Nontendo Wii

I don't always make smart shopping decisions. Fortunately I have Jen around to gently clue me in when I'm about to buy something impulsive or stupid. Impulsive and stupid, I've found, are the peanut butter and chocolate of vices.

So when I saw the "Zone 40" gaming system at CVS for $30 and suggested we get one (it's $30 for a gaming system--even if it sucks, we can still pay rent) I fully expected a slapdown of sensibility. But, she's been Wii-captivated ever since last Christmas and the Zone 40 is a Wii knock-off (and it's $30--C'mon already!!), so she came on-board with my dumbass idea to buy one.

The box was surprisingly light--so light that I had the cashier guy open it up to make sure there was actually something in the box. Indeed, the box contained two controllers and our soon-to-be Nontendo Wii game system thing. The reason the box was so light, I discovered when we got home, is that it doesn't come with an AC adapter. So, already the $30 investment now has recurring battery costs. Value diminishing.

There's no HDMI output on the Zone 40. No composite. Just RCA. But so what? It's $30 plus the cost of batteries. After stuffing our little white box with AA batteries, I plugged everything in, and prepared to be dazzled by real-motion gaming, all thanks to some handy reverse engineering and Chinese slave labor.

Here's the thing about the Zone 40. Yes, it's sort of a real-motion game--assuming you're very generous in your use of language. But the games--all 40 of them--are knock-offs from early 16-bit arcade days. "Bee Fighter," for example, is Galaga. But instead of shooting the alien ships in space, you shoot the exact same alien ships, which coincidentally were insect-themed, against a pastoral grassy barnyard setting. There's no getting around it--this is Galaga with a slightly modified cheesy MIDI soundtrack.

And then there's the fishing game. The only bigger waste of time apart from actual fishing is the Zone 40 fishing game. Beer is mandatory. In sufficient quantities, it will dumb you down enough to figure out what the fuck it is you're supposed to do. But, after all, it's only $30 plus the cost of batteries plus sufficient enough quantities of alcohol to muddle through the 40 shitty games.

It gets worse, amazingly. The racing game is a slightly polished version of ActiVision's Enduro. We're talking 8-bit games. Think Atari 2600, but positioned as a modern-day contender. Seriously.

So. If you hate your kids, buy them a Zone 40 gaming system. It sends a very clear message. It lets them know that you will not be paying for college, cars, and have no real interest in their development or happiness. Yeah, it's $30 bucks. But the recurring costs that follow in its wake far, far exceed the price. Should you get one for yourself? Meh. It's $30.

One Week.

One week as of tonight. Seven days sans-cigarettes. I am genuinely appreciative for all the kind words from everybody. Cold turkey probably isn't the most successful way to go about this from a purely statistical standpoint, but it is the fastest way to break the habit as well as get the nicotine out my/our system(s) once and for all.

It's hard to say if this weekend was, in reality, saturated with absurd encounters with some of the most obnoxious, dimwitted, lumbering, clueless assholes to ever roam the planet, or, if simple deprivation of those little toxic coping-sticks just made it seem that way.

Given where we live, it's undoubtedly a bit of both.

Simple things somehow evolved into complicated tasks that grew in gravity and intensity until time and light formed a brain-humping singularity--causing the very fabric of reality to unwind around us. Think I'm fucking with you?

I don't know. Maybe I am. But shit, man. That we made it past this weekend without breaking has me pleased. And at this point, we've made an investment in this shit. To turn back now would be something of a soul-crushing kick in the nuts. It just means behaving. And isolating ourselves from anything fun for the next few weeks until the habit is partially slain and the addiction is more manageable.

Again. Thanks to everyone for the support. It's very appreciated.

The Rise of Stupid, Pt. I: The Douchebag in Daylight

Gyms offer an interesting lens into society. They're one of the few places a person can observe douchebags in their natural daytime environment. Typically, sightings are reserved for night when packs of wild douchebags congregate to roam cheesy nightclubs, marking their territory with sunless tanner, Axe body spray, and sticky handprints resulting from running their hands through their very deliberately coiffed gelmets.

