Goddamn Liars
Posted: August 31, 2012 Filed under: douchebaggery, stupidity, weird 4 CommentsPart of my work involves testing and trouble-shooting bar code labels. Every time I print a test label, I get 2 labels on either side of the label that are printed witht the words ‘BLANK LABEL’ in big letters… to which I want to answer, “No, it’s NOT a blank label…”
The world is full of goddamn liars.
Hello Kitty
Posted: August 14, 2012 Filed under: consumer, crass commercialism, weird 8 CommentsUp until today, I never knew who ‘Hello Kitty’ was. I still don’t know very much; I only read the first paragraph of her wikipedia page. I have seen her image on shirts, hats, shower curtains, backpacks, etc., like I have seen ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’ on hats, t-shirts, etc., but I had this idea that ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ was a ‘real’ character (insofar as he seemed to have some sort of ‘existance’ as a fictional cartoon character outside of being a reason to sell merchandise, and, one might argue, the popularity of the cartoon helped sell the merchandise). As far as I could tell, there was no cartoon behind ‘Hello Kitty.’ ‘Hello Kitty’ seems to have existed in order to sell stuff first, and THEN they made the cartoons, comic books and video games. Which seems pretty backwards but maybe it’s just post-postmodernity in action.
Didja know you can get a ‘Hello Kitty’ AK? They also make a Hello Kitty AR15.
What is this blog for?
Posted: August 1, 2012 Filed under: blogs, douchebaggery, stupidity, weird Leave a comment
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| At least one of these rounds is going through my foot. |
What is this blog for? I used to write here about gamey-dork-type things, and I plan on continuing to do that as the mood strikes me. For example, we will be playing another session of our DCC campaign next week which will probably eventually be preserved here for posterity’s sake (see links to session 1, session 2, etc., at right).
I’ve never been much of one for writing ‘state of the hobby’ or ‘here is what you should be worrying about if you care about the game industry’ and similar stuff. That just doesn’t interest me and there are plenty of blogs that fill that niche.
I used to write what some people would describe as ‘political rants’ (I saw them more as ‘social commentary from my perspective’) and probably still will, even though doing so seems pretty pointless. I’ve given up on the idea that the internet is a good method of ‘winning converts to your point of view in order to make the world a better place.’ (if that is even possible — I put it in italics to show you that I typed it with a smirk on my face). Whenever I go off on a ‘political tear’ I end up feeling like I was either preaching to the already converted or telling people who were never going to agree with me what I thought. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to fire off an angry screed now and again; an esteemed author of many angry screeds, Gore Vidal, died today, so I kind of feel like being a crank puts me in good company, but I don’t fool myself into thinking that these cranky rants are anything more than me blowing of steam or holding forth on a topic I am interested in to a mostly indifferent audience. I also think I’ve become more fatalist in the past few months; I used to believe that if you selected your positions carefully and then attempted to argue with honesty, people might find something interesting in what you had to say. And I no longer believe that the vast majority of people have the ability to accept anything that does not fit their preconceived notions as anything other than ‘incorrect thinking.’
I suppose I’ll also use the blog keep writing about my own projects and stuff. How much time I am able to spend on those projects (and spend writing about them) has been greatly cut back because of my new job, but you gotta do what you gotta do in this world to pay your bills, and, sometimes spending too much time ‘blogging’ about doing rather than doing something feels like being a hamster on a wheel — a lot of activity that fails to go anywhere.
(speaking of potentially political posts, “zombies” showed up when the Westboro Baptist Cult had yet another one of their almost constant protests where they shouted how “God hates Fags” and whatnot. If there was ever anything that left and right could agree upon in America, it is that WBC is loathsome. I like to picture a zombie shambling up to one of the Westboro cultists, biting into their skull and finding a tiny, shrunken walnut of a brain inside that even the undead find inedible.)
U-Con?
