Google honors Dr. King with hopscotch doodle. LOL HUH?

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. What problem could this cantankerous bitch possibly have with a Google graphic meant to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? IT HAS NO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Now I realize it promotes his message and blah blah blah, but this dude was a prominent civil rights activist that was fucking assassinated. Can't we have his picture on goddamn Google for a single day? We have nearly all of February to have retarded inter-racial hopscotch graphics. Even Pac-Man got his picture on the front page for his anniversary but Google can't put an effin' picture of Rev. Dr. King? What's more, it's ALREADY GONE. Hell, Pac-Man even got the whole week. Congratulations on being Eastern time, Google, while the rest of the country is behind and STILL IN OBSERVANCE of MLK Day. F A I L.

Why I don't like it when you drink...

If anything has added to my "lame" status over the years aside from my lazy excuse for fashion sense and generally quiet, anti-social nature, it's been when people realize that I'm pretty much a teetotaler. I swear, it's like you grow an extra head when you tell people you don't consume alcohol. You're a leper and no one wants to touch you. You can't "loosen up". I've been shown pictures of people boozing away and been "regaled" with stories of them vomiting and driving drunk and I'm supposed to clap and award these losers medals.

You see, I'm clearly not "living life" or so I'm told. I find this ironic considering the people who tell me that have been proven to drink to ridiculous excesses, presumably to escape the very life they so claim to luuuuuuuuuve livin'. If you need liquor to get over your inhibitions that damn badly, I hate to break it to you—okay, actually, I'd luuuuuuve to—but you haven't made any progress. You're like an old man and his viagra: needing a dose of something-something to get the job the done but still pathetically and woefully impotent.

Anyway, I digress. The fact is I just don't like it.

1. It tastes like crap. I like to call liquor "Bath & Body Works" because it tastes like some body spray I accidentally tasted. (HA HA ho, no.) I like to taste alcholic drinks out of pure curiousity and frankly I haven't found anything I'd consume on its own without using it in food or something. You may as well tell me you eat paprika by itself.

2. It ruined my birthday party. I was a little kid and a bunch of my relatives came over and got drunk. At a CHILD's party? I mean, I'd go to school and learn the dangers of alcohol and how it's killed people and then I get to celebrate my eighth or ninth or whatever birthday with a bunch of booze-hounds. That put a worse taste in my mouth than actually tasting the stuff as an adult. Beer and cigarettes do not belong at a child's birthday party and any time I see them there, I die a bit inside. And I thought getting packs of notebook paper one year for a birthday present made me a bitter pill.

3. No respect for moderation. "WHY CANT I HAS A GLASS OF WINE?" First of all, no one's talking about a glass of wine, stupid. This is clearly about people who just chug it away like it's water that's gonna win them a Wii, conveniently forgetting that woman died. Anyway, do you think me or anyone else for that matter gives a rat's ass about someone who only has a beer or two or sips a glass of wine with their dinner? Don't be retarded.

4. It's a ridiculous status symbol. Like a douchetastic pair of over-priced sunglasses or a groovy national landmark, people can't resist posing with it in pictures with a smug sense of pride. And then they actually publish these online! Do you see me smugly posing with a gallon of milk or a quart of juice, dumbass? You DO realize it makes you look STUPID, right? And unless you're an avid wine connoisseur or the owner of Budweiser or something, you don't need to pose with any alcohol.

5. It makes you indignant of the law. My favorite one? When people are all bitching about going to jail or paying fines on multiple DWI offenses. "Damn the law! Trying to save innocent drivers by punishing me! It'soooooo unfair!" BAAAAAAAAAAAAAW.

6. It ruins sober people. I've met a lot of funny, smart folks at work and school. Or at least I thought they were. Get these folks liquored up and watch out, bro! "OHHHHH, but I'm just livvvvvin' life." Sad, because I liked you before you turned into a babbling, potato chip-spewing drunken asshat with no self-respect. Lots of awesome actors, singers, and talented people wasted by this crap. Come on, you know it. Rehab this and rehab that.

