What do we learn from the below video?
1. The entire nation of Japan exists in a near-constant state of having just smoked a bunch of crack.
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger loves Cup Noodles, and is not deterred by the high sodium content. Also he sometimes is a gay genie.
3. Anyone can become governor of California. Anyone.
I’ve been on vacation for the past week. There will be blogging but now I’m too tired. In the meantime, this video perfectly sums up my love for Sarah Palin.
I successfully pickled okra. Remember that? Two weeks ago? Yea, it came out really good. The okra is crisp – much more crisp than store-bought. It’s very spicy (probably because I added way too much red pepper flake), but it’s not so spicy as to be unbearable. I like it.
Most importantly, I clearly sterilized everything correctly, because I ate some last night and am still alive. That’s good news, because that’s the part I was most worried about, and despite my best efforts, ended up half-assing it, because that’s just how I roll.
Still, I can say that I have successfully pickled something.
It was just a matter of time: Last night my XBox 360 flashed the Three Red Rings of Death. The good news is that Microsoft is paying for the shipping. The bad news is twofold: I was on the hook for $25 in packaging costs, and I’m going to wait a few weeks to get it back.
Hey Microsoft: Not cool. You used to send out packaging for people to send back their defective XBoxes. Why did you stop? Did you stop because you did such a poor job of testing it that you lost tons and tons of money, and just got stingy about taking responsibility for your poor standards? I bet that’s it.
Unfortunately, this is the era in which we live. Hardware is rushed to market in order to establish dominance (and, yes, for Microsoft it paid off in this generation of console wars), but the consumer really suffers in the end. It was like that with the BlackBerry Storm – it was so buggy as to be nearly unusable, and early-adopters had to wait for a software update. RIM knew the problems, but put it out anyway. If you listen to sources at Microsoft, they knew what they were doing, too: On one of their test runs, 68 of every 100 units were defective.
It’s sort of ridiculous that this is somehow OK. It’s why, even after they put out the iPhone 3G, I waited for a couple of months to pick one up. I’d rather wait for the first wave of people who pick it up and discover all the hardware and software failures, so they can be fixed. I’m sorry they’re the ones who have to do that, as opposed to the manufacturer, because product testing is not our job.
The Wall Street Journal has a story about coffee shops pulling the plug on free-loading laptop users. Read it here.
Look, I’m a “writer,” in the sense that I like collecting rejection letters. I’ve always felt like the people who go to a coffee shop to write are lame. It seems like they’re more interested in someone (usually a pretty girl) coming up to them to talk to them about their deep thoughts and insights a.k.a. lame poetry.
Or they want to surf the web for a few hours while nursing a single cup of coffee. Who cares if paying customers can’t sit down? There’s pictures of cats with funny captions to be looked at! Also lame.
Or they want to show off their new MacBook. Lame lame lame.
I tried to write in a coffee shop once. It wasn’t on a laptop, I was doing line-edits on a printed manuscript. I was curious to see if there was anything to sitting in a coffee shop and working. I felt like a self-absorbed tool and ended up drinking five cups of coffee because I felt bad for monopolizing the space. Plus, it was too loud to concentrate.
So instead of getting some good work done, I ended up frustrated and jittery. LAME!
A recent college grad from the Bronx, Trina Thompson, is suing Monroe College because, three months after graduating, the college hasn’t done enough to find her a job. She’s seeking $70,000 in tuition reimbursement, as well as $2,000 for stress.
I’m pretty sure it’s not Monroe College’s fault, and I’ll give you two reasons as to why:
1. Check out the story NY1 did here. While a gracious editor cleaned up her quote in the text, if you listen to the video, her quote is actually this (emphasis mine):
“I need a full-time job placement and that’s what they said they was going to help me with and they didn’t.”
2. In her complaint, which you can read here, you can see that’s she’s “seeking a reimbursement of $70,000 from [her] tutision.”
So the reason Trina can’t find a job is not because of anything Monroe College did. Actually, it’s despite their effort. It’s because she’s a moron.
It’s kinda sad that my generation is one that expects handouts without having to do any work.
If I really thought about this, I would probably be overcome with an impending sense of doom, that if the children are our future, and the children are retarded, then we are completely screwed as a race, and I may as well go live in a shack in the mountains and become self-sufficient to try and stave off the eventual collapse of society.
Instead, I’ll just laugh and move on.
