Dipshit of Month - November 2011

Congratulations go out to Rick Perry, governor of Texas and Republican Presidential candidate. You are the Dipshit of the Month!

Why? Do I really need to explain? Geez, where have you been?

Fuck The Rich - Part 2

Kim Kardashian reportedly spent $10 million dollars on her wedding to Kris Humphries (whoever the fuck he is). This is obscene. No, it's beyond obscene. Obscene is spending one million dollars on a wedding. Grossly obscene is spending $2 million. $10 million is basically the rich pissing on everyone else by showing how much fucking money they have - so much that they can blow it on a one-day event catering to other rich assholes, celebrating a marriage that has a 50% chance of failing. You don't spend $10,000,000 on a marriage unless said marriage will create peace between two mortal enemies and said peace will prevent war that would have killed thousands. A $10 million wedding is like taking a dump on someone else's plate then eating a gourmet meal in front of them. "Oh, you don't like your dinner? That's too bad. Look at mine. YUM!!!"

Fuck you Kim Kardashian. You could have spent $100,000 on a very nice wedding and had $9,900,000 left over. You could have given a little bit of that to a food bank, a homeless shelter, an animal shelter, established a scholarship fund, contributed to cancer research. You could have given to all of them, made a positive contribution to society and STILL had a nice fucking wedding. Jesus. For $10,000,000 you could have run for president - or bought a president.

The fact that she was willing to spend $10,000,000 (even if it was someone else's money) on one of the most bullshit things on planet Earth is evidence that Kim Kardashian is one of the dumbest objects in the universe.

But wait! Don't burn that "Kim + Kris 4 Ever" t-shirt just yet. Kim has filed for divorce from Kris Whogivesashit. After 72 days. 72 DAYS. Jesus Christ on a cracker! Even if the guy is the biggest asshole on the planet, after spending ten million fucking dollars on your wedding, you put up with the son of a bitch for more than 72 days before throwing in the towel. You go to therapy. You take separate vacations. You pay some shithead $50,000 to whack your husband and make it look like an accident. Do you don't fucking file for divorce 72 days after spending $10 million to marry him. You just spent $138,888.88 PER DAY to be married to him. Fuck almighty.

And if he was THAT big of an asshole, surely Kim had at least a little hint of that before she got married. If not, this guy just bamboozled her big time and he should probably get some kind of acting award or something. If he did give Kim a hint that he might be a colossal asshole, then this is yet further evidence that she is the one of the dumbest objects in the universe. You don't spend $10,000,000 to marry an asshole. There are plenty of them to be had for cheap. I know - I'm one of them.

Birthday - Schirthday

Don't celebrate birthdays anymore. It's just annoying. Seriously.

Consider what you're celebrating. Its celebrating the fact that the person survived one orbit around the sun. So what? Why not celebrate each lunar cycle? Or each sunrise? Happy Birthday! You're 14,510 days old!!! Alright! It's the big 1451-oh!

Back in the Good Old Days when infant mortality rates were ridiculously high I can understand being enthusiastic about your bundle of joy making to a year, two years even three years of age. These days, however, other than when there are serious health issues from birth, most children survive childhood. Surviving is a non-event. Why celebrate it? Because you want to make the person feel loved and good about themselves? One day a year? That's it? What about the other 364 days? You don't give a shit do you? So the Birthday is just the one day a year you pretend to give a shit about someone so you won't feel bad about not giving a shit the rest of the year. Birthday celebrations are your penance for being an asshole. That's why I don't let people celebrate my birthday. I'm not letting you off the hook for being an asshole the rest of the year. Fuck you.

On the other hand, I too am an asshole. I don't celebrate other people's birthdays. I don't give a shit and I don't care if you know it. Have a happy birthday. Or don't. I don't really care. I do care if you have a good day the other 364 days - but on your birthday, well, you're on your own. It's a stupid thing to celebrate something that will happen whether you put any effort into or not.