7. Point, stupid counterpoint. "But they do it in EURRRROPE!!" Then solve both our problems and MOVE TO EUROPE. "I can DIE for my country but I can'ts drink!" The fact that you compare the lost lives of our military men and women in service to our country to your legal inability to get hammered shows why you have not been deemed mature enough to drink. "Why can't I HAS A GLASS WINE?" Because in loads of lovely, retarded internet arguments, it always comes down to a damn glass of wine. Hey, I think we all know it's not about "a glass of wine" so shut-up.

8. It smells... like broken promises and dreams of Christmas past.

9. I do not feel safe on the roads on weekend nights. I really don't do it and it makes me a bit apprehensive when I am out there. "Fifty-four percent of all teen motor vehicle deaths occur on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thirty-five percent occur between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m." And those are just teens! Boo! I don't wanna die, homes.

10. My uncle almost hit me in the head with a plate. Drunk people + repressed problems is the recipe for a made-for-tv movie on Lifetime. Tons of people with crappy lives tend to turn towards firewater, denying the fact that once they leave Beer-Narnia or wherever they go, their problems will still be waiting for them. Hey, I haven't seen anybody's life improved by the stuff either.

11. People destroy themselves and then want free organs. Truth, I tell you, truth! These people whine and whine about dying and needing a kidney or a liver after forty years of hard drinking and get all bitchy when you won't let them farm you for parts. Then they get their whatever and don't curb their bad habits. Aren't there better people these organs can go to? If you want to destroy your liver, fine, but don't make it everyone else's problem. Don't make people pony up for your medical care when you didn't give a damn about your body in the first place. Speaking of which...

12. It wastes money. (1) How much more government bread are they gonna spend on "prosecuting" spoiled rich jerks when John Law doesn't even mete out any real punishments? Let's just leave Lindsay and Paris alone. Then, when they hurt someone or destroy property, sue their asses for a megaton of cash. Rehab is a joke. Jailtime is a joke. Ankle bracelets are a joke. Stop wasting tax payer dough unless you're serious. (2) If you're so damn poor, stop buying beer and pay your rent! If I bought $50 worth of gum each week for myself, you'd think I'd have a serious problem, right? $50 worth of beer isn't any better.

13. Ridiculous level of public acceptability. In an era of "Jackass" and other MTV garbage, it's no small wonder why these antics are lauded. There is no sense of shame anymore. In fact, it's a worse crime to be a virgin or live at home than it is to have a drinking problem. This is because people who drink, like shoplifters and constantly pregnant welfare moms, are just "livin' life".

Hey, if all that crap ^ is "living life", no thank you! :)

EDIT: Forgot one! #14. Free license to act like a jerk and talk trash. But you didn't mean it because YOU WERE DRINKING. Hey, you chose to drink sober and you probably really think those things anyway, so you meant it by proxy. Prefacing insults with "He's a really nice guy but" don't help either. Especially when you then crack a joke at his expense and expect the whole table to laugh. Boo.

Yeah, I know, I'm a jerk, too. Hey, at least I own up to my shit and don't hide behind a bottle.

Why Capital vs. Thomas is a load of horseshit.

"Lady, look out behind you!"
If you need some reading materials on the subject, you can go to either Single mom can't pay $1.5M song-sharing fine or The RIAA's latest victory over Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Here's an older article about the matter: Thomas testimony ends with tears, anger, Swedish death metal. The gist is that a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas-Rasset was using a file-sharing application, Kazaa, to download music. 

The nature of peer to peer file sharing means that while you download something, you are helping others download the same file through whatever pieces of the file you possess while downloading. Thus, whether you mean to or not, you are also sharing music. She apparently did this with over a thousand songs. After not paying the amount demanded by a desist letter, also known as toilet paper, the case went to trial. Over the years, she had been found liable for various amounts, with the latest amount being $1.5M. Despite the emphasis that Thomas-Rasset is a repeat offender, this lawsuit, formerly Virgin vs. Thomas, is not for damages from thousands of songs. It is only for 24 songs: 

 * Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain" 

 * Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last" 

 * Janet Jackson "Let’s Wait Awhile" 

 * Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You" 

 * Goo Goo Dolls "Iris" 

