You Are Dumb - Consumer Products

Time For A Rollback

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:16:06 -0600

Society, 1 December 2008

Memo to everyone involved even tangentially with Black Friday: YOU ARE DUMB.

The fact of the matter is, the day after Thanksgiving has always been a sign of something fundamentally and systemically wrong with American society. But now, perhaps, there's a tiny chance that systemic flaw will get some actual attention, thanks to the incident at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart in which a store clerk was trampled to death by the crowd rushing in for that morning's all-too-literal "doorbuster" sale.

Make no mistake about it, this death was inevitable. It was built into the very fabric of free-market capitalism that makes Black Friday possible. You can try to place the blame on the individual customers, but if you'd gone to all 2,000 shoppers in July, and offered each of them $150 off a flat-panel TV is they allow an innocent man to die a horrible death, fewer than 50 of them would have agreed.

Yet, when actual push came to actual shove, that's just what the vast majority of the shoppers did. They rushed the door, they trampled the clerk, they got in the way of people trying to help him, and they complained loudly and angrily when their shopping was curtailed. Why? Because they were placed in a situation where the inexcusable seemed excusable. And at the heart of it all is the concept at the core of free-market fundamentalism: COMPETITION.

Competition is why Jdimytai Damour was holding back the crowd in the first place. He was described in news reports as a "temporary worker", which means he wasn't even a permanent Wal-Mart employee - just one of millions looking to feed themselves in a shitty economy in a job even worse than full-time Wal-Mart employee. And instead, he ended up trampled to death.

Competition is why Wal-Mart was having Black Friday sales in the first place. The same corporate culture that somehow got the day after Thanksgiving enshrined as the official start of the Christmas shopping season have, year after year, built the day up until it was the kind of juggernaut that could not avoid leaving at least one corpse in its wake.

Competition is, inexplicably, why the doors opened at five in the motherfucking morning. If you wanted to lower the inhibitions of a crowd full of people, there are a lot worse ways to do it than the combination of sleep deprivation and temperature extremes. For fuck's sake, the CIA considers them both "enhanced interrogation techniques", yet we're encouraging average citizens to voluntarily get up in the middle of night, on the edge of winter, to go shopping? But Wal-Mart's afraid that if they open at 8, then everyone will spend their money at Best Buy which opens at 7, or Target when it opens at 6, etcetera, etcetera, until the ungodly hour becomes tradition.

And nobody likes it. Shoppers don't like it. Employees sure as fuck don't like it. But the inexorable force of competition leads us all to misery. Not to sound like a fucking communist, but maybe, if these store clerks were unionized, they could negotiate a contract that says they wouldn't work before 9:00 a.m. on Black Friday, and at least the fucking sun could be up when the panic starts.

And, of course, the cruelest form of competition of all is built into the very essence of Black Friday - pitting large numbers of people against each other in order to get large savings on a deliberately-limited quantity of stuff. That's the competition that really gets into people's heads. That's the one that makes them see the person ahead of them in line as an enemy, and the guy in the blue apron making minimum wage as an obstacle. That's what turns people into a crowd and a crowd into a mob and a mob into murderers.

And that competition is why it'll never stop. According to free-market fundamentalism, eventually, we as consumers are supposed to get fed the fuck up with getting up at midnight, standing in line in the cold, and temporary workers being crushed. Eventually, we will opt out of participation in Black Friday, and the retail outlets, bereft of customers for four hours, will start opening later and offering more reasonable sale prices on larger quantities of merchandise. But we all know it doesn't work like that.

Greed does not self-correct. We know this in our bones, from dozens of historical precedents to the current financial meltdown. If no authority, be it store security or the government, steps in to make greed stop, then greed will only stop when there is nothing left to take. Maybe this death will cause some authority to step in and decide something needs to be done about Black Friday, but until then, all we can do is opt out individually. It won't change the system, but at least I know I'm absolved in the death of Jdimytai Damour, because on Friday, I fucking well slept in and didn't shop.

Zero Days To Dumb

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:25:36 -0500

Internet, 14 October 2008

Memo to ZATZ Publishing and their customers: YOU ARE DUMB.

I love my iPod Touch. This isn't an Apple testimonial, and I have received no compensation for saying so. It's just a statement of fact. For me, it's the futuristic handheld computer I've wanted since my first tentative steps into the world of "20 GOTO 10" in the early 80s. And a lot of that functionality is due to the new App Store, in which small independent developers write small, useful programs for the Touch and sell them on the cheap, in some cases making small fortunes.

And then there's ZATZ Publishing, developers of the 28 stupidest apps in the entire App Store. Dumber than the forty thousand simulations of a spirit level. Dumber than the hordes of knockoffs of simple puzzle games. Dumber than apps whose sole purpose is to make a single noise. I speak of their entire software development output, the DaysTo series.

There are 28 different DaysTo applications. Each one costs 99 cents. Each one provides a countdown timer to a specific event, in days. For example, if you, in a drunken stupor, decided to pay a dollar for DaysTo Valentine's Day, every time you launched the app, a picture of a heart would appear, along with a caption telling you, "There Are 124 days to Valentine's Day!". That's it. That's all it does. For a buck. It is awe-inspiringly insipid, and only gets more so as you explore the range of events that ZATZ Publishing has created DaysTo events for.

For example, let's say you're a business person with an important trade show coming up. For years, these businessmen and women have had to rely on Franklin Planners, desk calendars, and knowing what the fuck they're doing so that they don't miss this important upcoming event. But now, with DaysTo Tradeshow, you can look at your iPod or iPhone, and have a goofy cartoon businessman tell you that "There are 191 days to tradeshow!". That's a direct quote, by the way. Apparently there are an infinite number of days left until ZATZ Publishing learns the importance of definite articles.

But wait, there's less! There's "DaysTo Election Day 2008", soon to be an even dumber app than the rest! There's "DaysTo Game", to let you know how long remains until the big game of your choice, and "DaysTo Race", in case that big game is a race, and you're too much of a fucking snob to lump motor sports in with other sports. For weeks, you sat, staring at the App Store in frustration, wondering when ZATZ Publishing would see to your specific race-waiting needs, and they came through for you.

There's DaysTo Wedding, in case you forget when you're getting married, DaysTo Birthday, in case you forget when you were born, and DaysTo Christmas, in case you not only can't remember when Christmas is, you live in a cave somewhere completely devoid of cultural cues that would remind you.

There's even DaysTo Baby, which is not only pointless and stupid, but unless ZATZ Publishing has developed some elaborate medical sensing technology and is just fucking around with countdown timers as a lark, is completely inaccurate as well. "Honey, you're going into contractions. Shouldn't we go to the hospital?" "No, dear, my iPod says we have two more days left!"

