A Million Things That Bug Me

I'm pissed off and I'm going to rant about random things. Try and stop me.


A Million Things That Bug Me


1. "Your/you're" and "their/they're". And all the other grammatical brainfarts people do all the time. It makes you look stupid. Just so you know.

2. When people respond to one thing from a long-ass post but quote the whole fucking thing. You can delete what you don't need! It was too long to read before, I'm not going to read it in a quote box! My scrolling finger can't take much more of this!

3. Old Navy commercials. Anyone who goes anywhere that place should be shot merely because of the commercials. Fashion is for losers. I'm a loser and I'm calling you a loser, so that should tell you something.

4. The pop-up ads that splash onto the page you're reading and won't go away. Do you honestly think I appreciate that? Am I going to think, oh, Vonage seems like a nice outfit, I think I'll click on their extremely obtrusive ad! Why yes, I'm very interested in seeing the latest unoriginal horror movie!

5. Excessively negative people.

War of the Worlds

The original film had an effect on me as a small child, to the extent that I would always be afraid of the street lamps on the freeway. Watching it later as an adult, I found it no more impressive than any other 50s B-movie...those films are classics only to the people who were around to remember when they were considered good. To my generation they're MST3K fodder. Still, I have nothing against it and if it's one of your favorite movies, then good on you.

I've also indulged in the original radio production, which is quaint and appreciable as a pivotal moment in American culture, when the mass media first had an instantaneous impact on society. The first "water-cooler show", as it were.

Now comes Spielberg's version to DVD, and watching it for the first time I was blown away. Spielberg never makes mistakes, always knows exactly what he's doing, and I looked at this and my visceral reaction was that it was one of his finest non-prestige efforts. Cruise knows his way around an action picture, and here he plays a character so flawed that it's nearly impossible to like him, which works out fine since it's nearly impossible to like Cruise anyway. So as the credits rolled I thought, wow. Just wow, what a movie.

Then I sat back and let it sink in and started to think about it some more. And naturally, one or two questions began to creep into my cerebellum.


**Spoilers Ahead** (but really, who doesn't know the plot of War of the Worlds)


Martians decide to take over Earth. To do this they send killer machines to our planet and bury them beneath the soil, wait a million years, and then send their fighter pilots to enter the machines and start frying everybody.

- If Martians can send machines to Earth and bury them so deep that no one ever finds them, why didn't they just take the planet a million years ago? They clearly didn't want our technology, because they fried all of our cities, and there's no way they could possibly have known back then that we, or any other terrestrial species, would make it this far, and even after a million years our technology is nothing compared to the impenetrable tripods they've had all along.

- How many machines were there? Did every single pilot catch the flu? It's reasonable to guess there were a limited number, so they'd have to disperse them evenly throughout the planet to make sure that they got everyone. How big a coincidence is it that at least one machine was buried on the east coast of a continent that, at the time, had no populations of humans or anything close, but would someday become the center of the largest metropolitan area in the most powerful nation on the planet?

- If they wanted to harvest our blood or what-have-you, why did they keep frying us with the laser? Did they want to keep human meat at a premium?

- If these machines are a million years old, how do they match up with "modern" Martian technology? Are the Martians just slower than us at innovation, or do the pilots have to put up with ridiculously outdated weaponry? It'd be like if the French suddenly ran into Europe and grabbed the cannons that Napoleon had left behind. It would certainly catch the Polish off their guard, but so would the nuclear stockpile they've developed in the meantime.

- Similarly, it's been a million years, and they still have the exact same plan? They didn't come up with anything better? Untold generations of Martians stirred and stewed and not one of them ever piped up and said "hey, why don't we build a giant death ray and just fry them from here?"

- Most importantly, if this exact same plan has been in place for a million years, and they've been waiting all this time...did they do NO further research into terrestrial life? Not one of them thought to check whether it was safe for them to start running around on an alien world? First of all, what do these cats breathe? It ain't oxygen, because there isn't enough on Mars for a species to depend on it. It ain't CO2, which is 95% of the Martian atmosphere, because there isn't enough on Earth for a species that's dependent on it to live. Perhaps they get by on nitrogen, or perhaps they have some sort of air mask that blends in with their bodies. It probably isn't a mask, of course, because if it was then they wouldn't be breathing in the microbes that killed them off. The microbes they seemed to completely miss on whatever ridiculously unsuccessful survey missions they must have taken. What kind of species is intelligent enough to build and operate sophisticated weapons, blockheaded enough to coldly exterminate the entire population of a planet, and stupid enough to start walking around an alien environment unprotected and start drinking the blood of an animal they clearly know nothing about? Does Dubya run Mars too? It is the god of war, after all.

But yeah, it was a good flick.

