A Less Than Timely Rant

I am way behind the times in committing these thoughts to words, but the fact that I am stuck in this office for about 3 more hours with nothing to do gives me some time to get some good old fashioned vitriol going.

You know what movie is a stupid piece of shit? Avatar. Seriously. Fuck that movie and fuck James Cameron. I had been doing a pretty good job not thinking about this abortion of a film for the last month, but with the Academy Awards coming up this Sunday, it's been slowly coming back into my life like a herpes breakout. Although I don't know if herpes would be less obnoxious than listening to people justify why this movie is worthy of anything other than a straight to DVD release.

So Avatar is the most expensive movie ever, using state-of-the-art brand new equipment, and if you're the type who thinks movies aren't ALREADY way too fucking expensive, you can offer to throw even more of your hard earned dollars at James Cameron's feet to see it in 3D (read: see it with a huge fucking headache). Though this doesn't need to be reiterated at this point. If you hadn't already heard all this bullshit before then can I move into the cave you inhabit with you? It must be peaceful there. My point is that any time you ask someone to justify their opinion of this movie, they will immediately start talking about the special effects and/or 3D. One thing that is conspicuously absent from most people's positive assessment is any attempt to address the plot. If you push most Avatar fans on the issue, their response will be "yeah, the plot wasn't too original, but the effects/world/"immersive" 3D are so impressive that it makes up for it." Are... are you fucking kidding me? That's like saying you have the most unique house on the block that is built from material that can withstand a nuclear strike, but melts when exposed to rain.

First, to address the plot: Have you seen "Dances With Wolves" or "The Last Samurai"? Then you know what this movie is about. If you haven't, skim Wikipedia. Both of those movies are fucking awful too, so it won't take long to get the idea. Just throw in some nonsense about a rare mineral called (I fucking kid you not) "Unobtanium" and you have Avatar. If you just felt some bile rise in your throat reading that, don't worry, that's just proof that your brain functions. But you have the usual checklist: formerly unquestioning marine exposed to indigenous people of another planet who takes up their cause, the heartless corporation and army that oppose said indigenous peoples and marine (plus marine's posse), scientist type who "always kind of but not really" understood the people she studies, and a whole cavalcade of expendable dipshits who prance on and off screen contributing fucking nothing except spouting the most embarrassingly awful dialogue I have ever fucking heard.

Now, I will say that the Visual effects are good. That's undeniable and really, after 315 million goddamn dollars, there would be no excuse for the visuals to not make me shit myself in awe. And that's the problem, they're good, but most expensive movie EVER good? HELL no. Hell. Fucking. No. It's all very obvious CG work and the speed at which it ceases to be jaw-dropping and starts to be par-for-the-course and commonplace is maddening. After all, special effects cease to be any kind of special when they comprise the entire fucking film. Those are just effects then. And I'm sorry, but Mr. Cameron should really be looking to get his money back, because they're really no better than anything else from the last 5 years or so.

Of course, I would be remiss in my assessment if I didn't mention the whole 3D... thing. I did not see this movie in 3D because I resent the existence of that format. It makes me fucking nauseated, and because there is no way to provide any kind of feedback to the audience, provides all the immersion of a pop-up book. Plus you have to pay extra money for those stupid fucking glasses. The point is that if you need to have objects (I'd say characters too, but let's face it, they're more like objects than ACTUAL objects) flying into the face of the audience every 10 seconds to keep their attention, then either your movie needs one fuck of a rewrite or you're Michael Bay. A lot of people tell me I'm so sour about this movie because I didn't see it in 3D and thusly "don't get it". My response is this: If a movie is reliant on a gimmick that makes me physically ill to convey whatever fucking point it's trying to make, then it is a failure as a movie. Why not just make this a vehicle to display "things that would be cool if they existed" then just give a rundown on Pandora, sans the awful characters and plot, if they're really that unimportant to my "getting" of the movie? I can't goddamn believe some people.

I will remain immovable on this issue. If you think Avatar was a good movie, you are wrong. If you think that it is excusable to make a movie that has been done countless times before (all fairly badly) for the sake of "durfff I just made something pretty and who cares about original ideas or interesting characters?" then congratulations, not only are you wrong, you also have the same standards for entertainment as most household pets. This is all well and good, but I would request that like most household pets, you remain indoors until you undoubtedly die prematurely from eating something you shouldn't have, simply so filmmakers will stop pandering to your moronic tastes.

On Racism

Resident Evil 5 comes out on Friday. I might-ish have a pre-order for it (the release date snuck up on me and I didn't realize it until pre-orders had closed) in the sense that one of the many awesome people at the Union Square Play n' Trade said he was pretty sure he'd have a copy of the game for me, and hopefully will call tomorrow to confirm so I can get it at midnight. Play n' Trade fucking rocks. Had I gone to a gamestop, they'd tell me I was too late, then demand I sell them my games for a dollar apiece so that I could preorder something else instead of, you know, what I want.

(Edit: Showed up at midnight, had a copy of the game with my name on it sitting in the box of preorders. Seriously, Play n' Trade fucking rocks.)

But i digress. What i really wanted to talk about was controversy, because nowadays it seems like no game can be released without some kind of big issue being broached by, well, idiots. The hot button issue for RE5? Racism. Wait, fucking what? Racism? Are you fucking kidding me? You kill zombies and fight an evil corporation who is evil for the sake of being evil. Pretty standard fare for an installment in the Resident Evil series.

Oh wait, back up: Did I mention the game is set in Africa? Did the "uninformed media schlock" alarm just go off in your brains? Do you see where I'm going with this?

Yes, people are accusing the game of being racist because you kill black people. In Africa. Say, wasn't that the name of the continent where like, there are a fuck ton of black people? Hell, there were so many of them that out of the goodness of our hearts we took them to America to live on biiiiig plantations so that they could chill and get out of the desert. Of course, then Abraham Lincoln kicked them all off of the plantations and they had to get jobs. At least, that's my knowledge of the situation based off what I skimmed on Wikipedia. My point, however, is that the game is set in Africa. You know what I would find a lot more jarring? A game set in Africa where there was nary a black zombie to be found (incidentally, if Rob Zombie and the guy from In Living Color teamed up, they should totally call their band Black Zombie). Shooting zombies that happen to be black because the infection hit in fucking Africa isn't racist, it's the plot of a fucking videogame.

I found an article on the Wall Street Journal via Joystiq that seems to sum up the problems with the allegations of racism in one particularly poignant line:

"the zombies hardly seem zombie-like when they control machine gun turrets and steer watercraft. Aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles, the zombies look like everyday African people, albeit ones that are trying to kill you"

Let's look at this a little closer, hmmm? "aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles"? Aside from? That seems like a pretty big detail to simply cast to the side when you're asking whether a game that's been in the works for years is denegrating an entire race. Also, if they look like Africans who are trying to kill you, wouldn't you be remiss if you didn't shoot them in the face? Also, I know Africa isn't the greatest place in the world to live, but if even the majority of citizens resembled the zombies in this game, then Africa would have been foresaken as a lost cause long ago. Christ, the spaniards didn't throw this much of a temper tantrum with RE4. Is the moral of the story that places that aren't predominantly white aren't allowed to be in videogames because if bad things happen to minorities it automatically means its racist? Hell if that was the case all crimes against minorities would have to be classified as hate crimes even if the crime had nothing to do with race, but that'd be sill... what? oh shit.

