The Dumbening of America's Youth

I just want you all to know. We're fucked.

Example. The kids nowadays when they're writing, like writing using a pen and paper, will write stuff like, "U in da way :)", in which the word "You" is spelled "u", "the" is spelled like "da" (appropos, no?) and the emoticon colon parenthesis is written out as an emoticon instead of just a regular smiley face.

I feel like I want to write like a whole essay about why it's retarded to write out an emoticon and about how the emoticon has now come to actually represent the thing it was meant to symbolize and replaced it altogether. It would be a whole long thing and I would be really angry at the end. So instead I'll just express my frustration like this:

>:-(

Blogging Is Awesome

I got home from the dentist today at like 3pm. It's 7:17 right now and I've just spent the last 4 hours scrolling through the archives of this blog. I'm about to go watch the Mets game, lest I would keep digging through. Frankly, it may be a better idea that watching the game.

I just want to pull a Diesal and point out the moment right now. I'm really glad that we've spent the last 3 years writing this blog and I hope we continue to do so with at least a moderate amount of vigor. (I know at least the ending of Lost is good for a couple more posts.) It's entertaining in real time when we actually take the time to post and comment, but it's also incredibly entertaining to go back and read the archive from time to time. I've sat here smiling and sometimes LOLzing (I love actually using that term in print. I apologize.) for the past 4 hours without realizing that all this time has passed. It's just a great record of these past years. Thank you for being a friend.

Some observations. LJT definitely writes the best posts. Open Bar definitely has the best/funniest comments. Side Bar has the one-liners coming out of nowhere. And I suck. And big ups to Walt Clyde Frazier for being our most dedicated non-author reader.

The Future Is Now

"The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!"
-Chip Douglas aka The Cable Guy

First of all, I'll never miss an opportunity to say how much I love the cable guy. But, also it's amazing how well that quote actually fits in with the tone of this post. That movie came out in 1996 which is long before all of those things were entirely feasible, yet it was clear that every one of them was going to come true. Interesting. Anyhow, I read this article a few days ago about a guy who cancelled (for the record, I've decided that I'm going to spell cancelled with two L's from now on. I really don't like this one L spelling.)his cable TV service because he's able to use his XBox along with a couple other devices to watch all of his TV shows and play video games and surf the web and stream movies through Netflix. This guy is my hero. I mean, I guess I knew it was theoretically possible to hook this up and cancel your cable all together and not have to deal with absolutely terrible service that they provide, but this guy just went out and did it. He's a revolutionary.

Reading this article inspired me to change my Netflix subscription to the unlimited plan so I can run it through my PS3. In order to run it you have to get some sort of disc to put in the Playstation, which should arrive today, so I can't tell you yet whether it works well or not. But I will say that I have started to watch a lot of TV online. I have been watching Heroes online because, for some reason, I like it better that way. I have watched episodes of Lost online after having inadvertently missed one on my DVR somehow. The same is true of a Modern Family episode that I missed earlier this year. (PS - If you're not yet watching Modern Family, then stop reading this post and go to the ABC website and start watching it right now. I guarantee that Modern Family is more entertaining than the remainder of this post.) Additionally, this Netflix thing streaming through the PS3 is a fairly recent turn of events.

When I first got the PS3 the Playstation Network was essentially a small scale operation. I mean the scale of it must have been huge, but the scope of it was pretty narrow. It was basically just for playing video games online against other people. Recently when I updated to the new operating system a whole new world opened up. The new Playstation Network is an incredible thing. They've integrated movies and TV Shows and obviously you can still do the video games. You can do the Netflix thing and obviously also just browse the web. I'm uncertain as to the current state of their web browser, but in the past I know that it didn't really work properly with a lot of websites. That may have also changed with the recent upgrade of the network, but I don't know for sure.

Anyway, the one bad thing about cancelling your cable subscription is that you can't watch any live sports. This, for me, is a dealbreaker. There's no way I can go without watching the Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Giants, and Jets. Also the Sunday and Monday night football games and also the occasional interesting NBA game. At the same time, Time Warner Cable and the Fox Network are both grandstanding now about how that network may be removed completely from the cable system. If that happens, then we'll lose NFL football on Sundays. Whatever ass clowns are running Time Warner need to die immediately. Whoever is deciding to let the Fox Network go is probably the same gie who decided to take a perfect DVR system and replace it with an absolutely terrible DVR system.

