Magnolia

I watched Magnolia because it’s supposedly a good movie but it turned out to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s convoluted. It’s annoying. It’s a waste of time. In fact it took me three days to watch it because it was so disengaging. The opening sequence with the three urban legends is interesting but it takes too long and doesn’t really do much for the plot… not that there is one. After that, it’s character introductions. Lots and lots of character introductions with fragmented back stories all in different scenarios and times shown in rapid sequence. This was the first time I stopped watching the movie. It was going for so long that I was starting to think that the whole thing was going to be like this, and I decided that I didn’t have patience for that shit. When multiple characters doing separate things are depicted in a movie you can always fall back on the formula that says everything will unify into one story eventually. The problem with this movie is that it never actually does this. It sort of does, on and off. But ultimately it’s just alternating between five or six stories the whole time. Why do they have to do this? It’s just exhausting and upsetting to have to keep up with that many developing stories mixed together. It’s like some kind of endurance test. It’s such a twisted knot of circumstances that you immediately stop caring about anything happening. I’d have a more satisfying experience turning on five random movies I’ve never seen before and watching them all simultaneously.

The whole point of the movie is that all of these people either know each other or incidentally have tangent meetings before continuing onward, creating an ever-expanding circuitous network of bullshit. And what does it all accomplish in the end? Absolutely nothing. They might as well all have nothing in common. They spend the entire movie drifting around and then nothing is gained by it. There’s no payoff. What it should have been leading up to is some kind of chain-reaction or series of events spawning a catastrophe that only occurred because each of the people somehow contributed a small part to it. I could see a good short film based on that but this movie is three hours long. Three excruciating hours of nothing.

What really makes this movie bad is the characters. Every single person in it is either a humongous asshole or a whiny dumbass that won’t shut the hell up. Every last one of them is ready to fly off the handle and throw an epic tantrum of biblical proportions at even the slightest inkling of opposition. Hell, Julianne Moore’s character is ready to curse you blind for making eye contact with her. My point is that they’re all terrible people with no redeeming qualities. Now one of the most important elements in any movie is to have a character that the viewer can latch on to, to experience the story through. While watching this movie I kept thinking, *if a nuclear bomb went off and the entire town was leveled would there be a single person I would feel remotely sad for.* The answer was always no. *None* of these people fit the bill. If the town *was* nuked, the world would just be a better place.

Then, for whatever reason, frogs fall from the sky on top of cars and buildings and all over the town. (Yes I know it’s an urban legend.) This is actually a pretty cool scene; too bad it’s too little, too late. The movie still sucks. My recommendation for watching it is skip to the frog part and turn it off when it‘s over. For those of you who’d like to experience Magnolia without having to see Tom Cruise, do this; clone the most despicable, irritating, loathsome person you’ve ever met 10 times. Now lock yourself in a white room with the clones for three hours. And that’s Magnolia.

More Banner Ads

Because there is no limit to their numbers or how retarded they can get.

Blue sky.

Damn, this is like the worst graphic design I’ve ever seen on a crappy ad. Would it have killed them to put in just a simple background. The pictures also look like they were screen captured off of some camwhore’s live feed.

Wow that’s weird, some IM service I’ve never heard of has somehow sent me messages, (over a public medium), from some of my “buddies” that are apparently on it. What the hell is a “crush request?” A crush isn’t something you can request to have. It’s something that happens without your control, whether you like it or not. Even if someone has a crush on me it’s a moot point. I’m engaged.

God forbid someone gets scared. This seems like such a childish gimmick (pun not intended.) And at the bottom it says “subscription required” implying that you have to do tedious paperwork before you can be scared. If I want a cheap thrill I’ll look inside the soup pot in the cafeteria. Still, I have to be sure. So what really happens if you click on it. Well you get this…

What the hell is this now? I wanted to be scared, not have my palm read. Are they just hoping you’ll forget about the scary thing and get distracted by *this.* Still, I have to give them credit. Someone obviously spent a lot of time on this. Compositionally it’s boring though. They made it so damn symmetrical that it has the same writing on both sides of the picture. Giesel huh? Why does that remind me of The Sound of Music? Oh yeah Liesl… I mean I never watched that. Gisele can predict UR destiny? What is “UR?” Is it an acronym for something or is it the shortened form of “your” capitalized for no apparent reason? And how am I to believe that she can predict anything if she can’t even tell my gender?

She solves problems… *Sexual* problems. If you heard this in your head the same way I do, there would be no way you could read it without laughing.