Fuck TBNYU right in their stupid fucking asses

I simply cannot come up with a good introduction. I want to, but I'm so fucking livid right now that my thoughts can barely maintain some kind of coherent train. Let me dial it back about 17 hours or so to 9 PM last night, when our neighborhood friendly student activist group, "Take Back NYU" decided to "occupy" the 3rd floor of the kimmel center in protest of... stuff. I'd be more specific, but their list of demands is so all over the place it's like they took random passages from the anarchists cookbook and fed them through some kind of mad-lib machine. Their demands encompass everything from re-banning Coca Cola products on campus, to a flat and lower tuition rate, to student-led financial oversight committees, to 13 (yes, they specified a number) scholarships for Palestinian students, to making the NYU library available to the public, and of course, the usual request for amnesty for all involved. After all, a protest wouldn't be fun (that is the point of protests, right?) if people actually got in trouble. You can find their pitiful sham of a website (and I hesitate to post this link because then it means people might actually click through and give them the attention that they want) at http://www.takebacknyu.com where you can find their full list of "demands" and a half assed justification for their retarded actions.

So let's look at the things I've got the biggest qualms with. First off, the involvement of any demands related to palestine and "using our excess funds to rebuild the university of Gaza". What. The. Fuck. Are you fucking kidding me? Since when is TBNYU the fucking PLO? It's like they couldn't get enough people to support their stupid fucking demands so they tacked Palestine on to make it seem like they're culturally aware and oh-so-sensitive. This also makes their list of demands look like the aforementioned anarchist mad-lib.

Next up: re-banning Coca Cola. Come on, are you fucking serious? Do you really think Pepsi is the paragon of human rights in their south american bottling plants? Fuck no, they're just good at hiding it, and apparently were better than Coke. If a company has shit set up in the third world, they're probably abusing their workers, so stop treating Coke like they're the worst of the fucking crowd. Striking workers have been mowed down by the dozens in banana plantations, but does NYU ban Chiquita? FUCK no, so let it go, you fuckers finally lost.

Scholarships to Palestinian students? Look, I have very little opinion on the Israel/Palestine thing simply because I don't feel I'm informed enough to have an opinion, but answer me this: I get almost no financial aid from the university in spite of the fact that my family in addition to paying for NYU is still paying off my sister's education (she graduated last year). So why is some person based solely on their ethnicity more entitled to help from the university than I am. I am going to be paying this shit off until I'm about 108 if you count grad school. So FUCK you, you TBNYU fucks. If you care about solving problems for NYU students, why don't you try to make it fair for ALL of the NYU students, and not just 13 of the ones who happen to also be middle eastern.

Full disclosure of all the school's financial allocations with approval by the students? Is this a fucking joke? What do you think that our higher ups do? Believe it or not, John Sexton has a hard fucking job that makes him WORTH the six figure salary. NYU has done great under him. He is not some malicious overlord sitting in the top of some crooked castle spire counting the millions of dollars he's embezzled from the wide eyed youths of America. And full disclosure? DO YOU FUCKS EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD ENTAIL? Even if it did get released it would be literally thousands upon thousands of pages of pure financial jargon and do you know why? Because we have tens of thousands of students paying upwards of 50,000 dollars per year. That is a lot of fucking money, and no one, especially not an oversight board composed of the same fucking jackoffs who compiled this idiot manifesto in the first place would be able to make heads or tails of it without advanced accounting degrees. Guess who does that? The people whose salary you are paying to WATCH WHERE OUR FUCKING MONEY IS GOING. And the system works. How do I know? A guy in my office was laid off in fall 2008 for embezzling. They catch this shit, they are on it. You occupying a fucking cafeteria of all things solves fucking nothing you stupid dipshits.

The grand point I'm trying to make here is this: Thanks to the jerkoffs at TBNYU, this will now be the face of the student body at an institution that I am irrevocably bound to for at least the rest of the semester. There has been moderate press coverage, but only of their side, and it is not clear that while (according to the website, so its probably a lie) "over 200" (read "probably 50 or so") students are in fact functional fucking retards, the remaining tens of thousands of us do not agree with this bullshit and do not care to be represented in this retarded half assed wannabe revolutionary way. FUCK SHIT DICK COCK PISS!

That is all.

P.S. Including this sentence, the word "fuck" or some variant thereof appears 25 times total in this article. Can you tell I haven't slept in like 28 hours?

Over the Shark, On to the Beach, and Straight on to Cancellation

I am willing to put up with a lot of stupid shit from my entertainment. I have watched every last episode of Lost and 24, I love the Die Hard series (including the new one), and still get perverse joy from watching Quentin Tarantino's cinematic tripe. As I write this, however, I feel that a certain line has been irrevocably crossed. What line, you may ask? The degree of bullshit I am willing to put up with from none other than Doctor Gregory House M.D.

The show has been going south for a while now, but I've stuck with it simply because Hugh Laurie plays such an unbelievable asshole that i marvel at the writing required to come up with somebody who is such a genuinely awful human being. This last week's episode has officially torn it for me. Perhaps you may have seen it, although if you have I'm surprised you're reading my blog instead of projectile vomiting all over your keyboard.

There were so many status quo changing elements in this episode that there is simply no way for any kind of return to a healthy equilibrium to make even remote sense. House almost got one of his doctors killed, alternated between chatting up and openly harassing a man with a gun pointed at him and other people, got the gun away from the guy, gave the gun back to the guy, then proceeded to be oh-so shocked and indignant when SURPRISE: the lunatic with the gun failed to act rationally in regards to other people's safety.

You don't play up a character's keen intuition into the workings of people's minds (all people are bad) and then take away that intuition when a character so repugnantly shallow even I could identify the, uh, character flaws starts waving a fucking gun around. And why did nobody think to simply breach Cuddy's office when this shit was still in first gear. Everyone in the House universe with the surprising exception of Chase and Foreman turned into hyper-emotional mongoloids, whining about their problems (sometimes to the fucking hostage taker) and talking through their inabilities to have normal lives. Hell they chatted so much you almost forgot that there was a man with a gun and a fucking SWAT team assembled at the hospital.

So, Dr. House, I say to you this: I have had it with your stupid bullshit. You have run out of medical scenarios that could even be minutely based in reality and thusly have to revert to waxing existential on mortality for about 20 fucking minutes every episode, and when that doesn't work, you throw in a bunch of people with guns, only you fuck that up too as nobody who would ordinarily be trained in using them seems to remember that they even have them. To say this show jumped the shark with this episode would be giving it too much credit. It's as if the show tried to jump the shark, but didn't quite get enough momentum and fell straight into its gaping maw, where it was promptly digested and shat out to become plankton food.

Oh also, the above paragraphs contain spoilers or some shit.