 * Journey "Faithfully"; "Don’t Stop Believing" 

 * Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery" 

 * Aerosmith "Cryin’" 

 * Linkin Park "One Step Closer" 

 * Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me" 

 * Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart" 

 * Bryan Adams "Somebody" 

 * No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People" 

 * Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run" 

 * Richard Marx "Now and Forever" 

 * Destiny’s Child "Bills, Bills, Bills" 

 * Green Day "Basket Case" 

 Am I the only one who finds the fact that a song called "One Honest Heart" is up there funny? Anyway, with the latest settlement, that is a staggering $62,500 A SONG. Even half of that, $31,250, is grossly unreasonable.

 

Let's take an example: "Bathwater" by No Doubt sells for 99 cents on Amazon. (I won't even see if it's the same price at iTunes because iTunes is a piece of crap.) Rounding down, that is 31,565 people that Thomas-Rasset would have had to share "Bathwater" with to even make the latest settlement halfway logical. This still makes some big assumptions though. 

 1. Would all 31,565+ people including Thomas-Rasset have ever bought "Bathwater" in the first place? I guarantee you that if all of those people were ordered by the court that they would have to pay for the song or get rid of it, over half of them would hit the delete key. Not everything that is pirated is something that ever would have been purchased to begin with!  Hey, I like the song, don't get me wrong. But the RIAA, Capitol, and all of those other monkeys need to accept the fact that shitloads of people would rather not have a lot of music than pay for it. Therefore, what money did Capitol lose from the people who NEVER would have bought it? And why should Thomas-Rasset be liable for it? 

  2. How do you prove that she even shared it with 31,565+ people? Now I'm no lawyer, but shouldn't there be a burden of proof here? Can they just pick a number out of their ass? I mean, they were willing to settle for $5000 dollars back in August of 2005. Why isn't the figure Thomas-Rasset is supposed to pay not $5000 plus court costs or something. In what universe is it okay for that to balloon to $1.5M? Shoot, I watched Judge Pirro today and some woman was suing her ex for a car that she had been in the process of selling to him. Her original price was $800. He paid $300, but not the rest. And this lady wanted more than $500! Judge Pirro called that shit out and I'm calling out this. RIDICULOUS, friend. No effin' way. 

 3. How do you know 31,565+ people didn't already own "Bathwater"? How many of these people already had "Return to Saturn", "The Singles Collection", or the "Bathwater" single and for whatever reason just wanted a digital download from somewhere. By saying Thomas-Rasset is liable for "Bathwater" being shared without compensation, the courts are also saying these people should have bought a digital copy from Amazon or Asstunes of SOMETHING THEY ALREADY OWNED. I mean, we're still allowed to rip our CDs for our own personal use, aren't we? If my copy of "The Singles Collection" is at home and I'm a friend's house and want to sync "Bathwater" to my MP3 player, why the hell should I have to pay AGAIN? What's wrong with just snagging it online? Not to mention the folks that liked "Bathwater" so much they went and bought a CD or digital download. Where are they in this equation? Yes, they initially took it for free but is a subsequent purchase 100% meaningless? Furthermore, if my computer, MP3 player, or copy of the CD is stolen, shouldn't I be able to replace a song I've already bought? 

Now this case is too complicated to make proper points on every little issue. Although Thomas-Rasset has been accused of playing the "single mom can't feed mah keedz" card, I have no idea what bankrupting this woman is supposed to prove besides that Capitol and the RIAA are insanely greedy and effin' nutso. She stole music, she got caught. And people are like, "well, if she shoplifted a purse, blah blah blah". 

Digital media is not comparable to shoplifting a goddamn purse or a dress. People who want a song but don't want to buy it can rip an MP3 from a friend's CD, get an MP3 from a relative, or rip a CD from the library. You can't borrow a freakin' purse at the library. Purses don't have the ability to multiply beyond the realm of control. Get real, folks. One of the comments for the MSN article said something like if Thomas-Rasset had shoplifted all of the CDs these songs came from, the penalty would be NO WHERE near $1.5M. And while peer to peer file sharing has the ability to share from millions, the fact is that millions who are stealing songs like "Bathwater" are not ALL using a single source like Thomas-Rasset for all of their music needs. It's like they're trying to make her pay for every single theft of the damn songs. 