THIS IS NOT A JOKE - YOU ARE THE 10,000TH BANNER AD TO TELL ME THIS!


Congratulations won a free prize eh? Good for him. Why is the A the only thing not capitalized in that sentence? That kind of bothers me. Also, if I was making a banner ad I wouldn’t use numbers for words like “Click 2 claim.” Using loose semantics like that just lessens it’s believability. Though I guess it doesn’t really matter because morons are their target audience anyway.

This ad doesn’t make any sense. Who’s to say which dinosaurs are good and bad. They’re all so cute. Why can’t they *all* be excellent?

I love it when they put fake buttons and drop-down lists on banners when in reality the whole ad is a single button. I’ve never heard of this dating service. I know they mean mate as in find a mate but I seriously can’t stop thinking about mate the verb.


Click release… what?! I don’t want to release my winnings. Are there no English-speaking people that make these ads? It’s not like it’s rocket science. All you need is one coherent sentence and no one seems to be able to do it right.

Well this is certainly creative. Three totally unrelated things making a banner. Only on the internet can one win such lavish prizes by performing the most menial of tasks. Why does this never happen to me when I walk into stores or look through the newspaper? You have to draw on the mug shot but drawing is the same as clicking so what’s the point? Obviously I had to click on something to even view the ad. What’s so special about drawing? And why on O. J. Simpson? There’s an asterisk next to the word “free” indicating a footnote that says “See terms and gift rules.” So I’m guessing that when they use the “term” “free” it doesn’t actually mean free in the way everyone uses the word. But then what the hell *does* it mean? Maybe the Xbox is *free* of internal hardware. Or it was *free* from restraint inside the delivery truck, causing it to become crushed and *free* from functioning. Also, according to the measurement scale in the background, OJ’s head is about one-and-a-half feet tall. Proportionally that makes him roughly 12 feet tall.

You succeed to make for happy fun time prize! Please use click to magic claim button!!!

People You Can't Stand

Are there people in your life that you’re forced to interact with that can’t seem to say anything to you that doesn’t constitute bitching about something you do? Well I have two of them and unfortunately I have to see at least one of them almost every day. One is this guy that works at the cafeteria where I eat. He’s relatively new there so that might be the only reason he is the way he is. He’s been bothering me about not signing in every time I get something from the cafeteria. The way the food system at the school works is that you purchase a meal plan at the beginning of the semester that has X number of meals you get per week. I think I have 19 or something per week. Anyway, you’re supposed to go up to the counter in front of the grill and give the person there your name which they check off on a computer. It’s basically to make sure they know when they can charge you money for exceeding your meal plan which has never happened and will never happen to me. After that, you can order something from the grill or get something lying out on the opposite wall like pizza or salad bar. That’s the way you’re “supposed” to do it. The way it’s actually done, (over the two years I’ve been there), is you go order/get what you want and eat it. The person at the computer either sees you or doesn’t see you doing this and signs you in… or not. Its not Arma-fucking-geddon if you aren’t signed in. Since there’s food that’s already out why not just get it and eat it instead of walking past it to go wait in a line just to say your name and then go back to get a slice of pizza or a drink? That just waste’s *everyone’s* time. I always saw it as a method of regulating gridlock at the grill.

So he came up to me on several occasions while I was eating and told me I needed to sign in. He knows my damn name. In the time it took him to accost me he could have signed me in himself like everyone else does. It takes more time and energy to leave the kitchen, harass me, and return then it does to press two buttons on a touch screen monitor. So what… he wants me to go with him back to where he was just standing and watching me from to get signed in? If he knows my name and he knows I’m eating, what more information does he need? He doesn’t need me to wait in line at the grill and *prompt* him to sign me in so that I can go get a cup of juice.

I actually failed to sign in so many times, (3-4), that he wrote me up for it. I don’t know what that means for me but for him I’m pretty sure it means he’s anal-retentive. He’s the only one that gives a shit about what I do in the cafeteria and if he wants to fill out papers to uphold his subscribed bureaucratic protocol then that’s his prerogative. I just don’t know why anyone would expend so much time and energy to be a pain in the ass ultimately. Recently he’s been bothering me about how much salad I put on my plate and I can’t decide if it’s more or equally as trivial.