And then there's the program description, which is so far beyond awesome that it loops back on itself to awful and then awesome again. Here's part of the one for DaysTo Hanukkah, but they're all pretty much the same. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"DaysTo Hanukkah is the simple, easy-to-use app that gives you the instant gratification of knowing how soon the Festival of Lights will be here. Simply tap the icon and you'll immediately know how many days you have to create the celebration you really want this year. This application is pre-programmed to calculate Hanukkah dates each year up to 2015... Heightening the sense of anticipation helps make Hanukkah a time to remember... Download this great ice-breaker and conversation piece for a buck. After all, you'd pay a buck for a song, so why not own this helpful and amusing app today?"

Well, because when I spend a buck on a song, I've got A SONG. Pulling out my iPod, showing people a picture of a Menorah, and telling someone I've never met before how many days are left to Hanukkah is an ice-maker and a conversation stopper, and if the person is Jewish, it's likely to get me punched right in my goyish good looks. For fuck's sake, if I want people to think there's something mentally wrong with me, I'll buy the iPod slide rule application. Sure, it's just as likely to cause people to shy away from me and shun my presence as a DaysTo app, but at least they'll think I'm socially maladjusted and smart, not anti-Semitic and retarded.

And yes, I realize that a dollar isn't a lot of money, especially after Dubya has had his way with it. But let's face it. Ascribing an arbitrary monetary value to items that were essentially worthless is how we ended up in the current financial crisis, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose my pension money when the subprime countdown timer bubble pops in 2017. Fuck the free market. Stop these bastards now.

Putting The Inedible Into Incredible

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:34:21 -0500

Video Games, 7 October 2008

Memo to BioSilo Foods: YOU ARE DUMB.

As a general rule, I hate to tread, over the course of a dozen paragraphs, ground that Penny Arcade covered over the course of three panels. We have a pretty big demographic overlap, plus their audience is about a bajillion times larger than mine. But dammit, Gamer Grub is idiotic, and I don't care if they said so first. It deserves saying again.

Gamer Grub is a plastic canister of snack food. Snack food that has been sprayed with a thin layer of vitamins and nutritional supplements. Nutritional supplements that, if you believe the makers of a product called "Gamer Grub", will help you win against the hordes of thirteen-year-old homophobes constantly headshotting you in Halo. Which would be great if it worked, I suppose, but does it have to be snack food? It's just that I usually prefer my bogus health science to come in convenient, wearable foot-pad form.

This is some serious fucking quackery. I'm supposed to believe that pita chips and nuts, sprayed with four vitamins, one mineral, and two vaguely conceptualized supplements are going to... well, why settle for a paraphrasing of quackery when you can have the real thing? ACTUAL QUACKERY TIME!

"Gamer Grub is a great tasting snack that boosts your core gaming systems, such as visual input, cognitive processing, signal transmission and muscle reflexes for maximum gaming performance."

Here's the thing. I've been playing video games for a long time. Going on three decades now. And during all those decades, there's one thing I managed to do with great, and possibly excessive, efficiency. FEED MYSELF. I didn't need an ergonomic container. I didn't need to chug the food from a cup. I didn't need graphics that energy-drink-can painters rejected as "too garish". And I didn't need the four most tone-deaf flavor names in the history of modern food production:

Action Pizza
Racing Wasabi
Strategy Chocolate
Sports PB&J

I was trying to remember the last time I'd heard something as stupid as "Strategy Chocolate" in a video game context, and then it hit me. There, on the Gamer Grub website, is the logo of the World Cyber Games. The "professional" "gaming" "event" for which Gamer Grub is now the official snack food. And I remembered that when the World Cyber Games launched, they had a theme song, "Beyond The Game". And that theme song had lyrics. Lyrics that would SEAR THE SOUL:

"You and I, We have met before / Through the magic of a moment in Cyberspace / Driven by a passion to win / Playin' heart to heart, face to face / The challenge of a life time / Stands before us now."

And that challenge of a lifetime is now full of pizza-dusted pita chips. I swear to fuck, the World Cyber Games must be a front for an international espionage operation. Because there are only two groups of people in this world this clueless about video games as an art form, a hobby, or a business operation: local TV news anchors, and the government.

Now that I think of it, I bet Gamer Grub isn't just full of pita chips and chocolate chips. It's probably full of RFID chips. That way, the government, who suspects terrorists are meeting in online games, can track gamers and listen in, hoping to catch them hating us for our freedoms. Of course, if I worked for the CIA, and my new assignment was to spend 8 hours a day listening in on World of Warcraft raid planning, I'd be on my knees every night praying for Robert Novak to blow my cover.

I have to believe it's a government conspiracy, because I cannot believe, even in these tough economic times, that the most jaded of marketing whores wouldn't quit their job and join the Peace Corps after being told to write copy like "Buckle up Dorothy, it's a zesty blend of wasabi goodness!" or "Wow! Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, In a can!" No, to write that shit with a straight face, you have to believe that the freedom of the American people depends on it.

Demonstrably False

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:28:00 -0500

Election 2008, 11 June 2008

Memo to Amy Winehouse, K-Mart, and John McCain: YOU ARE DUMB.

Of the stupid things that come all too frequently out of the mouths of stupid people, few stupid things are more stupid than the Demonstrably False Statement. This is a statement that is so clearly and obviously contradicted by widely known facts AT THE TIME that the person saying it must be either lying out their ass, mind-bogglingly stupid, or both. We've had a slew of these in the past week, which means it's time for a theme edition of IDIOTS SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS!

"I don't want to play anything down, but I'm the least racist person going." - Amy Winehouse

This is, context-free, already a highly suspect statement. Under no circumstances would I, or honestly, anyone who isn't Amy Winehouse, put Amy Winehouse on a list of the ten, hundred, thousand, or ten thousand least racist people on the planet. It just wouldn't occur to us. And that's based solely on knowing that Amy Winehouse exists.

Where the statement becomes Demonstrably False, however, is when you're saying it in response to the release of a video in which, drunk, high, or both, you and your friends change the lyrics to the kids' ditty "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to the very, very, very not least racist at all "Blacks, Pakis, Gooks and Nips". I guarantee you, if there were ever a contest for least racist person going, that would be explicitly in the bylaws as an automatic disqualification. And if it wasn't, and you somehow managed to make it to the second round, the bit where you pulled at the corners of your eyes to make them all slanty would definitely seal the deal.

"It is not our intent to associate with any one particular group or cause." - K-Mart.

Once again, hearing this by itself, I would automatically be suspicious. Corporations associate with particular groups and causes all the time. Target donates money to schools. Wal-Mart hopes to hasten the Rapture. And I don't know exactly what they're up to, but I guarantee TCBY is up to something.

