elle-o-elle

While at home, I spent most of my time with my little brother, an individual whose company I enjoy immensely and has received many a thrashing in Street Fighter from yours truly. My little brother mentioned to me that his friends recently discovered tuckermax.com, a hilarious website that chronicles the misadventures of a self proclaimed a-hole. This was all fine and dandy, even though Internet filters prevent my little bro from even visiting the website. What disturbed me is that his friends had begun to imitate Tucker's dispicable behavior.

I have always maintained that the lawsuits leveraged at the entertainment industry for violent, offensive content that influenced the behavior of yougins were ridiculous. The prevailing reasoning behind this stance is that millions of kids see this stuff every day (although honestly, some of them shouldn't be exposed to it) and manage to function normally in society. I still believe this to be true.

However, maybe it's necessary to point out the obvious, even if my little brother's friends never read this blog: Tucker Max is not a role model. He is not to be, on any level, emulated, imitated, or even admired, except for possibly his writing skills. I can see reusing some of Tucker's jokes given the right context, but he's not someone to look up to. I've always been able to laugh at dispicable behavior like his because the outrageous shock value what he's saying. I guess on some level, I like Tucker Max because he says things I want to, but can't, but I choose not to say those things for obvious reasons. Either way, Tucker Max is not a role model. And Megatron is not a tank.

Matt Daaamon.

As I start to right this entry at 5:03 PM EST, I have approximately 55 hours to complete what's probably the hardest programming assignment I've ever seen. The last time I encountered a program this perplexing, I was being paid eight hours a day to learn how to use it.

You have no idea how daunting this spawn-of-Lucifer program is. The thought of working on it makes me physically exhausted. God help me.

If today was any indication of what my new job will be like for the next 9 months, I'm grateful for my mp3 player. I spent four hours mindlessly clicking away at icons to make sure a program behaved properly for all its functions. This required approximately 0.001% of the stuff I learned in college (I placed out of MouseClick). Worse, I DIDN'T have my mp3 player and the wondrous 600+ songs stored therein. Without said audio device, my thoughts were left to wonder and my mind became fixated on remembering various parts of my childhood. Given the entertainment value provided by that, I should be awarded some sort of bonus for not collapsing on the floor and weeping bitterly.

If you haven't had an opportunity to check out Team America: World Police I recommend you give the movie a chance. Despite the purposely crappy puppets and some jokes that fall flat, the movie serves some great laughs and the funniest sex scene anyone will ever see.

F*** yo couch NCSU!

When I worked at Sears, I often longed for the days when I was in school. It was never great, but rather deal with the boring monotony of assisting geriatric dumbasses I could relish a loan-funded, carefree world provided partially by taxpayers everywhere. The promise of future prosperity always loomed on the horizon, waiting to beckon me into the "real world". This near-utopia would bless me with long sought-after-but-never-attained financial security and promise an engaging, successful career my parents could only dream of. Alas, sitting on the second floor of that department store, I realized that an inevitable recession and the end of the dot-com boom left that wondrous dream out of my reach. Graduate school became my new salvation, another chance to loaf around a little, hang with my peers, and then take another stab at the endless slew of resume submissions, phone interviews, and face-to-face exchanges to get my foot in the door of the IT industry. Oh yeah, I'd also get some kind of degree.

As I sit here at 1:20 in the morning on (technically) Monday, lenses through which I reflected upon my college life appear more rose-colored than ever. I can tell you with absolute certainty that Computer Science is among the most tedious, boring subjects you can take on. Every single fiber of my being must be concentrated to motivate me to begin any assignment. I can't believe that how much I can procastinate on any given project. It's like I've done a line of coke, developed severe ADD, and chugged a double expresso simultaneously.

Working on a programming project is like trying to endure a root canal. No matter how bad it gets, how incredibly difficult it becomes, you must continue with belief that at some point it will end. The end of this semester will liberate me from the assault of research papers, unfinished programs, and approaching deadlines and it can't come soon enough. But, hey, at least I don't have to sell anyone an extended warranty.

What the hell's a rant?

Life can be moderately interesting at times. Such is the case with three of my friends yesterday. One friend was arrested for missing his court date. Why'd he miss his court date? I don't know, seems like the sort of thing I'd remember. His bail was ridiculous though, $1500 and as far as I know he was only due in court of a car accident.

The other friend is my good pal Zach, who I learned is back in America after "defending" our country in Iraq(note: I only put that in that quotes to say that what transpired in Iraq can hardly be considered defense. I still respect and admire the bravery my friend displayed by fighting on behalf of our country). What's interesting is I just happened to stumble upon Zach's phone number while cleaning up my apartment and never expected him to answer the phone.

Lastly, I learned that some people from my high school assumed a friend of mine is gay. That's the end of the story, I just found it funny.

I don't wanna go on a rant here, but I'm about to. Warner Bros. has released all the juicy details about their upcoming release of the Ultimate Matrix Collection. The main attraction is some excellent commentaries from two philosophers who share some insight into exactly what the hell was going on in the last movie. The collection however is 10 discs long. TEN DISKS. After the original trilogy and the Animatrix, that leaves six discs of bonus features, equating to about thirty-five hours of extra footage.

What the heck can you possibly squeeze out of making four films that is thirty-five hours long? The Learning Channel could cover the entire Middle Ages in that time. That is just under one-and-half days of footage, who has the time or interest for that sort of thing? I look I dig bullet time, slow motion, kung fu, and sci-fi, but that's only enough to cover about two hours. If they really want to be efficient with their footage, they should've split the screen every time someone threw a punch in Revolutions and played some behind the scenes footage. That'd cover approximately five minutes a pop. At least the pricing is sensible: $60 for four movies and with six free coasters.

This leads to an even bigger issue: what's going on with the bonus content on DVDs these days? Every film now has to have some secret web content or the director's life story on the disc. There should a statute in that states that bonus DVD content should be, at the most, twice as long as the film itself. I'm serious here. I don't care how somebody decided what color shoes Brad Pitt wears or how Nemo's fin should look. Furthermore, a moratorium should be placed on these bonus "games" included with some films, until we can determine if they're worth playing (or if they're even being played in the first place). Who's making these things? What poor soul is wasting his college education to release sub-superman64 quality games? I'd test them out, but I'm a hardcore gamer and I fear the quality of game content could send me into convulsions. I have mescaline for that. I don't even know what DVDs I own have games on them. I don't want to know.

Look, if you're honestly willing to sit through hours upon hours learning how some hack made the White House explode in Independence Day, and you're over twelve, buy a portable DVD player, watch your bonus content while you're in the tub, then drop the player into the water. I beseech you on behalf of the human gene pool.

Scrumstrilecent

Between classes and work, life is becoming a surreal mixture of letters and numbers followed by the occasional heavy lifting. There's nothing as mindnumbing as learning a new, difficult concept in one class only to have the same difficult concept thrown right back at you in another. It's like standing in the middle of the street and trying to decide which of the four equally close Starbucks you'd like to go to.

Well, the election's finally over, and my guy lost. Whee. I can't say I thought he was that much better, just that the first guy screwed everything up so much we can only go up from here. There's nothing to do now but see how things play out over the next four years. And pray.