Driving: Being lazy as fast as you can

The evolution of transportation has advanced quite a bit in the past couple of centuries.

For a while, dudes would just wander around on their feet.  This was okay, because liquor stores weren't discovered yet, so they didn't really need to drive two miles down the road, just past the Wendy's.

Then some fellow saw a horse running about and thought, "Hey.  I want to sit on that thing."
So he did.  And for just about forever, people were content with riding these pooping terror beasts.

One day, some guy must have thought; "Man, these horses sure are a hassle.  They get all freaked out over nothing, and don't always do what you want them to do."

This man promptly put together a pile of wood, slapped four wheels on it, and made the horse drag it around; this effectively set transportation technology back a couple hundred of years.

Then finally some dude in Germany named  Karl Friedrich Benz finally invented something called a "horseless carriage", or more accurately called "the first car".  Soon after, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison kicked Benz in the dick, made their own car, and took all the credit.

"I'd kick any man in the dick for you, my sweet Edison."

From there on out, driving was supposed to be simple.  Get in/on your car, move forward, get out/off of your car, and repeat until you have reached your destination.

Somehow, someone fucked that up.

Maybe it was the guy who thinks that you have to slow down to 5 mph for every turn and curve.  Maybe it was the fellow who thinks that cutting someone off on a red light is an acceptable practice.  Maybe that couple who goes 40 on the highway to get a good view of the scenery.  It could be the people who think that turn signals are optional, and think they are there to make a pleasant clicking noise.  Maybe all of them.  Who knows?

I blame the government's decision to let people who can pass a simple test, and drive down the block the privilege of operating a 2 ton death machine fully equipped with 10 gallons of explosion juice.  And a little noise button to keep the simpletons amused.

Fighting Terrorism: Some stuff I did today

I learned some new things today, mostly while preparing to move.

I realized that my definition of "clean" is different from other people's.  Mine is "moving stuff off of the floor into a less inconvenient place".  Other people's is "making stuff look brand new, or at least where it doesn't look like you pooped on it".

I realized that moving is nothing more than putting all your stuff into boxes, so you can later take it out of boxes, only to put them back in boxes some time after that.

The most important thing I learned today is that you can fight any problem my making a slogan and putting it on a bumper sticker.  It doesn't matter what it says, but by putting your opinion on the back of your car, you can end whatever thing that is bothering you. This stemmed from a bumper sticker I saw that said "Fight Terror, Vote Republican".  If doing completely unrelated things can stop bad stuff, then I'm all in for that shit.

So I decided to fight terrorism with this masterpiece:

I expect all terror to be gone in 4-6 weeks.

Journey to the Electronics Store: How I Discovered a Wizard

BASED ON A TRUE STORY, BRO

The other day I was driving around, and noticed a new electronics store.  Being a fellow who enjoys things that run on electricity, I went in.

As I am wandering around and touching all the things in the electronics store, a man in a polo donning the same name as the store came up and started bothering me.

"Are you finding everythin-"

"What brand of sorcery is this?!", I said, cutting him off.

He started to nervously chuckle.

"Is a wizard responsible for this?!", I said.  I needed to know.

He is still chuckling, and he started to back away slowly.  I don't think he was ready for what I asked him next.

"Are you a wizard?", I asked calmly, but very sternly.  I stared him in the eyes, and did not blink.

He knew I discovered his dark secret.  At this point he walked away from me, and I went back to touching as many cameras as I could, before I got bored and wandered off to my next adventure to the mcdonalds.

Trolls: The Trollening

Open your mind and imagine this scenario with me, for just a moment.

It is a lazy Saturday afternoon.  You just finished watching your favorite episode of your favorite TV show.  You enjoy this show, more than any human should enjoy anything.  But just enjoying it isn't enough.

You have to talk about it.

The bad news is that all your friends live in different states and countries.  That doesn't stop you, though.  You plug in your magical webcam and fire up the ol' youtube.  Pretty soon, you got a good five minutes of you talking about the finer points of this show, what they could do to make it better, and also what you had for lunch.  You share this with your friends, and they agree with everything you said.  You do consider yourself their leader, even if you have never met them face to face.