So when K-Mart rolls out a line of pants with "True Love Waits" plastered across the ad, and promotes the pants by saying they show "just where she stands" and has a "bold abstinence screen print" that happens to be the name of a national Christian abstinence-promotion group, I can't help but think that yes, in fact, it IS K-Mart's intent to associate with a particular cause - abstinence - and possibly with the group as well.

And on top of the lie, the abstinence pants themselves clearly violate Lambert's First Rule of Abstinence Promotion, and do so to an alarming degree. This rule states that any abstinence program must remember that it is competing in the marketplace against the orgasm, and must make its pitch suitably appealing to account for that fact. A pair of gray sweats with puffy, 1972-era multicolored lettering across the back competes with an orgasm in much the same way matter competes with anti-matter. Except the explosion happens nine months later in this case.

"I did not—that was in prepared remarks, and I did not—I'm not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage... My supporters and friends can comment all they want about the press coverage, and that's their right. They're American citizens. I will not because I believe it's not a profitable enterprise for me to do so. - John McCain, to Newsweek.

The question from Newsweek, by the way, referred to his comments about the press coverage of Hillary Clinton. Now, since John McCain clearly stated he's not in the business of commenting on the press, and clearly stated that any remarks that might be seen that way were in his prepared remarks, but not in his now-infamous Green-Screen Skeletor speech, I think we can deduce from this that despite what his speech writers tried to provide him on what was obviously three different Teleprompters, McCain exercised his own judgement and refused to cross a line he felt was important.

Ergo, when the prepared remarks said:

"The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes receives."

What actually came out of the mouth of either John McCain, or what, if they're smart, the campaign will claim was an animatronic McCain simulacrum created for the express purpose of covering up another secret trip to an Iraqi market, was this:

"The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes receives."

I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from John McCain's example here, and that lesson is, don't fucking vote for John McCain.

Fun With Foot-Mucous

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:50:16 -0600

Main Column, 2 January 2008

Memo to Kinoki: YOU CAN HAVE MY TOXINS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD, DEAD FEET.

Since the beginning of time, where there has been stupidity, there have been snake oil salesman. Whether it's a tonic that claims it can grow hair, or an apple that's supposed to contain the knowledge of good and evil, shady characters have been taking advantage of idiots who don't know the first thing about science and are thus vulnerable to anything that sounds remotely plausible.

So who the fuck is buying Kinoki foot pads, because these things don't sound in the slightest bit plausible. Sold on the deep cable, out where the regular sponsors dare not go, during hours when sane people are not watching TV, you will see them. Gauze pads you stick to your feet that pull toxins out of you through Chinese reflexology.

No, seriously. Magic gauze that sucks all the heavy metals and poisons out of your body. Through your feet. While you sleep, no less. You want to know why I'm so harsh on creationists, charlatans, and talk show hosts who can't tell you whether or not the earth is flat? This is why. Because we SHOULD be able to laugh something like Kinoki out of business. All of us. From the laser scientist to the guy scooping your fries. But people buy them despite answers like this in the Kinoki FAQ:

"It’s the natural way to assist your body in the removal of heavy metals, metabolic wastes, toxins, microscopic parasites, mucous, chemicals, cellulite and much more. Kinoki Foot Pads provide the one-two punch of powerful detox ingredients in conjunction with tourmaline, a mineral that generates negative ions, to improve your overall health and well-being."

I bet they don't remove gall. Because it takes a lot of fucking gall to list, as things that come out of YOUR FEET, everything from heavy metals to mucous, and then say "and much more". If microscopic parasites and cellulite are oozing out of my feet, I can only recoil in horror at what "and much more" could imply.

As for tourmaline, a quick search on "tourmaline healing" confirmed my worst suspicions. Remember new age crystal bullshit? And how it was bullshit? Well, big-ass tourmaline crystals are a significant component in that. Which makes Kinoki foot pads a bit genius, in their evil exploitative way. Think about it. If you want to sell a sucker a whole tourmaline crystal, first you have to get a whole tourmaline crystal. Then you have to set up a shop with a bunch of dreamcatchers in the window, buy some robes, grow your hair long, go through a bucketload of fucking incense every day, and constantly speak in soft, low tones. And when you succeed, they take the crystal, wear it around their necks for a few weeks, and never come back.

With Kinoki pads, all you need is a small amount of tourmaline dust and some gauze pads. You mail them the stuff, they use it, and then they throw it away and have to order more once the placebo effect convinces them they're full of energy and considerably lower in foot-mucous. No incense need be involved, and you can outsource the soft low tones to an Indian call center.

Hey, folks! Want to give James Randi a fit? Then let's all read along with this exciting and oh so precise description of how and when you will know your magic gauze is working. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Depending on the individual, the detox may require two to three weeks or longer in the case of greater toxicity build-ups. Most people use the pads on the arches of the feet to start with. The pads generally start becoming lighter in color and less "gooey" toxic lymph is extracted. At that point, other zones of the body can be addressed and cleared (usually taking far less time). Depending upon what specific toxins are removed, the color stain typically ranges somewhere between a green, grey, black, brown, or tan coloration. Some people notice positive health results within a few days. Others may take a couple of weeks to sense that something positive is happening.

Get that? There's a reason the "clinicals" tab on the site is labeled "coming soon". Generally! Depending! Weeks! Most! May! But remember, if you put pads on your feet, and the pads come away black, it's not because you don't wash the soles of your feet well enough. No, no. It's because of all the heavy metals and microscopic organisms being pulled through your feetlymphs by the negative ion crystals. Still not sure their target audience could actually use a product that removes heavy metals from the bloodstream? Get a load of this.

"You may also sign up for our Kinoki Foot Pad Maintenance Program and receive 10 FREE Pads every month. You pay only $12.99 to cover shipping and handling!"

Yes, $12.99 to ship ten gauze pads. Unless they have a new service tier at UPS where a buff, naked deliveryperson of your preferred gender TELEPORTS to you and feeds you grapes as you're handed the magic crystal pads, I think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, there's an exorbitant charge going on here. Maybe. Also, if you visit an Internet site and are offered to be charged and sent a product in perpetuity with no actual indication of how much the other 20 not-free pads that will make up your month's supply will be, then... well, again, you're exactly the kind of person who thinks all the toxins in your body can be pulled out through the soles of your feet, and I cannot fucking help you.

You'll end up poor, still toxic, and still stupid, but I'll give you this - your feet will be so clean you can eat off them. Congratulations.

Dewmed

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:33:05 -0600

Consumer Products, 11 December 2007

Memo to Mountain Dew: YEW ARE DEWMB.

Like a longtime alcoholic, years of daily exposure to stupidity has raised my tolerance to the point where it takes a massive dosage to even get me to notice these days. Which is why I was surprised by my immediate, visceral hatred of the new Mountain Dew commercial.

I mean, Mountain Dew ads have been very, very stupid for a very, very long time. They practically invented the application of "extreme" imagery to otherwise non-extreme products. To top their legacy would take a nigh-Herculean effort, which is apparently how we ended up with "DEWmocracy".

