D I R K W O R L D

Comcast's Packaging Stupidity Goes To Xfinity and Beyond!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:08:00 +0000

I've had Comcast cable Internet service since 1999. Love it other than that one time storms knocked out my service for over two weeks. That I did not love.

Running Speedtest.net shows I'm getting almost 24 Mbps down and 2.2 Mbsp up. I just downloaded an almost 200 MB video driver package in about 75 seconds. Compare that to the three hours it took to download the ~36 MB Half-Life demo on dial-up or the 12 hours the Kingpin demo took. (If it wasn't for a program called GetRight that allowed downloads to be resumed after hanging up and reconnecting, I could have never downloaded it.) Cable is hella fast. My girlfriend has 1.5 Mbsp DSL at her place and I cry whenever I need to download something there.

A couple of weeks ago I got a note from Comcast that they were upgrading the service and I'd need a new modem. I'm on my third modem in 12 years, I believe. They've done an upgrade once and I think one died or something. Regardless, I needed a new new modem for whatever reason. I called them up last week to send it out. The nice operator mentioned that a "return kit" would be sent to facilitate return of the old busted junk. I still have the OG modem I got in '99 someplace. I never dropped it back with them.

Tonight, I came home to find this box in my apartment hallway:

It's approximately 2' x 2' x 1'. (It wasn't opened; I went back to shoot this sequence when I really what sheer f*ckery was afoot.) I saw it was from Comcast and got confused. A modem is about the size of a small book. What's with this giant box?

I cut it open and this is what was inside:

Hmmm...that's a lot of air. The small white box was about 8" x 10-1/2". The note was to tell me that this was for my old modem to be sent back in.

Well then, what's in the....hold on, say it like Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en: "What's in the baaaaaahksss??"

A small glossy folder with various manuals and paperwork for the new modem. Instructions on the lid which basically say, "Plug stuff in. All done!" Let's take a look under that top cardboard layer, shall we?

Huh?

Listen, I'm not a big enviro-whacko who harps on about recycling and whatnot, but my practical nature has always been peeved by needlessly large packaging. I used to wonder why Al Gore didn't crusade against the big boxes of air that the CD jewel case with the software on it came in instead of trying to scare us with fairy tales about the ManBearPig? This is nuts.

In this large box was (clockwise from upper-left):

The modem.
Ethernet cable and two lengths of coaxial cable - short for when your computer is close to the wall jack and long for if it's not. I suppose just leaving the long cable rolled up if you're close was less practical than providing a second, shorter, cable. (Note: Sarcasm.)
Wall wart power adapter.
Cable splitter, in case you needed to feed a TV box as well as the modem.
A bag of cable tacks to secure a long run of cable to your baseboard strip.

Here's what everything in the small big box inside the big big box amounts to:

The white box is the return box. If you're thinking that everything they sent would fit inside that box, you're almost right. The size of the coil of coax means the box would need to be an inch deeper, but otherwise IT ALL FITS!

That's right, folks! Comcast could have sent everything I needed in a box 8" x 10-1/2" x 3-1/2" or 294 cubic inches. How large was that UPS shipping crate that greeted me in my hallway? Approximately 6,912 cubic inches or about TWENTY-FOUR (24) TIMES AS LARGE AS IT NEEDED TO BE!!! It weighs almost nothing, but UPS had to eat up four cubic feet of truck space to deliver about one-sixth a cubic foot of contents. Properly packaged, they could put 24 of these modem kits in the same space as my one jumbo box. Un. Real.

I don't know what Comcast's stock is worth or their market cap or anything like that and I don't care. But how fiscally sane can they be when they do such idiotic things such as this?!? Why couldn't they just send out the right-sized box and say, when you're done emptying this one, toss your old junk back in and slap on the mailing label over the old one? Madness!

All We Hear Is Amazon Blah-Blah (Not Lady Gaga)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:58:00 +0000

As a sales gimmick, Amazon's MP3 store offered Lady Gaga's new album, Like a Monster, er, Born This Way for the princely sum of...wait for it...99 cents! That's right, for the price of a Value Menu item you could get the new album from the Mother Monster. (BTW, this "monster" stuff is stupid bordering on retarded.) What could go wrong?

Plenty.

As irate customers flooding the reviews area with one-star reviews testified, the problem wasn't the music, but the inability to get it in a timely manner. When I purchased it around 11:30 am, I saw people complaining, but figured it wouldn't take too long to show up in my Cloud Drive.

Ha!

When I started drafting this post, it had been 10 hours and I had only the three tunes I had 10 minutes after buying. I posted this comment on the deal section:

Lady Gaga was able to do what hacker terrorists Anonymous couldn't: Bring Amazon's system to a screeching halt.

I bought it about 11:30 am EST and after 10 minutes, the booklet and tracks #6, #10, and #13 showed in my Cloud Drive. 10 hours later, nothing has improved. I don't even have the singles off the album yet.

Meanwhile, the pirate torrent sites have had it for days and available for complete download within minutes. Once again, the paying customers have an inferior experience. How the heck is legal music at any price supposed to compete with illegal files that don't make you wait on top of charging you. It doesn't matter if it costs 99 cents or 99 dollars if you can't deliver the product customers have paid for in a timely manner.

Way to snatch crushing defeat from the jaws of victory, Amazon.

After wandering off and editing and posting the photos from a show last weekend, I checked back and they're all present and accounted for, 12 hours later. I bought a Bad Brains album a couple of weeks ago - what, a guy can't listen to Bad Brains AND Lady Gaga? Pffft. - and it showed instantly.

Clearly this was an aberration, but I'll be interested in seeing how many monsters snapped on this bargain and sent Amazon's servers up the creek?

Dirk's Three Laws (and One Strong Suggestion) of Band Naming

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:22:00 +0000

Working in the music business you see tons of bands for whom the task of coming up with the first thing people will hear about them - the name - has apparently been given less thought than their hairstyles or the music. To assist those who aren't gifted in the dark arts of band naming, I've assembled the following list of guidelines that you ignore at your peril. (And yes, there are more than three if you want to be picky.)

Rule #1 - The name should be memorable. This should be self-explanatory, but too many bands don't seem to understand that if no one remembers your band's name, no one will remember the band. Pink Floyd, Van Halen, even The Arcade Fire have names that can be remembered; Above All, Malajube, Menomena, and Shad (all actual bands at SXSW 2011) don't. Punny names like Jehovah Waitresses or The Victorious Secrets help. (I've used Atomic Guam and Iron Oreo as Rock Band and Guitar Hero names.)

Rule #2 - The name should indicate what sort of music you play. Iron Maiden implies one thing; Air Supply implies another. What does Sweet Jane sound like; a Velvet Underground tribute act? Atari Teenage Riot sounds like their name. Does your name sound like your band?

Rule #3 - It should be easy enough to spell so juvenile delinquents can grafitti it everywhere. I was considering naming my band The Bourgeoisie until I realized I had to think hard about how to spell it. Did I want "Teh Borzwahzee Rulez!" spray-painted on overpasses and alley walls? That's why I went with Red September.

The One Strong Suggestion - Try out the name in the sentence, "Hi, we're [band name]." Does it sound stupid or offensive or like something your mother would blush at or would it make J.D. Considine's work of writing a snarky one-sentence review twisting it for maximum damage easy? Then go back to the start and come up with something not terrible. There was once a band called Lame. Try that out in the sentence. Can J.D. reply, "Yes, you are."? Then it's a terrible name. Start over. Seriously.

