10 Worst Things About 2010 (personal edition)

The end of the year means millions of lists of things that happened in the year. It's kind of like cliffs notes. You don't even have to pay attention to the rest of the year because they recap it for you in two days.

The worst things of 2010, if you were me:

10. Shiny lip balm
No, I'm not wearing lipstick.

9. That borderline-manic guy from New Zealand.
Cock? Blocked. Not cool, dude. Not cool.

8. The realization that my Flickr account is only seen by about 3 people each day.
Upload new photos? What do I look like, a guy who's investing large amounts of time into his photography?

7. Katy Perry's "California Girls"
I can stomach useless bits of pop fluff. But bits of pop fluff that use Snoop Dogg like Li'l Jon? This song is actually a reason why I wanted to leave the country. I am not joking.

6. That darn cat.
This cat looked at the litterbox and instead pooped on my shoe. There's no sense in trying to cover for the cat saying how he feels anxious or upset. I don't think cats can have those emotions. This cat is just an asshole. And yet, I am still friends with this cat on facebook, which should tell you about the people I choose to associate with.

5. German Engineering
Gee thanks Volkswagen. I totally want to spend $1300 to get the various bits of my car fixed, bits that have broken and which cost so much you'd think they were actually made by little elves that lived in the forest. With the amount I've spent on this car, I could have 2 cars that always had the 'check engine' light on.

4. The time I forgot when August was.
I missed out on one show, and was comically late to a field trip. (I actually had to get driven to the event personally by a tutor) I packed for a 3 day trip in 45 seconds, or roughly 15 seconds per day which I would need clothes. I did not make wise decisions.

3. Politics
Politics politics left-wing politics teabagger fascist big government small government no government politics Rand Paul midterm election politics witch crazy politics Democrat scandal corruption Republican wikileaks cablegate Assange politics Stewart Colbert march loonies Christine O'Donnell politics politics live coverage and commentary.
Just like that. It all comes out in one crazy ball of hate and anger.

2. The guy who made me temporarily un-housed.
We talk for 2 weeks about the place I'll be subletting in Spring. I see the place and sign papers, assuming you'll do the same. Then you tell me that I can't have the room because things suddenly changed. All this before Christmas. I need the place in January and I can't exactly fly out every time I want to scope out an apartment.

1. Ke$ha.
Her performance on Saturday Night Live showed the world that she is not only an abysmal singer, but that she also can be out-performed by her own backup dancers. She's an over-produced and cynically marketed machine for the labels to make money. All her crappy pop tunes make me want to go punch random strangers for reasons such as I don't like their haircut. Her (thankfully brief-lived) single blah blah blah made me want to support the drug cartels in Juarez. THAT'S how terrible it is. Its a song that makes you into a bad person.
Tick Tock (which I'm spelling the proper way because I refuse to stoop to that level). If you've ever wondered how over-produced her songs are, here you go.
Your love is my drug If you want to have instant and searingly painful acid flashbacks, even if you've never dropped acid, here's the video for you.

let's make some recommendations

I got a 6-month trial of netflix for Christmas, so I'm working my way through their recommendations. Some things are pretty spot-on, and its making my love of British TV feel less weird. Sometimes they kind of throw a bone in the works. So I ask you netflix, what makes you think I would even consider watching the Care Bears? I'm a teensy bit offended, and a teensy bit worried about my taste in film now.

Very lame origami

Christmas means presents, which means I have to obscure these presents so that the sense of disappointment is delayed. I'm not very good at wrapping gifts. It's not like I'm buying things that are irregularly shaped, like bicycles or whole suckling pigs, I'm dealing with boxes. For some reason, I always somehow over-estimate the amount of paper required by a good square foot. OR, I manage to cut a piece of paper that's like a fraction of an inch too small, so it looks like the gift has plumber butt.
I think gift bags are designed for people like me. I'm skilled enough to put something in a bag and then cover it with crushed tissue paper.

How to solve a mystery dating back to the 90s

Two options for designers of fine computer accessories

Either keep designing infinite variations for ipad stands and holders, saturating a market and my google reader inbox...

Or stop encouraging Apple, and force them to admit that what they designed somehow both fills an unnecessary niche between netbooks and laptops, and which manages to be less useful or practical than either of those things.

What's worse than 18 inches of snow?

Killer icicles.

Not to be confused with stabbing this guy with an icicle for the perfect crime.

According to the Telegraph Saint Petersburg has a problem with falling killer icicles. What possible good could come from this?

