XKCD: A webcomic of smarm, pretentiousness, autism and failure

"Randallll...Raaannndalllll..."

This may sound like the start to a bad joke (which will get you warmed up for what's to come) but an ex-NASA contractor named Randal decides one day to make a webcomic based on doodles he drew in his spaceship design book. Instead of bothering to introduce regular characters or even attempting to draw them correctly, he just illustrates everything in the classic style known as "stick figure." It may not seem possible, but this puts his artwork at the skill level below that of Cathy Guisewite, a good sign that it's time to burn your sketchbook and kill yourself.

I don't know what kind of geniuses they have over at NASA (or even the contractors they use to build their genius stuff) , but it takes a very special fucking person to take a webcomic made entirely of childish stick scribbles and make it the most pretentious thing on Earth. Geeky Randal (who actually spells it Randall for extra pretention) bills his own work as a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language," and his work is beloved by the kind of nerds that make regular nerds want to kick their asses.

Oh, and by the way, the letters XKCD don't stand for shit.

omg XKCD reference ftw?

Here's some comics he drew. You can not make this shit up.

Haha great, now get over here and start spinning on my cock, you stupid bitch.



And then he showed you his fractals and raped you with a protractor or something, lol math




Randal dreams of being extroverted enough to make gay propositions in public. Sadly, only his stick figure friends can live out his erotic fantasies.




Randal hates himself :(



What in the ever-living fuck is going on here? Is...is this Aspergers?




Randal's arms are closer to his drawings than he'd like to admit.




Google didn't hire you because you smell.


Best comic evar.

If you are intelligent enough to see past the crude drawings but aren't sure whether or not to check out the XKCD site for yourself, a fan has made a helpful website that will let you know whether or not today's XKCD strip is worth a look. Enjoy.

Is XKCD Shitty Today?

Joyeux Noël (2005)

Just in time for the holidays. It's another night in the trenches and both sides are putting up some morale boosting music on the front lines. The Germans have a great tenor, but not enough musical accompaniment. The Scotts have lots of bagpipe men, but they suck at singing. Because they can hear each other from across no-mans-land, they decide to put their chips together. After all, music has no nationality.

By this time they're hanging out and sharing food. The war? Who cares. It's Christmas Eve and practically everyone is Christian. Everyone gets together for holy mass. Well, now since we're all in the same place we might as well return the enemy corpses. Well, since we're already friends, might as well help each other stay alive. You can share my trench. Merry Christmas.

Foreign movie. Subtitles required.
Rating: 80%

Hand Cock (2008)

This barely qualifies as a movie. In fact, they should have used this concept for a short film or a miniseries, not a hollywood feature length. The homeless superhero theme is good for the first half of the movie, which ran on a fresh story and had good jokes. The second half of Handcock is a waste of your time. Skip it.
The only thing that is the least bit memorable in this movie is Will Smith's consistently contorted face. Other than that, all the good parts have already been revealed in the trailer. Usually, an over-revealing trailer means that there isn't enough substance in the movie, and there is way not enough in Hancock.

Rating: 30%

I'mfat Andugly.com

I'm a firm believer in changing your name to something ridiculous. For example, Chad Ocho Cinco, formerly Chad Johnson, had several pretty good reasons to do so:

1. It was funny
2. It pleased the fans
3. He was already widely known as "Ocho Cinco"
4. He's just honoring the national Hispanic Heritage Month

Doing it for the good of Hispanic Heritage Month

On the other hand, when Jennifer Thornburg changed her name to Cutout Dissection.com, she just ended up coming off as a pretentious idiot. Haunted by the ghosts of chickens and frogs she dissected in high school biology class, Jennifer changed her name to the likewise named website in order to promote alternative methods of learning that did not require killing animals.

Totally ignoring the concept of Willed Body Programs, Cutout insists that all dissections can be completely abolished in the educational setting. Using her incredibly retarded name to generate publicity and get all up in your face about it, she has joined forces with PETA (great choice!) in order to further cram it down your throat. I mean, this is totally reasonable. Imagine having a rational debate with someone named Cutout Dissections.com. I just can't wait.

