February, 2010:

Oh for fun, links for your eyes and ears to sink their teeth into.

Feb 23rd, 2010
by John.
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– I can’t stop listening to Uhh Yeah Dude podcasts.  I joined the party 205 episodes late, but now I have a 205 hours worth of hysterical discussions to enjoy on my way to work every morning.  Some video examples of  a normally strictly audio experience –
Denny’s | Parenting | Men Looking for Women

– New Jersey toll collectors hate our stupid pennies and really just want us to die instead instead of paying them.  And apparently we complain about the toll collectors and write formal complaints.  The Smoking Gun was all “quarter circle forward + freedom of information act” on Jersey’s ass, and they had to comply.  The result?

Click to view the ongoing battles of patron vs. t/c.  Warning – frequent racial epithets and empty threats abound.

It’s the thuggish ruggish clone.

Feb 22nd, 2010
by John.
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Avatar tells the story of beautiful blue people who shove their braids into dragons, fight battle mechs and fly majestically into your heart. For seven hours. Through the use of fancy 3-D technology, James Cameron and his squad of A/V nerds in white lab coats are changing the public’s perception of 3-D movies, and the public wants MORE MORE MORE. But instead of taking chances on new 3-D franchises (admittedly, the technology needed to create the perfect font for Avatar’s script took about 8 years), Hollywood is just going to re-release all of our favorite movies of yesteryear with enhanced 3-D jackoffery and useless effects that add nothing but a chance to say “Whooooaaaaaa!” as the Ghostbusters play trombones that pop off the screen and right into your face. I know I’ll be ducking in my seat with my hands over my head as glorious digitized wine sprays the audience during Sideways 3-D. This is a new and exciting frontier for film-making, and I can’t wait to–

“Well, we’ve been looking for years and years and years at trying to put Star Wars in 3D, but the technology hasn’t been there and we’ve been struggling. I think this will be a new impetus to see if we can’t make that happen.”
– George Lucas

Oh for fuck’s sake, who invited him? I mean, “Didn’t we just leave this party?” asks Han Solo. Yes we did, fictional space-drug trafficker. The last time George got a boner for advanced technology, he re-mastered the original Star Wars trilogy and added a bunch of goofy shit that nobody wanted to see. Thousands of CGI aliens, jazzy dance numbers and other questionable additions made the world proclaim the now ubiquitous phrase, “George Lucas raped our childhood.” However, is it rape if you invite the rapist over to your house and then pay him $10 to rape you? Three times? The law says, “Probably not,” and then a bunch of words that I don’t understand.

Nevertheless, do you think George Lucas is just going to click the “OK MAKE THIS 3-D NOW” checkbox next to the original trilogy’s data files, save the changes and then forward them to your favorite movie dispensary? No! He’s storyboarding thousands of changes that still need to be made, because technology is finally catching up with whatever whacked out ideas he claims to have imagined 30 years ago. Here are some new plot developments that we can look forward to when Star Wars 3-D blasts itself into your theater like Captain fucking EO.

RETCONS RETCONS RETCONS. Retcon is short for “changing shit and claiming it was always meant to be that way for the sake of convenience.” Sometimes this works! The retelling of Evil Dead 1 during the first 15 minutes of Evil Dead 2 is a good example. The prequels are a bad example. Now it’s just a coincidence that everyone in every galaxy knows each other. I mean, Darth Vader was always going to build C-3PO! Yoda fought alongside Chewbacca, ok? It could totally happen. With three old movies to futz with and nothing but time on his hands, George is gonna retcon the living fuck out of everything. For instance, did you know that Mace Windu was Lando Calrissian’s father? This will add so many new levels of… something to the story. It will finally answer the question – What the hell was Mace Windu good for? Answer – fathering Lando Calrissian. Plus, Samuel L. Jackson will re-record all of Billy D. Williams’ dialogue to further drive this point home. THEY’RE RELATED NOW, WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?

Han: Lando’s not a system, he’s a man! Lando Calrissian, son of great Jedi master Mace Windu, who was killed by Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader during the Clone Wars. I saw all of this on a security hologram.
Leia: My adopted father briefly stood next to Mace Windu during the Clone Wars! What a coincidence that these two seemingly unrelated characters are related. Now I’m getting a vision of my real father… killing younglings… also on a security hologram.

There are still too many questions left unanswered! Quickly, retcon them out of existence! How do 20 Ewoks take down a squad of countless stormtroopers in Return of the Jedi? Easy. They were clones. That had the force. In 3-D. Our 21st century minds are ready for extreme Ewoks that can rip trees out of the ground and fling them halfway across the planet or sever a stormtrooper’s spinal cord by “jub-jub”ing in his general direction. Believe me, there won’t be a dry eye in the house when that one Ewok youngling dies and his midichlorians form the shape of a heart and float up to heaven in 3-D.

