Bitter Old Punk

I Wonder How Many Sermons On The Evil Of Homosexuality He's Preached?

2008-05-16T16:13:00.006-05:00

Megachurch minister arrested in Texas for planning to have sex with 13-year-old.

Of course, it isn't the church's fault. I mean, they have 26,000 members and 40 ministers, who can keep up with all of them?

And I'm waiting for the tearful "we have all sinned" court appearance where he'll inevitably ask for forgiveness and seek compassion from his invisible sky wizard, and by extension, the jury.

It must be nice to go through life convinced that not only are you irreparably flawed, but that forgiveness is just a genuflection away. How that must relieve one of responsibility.

I'll bet money this guy will "minister" to other inmates while he's in.

Because he's a man of God.

*barf*

Cory Maye: A ReasonTV Recap

2008-05-16T10:41:00.004-05:00

I've blogged about this before, and now ReasonTV is covering the story, based on the admirable reporting of Radley Balko.

This story is a tragic example of how the Drug War ruins lives, for both the cops and the people they are supposed to be protecting.

Click the title for the link.

Plot of GTA V Revealed!

2008-05-11T17:32:00.003-05:00

Not really.

This is just what one rabid fanboy (me) think it should be. With a title designed to draw suckers into reading my blog.

OK, Rockstar always ups the ante with every iteration, right? And having built the game systems they can now squeeze out another one (a GTA IV.5, so to speak) like they did with III. So next year, I want to see a GTA game starring....

....Dwayne Forge's lesbian ex-girlfriend.

Think about it. Unless you haven't played the game, in which case you are excused and you should probably go here instead. Dwayne, the surly, chronically depressed ex-con who is crippled with self-loathing rivaled only by his disdain for the system that chewed him up and spat him out, is one of the best characters ever written into a video game. But he shouldn't be the main character -- that would be too close to CJ from GTA:SA. Dwayne is the Greek chorus of the game, and he should be on the sidelines in the next one. And by making the character a lesbian, Rockstar gets to mess with the heads of the player base, while addressing issues of sexism and gender and sexual freedom in a visceral way (rocket-propelled grenades = visceral).

So, here's my idea. Dwayne gets framed and jailed. Maybe he's sitting on Death Row. It's up to his ex, who has accepted herself and changed her life while Dwayne was inside, to free him. She follows a trail that leads from gangbangers to crooked cops to a conspiracy involving the highest levels of government. Remember, this game will take a couple of years to make, at which time we'll be deep into the corruption and treason trials of several key former Bush administration officials (a man can dream, can't he?).

I think it could work.

Sexist Radiohead T-Shirts

2008-05-10T13:12:00.004-05:00

At the Radiohead show in Atlanta Thursday night I was standing at the T-shirt booth and wondering just what kind of idiot would pay $40 for a t-shirt. Then my phone rang, and it was my friend Terry asking me to buy him a t-shirt.

"They're 40 bucks, dude," I said.
"I don't care. I want a Radiohead t-shirt."
"They're not all that great. They have slogans written on them. They don't even say they're Radiohead tour t-shirts."
"What do they say?"

I read a few of them to him. They were the kind of cryptic dyspeptic grumbling beloved by Radiohead fans. One, though, stood out. On a plain black t-shirt, in a font that mimicked the electronic CRT displays of the 80s, was printed: "I am trapped in my body and cannot escape."

"That's the one I want," Terry said. I should mention at this point that Terry is trapped in his body and cannot escape. He has inherited spastic paraparesis which has locked his muscles, stiffened his jaw, and left him nearly blind. For him to wear that t-shirt would be a truly blackly humorous form of performance art.

So I told the woman running the kiosk that that was the shirt I wanted.

"It's a baby tee," she said. "A girl's shirt."

"There's not one with that slogan on it in a men's size?"

"Nope. That one's for women," she said.

Wow. So the assumption there is that only women are trapped in their bodies. I understand that body image is a problem that disproportionately affects young women, but still. Also, it's a baby tee. One size: curvy and small. No fat chicks need apply. BBW who are trapped in their bodies will hafta choose a different shirt.

That's kinda sexist, Radiohead.

So I got Terry one that read: "You used to be all right. What happened?"

A Second-Hand Anecdote

2008-04-23T08:17:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine is a project manager for a software design firm, and regaled me with this story. This is as told, with only identifying details changed to protect corporate and individual identities:

So we're taking a tour of the data center at a financial institution that's contracted us to do some coding. As we're walking through their server room, the guy giving the tour gestures to a tall black box along one wall. "That's Big Bertha," he said. "We're not sure what it does or why it's here. And the last guy who knew the password died three years ago." We all laughed, but the guy was serious. "It was installed in the late 1980s, we know that much. And we kinda know what it does, because we've checked the data going in against the data coming out. But we're not sure that that's ALL it does, or even how it's doing it. We've lost all the documentation, and there's no one here left who was around when it was installed. Every bit of our data runs through it. When that box goes down, we're fucked. We keep a full bottle of whiskey in the break room so that when that box dies, we can all get drunk before they fire us."