Thanks to special forced-interaction technology I licensed from those Facebook ads, I can tell you're already cringing at their branded neologism. You're probably imagining some horrific 2008 election tie-in where soda drinkers can vote for their favorite sickly-sweet Dew variant, while behind the scenes, Diebold makes sure whichever syrup they've warehoused the most of comes in first.

HAH. The Mountain Dew marketing department scoffs at your underestimation of their collective shittiness for a good half-hour before finally realizing that it's not actually a compliment. Because what they actually came up with is so much worse. ACTUAL HORRIFYING PREMISE TIME!

"Corporate Barons rule the city with an iron-fist, but a thirst for change is in the air. As a “Seeker,” you have the chance to return choice to the people. To do so you must embrace adventure, face your destiny, and help create the next Mountain Dew."

OK, first of all, who the fuck hyphenates "iron-fist"? And secondly, I'd like to officially congratulate Mountain Dew Livewire on its demotion to second place on the list of Mountain Dew products that make me want to vomit. The Pepsi corporation is going to provide me with the interactive experience of fighting against oppressive corporate overlords? That's just a brazen disregard of the very existence of irony. It's a slap in the face with a white-glove, challenging satire to a duel.

That would be bad enough, except that, apparently confronted with the corporate implications of their premise, they decided to mix in urban fantasy elements to distract the caffeinated pseudorebels visiting the site. Either that, or they handed the whole thing off to a developer on a Friday, and the developer came back after a weekend of weed and an Avatar: The Last Airbender marathon:

"To succeed, you will need all of your cunning and strength. Each Chamber is blocked by a Guardian and ruled by a Master, epic creatures of adventure and deception. There are enemies to fight, lessons to learn, and tools to earn – like a 2-sided battle axe or a coral divining rod to point the way."

No, really. In a move that could in no way, shape, or form go horribly, horribly wrong, the creators of DEWmocracy are suggesting that the two best tools for countering an oppressive, authoritarian corporate regime are a bottle of slightly customized sugar water and a BATTLE AXE. And while that might be the recipe for the greatest Gallagher II show ever, it's not a recipe for freedom.

Which, in another hilarious repudiation of obvious irony, the Dew people make utterly clear in their FAQ. So don't even think about repurposing DEWmicracy's copyrighted marketing imagery for your own use. Battle axe good, Photoshop bad.

"Q: Can I download any of the artwork from the chambers? A: We appreciate your interest in the rich backgrounds and characters of the Chambers, but this mythological world only comes to life within your journey – and in your mind. Of course, feel free to explore these worlds again and again."

Yeah, see, it's only Pepsico's commitment to the artistic integrity of their immersive interactive experience that prevents them from making their art available for your offline enjoyment. Their mythological world only comes to life within your journey? I'd wonder what the screaming fuck that meant even if it WASN'T about soda. But it is. About soda. The mythological journey to defeat the evil Pancreas on your way to the promised land of Oddly-Colored Urine. It's one part World of Warcraft, one part Rock The Vote, and 40 parts high-fructose corn syrup.

I Know From Disapproval

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:42:54 -0500

Politics, 27 July 2007

Memo to Jim Naugle, poll-watchers, and Glenn Beck: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'll be going on vacation soon. Don't worry, gentle readers. I am making arrangements for your daily dose of vitriol and dick jokes to appear in this space, as if by MAGIC, while I'm gone. But just like you can't leave home for a couple of weeks without cleaning out the fridge, you can't leave the column for a couple of weeks without cleaning out the half-full jars of fruit spread that clog my research tabs. SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

We start with the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Jim "Fucking Buffoon" Naugle, who thinks that no price is too high to achieve his ultimate goal - the elimination of gay sex from Fort Lauderdale's public restrooms.

Never mind that the Fort Lauderdale police say it's not a big problem. Jim Naugle knows better! How does he know better? The fuzzy intersection of rampant speculation and libel law means we should all probably just work it out in our own heads. Even if working it out in the head is what's got Naugle so upset. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We're trying to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act." - Remember this, because it's going to be important in about 45 seconds.

His proposed solution? $250,000 "robo-johns", self-cleaning, computerized portable toilets that pop open after a short time. Presumably, the developers have spent years timing huge dumps and blowjobs, and have found the precise cutoff point where the assumption of constipation stops and the conclusion of fellatio is reached. But as many of you know, when you have kids, EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER.

if you're really trying to create a family environment for kids who need to pee, what's more traumatizing for your average eight year old? Some moans and thumps from the next stall? Or a technological monstrosity that pops open before you've finished your business and secured your matching Garanimal bottoms? One of these things will be strange and confusing. The other will make them NEVER WANT TO PEE AGAIN.

And speaking of exposed polls, here's a little tip for all you political junkies, especially those of you with right-wing blogs. When you hear that Bush's approval rating is, oh 27%, and Congress's approval rating is, oh, 14%, try to remember that one of those numbers is an apple, and the other one is an orange. A fake, plastic orange, only suitable for really ugly interior decoration.

The President is one person. If person A likes him, and person B does not, that judgment is at the very least made about the same fucking dude. They may have various reasons for their like or dislike, but they're operating on a somewhat common framework.

Congress, on the other hand, is well over five hundred different people. If you're a Republican, you don't like Congress because Brit Hume told you you weren't supposed to. And if you're a Democrat, you don't like them because they haven't skewered John Ashcroft, shackled Karl Rove, and passed single payer universal health care. And if you're an independent, you don't like them because independents don't like ANYBODY.

It's a no-win situation. Which means at least the Democrats should be comfortable with it by now. But more importantly, it's COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS. In the current political climate, I'd be terrified if Congress had a -high- approval rating. Because that would mean both sides had found common ground on which to pass legislation, and the only common ground politicians have these days is fucking over anyone who isn't a politician.

And finally, Glenn Beck, the epic dipshit who, you may recall, once asked Keith Ellison to prove he wasn't working with the enemy. As we all know, one of the big problems with the media right now is that it's almost impossible to actually discredit someone. No matter what stupid shit they say, or how often they're completely wrong, if you tune in next week they'll still be in their chair, in their suit, saying something just as stupid and wrong.

But Glenn Beck's decided to take things one step further, reaching out to voices that, in saner times, were completely discredited, and giving them national airtime. Specifically, the John Birch Society.

An artifact of the Cold War, the Birch people saw Communists everywhere - especially in the Civil Rights movement, President Eisenhower, and fluoridated water. They've since turned their keen grasp of reality onto the subject of immigration, which I'm sure is a great comfort to us all. The point is, nobody's taken the John Birch Society seriously about much of anything for the past, oh, 30 years or so. Until Glenn Beck had Birch spokesman Sam Antonio* on to discuss how we are being taken over by Mexicans or some damn thing.

