Wednesday, January 28, 2009

F You Tom!

Myspace has always had a love/hate relationship with it's users. People liked to use the site because it allowed them to connect, or stay in touch with, friends from all over the glob, but Mypace has never quite delivered on the promise of being a decent place to spend your time.

Let's look at some of their failures up close:

  • Blogs - I was always convinced that Myspace tossed in the blog tool simply because they read about it being a cool new tool that all the kids were using. They never put any time into actually making the tool useful. Or stable. When it wasn't "down for maintenance" they were making ridiculous changes that would ban you from trying to insert perfectly valid links to sites that you wanted people to see. No RSS feeds, no networks, not useful.
  • SPAM - I have always felt that the SPAM problem on Myspace wasn't really that big of an issue to the people who run the site. Would anyone really be surprised if they found out that Myspace was making money off of the very same spammers they were pretending to stop? Sure you may read how Myspace sued a few spammers, but I wonder if they just went after the spammers who weren't giving them 10% of the cut.
  • Ads - Even their legitimate advertisers were an annoyance. Between the ads that made noises, forcing you to hit your mute button while at work, and the constant deluge of singles ads that insulted your intelligence - I was almost happy to see the BRIGHT BLINKY ANNOYING CLICK ME NOW ads!
  • Names - When I created my first account on Myspace 5 years ago I was really disappointed by their lack of maiden name support. How could I find an old friend of mine if she got married and changed her last name? I wrote to support and suggested this feature. I'm sure I wasn't the first to do so either. Yesterday, January 27th 2009, I got an email from Tom telling me that they finally have maiden name support. Wow that must have been a lot of work to put an extra freaking name field into the database and to toss the extra line of code into the profile editor. This is a perfect example of why Facebook is now kicking Myspace's ass.
  • Accessability - Unless you have a fairly new computer with a fairly decent connection, forget about Myspace. Their phone/portable version of the site is sloppy, poorly featured, and buggier than a homeless guy's groin. On slower computers their ads (see above) can slow you down to a standstill. (This is because they accept/use ads that use what is called "Alpha Channel" in their animations. Alpha'd stuff takes a BIG hit on your CPU.)
  • Community - The biggest failure, in my book, was their total inability to help grow individual communities within the site itself. Say you wanted to talk to people from Tampa to find out some info about the town before you fly in for the Superbowl. Your only real choice is to find a group with the word "Tampa" in it and hope to find someone who actually reads their poorly designed groups. Then you could try to get some answer from them. Most people have given up on the groups, because again, they are poorly managed and nearly impossible to use.
  • Bands - I feel bad for the bands who try and use this shitty site to promote themselves. I mean yeah it's a great place to slap your music up, but have you ever seen what these poor bastards have to do to reach their fucking audience? They can't send a message to all of their friends. Nope. They can't invite more than 200 people to an event - and even that is painful. They can't count on anyone actually using the MySpace calendar because Myspace no longer cares about events or helping people find them. (If anyone disagrees with me here, please tell me the last time you used their calender to find something to do!)
  • Fuck Tom - Seriously. Change your goddamn picture. Stop sending me messages as if you are a real dude and not some poorly paid shift worker who was told to spam out a message to the users. Just dump the lie and fess up to being a 300 person company who spends most of your time sorta trying to fix the broken shit and ZERO percent of your time trying to make good tools.
Thankfully, I'm not the only person who is done with Myspace. I started this blog a short while ago because I was fed up with their garbage. I'm using Facebook more and more because it's always up, because they have working tools that make sense. Because this blog can be RSS fed direclty into my Facebook profile as a note - and networked via their Blog Networker.

Yeah sure I'll keep my Myspace page around. I still have my Friendster page up afterall.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Mythbust This...

Dear Jamie & Adam,

I have noticed that, in the past two seasons of Mythbusters, that you haven't really busted any myths.

Let's be fair here, your James Bond specials were entertaining, but what you recreated at your M5 Studio wasn't really a myth, was it? I mean nobody seriously believed that most of the gadgets that Bond used were real. What's next? Are you going to bust Star Wars and tell us that lightsabers don't exist or that there is no way that two swinging logs could crush the head of a ATST.