A Conversation

Steve: Thanks for calling The History Channel, this is Steve, how can I help you today?

Me: Yeah, hi, I'd like to report some technical difficulties with your network.

Steve: Okay, what seems to be the problem?

Me: Well, there's something wrong with the show I'm watching.

Steve: Is the picture fuzzy, or pixelated?

Me: No, there's nothing wrong with the actual picture...

Steve: Okay then, is the sound cutting out or skipping?

Me: No, the sound is technically fine...

Steve: All right then, could you describe the exact problem to me?

Me: Well, I'm watching it, and the show is playing, and everything else seems to be fine, except that they're not talking about World War II.

Steve: .......

Me: .......

Steve: .......they're not?

Me: No. They're showing planes, but they're fueled by jets or something, and they're fighting other jets, but it's not in Europe or Japan.

Steve: ...did you say it's not in Europe or Japan?

Me: Yeah, it's somewhere called "Korea?"

Steve: Are you absolutely sure there's nothing wrong with your tv?

Me: No, I turn it to other channels and they all come in fine. Discovery is showing a program about early primates, TLC is renovating a home, A&E is taking us through the minds of a serial killer and the detectives hunting him down, and naturally I skipped over Animal Planet because no one in their right mind gives a fuck about them. Everyone's showing what they should be showing. But here on History...no WWII.

Steve: Yes, I've punched it up here too and I'm getting the same thing. This is really weird.

Me: I just had a thought...maybe this Korea thing is a classified mission and the show is called "Secret Battles of World War II." Could that be it?

Steve: ...No, we don't have any programming like that, at least not that I'm aware of. Maybe some wires got crossed and it's showing programming from a different network.

Me: I don't think so. Every time they come back from the commercial break, they recap everything that has happened in the show so far including the last three minutes in excruciatingly unnecessary detail. It's got to be History.

Steve: Okay, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to put you on hold and call up to the corporate floor, and see if they can shed some light on this mystery. Can you wait a few minutes?

Me: Sure.

...

Recording: Thank you for your patience. We here at The History Channel are committed to providing you with 24-hour nonstop quality programming dedicated to all aspects of the Second World War. Please continue to hold so that we may assist you.

...

Steve: You still there?

Me: Yep.

Steve: Okay, I just talked to the senior vice-president of programming. And he said that this "Korea" show is perfectly normal.

Me: ...uh, okay.

Steve: He said there was an intense conflict between Western and Eastern forces over the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, culminating in open hostilities in Vietnam in the 60s and...Korea in the 50s.

Me: Ah....So the war didn't actually end with the dropping of the atom bombs?

Steve: Well apparently this is a completely different war, fought over clashing ideologies and economic systems.

Me: So let me get this straight. Something...happened...at some point...that wasn't World War II...and you're...talking about it on The History Channel.

Steve: It would seem so.

Me: ...

Steve: ...

Me: ...Well all right then. Thanks for your help.

Steve: No problem. Have a super day.

Get this freakin' duck away from me

The Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM. 128 bytes. The cartridges had a maximum file size of 4K. This means that a thumbnail screenshot of an Atari game is larger than the game itself.

The Atari console in its own right was mind-boggingly more advanced than ENIAC. If properly configured, your cellphone could have decrypted Enigma in seconds. In another sixty years, artificial intelligence will likely have the right to vote.

But can they love? CAN THEY LOVE???

A Taste of Home

The world was always so much simpler when we were young, though of course we didn't know it at the time. There was a whole lifetime to look forward to, you had no responsibilities, everything was safe and secure. For most people, feelings of "youth" go hand-in-hand with feelings of "home". It comes as no surprise to me that whenever I have dreams that take place at home, they occur in the house I grew up in, not the house I'm in now. I don't know if everybody is like that. I'd wager that many people are.

And the only great, true tragedy in our lives is that we must inevitably lose our youth, our passions, our potentials, our freedom, when we grow up, and what is so sad is that when we were young we never knew or appreciated any of it. A child's mind is something so beautiful and unique, but when it is hardened by experience and outside stimuli, it erodes into adulthood. The dandelion blossom falls away and all that is left is grey seeds. Very few people can understand what being young is like, even though they all understood it once.

Consider those thoughts, and go back and listen to "Brain Damage" at the end of Dark Side of the Moon. The band you're in starts playing different tunes.

Every so often an adult can still grasp the mind of a child, and these few souls can often be found in the annals of our most revered artists. One such person spoke to me for ten years during my own youth, and it was a sad, sad day when he stopped speaking. Starting today his wisdom is being rebroadcast in the medium which made it famous, the newspaper, and this morning I found it exactly where I had left it, covering half of the front page of the comics section, right where it deserves to be. A glimpse of his youth, and a taste of mine.

Pickles

I know I've ranted about this elsewhere, but it still makes me insane.