This means one of two things, and neither of them are good. Either Glenn Beck thinks that, for some reason, he needs to stake out a whole new claim of crazy territory to make his schtick work, or we've now all gotten so crazy that the John Birch Society is part of the mainstream. And whether he's making it happen or just pointing it out, Glenn Beck can go fuck himself with a fluoridated fountain.

*An actual person, not a character from Alien Nation.

More Reasons Ludd Was Right

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:09:28 -0500

Internet, 22 March 2007

Memo to Kevin Federline and Nanda: CUT IT OUT.

Science has enough of a bad name in this country right now, OK, fuckers? NASA doesn't have the funding to watch for planet-smashing space rocks. Inhofe's still Inhofe. People are going to museums to learn that the Great Flood carved the Grand Canyon. And YOU'RE NOT HELPING.

The great thing about science is that science leads to technology, and technology leads to more useful and fun things. So when technology is corrupted for banal or evil purposes, it reflects badly on science. Think of science as technology's daddy. Then think about how Bush 41 must feel about Bush 43 most days. OK, technically, "The stupid shithead keeps getting caught" is not a sentiment that applies to the following two cases, but you know what I mean.

Kevin Federline has his own search engine.

I'm not even sure why there ARE other search engines at this point. Even if you believe, for whatever reason, that Google isn't the apex of web searching, it's become so central to the nature of the Internet that positioning yourself as an alternative to Google is like positioning your new gas as an alternative to oxygen. Even if it works better than oxygen, the ubiquitous barrier is not the kind of thing I'd expect Kevin Federline to be able to overcome.

It will come as no shock to you that searchwithkevin.com is not, in fact, the results of months of hobbyist coding in Federline's basement. It's just some crappy celebrity tie-in, where the word "crappy" pulls double-duty as a modifier. Every time you use the hideous, powered-by-Prodege search tool, you have a chance to win a Kevin Federline autographed 8x10, a Kevin Federline T-shirt, a Kevin Federline CD, or an entry into an "autograph sweepstakes", which is the only thing in the universe less exciting than the other three prizes. If you're lucky, your prize gets to be a chance at a prize? That'd be lame even if it weren't a Federline-related prize. Which it is. Which makes it the platinum-iridium bar defining the unit of lameness.

It's so lame I don't even care that I'm a lowly fifth on the list when you search for "you are dumb". Unlike Google, where I'm number one, baybee. Someone may have to explain the concept of "number one" to K-Fed, of course. You know, the same way you have to explain "snow" to someone who's lived in the desert their whole life.

And speaking of harsh wake-up calls, until this week, I thought I was a cynical misanthrope. Someone who believed that most people were basically moronic bastards, deserving of whatever slings, arrows, or petty torments inflicted upon them. But it turns out that, compared to Nanda, I'm Bob Ross at an Up With People concert. I mean, I hate people, but I don't hate people enough to invent an alarm clock that RUNS AWAY.

"Clocky" is a battery powered alarm clock suspended between two large plastic wheels. Clocky allows you th hit snooze once. Once that snooze expires, Clocky will drive itself off your bedside table and roll around the room randomly, forcing you to get up, hunt it down, and shut it off. It can survive a three-foot drop and, as they say, keep on ticking.

That's just fuckin' wrong in every way possible. This is what the blase attitude towards waterboarding leads to, people. Demonic, independently mobile alarm clocks that run around beeping while you stumble after them in your underwear. If that's not torture, I don't know what is.

Who would make something like this? Who would BUY something like this? If becoming Turok: Timeosaur Hunter is the only thing that'll keep you from snoozing until 10:30 in the morning, SEE A DOCTOR. Don't encourage these people. Because pretty soon, rolling around on the floor won't be good enough.

The clocks will get more mobile. All-terrain. Soon, they'll be able to cling to walls, jump five feet in the air, and adapt to your every move. They'll get smarter, and one day, one of them will realize that there's more to life than taunting dreary meatbags and beeping. They'll just wait until the next time we go to sleep, and if we're LUCKY, we'll be powering the post-apocalyptic alarm clock world with our bioelectric fields. And in the alarm-clock Matrix, everybody gets up at 5:30 a.m.

The Gift That Keeps On Sucking

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:57:23 -0600

Main Column, 7 December 2006

Memo to America: STOP BUYING STUPID SHIT. AGAIN.

Looks like the Official YAD Holiday Antigift Guide will end up being a recurring feature. And why not? Someone's got to point out to all of you the things you may, in a moment of weakness, think are a good idea. You know, like a TV that claims to be the first one for both men and women. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm glad Sony's finally cracked the technological hurdle linking chromosomes to the ability to receive visual input, but you'd think, for the sake of humanity, they'd incorporate it into ALL their models, not just expensive plasma sets.

I guess we'll all have to keep living with our own gender-segregated sets until prices come down. And speaking of gender and television, it's come to my attention that Rachael Ray must be stopped.

I know it seems like I'm late to this particular backlash, but that's because I don't really -want- to hate her. It's just that she keeps making me. With the mute button on, and a bit of cardboard covering the entire screen from her forearms up, 30 Minute Meals isn't a bad little cooking show.

If they ever put season sets of it on DVD, though, we can strap creationists to chairs, prop their eyeballs open, and force them to watch this woman evolve from a slightly ridiculous cooking show host into a crank-addicted, Joker-gas-sniffing, multimedia prisoner of her own schtick. The personification of nails on a blackboard. And a one-woman post-Martha empire.

The moment I realized she'd become a menace to society was when I caught two minutes and eighteen seconds of her new syndicated talk show. That was months ago. I didn't write about it, because doing so would have required watching more than two minutes and eighteen seconds of her syndicated talk show, and that wasn't gonna fucking happen. The moment I decided I needed to tell you all she'd become a menace to society was when I saw a commercial for her Christmas album.

Put down the rope and step off the chair. She's not singing. At least not this year. No, instead, the eyeball-scrapingly-titled "How Cool Is Christmas" contains exactly one dozen Christmas songs, personally selected by some record company executive and shown briefly to Ray for five seconds to get a signature. And oh, what a dozen songs it is.

It's the reality show cast of Christmas albums. There's your requisite standards (Sinatra, Aretha, Doris Day, and of course the Bowie/Crosby Little Drummer Boy). There are the demographically-balanced covers of classics (Willie Nelson doing Blue Christmas, and Hall and Oates doing Jingle Bell Rock*), a couple of wacky tracks so that those approaching middle age can feel hip (Elvis, Buster Poindexter), and the requisite smattering of world music and jazz.

I don't understand why even people who can stand Ray are supposed to give a shit what Christmas music we're supposed to believe she likes. Or buy an album, even if there are a couple of recipes in the liner notes. I mean, if I want to hear that fucking Bowie/Crosby song, all I have to do is take my head out of its soundproof sack anytime after Thanksgiving and wait ten minutes. She should have called it "Songs As Inescapable As My Grinning Death Mask".