There have been a few episodes where you have built a gadget to see if it would really work, but that's not really a myth now is it? Like those anti-gravity devices - even the one that worked was clearly documented as an air-pusher years before you put it near the gravity field detector. Or the water stun gun? It wasn't a myth, it's a gadget that someone once tried to get working. You didn't really get it working either. Not a myth, sorry.

Nor is it a myth when you find an internet video and prove it real or fake. You once did an entire show on the Mentos/Coke thing and yet any kid with $2.00 and a nearby grocery store could have told you that it wasn't a myth. Fine, you spun it to look like you were trying to show which chemicals were responsible for the reaction, but really, that's better suited for an episode of Good Eats than an episode of Mythbusters.

So fine, we have established that you aren't really busting myths anymore...

How about you do something interesting?

  • Bigfoot! How about you settle this shit once and for all. Fake everything like you did with the moon landing special and then show us how easy or hard it would be to make up all of that evidence. Make comparisons between footprints from various periods and places and see if they are even close to being the same. Go out there and really nail this damn thing. Maybe blow up a Bigfoot suit at the end of the episode.
  • Shamwow, let's test this bastard out. What's it made of? Sheepskin like a chamois? Synthetic fiber or Bigfoot fur? Does it really suck orange soda through carpeting and what applications would it have in the porno industry? Maybe get Kari involved in this during ratings sweeps week.
  • UFO's of course need looked at. Find some of those bastards who say that they have been abducted like, Whitley Streiber, and hook them up to a lie detector. Maybe follow him around for a year so that when he writes, in his next book, about being abducted on July 15th, you can show the world your spycam footage of him bullshitting with his wife about how he's going to fake a good story for that night. Maybe put some lights up in the sky to see how many people say it's a UFO, and show people how easy it is to fake a UFO with, pretty much, anything that is round and throwable.
  • Paris Hilton. Just why the fuck is she famous anyway? I don't know how you would test this but blowing her up at the end of the episode would be fucking brilliant!
  • Mythbusters! How about you expose some of the myths of the show itself. Like those scenes where you try something out in the field, then go back to M5, and then go back out in the field with something new - everyone is dressed the same. How about, on a show where you talk about the truth, you don't let your editors fuck with the timeline of how your week went? If Grant had his golfing machine out on the same day that they all drove balls manually- say so. Also those crappy little scripts that you invariably make Torri read are unnecessary. Having him explain physics to us, as if he just thought that shit up himself, is an insult to our intelligence. Why not just use the announcer the way he was intended to be used?
  • Comcast/FIOS/Direct TV. The American people really need you to answer this debate once and for all. Who really does have the most HD channels? How much does Comcast degrade their HD signal? Who has the most channels? Who has the best price? The winner gets to air parts of your episode as their commerical.
  • General Tso - Where the hell do these people who own Chinese restaurants get trained to cook like that. The dishes that they cook up are NOT in any way related to what they would be cooking in China. Is there some big school for Chinese Restaurant Cooking where they can teach me how to count out exactly 5 shrimp per Triple Delight?
  • The Ghost Hunters - Wouldn't that just be the awesomeness? Adam and Jamie could go out and prove that The Ghost Hunters are full of shit. Maybe sit down and ask them, "If people see ghosts all of the time, why do you only film at night with the lights out? Is it because the loss of definition of a nightvision camera helps you make shit up?"

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

It's Amazing I Ever Got Married (Stories 1 & 2)

STORY ONE

Throughout high school I was known as a nerd. It was so bad that my long term girlfriend had to be from another school where nobody knew that I liked to play with computers. During one brief breakup I did date a girl from my school, but she was in Jr. High and had no idea about the intensity of disdain that most people viewed me with.

So when I started hanging out at the mall or South Park it started to sink in as fact that as long as I talked to a girl who wasn't from Elizabeth Forward High School, I actually stood a chance at scoring a date with her. Because of the life-long ego-beating I was given, I never really set my sights too high and when I did I would invariably fuck things up.

For instance there was Kelly.

That's not her real name. I don't remember her real name.

What happened was that one weekend while her parents were away I was invited to a party at her house with a few of my friends. We arrived and things were going well when drama strikes. I play the concerned guy, help to calm things down and Kelly hints that we should go out sometime. I jump on the chance without thinking things through. You see, if I had paused for a few minutes, I would have realized that she was way to hot for me.

