• GRAAARRG. That is all.
• I'm listening to Doug Stanhope: 12 - Tits & Buttfucking are Il

March 16, 2008

Dear Hipster Douchebag,

Thank you for stopping right in the driveway of our parking garage while I was attempting to back in. Your stone gaze at the back of the RAV4 was almost awe-inspiring, and the way that you took a huge drag off of your cigarette in a very stoic, manly way while NOT MOVING probably melted at least three uteruses within 10 feet of you, two of which actually belonged to squirrels.

I duly apologize for cutting into your moment of deep introspection by rolling down my window and screaming "I'M TRYING TO PARK HERE, CAN YOU MOVE?!?" Your immediate reaction of ambling out of the driveway and turning to face me as I passed was pretty awesome too, and I'm sure that you were ready, steeling all of your powerful might in preparation to kick my pasty 100 lb. ass. I also didn't mean to frighten you by getting out of the car and stomping toward you, but I'm sure you were still planning on maybe kicking my ass later as you turned tail and started walking away really quickly. That's not a problem, I can arrange it, just have your people call my people and I'll line up so that you can let loose with all of your stringy, anorexic hipster rage and maybe channel it into a vigorous slap to my pectoral muscles.

Thanks for your display of manliness,
The Killing Machine

February 24, 2008

Oscar night. What a bunch of bullshit. It’s the night that all the studios get to stand around and jerk each other off and tell each other how great they are, and people treat them with credibility.

I’m a huge fan of movies. I love them so much it’s not even funny, so when I say that I couldn’t give a fuck less about the Oscars, it’s not because I hate the medium – far from it.

I hate the Oscars because they represent everything that’s wrong with Hollywood. Because they’re honestly insignificant. Because it’s another empty reason to get people to crowd around their televisions.

Once a film wins an Oscar, everyone treats it with a newfound respect and dignity that they somehow couldn’t afford to give it when it first premiered. Amazing films that could have used that extra box-office push within its first few weeks get the shaft, and suddenly after the film wins ten Oscars people rush out to see it. Not only do they rush out to see it, but they often don’t get it. It’s either “Well, I didn’t understand the movie, but that’s okay because it won an Oscar, so it has to mean something to someone!”, or “Okay, we saw it, let me be a pretentious ass and read way too much into the film so that I can form my own lame, illogical theories about the movie.”

Yeah, sorry it’s not Norbit or Wild Hogs, people, but is it so much to ask for you to work with the material? Oh, wait, this is the same movie-going public who whines when a film has subtitles because they “don’t like to read while watching a movie”.

Maybe it’s just me being even more bitter and angry because I’m not feeling well(at all), but the Oscars can suck my dick.

February 17, 2008

Mass Effucked

I'm taking advantage of the long weekend to take care of all of my errands. It's pretty refreshing.

...Okay, I'm a liar. I'm replaying Mass Effect, and it's still pretty fun considering that I've basically restarted it twice. My latest colossal screw-up was not ramping up my techs' decryption abilities and scratching my head wondering why I couldn't break into the armory locker of Colonel Hackdicks from the Fuckface Division.

I've also taken it upon myself to make the completely mature decision of choosing to bone the human chick this time instead of the alien-chick. Sorry, Liara, but "Once you go blue, you never go back" is a lie. It's sort of telling that in order to woo the human female, Ashley Williams(hurrr Evil Dead reference, there are never enough of those in videogames these days), you have to be a racist(human-racist? You have to hate aliens.) God-squaddie who loves killin'. Who is this fucking woman anyway, the future demon-seed of Dick and Lynne Cheney?

Either way, your rampant screwfest right before the end isn't much to call home over, as seeing your doppelganger bare-assing it with an alien or a surprisingly shapely Neo-Republican through a very blurry filter is probably worth about 0.23 nanoseconds in the average male's spank bank. This is problematic. Therefore, I plan to write a letter to Bioware in which I outline the need for them to make the sequel with an option where you can fuck your way throughout space without firing a single shot, cumshots notwithstanding.

Don't like the way that salarian general is treating his Krogan detainees?

Rape him.

Once you free the detainees? They will grovel at your feet and beg for your angry piston-like pelvic thrustings.

Rinse and repeat...throughout the entire galaxy.

It will be the game that makes Jack Thompson fling himself from a bridge in a fit of rage. Don't let me and the rest of the gaming community down, Bioware. You understand your mission now. Go forth and make it reality.

February 14, 2008

Everyone likes to think they’re smarter than everyone else. I admit to being one of the worst offenders of this, even though I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just that half of the time I feel like I am smarter than half of the people I deal with on a daily basis. Maybe it’s just because I’m an asshole. I’m not sure.

But this video clip skeeved me out. Mainly because a TV show exists that is titled “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader”. And because it’s hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, a guy who built his career on jokes about people with the collective IQ of a 5th grader: rednecks.