Boy, talk about your "legacy systems". Did I mention that this is a financial institution whose job is keeping track of millions of transactions, all of which seem to get routed through the Mystery Box? I hope it runs for a while longer, because eventually people will start lighting candles before it and worshipping it like a god.

Cognitive Dissonance In The Snack Food Aisle

2008-03-17T15:48:00.003-05:00

The other day I went grocery shopping and my head exploded.

One of the first things you see on walking into my neighborhood Publix, right after you pass the seasonal display in the front, is a row of two-for-one bins. Crackers, mayonnaise, canned soups, and, today, chocolate chip cookies. Buy one, get one free. There's a variety available: chewy, white chocolate chunk, peanut butter, original. I examined a package more closely.

"REAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!" it declares.

Well, yeah. I don't see why that's worth stating, much less bragging about. Of course the package contains real chocolate chip cookies. If it were full of mousetraps, or geraniums, or something, it would probably state as such, too. But the implication is -- there are FAKE chocolate chip cookies out there, just waiting to tempt the witless, innocent cookie consumer. These are REAL, much better than those FAKE ones.

In the right hand corner of the package is a smiling chocolate chip cookie, replete with eyes and chocolatey eyebrows.

That cookie is obviously a fake.

So to advertise the realness of their chocolate chip cookies, the manufacturers have chosen a fake cookie. And they then thought it necessary to reassure them that the cookies were, in fact, real.

I think I may have drooled a bit, then.

I stood there stunned as an ox for a couple of beats.

And yes, then I bought the goddamned cookies. Two packages. They aren't very good, but they are indisputably real.

Planning A Long Trip?

2008-03-14T20:40:00.001-05:00

Google can help!

Watch Idiocy Unfolding In Real Time!

2008-03-04T16:29:00.002-06:00

Skipping the 20th century entirely, the Birmingham City Council will begin live online streaming video of their meetings next Tuesday.

Watch the sausage getting made here.

Sufferers, Rejoice! A Cure For Depression!

2008-02-22T14:48:00.003-06:00

...47...48...49...50...51...

Oh Larry, We're Shocked, Shocked

2008-02-19T21:11:00.002-06:00

So now John Katapodis has stated in sworn testimony that money from a computer charity (Computer Help For Kids) he ran with Langford went to pay a gay porn star.

Read it and weep. Tears of laughter and hot, hot shame.

Birmingham OLPC: LULZ FUXXORED D00DZ

2008-01-23T18:08:00.000-06:00

Aaaaaaaand we're off, with the national tech media beginning to pick up on the story of Birmingham's new mayor and city council managing to make epic fail from technology designed specifically for

the world's poorest children living in its most remote environments

That's from the OLPC website, which appears borked ATM, perhaps due to some recent troubles. Irony? You're soaking in it.

WhineFest '08

2008-01-23T17:15:00.000-06:00

The economy's in the crapper, we're bogged down in a war we can't win, and now I need a real estate agent, a lawyer, an accountant, and a bunch of other besuited parasites designed to rid me of my money under the aegis of "consulting".

Mom was confused and irritable all day, demanding that I take her "home", that I "go find the cat she left at the other house" and that I give her her car keys back if I was just gonna ignore her, dammit.

Hint: there's no other house, there's no other cat, and you haven't driven in over a year, you crazy old bat.

And it never stops. That conversation loops through her head all day, and it erases every ten minutes. So, every eleventh minute it's like SHAZAM! what a great idea she's had! And I hear it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

And then I lose my shit. "GODDAMMIT LISTEN TO YOURSELF ARE YOU CRAZY?" And she looks so lost and confused and hurt that I feel like the lowest scumbag to ever get lippy with his sainted mum.

I need a break.

It's A Miracle!

2008-01-06T21:18:00.000-06:00

Someone should sell this dog's ass on Ebay.

W00t! I Got Anonymously Quoted in New York Magazine!

2008-01-02T17:04:00.001-06:00

The Givewell debacle over on MetaFilter continues to snowball, and now New York magazine has picked up the story. One of their quotes was one of my snarks. Hooray, my spitefulness and vindictive behavior finally pays off! Well, not really. Since I didn't actually get, you know, PAID. Or attribution, either. Oh well.