Now I really have nothing against fat people. I can understand if they have thyroid problems, or are just plain weak willed, it happens. But the main problem here is, how can you be so fat when you are a fucking vegetarian? Just look at that double chin. How many soy beans does it really take to lard yourself up like that? Perhaps she wants everyone to stop killing animals so she can have more for herself! That's why I propose this to you, Jennifer. Rename yourself Cutout Bacon.com:


This gets the message across that we should stop eating animals (pigs, etc.) and it forces you to stop stuffing your fat face with bacon. Everyone wins.

Million Dollar Listing (2006- 2008)

Watch this and you'll think Real Estate is hot again. Forget about affordable living or "the dream of owning your own home", this is about ridiculous houses for ridiculous money. I'm running on the assumption that is this the top tier of "those little people that sell other people's houses for them" centered, of course, in equally top tier Southern California.

Every minute is people worrying about shit. Worries about how sharply they are dressed. Worries about finding the right fit in whatever shit they're pandering to. Worries about playing buddy-buddy with the fellow brokers. Worries about the rate of progress in life. Holy shit, follow the story for more than 20 minutes and this bullshit actually starts to matter.


Hair is scary and gay. Most of the time more gay than scary.

Rating: 50%

Star Trek 11 Trailor (2009)

As a promotional bid attached to Quantum of Solace, came the first look at the speculative new Star Trek movie. This trailer contains clips of heavy space battle action and a hip new cast of new young characters, most notably a "young Spock" and John Cho, as part of the rebellious new cast.
What's the idea here? This movie will take Star Trek in a new direction with a blank slate. All that Trekkie shit you hate is gone. All the components that you like about Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek is also gone. There's just a little problem: Who gives a shit about TOS?

(2006)

For some reason, Hawaiian cable television has a lot of movies about being on the ocean. This must be Oceanic Time Warner's attempt to appeal to the experiences of the audience, and features classics like Castaway and movies about nuclear submarines. Into the Blue may look like a movie for retard surfers and beach bums but firmly caught my interest. When a drug cartel messes with Sea Skippy (the one with the harpoon), he gets pissed and kills them all with his sailor friends. Yeah, the acting isn't that good and the characters are predictable stereotypes, but when the Alpha is pissed off, the cinema is top notch. When bad guys get owned on the high seas, they really get owned hard.

Rating: 60%

Get Smart (2008)

This was so horrible. It's like...at the level of a student movie -no worse- like those bullshit movies you're forced to make for English10 because the moron teacher thinks that making you work in a group will inspire cooperation. Surprise, it inspired exploitation, solidified the clique structure, and produced a shitty home movie reeking of grade grubbing desperation instead. That is a good description of this movie, which has Michael from The Office....which is a good start I guess, but goes to hell from there. The acting is childlike. Childlike. Pre-Ritalin children act like this. The characters all have numbers for names and the comedy (as well as the halfway house of a story) was a failure. ZZZZZZ!

Rating: 10%

The Oblongs (2001-2006)

What the fuck is this? This show is fucking disgusting! Who is this targeted at? Kids who want to watch a show about people with birth defects? Kids who think these things resemble actual human beings? God damnit I feel sick. I have never been so ill effected by something on TV in my life. Ill bet that if you watched these shows consistently you would turn into a total schizophrennneeewaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Rating: 0%

Max Payne (2008)

God damnit not another bad movie based on a good video game. I was bored from the very beginning, mostly because Max was a lot cooler in the game.
I found myself direly wishing I was playing Max Payne rather than sitting through Mark Wahlberg's half assed attempt to pull it off. What does he think this is? The Italian Job? Stop interrogating and torturing people. Stop asking stupid questions like, "What?" and "Who do you think you are?". Is Max Payne in a fucking rock concert? What's with all the talking? Where is all the vividly dark narration? Why isn't he taking any painkillers? Did the director do ANY research? FUCK!