Well according to Valentina Matviyenko, St. Petersburg's governor, "Icicles should be removed with lasers or steam". Icicle removing lasers. Russia is awesome.

Walking in a winter wonde-AHHH MY EYEBALLS ARE FROZEN

The snowfall here is eighteen inches (or most of a cubit, for those readers from the Bible) That's enough to make me wish I had a team of sled dogs instead of a car. Trying to get around by dogsled team seems crazy, until a blizzard like this comes around and suddenly, you'd be crazy to NOT have a dozen huskies in your backyard.

But I digress. Streets were half plowed, so almost everyone was getting stuck. The people with 4-wheel-drive SUVs were comfortably cruising around, trying to not look smug. The rest of us were shoveling out the street, and pushing cars around. Then some neighbor said that they had a snowblower. A common courtesy rule: If you have a snowblower, mention this first. That way, we won't have to all shovel for hours when the solution could be accomplished in 10 minutes.

Also, a pre-emptive warning to any person writing in to the local paper that "global warming can't possibly be true! Snow is the opposite of hot and look at all this snow". Write this, and I will sic my sled dogs on you.

The holiday season

I'm trying to see how long I can go for before I blink and actually buy gifts for people. The family's also holding off on getting a Christmas tree. It's like playing chicken, but just about everybody else is playing the same game.

¿Que?

While I was in the airport, I saw a Mexican restaurant that said that they were "redefining Mexican food". Are you allowed to do that? I don't think you really have the power to redefine things like that. What would they serve? Beef bourguignon... con queso?

Manscaping

Manscaping is like landscaping. It's always best if you do it yourself, instead of hiring someone to do it for you.

The best thing ever in the world. ever.

Apple had a secret, and they wanted all of us to speculate about how awesome it would be. They were talking it up, as though it was going to be a massive, life-changing event. So what was their new secret? Streaming tv content? A possible Pandora and HULU killer?


They're now selling Beatles albums on iTunes.


In other words, their ground-breaking, world-changing story is "a famous record label decided they'd like to make more money"

I did it all for the snookie, the snookie

Breaking news:
Jersey Shore "star" Snookie is famous for reasons that defy logic and common decency. In any event, the totally legitimate and not a broadsheet rag New York Post reports that the 23-year-old's birthday party will be sponsored by Lifestyles Condoms.

Thank you Lifestyles, for taking the initiative to help ensure that anyone even loosely associated with Snookie will not reproduce.

An open letter to nature

Dear lawn,
I'm not sure where our relationship soured, but I'd like to make our interactions better. I truly believe we can make things work and learn to live together happily.
In case you are unaware of what you did to upset me, I'm going to remind you. Earlier today I had decided that I would like nothing more than to walk barefoot upon you. A simple request, and in my mind, not an unreasonable one. And yet this idea displeased you. With nary a warning, you jabbed several missiles into my most vulnerable of foot-parts - and on my very first foot-step no less.
I cannot understand why such defense systems are necessary. You are a lawn - you are meant to be enjoyed in bare feet. And yet, you insist on cultivating defenses against this very practice. It seems that this is an evolutionarily unstable practice. I could rip you out and put in more patio, but neither of us truly want that outcome.
I'm sorry for whatever it is I did to you to hurt you. But you did hurt me. Not just my feet, but you hurt my pride too when I was forced to do that awkward short-steppy walk that happens when you're trying to not put weight on half of your foot. But I'm willing to forgive, and hope you're willing to do the same.
Best,
Nick

Who steals a front lawn?

Woke up this morning¹ and the front yard was gone. A 2 foot high brick wall and a collection of sticks which was at one point in time a garden, were missing.
Two scenarios are possible:
A) Housing is telling us the truth, and workers were repairing a gas main
B) They're demolishing the house bit by bit, to see when we start to notice that something's amiss.

Of course if it's option B, we're still going to leave passive-aggressive notes.
"Hey guys, when you're done demolishing the living room, can you please take out the trash?"
"It's cool if you take out the patio, but can you stop taking my mustard? Seriously, buy your own"


1. afternoon

And now, the health report

CNN covered the story of a nutrition professor who went on a 10-week diet consisting mostly of high-sugar junk food. And no, this did not end like Super size me: he lost 27lbs. What lessons can we take away from this story?

1) weight loss comes down to diet and exercise. Diet comes from eating fewer calories. Exercise comes from the six year old level of hyperness that you get by eating 1200 calories of sugars in a day.