Interesting that something I posted less than an hour ago was quoted online elsewhere within the hour, and I began blogging about it minutes later. The Internet is happening in real time, people.

Oh, Snap

2007-12-31T13:48:00.000-06:00

Hint to hedge-fund 20-somethings with scammy Internet charity sites: don't astroturf AskMetaFilter and expect to get away with it.

Heh. That's why I love that place. That, and the pancakes.

And you gotta figure that if the founders of that site are as unprincipled in person as they demonstrably are online, their "administrative costs" are probably sky-fucking-high.

Happy New Year, everybody!

I Don't Know Why This Is So Fascinating

2007-12-26T21:22:00.000-06:00

But it is.

Happy Horrordays!

2007-12-20T01:30:00.000-06:00

I'm fed up. I'm sick of this shit.

Our president is EVIL. And the Democrats are QUISLINGS.

I have nothing good to say.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

Got My Ass Handed To Me On Metafilter Today

2007-12-13T21:16:00.001-06:00

So someone threw up a lame one-link FPP about British women vs American women. The poster probably (surely, I'd bet money on it) saw it here.

Now, MetaFilter has been abuzz for weeks with a sexism meme (which has been accompanied by all sorts of tempest-in-a-teacup internet drama like long-time members resigning and thousand-post threads). I didn't contribute a lot to those threads. I followed them, and I think I made a couple of posts in one. But I was neither instigator nor propagator. Least, I tried not to be.

Anyhoo, I was contributing to this admittedly lame thread today and suddenly one of the mods yanks it. WTF? All we were doing was piling on the author of the linked article for being a shallow dumbass.

So, being a consummately moronic individual, I go and call the mod out in MetaTalk. You know, as I write this, it becomes more and more narcissistic and masturbatory and stinking of fail and overweening irrelevance that I may not continue.

Lemme take a breath.

Needless to say, I got torn a new one.

I may revisit this post and put down some more meat as to why I called the mod out on the deletion -- I mean, it's like the mere whiff of men talking women IN ANY CAPACITY is now verboten on MetaFilter, and that's not only stupid, it's patronizing and lazy.

But I hate to be lumped with the "I'd hit it!" sexist fuckwads, which is what would happen if I said that on MetaFilter.

And I think I'll frame the issue more clearly with a bit of sleep.

Consider this post a marker. More To Come. Wait With Baited Breath, All Three Readers.

Don't Try The Marijuana!

2007-12-08T17:50:00.000-06:00

How To Understand Punk Rock

2007-12-04T23:21:00.001-06:00

If you like this, you'll like punk rock!

48 Seconds

2007-12-03T14:22:00.000-06:00

...is how long it takes a Texas cop to go from pulling a car over speeding to shocking the driver with a taser.

The cop, who according to online records was hired by the force in 1994 and as of the time of the stop in November 2006 had risen to the lofty rank of corporal, one whole pay grade in 12 years, which probably tells you all you need to know about this dingus, starts off by being an asshole and then find s a whole new gear of "violent asshole" when the driver actually complains about being pulled over for doing 70 in a 65. Oh, and it's a white male cop tasing a black woman who's only other offenses besides a rinky-dink speeding charge seems to be that she didn't have a socket set to attach her rear tag, she had to fumble in her purse for her license and proof of insurance, and oh yeah, she's black and in Texas.

I shouldn't post stuff like this. It's pointless. It just jacks up my blood pressure and makes me angry and sad.

Do cops not understand that THIS IS WHY EVERYONE HATES THEM? Do they not get that a speeding ticket and an illegal tag is not grounds for ENDANGERING SOMEONE'S LIFE?

It used to be that when I'd see a cop, I'd be mildly annoyed and irritated. Now when I see a cop I'm actually afraid of getting tased, beaten, shot, or worse. That may be completely irrational. But I'm sure I'm not alone.

I'm sure it's tough to be a cop. They have risky jobs that make them do unpleasant things to unhappy people. I get that. But the attitude of cops toward the people that they have sworn to serve and protect frightens me.

If You Hate The Hold Steady, Skip This

2007-11-25T00:00:00.002-06:00

Someone please tell me why I should hate this band. Beside the fact that they do everything wrong: derivative licks, pretentious lyrics, frat-boy posturing.

I wish I hated this band. But I am not cool enough to hate this band. I love this band. I love the way they find that expansive big riff that carries the song. I love the way they shamelessly worship gesture rock. I love the way they sound like Social Distortion meets Molly Hatchett while The Fall mediates the peace talks.

I'd like to see them tour with the Drive-By Truckers, so folks could see side-by-side what a trying-to-sound-like-a-rock-band band sounds like next to a real rock band.

