Guess that fiscally conservative shit doesn't matter when it comes to cutting a trillion tax dollars for the rich people, huh? Yet these same people turn around and accuse of of creating a "nanny state." It blows my mind.
That I think is the final mark against these people. Look at how fucked up our country is, with only 8 years of an evangelical in the white house. Do we truly want another one in charge, this one even more brainless than the last? Why is it people who believe in this religion are always so soulless? Regardless of what happens, The next president is going to face incredible challenges. It's a lose-lose situation for us: if McCain wins we spiral further downward into neocon oblivion, if Obama wins they just blame all the shit that goes wrong on him.
Years ago, when it started to look like Gore lost the election under shady circumstances, we, the progressive left, told you people this shit would happen to our county,but you dumbasses were too busy waving yellow flags around to notice. Now look what happened.
Good job assholes.
Something I've noticed is that the reduction of the intelligence quotient of hardcore party supporters is directly related to the distance of election day. As that date grows closer people always tend to get stupider, regardless of their political affiliation. But I'm sure I'm not alone when I say as far as "stupid" goes, this election takes the cake.
I make no secret of the fact that I'm a lefty tree hugging pinko liberal, in fact I rather enjoy the label. But just becasue I'm a registered Democrat does not mean I just blindly follow and do what I'm told. Seems to me that liberals in general tend to hold their own people to a higher standard than Conservatives. We actually do things like protest against our own party, unlike the conservatives, who close their ears and vote for whatever sleazebucket that happens to have the big "R" next to their name. Not only that, but it seems that the closer the election gets, the more rediculous the claims conservatives tend to make about the other party.
It's standard procedure in American politics to make up total bullshit about your opponent. The lies and rumors don't actually convince anyone of who to vote for, people usually make up their minds in this regard far in advance of the election. What they do is allow people to justify in their minds as to why they're voting for someone they don't like by demonizing the other person. So you've already decided to vote for candidate A even though he's been busted for fraud and embezzlement, so you bullshit yourself into thinking it's ok by believing some total crap rumor that candidate B is a cannibal who eats babies. Whoever can get more people to bullshit themselves wins the election, that's how these things work.
But this time, oh man... we've entered fantasy land a long time ago. Since we now (thankfully) live in an environment where societal pressures make it taboo to not vote for someone becasue of their race (openly that is,) instead the slime attacks against Obama have taken on a very surreal xenophobic flavor. Here's a few things I've noticed:
- First and foremost, we have the "Obama is a closet Muslim" rumor. In forums and such, people always include his middle name when mentioning him. So it's always "Barrack HUSSIEN Obama," just to reinforce the idea that sometime in ancient fucking history, one of his ancestors might have worshiped the same God as you but in a funny dress five times a day.
- Of course, even though he's a Muslim, that doesn't stop him from having an radical Christian preacher that spouts anti-American things. Guess he's not much of a Muslim in the first place, huh?
By the way, we don't see much in the news about McCain's antisemite preachers, or Sarah Palin's speaking-in-tongues, God-wants-that-oil religious beliefs, do we? I mean we would, if the fucking McCain/Palin campaign would let the newsmedia actually talk to their supporters. So I guess fundamentalism in government is OK as long as it's YOUR fundamentalism?
- We have the "Obama's birth certificate is fake" rumor, even though it's been proved phony people keep bringing it back. I mean come on, does anyone really think the DNC would choose someone who isn't a citizen? Please.
- How about the "Obama cocaine and Gay sex" rumor? So if one jackass on Youtube makes a video, then it's automatically true? Get the fuck out of here.
- Or maybe the "Terrorist Fist Bump" fiasco. Yeah, that's really fair and balanced. What a fucking joke.
- Speaking of Terrorists, what about the "Obama is best buddies with convicted terrorist William C. Ayers" line? Oh yeah, he's really a terrorist. I mean, he was out there with Ayers bombing buildings when he was eight years old. Too bad Ayers is a respected tenured professor and a force in Illinois politics.
This is like saying, oh... I don't know... Bush is a Terrorist becasue he has business ties to the Bin Laden family.
My favorite rumor by far however is the "Obama is the Anti-Christ" line. So now not only are we voting for a secret-cocaine-snorting-radical-Christian except-he's-really-a-Muslim-gay-terrorist, he's also the spawn of Satan himself. Notice how all these dumbasses call him "The Messiah?" Wanna know why they do that? First off, becasue Rush Limbaugh calls him that. No link needed for that, just hit google. Second, it's to capitalize on the anti-Christ figure in Tim Lahay's Left Behind novels. Wow. Just, wow. You would think there couldn't possibly be anyone so fucking stupid as to actually pick this up, but you'd be wrong. Goddamn conservatives eat this shit up.
Yet despite all of these rediculous rumors, as of this writing (10/7/08) Obama is wiping the fucking walls with McCain. In some battleground states some of the polls put him ten or more points ahead. Seems like people are smarter than the GOP whisper campaigns are giving them credit for. One gets the feeling that these heaping helpings of sleaze are starting to backfire, especially when people like your own vice presidential candidate start repeating shit proved to be false nearly a year ago.
Sarah Palin... good gravy covered shitballs, where to start with that woman. I could go into all of the reasons why such a person is so completely not qualified to run our country, but I won't. What I will do is the one thing that other people will not do: Attack her becasue of her religion. That's right, the rest of the lefties are too PC to take this route. But since I'm on a blog with a readership that can be counted on one hand, I will do it for them.
Her religion is the reason she is not qualified to run the country. She's from the far, far right evangelical field. These are the kind of people that believe that any day now the trumpets will sound and suddenly they'll all disappear, leaving just a bundle of clothes behind (I've always thought it funny that heaven is supposed to be one big nudist colony.) She goes to a church that tries to "cure" gay people. She personally believes that Alaska itself will play some pivotal role in the end times.
Because people of her ilk are standing around, waiting for the world to end, that completely justifies in their mind any kind of pollution that commercial exploitation of our natural resources might entail. That's why Sarah Palin doesn't believe in Global warming and why she likes to fly around and shooting wolves and Polar bears from helicopters - becasue according to her, God is going to come back and put everything the way it was, so might as well use it in the meantime. Guess it doesn't matter that there's thousands of three legged frogs running around, or a continent sized Sargasso sea of plastic fucking bottles floating around in the Pacific. God will take care of all that, so go ahead and shoot those endangered red footed falcons. He'll make more when he gets here.