Fuck this nonsense I'm going back to playing MaxPayne2 Extra Blood Mod.
Rating: 20%

The Office Season 5

Thanks to hulu, I can watch this show consistently enough to follow the story. Grade A corporate jokes with a weird feeling of being a semi-invisible cameraman. After going through about a half dozen eps, I have finally derived the formula.

-Start-

Intro designed to dumb down the atmosphere

STARE AT THE CAMERA

Dwight and Jim fuck with each other's office supplies

Stupid coworker stereotype joke

STARE AT THE CAMERA

Something reeeeally awkward

STARE AT THE CAMERA

My boss is a dumbass joke

STARE AT THE CAMERA

Dwight and Shrute do something really gay

Character Shuffling

-END-

Works every time!
Rating: 100%

Densha Otoko Deluxe (2006)

haha I love this show. This shit is so funny. Actually this wasn't part of the show, it was just some kind of TV special. These Otaku are doing their funny Otaku things, and even though they're trying to interact with normal society, weird things keep happening that screw them up. The guy that plays Densha is such a good actor. His behavior and monkey-like appearance are just perfect. Anyway, the story is just hardcore madness. You would have to totally fucking insane to think like these people.

Rating: 60%

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

This was what I saw on my flight back to the United States. It was the only thing that was watchable. Personally, I don't understand why this even exists. There was the other Hulk movie in 2003 that was exactly like this one; big huge reluctant green guy, white girl that wants to save the green guy, angry military guy that wants to kill the green guy...ja ja ja.
The only difference perhaps between the 2003 and the 2008 versions is that Hulk doesn't do any of that jumping through the stratosphere and that there is a "new Hulk" or Hulk level 2 or some shit that didn't really cut it for me.

Hulk, or any split personality character, is a good role for Edward Norton. Just like Fight Club but less homosexual.
Rating: 30%

Yume Wo Kanaeru Zou (2008)

The title of this show means something along the lines of "elephant that grants wishes". Ahh another crazy Japan TV show. This one caught my interest immediately with the presence of Japanese Ganesha, a stout oyaji with an elephant nose + deity crown. Without subtitles I couldn't understand it completely, but basically, this girl is having a hard time and domestic Ganesha comes and help her with stuff.
In the middle of the show I left to run an errand. By the time I came back, the cast now included super gaijin Julius Caesar, Nobunaga, and a Japanese woman cosplaying as Marie Antoinette, in addition to Ganesha. What the fuckkkk. This cannot be explained.

Rating:50%

Planet of the Apes (2001)

I couldn't understand why, but I knew that I'd seen this somewhere before. It must have been a while back, 7 years in fact, when I actually watched movies in a "theater". hah! At the time, I was a Sophomore in high school and this was the movie of the summer. Watching it then and now was quite a different experience. Somehow, knowing that the main character was Mark Wahlberg changed my perspective. Having watched LotR about 50 times since then, I was much more keen of the phantasmological feel. Yet, the quality was lacking. This movie stood on the border between Forgettable and Entertaining, and fell off the precipice. Eh, remake.

Rating: 35%

Garireo (2007)

That is how you say "Galileo" in Japanese, named after the main character Professor Galileo Yukawa, the resident genius. I know it's a weird name, but bear with it because the show is actually pretty interesting. He goes around solving mysteries with physics calculations by combining the story, trajectory, tempurature/mass/energy and other shit into a big puzzle and thereby names the real killer. A ridiculous but funny Japanese TV show and basically, a kooky version of House Md. Or maybe Numb3rs. Whatever.