Fuck You, Mr. Malakian

Yeah. See that guy up here? Fuck that guy. Fuck him in his stupid whiny ass.

Those of you who might recognize this individual or the name "[Daron] Malakian" might be wondering: "why, Michael, why have you turned your back on the guitarist for the one and only mighty System of a Down?" Don't worry, my reasoning is good.

See, Daron here is heading up his own side project (Scars on Broadway) while SOAD is on hiatus and over the last couple of months, I have been listening to them pretty regularly. It's no System to be sure, but I liked it more than Serj's solo album and it had enough good tracks to earn a pretty prestigious spot in my itunes play counts. I enjoyed this album enough, in fact, that a little less than a month ago I bought tickets to one of their upcoming shows set for the end of October. I'm not a big fan of going to shows alone, however, and finding people willing to drop $25 on the ticket was tougher than I thought. Late last night/early this morning, depending on how you want to look at it, I decided to see if tickets were still on sale so that I could know if I should still bother pestering people to go with me. Imagine my surprise when the Irving Plaza website had the show listed as "cancelled". Suffice to say, I immediately went over to their myspace to see what the fuck happened to the show I had been anticipating for almost a goddamn month. Turns out, this had happened a few weeks ago, although the tour was slated to start a week after Daron decided to cancel, so I still feel vindicated in my outrage, as that is a pretty cocktastic move to pull. But what, pray tell, was the reason? After all, for such a sudden move, this cocksucker had better have a good one. Here's the most informative line of Daron's "explanation":

"now is a time when aspects of my life need to be tended to"

WHOA, there! Don't go unloading your life story on me pal! I could post the rest of it, but I feel that there is nothing else there that offers any clarification, just more pitiful attempts at Daron rationalizing cancelling an entire tour a week before it was slated to start. The official statement from the band's publicist simply stated that "Malakian concluded that his heart wasn't into touring at the time" They then go on to say that there is no plan to reschedule.

Excuse me? Are you fucking kidding me? You write and perform music for a living you whiny fuck. The pisser is that he may have a legitimate reason, but for some reason feels he doesn't owe his fans any clarification beyond "I don't wanna do it now". Some valiant myspacers have been quick to point out that "blah blah blah he's entitled to a personal life blah blah blah maybe if I defend this outright dickishness vehemently enough Daron will notice me and like me blah blah puke". Allow me to point something out:

Daron Malakian is a celebrity. He might not be on the same tier as that Hilton twat or Brittany Spears, but the bottom line is that he puts himself out in the public eye for a living and essentially puts himself and his music on display. When you become a celebrity, the very definition of the word means that no, you don't get to have much of a private life. And you can be damn shure that when you cancel a tour a week before the scheduled start and offer NO explanation other than half-assed excuses and poorly worded vagaries, people will remember you as the guy that cancelled a tour for apparently no fucking reason, not what as a poor suffering artist.

I'm not asking for all of the gruesome details, but come the fuck on. You can be vague but still give people enough of a clue as to why you pulled the rug out from under them all of a sudden. You have testicular cancer? "I've been advised that it would be medically unsound for me to do this tour after learning some new information". Some kind of death? Fine, don't even say who. Even if you just said "some kind of death" it would be infinitely better than the shit us fans were fed. Drug Problem? well you could... ah who am I kidding? Have you heard System of a Down? They've probably run out of drugs to do and had to start resorting to BZ just to feel anything. But you see what I'm getting at? You don't need to post pictures of your tumor, but let us know you're under the weather.

Or just cancel the tour with no explanation. Like a bitch.

On Idiots

I, uh, I have no really reasonable introduction so to speak, so I'm just going to dive right in here. As everyone is painfully, painfully aware, we have this election thingy coming up in just a few weeks. It's kind of, you know, a big deal and stuff. Anyhow, this particular election has provided a great window into a government gone wrong, a media just now beginning to regrow their testicles, and of course, Sara Palin in a bikini. Most importantly though, it's given me a few more reasons to hate a whole lot more people with such vitriol that I think I might actually explode. Allow me to Enumerate:

People who shrug off any information or issues with "I don't care about politics"
OK, where to begin with these fuckers? First of all, there's always the smarmy fucking way they say it, like they're too good to keep up to date. Because, you know, staying informed on the workings of your government is totally lame. Who cares if they're deliberating how best to just GIVE the very banks that are responsible for this clusterfuck we're in 700 BILLION fucking dollars of our money with no oversight or strings attached? Gossip Girl is on tonight and you just have to see what witty puns Kristen Bell will come up with this week. I don't even care about the social aspects here, as we can all agree that the government fucking with those is retarded. I am talking about opportunities to learn about the people who might be mandating what we do for the next 4-8 years. Here's a fucking clue: if you "don't care about politics" because you're disenchanted with the system, you are (and I will Italicize for emphasis) part of the fucking problem, not a part of the fucking solution. You are directly responsible for how out of control our Government has gotten because rather than keep up with what's going on so you can raise your voice before the problems arise, you sit there grinning with smug self satisfaction that you're not participating until you're living in a cardboard box giving rim jobs for pocket change wondering where all of your fucking money went. Here's a news flash assholes: you still live in this country (at least until we're bought out by China completely), so even if you "don't care" you are above or immune to absolutely fuck all. And when you're cleaning the shit from between your teeth after your 3rd rusty trombone of the evening, I will lean over to you from MY cardboard box and steal your floss.

People who think they are revolutionaries exacting change by not voting
(no Joel, this is not in reference to you. Your post earlier today was an example of a non voter with a good argument, plus I actually started writing this last week)

I can't decide if I hate these people more or less than the above. I'm not talking about people who simply don't vote (I have no real right to talk as I wasn't registered until right before I turned 21), but the ones who deliberately say they aren't voting because of the corrupt system or politicians all being the same or some other 19-year-old-who-just-discovered-Nietzsche stupid bullshit argument and think they are way smarter than you for figuring this out. They will proudly sit on their throne lording over you that "like, nothing will ever change, man". Well here's a fucking clue: it sure as shit won't change if you don't fucking do something about it. In case you haven't noticed, plenty of people (around half of the adult populace) don't vote and yet has it made a difference? It sure as fuck doesn't make any more of a difference than if you do. My point is, you certainly have your right to vote or not vote as you see fit, but if you expect anyone to give a shit that you're not voting because you're so fucking informed that you "see right through all the lies" or whatever, then don't be surprised when nothing changes, because I guarantee no one in Washington cares about your fucking vote. You are a statistical zero as an individual and they know where you won't vote, somebody else will. They say that people who don't vote don't have a right to complain, and I don't wholly agree on that point: People who think their not voting changes a single fucking thing don't get a right to complain because all they are doing is finding an excuse for their apathy.