Not that any of these people would even understand the severe environmental damage we're facing, becasue that takes like, an understanding of science where dinosaurs didn't coexist with mankind 4000 years ago.
Most evangelicals blissfully ignore the corruption, fundamentalists, and anti-environment angles and focus on morality. True, she seems on the surface to practice what she preaches, like making her daughter marry the loser who knocked her up. But this shotgun wedding bescumbles the fact that Palin's unwed teenage daughter is having a baby in the first place. To us, the loony lefty liberals, teenage sex is not a big deal. But Palin and her ilk come from the Abstinence only crowd.
So what, may I ask, is her daughter, who by her own beliefs supposed to be celibate, doing with a bun in the oven in the first place? Sounds to me that such people practice that valued American tradition of saying one thing and doing another? Could it be that somebody is full of shit?
What else are these people lying to us about? Here's one - that everybody is responsible for their own financial situation. You know, the ol' "You're poor becasue it's your own fault" routine. This is the excuse they give us to cut funding to things like health clinics, welfare, and education for ghetto children. It's sprung out of some bullshit 13th century belief that God himself determines who is rich and who is poor based on faith alone. You hear that term "Wealth Redistribution" being thrown around, like it's some kind of South African land grab to provide people with food stamps.
Too bad when it really comes down to it such people don't seem to give a shit about financial responsibility, not when it comes to redistributing seven hundred billion of our dollars UPWARDS to the rich people who ripped us all off in the first place. Where's your fucking "fiscal Responsibility" talk now, huh? Never mind the fact that this republican administration took the only projected surplus in the last 40 years and turned it into the largest deficit in fucking American history. Guess that fiscally conservative shit doesn't matter when it comes to cutting a trillion tax dollars for the rich people, huh? Yet these same people turn around and accuse of of creating a "nanny state." It blows my mind.
That I think is the final mark against these people. Look at how fucked up our country is, with only 8 years of an evangelical in the white house. Do we truly want another one in charge, this one even more brainless than the last? Why is it people who believe in this religion are always so soulless? Regardless of what happens, The next president is going to face incredible challenges. It's a lose-lose situation for us: if McCain wins we spiral further downward into neocon oblivion, if Obama wins they just blame all the shit that goes wrong on him.
Years ago, when it started to look like Gore lost the election under shady circumstances, we, the progressive left, told you people this shit would happen to our county,but you dumbasses were too busy waving yellow flags around to notice. Now look what happened.
Good job assholes.
Monday, September 29, 2008
The State of the Economy
An understatement, I think.
777 points in one day. Holy fucking shit.
Remember how a few years ago Bush inc. wanted to put Social Security into the stock market? Glad that didn't happen now, arentcha?
The general consensus now among the right wing boards I go to make fun of people at is this credit crisis is the fault of...
.... get this....
...BLACK PEOPLE!
Yup, the right wing nutbags out there are trying to blame this whole thing on BLACK PEOPLE, and also the Democrats (of course,) for forcing banks to lend money to black people in order to buy homes. News stories like this (linky) are being thrown around as "proof" this whole financial crisis is in fact, once again, Bill Clinton's fault.
Too bad the truth is like the exact opposite.
Please make sure to click that link and read through it, and please please please please, do not believe anything they tell you about what's going on now. The news nowadays just becomes more increasingly surreal as the days go on. It's embarrassing how far our country has fallen.
In the meantime, now is a good time to pay off those credit cards, becasue belts are gonna get tightened all around.
Fucking Republicans...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Ten Things I Fucking Hate Part 11
1) Programs that change your preferences without asking you - For instance, how Itunes, wmp, or most other media players automatically assume you want to use them to play all your media files. Fuck Itunes.
2) People who use lolspeak outside of video games: Lolspeak, L337 sp33k, "gamer talk," or whatever, is generally used inside of multiplayer games where you have to type in order to communicate quickly. Used in the proper environment (i.e. in game,) it's perfectly acceptable. But outside this environment it's just plain silly. Look at this:
Random thread from Gamefaqs that illustrates my point perfectly
I can't even read that crap, and I won't even try. It makes my head hurt. What is disturbing is that over time our normal, ordinary language is going to be supplanted with this incoherent bullshit. People already use the words "download," "upgrade," "noob," and even "lol" in real ordinary life, Usually in context that has nothing to do with what the terms actually mean, i.e. "I upgraded my sandwich to a combo." You get free tech support with that sandwich too?
Stop that stupid shit, noobs.
3) Those little banner ads that companies put at the bottom of Television shows now. It's bad enough that 8 1/2 minutes of every half hour TV show is normal commercials already, now they even insert them while the damn show is still on the air. It targets people who have DV recorders who just skip the commercials. God damn I hate TV.
4) People who complain too much about gas prices: What's the matter, just now noticing that gasoline seems to double in price every few years? Didn't think about that when you bought that gigantic gas guzzling Hummer shit-mobile? Yeah, I'm really crying for you. It's not like this oil peak baloney is old news. We've only been talking about it for the last eight years. Maybe now you'll listen to us when we tell you to stop believing what the government and news corporations tell you.
People continue to buy these gigantic trucks and tanks and shit becasue they want to be cute and stick it to the environmentalists. I saw a Hummer on the freeway with the bumper sticker "Piss off a Liberal - Buy American," thereby making the assumption that real Americans drive 27-ton penis compensators. Yeah, I'm real pissed. If you like giving oil companies your money, by all means go right on ahead. Have fun paying $150 every three days to fill up that piece of shit.
5) People who think life revolves around Movie franchises: Look, just shut up about how much Star Wars sucks already. Yes, we understand the old trilogy is a fantastic masterpiece and the new trilogy is a tragic load of suck. We understand that George Lucas has lost his marbles and should be committed before he ruins anything else. We get it already. Now Please go out and find something more important for your life to be about. Feed the homeless. Plant a tree. Cure Cancer. Invent something. Find something, anything. Just please don't allow yourself to die so pathetic.