She was something along the lines of 5'4", beautiful face, great smile, wonderful tight 80's jeans and a rack that would make a moose jealous. Cheerleader, model, kind of intelligent too. I'm sure that right now, if I could remember her name and look her up, she's still freaking hot.

Well my loser ass did not have a license, or a car, and she had to pick me up at my moms house. None of this turned her off, but she did ask that I drive back to the part of town where the movie theater is.

About halfway to the theater, on a long and windy road, there stood a cocky groundhog on the white line of the road. Standing there - he looked right at me - our eyes connected and he didn't blink. Neither did I. I totally forglot about Kelly and the fact that we were on a date and that this is her car.

I plowed right over that mutherfucker.

(As an aside, I'd like to say that killing things isn't cool. I was a retarded teenage kid then. I grew up being taught that the only good ground hog was the kind who used his body to feed the opossums. Now, I think it's stupid to kill something that you won't eat yourself.)

Kelly screams, "Oh my god! You hit him on purpose didn't you?"

At this point I still had an out. I could have said that I was trying to swerve or that I thought he was going to run to the left so I turned the wheel right. I could have lied...

If you have read this far, you know I didn't. I told her the truth. She was upset and I tried dealing with it. We watched the movie and we drove home and she was ice cold to me. No kiss, no feel, no ever talking to her again. I went from uber geek loser in high school, to idiot redneck jerkwad with her circle of friends.

STORY TWO

I was living in Oakland at the time with someone who I'm sure would rather go unnamed. It was right before I got involved in my next long-term relationship and there wasn't much to do in the morning besides listen to crappy radio morning shows.

The Rovolution (104.7) was having a Dating Game type of contest. I, having nothing better to do at that time of the morning, decided to call in. Asluck would have it I got on the show with my frist try.

It was me, some other dude and a girl who had to pick between us. The prize was dinner, drinks and a limo ride all around Pittsburgh. I didn't care so much about the date, but the dinner and drinks sounded nice and what the heck maybe the girl would be cute.

Well as the show goes on I'm stomping this guy's ass into the ground. His answers are boring and cliche. She laughed at all of my answers and asked me follow up questions. I had no doubt in my mind that this limo trip, and possibly the girl, were mine!

That's when we went to commerical.

We come back on the air and the DJ is hosting the "call in and help the girl pick" segment of the show. It goes pretty well with most of the girls picking me, that is until one girl gets on the phone and says something along these lines...

"Oh my god. Nathaniel Beall? I went to school with him and he was such a nerd! He was all into computers and stuff. Dungeons and Dragons too I'm sure. Like the biggest nerd you could ever image. Revenge of the nerds type nerd. But with long nasty hair. Do not pick him, trust me!!!"

I almost hung up right there.

The DJ asked me if I had a response. I couldn't outright deny being a nerd. That would never play. The best I could do was be cool enough to cast doubt on this girl's version of reality.

"I have no idea who that was, likely just another girl who I shot down."

(Ohhh smooth huh? I'm not sure what's worse. Running over an innocent little animal, on purpose, while on a first date with a hottie, or uttering the typically stupid "She's just mad because she can't have my dick" comeback.)

I was sunk. 15 seconds later she picked the other guy and yet again my loserdom was exposed to the world - only this time it's not a small circle of friends. It's the entire listening area of The Revolution radio station.

I take solace in knowing that the girl from my HS, whoever she is, is likely on Facebook or Myspace now being the nerd she accused me of being.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I'm glad it's finally over...

That's right folks - Bush is gone!!!

I hope this means that people will stop being idiots because I am just really tired of seeing everyone get in their last shots on the man. It's like one big boring joke, spread across every user accessible site on the internet and the biggest problem is, the joke isn't new, original or very funny.

Seriously, people have had 8 years to come up with good jokes or points about his leadership and the best I'm reading is something along the lines of "HE SUCKED SO BAD!!!"

Yeah and Bush is the guy who can't speak in public very well.

When I found out he got booed today at the Obama inauguration, I kind of felt sad for America. Have we really sunk so low as to boo a guy who is on his way out the door? I mean sure, disagree with every single policy he has come up with, from foreign to financial, but booing? BOOING?

Then I heard people were singing, "Hey Hey Hey Goodbye"...

*hangs head*

Really? This is how you want to celebrate a victory? You want to act like a total unoriginal idiot who worshiped MTV's "Remote Control" in front of all the children who were brought to the nations Capital to see what it means to be an American?