Nevermind that, though. I used to be somewhat of a fan of shows like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, mainly because our culture rewards us for knowing mostly useless trivia and facts, and I used to know a lot of mostly useless trivia and facts, as do most of the other folks who tune in to such shows. It’s something easy where John and Jane Doe can sit down and wrack their brains along with the people on the tee-vee and then mock the person for not getting the question right, while later cursing their life and asserting that they could have at least gotten to the $10,000 question if they ever had the chance.

This show, though, seems to be dropping the intellectual bar even further. Fuck it, are there even bars left? Is there really an audience for this sort of thing?

We have adults matching wits with fifth graders, here. Not to downplay the intelligence of the average fifth grader, but when I was a fifth grader, I thought that Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were the pinnacle achievements of filmmaking. In short, I was kind of an idiot, and so were most of my peers. Not much has changed in my mental hemisphere, but hey, I was a kid! I didn’t have to burden myself with anything except for school and first boners and falling off of my bike and things of that nature.

But the mere idea of having a TV show where people show up to get outwitted by a goddamn ten year-old kid just makes my blood run cold. It’s like we keep dipping lower and lower on the brain curve, and within ten years “Are You Smarter Than A Down Syndrome Teen” will premiere shortly after American Idol Season 356, where two different breeds of idiot can face off. Once the tard-wranglers can corral the one, they’ll roll out the opposing contestant, which will be whichever lucky obese translucent viewer they can fit through the cargo doors and shove up onstage without getting a hernia.

Whichever contestant wipes the food-flecked spittle from their chin first will be crowned the winner. Half the time, it will be the retarded kid, because at least they’re spry and blessed with tard strength.

And the whole “5th Grader” clip just feels forced and staged to me. Maybe it’s due to having been disconnected from television for so long or just general cynicism and knowing that half of this crap IS staged. Hell, it might even be that I don’t want to believe that people can be as dimwitted as the marginally attractive young lady featured onstage alongside Mr. Foxworthy. Either way, it seems bizarrely exploitative, cheap, and painfully boring – just another outlet where nitwits can tune in and feel better about themselves, because at least they’re smarter than that girl on TV who was dumber than a 5th grader.

January 25, 2008

Source Quote: (Source) TUCSON, Arizona (AP) -- A judge sentenced a woman to nearly the maximum prison term for negligent homicide after hearing a recorded jail conversation in which she made light of the bicyclist she killed.

Melissa Arrington, 27, was convicted two months ago of negligent homicide and two counts of aggravated DUI in connection with the December 2006 death of Paul L'Ecuyer.

She could have gotten as few as four years behind bars, but Superior Court Judge Michael Cruikshank sentenced her Tuesday to 10½ years -- one year shy of the maximum.

Cruikshank said he found a telephone conversation between Arrington and an unknown male friend, a week after L'Ecuyer was killed, to be "breathtaking in its inhumanity."

During the conversation, the man told Arrington that an acquaintance believed she should get a medal and a parade because she had "taken out" a "tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot."

Arrington laughed. When the man said he knew it was a terrible thing to say, she responded, "No, it's not."

Assistant Public Defender Michael Rosenbluth told the judge his client has never been "cold, callous or flippant" about L'Ecuyer's death and has always felt remorseful.

Arrington said words couldn't express how she feels, and that once she's out of prison, she hopes to share her story with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

L'Ecuyer, 45, was riding his bike the night of December 1, 2006 when Arrington swerved off the road, hit him and then continued for 800 feet before stopping, according to Deputy Pima County Attorney Jonathan Mosher.

Arrington's blood-alcohol content was .156 percent, nearly double Arizona's .08 legal limit. She had been driving on a suspended license for a prior DUI.

This might be my tree-hugging ex-cyclist hippie bias showing, but fuck these people. I’ve never understood the sheer invective people level towards cyclists. It’s nauseating and frustrating. I can’t count the number of times people have honked at me, screamed at me, called me names, and threw shit at me just because I was on a bike and dared to ride in the street. You know, where you’re supposed to ride. It annoyed the hell out of me, but I dealt with it. When you’re on a bike in L.A., you’re eye-to-eye with an understanding that one wrong move will get you mowed down by one of the Stepford Wives of Southern California, and I’m sure that it’s the same in other places as well. So you do your best to be a conscientious cyclist, and you end up being way too accommodating to people who are utter assholes to you for no good reason other than the fact that you’re a very minor obstacle. Sometimes you become a scapegoat for their anger at traffic. Maybe they channel their hatred of a driver that cut them off and aim it right at you. And it sucks.

But as a cyclist, you accept this and deal with it.