I do not believe it would be correct to merely find her liable for the initial cost of the songs, around $24. If she perjured or did anything else to affect the outcome of this case, she should be fined. Penalties and violations of the law are due for the thefts; Okay, I get it. But in a lawsuit for 24 songs, over a million bucks in damages is ass no matter how you slice it. There's no way that many people at a time want "Bathwater" or any of those other songs and that they all happened to take it from Kazaa AND from Thomas-Rasset. The MSN article points out that while the legal minimum is $750 per infringement, Thomas-Rasset has been found liable for well over that amount multiple times.

When a reporter pointed out that three juries of her peers had decided that she should pay well above the minimum, she said there's "no rhyme or reason to the numbers" but she respects jurors for doing their jobs.

Frankly, stuff like this leads me to believe that this woman is an idiot and "three juries of her peers" were in fact three juries of other idiots, which makes perfect sense. A jury is not doing its job if it truly believes this result is just. There are killers that aren't found liable for this much in civil damages for taking a life let alone a single mom taking her some music. Is it really so horrible that she needs Gwen Stefani to sing about washing herself "in your old bathwater" to forget that she's the mother of four kids who works as a natural resources coordinator? And she's Native-American so, like, didn't America already take this woman's land? Can't this shit just cancel each other out?

Then there's this tidbit from Cara Duckworth of the RIAA: "People forget about all of the individuals who work really hard to make music for a living," she said. "These people are negatively impacted whenever music is stolen and distributed to millions of people." I have hard goddamn time believing that Thomas-Russet cost No Doubt $187,500 ($62,500 * 3) in damages, let alone that she caused their songs to fall into the hands of millions of people. This isn't the ending to the last Harry Potter book where no one else had something that was distributed to the detriment of the source. "Bathwater" was out for a good five years before Thomas-Rasset decided to help herself to a free copy with many other songs on the list of 24 out for far longer. One of the millions of people who BOUGHT "Bathwater" was how Thomas-Rasset got the song in the first place. 

 And if Capitol and the RIAA are so concerned about "the individuals" who make the music making a proper living, why don't they give Gwen, Tom, Tony, the rest of No Doubt, their mixers, whoever else worked on and marketed the song some of that cheddar that was instead spent on this stupid lawsuit. If Thomas-Rasset had paid the initial $5000, how much of that would have even made it to Tony Kanal's wallet? Why doesn't Capitol spend money looking for ways to profit off this digital wave they have no hope of stopping instead of trying to get money from people who can't pay? 

I mean, Thomas-Rasset couldn't buy the music legally so what makes anyone think she can pay for it thousands of times over? This isn't teaching thieves a lesson, this is just being cruel and unfair to one who got caught.

Job Hunting: Let's hate this shit.

So the economy's really balls right now and a shitload of us--myself included--are looking for jobs. It really is an employers' market and I'm getting real bitter with some of this bullshit:

♦ Job fairs. Good lord I hate them! Half of the booths there are always for scam schools, fast food, or the military. Yeah, right. Me and thousands of others went and got bachelors and masters degrees so we could go to Career Point or flip a burger. I went to a job fair and they were all "bring multiple copies of your resume", so I ramped up that shit and printed loads. Nobody would take one. WTF. The job publications in the newspaper are just as shitty.

♦ Ugly inefficient websites. Because everybody wants you to apply online but few of them know how to do it correctly. One company split up all of their jobs into five different groups so I'd have to check five different websites for jobs. Oh, hell! Anybody use that Taleo thing? That thing's crap! No, I do not want to fucking choose my country, city, and state over and over again. More than one employer has listed categories i.e. "Finance", "Human Resources", etc. and all it does is fuck up my search results. If you only have fourteen positions open in the whole damn company, then you don't need twenty-plus categories to sort them!