For a time, these Laws did the job, but over time I recognized other factors to be dealt with, thus leading to the first extension to the Laws:

Rule #3.5 - The name should not have to be seen for the joke to be understood. I once saw a band called Raindance several times before learning it was spelled R-E-I-G-N-dance. Get it? Neither did I. Homophones are trouble and not because they sound like listening devices for gay people. If your name sounds like Laughing Carrots, do not spell it Laffing Carats.

Because too many bands ignore the One Strong Suggestion, I've had to add:

Rule #3.6 - If the name includes one of the "7 Dirty Words" than you don't want to be famous. No one is going to sign and promote or cover bands called Sh*t and Shine, Sh*t Horse, or Sh*t Robot. (More real SXSW bands.) There's a band around town called Sh*tf*cker and while they're commended for being able to gig without detectable brain activity, their name alone precludes interest from anyone who doesn't giggle at the word "poop" every time.

Rule #4 - Logos must be clear enough that the band name can be discerned in 1.7 seconds or less. This stems from seeing an ad for a death metal festival where about 30 bands were playing, but I could only tell the names of 80% of the acts. The rest had logos that tried so hard to look like lightning bolts, spiderwebs, Klingon bat'leths and whatnot, they were illegible. Hippie jam bands are also frequent offenders as they have psychedelic melted balloon typography. Hey, Trustafarians, the reason the Fillmore posters could get away with it was because the people back then were on acid and to them the words looked like they were in Helvetica.

CFE: Taking The Excuses of the Stupid Party to the Woodshed.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:58:00 +0000

The Background: This post on The Corner explaining the convention "wisdom" being bandied about by the Stupid Party to excuse their fecklessness in getting anything they were sent to do done. What follows is my comment:

As Breaker of Horses noted, the Stupid Party under Dubya were Big Government Compassion Fascists who squandered what little remained of the Newt Revolution and setting up a situation where liberals were/are able to sneer, "Bill Clinton left a surplus* and Dubya blew it on war and tax cuts for the rich. Also, funny how you teabaggers are suddenly concerned about spending not that a proud Nubian brother is in the White House." Yeah, it's a lies and selective character assassination, but the Stupids under the non-leadership of Cryin' John Fakenbake have done NOTHING to counter it.

What's appalling about the Stupid's utter collapse since being returned to partial power is that they've gone from being the so-called "Party of No" that remained futilely unified against the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Marx/Alinksy socialist juggernaut to spineless, mewling, Vichy collaborators as they seek to crush the very freshmen and Tea Partiers that gave Cryin' John the gavel. It should be noted that Newt offered a Contract while Cryin' John merely spoke a Pledge. The difference is that you can't sue for breach of pledge and that semantic distinction bespeaks the unseriousness of these jokers.

The Contract with America was followed through on as far as voting on its items. What's happened with the Pledge? Demurrals, backtracks, excuses, and failure. From the moment they won decisively in November, they have capitulated to every demand of the Democrats. The lame duck was filled with bad treaties and bad tax deals. It was as if the Stupids wanted to side up with Obama and the Dems to stave off the Tea Party rubes. Then the chairmanships went mostly to old dog spendthrifts indicating that, as many suspected, the problem for the Stupids wasn't that there was spending going on, but that they didn't get to direct it to their cronies.

It's maddening to see how the Stupids can't seem to understand the actual meaning of what happens to them electorally. They believe they lost in 2006 and 2008 because they we're moderate enough and Dem Lite enough for the grasping hands in the nation. While they almost appeared to get that they'd lost their way from the true path and conservative principles during the Porkulus and ObamaCare battles, they were so outnumbered it didn't matter. So the voters took them at their word that they'd learn their lesson and we looking to redeem themselves and here we are now, betrayed by the only forces available to stop the nation-destroying agenda of the Obama Regime and fellow travelers.

As the brilliant Mark Steyn aptly said a month ago, "“I think John Boehner has been an incredible disappointment. I think John Boehner has basically climbed into the Bob Dole suit, and I think they misunderstand the lessons of the 2010 election, which is that the tea party chose to work within the diseased husk of the Republican Party it loathes. And it still hasn’t forgiven for 2006 and 2008. So for the Republicans to demonstrate that ‘hey, we’re back to 2006 again,’ except on Obama-level spending, is not a good idea.

We need Republicans to at least take the lead in broadening public discourse. This country is broke. It’s the brokest country in the history of the planet. And the idea of arguing over itsy-bitsy, half a billion here and half a billion there, and continuing resolutions staggering forward every ten days, is preposterous. It’s inadequate to the task. It’s inadequate for the challenge facing America”

The Stupids under Cryin' John have offered nothing but excuses for their failure and lack of will. They insult the intelligence of their constituents by whining about how hard they have it without the Senate and White House and it reeks of not wanting to get sweaty if victory is unlikely. The Detroit Lions show more stones than the Stupid Party because at least they make an attempt to not lose before starting the "Wait until NEXT year!" happy talk.

Let's see how the Stupids have done:

• Lame duck session - "We can't do anything because it's still the Dem's show. Next month, we'll get 'em."

• Then the new Congress starts and a lunatic shoots up Tuscon and while the media blames them for the tragedy, they suspend operations for a week. This is understandable, but it halted any momentum they may have had left after the lame duck debacles.

• The in CR after CR after downward revision until ultimate failure, they couldn't find it possible to cut ANYTHING in a substantive way. They couldn't defund the CPB after a citizen catches NPR's management acting up. They couldn't defund taxpayer-funded baby slaughter at Planned Parenthood after another citizen catches them collaborating with supposed sex slavers. [It's "human traffickers" on site because the language filters prevent sex] It was low-hanging fruit that the public wanted picked and they couldn't do it. Meanwhile the Dems are going to the wall in order to protect the murder of babies on the taxpayers' dime. They are willing to stand up for their death-loving ideology. What does the Stupid Party believe in that they're willing to fight for?

• After they lied that they understood why they lost; lied that they want to prove themselves reformed; lied that they would force the issues and do the will of the People who sent them; we're supposed to believe that the next fights, the hard ones with real money at stake and the future of the Republic hanging in the balance, that THEN they will stand up to the Dems. Uh, right. That's like a morbidly obese person promising to start dieting and exercising while they're still at the table choking down another wafer-thin mint.
* Nevermind that it was the Newt Congress's surplus. The Stupid Party can't even be bothered to set that record straight

System Restart Is Go.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:12:00 +0000

I've neglected this blog for too long and the shooting of Rep. Giffords and the subsequent disgusting attempts by the liberals to smear conservatives like Moose Slayer for it require more discussion than can be done in other venues. So, buckle up, bitches...

DIRK'S BACK!!!

CFE: Dvorak's Commenters Are Dumber Than Digg's

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:35:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Dvorak Uncensored had a self-proclaimed moderate (translation: liberal who know that liberals are rightly viewed as evil) posting some blather from an English writer bemoaning the supposed implosion of Republicans in the Enlightened Era of Obama. The comments were beneath even the subterranean level of Digg, prompting this retort:

The reason Obama and the Democrats are imploding - that's right, THE DEMOCRATS, NOT REPUBLICANS - is because the Left is so consumed with arrogance, hubris, a thirst for revenge, and elitist entitlement that they don't understand how the liberal fascist schemes of Obama & Co. are playing with those outside the self-reinforcing echo chambers of NY, LA, and SF.