I'm not a fan of the guy. Never was. I'm glad he's gone and I'm very willing to give Obama a chance to really turn things around if he can.

But wow can we, as a people, suck. I don't care who he or she is, I don't care if they vote and push for the one issue I have the strongest opinions about. I will respect the President of the United States of America and you can damn well bet I'll act that way in front of children too.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Luke Steelerstahl - Idiot

So Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is making an idiot of himself. Again.

He is spreading around rumors that he is going to take the "Raven" out of his name and replace it with "Steeler" - for at least the next week or so. Luke Steelerstahl. Can't he just get to the point and change it to Luke Screwedpittsburghup.

First, I'm embarrassed by anyone who would be ashamed of their own last name. I'm not sure what the Ravenstahl family has done, but I doubt that they were all douchebags that need to be remembered this way - by having a failure of a mayor, a successful pupput to Dan Onorato - slam his family heritage simply because it contains some of the same letters of a fairly good NFL team that the Steelers have already beaten twice.

Second - fuck him. The Steelers don't need him to win on Sunday. In fact connecting his shitty mayoral record to their good name will only hurt. I mean how can anyone on that team play with pride when they are constantly being reminded that they are somehow tied, even if in name only, to someone who could have done good things with the city and utterly failed to change a single goddamn thing.

Finally this rumor business... just change your name or not. Stop feeling out the media or the Steeler nation. I'm positive that if more people dump on this lame attempt to gain some popularity before his next election run, Luke is going to say that no, in fact, he isn't going to change his name and that it was all a rumor started by, well, someone mysterious who has contacts to all of the local news networks.

Eat a dick Luke.

For the actual article: http://kdka.com/steelers/Mayor.Ravenstahl.Steelerstahl.2.907975.html

Monday, January 12, 2009

You Are Not Very Important

I don't mean to insult any of you with the title of this post. In fact I am sure that there are several people in the world who think that you are very important, if not the most important, person in the world. I'm just saying that in the grand scheme of things you don't mean all that much.

Which is why I am pretty sure that some of the bar owners (and managers) in Pittsburgh are dumber than a box of rocks, even if you add in the IQ of the box that the rocks came in.

You see, all over Pittsburgh, on almost every night of the week, these idiots are holding VIP parties.

I'm not sure that they know what a VIP is. It seems that if you can find, and read, their grammatically incorrect posts on Facebook or MySpace, that you too can become a VIP and be treated just like - well - everyone else who shows up on that particular night and pays the cover. Back when I started drinking that was what we called "being a customer."

I can only imagine what it would be like to be a real VIP. I mean sure I own a Nightlife / Community website that generated over 8.5 million page views last year (we beat wpxi.com) and I get treated pretty well almost everywhere I go. No cover, free drinks, all-access... But I am pretty damn positive that whenever a minor celebrity like Rumor Willis walks into a bar, that she (and her freaky mutant Rocky Dennis head) get actual VIP treatment.

I can picture it now. Rumor shuffles in, dragging her foot behind her. She sees the candles set out on the bar and starts screaming, "Gahhhhhh!" Three Jr. Assistant Shift Leaders run out and blow out every candle in the bar for her. Frankenstein's Monster is placated and orders her first drink. If she ordered braised puppy with fart sauce they would kill the dog, eat some beans and make it for her. She's not even a real celebrity! She's the product of Bruce Willis and that fake tittied girl who killed her career in the movie "Striptease."

So listen up Pittsburgh. Reading an invite on the internet, even if it was emailed directly to you via a bulk email list, does not make you a VIP. VIPs, even the lumpy headed Hulk Hogan lookalike above, get treated much better than you or I do. They don't pay for drinksm ever. They don't wait in line. They don't have to worry about the dress code. They don't have to do the fake-lesbian dance to get attention from the everyone in the bar.

"Hey, look over there!!!"
"What, beyond the two Mon-valley girls making out to try and get free drinks - say isn't that RUMOR WILLIS???"

I don't care if you paid $300 for a $40 bottle of vodka and have your own table. First off you can't buy VIP status. Second, you can buy bottle service, but you can't make yourself important. In fact I know for a fact that Ben Roethlisberger rarely pays for drinks, let alone $300 for some stinkin Rain Vodka.