6) Apologetics who undermine other people's religions by pointing out scientific inaccuracies yet deny it when the same inaccuracies are in their own holy works. Let's face it folks, religion is not scientifically accurate. None of them are. That's why it's called Religion, and not science. You're not doing your own religion a favor by pointing out how unscientifically sound someone's else's religion is, becasue it begs the question of how well your own holy book holds up under the microscope - not well. Truth is the religious texts for our three main Abrahamic religions were written thousands of years ago, and as thus each expresses an understanding of the universe from their respective cultures. When compared with science each one fails to reach the bar. Yes, your religion does too. So please, stop trying to use your scientific "facts" to disprove someone else's religion. You're only making yourself look bad.
7) People who drive yellow cars with racing stripes: Guess all you need to do in order to sell cars is make a movie about your cars turning into giant robots, huh? How many of you dumb motherfuckers ran out and bought yourself a yellow Camaro with racing stripes after watching that stupid ass movie? Hey, if the main guy had yellow racing stripes tattooed on his buttcheeks would you brainless unimaginative mouthbreathers do that too? Are product placements in movies really that effective? So all I have to do to make you fruitcakes buy something is put it in a damn movie with robot soda machines and transforming Motorolas an' shit?
What's really sad is the guy who couldn't afford a Camaro, so instead paints his old hunk of crap Mazda yellow with racing stripes to try to make it look like he's driving a Transformer. That's like wearing fake gold, or having Wood paneling on the side of your car. Everyone knows the shit is fake, you're only fooling yourself.
It just doesn't make any sense to me. Since when did people base their entire lives over what they see in the fucking movies? When Silence of the Lambs came out did people start eating Fava beans with a nice Chianti and making that slurping sound all the time? When Pulp Fiction came out did everyone start shooting up smack and quoting bible verses? Did Samsung sell a billion Phones after the Matrix?
Oh wait, they did.
God damn you people are stupid.
8) When you're out with friends at a restaurant and no one will allow you to pay for anything. Thanks I appreciate it, but I have money too. You're making me feel cheap, Let me pay once in a while.
9) People who sell roms, hacks, protos, or other game related material that can be found for free like they're rare collectibles - One of the small sub segments of dorkdom I am happy to associate with are people who collect unreleased prototypes and early builds of games. Most of the people who are into this sort of thing are programmers and collect such material because of it's "educational" value, becasue what you get is usually still chock full of bugs and for the most part isn't playable. Once in a while though a game will make it nearly to retail before getting canned, a famous example being Half-Life or Propeller Arena for the Dreamcast, or Thrill Kill for the Ps1. Some of these games eventually get leaked and can be downloaded for free across various sites (some of them even legal :)
Problem is there's always some unscrupulous bottom-feeding dirtbag who burns a copy of said leaked rom, slaps together some off the shelf artwork and Ebays it as a "rare unreleased proto." Same shit with these assholes who burn a and sell full discs of Roms and emulators, it just muddies the hobby for the rest of us. True one shouldn't get too mad at scammers, becasue is it wrong to rip those off who are so eager to hand you their hard earned money? No, the reason they piss me off is the principal involved. These people are taking the labor of someone else and profiting off it. Just like some slimy crackbucket on the corner selling bootleg DVDs of a movie that's still showing in the theater across the street, these shitbags have no qualms about grifitng off the backs of others. Just goes to show, there's maybe 5% of the human population who actually creates everything so the other 95% can rip each other off.
10) Social networking Surveys: More inane bullshit that I'm not wasting my time with anymore. This is one of those ideas who's time has come and gone. I'm sure a few years ago when all these social networking sites that people use now instead of a real social life were the bees knees, filling out a few of these surveys might, maybe, occasionally, sometimes, once in a blue moon be a fun time waster. But as time goes on they just get more and more inane. It would help if they weren't all written by pre-teen girls. I'm not taking them, I'm not reading them, I'm not even looking at them anymore. I don't care when the last time you cried was or what kind of sandwich you ate yesterday or if you've ever cheated on a test, and I don't think I'm the only one. Is there anyone out there who actually pays attention to this bullshit? These surveys are distracting me from finding compromising semi-naked pictures of hot female acquaintances who's profiles I check but who I've only met a few times in real life. You know, the real reason we use these sites.
2) People who use lolspeak outside of video games: Lolspeak, L337 sp33k, "gamer talk," or whatever, is generally used inside of multiplayer games where you have to type in order to communicate quickly. Used in the proper environment (i.e. in game,) it's perfectly acceptable. But outside this environment it's just plain silly. Look at this:
Random thread from Gamefaqs that illustrates my point perfectly
I can't even read that crap, and I won't even try. It makes my head hurt. What is disturbing is that over time our normal, ordinary language is going to be supplanted with this incoherent bullshit. People already use the words "download," "upgrade," "noob," and even "lol" in real ordinary life, Usually in context that has nothing to do with what the terms actually mean, i.e. "I upgraded my sandwich to a combo." You get free tech support with that sandwich too?
Stop that stupid shit, noobs.
3) Those little banner ads that companies put at the bottom of Television shows now. It's bad enough that 8 1/2 minutes of every half hour TV show is normal commercials already, now they even insert them while the damn show is still on the air. It targets people who have DV recorders who just skip the commercials. God damn I hate TV.
4) People who complain too much about gas prices: What's the matter, just now noticing that gasoline seems to double in price every few years? Didn't think about that when you bought that gigantic gas guzzling Hummer shit-mobile? Yeah, I'm really crying for you. It's not like this oil peak baloney is old news. We've only been talking about it for the last eight years. Maybe now you'll listen to us when we tell you to stop believing what the government and news corporations tell you.
People continue to buy these gigantic trucks and tanks and shit becasue they want to be cute and stick it to the environmentalists. I saw a Hummer on the freeway with the bumper sticker "Piss off a Liberal - Buy American," thereby making the assumption that real Americans drive 27-ton penis compensators. Yeah, I'm real pissed. If you like giving oil companies your money, by all means go right on ahead. Have fun paying $150 every three days to fill up that piece of shit.
5) People who think life revolves around Movie franchises: Look, just shut up about how much Star Wars sucks already. Yes, we understand the old trilogy is a fantastic masterpiece and the new trilogy is a tragic load of suck. We understand that George Lucas has lost his marbles and should be committed before he ruins anything else. We get it already. Now Please go out and find something more important for your life to be about. Feed the homeless. Plant a tree. Cure Cancer. Invent something. Find something, anything. Just please don't allow yourself to die so pathetic.