Where would you sneering liberals be if Obama was John Edwards trying to advance the same totalitarian agenda? Hmmm? You tell yourselves the fairy tale (learned from MSNBC) that opposition is only because "scared Whitey is afraid of losing their stuff and power" but for the poll numbers to match the actual vote totals, it would have to assume that the White Devil voted for Obama in November and is back to their Klan robes now. Huh?

In a country where Oprah (black woman) is a secular deity telling people how to live and what books to read; white kids want to be rap stars (mostly black men); the most popular athletes are black; the biggest movie star is Will Smith (black man); liberal morons (redundant, I know) are convinced that everyone is just like the people in "Crash", racist at best; genocidally racist, more likely.

Obama got elected by a frightened and ignorant public who bought the whitewashed (no pun) facade that Hopey Changerson would be a unifier who didn't see us as "red states and blue states." The Stupid Party (as I call the woeful GOP) had pissed off their base with crazy spending (which is small beer compared to the Omaba/Pelosi/Reid deficits) and lackluster leadership and campaigns. Many voted for Obama to absolve themselves of any appearance of racism, though I think many thought they going to get David Palmer from "24", not this Marxist Chicago machine thug who has taken corruption to unseen levels, not that you liberals can acknowledge the truth of your man.

Instead of leading as a purple state President, Obama has ruled as a tyrant unilaterally - "I won" - and has nationalized two-thirds of the domestic auto industry, handed hundreds of billions of payoffs to his Wall Street and union cronies, loaded his Administration with tax cheats, scofflaws and racialist anti-Constitutionalists who will remake the fundamental structure of this country by fiat and you Brownshirts couldn't be happier.

You people make the regurgitating parrots at Digg look like Oxford debaters. Your hatred of anyone to the left of Marx seethes in your posts and your bullying attitudes belie any specious claims about how supposedly "crazy" the conservatives are.

You aren't protesting the wars anymore, proving it was never about war and all about hating Dubya. You aren't upset that Obama has expanded surveillance under the Patriot act because it was never about privacy and all about hating Dubya. You don't care that Obama has doubled unemployment and quadrupled the deficit over Dubya's worst stats because it was never about fiscal responsibility and all about hating Dubya.

Europe is moving back to the right as they realize that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money (Margaret Thatcher) while America is being run a full throttle off the cliff of socialist liberal fascism. And you idiots couldn't be happier about it and are ready to yank your Chatty Cathy strings and bray, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISTSSSSSSSSS!!!!", at anyone who dares question Dear Leader. Even the fact that the Obama/Joker image was made by a Palestinian-American didn't stop you from blaming the mythical Angry White Male for it.

I now leave you to resume your self-reinforcing circle jerk of genuine hatred and ignorance.

Immediately, someone's knee jerked predictably:

# 23 Phydeau said, on August 20th, 2009 at 6:45 am

#19 Dirk “aptly named” Belligerent: Whoa dude… obsessed about race much? Copy/paste from right-wing blogs much?

Example #4,743 of wingnut meltdown. Thanks, Dirk.

Too easy....

#23 - Live in your liberal fart recycling chamber much? Cling to your stereotypical views of who's a racist much?

News flash, Sparky: It's YOU who is the racist, not me. It's YOU who sees nothing but skin color and acts accordingly. I called out the cognitive dissonance of you unhinged liberals and you had no response other than to resort to ad hominem and calling me the racist.

I'm sure the black woman with whom I had a business with and the black guy who is one of my best friends would be surprised to hear about my pathologies as diagnosed by the likes of you. Raff.

As I said right at the top of my post, "Where would you sneering liberals be if Obama was John Edwards trying to advance the same totalitarian agenda?" If a white Marxist liberal fascist was trying to advance this agenda and people rose against them, what would you do without your race card to play? Have you failed to notice that Nancy Reid and Harry Reid, the ones crafting the legislation that Dear Leader will only be signing are WHITE? They're getting protested even more than Obama, so is it because white people are afraid of them because they're white?

Yeesh. I don't even know why I bother to point out the doublethink you bozos operate under. It's not as if you'll suddenly wake up and realize how stupid you are and stop visually inspecting your colons.

Of course, Obama's greatest triumph was to tailor a one-syllable mantra for his sub-literate followers to latch on to. HOPE! CHANGE! We've gone from the Federalist papers to t-shirts. Can we sucker guilty liberal racists? YES, WE CAN!!!!

I see someone else visited here and took one look at the links and judged me unworthy of consideration because as the MSNBC race-mongers have told them, it's the non-liberals who are racist. *cough*

Since I've got actual work to do unlike the unemployed losers of the Left, I can't waste more time tussling with close-minded fools.

CFE: Why Pay For Propaganda?

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:16:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has an item about "Why The Newspaper Paywall Will Fail" and this prompted these bon mots:

With the Treason Media's (as I call them) obscene cheerleading for the Obama Regime manifesting itself in blind stenography of whatever Dear Leader says no matter how false; the fundamental incuriousity about Dear Leader's college years, associations with crooks (e.g. Tony Rezko, Rod Blagovich) and terrorists (e.g. William Ayers, Bernadine Dornan), illegal fundraising; hypocrisy and bias in coverage (e.g. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were instrumental in pushing our economy into the abyss while reaping sweetheart deals from cronies they supposedly regulate, but, hey, that Republican is having an affair!); and brokering access between Administration honchos and fat cats, that they expect the people to pay to be lied to while they shill for the powerful elites whom they fellow travel with is to laugh.

These latter day Walter Durantys proclaim themselves to be objective reporters of what happens at the circus when they're f***ing the elephants (and donkeys.) Ever notice how many "reporters" are married to government power players, like Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan for two? When they are literally in bed with the other side, what hope do the serfs, er, people have of knowing WTF is actually happening? Fascism - REAL fascism, not the stuff the statist wingnuts were accusing Dubya of doing - is being imposed on America and the watchdogs are lapdogs because they endorse this upending of our culture in favor of something more Soviet in style.

It's ironic that as a commenter on a blog I'm expected to provide links to my citations while the Treason Media presents their product as the Truth to be accepted on faith, no proof required. They say something is so and it is so! How dare anyone question the High Priests of the Temple?!?

I forgot to mention this beatdown of the idea the government can fund their propagandists because I was tired, but you can check it out yourselves.

CFE: Stupid Party Is Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:26:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item slagging the national GOP for backing a liberal, whoops, "moderate" candidate (Charlie Crist) over a supposedly genuine conservative (Marco Rubio) and bemoaning how this is more selling out of the Party's conservative base. In response to a comment about how the Stupid Party has learned nothing from the past two electoral cycles, I exponded:

The "leaders" of the Stupid Party have totally swallowed the Treason Media's meme that the reason they've been losing is because they've become "too right wing" and the party has been "hijacked by religious fanatics." WRONG! The reason the Stupid Party loses is because they offer nothing to CONSERVATIVES to vote FOR!