2) We now have permission from a nutrition professor to eat a dinner that looks exactly like the Katy Perry 'California Girls' video, as long as we throw in a multivitamin here and there.

3) Did any of you ever have a health class lead by someone who dedicated weeks at a time to the dangers of smoking, yet this same teacher would burn through a pack a day?

And now, the news

First some sad news: The New York Times is reporting that Charles Reynolds has died. Mr. Reynolds' claim to fame is that he was a prolific creator of large-scale illusions for stage magicians. As per his wishes, his casket will be fed through a wood chipper, only to emerge on the other side completely undamaged.

In other news, residents of Fountain Hills, Arizona are upset that the city has changed the way their trash will be collected. It's times like these I'm glad I have this image at the ready:
















Really? You're upset that the city is taking care of your trash? And you're going to derisively call it 'trashcare'? I'm pretty sure the a major part of the definition of trash is "the things I used to own but that I now don't want to deal with anymore".

Okay, I get that before you could choose between 5 different removalists, and now you can't, but keep in mind that the city can negotiate to get a discount probably larger than anything you could have on your own. Also, recycling? really? Who the hell opposes recycling?

A key difference

Muscle cars and sports cars are often confused. But I think I've figured out the difference:
Muscle cars make men look more virile. Sports cars make men look like they're compensating for something.

Nick Klaus: Live

I used to do open mics at a place called the Hamilton Hotel, but that night was shut down for the rest of the year. It was a horrible room, but I miss it because there was something oddly comforting about it. I guess it'd be like if some of those Chilean miners wanted to go back "for old times sake".

Anyways, you can catch me Mondays at the Newmarket Hotel. It's a free show that starts at 7:30 PM. I get about 5 minutes, but everyone who goes up is good.

So where have you been lately?

Here.
Sittin' on a beach, trying to become less pasty.

This also marked the first time I'd ever gone snorkeling. Wetsuits are supposed to be tight, but I was wearing one size too small. The result, shall we say left nothing to the imagination. And the imagination was sorely disappointed.

In my defense, the water was really cold.

Stupid stupid stupid

Think Progress tries to argue that the new Obama tax cuts benefit the ultra-rich far more than they benefit the poor.
Let's look at the bar graph that they use to argue the point:

Does something strike you about this graph? It takes the numbers as an absolute number. But it makes more sense to measure is as a relative percentage.

So in terms of returns as a percentage of your income, those making between $20k and $40k are getting the highest percentage of their money back. In other words, Think Progress, you're wrong.

Wait a sec you may ask, why do you want to measure things in relative terms? Well, an absolute approach assumes that one dollar is the same to everybody. If you have 10,000 a year in income, 1 dollar is a lot more important than if you have 100,000 dollars. A person with $10k in income has a lot less disposable income than a person with $100k. It makes more sense to view it as a relative percentage.

Exciting news

Or: trying to excuse not posting with an announcement that won't really affect you for a few years now.

There is a new book in the works. Over the last couple of months, it's taken form. I expect it to be far superior to the last book. Yes, I will give out snippets here and there.

I fought the law and the law won

The powers that be have spoken:
We are no longer allowed to have a ladder going from the balcony to the roof.
Why would you want a ladder to the roof?
Roof parties.
Why would you want to have roof parties?
Because we're men. It doesn't make a lot of sense, it's slightly dangerous, and apparently it's not entirely legal. But buried somewhere in the male brain, there's a little voice that shouts over the voice of reason. It's the voice of Calvin and Hobbes. It says things like 'You know what's a great idea? Try building a boat from all the empty plastic bottles you have in the garage!'

But noooo, the people in charge have said we have to take it down. I suspect they'd also put the kibosh on phase two, which was to have a slide going back down to the balcony.

Quick hits

People always complain about how they don't play music videos on MTV. That's not what the problem is. AMC used to play nothing but movies. And then a little thing called Mad Men came out. And Breaking Bad. Would you really tell AMC to play only movies, and in so doing, stop Mad Men from ever existing?
So really, the problem is that MTV branched out into broadcasting absolute shit.


We have an ant problem. However, these ants are stupid ants. The only thing they cluster around is my toothbrush. Which is weird, because I have chocolate sitting around in an opened bag. That's like running into Megan Fox at a party, and then trying to hook up with the wallpaper.

Communism is alive and slightly delicious.