Did you know there are entire websites dedicated to the symmetry of Darth Vader’s fucking helmet? George has heard your complaints and will now digitally alter Vader’s helmet in the original trilogy. It will now be so symmetrical and perfect that you’ll question how you ever watched the films featuring the lopsided asshole helmet that was probably held together with dog shit. Maybe it will even take your mind off the fact that this guy is now underneath all that black plastic.  Wait till you see the new footage of Luke removing Vader’s helmet in Return of the Jedi… I won’t spoil it for you, but it’ll be in 3-D and you’ll watch it a million times and HATE EVERY SECOND OF IT BECAUSE IT COMES FROM THE MIND OF A CONNIVING RAPIST.

Oh hi the reason I wake up every day.

Feb 18th, 2010
by John.
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There is no “i” in internet.

Feb 7th, 2010
by John.
1 comment

What is the internet?  The question has plagued scientists and laypeople for thousands of years.  Some say it crash landed on American soil, wiped out the dinosaurs and instantly made all of our 1994 Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROMs laughably out of date.  Others don’t know what it is or what it wants from us, but will nevertheless throw credit card numbers at it in exchange for goods (bestselling novels, replacement Lego pieces, tax-free cigarettes) and services (blowjobs).  Much like your local supermarket or DMV, the internet allows murderers, pedophiles and other scumbags to coexist with normal people like you and me.  And that’s great and all… but seriously, what the hell is the internet?

The new scientists over at New Scientist have a few ideas, and with the help of their clipboards, two-way mirrors and various beeping and booping accoutrement, they compiled a list of Eight Things You Didn’t Know About the Internet.  It’s a very interesting article, and even I, a crackerjack internet veteran, learned a few things.  Dark corners on the self aware internet?  What the fuck, right?  But, did you know there are a few more things that you probably didn’t know about the internet, or maybe you always wanted to know but were too afraid to ask about the internet?  It’s true!  And I’ve got a hastily thrown together list that sort of proves it –

An addendum to:
New Scientists’ “Eight Things You Didn’t Know About the Internet” article.

9. The internet goes offline for 15 minutes every year on June 2nd at 11:30 am for recharging.
Remember the 1999 film entitled, “The Matrix”?  In it, a computer hacker becomes Jesus and fights software applications in suits.  When the computer hacker asked Laurence Fishburne what the Matrix was, he was like, “It’s a computer program and you’re a battery.”  And then he held up a battery.  The internet is nothing like this, but it still needs to be recharged, much like the battery in the previous sentence.  OK, this was a terrible example… ooh, I got it – remember the 1989 film entitled, Shocker?  In it, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in to the police.  That’s what imdb said anyway… I just remember there was a billboard near my house advertising this movie, and it scared the shit out of me.  Because I was 8.  Again, I should really think about these examples before committing them to print.  My apologies.  Anyway, the internet goes offline for 15 minutes every year on June 2nd at 11:30 am for recharging.  The heading for this section really summed it up.

10. The first electronic mail (e-mail) message took 9 months to reach its recipient.
Prof. Theodore Atsine of MIT penned the following e-mail message to his lab assistant on April 22nd, 1965 at 3:15 pm –

TESTING.  THE QUICK BROWN PROFESSOR JUMPED OVER THE LAZY LAB ASSISTANT.  THAT’S YOU.  RESPOND OR YOU’RE FUCKING FIRED.

The lab assistant was fired at the end of the day.  In January of 1966, the e-mail finally arrived at the lab assistant’s terminal.  Due to the raw processing power required to receive the e-mail, most of MIT’s computer equipment melted, exploded and, oddly enough, vanished without a trace after an ear-shattering “YOU’VE GOT MAIL” announcement liquefied the ear drums of everyone in a 5-mile radius.  Prof. Atsine was hospitalized and later died due to complications with tinnitus.  Considered the world’s greatest genius, Prof. Atsine was given the highest honor of having a typographic character named after him.  The at sign. @.  Get it?  Because he invented e-mail.

11. The internet doesn’t “exist,” but is actually a digitized collection of thoughts and dreams of an incredibly perverted genius.
Although I don’t have any actual “proof” or “charts” or “words” to describe this issue that “aren’t in quotations,” I think there’s a pretty good chance that I’m totally right about this one.  And even if you tried to do some research to disprove my theory that the internet doesn’t exist, consider your source – I’ll give you a hint: it’s the fucking internet.  You’ll need a lot more than a Google search to start unraveling the convoluted e-fabric, my friend.  You may have to head to a library to check out some books on the subject… or I guess you could just download them to your Kindle — oh god THEY’VE TAKEN OVER OUR BOOKS, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES PROBABLY, ETC!

So, in conclusion, the internet is here to stay.  One day, we will harness its awesome power for something so revolutionary that merely thinking about it now would turn your brain to gray hummus.  It will probably be a combination of social networking sites and email and chatrooms and oh fuck - Google already invented it months before I wrote this sentence.