I came to the realization that in the six Presidential elections I've voted in, I have never voted FOR the Republican candidate. It has always been an anti-Dem or third-party vote.

1988: Voted Bush 41 as Reagan's third term.

1992: Voted Perot because Bush had failed and I believed the codswallop Perot was peddling. (That I was so easily sold this charlatan gave me insight into the Obama herd's blind gullibility.)

1996: Voted Dole because he wasn't Clinton.

2000: Voted Dubya because he wasn't Gore.

2004: Voted Libertarian because Dubya had failed to be conservative and I knew he was unable to articulate why the GWOT was important. His pathetic "turn the other cheek" responses to the Dem smears proved my suspicions. We can blame the Treason Media for Obama's rise, but the country wouldn't be in the mood for an elegant Marxist dictator if they weren't totally fed up with the Stupid Party.

2008: Voted Palin, but she wasn't actually running, so it was McCain as a "not Obama" vote.

Liberals/socialists/Marxists/fascists/statists have the Democrats to speak for them, but who speaks for conservatives? The Stupid Party? When they cynically back career pols like Specter, Chaffee, Crist, etc. over and over, it leaves freedom-cherishing people like us screwed over and with little choice but to go along or stay home and when we stay home, evil people like Obama win.

I had hoped that 2008 would be a clarifying year in which we could get a read as to whether the people wanted to be free men or serfs, but with a pinkish "moderate" squish (whose only real goal was to deny other Republicans the nomination) on one side and a true deep red Marxist on the other side, the liberal won and the TM-promulgated meme that the SP needs to move left to be relevant was furthered.

Since we've already seen that running RINOs is a losing plan, how about running some true blue conservatives and seeing what happens?!? If they lose, then the meme-pushers will have a legitimate "told ya so" moment instead of the specious spin. Too bad the Stupid Party's "leadership" is guzzling Treason Media Kool-Aid and can't think anymore.

CFE: Arlen Specter's Liberal Sensitivity

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:44:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item about reconstituted Democrat Arlen "It's all about me me ME!" Specter's douchebaggery in response to Jack Kemp's death.

I guess that Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) really is happier in his new party:
Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its healthcare priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.
…because he’s certainly picked up from them the trick of using safely dead people to push a partisan talking point. Jack Kemp isn’t even buried yet; and he had nothing to do with the current political situation, you disgusting piece of partisan slime. I don’t expect truly civilized behavior from you anymore, but I did foolishly think that you could be trusted to show more delicacy than a hyena at the passing of a former friend.

I posted this comment to the thread:

I got my wake-up call about the mental pathologies that animate liberal jerks like Specter on Sept. 11, 2001. The WTC had just collapsed, killing untold thousands of people. Initial speculation was in the tens of thousands dead,

On a message board populated by many New Yorkers and even more unhinged liberal maniacs who took the defeat of Al Gore almost as badly as Reagan's defeat of Jimmy Carter - I'm not kidding; these people viewed Reagan as the beginning of the end of America - one guy, a Californian originally from NYC posted, "This is the result of the coup d'etat orchestrated by the Supreme Court last year to install Bush in office over the will of the people."

O...M...F...G...

Not 30 minutes before, our country had just withstood a massacre of civilians and the first place his diseased mind ran to was his soapbox to rail against the denial of his party's continued rule. Again, I'm not making this up! This jackass would then proceed to post personal information about me: my address, phone numbers, photos, etc. in order to strip my of anonymity and make an example of me to chill anyone else's ideas of speaking against the liberal mob.

The kicker was when he thought I was somehow compromising HIS privacy and rushed to the forum operator to have me banned, which happened without my being asked first what was going on. When I explained what he was seeing, I was reinstated at the cost of my low member number, post count and private messages. Whoops! Sorry about that. Bah.

This one a-hole was the Rosetta Stone for understanding just how craven and inhumane liberals are. Specter's insipid burbling is no surprise to anyone who understands the dark, empty hearts of liberals. Those bozos like David Frum and Jeb Bush who think the Stupid Party needs to cuddle up to the winning strategies of the fascist statists in order to win fail to understand the nature of the enemy and how accommodating them is no different from accommodating evil.

I wonder how many chumps who voted for Hopey McChangerson realize what vile monsters they unleashed upon the land? I have to think that perhaps the union workers who blindly followed their leadership off the cliff in the quadrennial yanking of the donkey lever only to have a self-anointed Emperor seize control of their companies and put them out of work may have a little buyer's remorse, but then again, who knows?

CFE: Barry's (First) 100 Days of Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:06:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: A friend - a woman with a year-old baby boy that she loves to death - posted on her Facebook status:

Two wars, an economic implosion and a possible pandemic: President Obama is not God--he's Job.

Though I hesitate to bother even my most liberal friends with the inconvenient truths of their incorrectness with regards to politics, I felt a brief reply was warranted:

Too bad the rubes thought they were buying a Messiah instead of someone mortgaging away our future and way of life. Let the excuses begin! :\

Too which she replied:

And we would be in better shape with Palin? I say Pain because I think McCain would have had heart failure by now.

Oh no she dint! FLAME ON!!!

Well, let's see...if Palin was Prez, she probably wouldn't have:

* Nominated hordes of tax cheats, lobbyists and fat cats to her administration.
* Taken over two auto companies and six banks like an Empress to nationalize formerly private companies while paying off those who made the messes.
* Passed budgets that will triple the national debt in 10 years; debt that YOUR CHILD will labor in futility to pay off.... Read More
* Bowed to a Saudi king.
* Chummed around with every Latin American tyrant and sat silently while America was insulted.
* Groveled, apologized and blamed America to all who'd listen, cementing the impression that she was a punk who was weak.
* Insulted our best allies with cheap gifts and arrogance.
* Incapable of speaking w/o a prompter.
* Scared NYC to death for photos of her plane.
* Ensured poor kids couldn't go to her kids private school.
* Get the drift?

So, yeah, Palin would've been hella better! The bill for Barry's Marxism will come due and your son gets to pay it. :(

As much as the frightened and ignorant public who blindly swallowed the Myth of the One are to blame, Dubya and the Stupid Party are the main ones to blame for for the ascendancy of this charlatan. They squandered their power and betrayed their conservative principles in the vain hope being more liberal would make the media be nicer to them.

Bush exploded the budget and the GOP tried to be "Dem Lite" and drove people like me away. Bush was an inarticulate fool who couldn't explain what was happening and refused to defend against scurrilous lies and we all know a well-told lie will always beat a badly-told truth.

So, with the lame old McCain - whose only goal was to beat fellow GOPers for the nom - on one side and the glossy whitewashed package of Barack Obama - with all his hype and no serious reporting of his shady past and pals - on the other, voters who ponder their American Idol picks more seriously bought the empty box in "CHANGE!" paper. "How much worse could he be?" A: Lots.

Nightline tonight put together a really revolting hagiography of The One's first 100 days with such objective luminaries as Al Sharpton and Bill Maher fawning over how wonderful Barry's been and how we are finally about to join the Community of Nations thanks to this good shepherd. Ugh.

So blind. So foolish. We are so screwed.

CFE: Demigod Piracy Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:58:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Game publisher Stardock is a lonely advocate of not treating their customers like criminals and thus doesn't put DRM on their games. While this makes their stuff very easy to pirate, they counteract this by having updates and multiplayer limited to only registered legitimate customers.