Cheapness is a mixed bag. Some things are better cheap: tricks, thrills and dirty deeds, for example. Other cheap things give you that sinking feeling that you're getting even less than what you bargained for. Like surgery. Or condoms. In the cases where picking the wrong option can ruin your weekend for the next several decades, paying more means you usually get your money's worth.

There is, however, no good reason to pay more than 15 dollars for a pizza. A 7 dollar pizza can do great things. In order to be twice as good, a 15 dollar pizza should also walk your dog, complement you on your haircut and give you hints on your sudoku - but only if you ask for help.

By that same logic, a cheap pizza should have all the appeal of taking a vacation to death row. But pizza is like love, it's just not rational. When the moon hits your eye like a mixed metaphor, that's pizza. So of course I had to try the Black and Gold pizza. This has the distinction of being the cheapest pizza money can buy (At the foodworks in St. Lucia, assuming nothing else is on sale).

Looking at the box, you get the feeling it might be a holdover from the soviet union. It doesn't have decadent capitalist things like graphic design. HAM AND CHEESE PIZZA. Block letters. Yellow and black. You get the impression that eating this will give you enough calories to be able to work all day at People's glorious number one footwear factory, making boots from lead and dissidents.

Opening the box doesn't reveal any pleasant surprises either. Some swimsuits are called skimpy. This is less than that. You can clearly see the lightly tan parts through the cheese. There isn't much in the way of sauce. You'd get more from accidental cross-contamination.

I should warn you that my taste-test will not be fully objective, because I forgot about the pizza, and it turned out well done. I'm not sure if pizza can catch fire, but I certainly pushed the envelope. Taking all that into account, I'm shocked to say this:

It wasn't bad. It was like pizza-flavored bread, but the pizza flavor tasted like pizza. I would have it again.

And that isn't so much a triumph for the communists, as it is a victory for capitalism. Sure, they can make a decent pizza from nothing but dough, cheese and Marxism, but I have the freedom to eat other, tastier pizzas if I so choose.

It's like climbing everest, but with more intestinal distress

You would pay money to say you've played tennis against the world's best player. You wouldn't pay money to spar with the world's best boxer. Even if it was free, you probably wouldn't agree to it. That would be stupid.
Cut to: me trying not to visibly panic whilst having a bit of the earth's core between my teeth.

I'm referring to a pepper called the Bhut Jolokia. Guinness World Records has recognized as the hottest pepper in the world. I don't even know why civilians are allowed to have it. Bhut Jolokia is 400 times spicier than tabasco sauce. That's like showing up to a squirt-gun fight with Hurricane Andrew.

An engine's horsepower rating is a very simple number to understand: 100 is not enough; 200 will get the job done and 900 will peel your face off. The exact scale for measuring spiciness is not very useful. Peppers range from the low thousand degrees Scoville to several hundred thousand of these magic degrees. The spice seller had instead chosen to replace the degrees Scoville system with a base-10 scale.

The process was simple: you take a chip, spoon a little of the hot sauce on your chip, and then down the hatch it goes. I started with a spice blend numbered 7. I didn't care so much about what the flavor was but 7 of 10 was a bold opening salvo. It was good, I could handle it with ease. But like all men, I knew that 7 of 10 wasn't good enough.

Down towards the more menacing end of the scale was a blend with a 10+ out of 10 rating and a warning that under-18s were not allowed to sample this blend. Again, this sauce didn't put up much of a struggle. Flush with a sense of invincibility, I asked if they had anything hotter.

They did. And here, the Bhut Jolokia enters the story. The description of the sauce gave a surprisingly unhelpful 14/10 rating. If an amplifier says it goes to 11, you can understand that will be painfully loud. But 14? That number might as well be infinity. It just boggles the mind.

Like most peppers, the spiciness of the Bhut Jolokia doesn't come immediately. Your first taste is citrusy, with a bit of tomato. It seems a bit of a letdown, a bit of a joke. As if you're supposed to pretend that it is unbearably spicy to scare off anyone who hasn't tried it. And then the spiciness knocks you off your feet. And then it kicks your teeth in for good measure.

The Bhut Jolokia is over one million degrees Scoville. The runner-up clocks in at a mere 600,000 degrees. There is, simply put, no pepper which comes close. I'm trying to think of adequate ways to describe the way this pepper feels in your mouth. Napalm, perhaps. Or a blast furnace. This is not hyperbole for comedic purposes. You genuinely believe that the inside of your mouth is melting like an Edward Munch painting.
Dairy, we are told, helps soothe the burn. This is not the case. I sought out a free sample of yogurt in hopes of diminishing the lava flow. It did nothing. The yogurt vaporized on contact.

