Sure, Why Not?

No, that’s not a typo. Apparently that’s actually how his parents spelled his first name when naming him. They’re the ones who misspelled “Michael”, not me. Yes, it’s A before E, which you don’t see in the English language much (less so in the American version), which must have made them think the name Michael was misspelled in the Bible, despite it being Hebrew obviously.

But that’s well beside the point here. Who is this guy?
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Now for a gory yet clever edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, violent video game manufacturers!”

You people are so stupid. No, not the manufacturers. The general public. The manufacturers are quite intelligent. They see a mass of humans who will shriek at the mere idea of mixing kids and violence in any way (unless it’s violence perpetrated by the parents, in which case they’re all for it, but that’s another matter entirely). What does that usually mean? Lots of sensationalist news reports. So finally the video game makers thought to themselves “wouldn’t free advertising be awesome?”
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On the NYRA forums, some new person posted about a blog he saw some place that apparently lauded the idea of a “separate internet” just for kids. The idea being that the internet as we know it be kept an “adult only” territory while creating a super censored, “kid friendly” online zone just for those under 18.

Now, I was quick to tell this person that he needn’t worry since it was just a random blog entry some place, not even a high-profile blog or anything. If any random blog entry changed the world, goodness! Nonetheless, it got me thinking.
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There’s a belief that every little girl is a princess, or should at least be told she is. What does it mean to be a princess? Who knows? Adults think it’s an endearing thing to tell little girls and think it’s just adorable when they act upon it. How? They idolize Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, or whoever else, wear clothes with them on it, and dress up like them, for Halloween or otherwise. I myself was Snow White for Halloween at age five. But what did this princess ideal mean? Really, it comes down to the little girl being an object of affection, particularly from males, usually her father, but in the older form of the princess, this includes boys her own age perhaps, or at least the expectation of such. She was special, to be pampered and showered with gifts, and her only job was to sit there and look pretty and cute.
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1. Make students work like dogs
2. Make students work like dogs even more
3. Make students work like dogs still more
4. ????
5. PROFIT!!!!!

So when I was at work earlier, was after hours but a few of us still there, my coworker (he’s Chinese, which I mention because it’ll be relevant in a sec) got to chatting with me and other coworker (Indian) and talked about all the activities his kids usually do over the summers. Usually they were stuck into all kinds of summer camps and whatnot. Basically, their summers are just as if not more busy than the school year. Coworker went on talking happily about it, even saying that if they weren’t, they’d just be indoors sitting in front of the TV or a video game. He went on to mention that this year he might not do the summer camps but instead get them into some kind of tutoring for math and English. At this point, I asked how old his kids were, and he said they’re 9 and 11. I didn’t ask whether their grades were subpar or anything to have merited the tutoring, but from how the conversation continued, I figured otherwise. Tutoring was not for improvement of grades. It was to keep up studying momentum, to keep the flow of studying and homework going. Hell, not even to necessarily speed up the kids’ progress in the subjects. Just to keep them doing it in general.
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I hereby decree…

The live bar performer will play Margaritaville.

Without exception, without fail. Or no, very much with fail. This song is way overplayed. Some loser with a guitar who got fortunate enough for some Saturday night bar gig where he’ll spend the evening badly covering various popular songs will soon enough stumble upon this Jimmy Buffett ballad.

People eat it up, as they often do with the most tiresome, clichè acts. “ZOMG, awesome, he’s playing Margaritaville while we’re in a bar, he’s liek sooo kewl!”

What other gems shall we hear? “Closing Time” perhaps? Maybe even “Tub Thumpin’”. Or, perhaps not, those are too recent. Still bar songs. Even if played, not the least bit creative, but with Margaritaville, shit, song’s old so everybody knows it and you don’t piss off the older bar goers who want to pretend the year 1980 has not yet come.

All I wanted was to go to a restaurant on some evening, but in the restaurant’s bar they have some gay ass live band or whatever. Margaritaville will be played. That train is never late. I mean, the song stops being clever after the second or third time you hear it, if it ever was. Playing it over and over just speeds up the brain damage the bar people are already on the verge of with their copious alcohol consumption. Ugh.

(Speaking of retardedness, prepare yourself for like 500 comments all saying “ZOMG, finally, a new entry!”)

This has been Day 45 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 8.

So the other day, I got this strange call on my cell phone. Annoying recording. Voice came on saying something like “this message is to warn you that the warranty on your vehicle is about to expire” and went on to say to wait for a rep to come on and talk, blah blah. Hung up right away and didn’t give it another thought. Not sure how telemarketers got my number, but whatever. My car is several years away from warranty expiration.

The number is usually blocked, but this time it wasn’t. It was 818-870-8127.
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Gaaahhhh!

Let down again!

Damn you, Big Brown! Just like Smarty Jones and Funny Cide and Real Quiet and a lot of others who looked hopeful for the Triple Crown, pwned the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, only to descend into epic fail at the Belmont. Damn you to hell!

Been since 1978, when Affirmed won it, that there’s been no Triple Crown winner. A bunch who won two out of three, sure. No one did it all. What’s with you failtastic horses and trainers? So many years we watch the horse races and think we finally have a winner, only to have yet another year of epic lose.

Although, the 5.9 million dollars thrown away on win bets on Big Brown is lulzy. Lulzy until I remember all that lost money goes to the other NYRA.

Well, as has been said a lot now, maybe next year.

This has been Day 15 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 8.

Now, for a cultureless culinary edition of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

So I was glancing through some menus of local restaurants earlier today while I was at work, making myself hungry. Italian. Tex-Mex. Asian fusion. Good stuff. But there was one common little problem each of these menus had, a common little problem very common to menus.