The other guy that won’t stop harassing me works in the IDS shop. Huh, both of them stand behind counters; weird. Well it’s not like there’s a specific thing he gets on me about, it’s anything and everything. It’s something new every time. Actually it’s often about cleaning something. Any time he’s in the room I feel like I need to stop whatever I’m doing or else I’ll be provoking him in some unknown way. Most of the stuff he says is small but he hounds you about things so constantly that it wares down your resistance and after a certain point everything he says just seems to set you off. Clean these tools off. Put a clamp on that. You’re going to clean this up right? Don’t use that. Why aren’t you cleaning? Turn on the dust collector. It’s nice that they have a sign on the band saw and a shop-tec to yell at you to turn on the dust collector but that still doesn’t tell me how to turn it on. Assuming you know what a dust collector is, the switch is still behind another machine. I saw a guy using a chop saw and he yelled at him to turn on the dust collector. Of course he had to ask where the switch was because it’s not at all apparent. He told him and then he asked “which one, there’s like four.” After all of the oblivious students they’ve had asking about the switch you’d think they’d make it a little less ambiguous. Or maybe it’s just too much fun haranguing them about it.

Another time he pontificated on this girl and I about not doing our part in clean-up time. At random intervals during the day a shop-tec gets on a megaphone and informs everyone in the shop that it’s time to clean up. If you’re unlucky enough to drift in during clean-up time, you get unjustly burdened with it like we did. We never heard the announcement but that doesn’t make us immune to being scolded for not doing what it said.

Yet another time, (after I had switched from using one lathe to the one next to it because the speed controls wouldn't stay where I put them); he came up and asked if I was going to clean up the other lathe. Would it be OK if I finished making the mess before I start cleaning it up? Son of a bitch! Just leave me alone. I hadn't even done anything wrong yet.

The time he pissed me off the most was when I lost the needle to my paint gun inside the gun washer. I usually take my gun apart and put it in the washer and it’s fine. There is a mesh metal sheet at the bottom of the washer to let thinner drain through and keep your gun from falling down. There are a few holes that are larger than the rest on the mesh and can allow the passage of a loose needle. On this occasion was when it happened. My first thought was to just remove the mesh and fish out the needle. The mesh isn’t secured in place at all. It’s just sitting on some pegs. Then I thought I should get a shop-tec to get it out because I don’t want to mess around with the washer. I should have just ignored that thought. When I went up to the counter the only tec there was… that guy. Oh goodie. I can’t wait to hear this one. I reluctantly went up and explained to him that I lost a gun part in the washer. As soon as I mentioned that my gun was disassembled while in the washer, it seemed to activate his big fat lecture mouth. He starts *complaining* (he never actually sounds like he's just requesting or advising), about how you're not supposed to put a disassembled gun in the washer. That's just stupid in my opinion. The inside, (AKA the important part of the gun), will not get cleaned at all unless it's disassembled and cleaning the outside of the gun is unnecessary. If I don't put the gun in the washer while it's disassembled there's no point in putting it in the washer at all. Anyway, he starts acting skeptical that he can get the needle back. He opened a panel on the side of the washer and confirmed his own suspicions by briefly glancing at the internals of the machine. Then He basically said that he couldn't get it out and to go ask so-and-so if they could do anything about it. I knew I should have just gone with my first instinct and done it myself or at least left *him* out of it. I waited for him to leave, removed the mesh in the washer and retrieved the needle. After reassembling my gun, I walked out of the room and passed the shop counter where he was. He asked if so-and-so got it out. I lied and said he did. Then he gives me this look and says, (emphasizing the word don't), "don't do it again." If there was ever a conversation in my life that required a crass rebuttal, that was probably it. A nice *go fuck yourself* or a *shove it up your ass* would have been most efficacious. I know it's never a good idea to have verbal altercations with someone I'm going to have to interact with several times from now until I graduate so I just walked away. I just wish I could have let him know that I managed to do the task that he couldn't, in less than 30 seconds.

Movie Soundtrash

In hell, this is all you get to listen to.

Codec City

Why does this world need so many media compression file types? Why can’t we just have one compression type with limitless resolution and aspect ratio settings? Instead we have an endless array of meaningless acronyms that have to be dealt with individually. If you want to open the file Pokemon.SKXEECGJSAQ-43783, then you have to get a codec that decompresses SKXEECGJSAQ-43783 files, (wherever that is.) Why should you have to do that? The files all do the exact same thing so what’s the point of having each one have it’s own stupid codec you have to acquire to open it with? That’s like if every time you got a letter in the mail, you had to use a specific letter opener to open it. If it’s a bill, use the bill opener. If it’s a Christmas card, use the Christmas card opener. Don’t have a Christmas card opener? Then throw that Christmas card away because you can’t open it. They’re all paper envelopes with letters inside. You should just be able to use anything sharp to open them with but no.