If anyone wants the cliffs notes to this, read the headings in bold, and this gem from Harlan Ellison. It sums up my feelings on the matter quite well:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

You Wouldn't Take No For An Answer You Fucking Bitch

Don't worry kids, I'm not insulting you (yet, although we'll see where this takes me), rather quoting one of the many songs that has been stuck in my head for the last week or so. Yes that's right, Mindless Self Indulgence has finally come out with a new album (well, almost, but it's available to listen to on their myspace so, yeah, it's pretty much out). Let me put it to you this way. I, erm, acquired their album on Sunday night so I could listen to it on my iPod. Until today, nothing but that album was played on it. I think the lowest playcount for any track on the album right now is 12. Suffice to say, I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Now, the actual reason I'm writing this is because of a news post I prepared for Just Stunned (one of the strips set to go up I believe at the beginning of May). It started getting lengthier than I feel the average news post should, so consequently I decided to expand on it here. See, If has been completed for a while now (I would have to surmise at least since February. The band may have put it up on their blog but I'm just too fucking lazy to check). This means that they've been spending the interim period getting their marketing machine powered up to full steam, and have kept true to their roots of bending their fans over and fucking them in the ass.

You see, this makes the second album in a row now where MSI has released no less than eleventy-billion different versions. OK, that was kind of a lie. In actuality there are 4: standard edition CD, limited edition CD, limited edition vinyl, and edited cd. Normally, edited wouldn't warrant a mention, except for the fact that they added one track to it. They also added a different track to the vinyl edition, and added a few live songs on a special dvd for the limited edition. This of course means that there are, in actuality, 17 tracks in total (plus some live songs, but I'm only counting new stuff), but if you want all of them, you have to buy the same goddamn album at least 3 times.

But wait, there's more! Did you know that there is a special deal on their site's store where if you buy all 4 editions you get a t-shirt and a special vinyl single with yet ANOTHER new song plus a demo for one of the other tracks on the album? That's right, for $60, you can have the same album 4 goddamn times plus a t-shirt and some collector's edition shit. On vinyl. Because everybody has the capability to listen to vinyl all the time and of course it's not costly or a hassle to get vinyl onto your computer so that it's in an easier to access format. No, of course not, that would be MADNESS. It's an established fact that everybody everywhere always has access to a turntable and you can get songs off of them and onto your ipod simply by clicking your heels 3 times and saying "I didn't just get fucked, I didn't just get fucked" until you start to believe it.

I mean, seriously, if they're trying to keep people from pirating their stuff, this is so NOT the way to do it. I preordered If back in March and felt no pangs because 25$ for the limited edition CD and a t-shirt was a pretty sweet deal. And it almost seems like paying double that plus change to get all 4 isn't that bad a deal, but remember, you're paying the 25$ for one album and a t-shirt and the subsequent 35 amounts to 2 extra tracks and a vinyl single. Are you fucking shitting me? Is this shit for real? The only thing I've seen that's more jaw dropping was the "special edition" of trent reznor's latest crap fest that sold for 500$ and sold out upon the day of release.

The best part is that if you read the band's blog, they announce these "deals" like they're doing you a favor. I will reiterate a past statement: Are you fucking shitting me? I took one look at that announcement and my first thought was "I wonder how long it'll take for the other editions to get put up on isohunt". Because, my friends, the day I pay for the SAME FUCKING ALBUM 4 times will be the day my dick falls off from getting fucked to death by Jessica Alba. Need a less wordy summary? The day I buy the same album 4 times will be the day I am fucking dead.

We Find Most of our Clients Can Remember 2 Words

OK, Sega, this is it. I've been patient with you as a company, given that the Sega Genesis was my first video game system, but goddammit enough is enough. I cannot stand idly by while you continue to mouth-fuck your beloved intellectual properties to death.

So last week my roommate calls me over to check out the new sonic game's gameplay footage. Suffice to say, I was trepidatious. Remember Sonic 3D? The Sonic Adventure Series? Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games? Sega has done absolutely nothing to retain the trust of the gaming community at large, is what I'm driving at here. However, this new trailer had me about ready to drink that blue and prickly kool-aid. Minimal 3D elements, linear game play involving collecting rings and running fast, the game doesn't appear to be on rails, just some good looking 2D gameplay in some pretty nice looking 3D environments. Somebody hand me a chalice, I'm ready to drink.

Well, WAS ready to drink. I paused today to go on joystiq because I was at work and had nothing better to do. There I saw this coupled with this (sorry to be pulling a Tycho here and linking to 50 different things rather than summarize. I'm lazy. Fuck you.) Take this Kool-aid from my presence, for it pleases me not. "Reinventing sonic's gameplay" with "unusual situations"? All while "staying true to what made him an industry icon"? Fuck you! You don't get to claim you're reinventing him AND keeping him the same. And have you brain dead fucks at Sega learned nothing? What happened every time you tried to "reinvent sonic"?

Sega Developer 1: "guuuuuuh, let's turn sonic into a pinball game, then continue hitting ourselves in the heads with rocks"

Sega Developer 2: "better idea! let's give him a voice that 5 year olds would find lame, add some characters no one likes or cares about, THEN hit ourselves in the heads with rocks!

Sega Developer 3: "Gahhh! I just choked on my own tongue!"

Getting the basic gist here? So Sega, to quote the only funny madTV sketch in existence: "I will offer you a piece of advice. 2 words. Stop it. Just...just stop it." No good has ever come of "reinventing" sonic. Anyone remember the Dreamcast? No? oh right, at least in the US, there were like 4 games available before it tanked! That was when Sega turned themselves into the $50 hooker beneath the underpass, offering to license their beloved properties to the highest bidder, churning out shitfest after shitfest. Ever wonder why Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, and Sonic And Knuckles did so well? Sega had the common sense not to FUCK AROUND with a working formula.

So fuck you, Sega. Fuck you for getting my hopes up, fuck you for sending them spiraling back to the ground, and fuck you for shilling out all of your integrity and turning sonic into a fucking werewolf. You stupid fucks.

How I Learned to Stop Hating Hardcore Kids and Start REALLY Hating Hardcore Kids

Those of you that know me know that when I go to a show, I like my moshes to be straight fucking moshes. This means there should be precisely 3 things going on: pushing people, running in circles, and pushing people some more. Those of you that know me also know my opinion about hardcore kids (for those of you who don't, I hate them, as the title implies). This was solidified last year at a Between The Buried and Me concert when, while defending myself from a hardcore dancer, I got sucker punched in the face. I have an old blog on my myspace ranting about why, if people are seeing an EMT on a regular basis at your shows, the reaction should not be "YEAH, HARDCORE DUDE!!!" Rather, people should wonder what is wrong with their scene that causes so many grievous injuries.

However, risk of life and limb aside, I still enjoy the music and, while I come out of some shows with a few bruised, the incident at Between The Buried And Me was relatively isolated in my personal experience. That was why I wasn't terribly fazed when I got to the Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza show last night. There was the usual run of idiots flailing around like retarded fish out of water, and because the space was limited, they were a little harder to avoid than usual. Nothing I can't handle though. You can take a punch to the face, you can survive a few hits in the arms or back (which is where I'm very sore right now). However, halfway through the second band's set (Born of Osiris: they were awesome, like As I Lay Dying but grindier) I noticed that we were dealing with a very special breed of asshole at this show.