Daytime, however, reveals a level of narcissism that a douchebag simply can't explore in a darkened nightclub. When confronted with a mirror, the douchebag enters a semi-hypnotic state--think deer in the headlights. It begins as a passing glance, as if he vaguely knows the Bro in the mirror, then a pause followed by brief confusion--"was that the dude who joined in on the pooltable train last weekend? No, no. That dude's ME. AH, BRO!!" At this point, a blunt object to the head is not enough to distract him. There's nothing a gym douchebag loves more than his own relfection--not even the stupid combat boots he wears with workout gear.

Sometimes douchebags seek to reinforce the bonds shared among their pack, which generally means engaging in much the same behavior as an evening prowling the nightclubs would entail, but the setting is one of the Bro's livingrooms where, gathered in front of a 60" flat screen television, they swill shitty beer and yell at the screen as the homoerotic ballet unfolds before them. Of course the dance is a familiar one to all those carrying the D-Bag gene, and by this I mean Ultimate Fighting Championships.

Why douchebags flock to UFC like gay moths to other gay moths is a mystery, and for purposes of this conversation, not necessarily important. But just like a white guy sporting a baseball cap cocked to the side, UFC clothing is a surefire indicator that the dude is a douchebag. Tribal armbands, muscle shirts, and popped collars just scrape the surface of the vast pool of douchebag regalia.

Other favorite doucbebag accessories include pit bulls, girlfriends (beards) with half-cantaloupe fake cans and a permanently startled appearance thanks to overplucked, Sharpie-inspired eyebrows, 20" wheels on SUVs, Red Bull, and rear-window decals for any number of dipshit products like Oakley sunglasses, Harley Davidsons, UFC (of course), and shitty, mediocre bands like Fallout Boy, Pat Green (technically an "artist," not band), Cross Canadian Ragweed, or every new metal, no-talent hack MTV band.

There's no explanation for the explosion in douchebag populations. Well, apart from the way dozens of dumbass television shows celebrate mediocrity. People who once belonged on COPS now have their own shows. Dog the Bounty Hunter, a progenitor of the modern douchebag, and his Divine-looking wife with her U-boat inspired tits are second only to "Operation Repo" in the ways in which they glorify the American Asshole.

Once upon a time, stupidassed fads were pretty much limited to highschoolers. But somehow, the mechanism that kicks in around age 22 responsible for causing a person to look in the mirror one morning and realize he looks like an asshole has failed. Douchebags are getting older and becoming more massive douchebags over time. What was once localized in southern Florida and pockets in the Northeast has spread like fire ants, leaving jizz trails and the rotten stink of shitty cologne in every corner of the country.

The next awful reality show should skip the pretext and marketable titles. Just call it "Douche Island." It'll earn billions.

Saturday in Jail

Clairemont is a tiny, fly-blown spec of a town located in Kent County. Not that you have any idea where the hell Kent County is, but nevertheless, that's where it's located. If you're really curious, here's a map. Anyway, Clairemont was once the county seat of Kent County and, as such, built a jail to keep drunken ranchhands from doing whatever drunken ranchhands do.

This is not an nice jail--certainly not a place anybody would want to call "home" for an extended period of time.

Enjoy.

Man v. Cell Phone

In the past year, I've burned through four, possibly five Blackberry Pearls, a Google Android, an HTC Fuze, which is a piece of shit of unimaginable magnitude--more on that later--a Samsung Behold, and now I'm on a Nokia E71x. Apparently my pockets are made of cell phone Kryptonite, rendering any communication device in certain peril as soon as it has the misfortune of being slipped inside.

So, having had numerous one-night stands with as many phones that line store shelves, I figured I would help you, dear Reader, on a few handsets to grant a wide berth.

First, the HTC Fuze. "Fuze" is a very generous name. It's really more of a "Fizzling Unnecessarily-Complicated King-of-groupthink-inspired-bullshit" or, as I like to call it, a horrible FUCK of a phone. The folks at HTC opted to rely on Windows Mobile 6.whothehellcares as a means of grabbing corporate customers. I don't really get this. There are dozens of means of tapping into an Exchange server that do not necessitate Windows Mobile and all its burdensome menus and their Hell-hatched brood of sub-menus upon sub-menus. Moreover, almost every OEM crams some sort of reader for Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, many of which allow users to both read and write files.



