This week Tim and Noah record in the same room…and an awkward echo ensues. Sorry ’bout that. Read the rest of this entry »
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Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 17
I think I’ve been clear on my feelings towards attention-starved media whores.
On October 15th, the world waited for a little boy to pop out of a balloon his pseudo-scientist (oops, the polite term is “amateur scientist”) father built, or else for him to die horribly so we could all shake our heads and say “what a shame”, then resume searching the web for celebrity porn tapes. It turned out mostly okay.
Late that night, Wolf Blitzer, in his best imitation of Larry King, missed the little boy apparently giving away that the whole situation was a hoax (check out the 40s mark).
I was entirely unsurprised. Maybe it is because I assume people who have been on Wife Swap are attention whores. Maybe it is because I paid attention to Mythbusters. Or to Aesop.
Now the local authorities have begun investigations, and it seems Richard will have some ‘splaining to do.
This is the story I’ve been looking forward to; the one where the asshole who wasted time and taxpayer money gets what’s coming.
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 16
I had a stupid idea, but what the hell, TANcast is a stupid place. Maybe it’s even unique. I certainly haven’t found it documented anywhere yet, despite my attempts to find any mention.
At any rate, if I thunk it up I get to name it and until I hear otherwise I’m calling it Brainf*ck Chess. It’s pronounced “Brainfuck Chess”, but I’m spelling it with an asterisk so people can print the name in semi-polite company.
The rules are as simple as they are (currently) poorly defined: This is standard chess, but the players switch sides. The colors still act in turn throughout the match, so the same person makes the move prior to and the move after each change of side.
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 15
Blah blah, late post, socked nuts…
I’ve been trying to locate a copy of a short story (~5000 words, I think) originally created for an English class back in 1998. I called it Paranoia, and it was essentially the diary of a madman.
Thanks to Hotmail’s old “log in regularly or your email archive goes away” policy, my 4 subsequent moves, and possible lending to an ex-girlfriend along the way I’m not even sure a copy still exists in the world except the general structure and some details that live on in my melon.
I’d probably be embarrassed to read it now anyways. I’m not saying 32 year-old Andy is a better writer than 21 year-old Andy, just that 32 year-old Andy is probably better at recognizing shit writing. I have read Digital Fortress in the meantime, after all.
Still, there’s a little voice in the back of my head that tells me I should rework Paranoia and see if I can get published in some shitty little dead-tree magazine. The reasons are complex.
Ok…we’re all sick of hearing about “Balloon Boy” by now. It was lame, he was never in the baloon, yadda yadda yadda. I was ready to move on to the next thing too, then I logged into my e-mail account where Yahoo presents me with the top news stories.
At first I thought, “Geez! That kid is still the lead story. You people suck.” But then…something in that picture caught my eye which actually made me click on the story. When you see the photo full size, you’ll understand… Read the rest of this entry »
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 14
The following is an open letter to the National Rifle Association, inspired the events of this morning.
Dear Pieces of Shit at the NRA:
I received a call today on behalf of your organization from (703) 656-9940. I’m uncertain whether I spoke to one of your paid staffers, a volunteer, or an agency you contracted, but regardless I am very clear on what the dishonest little turd was trying to accomplish.
Slathering the call with a thin veneer of legitimacy by couching it as a “one-question opinion poll”, your minion tried to drum up some sort of outrage (and presumably monetary support) by asking me whether I agreed with “the outrageous United Nations plan to ban guns in the United States”.
I was about as polite to that stupid cow as I am being to you right now. I have no patience for push polls and no respect for the sort of garbage that would resort to using them.
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 13
I just wanted to share with you all something I said to my then-not-yet-wife one evening in early December 2005:
Pink Meatstick of Death …
Yeah, she didn’t get it either.
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 12
Yeah, yeah, I know… This time it was a dick-punch.
Long, long ago, back when (or before?) some of you were actually in diapers, I did some development work (wait, didn’t I claim to have been a banker?) in C, C++, and Smalltalk. Recent career shifts got me back into programming by making me work with a Java-esque special-purpose language. I’ve also been trying to pick up and polish skills with PHP since that is the language that makes TANcast tick.