Here’s something that makes me wonder how the elected officials and landowners involved have convinced themselves that they’re still worthy members of society: According to the Daily News, the Freedom Tower, and surrounding transit hub and memorial, won’t be completed until 2018.
2018.
Read it and weep.
That’s 17 years after the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, excavation for the Empire State Building started on January 22, 1930. It opened on May 1, 1931. That’s barely more than a year! And I’m pretty sure they didn’t even have electricity in the 1930s! If you adjust for advances in technology, by today’s standards, we should be able to build the Freedom Tower in 45 minutes.
So what’s the problem? Well, Larry Silverstein, who leases the property, isn’t helping. This is the kind of guy Larry Silverstein is: His insurance policy was for $3.5 billion, but he wants double that, because since it was two planes, that means two separate attacks, which means he’s due closer to $7 billion. Makes sense. I mean, c’mon, $3.5 billion, what is that? That’s practically an insult. What can you buy with that? Cuba? Whatever. Clearly, he is an easy-going guy who wants to do the right thing: The right thing is collecting all the money ever printed in America.
Although, it also didn’t help that former Gov. Pataki appointed his buddy, John Whitehead, to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. You’d figure a successful banker would have experience with construction and economic development, right? I mean, that’s why I call my butcher when my sink is backed up. Seriously though, it must be fun to be a political appointee, unless you’re Michael Brown (although, in Bush’s defense, I believe that raising horses is qualification to run the country’s disaster-response agency. It makes just as much sense as abstinence-only programs and invading a country that didn’t attack us. Right?)
Then there’s dealing with the Port Authority, a bi-state agency that actually owns the site, and is also full of political appointees. They made an agreement in 2006, called the master development agreement, with Silverstein, which gave the PA control of the Freedom Tower and Silverstein would have to build some of the smaller towers. Problem was, it resulted in $132 million in late fees after multiple deadlines passed, because a random wall in the middle of the site prevented it from getting handed over…
You know what? Fuck this. This is ridiculous. Fuck everyone involved who handed al-Qaeda the win on this. Because they did win. We live in a constant state of fear and political bickering, we’ve given up our civil liberties for the illusion of safety and we’ve accepted that a big, gaping hole in lower Manhattan is just something to accept. For a country as jingoistic as America, I fail to understand why there isn’t rioting in the streets. It’s also the same reason that I refuse to acknowledge the Pledge of Allegiance or the Star Spangled Banner anymore. This country, and the standards we set for ourselves, it’s all a joke.
I had a hard time following this movie. First, because the sound mix was terrible. The dialogue was mixed way too low, and everyone was talking in British accents, which is essentially gibberish. Also, two of the guys in this looked very similar and they were so bland I couldn’t even retain their names.
Also, I have an alternate title for this movie: Terrible Things Keep Happening. After a while it becomes a little much. If there’s nothing redeeming about the characters, I have a hard time caring about them dying.
That aside, some dude gets killed with a speedboat motor. Amazing. Sorry, but I just ruined the best part. Doesn’t matter. You’re not missing anything.
So, yea, this guy totally isn’t playing along with my bait to turn this into an awkward e-mail exchange about needing money for a sex change operation. Whatever. I’m bored with him now.
What is funny, though, is that in the first letter he sent me, he was Officer Incharge. Now Mr. Louis Hillebrant is Executive Secretary. Let me be the first to congratulate him on his promotion.
I love Judd Apatow’s movies. They have no structure, they make the third Lord of the Rings movies seem short, and they’re full of talented comedians standing in front of a camera and just saying funny stuff until something hits – then they move on. But, there’s always something missing – he has these great characters (in Funny People it’s Aziz Ansari as Randy) who are in his movies for, like, 30 seconds, and then they’re gone. Any other filmmaker would have left that character on the cutting room floor, but Apatow included him. He includes a lot of little flourishes that are completely pointless, and just add to the bladder-busting runtimes.
And I think I figured out why that is: Judd Apatow should go back to doing TV. I never watched Freaks and Geeks and I feel like I should, because I enjoy his work. I feel like what’ll happen is that I’ll watch it and get into it, and then be bummed that Apatow isn’t working in the medium he’s best suited for.
That being said, Adam Sandler was great in this. Seth Rogen only has three facial expressions, and a lot of times you can see him furrowing his brow and thinking act, act, act really hard. But I still love him. This movie is very funny.