♦ Horrendously long online applications. I swear, some of this shit takes thirty minutes or more. And sometimes they time out while you're filling them in! So I fill these out and then three weeks later, I get an automatically generated rejection notice or some shit. Thank you for wasting my fucking time. One company did this right: I filled out basic info and sent a resume. They replied they were interested in me and THEN sent me a link for a long-ass form. Weed out people first with a short form or resume before you waste someone's fucking time.

♦ Filling out a paper application when you've already done an online one. WTF? Is it Backwards Day? This has happened so many times and I wonder just what the fucking problem with their printer was. Print that shit. Why the fuck are you making me do this crap OVER AGAIN? I went to this one interview and I had already filled out an online application AND had a phone interview. So at this stage, I figure it's a simple face-to-face because they already have my shit. Well, I get there and then they give me all of these fucking forms on a clipboard and an effin' pen: What is my name? Where do I live? My phone numbers, e-mail, job history, am I a U.S. citizen? What the fuck is this shit? Turns out somebody was supposed to send me a PDF of this stuff. So I could refill it out again? Why don't you just print out what I already filled in? If you have new forms for me, fine, but it makes no fucking sense to have a huge application for me to do online and then make me do it over again! You fail the internet.

♦ Fuck you and your experience. How is anyone supposed to get experience when nobody will hire the non-experienced? Twice I was asked if I knew Quickbooks. I said I'd learn it and they got all doubtful. Oooh, because I bet Quickbooks is so fucking hard. Look, just because some of you suits are shit with programs doesn't mean the rest of us are. The university I went to saw no need for Quickbooks or Peachtree, which I admit is a little dumb of them but it doesn't change that software is software! NOBODY should need several years or even months to learn any software when it comes to basic usability.

♦ Promises to call me later go unfilled. You know what? You DON'T have to promise that. Just tell ME to call you back or something. I'm getting sick of "we'll call you" like we're gonna touch base or I actually have a shot at the job. False hope really burns my grits. They never call. It's almost always no phone call and a rejection e-mail instead. Everytime someone says they'll call me, I feel like going "OHHHHHHHH RLY?" and pulling that owl-face. I get it, you're busy. Then DON'T TELL ME YOU'LL CALL ME.

♦ Taking for fucking ever to decide. I was up for this one assistant position and I REALLY wanted it but I was gonna run out of money in like a month and needed work bad. They kept saying they would decide later in the week or next week and literally kept bouncing it around for a whole damn month. I was forced to withdraw myself from contention and take another job. These assholes knew I needed a job. Don't fuck around with people's livelihoods. Just make a damn decision. How do three people take a whole month to hire one entry-level person? HEY, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

DVD Essentials: What Should Be There

Open wishlist to DVD companies far and wide:

♦ Barebones DVDs are balls. Hey, if it's the only way the show's available, fine. I'll live with it. But hell, at least have some chapter skips and closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

♦ The more language tracks, the better. Here in North America there should be English, Spanish, and French on as many damn DVDs as possible. Other languages are fun, too. Like Greek and Portuguese. And furthermore, the languages should be consistent on television series. Example: I recently Netflixed "Batman: The Animated Series". Some discs had English, Spanish, and French. Some didn't have Spanish. Season One of Justice League Unlimited had a Spanish track but Season Two didn't. Consistency, people! Having one language or languages missing is craptacular.

♦ Subtitles. Preferably in whatever languages are on the disc as well as on the commentary track if one's on there. Big honkin' subtitles that eat up half of the screen are stupid. The people that need those the most are deaf, not blind. Subtitles should be clear, concise, and in a san-serif font. White or yellow outlined with black. Not giant pure-white bs that no one can see when the screen's all light-colored.

♦ Foreign films with hard subtitles are a no-no. For you newbs, hard subtitles are when they're stuck on the bloody screen. Sometimes I like an unobscured screen. Don't worry about whether or not I understand the language, that's my damn business.

♦ Do NOT make me go back into the menu to change this crap. What I mean is, for example, on "The Princess and the Frog" I can't just jump from English to Spanish audio using my remote. I have to actually return to the menu and change the language there. That's stupid. Luckily, most DVDs are pretty good about not doing that. Additionally, if you have audio and subtitles on the same menu screen, don't yank me out of there immediately after I choose a one feature but don't get to choose another. (Like if I choose Spanish language and get pulled out before I can put on Spanish subtitles. That's dumb.)

