Entries Tagged 'Bullshit' ↓

Excellence in schools is a lie. Every year I get a card that declares how well my old school is doing in all areas. Excelling, the top rating, in all seven categories. But I’ve seen the recent grads. They don’t know shit. What they do know is how to take the AIMS test and Stanford 9. They spend more time on standardized test practice than any actual lessons, and if it’s not on the test, they don’t get taught that particular piece.

I watched the flailing of the initial few years of the AIMS test, the panic because it seemed like a test with a breadth to the questions rather than the predictable Stanford 9. Almost everyone failed it. Only three people in my high school passed it, in fact, in those first few years. Clearly the need to fix the curriculum would be put front and center, to really start teaching students to understand, not parrot back an answer.

Arizona chose an alternate solution. It made the test easier and gave the questions and answers out ahead of time, so teachers knew what to drill into students. After all, higher scores mean more money for the school. Sure the student doesn’t learn a damn thing, sure they’re getting kids who can’t even make it into community college and will struggle to keep up at a minimum wage job, but they get more money! Alternately the best and brightest have become so fucking bored with the whole thing in freshman year they drop out or fail most of their classes, purely because they can’t be arsed to pay attention or bother due to a feeling of absolutely disenchantment, leaving them eventually as new college students in their late twenties after they get sick of working minimum wage or no jobs thanks to the economy.

Ahem.

Every year, I get that card. Every year it claims absolute excellence. Every year the parents I talk to of students in that school vehemently disagree, and every year the high school board says “We’re doing great! Keep it up!”, despite the human cost.

Nice work, assholes.

That’s not a bad thing, the way I see it. It’s just hilarious. I’m watching Idiocracy on cable right now, and while the words “fuck you”, “fag”, “faggot”, and “fucker” are all censored. Fleeting expletives especially, which have previously gotten some protection, are censored.

Yet written on screen in bright letters, the unprotected sexual usage of the word fuck is used, for “Buttfuckers” restaurant.

Maybe we should just stop being so stupid as to censor in the first place, but if we’re going to do it, maybe we shouldn’t get it hilariously wrong?

Then again, maybe the network went with the premise of the movie and assumed the audience is filled illiterate ‘tards.

Textbooks. How did these things manage to reach such a high price and have it be considered somehow acceptable? I think my favorite teacher is now the one who went with an older edition of the book for a simple, honest reason. “It’s cheaper. Way cheaper.”

I dread the fact an upcoming class is using a brand new textbook. I know it’s going to cost me a saolid $150 at the very least. Any other book from an expert on any subject would cost me $30 for a new hardcover on the high end, yet a dry, poorly written tome costs $100 or more? I cannot fathom the reason we still use these things. Airport and jury duty food don’t get the markup a roast beef sandwich does at college. I’ve spent plenty of time at both, I’m well aware of the prices at all three of these locations, and of the three, the most expensive place is the one where people are least likely to have a single quarter to spare, much less $4.95 for a thin slice of beef with a bit of lettuce.

Seltzer and Friedberg are doing another movie in 2011. What, you ask? Space Nuts. Yep, it’s a Star Wars parody, most of the content taken from trailers as usual, and the rest simply stolen from Space Balls. I’m writing my congressman now to create a law that allows Mel Brooks to murder the pair for ripping off and destroying his material (as well as comedy at large).

And the proof is here. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer still have careers. After the generally bad Date Movie, followed by the very bad Epic Movie, 2008 got a double dose of shit in the form of Meet the Spartans and Disaster movie. Most people didn’t seem to be aware of how bad the former would be, tricked by the movement away from the naming convention, though as a firsthand witness via video store, everyone over 14 realized it was an absolute shitpile. Disaster movie flopped, rightfully so, as people now understood how bad it would be.

Friedberg and Seltzer have 3 of IMDB’s bottom 100, and it’s about to become four. I’d say they’re the Ed Wood of parody, but a bad movie that takes itself seriously can be enjoyed for the lack of quality and heartily mocked. A bad comedy has to fight to be heard over the horrible jokes, and they drag the whole thing down. Even the Mystery Science Theatre treatment can’t make it worth the time. As Tim and Eric prove every show (intentionally, so they claim), you can’t tell good jokes over bad jokes. The pacing falls, the distraction kills it all. A bad joke can be used as a joke, but only when it’s lampshaded. You might as well perform Shakespeare in front of Grey’s Anatomy.

Just as Grey’s Anatomy can be summarized per episode easily (Tub soliloquy, medical thing, dramatic surprise, someone has sex, someone cries about having had sex the week before, the patient dies or routine operation goes horribly wrong in a way that doesn’t make sense, tub soliloquy), Friedberg and Seltzer can be predicted. All you have to do is watch trailers for big name movies (that’s all they do, as they’ve admitted), throw some parts together, add some extreme violence, and between points ripped from movie trailers, add random celebrities. Oh, and make sure to assume your audience is incredibly stupid (actually, this might be a good idea for the duo) by announcing specifically who and what every single reference is to. Name every character, celebrity, pop culture reference shoved in, and object in the background. Otherwise they won’t get it.

tl;dr, fuck Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox.

What is it about that last hormone blast that makes so many teenage boys start the wrong shit with the wrong people by reacting the wrong way?