See, at most shows, the hardcore kids maintain a moderate distance from the edge of the pit out of whatever small shred of courtesy they may have for their fellow concertgoers. This show however, had people rushing the edges with spin kicks and flailing punches. Now I cannot stress this point enough here, hardcore dancers look like fucking morons. Words can't even describe how stupid this new moshpit fad is, so I'll let video do it for me.



Look at these fucking idiots. Oh my god it makes me want to shoot myself, as if this is truly the up and coming generation, we are all fucked.

Anyway, Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, Born of Osiris, and See You Next Tuesday (aka CUNT) went off without a hitch for the most part. CUNT was too drunk though, and by the end of their set, it degraded to pure noise. Not like grind noise, but like the guitarist slamming his fretboard against the amp. At one point he pulled me onto the "stage" (which was elevated about 6 inches off the ground) and threw me into the audience. I have no idea why. Anyway, Beneath The Massacre was headlining, and Mike and I were there for TDTDE and them, so we were pretty stoked. 10 minutes into the set, a guy came up on the stage, said something to the singer, and the singer announced "OK, guys, stop fighting with each other out there. Just come up here and headbang with us, we all want a good time but people don't have to get hurt." Solid advice from a cool guy. Flash forward to 5 minutes later when the show stopped again because 10 guys were beating the living shit out of 1 person. I don't know what that guy did, but these fucking pussies were on him like balls in a hardcore kid's mouth. They were slamming him into the bar, knocking him down, and punching and kicking him in the face. There was a puddle of blood on the floor about one foot in diameter. We're not talking smears here, we're talking an actual puddle. I also saw what I believed to be a tooth, but I couldn't be sure because all of the blood on the floor was obscuring things. Have all of my italics made this clear enough?

At this point a guy from the knitting factory came out and started yelling at the crowd that "they were acting like a bunch of fucking idiots and that they needed to show some fucking respect for the bands". Then they canceled the rest of the show. That's right, hardcore kids managed to get a show fucking canceled because they wouldn't listen to the band (who they supposedly respect enough to pay money to see) when they told them to fucking cool it. The show got divided into two people: those who supported the knitting factory guy, and those who kept chanting "fuck you, asshole!" Let me make this clear. They were beating the living shit out of somebody for no good reason (I don't know what he did, but nobody deserves the beating that he took unless they are Osama Bin Laden or Peter Jackson) and they were outraged when the band told them to stop beating the shit out of people. I have gone to somewhere between 30 and 40 metal shows and have never seen a beating half this severe. Before this, my trump card of mosh pit stories was my friend Ben getting half of his front tooth kicked out.

On the way out of the show, I commented to Mike that this was why hardcore dancing is stupid. Somebody gets hurt, a fight breaks out, and it wrecks the show for people who just wanted a night of headbanging and heavy music. Some dude overheard it and started calling me a "faggot pussy motherfucking bitch" and suggested that I "go cry about it" like "a faggot". And that sums up the hardcore scene right there. A bunch of meatheads who can't resolve conflicts like a human being and instead gang up on people, because in a one on one fight they would go down like the dickless pieces of shit that they are.

Do You Dislike People?

Then come and work at NYU's dining halls and health center. That's right, if you hate talking to, interacting with, helping, or simply seeing other people, then these positions are perfect for you. Allow me to elucidate.

I'll start with the dining halls, as I have less of a bone to pick with them, but a bone nonetheless (insert appropriate sexual innuendo here). I live at the Palladium, which amongst it's numerous other features (a career center that I have not visited since fall and a gym that I never use) features a dining hall. There are 12 residential floors in the building with about 25 rooms apiece, most of which house 4 students each. Suffice to say, there are a lot of people in this building which means the dining hall is always crowded. This of course means that the employees there (with the exception of one cool guy who can knock off 10 people in about 2 minutes) prepare and serve the food one person at a time. This is in addition to barely ever paying attention to requests (because asking them to not put onions on your sandwich is an affront to them and you must be made to pay for it), maintaining a gruff and shouty demeanor, and essentially treating you like shit scraped from their boots for asking them to do their fucking job and get you your food. If food preparation is not your thing, you can be the official swipe nazi, ensuring that only people who have swiped meals are allowed to even look at the dining area (which is a completely separate room from where you acquire the food). This means that if you have a friend who doesn't have a meal plan (about half of the people in my group) it will cost you an extra meal for them to sit with you. Not even take the food. Just to sit down at a table. As if, given the choice between their own good food and the dining hall, somebody would knock over the dining hall for all it's worth. There's nothing I love more than burnt burgers, powdered eggs, and quite possibly the shittiest, driest sandwiches I have ever consumed.

Now onward for those of you so misanthropic that even sighting another human being makes your stomach turn: The NYU Health Center. If you make an appointment, it is almost guaranteed that you will not be seen for at least a week, probably two, after you call to schedule. Should you actually still be ailing from whatever your initial problem was when your appointment finally rolls around, they will make you fill out a questionnaire about every possible thing that might be even remotely pertinent (pre-existing conditions, things that run in the family, do you drink/smoke/use drugs, what kind of sex you have with how many people, do you wear a seatbelt - yes that is a real question that they ask every time you go in). This may seem like something that would be worthwhile, and it would be if the quacks that work at that fucking cesspool of incompetence actually read it. Instead, the nurse will come in, ask you the questions that you just finished filling out, and write them down. Then the "doctor" will come in and ask you the same questions that the nurse just asked you, which you just filled out on the goddamn form. Brief example: I have been taking zyrtec for my allergies since I was 14 and always say such on the form, yet when I went in this week to get the horrifying hives I have been breaking out in treated, the "doctor" had the fucking gall to recommend that I try zyrtec. When I told them I have taken it for so long that I am practically immune to antihistamines, the doctor shrugged and recommended I make an appointment with the allergist. They fit me in in March.

Now, should you manage to make it past the form/question triple barrage without dying from overexposure to pure stupid, they will chalk up whatever is ailing you to one of two things: post nasal drip or (if applicable) smoking. I could walk in there with a gunshot wound to the fucking arm and they would tell me that it is, in all likelihood, a cold. It took Allison 3 trips in two weeks to get diagnosed with mono, and on the last trip her throat was so swollen that she could barely talk and they had to intravenously hydrate her because it hurt too much to eat or drink. And they were still ambivalent as to whether or not it was post nasal drip. I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. This place makes me so goddamned angry that I sometimes contemplate lighting myself on fire and running around in front of their building to warn others not to enter if they might even be slightly sick, finally leaving an ashen husk as a grim reminder of my sacrifice (until the street cleaners sweep me into a dustpan).

So if either of these posts sound like something you'd be interested in, apply today and they'll be sure not to help you just as soon as they can.

On "Controversy"

OK, before you read this post, have you read the one below it? About Microsoft discovering sex? No? Go read it now. Don't worry, it's cool, I'll wait. Kind of amusing wasn't it? Anyway, here are my actual thoughts on all of this shit that's been happening.