Their new game "Demigod" was sold by Gamestop ahead of street date, an event which forced Stardock staff to rush in on Easter to get the server infrastructure up to accomodate players - gee, thanks, Gamestop! - and they immediately detected LOTS of pirated copies attempting to connect and play online, causing legit users to have a very poor experience.

Boss man Brad Wardell has been posting about the piracy problems and an update was featured on Voodoo Extreme which drew some scoffing replies, basically blowing off the explanations for load problems. I replied to these tools:

@Dangerdoggie & anonymousgamedev

Did Brad Wardell steal your girlfriends (yeah, right, like you have them!) or take the last slice of pizza right before you reached for it or what? Your attacks on this update indicate you're either illiterate or so agenda-driven that nothing matters, even if it's facts at issue. "AGD" - more like "anonymouspiratefan" IMO - is particularly dishonest and/or stupid because his scenario requires that no one actually read what Wardell wrote.

Just what the heck is this supposed to mean? - "If those users had bought the game instead of pirating it, they'd have been putting EVEN MORE stress on the servers, and they wouldn't have been able to fix the problem simply by rerouting the legitimate users to a different set of servers."

Now take a look at what Wardell wrote: The infrastructure was designed to handle up to 50,000 of these connections. But on day 0, there were around 140,000 concurrent users of which 18,000 are validated.

For your insane thesis to have the slightest credibility, you would have to assume that a game from a small developer and publisher would be such a blockbuster smash hit that it would attract the COMBINED peak concurrent user load of Counter-Strike, Football Manager 2009, Empire: Total War, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 on its first day. Get that? Demigod would have to steal the whole of Valve's player base to start approaching the mobs who were pounding their servers. That is lunacy! The only dev and title who can draw the crowds you're imagining rhymes with "Wizard's Burled of Boredraft."

Competently run businesses have a good idea of what their best case numbers should be and allocate resources accordingly. This is why Blizzard is able to launch WoW expansions that sell MILLIONS in the first week and absorb the onslaught. Stardock had no reason to expect this sort of traffic because they had a sense of what sort of load they'd be getting and they had more than double the capacity on tap for their legitimate customers. The system only faltered because nearly three times as many users were hitting the servers because of the hordes of pirates gumming up the works.

18,000 paying customers had to suffer because 122,000 thieves - that's a 6.78:1 pirate/customer ratio - messed things up and you have the gall to suggest that it's Stardock's fault for not having the capacity?!? That you then accuse Wardell of lying about the problems is just more outrageous. Stardock employees had to rush into work on Easter because Gamestop broke street date and they had to crank out fixes for the piracy-related loads literally overnight and little Internet snots like you dare call them the liars and attention seekers?

Stardock has been transparent in their dealings with their products. The company trusts the public - for better or worse - to not steal their works and doesn't slather DRM on their products and you seriously think that they wouldn't come out and admit the game outsold their expectations? That's how I really know you're a sack of bovine excrement - what company wouldn't want to boldly proclaim that their product is so popular that it sold three times as much and everyone was trying to play it?

You've got some petty vendetta against Wardell, Stardock, GPG and reality and you've just been served. Buh-bye.

This concludes this Smackdown.

CFE: Television's Slow Suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:11:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has a item about how Hulu keeps trying to prevent Boxee from working with their content because content producers are techno-phobic morons who can't understand that their very survival is being put in doubt because of their foolish actions. As I explain...

As television networks are bleeding out because audiences are shrinking and advertisers won't support scripted shows - why should they when "Surviving with the Idol American Stars" draws awesome numbers? - it amazes me that instead of embracing Boxee and Hulu and new means to connect digital content to TVs, they fight to the death to maintain business models created when there were only channels 2, 4, and 7 on the dial.

My girlfriend's family doesn't have DVRs and still tapes shows on VHS off standard-def DirecTV. (Ugh, I know. I'm working on it.) At 9pm Thursdays CSI, Supernatural, and 30 Rock are on. We watch Supernatural on OTA HD while she tapes CSI and then I download 30 Rock from BitTorrent, playing it back thru my Xbox 360. Clunky, no?

Now, why the hell aren't the networks making deals to stream Hulu (or whatver) directly to these game consoles like NetFlix does. Instead of making people muck about with a HTPC or things like Boxee, just pipe it into the Xbox or PS3 that's already hooked up to the TV. Duh!!! How hard is it to see the obviousness of that?!? It cuts down on "piracy"; allows advertisers to present their commercials in an unskippable format (Hulu's one 30-second ad per break is quite tolerable as opposed to four minutes of ED adverts); and gives viewers a good experience.

Whoops! It makes too much sense! My bad. Nevermind. As you were, people.

CFE: Regarding Difficult Videogames

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:08:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: The director of the upcoming game "Bayonetta" is quoted at Joystiq as hoping the game will be "sadistically hard". Comments as to the pros and cons of hard games ensued and my 1/50th of a dollar:

The original Ninja Gaiden was miserably hard; absolutely no fun at all; and the way it was structured where you'd have to fight a dozen minions to get to the mini-boss fights, only to die and have to rinse and repeat over and over made "playing" take more effort than my day job.

Early on, Ryu finds his family village pillaged. He (you) fights 12-20 enemies and then faces a mini-boss on horseback. Common sense would dictate that if the mounted warrior kills you, you should reset to the beginning of that area, but the a-holes at Team Ninja dictated that you re-battle the whole village before getting a crack at the boss. Not. Fun. It wasn't until they put out Ninja Gaiden Black with the "Ninja Dog" mode (read: "You suck. We'll take it easy on you.") that I was able to actually play the game I paid for. I struggled in spots, but it didn't feel like I was being laughed at by sadistic developers.

However, 1337 g4m3r kidz whined loud and often that Ninja Gaiden was too easy(!!) for their awesome skillz. They filled their diapers over Bioshock's Vita-Chambers because it removed the penalty for death. Yeah, gawd forbid players be able to finish the game. How many devs slave over the end levels of their games to have their work go unseen because players give up? I was so annoyed at their crying, I posted, "You want hardcore? Take a loaded pistol and put it on the desk in front of you and then play the game. When you die in the game, pick up the gun, put it to your head, and PULL THE #$%&ing TRIGGER!!! HARDCORE ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!? ENOUGH RISK FOR YOU?!?!?" Sheesh...

If I were Bayonetta's publisher, I'd be on the phone telling Kamiya to STFU and not cripple my investment stroking his dom urges and pandering to tubby loser virgins who have nothing better to do than memorize 16-button combo sequences. Making games playable - and ENJOYABLE - for a majority of gamers isn't "dumbing down" or "selling out to casual gamers"; it's good business. Go ahead and put in a "PWNZ J00!!11!" mode for the hardcore llamas, er, 1337s, but give the rest of us a freaking break. kthxbai!

BTW, doesn't she look a little like Moose-Slayer?

CFE: Regarding U2's "No Bars on the Verizon"

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:17:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: In his Big Hollywood post, "U2 & Me", Matt Patterson discusses his mixed, but ultimately positive, reaction to "No Line on the Horizon", which I refer to by the title of this post. I posted this comment:

U2 was one of the few acts I would still schlep down to the Beast Buy to plunk down my Hamilton to blind (deaf?) buy their latest on the day it came out. When the album leaked a couple weeks early, I decided to try before I bought and I am so glad I didn't waste a farthing for this turgid bore of an album.