6) Apologetics who undermine other people's religions by pointing out scientific inaccuracies yet deny it when the same inaccuracies are in their own holy works. Let's face it folks, religion is not scientifically accurate. None of them are. That's why it's called Religion, and not science. You're not doing your own religion a favor by pointing out how unscientifically sound someone's else's religion is, becasue it begs the question of how well your own holy book holds up under the microscope - not well. Truth is the religious texts for our three main Abrahamic religions were written thousands of years ago, and as thus each expresses an understanding of the universe from their respective cultures. When compared with science each one fails to reach the bar. Yes, your religion does too. So please, stop trying to use your scientific "facts" to disprove someone else's religion. You're only making yourself look bad.
7) People who drive yellow cars with racing stripes: Guess all you need to do in order to sell cars is make a movie about your cars turning into giant robots, huh? How many of you dumb motherfuckers ran out and bought yourself a yellow Camaro with racing stripes after watching that stupid ass movie? Hey, if the main guy had yellow racing stripes tattooed on his buttcheeks would you brainless unimaginative mouthbreathers do that too? Are product placements in movies really that effective? So all I have to do to make you fruitcakes buy something is put it in a damn movie with robot soda machines and transforming Motorolas an' shit?
What's really sad is the guy who couldn't afford a Camaro, so instead paints his old hunk of crap Mazda yellow with racing stripes to try to make it look like he's driving a Transformer. That's like wearing fake gold, or having Wood paneling on the side of your car. Everyone knows the shit is fake, you're only fooling yourself.
It just doesn't make any sense to me. Since when did people base their entire lives over what they see in the fucking movies? When Silence of the Lambs came out did people start eating Fava beans with a nice Chianti and making that slurping sound all the time? When Pulp Fiction came out did everyone start shooting up smack and quoting bible verses? Did Samsung sell a billion Phones after the Matrix?
Oh wait, they did.
God damn you people are stupid.
8) When you're out with friends at a restaurant and no one will allow you to pay for anything. Thanks I appreciate it, but I have money too. You're making me feel cheap, Let me pay once in a while.
9) People who sell roms, hacks, protos, or other game related material that can be found for free like they're rare collectibles - One of the small sub segments of dorkdom I am happy to associate with are people who collect unreleased prototypes and early builds of games. Most of the people who are into this sort of thing are programmers and collect such material because of it's "educational" value, becasue what you get is usually still chock full of bugs and for the most part isn't playable. Once in a while though a game will make it nearly to retail before getting canned, a famous example being Half-Life or Propeller Arena for the Dreamcast, or Thrill Kill for the Ps1. Some of these games eventually get leaked and can be downloaded for free across various sites (some of them even legal :)
Problem is there's always some unscrupulous bottom-feeding dirtbag who burns a copy of said leaked rom, slaps together some off the shelf artwork and Ebays it as a "rare unreleased proto." Same shit with these assholes who burn a and sell full discs of Roms and emulators, it just muddies the hobby for the rest of us. True one shouldn't get too mad at scammers, becasue is it wrong to rip those off who are so eager to hand you their hard earned money? No, the reason they piss me off is the principal involved. These people are taking the labor of someone else and profiting off it. Just like some slimy crackbucket on the corner selling bootleg DVDs of a movie that's still showing in the theater across the street, these shitbags have no qualms about grifitng off the backs of others. Just goes to show, there's maybe 5% of the human population who actually creates everything so the other 95% can rip each other off.
10) Social networking Surveys: More inane bullshit that I'm not wasting my time with anymore. This is one of those ideas who's time has come and gone. I'm sure a few years ago when all these social networking sites that people use now instead of a real social life were the bees knees, filling out a few of these surveys might, maybe, occasionally, sometimes, once in a blue moon be a fun time waster. But as time goes on they just get more and more inane. It would help if they weren't all written by pre-teen girls. I'm not taking them, I'm not reading them, I'm not even looking at them anymore. I don't care when the last time you cried was or what kind of sandwich you ate yesterday or if you've ever cheated on a test, and I don't think I'm the only one. Is there anyone out there who actually pays attention to this bullshit? These surveys are distracting me from finding compromising semi-naked pictures of hot female acquaintances who's profiles I check but who I've only met a few times in real life. You know, the real reason we use these sites.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Fun with ATM fraud
Hey guys, I just got back from the bank, where I found out some dirtbag cloned my ATM card somehow and went on a mall shopping spree.
Yesterday I was using an ATM that I have used many times before in a CVS Pharmacy by my work. This time though the machine reset itself, right after I had entered my number in. I thought that was kinda strange. I watched it for a few minutes as it went up through it’s boot cycle (which it ran OS 2 warp, for some reason.) Unfortunately, I’m not super computer savvy enough to be able to tell what’s going on with a machine just by looking at it’s startup process (never mind the fact that I’ve also never seen an ATM starup before, I wouldn’t know if something’s wrong with it or what.) I shrugged it off, and checked my balance later in the day at a different machine. Everything was cool.
Earlier today at lunch after eating quite possibly the world’s best hamburger for some reason my atm card didn’t work when I went to pay. The girl gave me the "Sometimes these machines don’t work" spiel. I wouldn’t have been suspicious except for the freak resetting ATM thing that happened yesterday.
So on the way home from work I stopped in at the bank to check my balance, and sure enough someone had spent $300 out my account. Whoever it was somehow managed to hack or otherwise compromise that ATM in the pharmacy, then cloned the card and went shopping at the stupid mall (Macy’s and Fredricks of Hollywood, fucking lingerie of all things...)
Luckily I caught it early, and whoever it was apparently didn’t have my atm pin number as all the transactions were credit transactions (i.e. they had to sign for them like a credit card.) So luckily my savings were protected. So now I just got to spend the last hour closing out my account, opening a new account, and having the guy explain to me in intricate detail exactly what I need to do in order to file a fraud claim and get my $300 back.
