Funniest Thing I've Heard Recently:

"As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feast on the flesh of the living! So we all sing Christmas Carols to lull him back to sleep." 9/19/07

Sonic is a Gangster 10/29/07

"What did you eat for breakfast, Carnation Instant Btch?" 10/29/07

Question: "Do the PS3 games play on the PS2?"
Answer: "no the ps2 doesnt have backward compatability to run ps3 games u will have to get rid of ur old ps3 games" 11/1/07

"The library has 15,000 books to choose from and wireless Internet rendering them all completely useless." 11/25/07

• 21May 08

  An American's Ignorance

  It's been... well, I'm too lazy to do the math on how long it's been, so in that spirit I'll tell you all about Americans in general. This is just a thought that's been bouncing around in my head for awhile. It has struck me that much of the world feels that Americans are incredibly stupid. Ironically, this entire time we've been referring to Canadians as 'stupid.' In fact they made a video dedicated to this 'fact.' I assure you, we're not as stupid as that video makes it seem; I assume they just edited out anyone that could answer the questions correctly. We are certainly not cultured in a traditional sense, since in my experience many Americans feel that if you come here you should speak English. "Egotistical" is the word a woman used when I went up to Canada some years ago. Sadly, that's pretty accurate.

  There are a number of things that Americans in general cannot differentiate between in the slightest, and geography and culture are on the top of that list. Case and point:

  Irish/Scottish- We have absolutely no clue as to what the difference is here. If someone were to ask us to mimic the Irish accent, it would inevitably deteriorate into a mix of Lucky Charms and Shrek.

  Japanese/Chinese/Korean... - Once again, we can't tell the differences for our lives. We tend to throw them all into the category "Asian." "Oriental" is what was used back in the 80s or so, but it's not "politically correct" anymore. Really, I know there are others, but I'm hard-pressed to think of another country in the area, thus further proving that geography is not one of our strong points.

  Dominican/Mexican/Puerto Rican/Cuban... - We group these nationalities into the set "latino" and moved on. A lot of people would throw the blanket nationality of "Mexican" on all of them, but that's something I'm happy to say I don't do.

  Russian/Polish/Turkish- We don't even have a word to group these all into. Some would even throw German in there since, unsurprisingly, they don't have a clue. They're basing their knowledge on wars that happened over half-a-century ago. At this point, we should be happy if an American could pick the right hemisphere.

  South Americans- We know where South America is, sure, but naming more than two or three countries down there would be quite a feat. And being able to differentiate between the nationalities? Just... don't ask.

  There are exceptions to these rules, particularly with people that have studied in related fields such as language courses, or anthropology. But that's quite key to our culture: we're specialists. If we're good at anything, it's pretty much that one thing and maybe a few others. The majority of the United States detests mathematics with a passion and as such, we offer up only our most mathematically apt nerds to the god Mathios to do our bidding so that we don't have to learn how to solve derivatives and logarithms and whatnot. While it's to a somewhat less degree, we really don't like science either. We have a different god we offer up those nerds to. Ironically enough, that leaves culture, which we clearly flunked out of in the previous section. So what does that leave the majority of us to do? Well, that's simple: mindless, pointless service tasks.

  We provide services and entertainment to a massive degree. We work in the services industry doing things others don't want to do so that we can pay someone else in another service industry to do yet another task that we ourselves are too lazy to do. We have fast food restaurants that cook our food for us, we have maids, butlers or whatever the politically correct term is to clean our houses so that we don't have to, we have 'installers' for everything from floors to video games. We have someone for everything. Then we have 1,000,001 television channels so we don't have to suffer through boredom and/or work. We have artists for every genre of music, including some genres that may have been better off never being created. We even created a site so that people could entertain others for free. We are a society so incredibly wrapped around the entertainment industry that when the writers for television shows went on strike, it was a pretty big deal. Apparently the show 'American Gladiators' is still on because its ratings received a bump during that period.

  True enough, I am selling my country's people short by quite a bit. I myself am clearly not a complete idiot and I'm certainly not the only one. The US boasts its fair share of 'educationally impaired' citizens that are kept afloat by the buoying intellectuals who hold varying levels of knowledge on many subjects, but still edge towards specialization. I have a professor at my university who spent about 20 years in college studying a number of subjects. Meanwhile, universities are having to turn away students all the time because of the high number of people applying to enroll. We are certainly not all aimed at service and entertainment, though there is a disturbingly large population of pseudo-intellectuals that flow into the mix all the time, basing expertise on limited study and 'experience.' You see this all the time on news programs with 'experts' and 'analysts.'