There are even stories where the dirty fucking hippie population and the cyclist population clash, like a bad dating show. Except this story involved an angry environmentalist strung chains across a rural road after bikers sped through on their Harleys one season and “disturbed the local ecosystem”. The guy was clotheslined by a chain at about 20-30 mph and died. From what I hear, the environmentalist wasn’t even remorseful.

What a dick.

It’s when someone’s hatred crosses that boundary and they start championing the fact that an innocent person died that I start to get really pissed off. I’ve read countless stories about cyclists being plowed over by drivers, even stories where a drunk driver sped down a bike path and killed a guy. It seems like our culture has an intrinsic hatred for cyclists – maybe it’s the idea of them, maybe it’s our culture’s hippie-hate manifesting itself once again, but either way, it’s sickening.

It’s doubly worse when some intolerant piece of shit throws in homophobia and ethnocentrism, and the offending party doesn’t even bat an eye. I know that I’ve mocked the deaths of people before, such as Jerry Falwell, Reagan, et al – but these were powerful, influential people who actively contributed to really fucked-up things in society. They were not some random guy on a fucking bike.

The woman should have had the book thrown at her due to DWUS (Driving While Utterly Shithoused) and killing a guy, but she nearly got what could amount to a slap on the hand. Personally, I’m glad the judge took their comments into account and sentenced her accordingly.

Yeah yeah, I know I've been slacking. I've been busy. And lazy. Lazybusy. I'll try and make up for it tomorrow morning, but I roped a pair of friends into seeing There Will Be Blood with me, and I really really really want to see it again. Since I haven't seen Ratatouille either, I figured we'd come back to la casa and watch that on the Gigantovision, and maybe I can coerce them into watching Brick as well. I fucking love that movie so hard.

I still haven't gotten to catch No Country in theaters again, but I keep swearing to myself that I'll see it once more before it bows out. Such a fantastic film.

Of course I need to set aside time to see Cloverfield and Rambo - Rambo's been getting really good reviews, and I'll be jazzed to see Stallone getting down two good movies in a row (yeah, Rocky Balboa was pretty great for a last hurrah) considering that dude hasn't had a good performance since Copland, which was horrifically underrated and proved that Sly can do more than just be muscular - even though he does that really well given his age.

January 20, 2008

I lied to a preacher yesterday at a memorial service in Crenshaw. He pointed to me and asked if I believed in God.

I just did a nervous half-nod. I didn't want to make waves.

Meanwhile, I'm finding politics during primaries season more and more stultifying. I just get sick of people howling about how their guy/gal is better and the other one's guy/gal eats poop and smacked a kid in third grade so you shouldn't vote for them. While primaries season is obviously important, the behavior of most political enthusiasts isn't that far removed from scoopers on internet gossip sites. While I'm not thrilled with the crop of Dem candidates, I absolutely can't stand the idea of any of the Republican dolts taking power. They're all just crazy as shit and seem to want to revert us to the age of snake-handling and Jesus-praising while torturing everyone who isn't white and shotgunning depleted uranium into poor kids' mouths. Even the least crazy candidate, McCain, has said and done things in the past that make me question his integrity as a potential leader.

Plus, he's like 94.

I don't want him to get into office and a year down the road suddenly - "HURRRRKNNNGGG* - he keels over from a heart attack after suddenly clutching the mantle in the Oval Office, or shrivels in his sleep, and then we're stuck with President Huckabee or Romney.

President Huckabee. It sounds like something from the Elks Club in Possum Ridge, Arkansas.(hat-tip to Bill Hicks)

And while Obama's a motivating personality and Hillary's a fairly resilient woman, I wish Edwards was way higher up on the totem pole. Unfortunately, when you make a career out of fighting corporate interests, it's hard to get people to stump for you in a presidential position.

Hillary just bothers the crap out of me though. While I feel a bit of sympathy for her due to the base misogyny leveled at her on a daily basis by brainless, doughy toadies like Chris Matthews and the idiots at FreeRepublic, her voting record and stances on many issues leave a lot to be desired. She's just way too much of a centrist(as is Obama, to an extent), and I grew tired of the people who wanted to offer an olive branch to the same assholes who are about to top off a near-decade of completely screwing up our country AND beating us over the head with sanctimonious religious bullshit until our heads were on the verge of bursting like in Scanners a long, long time ago.

Unfortunately, I feel a sense of desperation that I'm willing to vote for anybody that's marginally less fucked-up just to get rid of this current gang. I'd pick the guys from Jackass to run the country, for Christ's sake. At least Steve-O shooting rockets out of his ass on the 4th of July during a press conference on CNN would reek more of self-sacrifice than anything this band of douchebags could conjure up. I'm just so sick of the fake sympathy, the religious ass-kissing, the glorification of sheer stupidity, the hateful rhetoric towards everything that's not fat/white/American/Christian, the continued erosion of civil liberties, and the erosion of our country that I could violently puke clotted blood all over my desk on command like a Linda Blair reject.