A few days of nothing goes by, then you notice a new comment on your video; a comment from a name you have never seen.  It looks like "HowIsBabbyFormed219" really needed to call you a "wirthloss peece of shit foggit" multiple times.  It bothers you, but you brush it off and go the the weekly tender festival for a few hours.

When you get home, you video has thousands of views.  And thousands of comments.  And not a single one of them was telling you how nice your sweater looked.  Quite the opposite actually.  It seems like everyone had a pressing urge to tell you how homosexual you look, how you should never be allowed on the internet again, and some even told you to kill yourself.

To be honest, you were asking for it when you put this on.

This is what a very mild trolling is like.

As soon as two people were on the internet, one was calling the other a fag. I am not saying that there wasn't trolling before the internet came around.  It was done in the form of dog poo in flaming bags, or molotov cocktails.  But when people discovered that they could bother other people from their own chair, thats when things went downhill fast.

Feces related pranks may be a bit barbaric, so you would think that adding high-tech stuff into the equation would make it more sophisticated.  It didn't, for the most part.  Where people would use to yell "homo" at someone, it now can be posted on a person's facebook.

But what happens in cases like the hypothetical one above?  Can that many people really be opposed to unicorns, and sweaters made of them?  Probably not.  Then what happens?  A bunch of bored kids is what happens.  One person finds it, shares it with his friends, they share it their friends, and so on.  Most just laugh and move on, but one bright snowflake ("HowIsBabbyFormed219", in this case) posts his feelings on the matter.  Then an online mob mentality happens, and before too long you have death threats on your youtube inbox.

Sometimes it goes farther.  One of these guys decides that they REALLY hate unicorns. So much so that they hack the uploader's youtube, facebook, myspace, and bank account.  Yeah, it happens sometimes.  And then they post as much gay scat porn as they can, and spend all your money on dog dildos.  Yeah, they exist.  And god help the uploader if the hacker gets his real address.  He will then be signed up for every porno mailing list available, and have large amounts of pizza delivered to his house for days.  And gets a hold of his phone number?  He is going to be asked if he has Battletoads for quite some time.

The world's most sought after game.

The internet is a battlefield, and everything is a land mine.  Do you want to browse the web, and not get trolled?  Tough shit.  The only way to ensure that you don't get bothered online is to not go online.  But don't take it personal, they don't hate you.  But you really do look like a fag in that sweater, seriously, what were you thinking?

Video Project: My Heart and Soul

I've slaved over this video.

Countless hours has gone into this video.

I would even say my heart, my soul, and my blood went into this video.

This will be my magnum opus.

Advent of Internet: Why God?

I would like for you to spend a few seconds imagining what the world would be like without the internet.

A life without endless pictures of cats, if you can call that living.

That was pretty bad, wasn't it?

Simply put, the internet is multiple computers sharing information with each other; multiple computers telling each other "1" or "0".

And we have somehow made the existence of modern society depend on it.  So maybe a "1" is sent to a computer instead of a "0", causing a glitch.  What happens? Airports are shut down.

But ideally they never do that.  So lets say that you make a investment program that makes the most economic and efficient decisions. It works perfectly.  What happens?  The stock market plummets.

Oh internet.  We can't live with you, and we can't live without you.

I have always said that the invention of the internet will cause the end of the world.

We have embedded our life into this relatively young technology (it has been around since 1969, compared the millions of years everything else has been around) at frightening rate.  Back in the day, when you needed money from your bank account, you actually had to go to the bank and withdraw it, because a bank was kind of secure place to keep it.  Now your hard earned cash is held safely behind the eight character password of your choosing.  I sure hope no one knows the street you grew up on, and your year of birth!

Hell, if someone just knows a few public things about you, then they are going to be all up in your email account.

And social interactions.  Remember those?  Before facebook and text messaging, you actually had to talk to other people, face to face! Communicate with actual words! Can you believe that?  When you wanted to call someone a douchebag, you actually had to say it with your mouth, not your fingers.

And this only goes so far.

So the internet is in control of our money, and had made us social networking pussies.  What could be worse?

More.  A lot more.

Back in the mid eighties, a fad involving anthropomorphic creatures was really catching on.  A few magazines were being circulated, and a few social gatherings were planned here and there.  But it was hard to find other people in this "Furry fandom" without everyone knowing your dark secret.  But in the mid-nineties, people discovered that finding other furries was an AOL chatroom away.

