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.