So please Pittsburgh - patrons and owners - stop the stupidy.

You look dumber than Rumor Willis.

Delete Your Friends And Get Fat

As an individual who works in the advertising/marketing field I actually enjoy a good commerical. The company that came up with the songs for freecreditreport.com may have annoyed the hell out of you, but they really put the product out there in a very big way.

One company that has always had the wow factor going for them is Burger King.

They are the people who brought you the Subservient Chicken. They took their mascot and transformed him into a creepy plastic headed freak. Maybe that never struck you as a brave thing to do, but just think about it for a minute. Think about Wendy's taking their cute little redhead mascot and turning her into a evil undead zombie. "Where's the brains....."

I think that they do all of this in an effort to make you forget that there is no such thing as a clean looking Burger King. I've been in BK's all over this great nation and have yet to find a table that wasn't stickier than Traci Lords in the 80's.

Anyway - now BK has done it again with one of the most original marketing campaigns I've seen all year! Yes I am aware that it is only January...

http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/


Click this link, install the app, and delete 10 of your friends. Ta-Da! Free Whopper!

Think about it - all of the sudden your ex-boyfriend who added you on MySpace and then followed you to Facebook can finally have a use. That dude who used to work with you that keeps asking how things are going and telling you that you are stupid for staying can now have a pay off. That one night when you were drunk and thought it would be funny to add that annoying kid from the Encyclopedia Britannica Commericals... well, that's just fucked up, but you can delete his nerdy ass and get some free points towards your next cardiac arrest!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Porno...

Located on the border of New Eagle and Monongahela, Videos Unlimited, was the best video store in the entire Mon Valley. They always had the newest titles, they would often forget about late charges, the owner was a really nice guy and they had one hell of a good porno section!

I don't remember the title of the first porn I ever rented, but what I do remember is not having to worry about what I was about to watch. All I wanted, and all I saw, was good old American fucking.

I wasn't a regular but I'm sure I rented a good 20 titles during my Monongahela years. Every single video had a weak plot, too much oral, and some average looking sex acts. Nothing over the top, except perhaps an anal scene, and that was that.

Now I find it practically impossible to rent a porn - and here is why:

  • Spitting - Every single porn you rent these days will have a scene with someone spitting on someone else's genitals. I even saw one porn where a girl spit on her own junk. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a little saliva here and there, but these people are spitting up several ouces of throat-juice and hocking them at perfectly nice reproductive organs.
  • Editing - I understand that porn is a fairly low-budget thing, but I get bored quickly while looking at the same scene for 20 minutes. It's like they have only one guy with one camera and no ability to edit out the boring stuff. Granted, this wasn't too different in the 80's, but now that they can edit the entire movie on a $500 Mac Mini there is no excuse.
  • Slappy Slappy - I've been with my fair share of women and I have yet to see a girl, in real life, slap herself on the clit in an attempt to make herself, or me, hot. Just - just - OUCH! Stop it. I don't care if the "actress" is numb down there from years of cock pounding abuse. This is about the customer, not her. She can go bash herself in the cookie with a frying pan after the filming stops.
  • Plot & Acting - Back in the 80's the plot usually consisted of 3 sentences before the fucking got started. Now they actually take 10 minute breaks between the sex scenes - which is fine. Just stop giving these types of jobs to "actors" who can't act. One non-sex scene involved an actressing talking about the philosophy of love and I couldn't help but think what idiot was behind the camera thinking, "Oh yes, very good!"
  • Shutup - Shutup - Shutup - Hearing a girl moan the same thing over and over again 3000 times is not hot. Actually hearing a girl moan during an entire sex act is annoying. The last movie I watched had a girl make a hungry growing noise when she went down on a guy. Hey cool... but she did it the entire time she was on him. SHUT UP. (Worse is when they overdub the moaning so it's twice as loud, and the audio doesn't come close to matching the video.)
  • Music - Again, back in the 80's there was some sort of excuse for horrible music but at least they didn't play the same 20 second loop over and over again. This is 2009 and we have an entire MySpace full of bands who would love to get paid $100 to have their music used in a porno.
  • Licking The Toys - If a girl is using a toy on herself or on someone else she must lick it. Before, during and after. She does this as if the toy is a real penis and she is giving it pleasure. To me it comes off as mentally defective. "Mmm toy, must lick rubber toy.... yum!!"