I sought out water instead. The man at the booth asked how I was doing, unaware to the unquenchable inferno contained within. I don't recall what I told him, but I recall that I was somehow using a tongue I thought had dissolved minutes ago.
"Mate," the man behind the desk said "you're shaking." So I was.

The test of intelligence is the ability to recognize and learn from your mistakes. Will I ever eat one of these again? Yes.
And with that kind of mindset, I wouldn't blame you for thinking that I'd taken a couple of knocks to the head, courtesy of the boxing world's heavyweight champion.

Textbooks

First day of class means that I actually have to go through the sheer, unadulterated pleasure that is buying textbooks. The lottery may be a tax on stupid people, but textbooks are a tax on smart people. Or people stupid enough to buy their books from the University bookstore.

Per ounce, textbooks cost as much as cocaine or plutonium. The problem is, for a 130 dollar book, college textbooks sure don't look like one. I mean for that kind of money, I want to see leather binding. I want to see gold leaf on the edges. I want this book to feel like an illuminated manuscript where teams of monks have been slaving away at it for years. The head monk cracking a whip shouting about how if they don't work faster, a comparative feminism class will have to use photocopies of the last edition.[1]

I like to believe that the reason these textbooks cost so much is so that you force yourself to read them. For that kind of money, you don't want to think that the only reason you bought the book was to keep the beer cans from leaving rings on your coffee table.

And in 13 weeks time, I get to experience selling textbooks back. If you do the math, after about 20 weeks, textbooks are actually worth zero dollars. Blame that little thing called The New Edition. For things like the hard sciences where all kinds of discoveries are made all the time, having a new edition come out every other year makes sense. For the more fakesocial sciences, a new edition is a little harder to understand. Yes, the new edition of Comparative Narrative Studies costs more, but it's got 20% more criticism, twice the moral relativism and 50% less patriarchy!And 50% more incomprehensibility. For this edition, we've actually made up no less than seven critical terms.[2]


[1]Textbookmaking indentured servitude seems like an appropriate punishment for certain priests.
[2]Textbooks are, in that regard much like A Clockwork Orange. By the end, you can usually identify what the words mean based on context, but that still doesn't give a reason why the text was written to be so obtusely in the first place.

The suitcase life

You sometimes hear of these people - people like dissidents or spies who have a suitcase packed at all times. Something goes down and BAM, get out of there. And you think they're a bit paranoid or crazy for doing that.
And then you have to pack. We do not do packing well. Most of us are "oh, I have plenty of time to pack" It's like an afterthought. Were it possible, most of us would be on the tarmac, ready to take-off and say "Wait! stop the plane. I think I need my dress shoes. Well maybe we'll wind up going someplace fancy. You don't want to be unprepared do you?"
So most of us fall into one of two camps. You've got the people who decide that what needs to be packed is everything. Tuxedo, tennis racket, clothes iron. Because heaven forbid you be unprepared. And you never know... maybe you'll need it. So what you're left with is a suitcase that weighs as much as the moon.
The other end is the people who think "you know if I need something I can just buy it there. All right I'll just grab this this this Boom! I'm done. let's go" And what you have is something like three socks, a toothbrush and aftershave. Like one of the most useless combinations of things to have ever.

I would not run my own country very well

One of the little surprises of traveling abroad is seeing how things are called different names. Grapes? you want grapes? we don't have those here, only muscat. Cherries? nice try, but we have acerolas. Raisins? Nope. Try sultana.
If I ran my own country, I would have a bizarre name for something really common, like bread. You want br-ead? never heard of it. Oh, you mean scaramanga. We have all kinds of scaramanga... round scaramangas, scaramangas with nuts. Try our national dish, roast scaramanga, which I believe is called 'toast' in your country.
Yeah, toast would be one of the national dishes of my country. I'm not saying I'm a bad cook, but I have really low expectations for what qualifies as a good dinner. If I ran a country, I think the national holiday's food would be microwaveable.

Hair apparent

One thing I'm enjoying about having long hair is the way it looks when it's windy. I like this look so much I will walk places based solely on the way the wind is blowing. I'm miles off course and horribly lost, but my hair looks like it should belong in a male model's photoshoot.

It's electric. Boogie oogie oogie

I'm at a hostel right now, adjusting to a new system of electricity. My brilliant setup was to plug an adapter into the wall, a 3 plug to 2 plug adapter into that and then a surge protector into that. Plugged the surge protector in and Pop! I killed it. If only there were some invention which could protect electrical devices against sudden power changes...
Like a surge protector?
Yeah. like that.