I personally blame the internet for the explosion of furries in the world.

But there are worse things.

In 2003, a teenage boy decided to create a website where he and his friends could talk about anime.  Soon his friends were inviting their friends, and they invited their friends, and so on and so forth.  Now we have one of the busiest and notorious websites out there: 4chan.  All because you can post anonymously, behind the proxy of your keyboard.

So is there good in the internet?  Yeah.  But as soon as people could pretend to be someone else is when things got out of control.  So what should you do?  The obvious answer is to liquidate everything you have and live in the mountains.  Then the only thing you have to worry about is bears.

AWWWW FUCK

My Gift, My Curse: Ballad of the Retail Worker

It is a unseasonably warm day in late Febuary.  Around 2 in the afternoon, if I recall.  I am walking around, searching for those in need.  I see a woman, obviously distressed.  Her mouth hangs open, but quiet; failing to voice the terror she is in.  Her eyes are as wide as saucers, moving around violently, as if she is unable to comprehend the horrors she is witnessing.  

I approach her.

"Ma'am, do you need help with anything?"

Her eyes lock with mine, and a glimmer of hope twinkles on her pupil.  I made myself her only chance of salvation.

She utters,

"Could you tell me where the paper towels are?"

"Aisle 8, ma'am. And if there is anything else you need, just ask."

As we embark on our seperate paths, I look at the aisle 8 marker, just to make sure that it clearly says "PAPER GOODS" in big bold letters.  

It does.

This is the life I have chosen.  Years ago, when I first but on that badge that let everybody know that I am a 'CERTIFIED PHOTO SPECIALIST", I understood what I was getting myself into.  I understood that I would spend my days telling countless people where the bathrooms are.  I knew I would have clean up the aftermath of when people just couldn't make it to said bathrooms in time.  I knew I would have to spend hours looking for that one can of pork and beans for someone because "it's on sale and 99 cents is just to good of a deal to pass up on you know?" 

These people need a savior.

These people need me.

Video Games: The Deal With Them

Let me get one thing out of the way.

I love my video games.

I want to do bad things to my video games.

If video games were a pretty little female, she would be the victim to my unhealthy obsession, ending with a weekend in jail and a restraining order.

But I digress.

I recently read an article that someone wrote about how video games are straying from what they need to be; how they need to be classified as a sophisticated art form and such.  Some big companies agree.  Some big art critics disagree.  In some aspects, I agree.

But the vidya will never be accepted as an art.

Art is expressing yourself or thoughts onto some kind of viable medium, telling stories and triggering emotions and whatnot.  That's just my interpretation of art though.  Different people will say completely different things.

Ever since the beginning of man, we have been looking for ways to not do anything productive.  Ancient people painted on cave walls with shit and berries.  They kept doing that until sports were invented.  But that required too much moving for some people, so other dudes went and invented video games.  Why?  Because lazy folk susceptible to addiction would pay them handsomely for it.

Like these, only for your brain!

But that wasn't the end of it.  People were happy with their Pong paddles for some time, but soon they wanted better looking paddles.  High-Def paddles.  They wanted that shit in 3-D.  Video game companies kindly said "Fuck that noise", and that led to the video game market crash of 1983.  Then some bright snowflake must have realized, "If we spend more making it, then we can charge more selling it!".  And now you can play Pong in glorious 1080p with you PS3 on your 50" flatscreen.

The point I am trying make is that the video game market is just that: a market.  They supply to peoples demands to turn a profit.  That's all it will ever be.  That is why we have seven Call of Duty games, with each one selling more than the last.  And it isn't for the "beautifully written story", its so they can go online, and shoot other assholes and call them gay; ultimately, to be doing nothing productive.

Every once in a while you come across a game that is just amazing, wonderful, and makes you feel "emotions".  The sad part is you will usually find it in the bargain bin.  Most people don't want to think when they play a game, they just want to find the best way to draw a penis in it.

Thank you Spore!

So there you have it.  Video games are great because they are a great way to pass the time.  Not because they are "edgy", or some nonsense like that.  And for the love of god, don't get me started on indy games.

I think it's time for a beer.