  • Posted May 21, 2008 3:35 pm PT
  • Category: Sports
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• 22Mar 08

  Computers S**k: The Internet

  Note: Well, it appears in the time I've been gone Gamespot's kept up it's lengendary glitch status, along with a new and very sad adjustment: the word "s*ck" is apparently now automatically censored. Don't be surprised if something in this post looks off...

  Well, it's been a couple months, hasn't it? So, I guess I'll drop by to unload all of my problems on you.

  Had finals this week, and go figure, the morning of, I ended up dropping my laptop. A weak-**s two-foot drop and the thing busted like a pinata (forgive the missing accent on the n). Seriously, could less money have been put into protecting a $1500 computer for it to not be able to survive that? Now I'm out of my mind worrying about the possibility of my HDD being corrupted and three years worth of files going down the drain.

  But it gets better! This week we lost our Internet connection. My mother and I spent a good number of hours trying everything possible to get the damn things to connect, but ultimately it was time wasted. It's strange, too, since all of them stopped working all at once, but this sorry little Laptop that we hooked up runs the Internet fine. And I don't think anyone simulataneously changed the settings on our five other computers.

  Just went through a live session with a tech support person (Agent Jarnail was the person's name) and it also ended up being time wasted. Time I could be using to finish any one of the five or so games I'm working on (I know, I shouldn't play so many at once...) By the way, if you're wondering: Devil May Cry 3, very close, Persona 3, fairly close, though it's the sort of game that you can't be too sure when it will end, Bladestorm, which I have no idea on, Valkyrie Profile 2, which I've only just started, and God of War, which I just bought again since my brother, the little idiot, sold off the first copy for $3. Though it's a fairly short game and fairly addictive so it'll over and done soon enough. I'm also playing Patapon on my PSP, and I play Final Fantasy Chronicles from time to time, though it's on the extreme back burner.

  And it seems that pretty much every problem that a computer has nowadays can almost always be linked to the Internet. I help this old couple down the street from time to time, and guess what they have trouble with: e-mail. Go figure. And now we all need virus protection, and when the subscription ends, another pathetic development with the Internet, they give you a pop-up every single day to pay them an outrageous fee to protect us from the virus they create. Yep, they have virus development supposedly to pre-empt the creation of it by someone else, though you can't be too sure that they aren't "accidentally leaked" from time to time. It's basically the "protection money" you used to pay that bully back in your school days.

  The day we integrate technology into the human body, we better be sure we have everything worked out and completely standardized, 'cause Your Dear God, if I need tech support to use the restroom I will become the Terminator v2.20. Speaking of which, there's a PSN update coming up in the near future: fw2.20 that will a bunch of stuff, though nothing people have been screaming for. Still, a decent update overall. If you wnat the details head on over to PlayStation.blog. And don't expect me to provide a link either. Like my daddy always used to tell me "Find it your own damn self."

  I guess I've provided enough for another two or three months.

  Laters.

  • Posted Mar 22, 2008 3:21 pm PT
  • Category: Sports
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• 7Jan 08

  So, This is What It's Like...

  It's been about a month, hasn't it? Well, I warned you it'd be quiet here, but I'll break the silence for about a minute and then recede back into the Mist. Another reason why I haven't been on is my laptop is at Best Buy for some minor tune-ups... for the third week.

  So, this is what it's like to be a free-loading Gamespot member. There's actually an ad in my profile! Wow, I never knew.

  I've been playing plenty, though not on what you might think: my PSP! Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth has me incredibly intrigued and I've found myself using the Remote Play quite a bit too. I've also jumped back into Final Fantasy XII, which I've found I didn't really enjoy as much as I should've because I felt like I had to get through it. It's so much better the second time around.

  As far as new purchases go highlights include Unreal Tournament III, Uncharted, and Call of Duty (only because they were selling it for $37 at Target). Haze is very close so I'll be picking that up pretty soon, though I would've like to have done that in December.

  University starts back up tomorrow so I'll be back in action and preparing for the future again.

  Really, the only reason I jumped on today was CES, but it appears that the event is a bust, though I suppose it could pick up.

  (Much) Later.

  • Posted Jan 7, 2008 2:27 pm PT
  • Category: Cars
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