I'm getting around the city. In this case, that involves a lot of jaywalking. When you jaywalk, it helps if you look like you're really solid, so that hitting you would seriously damage their car.

damn hipsters

American Apparel, the go to shop for young 20-somethings with unique taste in clothing has offered some questionable things in the past. Neon yellow jeans, thermochromatic t-shirts (remember those?), and MC Hammer Pants.
And now... this.

They're fucking with us. They've got to be. This guy looks like the human equivalent of a panel van with free candy painted on the side.
And this thing has sold out.

I need to stop being so cheap

I'm a sucker for free samples. Sometimes, I'll remove clothing so I can get a second pass-by.
Today I hit that dreaded thing called 'things you think are tasty, but aren't.' It was strawberries covered in some fake sugar that comes from plants. I know what sugar tastes like, and this did not taste like sugar. The woman giving the free sample was saying that this fake sugar didn't have a bad aftertaste, and I had to resist saying "no, it does." It had a bad before taste, it had a bad during taste, and it had a bad aftertaste. And these were all different tastes. This was like a neopolitan ice cream of suck.

Everybody panic!

According to the predictions of 24/7 Wall st. Reader's Digest may not have much of a future left. Instead, it will be broken up into several smaller magazines; Questionable advice, Things that are only sort of funny, Books you can't be bothered to read all of, and OMG CRIME COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.

Google Reader is making me fat

90% of the posts I save with the label 'food' are desserts. Then again, I judge cookbooks by that same section. I should just relabel that tag 'butterlicious' and stop fooling myself.

Yet another genuinely creepy thing on the bus

In El Salvador, two men dressed as clowns murdered a man on the bus. As though being murdered by the single most annoying/scary thing, on the most annoying/scary form of public transportation wasn't bad enough. Apparently, clowns regularly perform on busses in San Salvador.
Much as I hate riding the bus, at least LA's public transportation system doesn't have these.

RIP back mole: (??? - 2010)

Went to the dermatologist today to get this mole on my back checked out. It might have been cancerous, so they did a biopsy on it. I'm not worried at all. I actually think the whole thing is amusing. Especially the lidocaine they gave me to numb the pain. I almost asked the doctor to punch me in that area to see if I could feel it.
Really the biggest disappointment is that all I got for my trouble was a bandaid. A 5 cent bandaid. The least they could have done was give me a lollypop or some stickers or something.

Really hoarder?

You've filled up the living room with so much stuff that it's almost unusable...
and there's no chance to move stuff from the living room to the storage facility you're paying for...
because that's packed to the gills too.


Also, get rid of that creepy cherub bust lamp.

Really K Earth 101?

Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics is now "Oldies"?

Roll the dice

is it possible for a game to hate people? To actually have it in for people?
I'm pretty sure the game RISK hates me. Like when you start off with a little bit of Asia and Europe, and one guy always winds up with 3/4ths of Australia right off the bat, so you know THAT'S going to be a fun irritation to deal with.
Basically, I don't think I'd be good at world domination.

Also, I want a hot tub. This has become another life goal (along with running of the bulls and visiting all 7 continents). Even if I move into a teensy apartment, I'm going to try and cram it into the living room or something. Instead of a sofa, I'll have a hot tub.

Soon after writing that, I started thinking about how I could seriously pull something like that off. That's the sign that its bedtime.

I'ma be (repeat ad nauseam)

Please consider the song "I'ma Be" by the Black Eyed Peas. I'm sorry if it's now stuck in your head. If its any consolation, it's stuck in mine too.
One line to that song:

I'm a be your banker I'll be loaning out semen
I'm not sure what the terms of that loan are. I think you might literally have to give up your firstborn.

northside

Wednesday was the official 'lets clean up the house' day. An epic struggle ensued, and the pile of stuff we're throwing away (picture forthcoming) could swallow a small car. All this in order to attract the attention of a potential renter.
So why did the renter turn the room down? Any guesses?

His mother wouldn't let him sign the lease because the house has bad feng shui. Really.

Google knows too much

Google, our all-loving overlord and the indirect sponsor of this blog has a feature where you can keep tabs on your search history. Which is sort of like saying that in the world of 1984 you had the feature of 24/7 television.
I know my own search history has produced some weird results: mustardgate, SanDee*, and the phrase "disaster porn" (it's for my thesis... longneedlessly academic story.)

