Entries from April 2010 ↓

Me? A big ol’ nerd slacker? Work at Hollywood Video? Oh yeah. That was the majority of the clerks at that chain, in fact. Slacker nerds who’d watch Justice League and The Lion King on the TV.

Because the company screwed us all over by withholding raises, constantly cutting hours, etc., two main things happened. One, people stole a lot of stuff. Mostly concessions, the irony being that if they paid us the extra dollar an hour they were supposed to, we’d have just bought the drinks. But they didn’t, and they never refilled the water cooler, so we just took them.

Second, we screwed off all the time. We made shit, messed with shit, and watched a lot of DVDs instead of cleaning.

One night, my friend Haru and I were bored and because the district manager was coming around a lot lately, we were limited on our viewing options. The official rule was nothing over PG, and nothing that’s not animated. We’d already seen enough Pokemon and had been watching Lilo and Stitch anyway, but we felt like a change.

“Hahaha, dude, look! Garfield and Friends! We should totally ironically watch this”, I declared. “Oh wow, yeah!” says Haru.

See, here’s the thing. As a kid, I really liked Garfield. Maybe it’s because I had the older collections, the ones with Lyman and Jon’s sad, sad life, and where Garfield was an exceptionally fat fuck who didn’t even stand on two legs. But I knew in retrospect, it was pretty bad. At least the show was. Hit or miss with the comics, I’ll say, to be nice and because hey, sometimes they were funny. Not so much these days.

And we made a sport of bad movies and TV there, because sometimes that’s all we had to watch.

Haru and I both ended up physically ill that night, so much so we almost had to close the store early. It started around 10-15 minutes in, just after one segment of Garfield and Friends followed by one US Acres. We turned it off, I got a pizza from the Little Caesar’s in the shopping center, and we were okay. Nobody else who came in that night got sick, before or after, even other employees who hung around a while, as we were all wont to do because it was a fun place when you’re not working.

Just the two of us, watchers of Garfield.

The lesson we learned is that TV really can be bad for you, but it’s the quality, not the quantity.

I was on the quick recall team (shocking, right?), and we were involved in a national tournament which combined quiz team aspects and future problem solving teams, the combined score determining the winner. In the first round, some serious shenanigans occured.

Future problem solving was a subjective event, a short presentation based on a prompt given with about 30 minutes prep time. Teams were scored in a wide amount of categories from one to three, with all twos being considered a very good score. Two judges on each side score the teams, averaging 15 points out of 30 total, if memory serves. And it may not, but that’s not important to the story anyway.

What does matter is that the total was not insignificant, enough so that the FPS team could easily be 1/3rd to 1/2 of the score total.

As you can guess, this honest judging wasn’t. The first round of scores came in, the team on my side getting 16 from our judges, 11 from the other judges. An oddly large gap, but nothing world-shattering. The other team’s scores came in. 15 from our judges, 29 from theirs. Threes, any of them, were very rare. So when the total score was 9 threes and a two, something obviously was wrong. So wrong that the other team was able to win by a single point.

The national association putting the event on decided the ruling would stand, but that because of this a new system would be implemented. The students, generally the best and the brightest of the schools, and usually the nerdiest, all agreed. Impartial judges should be picked, one from the places hosting the competitors (often the rounds were done by satellite, in a Kinko’s or such), one from the association. Three judges, all who should be impartial as they have no vested interest, and even if they were inexperienced in the judging, they’d be inexperienced in a fair way.

That was rejected.

Instead, the suggestion of my team’s coach, a woman the parents recognized for being anywhere from stupid to “fucking crazy,” was accepted. Her solution? Four judges per team. Because clearly four could never be biased where two are, certainly, right? And since they proportionally raised the scores, it could never become 60-30.

And thus, at the age of 12, I realized even the people we’re paying to be smart aren’t always going to be.

If you’re in Arizona, involved in politics, and your name is John or some form of it…you’re probably an asshole.

Jon “People living on unemployment are lazy because they have no reason to look for a job and unemployment pays more than a real job would” Kyl

John “It’s illegal to be an intern while Muslim” Shadegg

John “I’m not a maverick, really” McCain

John David “We’ll have to disagree on that empirical fact because I really don’t like gay people” Hayworth

John “The bill I cosponsored isn’t racist, because it prevents crime by checking who’s illegal after you arrest them for crimes they already committed, really” Huppenthal

I’m pretty sure this extends to Joes too, but the only person I can think of offhand is Joe “Everything I say is a lie” Arpaio. Joe, however, at least manages to redeem himself on the subject of animal rights, those other four are as bad as it gets.

All restaurant bathrooms must have an interior handle or a door that closes in two seconds or less.

You’ve already waited a while for someone to leave or for someone else to come back so your table isn’t left alone like nobody’s eating.

You shouldn’t have to wait 10-15 seconds to gamble on just going immediately and someone coming in (especially if it’s a one person bathroom and thus, no shielding between you and door) or waiting 15 seconds more and letting one slip out of the chamber.

If the door just locks with a deadbolt, that thing better close incredibly fast or have a way for me to yank it shut. No exceptions.

Hey there, Craigslist Spammer. You know what might help you get people? Being able to use “you’re” correctly, and not posting a link that’s an obviously scammy affiliate ID. website.info/media/kit/1.html&ref?=digits gives you away. So does “Click the one you like most”, I suppose, but the other two prettymuch do the job.

Looking for Strong Writers for Marketing (Phoenix)

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Date: 2010-04-24, 3:50PM MST
Reply to: FAIL

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If your a creative writer and your interested in working a career in Media/Marketing then your at the right place.
For more information and to apply for employment go to (link removed, naturally)
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100′s of Media/Marketing jobs/gigs available, just click on a link that best suits you

Do you spend an hour every day trying to look like you just woke up?

Yeah, fuck you.

(This post brought to you by the “MGMT is a really shitty band, and I hate people like their lead singer” fund).

It doesn’t have any previews, excessive animated menus, or other bullshit.

I actually didn’t see any trailers, but the whole affair is insert disc, press play. There’s one menu, which lets you hit the setup options, skip to a scene or…something else that’s bog-standard.

James Cameron, I applaud you. I put the disc in and was able to watch the god damn movie within 20 minutes for once. I wouldn’t mind trailers for other movies accessible from the main menu, but I’m fine without that too. Keep it up.

Every two years, Republicans complain that Democrats are fiscally irresponsible and driving us into debt. Yet it’s almost always under Republican-led governments debt hits record levels. Reagan’s Debt, Bush’s debt, both prime examples.

Now there’s another piece to add to the ironic puzzle. The RNC itself, the very committee run by Republicans for Republicans…spends more money than it makes.

Yes, that’s right, the RNC runs itself into debt. Apparently balanced budgets only matter when Democrats are in charge, even when it comes to your own committee.

I really enjoyed it when I saw it in theatres. But I was totally sad when it was over.

Is Avatar like drinking, you should avoid it when you’re already sad, or does it cheer you up? Or do you end up watching certain scenes over and over, wishing you were on Pandora, minus the potential for horrible death?

Only one way to find out. That is, if I can find a single store with a damn blu-ray left. Shit!