So everybody knows about how monomaniacal tiny little short man Michael Bloomberg is trying to make it illegal for people in New York City to eat salt. Well, not to be outdone, some hi-larious gasbag idiots in the state legislature are pushing this bill, which, to quote it in its entirety, "prohibits the use of salt by restaurants in the preparation of food by restaurants."
Now, obviously, that summary was written by somebody not of this earth. Presumably, on whatever planet the asshole who wrote this came from, a fine of $1000 does not seem excessive for the make-believe crime of salting food; it is worth noting, however, that here on planet not-shoved-up-some-congressman’s-ass, it’s downright absurd.
And, of course, this intelligent new law would ban the use of salt "in any form." Anybody stupid enough to believe the government won’t define that so broadly as to encompass the use of any food products containing salt — which is all of them — probably still thinks there’s no way the Patriot Act could be misused.
The only bright light here is that, since it’s clearly insane, it’s not going to pass. Even New York politicians aren’t stupid enough to sign this. Illinois politicians, maybe, but not New York.
March 9th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
What do you call a quack who works with chiropractors, traffics in homeopathic remedies, and loves socialism? I guess I spoiled it in the title, huh. Well, for those of you who don’t read the titles of these things but still, for whatever reason, read the body: look at the title for the amazing answer!
Yeah, so, screw Choke-Rod and all that; there’s one thing I’d like to bitch about here, though:
"There’s reasons people put legs on it. Obama’s trying to bring in a health care system like ours and the private sector is trying to say it’s a lousy system. It doesn’t look good if the icons of sports are coming up to a Canadian health care system," Galea said.
Yeah, Dr. Dipshit, you’re totally a political prisoner. This is all about those greedy corporations fighting the God-Emperor’s noble attempts to save us all from the terror of not enough government in our lives. Alternative theory: those athletes are going to Canada to get drugs that are banned in the United States. Like that freaky cow blood shit. And the reason you’re in trouble is regular plain-old drug smuggling, for which your courier completely sold your ass up the river. Go peddle your health fraud and crackpot political theories on the roof. In jail.
March 8th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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So I saw some bananas the other day that had a sticker on them that looked, to my eye, an awful lot like Aiai. Turns out it was — apparently Chiquita bananas come bearing Super Monkey Ball stickers these days. Here’s the list of reasons why this made me feel completely gay, in increasing order:
1) I noticed a sticker from across the room and it immediately caught my eye because I thought it looked like a monkey from a video game.
2) Upon finding out that it was a sticker of a monkey from a video game, I was pretty excited and went searching for other monkey stickers (I located Meemee, but nobody else).
3) I kept the sticker and stuck it on my monitor.
4) My first reaction upon seeing this sticker was "why is a Super Monkey Ball sticker on a Chiquita banana, when everybody knows Super Monkey Ball is sponsored by Dole?"
5) I used the power of the internet to learn why Sega has swapped banana brands.
That’s me — super-cool, and keepin’ it real.
March 8th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Games |
no comments
Ars Technica has a gigantic bullshit cry piece posted about the evils of ad blockers, and how nobody should do it ever. Allow me to extend this Virtua Digit to you blubbery Betties and your sack of old moaning.
Here’s the deal, Arses. Back in the halcyon days when the internet was young and uncritical dopes were pouring tons of money into it, it was possible to run a 468×60 ad banner at the top of your web page and make enough money from it that not only would it pay your server bills, but also you wouldn’t need to get a real job. I’m sure you miss those days; everybody does. Other than the people who paid for it, I mean. But here’s the trouble: as the revenue from the crazy malinvestments began to dry up, some people began experimenting with trying obnoxious, attention-grabbing ads, figuring that if they just made a big enough nuisance of themselves, people would click the banners more often. This is a well-understood principle of psychology called "stupidity," since the (fairly predictable) result of making ads really annoying was not an increase in clickthroughs, but, rather, the development of software to stop the ads from displaying.
You basically brought this on yourselves. You’re pretending to have the moral high ground here, and you’re carping at your readership to visit fewer web sites rather than block the ads (seriously, fuck the heck?), but where were you with your strong moral stance when the awful advertising was starting up? Were you taking a stand against ads that blink? Were you opposing the pop-up, pop-over, and pop-under? What about those obnoxious full-page "gateway" ads that animate and make noise? Were you actively trying to prevent the proliferation of that nonsense, or were you just happy to get a higher rate from your ad networks for allowing those things to run?