Posted: July 31, 2012 Filed under: project, weird 5 CommentsI think I have been to 3 cons in about 40 years… and for one of them, I went to support a friend who was premiering a video at the con (I was in it — I was the guy who got stabbed through the eye socket with a crowbar in one scene and stabbed through the chest in another scene — that was fun). But U-Con will be happening in Ann Arbor on the weekend of October 28th… Ann Arbor is just a short drive away… and someone I have done some illustration work for (Goodman Games) has asked me if I want to go to the con and run a few games as an event to help promote DCC stuff. He’s a good guy and I want to do him a good turn, so I am seriously considering it — but I just never really liked ‘cons’ much like I never really liked going to the local comic book shop.
Maybe I have the wrong idea about them (cons)?
Maybe it will be different if I have a ‘task’ there?
What the Pluck?
Posted: July 30, 2012 Filed under: politics, weird 8 Comments |
| Is this chicken going to grill himself? |
People are getting agitated because the crusty old bastard who owns ‘Chick-fil-A’ opposes same sex marriage (or, in his words, he supports the “biblical definition of a family”). (If either one of my two readers is not from the US, ‘Chick-fil-A’ is like McDonalds, but they serve breaded chicken patties on a bun instead of beef. The name is pronounced, “Chick-Filet.”) As far as I know, Chick-fil-A has not refused to hire gay people and has not refused to let gay people eat their crappy food. But people from both sides are mad anyway.
Smart ads that are not
Posted: July 28, 2012 Filed under: consumer, crass commercialism, douchebaggery, stupidity, weird 2 CommentsSo I was looking at an online story about that dude who threatened to shoot up his coworkers and had a bunch of guns at home this morning and check out the ‘smart ads’ that popped up:
Ads for bullet proof vests and armor plate embedded in a story about someone who apparently threatened to duplicate the Aurora theater shooting? I don’t know if the content server’s analytics are genius or shit… I mean, reading about someone shooting up the movie theater or workplace might make me want to buy body armor, on the other hand, if I were to be in the bullet proof vest business, do I really want customers associating me with people who go ballistic (oops a pun) and shoot their coworkers or fellow movie watchers? Probably not.
This may be the worst book I have ever (tried to) read
Posted: July 17, 2012 Filed under: books, weird, zombies 4 Comments |
| I might read this Kilgore Trout book. |
I got a free download for my Kindle of William Bebb’s novel, “Valley of Death, Zombie Trailer Park.” I don’t know who William Bebb is, but a quick search of wikipedia tells me that “William Bebb” was a whig who served as the 19th Govenor of Ohio and died in 1873. Something tells me that ‘Zombie Trailerpark’ was not written by the same William Bebb.
A few posts ago, I opined that if one wanted to write a shitty book, one way to stack the odds in your favor on this quest of ‘shitty bookness’ is to write a zombie novel. And I think ‘Zombie Trailerpark’ could serve as exhibit A if one wanted to prove that proposition. Despite its 5 star rating on Amazon, Bebb’s book is pretty damn bad.
I haven’t managed to read the whole thing. I have pretty low standards — it’s not all Gogol and Shakespeare on my bookshelf — but I enjoy my pulp and genre fiction (and even manage to read them without having to assume an ‘ironic post modern manner’ — I sometimes read shitty, lowbrow genre novels because I sometimes LIKE shitty, lowbrow genre novels). But “Valley of Death” failed to amuse. After a few pages, I kept reading because I didn’t believe that a book could be so bad. I wasn’t laughing WITH it or AT it — it was like watching a literary car crash — I was reading with disbelief. I think I got about 1/2 way through when I threw in the towel.
I previously thought that “The Cannibal Within” by Mark Mirabello had to be the worst book I ever failed to finish reading… and I might have read more of ‘The Cannibal Within’ if the Kindle edition I had of it had not had so many formatting problems that it was close to impossible to read simply because it was entertaining in a ‘John Waters Pink Flamingos meets Richard Shaver’ kind of way. And, despite the worship heaped at the altar of Lovecraft, his prose is pretty awful… which doesn’t stop me from enjoying it (on the contrary, the ridiculous piling on of adjectives can be delightful — and, no, I don’t make any claims for my own skill as a writer).