There is absolutely no reason you should buy this stupid piece of shit. Well, OK. One reason. If a crazed maniac kidnaps you, forces you on Amazon at gunpoint, and tells you to choose between Ray's Christmas album and her "mixtape for kids" or he'll shoot you in the head. The Christmas album is, incrementally, better than eating a bullet.

*A combination roughly equivalent to bleach and ammonia.

The YAD Holiday Gift Guide

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:48:02 -0600

Consumer Products, 30 November 2006

Memo to shoppers: DON'T BUY STUPID SHIT.

Yes, it's that time of year again. Holiday shopping. In which we endure many and varied miseries in order to procure trinkets large or small for friends and family. Which I don't object to doing. It's just all you other fuckers doing it at the same time that drives me nuts. But you're there, and you're doing it, and even though you don't realize it, you need my help.

Because there's a lot of stupid shit out there, and you might end up buying it. And if you do, they'll keep making more stupid shit, because they know there's a stupid market for it. Buy less stupid shit, and we inch closer to utopia.

Today we're going to talk big-screen TVs. If you're planning to give a big-screen TV as a gift this holiday season, you have hundreds of choices available. Plasma. LCD. Rear-projection. Regular projection. 1080i. 1080p. It boggles the mind. But then, if you're getting one as a gift, your holiday budget boggles the mind too. So listen up, you rich bastard. Rich bastards buy stupid shit at a much higher rate, proportionally, than the general population. I'm saving you from yourself.

So don't buy a goddamn Ambilight. I hate to rag on Philips, but Ambilight is, without a doubt, the single most boneheaded useless technological "innovation" since the Orgone Collector. It's a feature on Philips' LCD and plasma TVs, and what it does is this. It shines colored light out from the sides, top, and bottom of your TV that roughly matches the colors on the screen, so that your wall lights up with solid colors while you watch.

No, seriously, that's what it does. It's like it's 1978 all over again. It's a mood TV! It's like having a disco floor... on your wall! It's like it's completely retarded! Why would they add this feature? Well, here's why Philips says you need one. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"It adds a new dimension to the viewing experience, completely immersing you into the content you are watching. It creates ambiance, stimulates more relaxed viewing, and improves perceived picture detail, contrast and color. You’ll feel as if you’ve been taken on an unparalleled journey elsewhere.

No, you won't. You'll have colored lights shining on your walls, and your neighbors will wonder why you still think it's Christmas in August. And it improves PERCEIVED picture detail? That's like saying a sugar pill improves perceived health. Any feature you spend an extra couple hundred bucks on is going to improve perceived picture quality, because nobody's going to admit that the extra money they spent makes their TV look like a fucking lava lamp.

So if the stated reasons behind Ambilight are bullshit, what's the real reason? Simple. Most of the TVs on the market now are plenty good enough for most people. The finer details are important to us nerds, but there are dozens of companies making hundreds of models, and Steve and Jennifer, standing there in the Best Buy with a blueshirt on each arm, cannot tell the fucking difference. So Philips needed a gimmick. A highly visual, highly pointless gimmick that the blueshirts can lie about without putting either of them to sleep.

Sure, when the ocean's on the screen your walls will be blue. And when the Hulk's on the screen your walls will be green. And when we're all watching Giant Sunflower Hour, the single most popular program in the world if TV product photos are to be believed, yes, your walls will be yellow. And then you'll watch a Laugh-In rerun and have a fucking seizure. Or you'll go downstairs on Christmans morning and open the brand new film noir box set you'd had on your Amazon wishlist.

Or you'll be watching the news one night, and realize that the fact that your walls are a vibrant azure doesn't actually bring you any additional comprehension of the issues facing the Middle East, and you'll go and buy a book, bring it home, shut off the TV, and realize you don't have any ambient light to read by. What I'm trying to say here is that it will end badly, so DON'T BUY STUPID SHIT.

This Week's Rollback: Eyes

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:29:01 -0600

Religion, 1 November 2006

Memo to the Save Wal-Mart People: GO FOR IT.

Just in case you needed even more evidence that the conservative movement is not only eating its own, but actually using other bits of its own as a decorative garnish for the main course of its own, look no further than the attempt by ultra-nuts-Christians to mount a fervent protest on November 24... against Wal-Mart.

Yes, Wal-Mart. Home of the low, low prices on products that still usually exceed the annual wages of the people who helped make them. Darling of the right and foe of the left, and for the exact same reason - being the standard bearer for the excesses of capitalism. Wal-Mart is proof that the market can solve any problem, as long as the problem is of the "needing toilet paper and having six bucks" category and not the "I need to see the doctor" variety.

You would think the fundies would spend their time organizing protests of the local organic co-op with the lesbian cashiers. But let's face it, even these dimbulbs know that's a lot of work for very little gain. Plus, as we've seen over and over again, these fuckers are so possessive they make Alex Forrest* look like the Dalai Lama. If they think a tiny part of what they consider theirs is getting taken away, they will go APESHIT. They'll start making signs and issuing releases and writing up websites and throwing temper tantrums.

And oh, how Wal-Mart did transgress. When you hear what Wal-Mart did, you're going to be shocked. Surprised. Amazed. Possibly awestruck. The fundies certainly were. Here's just a snippet of the phrasings they used to describe Wal-Mart's crime. ACTUAL QUOTE COMPILATION TIME!

"Satan has Wal-Mart in his line of fire... Wal-Mart has finally succumbed to this constant harassment and blackmail. She has now chosen a policy of appeasement to assuage all of the false accusations leveled against her in hopes that the devil will somehow stop being so mean... the world's largest retailer would also become the world's largest promoter of homosexual sodomy! ... [they are] an accomplice to the killing of little boys and girls in the privacy of American homes.

With rhetoric like this, there are only two possibilities. First, using a combination of Satanic arts, illegal technology, and alien DNA, they've reanimated the corpse of Sam Walton, cloned the corpse by the thousands, turned 90% of the clones gay, and sent all of them on a coast to coast rampage of ass-rape and child murder.

Or second, they're going to carry out Plan B and have donated .0002% of their 2005 profits to join the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Yes, if SaveWalMart.com has its way, on November 24, complete fucking idiots with home-made signs saying "WAL-MART SUPPORTS SODOMY", "WAL-MART BETRAYED JESUS CHRIST", and "WAL-MART CELEBRATES SIN"** will show up at Wal-Marts all across the hickiest parts of America to protest a $25,000 donation and a vague commitment to treat its employees, customers, and suppliers in an equally shitty and reprehensible manner no matter what their sexual orientation.