Anyway, if they can work out that live sports thing, I will be among the first people to completely cancel my cable service and go entirely online. Something tells me that's going to be difficult, however.

Down goes Gmail!

This can't be good.

WHAT DO WE DO?! HOW AM I SUPPOSED POST THIS AWESOME SERIES OF MCFLYS IN MY STATUS BAR? OR THIS AWESOME AD FOR DUREX CONDOMS? COME ON, INTERNET, STOP FUCKING MY SHIT UP! AND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN DAY, TOO?! IF I DON'T SEND THAT EMAIL BY 6 ... everything will probably be fine, I know.

I'm also quickly realizing how addicted I am to my Gmail. I've got some things I need to do (which I need Gmail for), but ultimately they can wait. Still, all I can think about is FUCK YOU GMAIL! YOU KNOW WHAT? I'M GONNA GO USE FACEBOOK CHAT! DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU'RE MAKING ME DO?! FACEBOOK CHAT SUCKS BALLS AND SO DO YOU, FUCKFACE!

I should really try to get a girlfriend or something.

My New Favorite Web Site

Ok, the Awkward Family Photos site is just pure brilliance. People submit, as you would guess, strange photos of people. There really are no words. Just check it out.

Here's my favorite photo from the site so far:


I mean, the mullet, the Bugle Boy shirt, what appears to be zebra print zubaz underneath his jeans. And clearly the story here is that there was a fight that broke out betwixt this gie, his jeans, and the flag. The gie clearly came out victorious over both of his opponents thanks to his trusty sword. And let's not lose the irony of the fact that the guy appears to be wearing British Knight sneakers.

Maddox Hates Me

Maddox is the dude who writes the best page in the universe. His little essays are very funny.

Apparently, though, Maddox hates me. His latest diatribe is about people who write puns and like Dave Matthews. Just when I was starting to think I was cool, and mere weeks before my 30th birthday when I can no longer, by definition, be cool, unless I'm an Irish rock star (Dolores O'Riordan, anyone?).

Though I would like to point out the irony of Maddox writing the self described "best page in the universe", while also railing against narcissism. In fairness, however, it is one of the better pages in the universe.

Friday Classic Video: This is mostly for Internet nerds (like me)

First off, Weezer is awesome. They're one of the ultimate "nerd" bands. Lead singer Rivers Cuomo wears glasses, for God's sake. David Brooks, whom Chuck loves, wrote something today about how "nerds" are different from "geeks." Whatever. As I'm sure Stan Gable would say, a nerd is a nerd is a geek is a nerd.

But anyway, I fucking love the Internet. At my "job," I have a lot of down time. I regularly check out Digg, FunnyOrDie, Cracked, GorillaMask, Ebaum's World, and Facebook. Facebook, by the way, is way beyond "the new MySpace," as was brilliantly illustrated here: "MySpace Intervention." Ha. I had a lot of LOLs and ROTFLs and LMFAOs and BLOWMEs watching that. Oh, what's that, Grandma? You didn't understand what I just wrote? Sorry, but welcome to the nineties.

So here's the new Weezer video. A good many Internet "stars" are featured, some of whom have been lucky enough to appear on our little blog site. Enjoy!

The Weirdest Thing Capitalism And The Internet Has Caused

Ok, I've never played a massive multiplayer online game (MMO), but they are apparently very popular nowadays among many people, not just typical gamers. The most popular of these games is World of Warcraft (WoW), which, based on my admittedly limited knowledge, seems to be some iteration of the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy type of role playing game. First of all, it's weird to me that people pay a monthly fee just to play this game, but apparently the game play is so good along with the fact that people make e-friends while playing that a whole community has built up around this game.

There are others that work in a similar way where you don't have to be an elf or a wizard. You can just walk around and be a regular guy and then the way you play the game is to pay real money for virtual shit for your character. How this is fun, I have no idea, but, like I say, it's apparently enormously popular.

I guess this phenomenon is true of all of these games, but I'll talk more specifically about WoW and then there are also a couple of examples from other online communities. The weird thing to me is the amount of real, actual, physical (consulting thesaurus for more synonyms) money that changes hands in order for people to exist in this virtual world. Here are two examples from WoW.