Weekend Work
Posted: July 15, 2012 Filed under: art, weird Leave a comment
Several years ago, we were at a street art fair and Annie fell in love with the sculptures of Andrew Carson. we talked about buying one for years… it wasn’t until recently that actually making the purchase became realistic.
The sculpture is custom made (variations on a design, each one is slightly different) and is made of brass, hand-blown glass, steel, copper, etc. There are 13 different pivot points on the thing, it’s really much more like a cross between a mechanical bird and a weather-vane than anything else, and when the breeze is blowing it spins and twirls, so still photos don’t do it justice. Right now it’s bastard hot and the air is still; I’m waiting for a windy day; maybe I can get a video of it in motion with my cellphone. It doesn’t make any sound (at least none that I can hear); it just spins.
I just spent a part of yesterday and part of today installing it. The artist shipped it out in a series of big boxes that arrived via UPS — the curvy stand was wrapped from top to bottom in packing material and the rest was disassembled and packed in boxes. I sunk a concrete footing about 2 feet deep x 18 inches wide with threaded bolts embedded in it and the stand bolted to that. The rest was fairly easy to put together with an allen wrench and a box wrench — it was 90% assembled, one just had to attatch the wings, the fan, etc. Actually unpacking it was harder than assembling it. I think the threaded rods on the base poke out too much and may want to eventually cut them down; Annie thinks that the grass will make it a non-issue.
I haven’t measured it, but I am guessing it is about 9 or 10 feet tall from the ground to the little red arrow-thingy at the top.
Artist removes halo, adds blue ribbon
Posted: July 15, 2012 Filed under: crime, douchebaggery, stupidity, weird 5 CommentsOK, there is this mural of all sorts of important people including Joe Paterno in downtown State College PA. The artist who painted the mural added a halo over Joe’s head after Paterno died earlier this year. Now that it has come out that Paterno was apparently aware that Sandusky was abusing kids and protected the molester (or, at very best, failed to act on the reports or allow others to intervene), the artist has painted the halo out again. He also added a blue ribbon to Paterno’s coat in the mural.* I was not aware of this, but apparently a blue ribbon means you support the victims of child sexual abuse.
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| Artist Michael Pilato working on the mural |
I don’t have a horse in this race, being uninterested in football, not a victim of sexual abuse** and not a Penn State fan, but, seriously, what the fuck? Isn’t adding a blue ribbon to the image of Paterno kind of adding insult to injury since he helped keep Sandusky in a position where Sandusky could keep molesting kids? Isn’t that “accessory to the crime” or “conspiracy to conceal a crime” territory?
The whole colored ribbon thing starts to make me suspicious anyway since it seems to be a way of looking like you are doing something without doing something. I mean, I guess I can stick a yellow ribbon on the back of my car and it means I want you to know I support the troops or pin a pink ribbon to my lapel and it means I want you to know I support breast cancer research — and maybe that’s helpful because it might spread awareness of the cause. But the cynical side of my nature thinks that it can also be a ‘heart on my sleeve’ gesture done primarily to show others that “I’m a swell person who cares about this cause so you should like me.”
I think there ought to be a special color of ribbon for people who knew someone else was doing something really fucked up and they had the power to stop it but decided not to do anything about it. And that’s the color of ribbon that ought to be painted on the portrait of Paterno (and a good portion of the Catholic clergy) and other people who look the other way.
It’s fine to have heroes, I guess, and if you love Penn State or “Paterno-ball,” then maybe you will want murals and statues and libraries named after him. But please don’t try to imply that he was ‘sympathetic to the cause’ of preventing child sex abuse by painting a blue ribbon on his lapel like some kind of a medal. He wasn’t. Paterno chose football and the school’s image and his friendship with Sandusky and the fact that he probably didn’t want to deal with a scandal over protecting the kids of people he didn’t know from sex abuse. He shouldn’t get to wear the blue ribbon.
* Apparently Sandusky used to be in the group portait and was painted out. Source.
**Yeah, I’m against it — who isn’t? I just can’t claim the cause has greater personal resonance for me than many of the other ways in which humans fuck one another over.