I guess I should consider myself lucky as it was "only" $300 that the bank covers during the fraud investigation, my account was not frozen, I still have access to the money I have left, I hadn’t deposited my paycheck for this week, and I caught it early enough to prevent any more cash from disappearing. This same shit happened to a friend of mine and his bank totally froze everything.
So anyway, if you’re out using a money machine and suddenly it reboots for no reason, you know what’s going on.
No one ever gets to make fun of me for being paranoid ever again.
Yesterday I was using an ATM that I have used many times before in a CVS Pharmacy by my work. This time though the machine reset itself, right after I had entered my number in. I thought that was kinda strange. I watched it for a few minutes as it went up through it’s boot cycle (which it ran OS 2 warp, for some reason.) Unfortunately, I’m not super computer savvy enough to be able to tell what’s going on with a machine just by looking at it’s startup process (never mind the fact that I’ve also never seen an ATM starup before, I wouldn’t know if something’s wrong with it or what.) I shrugged it off, and checked my balance later in the day at a different machine. Everything was cool.
Earlier today at lunch after eating quite possibly the world’s best hamburger for some reason my atm card didn’t work when I went to pay. The girl gave me the "Sometimes these machines don’t work" spiel. I wouldn’t have been suspicious except for the freak resetting ATM thing that happened yesterday.
So on the way home from work I stopped in at the bank to check my balance, and sure enough someone had spent $300 out my account. Whoever it was somehow managed to hack or otherwise compromise that ATM in the pharmacy, then cloned the card and went shopping at the stupid mall (Macy’s and Fredricks of Hollywood, fucking lingerie of all things...)
Luckily I caught it early, and whoever it was apparently didn’t have my atm pin number as all the transactions were credit transactions (i.e. they had to sign for them like a credit card.) So luckily my savings were protected. So now I just got to spend the last hour closing out my account, opening a new account, and having the guy explain to me in intricate detail exactly what I need to do in order to file a fraud claim and get my $300 back.
I guess I should consider myself lucky as it was "only" $300 that the bank covers during the fraud investigation, my account was not frozen, I still have access to the money I have left, I hadn’t deposited my paycheck for this week, and I caught it early enough to prevent any more cash from disappearing. This same shit happened to a friend of mine and his bank totally froze everything.
So anyway, if you’re out using a money machine and suddenly it reboots for no reason, you know what’s going on.
No one ever gets to make fun of me for being paranoid ever again.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
6 Reasons why the Transformers movie sucks
1) The main character is an annoying dumbass: The sole reason main character of Sam Witwiki seems to exist for is to somehow make an ass of himself or be made an ass of in front of hot chick Megan Fox. This includes:
- Making an ass out of himself in front of her at the park.
- Making an ass out of himself while driving her home.
- Making an ass out of himself while falling off a pink bicycle in front of her.
- His parents making an ass out of him while discussing his masturbational habits while she's in the room.
Now, in a movie about giant transforming robots, belief has to be firmly suspended from the beginning. However, expecting me to believe that a girl this hot would ever settle for a broke goofy baldy headed loser is just asking too much.
2) More plot holes than swiss cheese: Granted, when your movie is about giant transforming robots a few things can be forgiven, like the fact that they even bother talking in the first place. However this movie seems incapable of progressing for even five minutes without asking us to believe truly implausible, inane, and sometimes ridiculous "plot points," such as:
- Sam's father seems to think that two small earthquakes are capable of completely destroying his entire yard, including reducing his stone water fountain to rubble. This is despite the fact that there is no significant damage to the inside of the house. Yeah that makes sense.
- Sam and Mikela instantly trust that Bumblebee is there to protect them, even though Sam was running away from Bumblebee in panic less than five minutes beforehand.
- No one seems to really be astounded or even freaked out that giant transforming robots even exist. Our heroes are quickly able to asses the situation and act accordingly instead of reacting like a real person would, i.e. running away screaming their fucking heads off.
- Even though they are sentient robotic entities comprised of technology that eats ours for breakfast, the Decpticons are required to invade a heavily defended air force base in Qatar to forcibly break into the DoD's mainframe. Apparently they've never heard of free Wifi access points.
- The second attempt the Decepticons make involves sneaking into Air Force one to break into computers located in the Pentagon (um... okaaayyy...) As Frenzy the Decepticon is busy downloading defense secrets, the DOD comes to the conclusion that the only way to stop thievery of said secrets is to "cut the hard line," even though the intrusion is located on an airplane currently 5000 feet in the air. Must be those extra super secret DOD hard-line enabled wireless routers.
- Megatron is supposed to have been frozen in ice for the last 80 years, however he speaks fluent English the moment he's thawed out.
- The first half of the movie involves the Autobots and Decepticons looking for Sam to get his grandfather's glasses, which somehow have Megatron's co-ordinates imprinted on them (how they would know this is not explained, but this is fantasy here, so whatever.) So, Optimus gets the glasses, finds the co-ordinates in the Arctic, and moves out. However it turns out Megatron is in fact being held under Hoover dam by "Section 7," (which is this Men-in-Black type organization that is under the direct command of the President, even though in real life not even the President has high enough clearance for the really secret stuff,) and thus the Decepticons attack. Suddenly the Autobots are there to fight them, even though five minutes before they were on their way to Alaska. No explanation is given as to how they found out Megatron's true location.
- All of the Autobots speak English to each other while conversing privately instead of their native robot language. The Decepitcons talk in robot hieroglyphic subtitles (which is actually pretty cool,) but feel the need to use English also as soon as Megatron shows up.
- The team that cracks an alien code is made up of stoners and hippies with one really hot blonde chick, becasue we all know signal experts double as runway models.
- The hot blonde scientist, against all logic, decides to illegally copy the information to enlist the "world's greatest Hacker," who is a big huge fat black guy that plays Dance Dance Revolution. Big fat black guy is somehow able to not only decipher said alien signal in like 30 seconds, but also somehow instantly becomes an expert in alien languages. She does all this to great personal risk to her freedom when it is quite possible that said DDR expert could just have been enlisted illegitimately if she just would have asked.
- Immediately after deciphering this advanced signal that the entire NSA and Pentagon are unable to scratch with their advanced supercomputers in mere seconds from his home pc, the FBI suddenly smashes through the house in Gestapo fashion, as if they were able to track the hot scientist's whereabouts simply by the fact that she uses a computer.