Rating: 100%

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

This is a "Miazaki film", one of the most popular movie events in Japan. Miazaki is to the Japanese as Speilberg is to Americans. Considered to be one of the most revered and celebrated cinemas, Miazaki films include Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and the recently released Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which I was told was this summer's blockbuster. Watching these movies is an unnerving experience. You better not get too comfortable with anything you see because at any time objects can morph into something else, turn into sludge, get sucked into a wormhole, or come to life and start talking to you like an old friend. Expect lots of big WTF moments with a nebulous movie message by the end. You can't take this sort of thing too seriously, besides, me and Franklinstein have had bad experiences with floating castles before and let me tell you...do not want.

Rating: 60%

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

This was the complementary movie on my flight to Narita. I'm not too good on the story since I saw the first half dubbed in Japanese, fell asleep, caught the second half in English, and missed the ending due to in-flight turbulence. So, my impression of it is slightly biased by the choppy nature of what I saw. Nonetheless, I thought it was a pretty fun movie. I don't remember much about the original Indy films, so the nostalgia factor is null to me, but at least the story went somewhere. Or maybe it was the wine I had on the plane. I've never done that before. Maybe it was that.

Japanese Indy sure had a deep voice.
Rating: 55%

Bend it Like Beckham (2002)

I remember that this used to have some kind of cult following. I didn't bother to watch it because I thought it was about gymnastics or something (as the title suggests) and besides, I didn't even know that this "Beckham" was an English footballer at the time. The first thing you'll notice about this movie is that it's got lots of minorities in the story, automatically meaning that there is a copious injection of racial issues. Next, the main character is female but it is not a chick flick, meaning that the theme ties closely into abrasive feminist issues. Now then, with this touchy race thing on the right side, and this controversy/oppression issue on the left, you get a movie about a bunch of ridiculous emotional people arguing with each other. Oh yeah theres some soccer in this too yeah.

Rating: I don't know...I dunno what I saw.

Game Over

"The age of the Investment Bank has ended."
They have all either folded, failed, or been reigned in by the fed. I guess every bank in America managed to fuck up simultaneously, which is a testament to the dubious nature of money culture. Fuck them. I find it hilarious that a bunch of morons speculating on some shitty houses managed to nuke the bank, which by the way, is full of pretentious Jews and ruthless Asians. "Greed kills" they say.
Whatever the case, they're off center stage now. All those crisp douchebag brokers are back to square one, thanks to some risk-loving sub-prime property owners. Kids that are pondering "what to be when you grow up" should probably cross Investment Banker off their lists now.

The Myth (2005)

Yes, he does make that face a lot in this one. And yes, that really is 3 Chinese people and an Indian person.
In this unusual wuxia, Jackie Chan lends his kung-fu moron personality to a serious tragic/romantic/historic/action movie. It starts with a reluctant mainland Chinese archaeologist that is having recurring dreams about a Qin dynasty military general. In the dreams, he is the escort to a Korean princess that has been traded to Qin ShiHuang in exchange for peace. (at a time when early states of Korea and China were at war) Somehow this ties into real life and leads Jackie Chan into a supernatural arc with some immortal people. Man, what a twist!
By this time, the princess has turned into something resembling the Moon Goddess, and with great sorrow, realizes that Jackie Chan is not the man she has been waiting for. Destiny forces them to part ways. After returning to the real world, Jackie solemnly writes a book titled "The Myth", which tells the story of the movie that you just saw! WOW PARADOX!!

To understand this without subtitles, you need to know 4 languages: Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese, and Indian. The fuck is that? What if I'm seeing-impaired?
Rating: 40%

Spore Sucks and So Does Gamespy

Spore - the game almost a decade in the making, garnering rave reviews years before the actual release date. Does the game live up to the hype? Will certain reviews still stroke its dancing penis? To answer both questions, I look at Gamespy's review of the game, and respond with my own findings.

Lie #1:
"While the gameplay isn't always perfect, Spore is a technological coup that opens up a whole new genre of gaming."