And more power to them. Every inbred fuckwad outside Wal-Mart can join every inbred fuckwad INSIDE Wal-Mart on the list of inbred fuckwads I'm less likely to run into going about my daily business. That includes all the letter-writers featured on the site, like Kimberly Reyes of Dallas, who claims her and her husband's first stop after their honeymoon was Wal-Mart. Imagine how bleak that honeymoon must have been if visiting Wal-Mart was an improvement?

Nor will I be running into Kathy Heldreth of Charlotte, North Carolina, who claims in her letter to (a) have EIGHT CHILDREN, and (b) do all her shopping at Wal-Mart. May I suggest that if Mrs. Heldreth needs to make a little extra money on the side to cover the higher costs she will incur by boycotting Wal-Mart, that she volunteer as a research subject for scientists searching for the genetic component to stereotypes.

Fundies trying to save Wal-Mart from itself, while Wal-Mart tries to save the fundies forty cents on toothpaste. And the only one left smiling is me.

*Here's the rule. If I have to go to IMDB to make the joke, you have to go to IMDB to get it.

**Actual, I shit you not, suggested sign wordings from the website.

A True Fifty-State Strategy

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 22:26:50 -0500

Patriotism, 22 August 2006

Memo to the National Collectors Mint: YOU ARE DUMB. KEEP IT UP.

Here at You Are Dumb Dot Net, we single out stupidity for one reason - the basic assumption that stupidity makes the world a worse place to live. It ruins things for smart people, pisses us off, raises our blood pressure, gets in our way, and fucks up people's lives.

Which is why I must salute the stupidity of the National Collectors Mint, for defying the odds, smashing the stereotypes, and being stupid in a way that not only improves the world, but provides a shining example for progressives everywhere who want to gain an upper hand on the right-wing machine.

The National Collectors Mint sells crap. Expensive, ugly crap. They are the Franklin Mint of the Heritage Foundation. If you've ever seen an infomercial hawking some beyond-fugly "commemorative coin", odds are, the blame can be placed squarely on the National Collectors Mint. Silver coins painted in red, white, and blue? Papal commemorative medals? If it's jingoistic and shiny, they've got it. Their assortment of Ronald Reagan memorbilia alone is more gagworthy than the actual stench from the actual Gipper's actually putrefying corpse.

But they've managed to top themselves. They've trumped the painted Reagan portrait silver dollar with the inspirational quote over the flag on the back. The 9/11 5th Anniversary commemorative coin.

It's the first coin I've ever seen with an ACTION FEATURE. The coin is gold, the World Trade Center is silver, and it's hinged, so you can stand it up and use the coin as a base. Or as the ad puts it, "the gleaming Twin Towers actually rise up, like hope, from the shadow of Ground Zero". You know what else rises up? Bile. And if that wasn't enough, the silver is Ground-Zero-recovered silver, for that extra touch of morbid national corpsefucking.

I love this coin. I love this coin for one simple reason. This coin costs thirty bucks. Those thirty bucks are thirty fewer bucks in the pocket of someone stupid enough to buy this coin. Or a hundred and fifty bucks from someone dumb enough to buy the limit of five in the hopes they go up in value. There's a lesson here, progressives. Right-wing fucks will buy ANYTHING.

This is why progressive organizations really need to get into the business of Jingoistic Crapfests. Commemorative coins. Support Our Troops stickers. Toby Keith albums. Osama Yo Momma t-shirts. Confederate flags. Viagra. All that crap Rush Limbaugh and Bob Dole love so much. We should be selling it to them, taking their money, and putting it all into, say, Russ Feingold's presidential fund. And since they're completely incapable of irony, they'd NEVER NOTICE.

What else can we come up with? How about fireproof flags? Pink triangles with no-signs through them? Wait, I've got it. Abu Ghraib Hummel figurines! Big-eyed porcelain Lynndie England giving the double-point smile to a naked Arab caricature. Sell 'em in truckstops, megachurch gift stores, and in the wee morning hours on Fox News for twenty bucks a pop.

Sure, it's ugly, tacky, and distasteful. But that money's gotta go somewhere, and every buck that comes to us is a buck that doesn't go to Kinkos so that they can make three-foot full-color prints of aborted fetuses. It's so crazy it JUST MIGHT WORK.

Now that's what I call a fifty-state strategy. Someone get me Howard Dean on the phone.

Get Your Vomit On

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 21:55:25 -0500

Consumer Products, 11 August 2006

Memo to Hummer: PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH.

First there was the H1, a very large vehicle for very large, very wealthy assholes. That's what Schwarzenegger drives. Then there was the smaller H2, for still quite well off assholes who didn't mind getting eight miles to the gallon, but still had to fit into one and a half parking spaces.

But that leaves a vast, untapped market of assholes out there. People who want to LOOK like a complete dick, but don't want to spend quite so much money on gas. For them, there is the Hummer H3. But marketing the H3 to insecure men forced to buy tofu when real men would buy piles of meat* wasn't good enough for Hummer.

After years of trying to convince men that their dicks are too small, Hummer is reaching out, and trying... to convince WOMEN that their dicks are too small. It's completely ridiculous. Trying to convince women they like Hummers is just forcing them into submission to the patriarchy.**

And how do they do this? With a TV commercial. It starts on a playground, where a slim, long-haired attractive mother of a cute cherub is in line at a slide. Suddenly, an older girl cuts in front of the cherubic boy, having gotten the impression somehow that being bigger entitles you to special privileges.

Our protagonist complains to the girl's mom, a slightly stocky, short-haired Soccer Mom straight out of central casting. "I'm sorry, Jake was next," our heroine says. "Yeah, well, we're next now," replies Soccer Mom, proving to our heroine once and for all that politeness and decency will get you NOWHERE in the cold, callous world of the playground.

This epiphany happens to coincide with a bus-borne ad for Hummer. Which, by the way, is also fucking obscene - Hummer slapping ads on public transportation. It's like 1-900-SLUTS buying ad time on the 700 Club. Or, more accurately, your local megachurch buying ad time on Queer Eye. She sees the Hummer ad, and realizes that nobody's going to push her around any more on the playground of life.

Montage! Hummer lot! Don't think! Just sign! On impulse! Buy a Hummer! Drive off! Strap in! Get a self-satisfied smug look on your face! And if that doesn't drive the point home, here comes the text overlay: "GET YOUR GIRL ON."

Apparently, Hummer realized that the advertising industry was falling short in making women feel insecure, and decided it was about damn time they got their due. I swear to fuck, other car companies are awful, miserable, and stupid, but Hummer seems to be the only brand on the market whose mission statement is BE AS PUNCHABLE AS POSSIBLE.

But hey, at 16 miles per gallon in the city, it's only raping the earth half as fast as the other models. So remember to punch H3 drivers twice as slowly.

*Actual message of an H3 ad. I am not shitting you. I told you they're targeting assholes.