I sometimes use google for malevolent purposes: searching for things like "meningitis symptoms" while in lecture.
That's why using other people's computers is always amusing, because you occasionally stumble across the weird things they've searched for, courtesy of autocomplete.
The prize for "worst thing I've ever seen searched for on google" and receiving the coveted Amy Winehouse golden rock bottom award is *drumroll please*

"Where to buy heroin in Los Angeles"

A follow-up on the TV/internet economy

In my earlier post "Why the internet ruins everything" I talked about the problems facing producers of mass media when it comes to the internet. Well, here is an essay about the problems with streaming content.

Here's the breakdown:
A production company is the ones producing and often financing the show. If the show is a flop, the company loses money. If the show is a success, the company makes enough money to offset the cost of all the duds. The production company doesn't show you the show, however. That's the network.

A network is a branded collection of shows, licensed from various production companies. For the Food Network, it's food-related shows. For ABC, it's shows geared for a wide appeal. For MTV, it's god-awful pieces of shit that nobody should watch but somehow people do. The network pays money to license the show. If the show is a flop, the network loses money. If the show is a success, the network makes enough money to offset the costs of all the duds.

Here's the rub: the agreement to sell to a network carries with it the rights to broadcast it online, and then, only in that specific country. Thats why some shows are available online only to US or UK or whatever audiences. Internet surfers from other countries have to go to pirating or other (pretty much) illegal sites to get their fix. Sucks for people in those countries, but it keeps the deals going in the countries with lots of viewers.

Here's how this messes with my earlier posts:
Under the old model, production companies needed networks to function - that was their distribution method. But networks can come back to screw a production company. Shows with a strong but small fan base (Veronica Mars, Firefly, Dollhouse, etc.) get cancelled, while other shows languish on as quality goes down, but production costs stay low enough to keep it profitable (Simpsons, many reality TV shows).
Now that the internet makes it easy to distribute content on a wide spectrum, production companies can bypass the networks and get content straight to us. We still get our premium content, and the production companies can try to get money from us (selling merch, sponsorship, advertising... the list goes on, with varying degrees of success). Everyone but the network wins.
The network is dying. But until someone can figure out a way to make money off online advertising, the network will continue on life support.

Still, please kill MTV. The sooner the better.

The end is nigh

I've had a love-hate relationship with my first off-campus room. I love the larger bed. I love the fact that it's a little oasis.

I hate that it's attached to an immensely filthy house.

There are massive pudding stains in the driveway, random car parts that belong to the landlord in the backyard, and the upstairs bathroom may contain trace amounts of cocaine. (not mine, nor anyone else in the house's.) It took two months for a drawer to get fixed, and the stove and one of the fridges probably should be replaced.

One more rent check, and then I am out of this place.

Why the internet ruins everything

Hulu, the online tv show provider, is creating a subscription model: ten bucks a month for access to more shows than just the five most recent episodes of a series. This is part of a plan to try and teach us to pay for premium and professional content.

But that's not how the internet works. I can choose to pay for shows, or I can search around and find them for free. And it's not too hard to find many shows for free.

The rules of professional content on the internet:
1. People are going to pirate your stuff.
This is what happens on the internet. It's a feeding ground for people to take other people's content. I do it all the time, because the technology makes it simple. I can download images from websites, and if the site won't let me download, I can take a screenshot of what I need.
This leads me to:
2. There is no way to stop people from pirating your stuff
Technology is a poor substitute for security. Think that you can shut people out of free content? Think again. Create a secure system, and hundreds of thousands of hackers will attempt to systematically disassemble it (if they can be bothered to). Internet security always has a weakness, a backdoor. And it will be found.
3. If you're not putting it online for free, odds are someone else is.
Thanks to P2P software and video hosting sites, it really doesn't cost a person anything to offer someone else's content for free. Sometimes, these sites can even make money off their own advertising. That's right major networks: other people are making money off your hard-earned work.

So what's a major network to do? Internet pirates may be able to take your content, but they can't take your stars. Things can be copied, but experiences can't. Bootleg video of a concert is not the same as actually being at the concert, and bootleg movies aren't the same as being there in the theatre.
This is the final rule:
4. People will pay for things they can't get for free, and you're in a prime position to offer those things.
Want to draw a crowd to your site? have the actors chat with fans online about the show. Make it participatory. Make it special.