Too Little, Too Late - TRON: Legacy Movie Review

When I saw TRON (the 1982 film) it was visually amazing. I don't really remember that much about the plot. I don't think I understood it - or maybe I just didn't care. But I do remember it was cool. When TRON: Legacy came out I was pretty excited - but not enough to go see it, so I waited for it to come out on DVD.

TRON: Legacy is a cookie cutter story about a son rescuing his father, who is missing because he made an error in judgement - specifically, he created a computer program with the task of creating "perfection." Toward that goal the program (named CLU) decides that it must erradicate everything that isn't perfect. Sounds a little like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Oddysey.

CLU also decides that it must acquire the ability to manifest itself in our physical world and eradicate humans (Terminator, anyone?). The movie takes place in a simulated world that resembles our world quite a bit (The Matrix...oy). And the creater of this world (Flynn) tries to rescue one of the special programs that were the victims of genocide by CLU (shades of Schindler's List).

Altogether this movie looks and feels like a mish-mash of characters and plot lines from other, better movies. To add insult to injury, the visuals aren't even that great. The first TRON in 1982, even as primitive as the computer effect were, was visually striking - it made you feel like you were in a computer. This new film made me feel like I was watching a Daft Punk video. Oh, wait. I was.

Life sucks. Rinse and repeat.

I was always one of those people who scoffed at the idea of depression as an illness. Life sucks. Get over it. That was my motto. Then in 2006 I became clinically depressed. I figured it was just my inability to deal with life so I kept believing that I would get over it. When I did not get over it, my wife forced me to seek treatment. Several months, two prescriptions and several hundred dollars later I was no longer depressed, but I was emotionally numb and poorer.

The upside of this was that I was able to approach all of life's problems completely objectively. I was no longer reacting to my plight emotionally. The fact that I was in a financial tailspin, my wife hated me (or at least who I had become) and my career had imploded no longer effected me emotionally and they became problems that I could solve mathematically.

My financial situation was being made worse by soaring gas prices. In my emotional stupor, I deduced that the solution was to get a vehicle with the highest possible fuel economy and the lowest possible purchase price. I decided to get a motorcycle. Now, most men in their 40's or 50's get a motorcycle due to their mid-life crisis. I was having a mid-life crisis, but the motorcycle was a mathematical calculation, not a way to confront (or avoid) aging. The strange side effect of this was that somehow, in spite of my drug induced comfortable numbness, shopping for a motorcycle made me happy. I weaned myself off the anti-depressants and I was still happy. Somehow the thrill of just the idea of a motorcycle changed my brain and essentially cured my depression.

This all worked out pretty well for nearly three years. In spite of the fact that nothing else had changed in my life (at least not for the better) I was fairly happy. I got to ride regularly and I loved it. But over time, my perspective changed.

I've always been keen on risk management in my life. I didn't really know it until recently, but most of my decisions are made from a risk management perspective. I'm not a big risk taker so I do everything I can to minimize it. When the number and severity of motorcycle accidents near my home started to increase it really made me think. Was my decision to buy a motorcycle to save money really a good decision? The answer was most definately no. I won't bore you with the details, but the potential catastrophic loss costs of riding a motorcycle far outweigh any savings I might get in fuel costs over a lifetime. I just couldn't bring myself to make a bad decision anymore, so I stopped riding. That makes me depressed. The fact that I have to give up something I enjoy in order to protect myself and my family is dis-heartening and makes me question the purpose and usefullness of life. Why bother living if I can't enjoy it? I must live to protect and care for my family so they can enjoy life.

While contemplating this paradox I heard a voice in my head. "Life sucks. Get over it" it said. So I will. I will get over it. Without drugs. Without a motorcycle. I will find a way to get over it and fulfil my duty to my family. Maybe if I do this their lives won't suck so much.