It was, of course, the kids’ menu.
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On yet another anniversary of that fateful day, revisited one and two years ago, I recall the sheer uncertainty of the day. I watched him slowly move his stuff out of his dorm room, said my goodbye at that fateful moment behind his car.

That’s just it. All that day begged a question I had no answer for. What now? Will I see him again? Will I ever find anybody I feel the same way about? What’s next? Where will it go from here?
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That’s right, everyone. Today is my 25th birthday, and you know what that means.

It means that at last my brain is fully developed. You’ve got these public interest groups and all saying that studies show that your brain is immature and underdeveloped until you turn 25. That before then you are incapable of making any sound judgments. Well, I always called bullshit before, but now that I actually am 25, maybe my outlook might be a bit different.

Yes, yes, it’s true. I do feel more lucid, more logical. I feel like I truly understand the world now, and I realize that anyone born after this day in 1983 can’t possibly be so rational. It can’t be explained, as you can’t possibly understand until you turn 25. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Because if you are not yet my age, you shouldn’t drink a drop of alcohol because it will give you cerebral palsy. And don’t think about driving because it gives you Down’s Syndrome. Also, sex before age 25 will definitely make you autistic.

Of course, why am I retyping this whole thing? I’ve already written all about my new outlook on life. Read it here.

Now I hope you understand, or however much your underdeveloped brain possibly can.

So the other day I was looking at the MP3’s on Amazon.com and was on the page for the Barenaked Ladies. Among their usual songs and all I spotted a song called “The Other Day I Met a Bear”. I listened to the 30 second sample and it seemed to be a song about a bear, sung by that same voice that sings about breaking into apartments and liking sushi because it’s never touched a frying pan. Then I looked to the side and saw the name of the album it’s from: For the Kids.
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Now for a teasing, fruity version of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

Something I can say for sure that has irked me for pretty much my entire life are Trix cereal commercials. You know, you’ve got a bunch of kids enjoying Trix and the rabbit wants some, but he is denied time after time because of the classic retch-inducing line: “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

So ever since I was a tiny little kid and on through to today, on the rare occasion I still watch anything early enough in the day for a Trix ad to come on, I’ve watched that poor animated rabbit suffer the jeers and taunts of the animated people refusing him a cereal he has desperately wanted. He’s had to resort to outright stealing to entering contests on the quick to disguises to whatever else, all of which could be avoided if the kids would learn to fucking share. I mean, it’s kids these ads are aimed for. But what does it teach them? Entitlement based on superficial factors. Bigotry. Selfishness. Arrogance.
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Ugh, here I am talking about current political stuff. What is this, a blog?

Anyway, so we all know Hillary Clinton just won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. Kind of expected. In any case, Barack Obama, as some suggest, pretty much screwed himself in a comment he made about small town Pennsylvanians. Here’s a quote from the Lexington column in the Economist:

He told a group of fat cats in San Francisco that the reason why he is finding it hard to appeal to blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania is because they are “bitter”. They have suffered from so many broken promises that they prefer to “cling” to God, guns and xenophobia rather than reaching out for a helping hand from the government.

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So, yeah, I’m sure we’ve all heard about that polygamist cult group in Texas where a ton of women, teens, and children were rescued from abusive fundamentalists, where they were subject to beatings, rape, and forced marriages.

To that I say great! All those poor people having to have lived like that is horrible. No innocent people should have to live under some brutal coercion and violence, least of all kids.

Then I took another look at the news articles about all this. Just as I suspected.
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Something odd about the way some houses are designed. I thought of it not too long ago when I was first looking into moving into a shared house maybe, to get away from my family. One place listed on Craig’s List was like this shared 5-bedroom house. For a moment, I wondered that it might have been the house I lived in between the ages of 10 and 18. Nah, it wasn’t, but it got me thinking. What if that house were a shared house instead of a family house like it was for us?
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Now, for dangerous, oblivious version of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

These people who walk into the street and just seem to be completely unaware that they are, you know, in a street. They know, but they seem to think it’s just an extension of the sidewalk or something.
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I hereby decree…

Open it in a new window!

Holy crap, I haven’t written an entry in a while! Oh, well, here’s a new one. Be happy.

You know what pisses me off? Sometimes there’s a program on your computer that for some reason or another needs to go to a webpage. Perhaps to download an upgrade. Whatever.

Oh, did I mention you already had your browser open because you were in the middle of reading a page on the Fortress and admiring its awesomeness? Yeah.

So you click the link in the program to bring up a browser window with the page it must visit. But you see no new browser window. You are confused.

And then you realize.

The stupid program made the page open IN THE BROWSER WINDOW YOU ALREADY HAD OPEN!

What the shit?!

What the hell is the purpose of that?! No, don’t open in a new window in a nice unobtrusive way, a way that doesn’t interrupt anything you might already have going. Just move the page you’re already on into the other page.

Go die in a fire.

It’s that time of year again! It’s the week of the first full moon of the spring, yet it’s a somber week of reflection on, well, just how nasty humans can be. But we try to better ourselves, and prove it by giving things up for Lent, I guess. A meatless Good Friday ensues, followed by a cautious Saturday, and a joyous Easter Sunday as the day of bunnies and eggs and Zombie Jesus.
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Where did she go? In the kindergarten class, there was Jane sitting at her table, which she shared with two other girls named Margaret and Elizabeth, and three boys named Anthony, Phillip, and Timothy.

Jane played jump rope with Susan, who had a sister in the third grade named Rebecca. Susan worked on her art project with Karen, who sat next to Dennis in class. Dennis played with the blocks during recess, along with Edward and Martin.
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