- Fat black guy is such teh h4X0r that he is able to somehow take old, dusty WWII era radio equipment with cobwebs all up on it and interface it with a modern PC monitor, all with just a screwdriver in under five minutes.
- Entire city blocks are reduced to rubble in the climatic battle in front of hundreds of witnesses, yet the United States military is somehow able to effectively cover everything up.
- Speaking of said cover up, after the end battle instead of confiscating and studying the alien robot bodies that represent technology thousands of years in advance of our own, the military instead decides to dispose of them all into the the world's deepest ocean trench. Like that would ever happen.
3) The robots are stupid: Don't get me wrong, this movie has quite possibly the best special effects of all time. However all the SFX doesn't change the fact that the Autobots are ridiculous stereotypes. It's when they start talking that the whole illusion is ruined and you remember this movie was written with merchandising in mind. Any line delivered by an Autobot who isn't Optimus Prime is cringeworthy - this includes Ratchet remarking that Sam's pheromone level is such that he wants to "mate with the female" (thereby making an ass out of him in front of the girl yet again, see item #1,) Jazz saying "bitch" and acting all gangsta (ugh!), and Bumblebee "lubricating" the Section 7 agent (shoot me now please.)
The Decepticons on the other hand get zero screen time even though each one is ten times more bad-ass than any of the Autobots combined. Megatron himself gets less than five minutes of screen time - pretty pathetic for the movie's arch villian. Starscream, who is quite possibly the third most recognizable character from the cartoon, gets one measly line, and they didn't even try to make his voice sound the same as the cartoon. Lame.
The one robot that gets the most time in the spotlight is Frenzy, who is not only somehow also able to regrow his entire body after being decapitated, but is also able to casually stroll off of Airforce one in front of hundreds of patrolling soldiers and secret service agents - and no one notices.
4) Reason #4: It didn't have Shockwave in it: How you gonna make a Transformers movie without Shockwave, the baddest Transformer ever? If I was making this movie the whole thing would be Shockwave stomping robot guts out for three hours.
5) The whole movie is one giant propaganda piece for the Department of Defense: I realize when part of your budget is supplied by the United States Military that means they get to approve the way they are depicted in your movie script (see Top Gun and Black Hawk Down.) However here it goes to ridiculous lengths. The Secretary of Defense character - obviously patterned after Donald Rumsfeld, down to the glasses - is depicted as like, actually taking civilian lives and international repercussions into his decision making (HA!) I mean, talking giant robots I can accept, but let's be realistic here.
In another scene with the aforementioned Sector 7 where just as the Decepticons begin their attack on the secret base, the ordinary soldiers from Qatar - for some reason that defies all logic - decide to go mutiny because Sam the horny kid wants to "see his car," even though none of the military characters would have any reason at all to believe at this point that this particular captive giant robot would want to help them at all. It's turns out the whole scene is set up to give the Secretary of Defense the line "You better listen to them, they don't like to lose." Suck, suck, suck that Army dick, Micheal Bay.
Micheal Bay chose to portray the President as a useless imbecile, completely out of the loop, munching on Ding-Dongs while other people make decisions for him. So the movie is not completely unrealistic.
6) The rest of the movie is a commercial for something else: Apparently there was plenty of room left in Micheal Bay's mouth after the DOD got finished. Obviously the Autobots are mere walking commercials for General Motors (Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Hummer, etc.) But they're not the only ones, the whole rest of the movie is jammed full of product placements including (in no particular order:)
- Burger King
- Nokia
- Ebay
- Paypal
- Pepsico
- Xbox 360
- Hostess
- Yahoo
This is just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, which isn't hard considering these placements aren't the subtle, show an ad in the background type from other movies. These ads are in your face - Ebay is mentioned several times by main characters and even has a phony listing take up the whole screen for several seconds. The various cars aren't just shown off, they get more screen time than the robots do in robot form. During the part where the Autobots are looking for vehicles to transform into the movie essentially turns into a smorgasboard of GM commercials, even going as far to show a GMC dealer with prominent showroom.
Why are product placements such a big deal? When done correctly (i.e., not shoved in the audience's face,) I agree that they can sometimes make a movie seem more "real." However when you spend half the damn movie showing various cars and how cool they are and gee these same cars are available for purchase at the dealer across the street, then it quickly becomes apparent you're not actually watching a movie. Product placements are advertisements you actually pay to watch - Watch while you suck, suck, suck on Micheal Bay's commercialized dick, then suck it some more when you buy the DVD, t-shirt, candy bars, action figures, and featured automobile as Bay shoots his load all the way to the bank.
Besides all this the movie ain't half bad.
- Making an ass out of himself in front of her at the park.
- Making an ass out of himself while driving her home.
- Making an ass out of himself while falling off a pink bicycle in front of her.
- His parents making an ass out of him while discussing his masturbational habits while she's in the room.
Now, in a movie about giant transforming robots, belief has to be firmly suspended from the beginning. However, expecting me to believe that a girl this hot would ever settle for a broke goofy baldy headed loser is just asking too much.
2) More plot holes than swiss cheese: Granted, when your movie is about giant transforming robots a few things can be forgiven, like the fact that they even bother talking in the first place. However this movie seems incapable of progressing for even five minutes without asking us to believe truly implausible, inane, and sometimes ridiculous "plot points," such as:
- Sam's father seems to think that two small earthquakes are capable of completely destroying his entire yard, including reducing his stone water fountain to rubble. This is despite the fact that there is no significant damage to the inside of the house. Yeah that makes sense.
- Sam and Mikela instantly trust that Bumblebee is there to protect them, even though Sam was running away from Bumblebee in panic less than five minutes beforehand.
- No one seems to really be astounded or even freaked out that giant transforming robots even exist. Our heroes are quickly able to asses the situation and act accordingly instead of reacting like a real person would, i.e. running away screaming their fucking heads off.
- Even though they are sentient robotic entities comprised of technology that eats ours for breakfast, the Decpticons are required to invade a heavily defended air force base in Qatar to forcibly break into the DoD's mainframe. Apparently they've never heard of free Wifi access points.