Performing simple tasks, such as connecting to a paired Bluetooth headset, require the user to abandon anything resembling logic or reasoning skills. Just to give an idea as to the counterintuitive nature of the Fuze, the stylus docks at the bottom of the phone. Think about that for a second--it made more sense for the folks at HTC to use a magnetized stylus and port as if were some weird nerd "up yours" to gravity rather than simply cram the stupid thing into the TOP of the phone and work with gravity. Novel concept, gravity, apparently.

The combination of Windows Mobile and whatever core software HTC uses for its chipset never played together nicely in the sandbox. I constantly lost my data connection, which required a constant manual disabling/re-enabling of the data service. Of course every time I did this, the phone became slower and slower to respond to unrelated commands only to ultimately require frequent power-cycling.

The Fuze's accelerometer, the thing that tells the screen whether to orient itself vertically or horizontally, was afflicted with some sort of vertigo as it would often get confused which way was up in its own unique half-assed, retarded attempt to straighten itself out. The background images would be correct, but the text often remained perpendicular to the phone's orientation.

Stay away from this phone--far far away. Given it's absurd price and burdensome, ham-handed functionality, you're way better off going much, much cheaper or springing for an iPhone.

The Samsung Behold is next. T-Mobile plugs the Behold as being vastly more functional than what it really is. Really, the biggest problem is the fact that T-Mobile has the device so locked down from the factory that they've crippled what could be a great little phone.



Use Gmail? Yeah, well, the only way to install the Gmail client on the Behold is through some screwball software hacks and sideloading the application. What you get is a non-touchscreen version of Gmail that can't be minimized to run in the background. Now, you can use T-Mobile's installed email client, but it's not a true email client. It polls the email server and then through some odd Rube Goldberg contraption, it turns the email message into a quasi-text message. Stupid really, but T-Mobile, on the Behold's box, has "EMAIL" splashed across it in a manner that really belies what you actually get--a bastardized, stripped-down, clunky, SLOW, backwater version of email.

Full HTML browser, it ain't. It's WAP. Yet another hack is required to kinda-sorta turn it into a fully enabled browser.

Like Google Maps? Forget it. It's not worth it. Again, non-touchscreen, sideloaded, and requires some registry work. Too much trouble for a phone that should allow the application to run native--sans-bullshit.

The Behold is really a shame, and the blame falls directly at the feet of the T-Mobile product manager who needs to be kicked in the balls repeatedly for hog-tieing what potentially is a great handset.

Next, the Nokia E71x. This is my most recent addition--got just over 24 hours ago. So far, I like.

I've never had a Nokia that didn't work and the E71x appears to be no exception. It's a little more complicated than previous Nokias I've owned, but nonetheless, still easy to use, has a slick form-factor, and quickly and easily integrates with an Exchange server.

And I'm bored. More later.

Bronzer.

Sometimes the picture says so much more than I ever could.

This is one of those times.

So, this testosterone-fiending douchebag apparently takes looking like a testosterone-fiending douchebag very seriously--even down to the electric blue banana hammock keeping you shielded from the rotten, forlorn raisins beneath it.

He reminds me of Martin Sheen popping up from the swamps in "Apocalypse Now."



Seriously. Nice bronzer, douche.

Amazing Facts, or The End of Days

So, generally a couple of days go by before I even bother checking the mail since most of the important shit is squared away online, but yesterday I was inspired enough to actually check the old mailbox attached to the wall by the front door. It was primarily the result of the flyer’s size—so large it stuck out of the crappy little mailbox.

It was from “Amazing Facts,” a name which would turn out to be a complete in-your-face subterfuge to what the flyer really was. Amazing Facts is the name of an organization, supposedly a radio and tv consortium of fellow hucksters slinging their “Millennium of Prophecy” tripe, that goes around the country conducting garden-variety end-of-days seminars. The flyer bragged of “State-of-the-art large-screen graphics!!” as a key component to the marketing aspect. In other words, they have really splashy images of warfare, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, etc, etc.

What really struck me was a blurb about the antichrist—an American flag swooped over a glowing capitol building (not the White House—apparently that state-of-the-art large-screen graphic was unavailable at the time of publication) and the text centered around some utter horseshit about the great lie consumed by the country as dictated by the antichrist. As a matter of fact, it read as follows:

”Discover how the antichrist has popularized a lie that is sweeping America!”