That's funny, in all five stages of the game, I never once thought that this was a new genre of gaming. The cell stage was simply a Pacman clone. The Tribal and Civilization stages were just a shitty RTS. The Space stage? Again a bad RTS and similiar to Freelancer. Fans of Spore will say "BUT YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN CONTENT!" I'm sorry, but editing the look of your creatures and units is no more creating your own content than is creating a Jamaican race mod for Civilization 4. When you boil down this game, it really is nothing but five shitty mini-games strung together around an art editor.


Lie #2:
"The object of the game is to start with a single-celled life form and evolve it into a creature, then an intelligent being, and finally a spacefaring civilization. Is it evolution? Is it intelligent design? All we know is that alien life is out there, and it's fun to play with."

Again, a big fat lie. There's no evolution at all during the game. The first two stages are the only stages where you can modify your creature, and this can be done at any point you choose during these stages. It doesn't matter if you die a million times, you have infinite lives and are able to find a mate at whim. The "evolution" aspect would come into play because you need to eat to gain "DNA points" to add structures to your creature, such as mouths and spikes, but the overall morphology of your creature can be radically changed from one generation to the next. For example, If I'm a 4-legged herbivorous animal, I can mate then change my entire creature to a 6-legged flying carnivore in the very next generation.

Why does this piss me off so much? Because of the biggest flaw in this game: It doesn't matter what your creature looks like. That's right. I can create an armless, lifeless slug creature that has the same evolutionary success as a 10 foot winged creature with mouths for hands. My creature's morphology has very little bearing on how successful it is in the game world. Regardless if I give my creatures hands or eyes, it will become the dominant life form on the planet.


All that is required for my creature to succeed is to eat food, which is a joke in terms of gameplay, requiring nothing but pointing and ..... I don't even need to click. Why should I even add arms? Why should I even care if my animal has 3 legs or 15? The reason this matters is because it reduces the gameplay to absolutely nothing.

Spore is nothing but an art editor. For Gamespy to suggest that taking your creature to the Space Stage is some sort of epic journey is like saying that graduation ceremonies for the 5th grade matter. The reason Spore fails in this respect as well is because each of the distinct stages of the game is simply a mini arcade game. The cell stage all you do is eat food. In the Tribal stage, you have a set of 5 predetermined opponents you must conquer, the difficulty of which is laughable. Some reviews will say some bullshit about "leading your tribe" or "shaping your species" in these stages, but that's bullshit as well. You are allowed only one tribe, the buildings and upgrades of which are non-customizable and all look the same. To upgrade your tribe, you simply need enough food to buy the structure and choose which predetermined site to place it.



The divisions between each of the stages are distinct enough that you never feel any continuity with any of them. After the tribal stage, you don't even get to use your creature model any more. You have to create a new model, the "Land Unit" which is like creating another creature. But if the whole point of the game is to lead your unique creature to the Space Stage, then why abandon the creature all together in the Civilization stage? The reason is for more art-time. You get to create another unit that again, the morphology of which has no meaning at all. I spent an hour building my land unit, putting tons of laser guns called "War Crime" all over it's hull. So what happens when the unit actually shoots at something? A pathetic blue graphic appears over the head of the unit and slowly arcs towards the target. What shit.


Lie #3:

" In many ways the real genius of Spore is that the immense complexity of the technology is hidden beneath very simple editors, such that you forget the technology is even there. Spore allows players to create fully articulated and textured 3D models of vehicles, buildings, and creatures. The creatures are the most impressive: they're instantly capable of walking, chirping, fighting, singing, running, even flying."

Again, all that fancy computer coding and algorithms mean shit if the look of your creature is meaningless in terms of gameplay. All it allows you to do is make something pretty with your art editor.

Lie #4:

"The fact that anyone, including non-gamers, can create and share these models in their first game session without any training or practice is remarkable.... The technology behind Spore is unquestionably fantastic"

HOLY SHIT GUESS WHAT. I'M CURRENTLY INSCRIBING PIXELS ONTO A COMPUTER SCREEN AND SHARING IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE. THIS IS THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY.