World of Tanks (BETA) Review

“World of Tanks is a team-based massively multiplayer online game dedicated to armored warfare in the mid-20th century.” -- www.worldoftanks.com

World of Tanks (WoT) is not as fast paced or exciting as first person shooters like the COD, MOH or BF series. It is part Role Playing Game with your tank and crew improving over time as you build up experience and credits to buy better vehicles and upgrades. It is part simulation with the strengths and weaknesses of different vehicles playing a factor in battle. It is part strategy game as you must play smart to survive. This game isn’t about who can aim and shoot the fastest but about who can deceive and out-maneuver the other team.

While the game does not allow the degree of customization and flexibility that IL-2 did, it succeeds by making sure that you can get into battles quickly and ensuring those battles will be fair and balanced. If you like gritty armor-on-armor combat, you will probably find something to like about this game. And if not, at least you didn’t have to pay for it.

THE GOOD: It's free. How can you beat that? The game allows you to operate and fight against just about every light, medium and heavy tank, tank destroyer or self-propelled artillery commonly seen in the WW2 European Theater. The graphics are excellent and frame rates on a mediocre machine are good. Team battles are quick and easy to get into and teams are usually well ballanced. The variety of maps is good with each map having its own challenges - you will need to adjust your tactics based on the terrain. Maps vary from wide open plains that require long-range engagements to cityscapes with narrow streets and close-combat slug-fests. The in-combat interface superb - easy to understand and offers some customization options.

Did I mention the game is FREE. You can play and access most (if not all) of the features and vehicles at no charge. Paid services allow you access vehicles and technology more quickly, but are purely optional. The game appears to be balanced enough that paying players won’t have any major advantage over non-paying players, other than gaining access to top-tier tanks more quickly.

THE BAD: Every battle is won by either capturing the other team’s HQ or by destroying all the other tanks. An average battle lasts about 10 minutes (with a maximum time of 12 or 15 minutes). When your tank is destroyed you’re done. You can observe the game from the view any of your team mates, but you can’t respawn. If you die early in a battle, be prepared to wait. Go to the bathroom. Smoke a cigarette. Make a sandwich. You’ve got about 5 to 8 minutes before the next battle starts. On the other hand, you learn quickly to avoid getting killed which means more time playing and less time observing. While the developers say that buildings can be “perforated” it appears that most walls are solid and con not be destroyed or penetrated. A tank hiding behild a building appears to be completely safe from enemy fire, except that it is still vulnerable to artillery fire.

THE UGLY: While the graphics are generally very good, there is a lot of repetition in the building models. In the urban maps, you’ll find yourself passing the exact same bombed-out building repeatedly. On my computer, the interface screen was too big to display properly and the bottom of the screen was cut off - not a major problem, but it was somewhat annoying. Fiddling with resolution settings might fix it. Players can not set up their own servers and there does not appear to be any type of active moderation, so you will encounter the occasional abusive, team-killing asshole and you’ll just have to live with it since you can’t kick him. However, you can set up team battles that allow you to limit your team to invitees only. Artillery is a mixed blessing. It ensures that an out-matched tank has a way of defeating a well entrenched target (by having a team mate in an SPG lay down artillery fire on it). On the other hand, artillery seems unusually precise and in many battles I saw the SPGs held the highest kill counts.

WRITE OR DIE

In the business world, at least my version of it, there are three types of people. Those who can communicate effectively, those who can but don't, and those who simply choose not to.

We can debate what constitutes effective communication and we might even agree that it is situational. But I think I can safely say that if you refuse to communicate important business information with me by email and choose instead to use a phone, then you lose the right to send me your stupid email bullshit spam.

If you can't spend two or three minutes to write an email telling me what I need to know, but insist on leaving me five voicemails (get the hint already) asking me to call you back, then don't forward me your stupid "forward to five friends right now or a leprachaun will chew off your kneecap" email. If you can write, you should not be allowed to forward stupid crap to people. If you can't write, you should not be allowed to use a computer.