♦ Commentary tracks are wonderful but if the film makers really have nothing further to say about the subject, you really don't have to bother. Some commentary tracks read like the bored version of those audio tracks for the blind: "Russell Crowe enters the circus tent. He sees a clown. The clown waves. He punches the clown." Speaking of which…

♦ I love those Descriptive Video Service tracks for the blind. It's like I'm five years old and it's story time. "The Princess and the Frog" and "Inside Man" both have this service and it's awesome.

♦ Music-only tracks are also really cool. If there's not enough stuff to fill a commentary, do a music-only track or combine the two. Get creative!

♦ I saw the movie "Karma Sutra" with Indira Varma on a Panasonic widescreen television and for whatever reason that movie had black bars on all four sides of the picture. I don't know what the technical term for this occurring is but I call it balls and I dun like it.

♦ Previews are NOT an extra. However, I want previews anyway. Disney's Fast Play feature is a cool idea. Another good idea is the DC Universe Animated Original Movies and how they combine a teaser and a preview for some of their other material. A bad idea? Forced previews. This especially chafes when you've BOUGHT the damn thing and are being held hostage for something fucking annoying. I mean, I hate one of the previews on "Bride and Prejudice" but at least I can skip that crap.

♦ Real extras are nice. What's nicer is when there's a list of extras and a PLAY ALL option. There are few things that suck more on a DVD rife with goodies than having to play each one by one.

♦ Galleries that you can't zoom and navigate through yourself are useless.

♦ I Netflixed "That Touch of Mink" and it had profiles, such as stuff about Doris Day and Cary Grant. When it got to Gig Young, it was all "Oh hey, this guy killed his wife then shot himself!" That shit's really a downer. Who the fuck thought putting that on there was a great idea? Gig Young had dozens upon dozens of film and television roles and that's what they chose to highlight. Use common sense.

♦ Stop ripping us off for not upgrading to your precious Blu-Ray. Not everyone needs it. Not everyone wants it. So what do companies do when they release stuff on both Blu-Ray and DVD? They pack on the commentaries and features on the Blu-Ray and rip everyone else off. Now, I get there's more room on a Blu-Ray disc. That's fair. What isn't fair is when some of those things fit just fine on a regular DVD but you just want to eff customers over because they don't want to go down on Blu-Ray's Dr. Manhattan dong. I was all excited about the upcoming "Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam" until I heard that there would be no commentary on the DVD. So what DVD customers get is the new twenty-minute short, three additional shorts that have already been released in extended format—whatever few minutes THAT entails—and four bonus episodes handpicked by Bruce Timm. These four episodes are among the stuff that's already been released and will most likely be "Justice League: Unlimited" episodes with Captain Marvel, Green Arrow, and probably either the "Batman:TAS" ep with Jonah Hex or the "Justice League: Unlimited" that has Jonah Hex in one episode. In other words, they expect people to pay fourteen bucks and change for way less than 50% new material. I call this jack-assery or "wait for the bargain-bin". Or even "piracy, ho!" I'd rather have commentary and some featurettes. You have a hard sell on your hands if you're going to try and convince me that stuff won't fit when "Inside Man" had a crapload of stuff on a single disc.

♦ Those DVD close-clip thingies on the side. You know the ones I mean. They have no purpose in life.

♦ There is no excuse for cover art like this these days. -> This one for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is horrific. Use the movie's poster. Use a nice screen cap. Those aren't even their bodies.

♦ In multi-DVD sets, if I have to take out one disc to get to another one you're doing it wrong.

♦ FYI, if there's a soundtrack or a novelization available, advertise it somewhere on the DVD. There's stuff I didn't even know had soundtracks until I Googled it one day. You people are losing money.

♦ Why, oh, why would you put something edited on the DVD release when it's not even neccessary? "Turtles Forever" I'm looking at you. Do the rest of us a favor and don't even bother. Go look at the reviews for "Turtles Forever" at Amazon.com. Almost everybody loved it but HATE the way it was released. Do not shoot yourself in the foot.