Gamespy Rating: 4.5/5

My Rating:

I could go on and on, but it's pretty clear that this game failed the hype. Why it took 7 years to develop this piece of shit is beyond me. They had 7 years to create a game, but all they did was create a 3D model editor with predetermined parts. This is not a game.

Graphics: 5/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 3/10

Overall rating: 4/10

Your Face: Rui Chenggang

I saw this guy getting heckled by Rob Riggle on the Daily Show. Apparently he is the idyllic face of China's economics scene and host of all things financial on Chinese CCTV. Okay that's great...but I couldn't really understand what I was seeing. Who is this guy? A Google search on his name returned only 7,460 results. That's tiny. (my own name returns around 479,000)
How old is he, maybe 25? He looks around my age, like a kid. In fact, he faintly resembles one of the chumps sitting next to me in econ class taking notes with a ThinkPad. (They're just too good for paper) I found his personal webpage on CCTV.com particularly curious, containing a list of his "Unforgettable Moments", which include little blurbs on everything from a personal dislike of calculus to his struggle to be a good Karaoke singer. And he's the Bob Brinker of China? Does Bob Brinker have a webpage with a poetic list of his hopes/dreams/aspirations? I hope not. Man, who is this guy?

Constantine (2005)

I watched this in 2 viewing sessions at 2 different times. I saw the first half while watching TV in a public lounge but had to leave midway through the movie. By chance, I caught the ending 8 months later while eating lunch in a Hawaiian BBQ joint, which had a gratuitous flatscreen TV.

For the most part, Constantine was pretty boring. For a cheap copy of The Matrix, it was lacking in visual appeal and the story/dialog/set was stupid. Keanu Reeves looked like a chump, nothing like his hit persona as Neo. The only reason you would ever like this movie is (1) if you just couldn't get enough of Matrix and had to find a substitute, or (2) you're a Keanu Reeves fanboy/girl, both of which mean that you're an idiot.

Too much theological bullshit in this.
Rating: 30%

Never Back Down (2008)

Viral video. That's how I ended up watching this. The plot is based on a viral video as well, of a high school football player brawling up the field on youtube. This online video catches the attention of a fight clubber that challenges him and promptly crushes him with mixed martial arts. The kid gets pissed and wants revenge so he takes up MMA in a pride match sort of thing.

Personally, I hate this kind of stuff. This movie is for people that jerk off to UFC and talk and talk about how much they can kick your ass. I find that really annoying and gay. The rest of the movie was glorified MMA worship as well, so I skipped through it and watched the Ong Bak style fights, which were very dynamic and worth going through.

Rating: 55%

Two Classic Rock Songs That Suck

Since I am no longer under the broadcast range for KGO 810, for any talk radio I was forced to listen to KFI 640. Now KFI is nothing like KGO. First of all, they play Coast to Coast AM in the evenings, which is entertaining at first, but then slowly becomes depressing after you listen to several people talk about dedicating their entire lives searching for the Bigfoot. Of course, there are rare moments where Gordon Freeman calls in about portal technology, but in the context of the show, it's not really that funny considering the next night you'll have a guest that claims he's an alien from another dimension. Aside from Coast to Coast, KFI mostly plays conservative talk radio with Rush Limbaugh in the morning, and two other douche bags in the afternoon. I'm all for listening to the other side of the argument, but there's a limit to how much smarmy, smirk-filled bull shit I can handle on a daily basis. As a result, I now listen to KLOR 95.5 The Classic Rock Station.

KLOR plays a lot of good stuff, but they also play a few songs that are generally regarded as good but in reality suck balls. The shittiness of these songs becomes more obvious with KLOR's constant replaying, thinking "No one could get tired of this!" First up is:

"You better you bet" by The Who



Overall, I think The Who are average, and they had a few good songs that gives their band some merit. However, this song feels like taking a chainsaw to the ear canal. From what I can gather, it's about some guy who tells his lady that he loves her, but instead of that woman being grateful or saying I love you back, she says "You'd Better!" (best imagined with a little head shake while saying it). Only one word comes to my mind while listening to this song: bitch. Now the same type of person who would say "You'd Better" in response to "I love you" would also probably say this:


No. Fuck off. Sassiness or attitude is one thing, but saying "You'd better" is telling that poor guy he's falling in love with an attention-whoring void of a human being. Aside from that, the tune is good, but the singing blows and could be much better.