I was going to post the original article that inspired this rage (now kind of notorious on the internet), but it looks like the hack who wrote it has since taken the post down off of his site (probably for two reasons: 1) he realized that he could not support a single claim that he made and 2) he is a cowardly idiot. Yes I'm resorting to name calling, but whatever. I will call an idiot one if I damn well please). The thesis is essentially that Mass Effect is a sex simulator that is only a step away from breeding a generation of sexual deviants and rapists. In lieu of that riveting journalistic expose, here is the Wikipedia summary, and here is the video it mentions, which is so goddamned infuriating that in spite of the fact that I was in a public office, I could be seen, headphones on my ears, scoffing and seething throughout its duration. The best part is the host claiming to "just have gotten back into video games" when it is obvious that even duck hunt would be beyond this feeble twat's grasp.

What baffles me the most about this so-called controversy is that this information has been available since literally MONTHS before the goddamn game was even released. Haven't we been done with it for awhile anyway? Besides, it was much more terrifying when, you know, the game wasn't actually done and no one knew. Now, just go to youtube, search "mass effect alien sex" and voila! Oh god, just look at it! the horror! My fragile mind is forever shattered!

This whole scenario is really just part of a much more disturbing trend, however. Pundits are being given far too much control of what the media reports, and the thing about most pundits is that they argue, rather than report. Thusly, they aren't exactly obligated to present all sides of an argument, or in this case ANY side. What grinds my gears is that the material in question is available for public review. It comprises 1:30 seconds of a 20+ hour game, and yet people are still getting their collective panties in such a twist that Chubby Checker wouldn't even know what to do. These panels consist of nobody knowledgeable on the subject of electronic media and that is profoundly disturbing. We see the same patterns in global warming and medical issues like stem cells and abortions. Instead of knowledgeable and reputable people from the fields in question, "information" is instead disseminated to us by conservative business interests and religious nutcases.

The worst part is that people seem to buy into this painfully ignorant media hype as fact rather than question what sounds like an incredibly dubious claim to begin with. A video game filled with hours on end of nothing but sexually depraved interactive sequences just flat out would not exist, much like you would not see screenings of Anal Cumsluts 4 at your local movie theater playing alongside The Chronicles of Narnia. In fact, if a game garners an Adults Only rating (which such a game, as described by these moronic hacks, would certainly receive), then the major platforms (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) would refuse to allow them to be published for their system until the content is back in check and the ESRB deems it Mature or lower. The points that some people make are fairly reasonable: parents should watch what their children play. I wasn't allowed to play any games with shooting whatsoever until I was 11 and had a firm grasp of the fact that video games weren't reality (by that time I had about 5 years of gaming under my belt). But for fuck's sake people, parents don't NEED to be on the lookout for rape simulators. In fact, if you find yourself in an establishment where you wonder whether or not electronic rape how-to kits are being sold, you should probably just cut your losses and find a different store, as I can assure you, you are not at Gamestop.

I guess the encompassing argument to this diatribe is as follows: just because the caption at the bottom of the screen says "panel of experts" it does not mean that these people are experts. Oil companies are providing global warming studies, religious figures are telling us how we should handle the field of medicine, and psychologists who wouldn't recognize a playstation if they were bludgeoned in the face with the box are "authorities" on electronic entertainment. The trend seems to be that the louder someone is, the more weight they carry in that particular field, and that is simply not true. After all, if that was the case, I would be the goddamned president.

The Spike Video Game Awards had as much to do with video games as the Oscars have to do with kickboxing

So, I fell victim to a bout of work ennui last night (read "laziness") and watched a shitload of television. The block from 9:30 until about 11 had about nothing on, so I decided to watch the 2007 Video Game Awards on Spike. Oh man, that was a horrible idea. While they most certainly could have been far worse (I imagined a conglomeration of people repeatedly honoring Halo 3 and Madden NFL 2007 for every category, including best RPG) they also could have actually had a damn thing to do with video games.

The show was basically an excuse to get celebrities to parade onstage and talk about how with it they are and how much they looooove video games yeah yeah alright whoopie mazeltov. They were hosted by Sam Jackson, and while I love the man's films, being the voice of one character in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas makes you far from a sage on the subject. Nay, one might even say ignorant, as he somehow managed to mistake a Playstation controller for an Xbox while commenting on a photoshopped picture of George W and Saddam playing video games. Allow me to show you something:

This is a Playstation Controller. It is grey, a comfortable size, has pretty shapes to denote buttons, and no matter how much you want it to, it will not work with a goddamned xbox.

This is an Xbox Controller. It is larger than a baby's head, has the usual ABXY button configuration, is black, and differs most from the above in that it is NOT used with a god damn playstation.

The important thing to take away here is that, to paraphrase Dave Grohl, one of these things is not like the fucking other you ignorant twat! But the stupidity does not stop there. Also paraded onstage was Kristen Bell (as the award winner for "hottest voice actress" for her work in Assassin's Creed. She beat out no one because there were no other nominees), the guy who voiced the rat in ratatouille, some guy from Harmonix who was wearing a fedora, apparently uninformed of the fact that it is no longer 1950, Hayden goddamn Christiansen (the proof that no actual nerds were there was that he wasn't booed and egged for making what were already 2 horrible movies about a thousand times worse), and scantily clad, painted hoochies. They used the exact same stock footage (sometimes from previews that were literally over a year old) every time they announced a game, regardless of what category it was for. Almost no in-game footage was shown, so nobody even really knew what kind of games were winning, just that they had flashy previews that have been available for public viewing across the internet for years. The Orange Box got nominated so many goddamn times that I can still recite precisely what happens (Shot from team fortress two of guy using a shotgun, followed by shot of guy receding into shadows, followed by shot of turret and general carnage, switch over to Half Life 2 Episode 1 show a tower exploding, a robot pounces on a guy, and Michael throws something at the fucking screen).

My point is that gamers are nerdy enough to know players from the industry. I might actually care about Nintendo's newest game if it was presented by Shigeru Miyamoto or one of his proxies rather than some half assed Jimmy Fallon looking motherfucker. Would it be so hard to get someone from Ubisoft, or 2K Games, or even fucking Infinium Labs (nerd points to you if you got that one) rather than having Annakin Skywalker tell me the game of the year? (It was Bioshock, by the way. There is some justice in the world, as it is probably better in every way shape and form than any game I have played this year and possibly in the last couple of years.) Shallow as it may seem, I don't care about an "exclusive premiere" of some game when it's being presented by flashy celebrities. If the company cares as little as they do about this content to not handle it themselves, is it really worth watching? And if this was targeted at casual gamers, not hardcore audiences, why all the hype that this was "the most important night in gaming" (you know, fuck PAX, E3 and the like. Real Gamers watch a shitty show on Spike TV). And if it was for hardcore gamers, why the shitty celebrities instead of industry figures? Kid Rock, Tila Tequila, and Tony Hawk probably elicit less excitement in me than would a root canal.

And lastly: please, please, please, someone show Sam Jackson what an XBOX looks like.