Get off your high horse, Ars Technica. You participated in a marketing scheme that was ultimately hostile toward your audience, and your audience adapted. You can’t just call a do-over like that. Just do better next time.
March 7th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
Hey gang, Final Fantasy 13 is finally out! From the sound of it, it just managed to beat the ill-seeming Final Fantasy 14 to market. This might come as a surprise to those of you who have mental defects, but I haven’t played it. I’m sticking to my promise made ten years ago when Final Fantasy 8 burned me hard: I will not pay full price for a Final Fantasy game. Which does mean I’ll probably pick it up out of morbid curiosity when it’s ten bucks and I’m bored.
I’m being unfair here. It’s irresponsible of me as a game critic to assume the game’s going to be awful just because almost all of the games in the series have been. I’ll be positive here; I’m hoping that Final Fantasy 13 is finally good enough to redeem Final Fantasies 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, and especially Final Fantasy 8, all of which were a gigantic waste of binary digits. And that’s the good thing about the internet’s gaming community — we can judge the reviews in aggregate, since there are so many of them, and come out with a pretty good picture of whether or not the game’s worthwhile before we spend our own money on it.
Had you going there, didn’t I? I mean, look at this. The game’s obviously terrible. And the mass of reviewers are going to praise it to high heaven, because they’re tasteless, uncritical sheep. These are the same people responsible for the utterly non-excellent Bioshock winding up with a metascore of 96. 96! For a half-finished and completely unbalanced FPS with four different mobs in it that makes you play Pipe Dream about three hundred times. No, the idiots who did that are also going to give Final Fantasy 13 high marks just because they think they should, and meanwhile it’s going to suck the lights out.
March 7th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
The Cubs just finished getting murderised by the White Sox — who are terrible — 15-3. You know who gave up the first six of those runs? Carlos Silva, that’s who. He did it in two magical innings of lobbing 60 MPH meatballs across the exact centre of the plate.
Like I said. $6M. That was all.
March 6th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
Looks like I was right — this brouhaha has been leading to a Portal 2 announcement. Though that appears not to be the endpoint; as you can see, there are more odd clues in the announcement itself. Apparently the underlined letters create a new username / pass combo for the Aperture Science BBS that yields even more weird encoded images.
I’m also wondering why it says to go to www.steamgames.com for more information, since that just redirects to the Steam front page, which has no information whatsoever.
March 5th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
I’m a couple days late to this party — work and all — but Valve has started releasing a series of peculiar updates to Portal. The first one states — and I’m copying this verbatim from the Steam news entry — "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations." What this amounts to is a whole lot of confusing dickery related to the radios in the game; apparently they now broadcast (when brought to certain places) a bunch of static-y noise that can be decoded by running it through an SSTV converter into a series of strange pictures. MD5 decoding of the number sequences involved yields a phone number in Kirkland, Washington which is apparently an Aperture Science BBS, along with a username and password for logging into the BBS. The BBS apparently contains a whole lot of new weird images and words.
You probably think I made all that up. And yet.
I’m told that was an elaborate trigger mechanism; the BBS was sort of a trap, and once a certain number of users logged into it, it triggered the release of the second Portal update, launched with the cryptic line "Added valuable asset retrieval." This update alters the game’s ending; I’m reinstalling Portal now to check that out, because I’m the exact type of painfully nerdy nerd who won’t be satisfied to go look up a spoiler or see the video on YouTube; I have to run the new ending myself.
I’m thinking this is a viral prelaunch ceremony for Portal 2. We’ll see.
Edit: Portal rebeaten.
Extended ending does exist. Also, I think there may be some minor texture changes in the game, but I’m not 100% certain; I spotted some things I never noticed before, but it’s possible I was just looking more carefully this time since I was in pursuit of weirdness. Also there’s this:
March 4th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
"It’s not that he needs to walk more… he needs to be a more disciplined hitter. It’s not that more walks wouldn’t be welcome — he hit over .300 last season."
This in regards to Erick Aybar, who hit .312 last season with only 30 BB in 556 PA. Three points I’d like to make:
1) Erick Aybar is bad at baseball. I know he’s a middle infielder, but a career 85 OPS+ isn’t acceptable no matter what position you play.
2) Yes, he needs to walk more. 30 BB in 556 PA is lousy.
3) What exactly does being a "more disciplined hitter" mean if not walking more? Should you fly out more instead of grounding out? Does that help?
Baseball’s back! Woo!
March 4th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
Chicks in baseball alert! Everybody get ready for the dogs and cats sleeping together. I think that’s next.
March 4th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball, Bullshit |
no comments