Next up is Joan Jett. Ever heard of Joan Jett? Chances are you haven't, and if you do, it's probably because you recognize her only famous song "I Love Rock n' Roll":



Instantly recognizable, this song is ubiquitous on popular song lists. True, it has a good opening riff, but when was the last time you actually listened to the whole thing? The only good part of the song is the chorus, and the rest is like eating the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich from McDonalds: below average and boring.

My newest art piece, "Joan Jett"

My reasoning is this: Joan Jett looks and sings like garbage. If you've listened to any of her other songs (which you probably haven't because they are all bad), she has that same harsh droning tone with that drawn out inflection at the end of each line.

But you say, she's a hard rock artist. They don't need to sing well as long as the riffs are tight. I concede that point. However, the singing should not be so bad as to make it feel like scraping your scrotum over a rusty cheese grater. Just listen to the lyrics:

"MEEEEE yeah, MEEEEEEE"
"MEEEEE yeah, MEEEEEEE"
"MEEEEE yeah, MEEEEEEE"
"MEEEEE yeah, MEEEEEEE"

Every time I hear that, I want to stab a Phillips-head screwdriver into her, yes, her face. Just watch the music video when she says that. If I were living in the novel 1984, Room 101 would be that face saying "MEEEEE yeah, MEEEEEEE" over and over.

Another thing I cannot stand about Joan Jett is that she is ugly. That's not a crime, and I actually respect artists who are ugly because that means they rose to fame due to their skill at music. However, Joan Jett has the bitchy tendency to show off her body in bikinis and such in music videos, which people describe as "hot".

I don't even know what I'm looking at. Just look at those veins, the greasy skin. In every live performance she wears that same sweaty black bikini, too much makeup, and ends up looking like a shitstained toilet stall in a Food4Less.

10,000 BC (2008)

Man, 10000 BC? That was a long time ago. What did humans look like at the time...? Pretty buff and healthy looking, actually...pretty good.

It starts off with a bunch of proto-humans hunting wooly mammoth, which was mildly entertaining. After that finishes, the movie switches gears into an Apocalypto-esque slave trader chase that brings them to Egypt where they find the Pyramids of Giza under construction by slaves and wooly mammoths. Fake! Mammuthus primigenius don't live in the desert. By the end of the movie, a proto-Jesus frees the slaves, or Jews, or blacks, and assassinates the Pharaoh. Fuck this.

Rating: 40%

Why so sad

For the next few days, this will be the face of China. It is the anguish of millions of people over a terribly tragic event: A Chinese track athlete hurt his ankle.

wait what?

Quote: "Liu Xiang’s sudden withdrawal prompted a national outpouring of emotion in China. A television presenter who broke the story on the Olympics TV channel was reduced to tears on air...could hardly finish his sentences as he tried to explain Liu’s fate to a packed media conference as the rest of the country wept."

Now that is interesting. 110 meter hurdler Liu Xiang, pride of the Chinese people and symbol of China's struggle for superiority, also supplies the people of China with emotional stability. With one twist of an ankle, an entire nation is reduced to a race of mewling babies. What's with all the crying? Does Liu Xiang's injury mean that China sucks now? Have Chinese people been disgraced or something? Geez, talk about a burst bubble. Keep in mind this is the same society that cries over math tests.

Really. Wait, we can still fix this. Just have a prettier looking Chinese guy replace Liu and have him pretend to jump over those hurdles. It worked with a little girl lip-syncing the opening ceremony, right?