I don't like pickles.

I do, however, accept that my dislike of pickles is a result of my simply not having acquired a taste for them, and not because they are objects which deserve to be hated. In other words, I have no problem with the idea that other people could like pickles, or with the people who profess as much. If pickles were sentient life-forms I could probably sit and have a beer with them...or at least I might if I liked beer, which I don't. I'm just not about to eat them.

Now, the good people at McDonald's have an interesting way of preparing their world-famous cheeseburgers. The method must be the product of painstaking market research into what exactly consumers want on a cheeseburger, and exactly how much they want. Too much and it is pointlessly indistinguishable from one of the larger sandwiches, and too little makes it a White Castle turd. So they undoubtedly have just the right size patty, the right amount of cheese, the right amount of onions, and the right amount of...pickles.

At least, that's what I have to assume. That's what I have to hold faith in.

You see, the average McDonald's cheeseburger contains one (1) pickle. Not seven, not two, not zero, but one. Just one. It is a small slice of pickle, never more than an inch in diameter, as though there were special McDonald's-size pickles grown somewhere where they cross ordinary foodstuffs with cocktail weenies. It is always smack dab in the exact center of the burger, which is quite impressive considering all the other things that their chefs will often get wrong.

The inclusion of the lone pickle leads me to the logical conclusion that the majority of the restaurant's patrons enjoy the occurrence of the pickle; if this thesis were faulty, then very few explanations for the pickle's presence would exist. I, being one who does not care for pickles, am therefore in the minority. The fact that the pickle is included by default does not bother me in the least, for two reasons: a) I have the opportunity to request my order be devoid of pickles, which I do not exploit, because in practical experimentation the preparer is usually confused by extra directions and will either ignore my request and include the pickle anyway or commit some far more eggregious error; and b) I do not mind removing the pickle myself before beginning my meal, seeing as how there is only one to remove (though the meal itself consists of two cheeseburgers), and requesting its absence would force me to open the burger to check anyway, lest I bite trustingly into it and discover the Cracker Jack prize within.

But as I remove my pickle, I think to myself: if the pickle is there, then most people are comfortable with its being there. And if most people like it there, then most people must enjoy pickles in a general sense, to some degree. So if most people like pickles, then why is there only one on the burger? Why is the burger not covered in tiny little pickle slices? It's covered in little tiny onion specks. Market research must have shown people like or do not mind onions. But there isn't just one onion speck in the middle, there are tons spread out across the burger. So why include one measly, insignificant pickle? Why be so half-hearted about pickles? Either go all out with them, or don't put them on there at all. I don't want a pickle.

I just wanna ride on my motorsickle.




For EZers, I'll be on the HotSeat at Harry's board tomorrow.

New Slang

The Shins' "New Slang" is the signature rock song of the 00's.

It picks up right where Teen Spirit, the song of the 90's, left off. It is a paroxysm of wondrous depression, a classic ballad of resigned, disjointed reflection. To me it says more in the chords and melody than it does with the lyrics...to me it says "things were going so well, everything was going to be okay, and then the towers came down and our futures were stolen. Now all we can do is hang out and wait to die." It's exactly how I feel about the way things have been going since, well, basically the first election, when things didn't quite go the way they should have, and it didn't seem like too big a roadblock at the time but kept getting worse from there. My generation is lost on a far deeper level than any in the history of this country. I put the tune on repeat and listen to it ten, twenty times in a row. It's one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.

The entire Garden State soundtrack is also the best score to come along in many a moon. Braff actually submitted the soundtrack with the script, and the whole thing stuck. That's to say nothing of the movie itself, which was my favorite of last year and says pretty much what the song says. To me, anyway.

A Eulogy

I laid you to rest
On the shores of the lake
And there shall you sleep
Forever
I failed to know you
Through little fault of my own
And my sorrow comes in fearing
That will be my excuse
For all who I lay to rest
On the shores of the lake.

On the shores of the lake
The sun will trace the day
And chasing it, the moon at night
Venus in the evening, Mars in the morning
Planes in the air and rockets in space
And the grass will grow unchecked
And the flowers will wither
And the weeds will colonize
The shores of the lake.

As you rest there unmoving
The world shall move around you
And your fruit shall bear fruit
Then their fruit shall bear fruit
And all will ripen
And seed
Then wither
All in turn will go to rest
On the shores of the lake.

And the world will keep moving
And the grass will keep growing
The mountains will rise
The valleys will fall
The lake will go dry
And with it the flowers
The stone with your name
Will always be there

And though it may wear smooth
The seeds of the fruit that we
Cannot yet dream of
Will someday find a hill of stones
On the shores of a lake
And if they remember the trees
That have borne them
They will know you as I did
I hope they will know you better.