The recent events seem to have re-ignited my old interest in coding, so as I try to knock rust off of old knowledge and deal with the above I’ve also been starting to wade into Python and some Objective-C. I chose the former because, from all accounts, it is simple, sane, powerful, and Google loves it. Google is like the new IBM: nobody ever got fired for picking Google. I’m working on the latter because I regularly use a Mac for the first time since OS 8.1 was released.
All this résumé padding got me thinking: What else should I try to toss on that pile?
Then it hit me. I should join a high-IQ society. That won’t make me look egotistical or elitist, no sir. That may, in fact, be just the edge I need in this topsy-turvy economic climate!
I then spent at least 30 minutes trying to figure out just how high up the Ladder of Brainiacs my standardized test scores would entitle me to climb. The answer was enough to send me off on a new quest to figure out how to get old copies of my scores. Ego BOOST!
It didn’t take me long to figure out I’d wasted a ton of time internally bragging about how smart a test I took a decade and a half ago told me I was, rather than actually working on the skills I’d meant to attack in the first place.
I guess what I’m saying is that I am what you get when you stick a big brain in a lazy fucktard: lots of potential, but mediocre output…
… and I’m self-aware enough to know exactly how full of shit that makes me.
Andy’s October of Suckage: Day 11
Yes, I socked myself in the right nut and then backdated this post to Sunday.
I finally watched Beowulf with the wife last night. In short, my impression was: Gaimam is a talented writer (and I guess so is Avery), Zemeckis still has a hard-on for creepy CGI, and I feel like I’ve seen parts of this someplace else.
The underlying idea Gaiman and Avery set up is that the epic poem is the product of an unreliable narrator. A proud, boastful warrior has sold history his own biography as tall tale, and his loyal friend/kinsman can’t bear to see past the myth to the flawed man beneath. This idea that the poem I read 15 or so years ago was a snow job was compelling, and the writers used it as a fulcrum to shift the entire story away from having a one-dimensional hero kill a few zero-dimensional enemies/monsters. Instead they offer up a story of human vices and shortcomings, temptations and regrets, and heroic deeds born of pride and shame.
The technical execution was, to my taste, a little less excellent. While Beowulf’s eyes weren’t as death-thing-creepy as the passengers on The Polar Express, computer-generated humans still have the waxy, bouncy look of corpses on wires. Mocap has come a long way, but you can still see Pinocchio’s strings. The fire effects looked great, but the generous quantities of moving, splashing, foaming water looked like a cross between mercury and sand. I know the water-air boundary is hard to model, but it’s the director’s responsibility to choose shots that downplay any technical deficiencies. In fairness, I’m not sure this movie could have been made live action without thousands of effects shots and double the budget, and Robert Zemeckis deserves some credit for pushing the state of the art forward every time he does one of these all-CGI extravaganzas.
The artistic execution was a mixed bag. The cast turned in some excellent performances, for the most part, with Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover, and Anthony Hopkins standing out especially. On the other hand, like many epic or period pieces before it the accents somehow devolved into “pick your own British-ish delivery and try to stick with it”. Hearing John Malkovich’s unique drawl and Anthony Hopkins’ Welsh (I think) accent when both were supposed to be Danes, or Ray Winstone’s Cockney (again, I think) and Brendan Gleeson’s Irish accents when they played related Geats was just distracting. At least Alexander, for all its flaws, stuck to Irish accents for all the Macedonians and more posh British accents for the Greeks.
Parts of the movie were touching, parts were exciting, parts were distracting, and a few action scenes seemed really familiar.
I’d do the movie a disservice if I leave you with the impression that 300 fucked God of War and had a Beowulf. It wasn’t great, but some of it was excellent and the whole was at least good.
I’d watch it again some time. Y’know… If I run out of porn or something.
Another show worth nominating for best “comedy” podcast at podcastawards.com! This week the boys talk about exactly what you think they’d talk about on the 69th episode…politics, culture, and religion (no kidding). They also manage to talk about being a bad husband, babies, weddings, My Secret Ex-Girlfriend, The Cleveland Show, the pros and cons of losing cable, the bliss of owning your own Star Trek uniform, and the dangers of the Banana Spider. Read the rest of this entry »
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