A Qualm of Sorts

Living in New York is goddamned awesome. The people at the college are a fun bunch and the ordinary denizens of this city have a certain flair that goes unrivaled in any other part of the country. Also, there are a lot of really fucking impressive buildings (probably designed by overcompensating pencil dicks, but whatever, they're nifty to look at.) The cool part is that we get to use a lot of these cool huge buildings, not just look at them. That having been said, there are a few things I need to get straight with the general NYU populace.
Most of the buildings in this area are 10+ stories. Hell, my dorm last year was 7 and is one of the smallest buildings in regular use on campus. With such large buildings, it is only natural that there would be some accompanying elevators. These are there so that people don't have to run up 10 flights of stairs every day when they have spent the whole goddamned day walking all over the fucking village. However, there are a few things that need to be made clear so that everyone can live in harmony and, more importantly, so I don't start strangling people on my way to class.
*If you are going to the 2nd or 3rd (sometimes even 4th if it's a large building) floor of any building that is over, we'll say 7 or so stories, it is simply unacceptable to use the elevators. Obviously this doesn't stand if you have a medical condition of some kind like a shattered kneecap, or if you are carrying something heavy and/or unwieldy. However, on my way to work (7th floor of the Ed building, so I'm well within my rights to take the damn elevator), without fail I am subjected to lazy assholes, obviously not hurt and even more obviously not burdened with heavy objects simply wasting my time by not manning up and fucking walking up 2 flights of stairs. I'm aware you are only costing me about 10 seconds of time total, but goddammit it's the principle of the matter here.
*In a similar vein, it is simply retarded to take the elevator if you need to go up or down a couple of floors. Laundry in my dorm is done on the 3rd floor. I can understand taking the elevator if you are taking down your clothes or taking them back, but for fuck's sake any other time, do you NEED to get on and press "4" while I'm waiting to get back to 10? I am the laziest human being alive, and I am hardly what you would call a picture of healthy living, but jesus christ, some of these assholes are making me look like a damned olympian.
*To digress from that train of thought, did you know that repeatedly pushing the door close button every time somebody gets off just makes you look like a moron? Here's why: in most of the buildings, the door close buttons are disabled you daft twats. I may be an impatient asshole when it comes to elevator etiquette, but fuck, I'm not broadcasting it to the rest of the car. You're not making it go any faster, so please, lay off the damned buttons.
I realize that this rant seems almost petty and juvenile, and while my life has never been thoroughly inconvenienced by a lack of elevator etiquette, this is still my damned blog and I will rant about whatever I goddamn well please. So nyah.

You Have Been Warned

Or rather, you are about to be warned. Depending on what academic institution you attend, somebody may approach you someday and tell you about a great service called collegeboxes that will store your things for the summer at a reasonable price, then deliver them to your dorm when you move back in. Should you be approached with this offer, whatever you do, NEVER TAKE IT. It's like a game of three card monte. You can't possibly lose, right? Just find the queen! WRONG! Before you know it that dealer has taken your money and shanked you in the thigh with a filed down toothbrush. OK, I don't know how much that actually happens, but my point is this: Collegeboxes is shit.
I moved into my dorm on Sunday afternoon after getting into NY on Saturday. I picked up a set of sheets to use in my room and figured hey, whatever, collegeboxes is delivering my shit on Monday between 8:30 AM and 1 PM. I'll have a night of uncomfortable sleep, but it saves me both money and space. So I slept on a sheet with a wad of sweatshirts stuffed in a pillowcase upon which I could rest my head. REALLY not comfortable because i have no climate control in my room that I know of, so the AC is always running. Great when it's hot as balls out, not so much when you're sleeping fully clothed covered in a sheet. Anyway, Monday rolls around and motherfuckers haven't come. I woke up at 12:30 in the afternoon and it seemed somewhat odd that they hadn't come yet. Upon checking my email, I saw that they were running a couple hours late and apologized for any inconvenience. Whatever, I say, I'm not sleeping for at least 12 hours and I can just shower whenever they get here (all of my towels are in storage too). I have no roommates yet who I can offend with my odors.
Well, about two hours later, motherfuckers call me and tell me that my boxes will come at the same time tomorrow. I am pissed off. My friend Louisa and I went into storage together, so her shit is AWOL right now too. Her mom calls them to see if there's anything we can do. Her english isn't great though, so I figure that since it's my storage account, I may have better luck. Apart from telling me that "the truck couldn't make it out", I can't get an answer out of these jackasses as to why my shit isn't here. I kindly let them know how much they're fucking me and if I die of a skin borne parasite that I can't wash off that i got from sleeping on my 10$ k-mart sheet, it's their asses. They tell me they are refunding my account 10% for the inconvenience. That's 45$. Oh fucking boy. Between LuLu and I, that's 22.50 apiece! I could buy a small bottle of scotch to drink away the rage from NOT HAVING MY SHIT. Anyway, It is presently 1:20 PM on Tuesday and still no sign of them. I want to leave and buy books and guitar picks, but I have to stay in the dorm until I hear from these people. Fuck.

*An Addendum*
Here is a copy of the email I wrote these clowns.

Your alleged "service" has caused me nothing but trouble. I was fine sleeping on a sheet purchased at k-mart using a wad of sweatshirts as a pillow for the first two nights, but you have absolutely torn it for me. I will dedicate the rest of my academic year to ensuring that nobody I know ever uses your "services" again. I have been jerked around by your call centers for 3 days straight waiting for boxes that contain all the little things in my life. Bedding, towels, clothing, school books. You know, the little stuff. I have been forced to steal my roommate's towel in order to stay clean. Dirty clothes are piling up around my room because my bin is (you guessed it) with you incompetent buffoons. I have to wonder if you even bothered to store my items, or they are simply on a truck bound for New Jersey, pawned off to the lowest bidding mafioso. My wish list is as follows: 1) I want my boxes. Since I paid 450$ to have you pick up, store and deliver them, I feel like that's not asking a lot. 2) I want a 33% refund. This seems fair, as you assholes pulled off 2/3 of what I paid you to do. 3) I want everyone in your call center fired. Obviously you're paying them to do nothing given how helpful they've been. 4) Your warehouses should be burned to the ground so that you can't perpetrate this nonsense ever again. 5) Your founder should be shot. In the face. Repeatedly. I am livid and incensed at the fact that you feel like you have earned my money at all, or are still performing any kind of "service". Some day, I will look back on this with something other than blood boiling rage and have a good laugh. You know, when my things are in a real storage company, not a fucking circus sideshow where the monkeys seem to be in full control. I wish nothing but the worst upon all of you. Good day.

Feel Like Cheapening Your Webcomic?