Background: I've been a fan of theirs since 1980 when a high school pal had a t-shirt for their "Boy" album. My band covered "I Will Follow" at our annual Big 80s show last year. I have all their albums except for "Poop" (as I call it), which was such half-baked mess due to their having to push it out the door in time for the already-planned tour. (I gave that to my girlfriend with whom our first real date was a Zoo TV concert in 1992.)

I thought "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was the sound of a band with nothing to prove casually rebounding from their self-inflicted irony overload and delivering a solid album. I call "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" a "Wonderbra album" because what was up front - the sublime "Vertigo" - was just a tease because what came after was a flat experience that sounded like the Edge scrolling thru his guitar effect presets of classic tones.

Where "No Bars on the Verizon" (heh) flops is that the laziness and distractedness of the lyrics are only compounded by the lackluster music. Larry is playing the same beats; the best lick in the title track is the one Edge nicked from "The Fly"; every song is a slow to mid-tempo dirge except "Get On Your Boots" which serves as a midpoint wake-up nudge more than an exciting and memorable song.

Most critics are just rubber-stamping 5-star/A+ reviews for this thing like they automatically award the latest loaves pinched by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, or any act that bashed Dubya. Fans who can't cope with the idea that their beloved band could fail are happy-talking, too. But for those still able to see whether the monarch dressed for the day or not, "No Bars" is the sound of a band that should decide whether they want to save the world or save their musical reputations.

Behind the Stunning FX of Benjamin Button. (Updated & Bumped)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:34:00 +0000

(Note: Originally posted 1/5/09 - bumped to add video)

While I haven't had a chance to toss up the mini-review of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" yet - Bottom Line: 8/10, see it - I didn't want to wait to share this fascinating tech-speak-heavy article about how the special effects were done that created the titular character. However, if you haven't seen the film yet, DO NOT READ THIS or look at the pictures because it will blow the surprise. See the movie, THEN read the article.

=============

UPDATE: The film quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and this talk from TED.com shows in a fast-moving 18 minutes some of how they did it. Enjoy.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (of Edits!)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:58:00 +0000

Once again I marvel at the amount of spare time some people have.

See 'em all here!

White Wedding: The Literal Video Version!!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:36:00 +0000

Been a while since I posted one of these. Enjoy!

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

"Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, and More"

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:00:00 +0000

So says Larry Kudlow:

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s address to Congress and budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next ten years.

This is nearly double the government-spending low-point reached during the late 1990s by the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton administration. While not quite as high as spending levels in Western Europe, we regrettably will be gaining on this statist-planning approach.

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge tax increase on all blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, and new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

Obama’s tax hikes will generate fewer revenues and lower economic growth. Yes, the economy will recover. But Obama’s rosy scenario of 4 percent recovery growth in the out years of his budget is not likely to occur. The combination of easy money from the Fed and below-potential economic growth is a prescription for stagflation. That’s one of the messages of the falling stock market.

Essentially, the Obama economic policies represent a major Democratic party relapse into Great Society social spending and taxing. It is a return to the LBJ/Nixon era, and a move away from the Reagan/Clinton period. House Republicans, fortunately, are 90 days sober, as they are putting up a valiant fight to stop the big-government onslaught and move the GOP back to first principles.

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner. There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse. Well then, do conservatives dare say: We told you so?

It's a start. After the election, I wrote about silly conservatives, like Bill Bennett and George Will, who seriously thought Obama would act as a moderating influence on the Dastardly Duo of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi> They thought that Obama was such a savvy pol that he'd refuse to rush to the left because he knew that it wouldn't work and it'd backfire on him. Nevermind that he was the most liberal Senator and steeped in socialist radicalism his whole life, he would triangulate like Clinton did.

Well, we see how all that worked out. Morons.

Obama is ruling like the fascist despot he is, but the real question is who is going to step up and admit that they were suckered by him? Will Oprah call The One onto the carpet for being a charlatan like that "Million Little Pieces" author she shilled onto the best-sellers chart or will she silently sit in approval as he turns America into Soviet Amerika? (I'm guessing "B".)

Fly Air Dogbert!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:41:00 +0000

Heh.

(h/t Power Line)

Ayn Rand Foretold The Current Fascist Dem Power Grabs Decades Ago.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:47:00 +0000

As the Obamessiah prepares to address a joint session of Congress to scold us into accepting more fascism, it's worth it to keep in mind Ayn Rand's words from nearly 35 years ago:

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."

Before the election, I never got around to posting an article about how the radical Left - of which Obama was a foot soldier for and disciple of - declared that for their revolution to happen, the Old Ways would have to be sabotaged and rendered disreputable in order to stampede the sheeple into accepting slavery in the name of salvation.

It was really depressing because it wasn't any crazy conspiracy stuff but an open manifesto of how they planned on taking down freedom and liberty in order to establish their own tyrannical rule. It's not like we couldn't see this coming for the past 40 years. I can't find the bookmark at the moment, but I'll update this post when I do.

UPDATE - Here it is: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis Go read it all.

Oscars 2009 Running Commentary.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:14:00 +0000

C&Ped from the original posting elsewhere:

• For the first time in I think ever, I've actually seen all five Best Picture and most of the acting nominees BEFORE the Oscar show. That The Wrestler and Dark Knight aren't in the mix while the muddled and mediocre The Reader and glorified TV movie Frost/Nixon are occupying slots is ridiculous.
• Also ridiculous is the one-strap gowns all these women are wearing. WTF is Amy Adams wearing around her neck?!? Nice dress, terrible necklace.
• I'm wondering who's gonna get more shout outs: God or Obama?
• Mickey Rourke has a picture of his dead dog on his necklace. Sean Penn should drop out for this alone.
• Hermione is screaming, “No color! No color!”, at the drab bedsheets and neutral colors on parade.
• Ugh, Marissa Tomei’s dress is awful. TAKE IT OFF NOW!
• Wow. Glitzy crystal curtain. I need to get one of those for the tool shed.
• Cute opening number. Craig’s List Dancers! Yummy Girl sings too! Nice dig at The Reader.
• Well, after only 12 minutes of high energy fun, they’re already boring us with montages.
• Hmmm….not sure if I dig this gang nominee reader thing. Shouldn’t Tilda (and whoever comes next) get the spotlight herself? Jeez, can’t we get some clips instead of the tribute speeches. Awful, simply awful. Funny Whoopi line, but I’d rather see clips.
• The only category where there were five solid contenders and some question as to who would win still ended up predictably. Cruz is a fine choice, though I was rooting for Tomei.
• Funny skit with Steve Martin and Tina Fey about writing that gives a certain cult a kick in the shins. No surprise at the Milk win and no surprise that a lot of Prop 8 subtext was in the speech. Did he just tip off Federal imposition of gay marriage even though Dear Leader has claimed to be against it? Hmmmm….
• Penthouse Cat Dollarnaire gets its first trophy. I wonder if Benjamin Button would’ve been a better choice because it required more spade work to get it on the screen from the source?
• Jennifer Anniston looks like she’s been crying. Must’ve been fun for her to have to stand smack dab in front of Brangelina. Say hi to John Mayer, loser.
• Who is this Japanese guy with the…did he just say ”Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”?!?!?!? Where was I? Oh, yeah, the French movie title? I’ll have to track this down cuz Presto was a blast and would’ve been my pick.
• OK, I see what they’re doing with the order of categories, so why did they put Best Supporting Actress up first? Shouldn’t all the acting awards be in the middle and the editing, score and special effects awards last?
• Quick! Who just won the Art Direction and Costume Oscars that were won a few minutes ago? Can’t remember? Exactly!!!
• I don’t think Benji Button should’ve gotten Best Makeup because so much of it is CGI, not traditional makeup. Hellboy II should’ve won.
• Nice romance montage.
• We’re an hour in and have handed out eight awards.
• Ben Stiller channels Joaquin Phoenix and sets up the leading contender for Line of the Night: ”You look like you work at a Hassidic meth lab.”
• The inevitability of Penthouse Cat Dollarnaire winning has been sealed with the Cinematography Oscar. Where will the upsets come for the rest of the night? I hear TVs clicking off across America.
• Jeez, WTF was that bedsheet Jessica Biel was wearing? When you’ve got the bodacious curves, why would you cover them unless Justin Timbaland is threatening to go all Chris Brown on you if you don’t hide the badonkadonk.
• KILLER Judd Apatow short with the Pineapple Express guys and Januz Kaminski. Loved the bit with Franco’s kissing scenes from Milk cutting back to him. (He should’ve been nommed for Milk over Josh Brolin.) 2nd best LotN from Januz: ”Suck on that Andrew Dod Mantle!” Rogen cracks up and Franco munching the winner’s name.
• Hermione observes that Jackman’s been MIA while they’ve had comedians presenting most awards.
• Now he’s back doing the musical number that no one axed for. At first, when Bouncy came up, I thought that Queen Latifah sure has trimmed down. OK number, but drags the show out.
• Alan Arkin gets to announce the winner for the 2nd year in the row as Dora the Explorer opts to not show up for the cattle call. WTF is Seymour Philip Hoffman (sic) wearing on his head. Gee, more Prop 8-bashing from Joel Grey. Bore-ring. Walken’s creeping me out. Not a dry eye in the house as Heath Ledger’s family picks up his trophy. Damn shame he couldn’t have done so himself. A damn crying shame.
• Jeez, why didn’t they go to commercial after that moment? To stomp on that poignant moment with the canned Documentary reel was as tone-deaf as an A&R guy.
• Oh, jeez, Bill Maher? Every TV not in 212 and 818 just clicked off. Remember when this asstackler was in movies like D.C. Cab and shows like Hard Knocks? Oh, isn’t he cute pimping his Christianity-bashing film? Hey, Big Brave Man, why not speak out for Geert Wilders, you f*cking coward? Funny how you only bash the religions who won’t hack your empty head off. Pussy.
• Good action montage. Looks like Angelina Jolie was in half the montage.
• Benjamin Button wins Best Visual Effects. Damn right! I smacked down a herd of Comic Book Guys squabbling about Iron Dude vs. Bat Dude over at Gizmodo because while the comic book flicks were fine, BB was something truly extraordinary.
• ”Boom goes the dynamite!” Somewhere a college TV sportscaster wishes he’d trademarked the phrase.
• Why the snippet of “Mr. Blue Sky”?
• Interesting that the Indian sound mixer calls the city Bombay, not the politically correct Mumbai. Hmmmm.
• I hope no one has to call for tech support tomorrow because all the folks answering the phones will be hungover and slurring and more unintelligible than usual.
• How horrible is this tribute to Jerry Lewis gonna be?
• Hey, look, it’s Eddie “I released Norbit in time to blow my Oscar win” Murphy handing out Jerry Lewis’ Jean Hersholt Award. Oh, that’s right, they both did Nutty Professor movies. Jerry looks hella better than the last time I saw him when he was all puffy from steroids when he was going for the home run title.
• I figured out why Hoffman Phillip Seymour is wearing the skullcap: he’s playing the Edge in a U2 biopic.
• I like the way the stage is set up, though the crystal curtain seems to have gone MIA.
• Zac Efron and Alicia Keys – that’s some big-time Hollywood firepower.
• I liked Danny Elfman’s Milk score; a nice jazzy change of pace from his usual circus music.
• I guess it’s safe for the Benjamin Button crowd to head over to the after-party and the bar since they ain’t gonna be picking up anything.
• God just got a mention, so He takes a lead over Obama and Bill Maher has to be stifled from screaming by a beefy Teamster.
• Tonight, the part of Peter Gabriel will be played by John Legend backed by the Paul Simon Singers.
• With M.I.A. MIA, who are the girls covering for her? Also, what’s with the T-Pain effect on his vocals?
• God increases His lead with another mention. Bill Maher has been sedated to prevent him chewing his tongue off.
• Queen Latifah was fine, but when, oh when, are they going to do the Death Parade to the dulcet tones of Jim Carroll? Come on! Sydney Pollack and Paul Newman tie for applause.
• How many commercials is Jeff Bridges going to be doing the voice-overs on?
• Reese “I didn’t deserve my Oscar but I’m not giving it back” Witherspoon is dressed like a hobo. A glitzy hobo, but still a hobo. Was a blue dress not enough, needing the black curtains to be draped over it all?
• Danny Boyle gets an Oscar for making a movie with a script that didn’t collapse in the third act. Learn from it, Bub. You still suck for everything you’ve effed-up before though. (*cough*28 Days Later*cough*Sunshine*cough*Trainspotting*cough*Shallow Grave*cough*)
• Glitzy lineup for the Best Actress presenters. I still miss the clips from the films; that is what they’re winning for after all. Of the nominees, I’ve seen the fewest of these, having only seen Doubt and The Reader. Of the two, I think Streep was a bit better than Winslet, but Kate’s been due for a while. How about one for Glenn Close now? Great moment with her dad whistling.
• Nice that they’ve let the speeches run a little over without cueing the orchestra to stomp on the moments.
• I wonder if Robert DeNiro and Ben Kingsley compared notes about how to squander artistic credibility while chasing paychecks? It’s interesting how they’ve sometimes paired former colleagues like DeNiro toasting Penn and Hopkins introing Pitt.
• Well, politics trumped performance with Penn’s win. “Commie, homo-loving, sons-of-guns”, is precisely how he won. Now, I know the haters here will think that I’m upset because Penn is a disgusting sack of sh*t who can’t suck tyrannical dictators’ d*cks fast enough and should be torn to shreds by rabid badgers, but that’s not the problem. I watched Milk a few nights ago and was quite impressed by his performance, but the next night I watched The Wrestler and Rourke was simply much better. Take Rourke out and Penn would be OK to win, but instead the Pink Mafia and Prop 8 opponents chose to jerk off their politics first on a night that most of the awards have been justified. That Penn outdumped Maher was a foregone conclusion. Bleah. Hollywood just can’t stick their thumbs in the paying customer’s eyes hard enough, can they?
• Slumdog Millionaire, a film that Warner Bros almost dumped straight to DVD, wins Best Picture thus proving William Goldman correct. I think it was a little overrated, but of the nominees, it was my co-favorite.
• Overall it was a decent show. Jackman was charming and a lot of the numbers and bits were entertaining. The tributes from previous acting winners simply didn’t work. Lose ‘em and show clips.
• Overall score: B+

Back To Fighting For 2nd Place, Guys.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:59:00 +0000

Tiger Woods is returning to playing golf next week. The dream of doing better than second has just died for almost everyone on the PGA Tour.