Also, don't think that just because it's 'premium content' that people are gonna pay for it. There is a lot of professionally-produced content that is absolute garbage. There's also some (but not a lot) of non-professionally produced content that is darn good. Bo Burnham, Tremendosaur icanhascheezburger, etc. That annoying fred kid is getting a movie deal, and he started with nothing. The tools needed to produce and distribute content are cheap, and we don't have the same constraints that the networks do.

The internet ruined the model that the networks and music labels came to love. And they're now going to have to play by a different set of rules. Our rules. I can hardly wait.

Just because you're famous...

Tomorrow, a sort of rock star who's admitted to cocaine use will be in town. In a completely unrelated event, Courtney Love will be in LA too.
That's right. Pres. Obama will be a stone's throw from my front door. Will I have pictures? Possibly. I may just put on a suit, shades and stick a phone cord in my ear and walk around with impunity.

Getting up early

I am not a morning person. I'm barely an early afternoon person. my usual hours of operation are 1:30pm to 3am. So why was I up at 6am on Saturday? Evil cats. I like these cats even though they're not mine, but I reserve the right to hate them when they pee on things. Like my duvet. While I'm sleeping under it. Whoever the kitty version of R. Kelly is will be punished, once I figure out which one it is.

I was forced to use a bathrobe and snuggie combination to fall asleep again. (say what you will about snuggies, they do get the job done)

There is a broom in the house, right?

Spring is one week old already, but spring cleaning is something my housemates are unfamiliar with. I keep my room clean (or as clean as three cats will let me) but the rest of the house was described by my father as "squalor". The first step of spring cleaning in this house is "take the cowboy hat off the vacuum cleaner".

The joys of cinema

I'm not complaining about the ever-more-expensive costs of going to the movies. For your 12 bucks, you can get a lot: surround sound, air conditioning, mind-blowing visuals, a meat thermometer in your neck, etc.

Who brings a meat thermometer to a movie? I can understand sneaking in candy, but unless you're able to prepare a roast in a crowded theatre without anybody noticing, probably best to leave it at home.

do demons dream of demon sheep?

Having seen the Carly Fiorina ad, I really hope she gets the GOP bid, if only so that she can continue making seriously messed-up campaigns.

Here's what gets me about her. To some extent, running a government is like running a business, but I'm not sure whether its a lot like a business or not at all like running a business. If its not like running a business, her years of experience at HP are irrelevant, and might be a hindrance. If government is a lot like running a business, then she's clearly not the person for the job, considering that business magazines, the people who know business best, say she was never doing a good job.

I'm not persuaded by the idea that government is run badly already, so there is no reason why we shouldn't let her get a chance to reel things in. It's a bit like saying 'yeah, Laurel and Hardy ruined your house, but I know these three stooges, and maybe we should let them have a go at it.'

a narrative

Coffee.
8 years ago, my two dollars went a lot farther. My recognition
of this sad fact mirrored by the cashier's recognizing me.

You were... older then she says. Shy smile. (Flirting?)

No. The world was younger then.

chocoholism

I have a hankering for fine chocolates. I think one of the great unfairnesses of life is that petit fours are so darned expensive.

Ga Ga Ooh la laa

Why do I get the feeling that Lady Gaga designs her outfits with a mad lib book?
Tuesday: a (expensive thing) covered (noun), a (adjective) dress made from (mineral) and (proper noun) hair.

C is for cravings

One problem about being in college is that you don't get to meet many girl scouts. Right about today, this is a serious problem. Girl Scout Cookies are the biggest food tease in the world. They're oh so delicious, but they remind you that you can't get them any other time. it's like having a birthday on a leap year.
I don't quite approve of that plan. Girl Scout cookies will always be special because I don't have the patience or skill to make my own samoas. Believe me, I could single-handedly fund a troop if they sold those things year round.

mmm... medicine

I'm in the middle of a moderate sore throat, chomping down cough drops like they're candy. They have to be doing this on purpose. The better tasting the cough drop, the less effective it is, so I'm downing these things by the handful.

Oh, Klaus...

I was introduced to Project Runway last week. I kind of like the show. My life is becoming a never-ending game of 'Know how I know you're gay?'

I also talk too much during movies/tv shows. I can't help it.

Go Sports Team!

It's superbowl Sunday. Want to know how ambivalent I am about this event? Thanks to youtube, I don't even have to watch it for the commercials.

Yesterday I went to the Disney store. The cashier told me to "have a magical day". That puts a lot more pressure on you than just 'have a nice day'. Now you've got to overcome both brain chemicals AND the laws of physics.