Well, it doesn’t take Noam Chomsky to understand who the supposed antichrist is intended to be—these batshit crazy lunatics are unmistakably suggesting that President Obama is the goddamned antichrist and we’re all lining up to stumble into the bowels of Hell for supporting him.

On one hand, it’s laughable, but on the other, it’s also very troubling. The fact that there’s a sizable segment of society yearning for the apocalypse is sort of scary. By holding the worldview that the planet and all its inhabitants are at the ass-end of the human timeline, these war-mongering, ignorant, sanctimonious fucks can duck the enormously bad affects of their actions. After all, who cares if you wage a catastrophic war in the Middle East when the Bible says we’re all gonna die soon anyway? And that’s what these people WANT. It’s frightening to the rational person that such a mindset exists in this day and age. Ironically, these are the same people who castigate Islamic suicide bombers as extremists and murderers when, in fact, they share the same fatalistic, short-sighted philosophy.

The Biblical Rapture to this cloth of person is like the county fair, winning the lottery, and seeing your teenage daughter wait to get knocked up until marriage all rolled up into one giant, flaming orgasm. Seriously, this is the greatest thing imaginable to them.

Anyway, back to the fact that Revelationists are allowed to skirt the impacts of their actions—take the environment, for example. If the world is going to “end” soon, there’s no need to protect it. Right? What’s the point? And what’s wrong with the ill, unintended effects of capitalism gone amok? The Bible tells us that he who helps himself, right? Nevermind those pesky bits about charity and the meek inheriting the earth. Well, fuck ‘em—they can have it. Who wants the earth when you can stare down St. Peter at the Pearly Gates? Perhaps only then will these blowhards realize that by abandoning charity, sacrificing the environment, wantonly waging warfare, and refusing to turn the other cheek that they’ve lived in utter contradiction to the underlying messages of the Bible.

It’s worth point out that this “seminar” is a weeklong. Seven days. Of course it had to be seven in order to be in harmony with the magic number of the Bible. Six days? No sir, that shit won’t fly. Number of the beast and all that. Make it seven.

Seven days gives you ample time to hawk your shitty, absurd wares to the credulous many who attend this ilk of dog-and-pony show. You see, there’s no charge to attend the seminar. It’s absolutely free. And they provide free “child care” to children ages 0-8. Yup, “Kids for Jesus” comes at no added cost!!!! No better time to indoctrinate your youngins into the world of Revelationism than before they possess the wherewithal to begin questioning the premises of mommy and daddy’s doomsday lifestyle. I digress—this is a travelling mall of religious nonsense. The show might be free, but there’s undoubtedly a two t-shirt minimum. After all, it costs a lot of money to produce those “state-of-the-art large-screen graphics,” travel across the globe, and pay the snake-oil salesmen who conduct them. Shit, they’re empowering you with the tools to live your life head-in-the-sand—you best buy some holy chotchke from them for freeing you in this way.

Ironically, Alberto Gonzalez is slated to speak at the Law School opening night. Coincidence?

Sometimes it freezes you in your tracks

Some mornings, when I'm not running late, I try to catch a little news before heading out. Today was one of those mornings.

Generally, the news is little more than background noise. Most mornings consist of a few quips, some mindless speculation, and the usual "homeworker.com" scam commercials. You know the one--where the Asian massage lady makes $60,000/mo with nothing but a computer and a desire to succeed? Those.

My cheerios and I were met with a CNN "BREAKING NEWS" crawl today, so I decided to pay the set a bit more attention than usual.

Today, the House Financial Services Committee was given the opportunity to lob heaps of inane populist nonsense on the heads of Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. AIG was the primary focus--and deservedly so--but it was also an opportunity for some GOP grandstanding.

Of my favorite people, those absent the little mechanism that route's those things they wish to say through the mind's "ah fuck, this is so stupid that I should really refrain because I have not got the slightest clue what I'm trying to say" filter are at the top of the pile. Minnesota's Michelle Bachmann (R-etarded) is a prime example.