- The second attempt the Decepticons make involves sneaking into Air Force one to break into computers located in the Pentagon (um... okaaayyy...) As Frenzy the Decepticon is busy downloading defense secrets, the DOD comes to the conclusion that the only way to stop thievery of said secrets is to "cut the hard line," even though the intrusion is located on an airplane currently 5000 feet in the air. Must be those extra super secret DOD hard-line enabled wireless routers.
- Megatron is supposed to have been frozen in ice for the last 80 years, however he speaks fluent English the moment he's thawed out.
- The first half of the movie involves the Autobots and Decepticons looking for Sam to get his grandfather's glasses, which somehow have Megatron's co-ordinates imprinted on them (how they would know this is not explained, but this is fantasy here, so whatever.) So, Optimus gets the glasses, finds the co-ordinates in the Arctic, and moves out. However it turns out Megatron is in fact being held under Hoover dam by "Section 7," (which is this Men-in-Black type organization that is under the direct command of the President, even though in real life not even the President has high enough clearance for the really secret stuff,) and thus the Decepticons attack. Suddenly the Autobots are there to fight them, even though five minutes before they were on their way to Alaska. No explanation is given as to how they found out Megatron's true location.
- All of the Autobots speak English to each other while conversing privately instead of their native robot language. The Decepitcons talk in robot hieroglyphic subtitles (which is actually pretty cool,) but feel the need to use English also as soon as Megatron shows up.
- The team that cracks an alien code is made up of stoners and hippies with one really hot blonde chick, becasue we all know signal experts double as runway models.
- The hot blonde scientist, against all logic, decides to illegally copy the information to enlist the "world's greatest Hacker," who is a big huge fat black guy that plays Dance Dance Revolution. Big fat black guy is somehow able to not only decipher said alien signal in like 30 seconds, but also somehow instantly becomes an expert in alien languages. She does all this to great personal risk to her freedom when it is quite possible that said DDR expert could just have been enlisted illegitimately if she just would have asked.
- Immediately after deciphering this advanced signal that the entire NSA and Pentagon are unable to scratch with their advanced supercomputers in mere seconds from his home pc, the FBI suddenly smashes through the house in Gestapo fashion, as if they were able to track the hot scientist's whereabouts simply by the fact that she uses a computer.
- Fat black guy is such teh h4X0r that he is able to somehow take old, dusty WWII era radio equipment with cobwebs all up on it and interface it with a modern PC monitor, all with just a screwdriver in under five minutes.
- Entire city blocks are reduced to rubble in the climatic battle in front of hundreds of witnesses, yet the United States military is somehow able to effectively cover everything up.
- Speaking of said cover up, after the end battle instead of confiscating and studying the alien robot bodies that represent technology thousands of years in advance of our own, the military instead decides to dispose of them all into the the world's deepest ocean trench. Like that would ever happen.
3) The robots are stupid: Don't get me wrong, this movie has quite possibly the best special effects of all time. However all the SFX doesn't change the fact that the Autobots are ridiculous stereotypes. It's when they start talking that the whole illusion is ruined and you remember this movie was written with merchandising in mind. Any line delivered by an Autobot who isn't Optimus Prime is cringeworthy - this includes Ratchet remarking that Sam's pheromone level is such that he wants to "mate with the female" (thereby making an ass out of him in front of the girl yet again, see item #1,) Jazz saying "bitch" and acting all gangsta (ugh!), and Bumblebee "lubricating" the Section 7 agent (shoot me now please.)
The Decepticons on the other hand get zero screen time even though each one is ten times more bad-ass than any of the Autobots combined. Megatron himself gets less than five minutes of screen time - pretty pathetic for the movie's arch villian. Starscream, who is quite possibly the third most recognizable character from the cartoon, gets one measly line, and they didn't even try to make his voice sound the same as the cartoon. Lame.
The one robot that gets the most time in the spotlight is Frenzy, who is not only somehow also able to regrow his entire body after being decapitated, but is also able to casually stroll off of Airforce one in front of hundreds of patrolling soldiers and secret service agents - and no one notices.
4) Reason #4: It didn't have Shockwave in it: How you gonna make a Transformers movie without Shockwave, the baddest Transformer ever? If I was making this movie the whole thing would be Shockwave stomping robot guts out for three hours.
5) The whole movie is one giant propaganda piece for the Department of Defense: I realize when part of your budget is supplied by the United States Military that means they get to approve the way they are depicted in your movie script (see Top Gun and Black Hawk Down.) However here it goes to ridiculous lengths. The Secretary of Defense character - obviously patterned after Donald Rumsfeld, down to the glasses - is depicted as like, actually taking civilian lives and international repercussions into his decision making (HA!) I mean, talking giant robots I can accept, but let's be realistic here.
In another scene with the aforementioned Sector 7 where just as the Decepticons begin their attack on the secret base, the ordinary soldiers from Qatar - for some reason that defies all logic - decide to go mutiny because Sam the horny kid wants to "see his car," even though none of the military characters would have any reason at all to believe at this point that this particular captive giant robot would want to help them at all. It's turns out the whole scene is set up to give the Secretary of Defense the line "You better listen to them, they don't like to lose." Suck, suck, suck that Army dick, Micheal Bay.
Micheal Bay chose to portray the President as a useless imbecile, completely out of the loop, munching on Ding-Dongs while other people make decisions for him. So the movie is not completely unrealistic.
6) The rest of the movie is a commercial for something else: Apparently there was plenty of room left in Micheal Bay's mouth after the DOD got finished. Obviously the Autobots are mere walking commercials for General Motors (Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Hummer, etc.) But they're not the only ones, the whole rest of the movie is jammed full of product placements including (in no particular order:)
- Burger King
- Nokia
- Ebay
- Paypal
- Pepsico
- Xbox 360
- Hostess
- Yahoo
This is just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, which isn't hard considering these placements aren't the subtle, show an ad in the background type from other movies. These ads are in your face - Ebay is mentioned several times by main characters and even has a phony listing take up the whole screen for several seconds. The various cars aren't just shown off, they get more screen time than the robots do in robot form. During the part where the Autobots are looking for vehicles to transform into the movie essentially turns into a smorgasboard of GM commercials, even going as far to show a GMC dealer with prominent showroom.