What a fucking circus act.

And if another one of these bible-thumping Republican fucks manages to slither his way into office, Odessa and I are getting out of this country.

I made a big show of "we need to stick around and fight and take back what's ours" when Bush was re-elected, and the '06 elections - where we proceeded to kick some of these sons of bitches out of their cushy seats of power - were like a sexy beef-injection of hope, but now that everyone seems to have fallen into lockstep and we're still dealing with the same crap that we were before the '06 elections, I'm willing to say that this country is on the verge of jumping the shark. Again.

It's not defeatism, it's just realizing that a bunch of reality show-loving idiots who chew fast food like cud seriously might not have their best interests in mind despite all faith in the contrary. And I try to have faith in people, but I'll be damned if I'm not worried for the future of this place.

January 16, 2008

Bleh. Still trying to wake up. I'll leave you with this brief tidbit: Apparently FDR was an evil son of a bitch.

Take that, New Deal!

I can't wait until Glenn Beck finally gets shoved off the page for someone less hateful and moronic. Same with all of the other conservative hatepieces - just please, please push them to the side where they can spout their bullshit and rile knobby-kneed old white guys all over the South and Midwest, and get some more objective, sensible commentators in there. I don't give a damn about their political orientation as long as they bring some class back to political discourse.

January 14, 2008

Yes, I know the old stuff in the Writings section sucks - I was 17, be gentle. I'm thinking about switching out the old with some of the(relatively) new. I've been slacking off hardcore on writing anyway, so hopefully this will light a fire under my ass and get me to do more.

Also, the effect of emo kids on our culture has undeniably taken root, almost to the point that it has taken over weightlifting/exercise. I mentioned to someone that I was working out a diet plan for a serious cutting phase, and they asked me what was wrong. I started to say "I'm fat", but realized what they actually did there.

I reeeeeallly need to set aside some time to go see No Country For Old Men again before it leaves theaters. I'll probably follow that up with another viewing of There Will Be Blood, which was amazingly good and a great performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, but in no way did it shake NCFOM from its perch on my personal #1 of 2007 rating. Other than that, just looking forward to Cloverfield and (yeah, don't laugh) Rambo. I heard that the latter is actually way better than it has any right to be and very gory. Judging from the trailer on the innernets, I'll be there. At the very least, it'll be another good farewell to another one of Sly's franchises that has had its ins and outs - Rocky Balboa was a fantastic cap to the Rocky series and actually made me forgive IV and V.

Internet Meme That Needs To Die Now: LOLcats. They were better when they started off on a website that shall remain nameless due to anonymity and were referred to as "pictures of cats with amusing captions", but once icanhascheezeburger and LOLcats took over, the meme died and tons of unfunny morons the world around started systematically crowdfucking the corpse.

Hey, this blogging thing's sorta fun. Maybe I'll do it some more.

December 26, 2007

Homeless Abuse

Receiving from, I mean.

I was chilling out at the bus stop, listening to Yeasayer's "All Hour Cymbals" album (fucking great, check it out), and just trying to wake up before hopping on the cattle car to the cubicle farm.

I noticed a tall, wild-haired man loping down the sidewalk, making a beeline toward me. He had a slight wobble to his walk, and his jaundiced eyes basically telegraphed the fact that the guy was completely shithoused. I turned my attention back to the approaching traffic, paying him no mind. Moments later, I smelled the stench of sour beer, stale sweat, piss, and a twinge of vomit. Someone started yelling at me, and as I turned around I realized that it was the guy. He had a few inches and about 50 extra pounds up on me.

"You. You're not going to stop me. You're a demon, and I'm going to get rid of you."

Before I could even muster an incredulous "What?" he stepped forward and shoved me. I wanted to grab my shit and run, but I didn't have time. He came at me again, babbling and angry. I grabbed him by his shoulders, driving him backwards as I slipped my right leg behind his legs.

If he wasn't completely drunk, I would have been fucked.

Thankfully, his equilibrium was off from the booze, and I basically sat him down (very hard) on the pavement. I snatched up my stuff, yanked my cellphone from my pocket, and picked the local LAPD station number out of my list of contacts while getting the fuck away from this guy.

I made it to the other bus stop a few blocks away, completely out of breath. A dispatcher finally answered. I gave her the guy's physical description and where I last saw him as I leapt onto the bus. She stated that there was a cruiser in the area and they would do a quick run-through to see if they could pick him up. I thanked her and hung up as soon as she asked if I wanted to press charges, stopping to slather antibacterial hand wash all over my hands, forearms, and phone.

'Fuck that, I'm not going to press charges on someone who's obviously deranged and homeless', I thought. 'I'd just rather they hang onto him for a bit until he sobers up and chills out and doesn't attack anyone else.'

Needless to say, I had one hell of an excuse for being late to work this morning.