With her Katherine Harris-inspired bottled persona and horns well-hidden beneath her Cruella DeVille hairmet, she began her questioning:

BACHMANN: What provision in the Constitution could you point to to give authority for the actions that have been taken by the Treasury since March of '08?

GEITHNER: Oh, well, the -- the Congress legislated in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act a range of very important new authorities.

BACHMANN: Sir, in the Constitution. What -- what in the Constitution could you point to to -- to give authority to the Treasury for the extraordinary actions that have been taken?

GEITHNER: Every action that the Treasury and the Fed and the FDIC is -- is -- has been using authority granted by this body -- by this body, the Congress.

BACHMANN: And by -- in the Constitution, what could you point to?

GEITHNER: Under the laws of the land, of course.

Geithner's jaw literally drops at one point. You can almost see him reach for the sock puppets to more easily explain that Congress granted the authority to the Fed to take such actions, nevermind the fact that he's the Sec. of the Treasury.

Bachmann continued taking deference with Geithner's response, despite its simplicity. I have to hand it to Geithner for not flipping his lid with this woman.



It was the type of comedy that only real life provides. And it was a degree of stupidity that literally caused me to freeze in my tracks, causing cheerios and milk to run down my chin as my brain swelled with confusion--was this hilarious? was this tragic? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? HOW DO THESE DIPSHITS GET DULY ELECTED???

They say the people get the government they deserve.

Minnesota's 6th District, I'm not sure what you did, but it must be very, very bad.

A few of Bachmann's gems can be found here.

The Unsettling Last House on the Left

"The Last House on the Left" displaced the most recent "Rambo" movie as the single most unnecessary film to bleed its way onto movie screens.

Like "Rambo," "Last House" is evidence that Hollywood is rife with talentless hacks absent any creativity. It's yet another remake of 70s-era blood porn. The original, first released in 1972, was a product of Wes Craven. 91 minutes at first cut, Craven found himself forced to slice it down to 84 minutes in order to avoid an "X" rating. The film has been reduced to 64 minutes over the decades in order to fly under X's increasing criteria.

An "X" rating in the era of "I Spit on Your Grave" and the "Faces of Death" franchise is fairly compelling evidence that the original was primarily about graphic violence predicated on rape splashed with the occasional splotch of 70s bush.

The trouble with the remake (and the original) is the commodification of gang rape and blood porn clumsily packaged as a horror film. The fact that such a film found its way above ground after almost four decades of being deservedly buried in a dusty warehouse speaks volumes about the disconcerting culture continuum we find ourselves on. The premise is genuinely horrifying, but it's not one that should pique the pallet of an audience--to a rational viewer, it should naturally repel. Sadly though, the producers clearly believe an abundance of willing consumers still exists.

And they're probably right. The most disturbing aspect of the remake lies in the demographic most likely to consume such shitty products--young teenagers. To introduce graphic elements of gang-rape to ever-dumber, ever-more-desensitized shitbrained teenagers is, at best, irresponsible and, at worst, formative.

Of all the unimaginative, brainless, watery shit-splatters to hit the screen in recent memory, "Last House on the Left" looms head and shoulders above the rest. It's one thing to insult an audience, but the kick in the balls is not necessary.

Dumbass trailer:

Housekeeping, Apologies, and for those Googling "Apperian"

1. Housekeeping.
I am up to my eyeballs in shit.

Not bad shit, not great shit--just shit. I need five to 10 more hours per day to really do more than simply address shit.

Working on it.

2. Apologies.

So, the aforementioned shit has really slowed any ability to update this site. For you, though, I will make time. Possibly by relying on physics. Or alcohol.

3. Apperian

Apperian, as I knew it, was an Austin-based managed services/web-hosting company that burned through their venture capital and, like so many other Austin dot-coms, went the way of the dinosaur. I worked there briefly. My boss was a slick and cheesy hack named Kevin Somethingerother, who came from the world of whoring professional athletes.

The post you want is here.

Apparently, somebody else tapped into the ridiculous barrel of made-up, nonsensical new-economy, etymology-be-damned words and took on the aforementioned name. They can be found here. Far as I know, these jerk-offs have nothing to do with the original jerk-offs, however they do seem to believe they, like the first Apperian, can change the world. Heh. Good luck.