Why are product placements such a big deal? When done correctly (i.e., not shoved in the audience's face,) I agree that they can sometimes make a movie seem more "real." However when you spend half the damn movie showing various cars and how cool they are and gee these same cars are available for purchase at the dealer across the street, then it quickly becomes apparent you're not actually watching a movie. Product placements are advertisements you actually pay to watch - Watch while you suck, suck, suck on Micheal Bay's commercialized dick, then suck it some more when you buy the DVD, t-shirt, candy bars, action figures, and featured automobile as Bay shoots his load all the way to the bank.
Besides all this the movie ain't half bad.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Hunters are pussies and should be shot
I hate hunters, I hate hunters, I fucking hate hunters. What is this need to blow the brains out of an animal from hundreds of feet away? What is the "need" being fulfilled here? What is the desire that causes people to do this? Is it for food? Is it for the "sport?" Or some kind of arcane mountain man tradition? Bullshit. There is only one reason to go hunting- because you're a sick asshole who gets his jollies off of killing something. Other people may try to dispute that, but they are wrong.
It's obviously not for "food," unless you live so far off in the middle of nowhere that you absolutely must shoot deer and crap to survive - maybe if you're in the fucking jungle or something. But in this country your redneck-ass is never more than five miles away from a McDonalds (probably the same one you work at) so don't give me this shit about hunting for "food."
Some people like to delude themselves and pretend that there's no difference between hunting and slaughtering a cow on a farm or something. But once again we see the argument doesn't fly - Cows and chickens are bred to be slaughtered, we make no illusions otherwise. If we let them go into the wild they would starve by the thousands, because we've bred away their natural survival instincts. Wild animals on the other hand are out there minding their own business and would be just fine if we would stop periodically invading their habitats and blowing them away.
"Look here my good man," you may say, "We have to cull the herds because of overpopulation." Ahh, since we killed all the wolves and mountain lions and other wild predators now it's our duty to go out and blow away a bunch of deer to keep them from overgrazing and thus starving to death. True, true, populations must be managed. But we wouldn't have this stupid problem if the fucking rednecks hadn't killed all the predators in the first place. So, how about we start a program to bring back the predators? Reintroduce wolves into these areas, to naturally cull the deer? Set aside wilderness areas where these animals can live? Unlike human beings, animals will find a natural population balance in a given area (eventually.) It's only with human intervention that the balance gets all screwed up and we have to do shit like club baby seals.
"But but but-" you stammer on, "If we reintroduce wolves then people will get eaten!" True, true, so here's how you stop that: DON'T LET PEOPLE GO INTO THE WOODS WHERE THE WOLVES ARE! Don't let hikers and hippies and shit walk around in nature preserves where they could get eaten. That's why they're called "Nature Preserves," because fucking nature is supposed to be fucking preserved in them, not made into entertainment venues where people can walk around leaving their juice bottles and candy bar wrappers all over the place. We don't let people walk around in Grizzly bear country, do we? Make separate parks and shit without wolves and let the hippies walk around in those. It's not like this is rocket science.
One guy told me he had to hunt, because he lived off in the middle of the woods, and bears and wild asses and crap would go through his garbage and invade his house from time to time. Know what I say to that? MOVE. Get out of the woods. If you live in an area where there are lions and tigers and bears and shit, then move the fuck out of that area. YOU DO NOT BELONG THERE. I don't see what's so hard to understand.
Around here we have a problem with mountain lions. Every year they encroach a little bit further and build houses and stuff inside the territory of these animals, then everyone complains when the lions come down and start eating neighborhood dogs and kitty cats and everything. But no one ever brings up the fact that this wouldn't happen if people stayed out of the woods where they didn't belong. These animals need space to live, and if we take that away from them then they'll start their own hunting parties in our streets and backyards. It's called "ecological balance" people, that thing the Republicans say they believe in but do everything to destroy.
Then we have the "sporting" aspect. Well, let's think about this: How sporting is it exactly, to take a machine capable of firing bullet with such force as to rip through the body of any organic creature that has evolved on this Earth with lethal force, and then go shoot a little animal from a hundred yards away? That's not a sport, that's target practice. If you want to shoot a gun then go shoot it at a shooting range, don't go snipe a bunch of endangered Red-Footed falcons you fucking assholes. Go shoot at a paper target, not at something that's alive. I submit to you that dunking a basketball, hitting a home run, driving a souped up race car, or even hitting a fucking golf ball is way more "sporting" than taking a high powered rifle and blowing the brains out of a duck or goose or something. You know what? Even a marathon night of Halo is more sporting than that shit. At least then someone is keeping score.
Then you get these backwards shitbags who somehow think that hunting is part of "being a man," like real men have to go out and pown little quails and shit with sniper rifles as part of some dumbass tradition - complete bullshit. If you want to go kill something like a "man," then don't use a gun. Go out there with a Rambo knife. Make a sharpened spear with your own two hands and skewer a deer with it. Go out and face down a 500 lb bull elk caveman-style with a couple of sharpened rocks. It's not a sport unless you're in danger of serious injury - buying a three ton Giant hog then getting your 13 year old son to shoot it on your own land and then passing it off like the kid actually caught it in the wild ain't "sport,"and it ain't teaching him anything except how to be a fucked up, beer-guzzling, wife beating, gas pumping redneck. You want to teach him how to be a "man?" Throw the kid out there Spartan style, butt-naked with a sharpened stick for 30 days and make his ass hunt to survive, that'll make him a man alright. Or better yet, why not buy the kid a laptop instead of a shotgun? You know, get him an education so he can actually make something of himself and not have to kill shit to feel like he belongs? Being a "man" is about learning responsibility and making a living, not shooting a fucking giant pig then passing it off like a "hunt."
"This fucking tree-hugger has never been hunting" you may be saying. "He doesn't know what it's like." You're right, and you know what? I don't want to know. I don't really care. It sounds like six inbred yokels standing around sucking beers and shooting in every direction. Fuck that. Yes, you're right, I am a close minded asshole. Now hurry up and sweep up those yard trimmings. I don't pay your ass to stand around.
So, every time I hear about some chinless backward buttfuck country boy getting mangled by a Grizzly or shot in the face by the vice president, I smile a little deeper in the inside. You don't want to get shot? You don't want to get eaten? Then stop fucking hunting. YOU DO NOT BELONG THERE. It's not too late to join the 21st century with the rest of the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)