There's a deep sad irony in why Lucero and DBT aren't the shit yet The Hold Steady manages to garner significant press. Don't get me wrong: I love this band. Like, I play "Arms and Hearts" over and over again. I love 'em. But they have copped that hipster pose that allows them to ape authenticity without having the responsibility to back it up. DBT backs it up. And Lucero is simply too good for people to grasp until the band dies horribly or saves a baby from a well.

Leach the irony from a Hold Steady song, add pedal steel, better songwriting, and a Southern drawl and you have the Drive-By Truckers.

But DBT has been honing their craft in bars for 20 years, and The Hold Steady arose from the remains of Lifter Puller (an admittedly pretty good band)....like, Tuesday.

DBT actually thinks that there's a vernacular rock and roll that matters to people. They still exist at the locus of rock, R&B, country, and blues. The Hold Steady sees that as a pose and tries to take something from the dead parts and build a zombie out of it.

Both approaches have merit. Guys go for looks, girls go for status. That's hard to argue with.

Mass Effect: Further Impressions

2007-11-23T14:16:00.000-06:00

I had about ten hours of game play done and I kept getting my avatar's ass whipped and I realized that I was fundamentally DOING IT WRONG so I deleted all my save games and started over. Yeah, I know. But isn't that how other people play RPGs? You're not committed to that first game, right? It's just for experimental purposes, to try stuff out. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway. Playing as a female vanguard instead of a male infiltrator, and enjoying the combat much more -- it's really fun to cast warp into a crowd of enemies and watch their knees buckle as they collapse to the ground. Whipping through the early plot points with the intent of getting the Normandy and accumulating as many paragon points as possible in the process, I also have taken the time to pick up a lot more Citadel quests. I thought I'd explored pretty thoroughly the first time through, but there was more to see and do.

I've scanned 20 of 21 keepers, and have no idea where the last one is (yes, I found the one in the docking bay and the one on the balcony behind the bar near the embassies). Wrex killed Fist, and I chided him for it. Garrus and the quarian have joined the team. I haven't picked up one p[arty member yet, and by the outline, I'd say it's an asari female. Don't know when she'll appear. I hope I haven't someone permabanned her by turning down a branching plotline inadvertently. I'm trying to finish all the Citadel quests before going forth to explore the galaxy, my thinking being I'll have more skillz at a higher level than I did before, so the combat should be a little easier. Or maybe I'm just a n00b who can't figure out the subtle nuance of Mass Effect's combat system.

Mass Effect: Initial Impressions

2007-11-20T13:06:00.000-06:00

Can't talk, playing Mass Effect.

I'm about three hours in. Haven't gotten command of the Normandy yet. Exploring Citadel Station and finishing the prologue. I hope that's a true indicator of the scope of the game: more than three hours to finish the prologue.

Here's my first take, which will of course change as I figure the game out and get deeper into it:

This is KOTOR on steroids. That's a good thing and a bad thing. The good: buckets of plot in which to wallow, the best NPC-conversation system yet devised, and a rich backstory that makes you feel like you're starring in a 1980s science fiction movie. The bad: talk talk talk talk talk talk, I still feel constrained by invisible walls, squad members get in my way when trying to select objects or talk to NPCs. Also, the tutorial-to-handholding ratio is weirdly skewed. There's an acre of text telling me how to use the (simple and intuitive) mission computer, but not a word anywhere about how decryption works, exactly.

The combat is odd, but fun so far. It's easy to pause the action and issue squad commands, but the targeting (or absence of) is weird, I haven't figured out how to use the sniper rifle yet, and I'd like an indicator in my HUD telling me how many medkits I have available.

Visually the game is gorgeous, and the pop-in and frame-rate stutters that other reviewers have mentioned don't seem that bad. I've yet to see the game really rev up for a big boss battle yet, so that may change.

Thoughts so far: do you like words? Lots of words? Spoken, displayed, and scrollable words? Yes? Then you'll like this game! I'm enjoying it, but I can see how people with less patience would toss away the controller. I'm looking forward to seeing how the world opens up after I get command of the starship.

Country Music Sunday

2007-11-18T16:14:00.000-06:00

Been feeling rootsy.

Here's what's scratching the itch these days:

Dale Watson
Bobby Bare Jr.
Bradley Walker
The Meat Purveyors
Kelly Hogan (she usta be in the Jody Grind!)

I'm even rockin' rootsy:

Two Cow Garage (Warning: MySpace link)
Matt Mays and El Torpedo
The Sadies
Scott Miller and the Commonwealth

Next week I'll be back to the usual screamin' rawk, but for right now, on a gray Sunday afternoon, nothing suits the mood better than Dale Watson. Why is this guy not the biggest star in country music? Oh, that's right. Because country music isn't country anymore.