Well, good news, all you have to do is decide to do guest strips! You all know what I'm talking about, right? You have an awesome webcomic, then if you decide to take a vacation or something, rather than simply taking a break, you get other artists to write the comic for you, using your carefully created characters, settings, and plot points. My new favorite comic (www.questionablecontent.net) is the reason I bring this up. It is basically a 100% continuity strip with incredibly well thought out characters, snappy dialogue, and fantastic plot lines. This, however, makes for a not fun time when the continuity is broken. The artist (Jeph Jacques) occasionally does panels at cons and the like and rather than taking a week long break, institutes "QC guest week". These are the bane of my existence. I hate them about as much as I hate genocide.
When you have characters that have as dynamic personalities as the cast of QC it is dangerous to ever relinquish control (even though the guest strips don't have any bearing on the current plot line) because the bottom line is that no one but the creator will be able to write them well. Instead they are demoted to 2 dimensional caricatures of what some other hack seems to think the characters should be. The strips simply devolve into nonsense as everything familiar that we know and love about it is burned to a charred husk right before our eyes and the individual comics start to look like the schlock that appears all over the internet. The vast graveyard of shitty comics that nobody reads anyway. Real Life Comics is also guilty of this from time to time, and what's worse is that the artist (Greg Dean) decides that, in an effort to reach out to his readers, he will take their submissions. This seems like a fun and inclusive idea, but ignores the crucial fact that lots of people have an IQ with a shoe size to match and no real sense of how to write, particularly anything funny. I love webcomics, but have no desire to start my own until I feel that my writing is at a good level and I have a concept that will work and grab readers. Most people recognize this, that's why we read comics instead of make them: We rely on other, better people, to be funny FOR us.
Mr. Jacques and Mr. Dean, if this ever comes to your attention I beg of you: PLEASE stop letting 2-bit "artists" mangle your creation that so many people have come to love. Penny Arcade, Least I Could Do, Control Alt Delete, and Nothing Nice To Say (as well as a host of other comics) don't do guest strips and simply choose to let the strip lie dormant until they can man the helm once more. I certainly wouldn't care if the strips had to take a week or two hiatus while your batteries recharged or you reached out to your fanbases. Nothing saddens me more than these pitiful wastes of space. If I may steal a line from Penny Arcade (originally used to describe the games Sega has released in the last decade, but just as applicable here), Guest Strips "are like the videos terrorists release. The characters you love draped in rags and humiliated." Need something shorter? "[Guest Strips] are MURDER PORN. Their legendary properties are getting fucked and murdered."

At Least You'll Know That Warranty Was Worth It...

So now that I have finished the 7th Harry Potter book, I can finally get back to letting my life get slowly sapped away by the evil force that is my television. Specifically, my television in conjunction with video game systems of some sort. I have recently added to my somewhat sizable collection an Xbox 360. Now let me say that as far as game libraries go, the 360 has the market cornered. Hell, Gears of War and Dead Rising alone make your purchase worth it, not to mention titles like Crackdown, Call of Juarez, and the aforementioned The Darkness. Why then, with this library, am I ready to tear my damned hair out?
Well, it seems that the infinite entrepreneurial spirit at microsoft has led them to design sub-par systems (insert spooky music here). Most gamers have probably at least read about, if not experienced the 3 red lights of death. This is when three red lights around your power button light up, signaling that your CPU has just been fried beyond repair. This has been happening to approximately one in every four 360's. Why is this happening? Microsoft decided not to spend the extra 50 cents to use cooling gel that didn't harden into a heat conducting crust. No problem though, I've bought an external cooling unit, so hopefully that at least prolongs the damn thing's life span.
My gripes however, much like my balls, are twofold. Apparently, the skimping has not stopped with cooling gel. The disc trays being used are faulty as well. How do I know this? Well after owning the game for less than a week, my copy of Gears of War ceased to work, saying the disc was "unreadable". The game had been precisely two places: in its case (where it was purchased brand new), and in the system. Suddenly, after playing the game for about 10 hours in total over the span of about 5 days, it will no longer play. When the games cost up to 70$ apiece, this is about as pleasing as waking up to find my kidneys gone. Lucky me I can get the disc replaced for $20 If I send it to Microsoft. God forbid they do something like own up to their shitty workmanship and not nickel and dime me to death for something that I have absolutely no control over.
I Like my 360, really I do. It lets me play some fantastic games. But so help me god, I just know that once my warranty is up, I'll have like 6 months before I am left with a 400 dollar paperweight. Oh well, they've been having to extend the warranties so long to avoid lawsuits, maybe that day will never come. Oh right, it's Microsoft I'm dealing with...never mind.

The Beginning of the End

So, I've come to a genuinely terrifying realization: The metal scene has been in a state of horrible stagnation for years, and I have simply failed to notice. It all makes a horrifying kind of sense though, like this illusion spanning many years has just come crashing down like Michael Jackson dropping a baby off a balcony (too soon?). My realization has been cued by a few key events, which I shall lay out thusly:

1) Press. I doubt too many people read that many metal rags like Revolver or Hit Parader, but I've read them for a few years now. I picked one up for trashy airplane reading the other day and about halfway through it hit me: every interview is exactly the same. Regardless of the artist, they always have some new album coming out and they talk about how amazing it is and how they really poured a lot of themselves into it and it's the most personal thing they've done to date. Think about it. Isn't that EVERY interview with a musician you've ever read? Then you actually listen to the album and realize it sounds like everything else they've released. Look at Lamb of God's "Sacrament" or Shadows Falls' "Threads of Life". They sound almost exactly like the albums before them, yet somehow right now they are "unique". I just downloaded Devildriver's new album, "The Last Kind Words" and while I find it quite enjoyable, it basically sounds like "The Fury of our Maker's Hand" (its predecessor). The fact that these artists seem to view this as change is frightening though, because it means that the scene isn't going to evolve. And what happens to things that don't evolve (with the exception of the troglodyte that became president)? THEY DIE!

2) Artists that try to change just fuck everything up. I had some prime examples this summer when Marilyn Manson and Linkin Park both released new albums (yes, I liked Linkin Park back in the day, and I still like most of Manson's old stuff even if he is just trying too hard). Like other artists on the scene, they said that their stuff was "radically different". I wasn't too worried, I'd heard that line before and usually I was a fan of the results. Manson's new one had one good song. ONE. LP have an album that has some ok tracks, but after about any given 3, I get bored and change albums. So when the artists are trying to evolve, they're not even picking up on which traits to take with them, they just do artsy bullshit without realizing that metal is not an artsy crowd. And yes, i know calling Linking Park metal is like calling Slayer soft rock, but bear with me here. After all, nu-metal still has "metal" in it.

3) Bottom line, I just haven't been listening to newer metal that much. My latest acquisitions tend to be garage rock from Allison or Japanese Rock from Mike and Ryan. Hell, my favorite CD's I've gotten all summer were Bad Religion and Smashing Pumpkins (the latter is kinda metal, but kinda moreso grunge, so I don't count it fully). I figure I've got a hefty collection of awesome metal, but why keep paying for the same damned album over and over again? What's distressing is that this really only seems to be happening in the metal scene. SoCal punk has taken a really favorable turn lately, the more indie rock I listen to, the more diverse it seems, and what with having gotten into J-Rock last year, I now have an entire other country's scene and evolution to explore.

I really don't want to be the guy on the street corner trumpeting that the end is near, calling out the harlots, blaming the guv'ment for lack or morality etc....and say that metal is dying, but look at it rationally: Do we have a Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden from our generation? Fuck, we don't even have a Poison or a Warrant. In 20 years, is anyone even going to remember this scene?