The first one I read about in the New York Times Magazine (which is fantastic reading, by the way. I often just skip the paper and read the magazine. "I like the crosswords. She goes straight for the magazine"). In order to play WoW you need to buy stuff for your character, weapons and whatever else. There are two ways to do it. You can earn the money through playing the game, which takes many, many hours, or you can pay someone real money in exchange for game money. A lot of people choose the latter route and there exists, therefore, a market for virtual WoW money. Filling that demand are many companies in countries with internet access and large numbers of poor people, aka China and Russia, that literally employ people in 12 hour shifts to play WoW and do whatever mundane task is involved in getting coins and stockpiling fake money, which they then sell to a middle man in some US company, who then sells it at a profit. There are guys whose job is to walk around this virtual world and do the easiest possible thing in order to win money, and that's it. And when you can employ some large number of people to do this 24 hours a day and pay them essentially nothing, you can turn a significant profit.

Now that's weird. The second thing is somewhat understandable, but seems to defeat the purpose of putting all this time and money into the game. I saw this on a TV show either on the DiscoveryHD or the MoJo channel (again, people, if you don't have a HDTV, you're not just missing out on picture quality, but on quality programming). Another business that has sprung up is where guys are employed in 8 hour shifts that span all 24 hours of the day, the one they showed was in like Ukraine or something, where you can send them your username and they will play the game for you for however long it takes to get you to the highest level of gameplay. Apparently in WoW, the worlds don't change really at all, but as you gain experience points, you move up from level to level and you're able to do more things. The maximum is to be a level 40 player. So you pay some Ukrainian guys to play the game for you and then when they email you back, this takes about a month, by the way, of non-stop game play by the Ukranians, then you are a level 40 player. You don't have access to your avatar while they're upping your level and so you're basically shut out of the community. What's the point of that? That's like paying someone to get all the triforces and heart containers in Zelda just so you can walk around and kill things with one sword hit instead of two.

In another online community who's name I forget you basically just walk around and try to buy cool shit for your avatar. And then you can go out to clubs and hang out and hook up with other virtual people and do whatever. It's like living life for lazy people. Anyway, this was also on that TV show, one guy was really into the game and ended up being really popular because he actually wrote a song about the community and played it at the virtual club and everyone really liked it and he eventually became like the hip DJ of the virtual club. So they tell this guy's whole story and the end of the story is that he mortgaged his actual house and some other stuff and paid a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a virtual space hotel. The centerpiece obviously was the dance club in the middle of it, but there are hotel rooms and permanent residences for the virtual people in it as well. He paid this several hundred thousand dollars because he fully expected that people would pay him roughly $1,000 per housing unit, and would pay to stay in the hotel, and go to the dance club and whatever else. And he had potentially made an investment that would net him a million dollars in actual money.

Something else I read about in the NYT Magazine was about an online community that was a little different than the others. Apparently most of these MMO games only have the illusion of being a gigantic universe where everyone is, and the reality is that there are many, maybe even hundreds, of identical universes where some fraction of players are situated and they exist on different servers and it's easier to manage that way. This one universe, again who's name I forget, actually had only one enormous universe. And they did whatever virtual people do, but there was going to be a coup in the universe because some people felt that the emplyees of the company were managing the game unfairly and some people had more power than others due to some unfair practices. This company actually took the step of electing a governing body from amongst the users, flying the actual people to their offices and holding deliberations regarding whatever issues they were having and planned to make it an annual event in order to keep up the fairness of the game.

That last one is interesting, but not necessarily all that weird, given how much people seem to care about these things. Those first three, though, really just kindof astonish me. It's just so strange.

On a related note, I wondered in the comments on Joe's blog a while back what type of people administrate Wikipedia, and it turns out that the people at the NYT Magazine were wondering the same thing, because they had a really interesting article about the types of people who moderate Wikipedia. Many people, largely high school and college kids, choose to volunteer up to 8 or 10 hours of their day moderating Wikipedia. And no one asked them to do it. They weren't solicited by Wikipedia or anything, they just decided that it needed to be done. Again, that's mad weird, but not related to capitalism in any way.