I was at a great party Saturday night, and aside from about five minutes, everything went great. But for 30 seconds someone didn’t follow the rules, a potential fight got broken up, and then the four friends of the teenager in question tried to keep it going. They got swarmed by around 30 people in a half second, continued yelling for 10 seconds, then realized that it was a very, very bad idea to start a fight amongst a group of people that fights amongst itself regularly for fun.

On the upside, maybe they learned they’re not invincible. Probably not.

It turns out beyond being a major crazy player in the Tea Party doesn’t do it these days to get traffic. You have to manipulate the SEO too. I know, shocking, right?

Now it’s one thing, of course, to use normal meta tags. Only these aren’t meta tags. Mark Williams, writer of the “colored people letter to Lincoln” and leader in the Tea Party Express, has done the same thing you see on shady shady websites. Text hidden by Javascript or simply slapped down to size 1 font blended with the background, with clearly politically related text like “Buy Adobe CS4″, “Windows 7 Ultimate License”, and “Download Macromedia Software.” Yes, they’re sales/piratey terms, spamming up the page. BEFORE the actual content. Really. Header image, SEO bait, crazytext.

Naturally, Mark Williams has not responded to the questions about why he feels the need to do this, and why he doesn’t consider it unethical.

Edit:In the interest of fairness, I’m finding out if this was intentional, or if it was a hack. This could be someone attacking his site, him setting up an “I’m a victim of the liberals!” play, or a genuine attempt to get more traffic through deceptive keywords. But we’ll find out soon! Well, probably not, because I think the odds are a declaration of “It was an attack!” is assured, no matter what it was.

There’s lots of ways to rent textbooks, and hopefully more digital options, because seriously, Coursesmart.com is awful. The online version contains intrusive watermarks and horrid proprietary formatting. You can’t copy and paste normally, when you use the copy/paste commands on the interface there’s random spaces inserted in the text, you can only print 10 pages at time, and when you click “next page” you end up at the bottom of the next page rather than the top.

To get an offline version of the book you have to use proprietary software and formats once again. Watermarked, time-limited PDFs are neither complex nor expensive to automate, so why stick with the shitsoft?

Oh, and there’s this failure of the digital medium. “Actual size” doesn’t work well particularly when you can zoom in and out of text and images. So, which is right?

Neither! Or either! Or both, if you change the zoom level and your resolution and the size of your monitor works for the demonstration!

I’m not sure who’s to blame, whether it’s a person or a group of programmers, but whoever decided years ago that AOL Instant Messenger is so important a new message window should always pop up and take control must be killed.

It’s been 13 years now since AIM was intially released. I know it’s expected for it to have sucked back then, afterall, it’s AOL. It’s been long enough to NOT do this. But no, despite all the version changes, despite total overhauls of protocols, despite “Triton”, despite the fact now there’s one unified IM window…god help you if you leave AIM on without something already open, because when you’re on a Team Fortress 2 hot streak, when you and Sandvich are destroying everyone assaulting your base, someone will send you a message.

AIM will decide nothing, NOTHING is more important than it is, and it will force any fullscreen app to close and take control of the keyboard.

Whoever made this decision must now be killed, and if I ever experience the joys of time travel, I will use it to prevent this decision from ever being made. Granted, depending on your theory of time travel and time the fact I’m typing this may mean I won’t ever do it, but causality can suck it I say.

Bionic Band has a little brother called iRenew. Yes, this is what happens when you combine snake oil and clueless marketers who claim to be experts in youth/popular culture. Probably the same one who gave us iSnack 2.0.

This time the claim is…hang on, let me try and remember. Oh, right, “BioField Technology.” How’s it work? Let me quote a review they paid for. “In truth, the commercial that demonstrates the balancing power of the bracelet can be considered a manifestation of a field that, to this day, still remains beyond our level of scientific understanding.”

So, it doesn’t. But it does use the same pitch and “demonstration.” Our frequencies are out of tune! We’re under attack constantly from radio waves! And energy! And OTHER HORRIBLE THINGS! Nevermind the fact that we’ve been bombarded by solar radiation and more from the first amoeba and developed things like melanin to deal with it. Fortunately, they have a cure, and you can even get it for plants and pets!

iRenew®’s proprietary, nano based BioField Technology™ not only improves the biofields of people but also can positively impact anything biological which includes the biofields of plants and animals as well.*

Yes, that asterisk IS the standard “This product has not been evaluated by anyone, ever, nor have the claims, and it does not cure treat or prevent any disease.

AKA, “It doesn’t actually do any of the things we’re implying it does.” The usual. But  because people read “nano” and presume it means something besides being on a molecular scale. These bracelets ARE certainly made of molecules. And just like Bionic Band, they claim to alter your frequency to its natural level. One by “aligning the motion of the nuclei of your atoms”, this one by…uh…well, they’re not sure. But somehow they manage to be MORE shady than the original by the fact they only have a P.O. box for mail and their email address is “iRenew@myorderstats.com.” Myorderstats.com. Because if there’s one thing in a domain name that screams “sincere and relaible”, it’s “My(anything).com/info/biz” instead of an actual domain like a respectable business/corporation has.

By the way, iRenew guys? The whole lower case letter “I” is for “internet.” Internet Mac, Internet Phone, Internet…pod. Okay, now it just means hipster, but it’s still used in relation to electronics. This is pretty far from it. This is some rubber and metal.

Now I’m sure someone will come and complain that this post is unfair and that iRenew really works. And to that person I say “Have you tried Alex Chiu’s Eternal Life Rings lately?” Really, the way I see it if you think increased energy is great, you should give immortality a try.