Warner Bros. Statement On That Christian Bale Tape.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:39:00 +0000

Christian Bale's getting a raw deal in the media over his on-set outburst upbraiding a stupid DP who lacked the professionalism it takes to play in the big leagues. EW is trying to make it sound that audiences will abandon him like they did Russell Crowe - they did? - after he threw a cell phone at a hotel clerk. Ummm, not even close, bozos. Crowe physically attacking a civilian is nothing like an actor yelling at some crew jerk. That the morons in the press equate physical and verbal abuse shows how wussy they are. Toughen up, buttercups! Start by losing the John Mayer and Coldplay CDs!

Anyhoo, here's a spokesman for the Bunny Company had to say about the incident:(h/t Hitfix.com)

The Unending Rage of Janeane Garofalo Never Ends. (Updated & Bumped)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:20:00 +0000

(Note: This was originally posted 12/23/08, but I've changed the time index to bump it to the top so the update is seen.)

I was at Borders tonight picking up Robot Chicken: Season Three and looking at the magazine rack. On the cover of Geek Monthly was a smiling, brunette Janeane Garofalo - no longer sporting the self-loathing fried bleached blonde mop she had - with the headling "Crashing Bush's Party" in conjunction with her upcoming role on the next season of the Jack Bauer Power Hour (aka "24").

In the article, she was spewing the same insane rage-filled garbage she has been since she decided she'd be as offensive as she could be to anyone who dared not goosestep with her BDS samba. The same old "Bush-Cheney cabal" and lies that the show that she isn't too proud to take a paycheck from was an inspiration for Gitmo torture are trotted out for the umpteenth time. Didn't Obama just get elected last month? WTF are they still yammering on about Dubya? Why can't these losers just take their own advice and MOVE THE F*CK ON?!?

As the interview dragged on, she revealed that she was raised in a conservative, religious household and she had accepted what her father told her as the gospel truth until she went to college and was called an "asshole" for daring to voice her opinions. She was so shocked, she basically rejected everything she was raised to believe and became the shrill liberal harpie she is now. Well, there we have it: Daddy issues that would shock Electra and acceptance-craving that destroys any illusions she's actually an iconoclast when she blindly disposes of her family in order to curry favor with the crowd she wants to be part of.

So sad. I just watched "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" a few weeks ago and she was so winsome and cute then; easily the more desirable choice of her and Uma Thurman. I endured the schlocky "The Matchmaker" just because she was in it and I loved her cameo in "The Cable Guy" as the Medieval Times serving wench, but in her off-screen dealings, she's become insufferable and it's too bad because it damages her on-screen effectiveness. When she was cast on "24", a lot of people were outraged that a seething, anti-government malcontent would be sullying the JBPH as a FBI agent(!), but unlike the intolerant Lefties (like her, ironically), I'm going to try and look beyond her rancid politics. (Face it, if I didn't watch any TV/films because the stars were pinheads, I'd be watching nothing and as stupid as he is offscreen, Alec Baldwin kicks ass on "30 Rock".)

When Garofalo started on Air AmeriKKKa, I tuned into her show and after 45 minutes of her tirades, I had to bail before I woofed my cookies. Hearing her sounding upset that our soldiers' improved body armor was resulting in fewer deaths, but more crippling injuries, was just maddening. She was angry that our soldiers weren't dying enough for her taste; the same soldiers who were fighting the Islamofascists who would deny her a career and the ability to spout off freely whatever lunacy that entered her empty head. Just pathetic, but so typical for Hollyweird of today. Power Line had an obit for Van Johnson that explores the anti-military attitudes of Hollyweird that's enlightening, not that Janeane Garofalo has any use for facts that don't keep her in the in-crowd and slapping back against her father. Of course, she doesn't see the irony that conservatives are mostly blacklisted by her fellow travelers in the industry while she takes a job on a show she despises its best qualities of. (i.e. Jack Bauer kicking terrorist ass for his country!)

Final irony? She encourages people to go to Borders to get information. Who knew that Borders was considered the info spot for unhinged Lefties? I mean, other than me, that is? (I've joked with my g/f that she couldn't get a job at Borders because she's too hetero for them. Heh.) While I was in the DVD section, the sales girl was actually recommening "10,000 B.C." to a customer, so that should tell you the level of information Janeane expects you to swallow from her fave bookstore.

What was I doing there since it's such a evil place? Saving 40% on my DVDs, that's what - best price available anywhere. Score! Let the Commies figure out how to make a buck themselves. Heh.

UPDATE & BUMP: 24 is now nine hours into the season and Janeane has been OK, though a lot of liberals at this one forum I post at are bagging on her dour mien. (Maybe they wish she would sabotage Jack in the name of extreme liberals everywhere?) Anyhoo, I saw this interview quoted on Big Hollywood and here's what the typically "open-minded", "diverse" and "tolerant" liberal has to say:

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.

Sarah Palin [is] small-minded and mean-spirited. It has nothing to do with gender — I don’t give a shit about her gender — she is what the Republican Party has become: obstructionist, contrarians, small-minded, all of these things. She just happens to be attractive. There’s definitely something wrong with her. She’s lacking in so many areas. Of course she’s successful with a segment of the country because she represents that lesser segment of the country. It’s people’s lesser nature – their human frailty. You know whatever’s wrong with them is what she is about.

That's right, Janeane; the woman who has raised a family, worked a fishing trawler, and took on the entrenched old boys club of Alaskan politics to rise to the chief executive position of that state is stupid, crazy and a sign of how stupid and crazy you believe the proles of America to be. And who better to tell us than a bitter and rage-filled actress who hasn't been SEEN (she was a voice player in Ratatouille) by any substantial audiences in at least a decade until now on 24? If anyone is narrow and cruel, it's you, babe. That's why you're still single, your joke marriage 16 years ago that you didn't ever dissolve notwithstanding. You used to be cute and funny, now you're just vile and miserable. You have my pity, you miserable twit.

==============

ANOTHER UPDATE (2/27/09): Jeez, she just can't help herself, can she? Appearing with fellow traveler and raving loon Keith Olbermann:

After mentioning that former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan used to date Limbaugh, Garofalo cracked that Kagan has Stockholm Syndrome, which she also attributed to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, with Olbermann agreeing that Steele suffers from "self-loathing":
JANEANE GAROFALO: She dated him, so either she suffers from Stockholm Syndrome – a lot like Michael Steele, who’s the black guy in the Republican party who suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, which means you try and curry favor with the oppressor.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Yes, you talk about self-loathing.

GAROFALO: Yeah, and there’s, any female or person of color in the Republican party is struggling with Stockholm Syndrome.

So charming. Note that the picture has her credited as a "political activist", as if running around spewing lies and insanity on friendly media outlets contributes anything to society. Pffft.

(h/t Big Hollywood)

DDDJ: Jessica Gomes

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:47:00 +0000

It's time for the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and while everyone's panting after the cover model, I just looked for and found this lovely lady. I spotted her in last year's issue and now she's today's Dirk's Dirk Du Jour. Enjoy!