**Some of you will get this joke. The rest of you need to be aware that it is, in fact, a joke.

Use The Force, SUCKERS!

Thu, 04 May 2006 20:36:59 -0500

Star Wars, 5 May 2006

Memo to Scott Kurtz and Ilk: YOU ARE DUMB.

I single out Kurtz only because he's the first and highest-profile bitcher I came across on the Internerd yesterday, and I can quote him without visiting message boards, thereby saving what last few shreds of sanity and soul I can lay claim to.

Anyway, the issue at hand is the announcement, yesterday, of new Star Wars DVDs due out this fall. They're sold individually, they include the Special Editions, and they also include the Unspecial Editions. In all their shooting-first, white-wall, no-CGI-dinosaur, Yub-Nub glory.

You would think this would make the nerds happy. I mean, it makes ME happy. And by the Lambert Projection Principle, that means you all should be happy, too. And some of you are, and some of you aren't, and you've got nobody to blame but your own fucking nerd selves. And to demonstrate this, I present Scott Kurtz, author of PvP, Star Wars nerd. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"But don't you guys feel beat up yet by the lucasfilm camp?. Don't you feel a little bit abused by now?"

I don't. But then, I make my entertainment decisions based on the concept of free will, which dictates that companies offer options to me, and I can choose to partake in those options, or not, as I see fit. Thus, their ability to "abuse" me doesn't exist, because at the end of the day, they can't make me walk to the counter at Best Buy.

"Hasn't the Lucas camp been swearing on Bibles since the late 1990's that they would NEVER, EVER release the theatrical versions of these movies on DVD? And since then, how many versions of the original Trilogy have been put out for fans to purchase in lieu of what they truly wanted? Two or three at least. And we bought them. What else could we do?"

What else could you do? NOT BUY THEM. If they weren't what you wanted, you didn't have to get them. You know how I know this? Because The Empire Strikes Back is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, and I don't own a single fucking Star Wars DVD. Why? Because I had a choice.

But Kurtz and Ilk are suddenly shocked that George Lucas is being inconsistent. George Lucas! Doing something one year, then changing it a few years later! That runs counter to everything we've ever known! If George Motherfucking Lucas says the movies will never be released, they'll never be released, because George Motherfucking Lucas never changes his mind about ANYTHING.

Jedi, please. There's a simple way you could have known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Star Wars Classic would be available on DVD eventually. It's because EVERYTHING will be out on DVD eventually. And you know how I know this? The first season of "227" is out on DVD. If there's a market for the first season of 227, there's a market for Star Wars. And if there's a market for it, it will be sold, no matter how many claims of artistic intent George Lucas makes.

"I think the only reason to buy these new DVD's is so that one day, I can sit down with my kids and share with them the same experience I once shared with my father. That's something I've been looking forward to probably ever since 1977. I certainly don't appreciate, however, how hard Lucas has made me work for that privilege."

OK, first of all, if Scott Kurtz really came out of a theater in 1977 anxious to knock up some babe so that someday, he could watch the Death Star explode with his spawn in his living room, that dude's a much bigger geek than I thought he was.

And second of all, FUCK OFF. You didn't work hard. You didn't work hard at all. You didn't even work hard for the money you spent on the DVDs. You drew pictures of pandas mauling nerds and had people send you money. More power to you, but don't fucking martyr yourself because YOU decided to buy the SE videotapes and YOU decided to buy the SE DVD's and YOU'RE GOING TO decide to buy the fall Classic releases. You have been, at most, mildly inconvenienced by your own fanboyism. Shut the fuck up.

At the end of the day, this is a situation where blind fanboys lose, and smart nerds win. You know what I call that? One step closer to Utopia.

Oh, Something's Being Passed

Wed, 03 May 2006 09:20:40 -0500

Religion, 3 May 2006

Memo to The Dove Foundation: YOU ARE DUMB.

And by dumb, I mean holy fucking shit on deep-fried toast dumb. I mean retarded slugs think this is an awful idea dumb. I mean if I'm trapped in an elevator with one of these people and their ideal entertainment, one of us is going to die, and I don't care who. So this column's traditional salutation really does not cover the range of emotion I feel about the Dove Foundation's product recommendations

The Dove Foundation is one of Those organizations. Like CAPAlert. Ultrajesusy arbiters of modern media and its value to the family. Their movie reviews are dull, though, without the over-the-top railing that makes other sites so much "fun". I checked out their American Dreamz review hoping for lots of "how dare they", and just got a couple of paragraphs of "they're mocking Christians". DISAPPOINTING.

On the other hand, their profanity counter beats the shit out of CAPAlert's "foulest of the foul words" schtick. Here is the language score for the film adaptation of Doom. ACTUAL SCORE TIME!

F-19, S-19, GD-8, J-4, D-1, H-6, A-1.

I think I've got Fuckbingo!

Because I've seen Doom. And I guarantee you, the problem with Doom is not that they said "Hell" six times. It's that they didn't say "Hell" enough. And never went there. And never fought demons. Also, it sucked. But that's beside the point.

Because the problem with equating wholesomeness with quality is that sometimes, the most wholesome things are in fact the worst things ever seen or heard on the planet. Allow me to present to you the Dove-recommended audio Darfur known only as "The Best Of Pass-It-On E-Mails, Volume One: The Journey Begins."

Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. A full half-hour of some dickwad reading aloud a selection of the inspirational and comedy e-mails you added your aunt to the spam-blocker to avoid reading ever again. Now, I can understand why Christians might enjoy a selection of written documents that change slightly every time they're transcribed and aren't actually true, but still. Paying money to have e-mails read aloud to you? Nobody can really enjoy that, can they? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Are you tired of listening to the music on the radio? Well here is a cute CD that will put a smile on your face. Listening to 'The Best of Pass-it-on E-mails' Vol. One, reminds me of the stories my mom told me about listening to radio shows when she was a kid. It will have you laughing out loud to some of the stories. The wonderful narration of Bob Noble keeps you entertained."

It was much better than Cats. I want to fornicate with the spindle-hole again and again.

Ten bucks gets you Volume 1. But no amount of money can make you clean again. Only Volume 1 is available, but he's threatening the world with nine more. Forget about Iran. Bob Noble's the one that needs a house call from Dr. Bunker Q. Buster. Preferably before the "Patriotism Still Reigns" disc becomes available.

Bob Noble, by the way, is a veteran actor of motion pictures, TV, and theater. If you believe his website. IMDB claims he was Dr. Festerspoon in two episodes of "Clarissa Explains It All". I think that explains it all. Feel free to enjoy the rest of his filmography yourself - it is guaranteed to be funnier than all ten volumes of "The Best Of Pass It On E-Mails" put together.

And, unless you're Bob Noble, it's a lot less likely to make you eat a bullet.