Having four or five file types is one thing but we have: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, AVI, DivX, XviD, OGG, OGM, Cinepak, WMV, MID, WAV, MP3, WMA, and M4P/AAC among many more. And in my opinion, WAVs are needlessly large files; MPEG-4s don’t work; and M4Ps were created by the Prince of Darkness. An M4P is a compression that online music stores use. The only difference I can see in it from an MP3 is that You can only play it through whatever service you bought it through like Napster or iTunes, which is just a pain in the ass. M4P was literally created to be less useful for it’s consumer. OGG is something I find popping up more often then it should. I remember I had to scour the internet for days to actually find a program that would play them. That’s another thing, if I have to research a file type in order to find a way to play it then the type in question just shouldn’t exist.

Who keeps making all of these file types anyway? Did it really seem to them like a good idea to make new stuff for an, (already polluted beyond use), universe of compressions? It’s like a handful of people creating new languages and then expecting everyone to use them. We don’t need any more languages. Languages get in the way. Here’s a good rule of thumb if you’re thinking about making a new compression type: unless your compression is going to make files 1/10th their original size, it’s worthless and no one will give a shit. Have a nice day.

Mortal Kombat Movie Marathon

The Mortal Kombat franchise was created when co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias stayed up all night watching kung-fu movies… at least that’s what *I* like to believe. There are so many MK characters that look like movie characters it’s weird. I’m certain there are a lot more than this but this is just what I’ve noticed. Inspired by, ripped-off from, or total BS from my head… You decide.
*SPOILERS*

Starting with the most obvious, we have Bruce Lee from “Enter the Dragon” and Liu Kang. They’re both trained as Shaolin monks. They don’t like wearing shirts. They also go WHAAAAAAAA!! when they throw a punch. Still, it’s a very common fighting game character archetype. What’s more interesting is that the plot of Enter the Dragon is very similar to the “plot” of the first Mortal Kombat. I.E. the main bad guy throws a tournament on his island inviting fighters from all over the world.

The main bad guy from Mortal Kombat is Shang Tsung. His movie equivalent isn’t from ETD though, it’s Lo-Pan from “Big Trouble in Little China.” They’re evil and impossibly decrepit-looking. They sit on their asses until it’s absolutely necessary to stand. And they steal people’s life-force to regain youth

Speaking of Big Trouble in Little China, here are some Raidens from said movie. OK they are actually called Thunder Lightning and Rain. That’s kind of weird, there’s also an MK character called Rain but he looks nothing like the other Rain. Actually he was supposedly named after Prince’s “Purple Rain” which makes a very silly visual pun.

Anyway, aside from dressing exactly the same and using lightning attacks, they also have the same moves when charging their lightning, if you compare it with an MK cut scene like the intro to MK Deception.

The three cyborgs, (Sektor, Smoke, and Cyrax) were actually said *by Midway* to be based off of a favorite sci-fi character. No name was mentioned but I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s the Predator. The Predator is a high-tech hunter from space that just likes hunting people with lots of cool traps. It’s been a while since I saw the original but I know in AVP he has this net he can shoot at prey. The cyborgs are all assassins which is almost the same as a hunter right? Cyrax, (the yellow cyborg) also shoots a net to trap people in, which is like the most annoying thing in the game. Still Predator looks most like Smoke, (the blue one.)

So Blaze and the Human Torch from “The Fantastic Four…” If I cropped the pictures a little more you wouldn’t even be able to tell which is which.

Here’s an interesting one; Kenshi and Neo from “The Matrix Revolutions.” They were both blinded by their worst enemy but still see with some kind of extrasensory vision. They have psychokinetic powers. Over their eyes they wear red headbands. I guess physically they look similar too. Also Neo stopping bullets and Kenshi’s “Telekinetic Push” have the same, (fun to practice in the mirror), stance.

Neo actually does this once or twice while outside of the matrix so it’s a legitimate power and not just “bending the rules” of the matrix. The weird thing is that Kenshi first appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which was released in 2002. The Matrix Revolutions was released a year latter so I don’t know how to explain that one. Maybe The Matrix copied Mortal Kombat?

I’ve saved my favorite for last. It’s Kobra and Johnny from “The Karate Kid.” Look at that, they’re wearing the exact same gi! (If you’re using Kobra’s alternate costume.) Kobra also uses karate and Johnny is on the Cobra Kai Karate Team. Cobra… Kobra… Get it? They also both have cobras on the backs of their gis. I like to think of this as what Johnny looks like as an adult... with a big knife.