Hobonomics

A couple years ago when I was visiting mainland China as a tourist, I took some time to talk to this hat vendor on the streets. He was selling bucket hats that said "Beijing 2008" in rainbow colors, the symbol of China's bid to host the 2008 Olympic games, which by coincidence, I am watching on channel 3 right now. Beijing 2008 was a big deal at the time. It would be a symbol of China's entry into the modern world, the pride of 1.3 billion nationalistic individuals, and an opportunity for the Chinese to show their capitalist aptitude. (which they have so far performed with a ferocious tenacity for entrepreneurship)

Anyway, I asked this street vendor where the recycling bins were, as I had some empty water bottles in my backpack that I wanted to dispose of. He laughed and tossed my bottle into the sidewalk. Before I even had a chance to say anything, a dirty looking man came and picked up the bottle, threw it in his cart filled with bags of other beverage containers, and walked off. This is why there are no recycling bins anywhere in the People's Republic of China.

But the greater point is about the guy pushing the cart around. Just who was that guy anyway? He is a member of a special sector of society: The Recycling Homeless. Welcome to Hobonomics 101, where the laws of monetary incentive, material needs/wants, and free-market competition fall apart and are replaced by dumpster diving, class discrimination, and ultimate freedom.

WALL·E (2008)

I have never seen a Pixar movie that I didn't like. They're great, refreshingly unique, and the animation is top notch. Well...that is with exception to The Incredibles, which I thought was degrading and tacky, not to mention slightly racist.
Wall-E has this funny message about mass consumerism. In the movie, material consumption trashes the earth and makes people lazy, so much so that it causes humans to devolve slightly. Mankind becomes completely dependent on machines and tele-electronics, and since all their human desires are satisfied all the time, they forget about everything else in life. The Wall-E robot btw, is this crude trash compacting machine that lives on a huge desert of garbage. The story works its way up from there.

Movie has really good jokes.
Rating: 90%

Your Face: Nick Lane

Small time actor Nick Lane's face has no equal. He appears like a normal person until he makes a smug jerk face that stretches his maw into a broad smirk, turning him into a facial abnormality. He is shown here in a Paris Hilton music video grinning pretentiously.

Smirk face + annoying kid --> Perfect character for House Md :3
:3 :3 :3

The Island (2005)

Uh so I was pretty sure this was about a bunch of guys on a Pacific island killing each other but it turned out to be a sci-fi movie about eugenics. Hell, thats right up my alley. Half Minority Report and half The Matrix, this is about hundreds of people living in a post-apocalyptic utopia.
Things in the utopia are great. Life is mundane, activities are structured, and everything is clean. But....some things don't make sense. For example, hundreds of people work in this factory where they pipet nutrients into tubes all day. Glucosamine and D-Tyrosine and shit. Then there the bar, where there are no alcoholic drinks. Everything is pomegranate juice and health food. What's with that?
The curtain falls when one of the citizens finds out about the outside world, revealing that utopian society is nothing more than a cloning facility. A clone war ensues.

You know what, this is just a cheap copy of Matrix.
Rating: 50%

Civil Disobedience: Paying Unjust Fines with Truculence Day 90+

Couple months ago I appealed a campus parking ticket. This is the same citation that I paid with pennies and other coins to a bunch of disgruntled passive-aggressive TAPS employees. In the appeal, I listed a bunch of circumstantial reasons why the ticket was invalid, mostly blaming TAPS for being sloppy, and Bel Aired them at the end of the letter in spite. I just got the results of the administrative hearing, and surprisingly, I won by default!

"In your appeal, you stated that the signs to the entrance of the lot are not easily seen and is[are] oriented to only be visible from one direction. You stated that several cars received citations on January 11 in this lot, suggesting that the permit requirements are not well posted. You also included a portion of the lyrics to the TV show "The Fresh Prince of Belair" as part of your appeal. I am dismissing this citation because I did not provide a reply to you within the time limit required (90 days from requesting the administrative hearing). ...
A refund of $30 will be sent...in approximately two or three weeks."

How great is that? The system works, man!