It’s called ‘i-dosing.” Thank you Steve Jobs for inspiring our society to come with yet another “witty” name based around a verb in gerund form starting with the vowel “i.” Sesame Street can rest easy now, knowing that they can focus on the other 25 characters in the English alphabet because in the future everything will begin with an ‘i’ (even words that already start with that letter), thus confusing non-English speakers even more, and making Issac Asimov spin in his grave when Apple’s i-Robot is finally revealed, and done so with a tribute to i-Issac himself.

For those of you who don’t know what i-dosing is, it’s apparently a new way for people to get “high” from listening to a monotonous sound for an extended period of time. I can relate, as the monotone voices of many professors and teachers used to give me strange hallucinations of euphoria, until they’d slam the ruler on the desk and wake me up from my in-class nap.

So without further ado, let me be the first to say: “Quick everyone! Let’s overreact!”

Now I’ll be the first to admit here that music is a wonderful and wondrous thing, whose crescendos can send goosebumps across the skin, and whose moods can reflect or alter your own moods. It’s the latter reason why dentist offices will play Enya over NIN. You need to be relaxed so they can easily get into your purse, and not wound up to the point that you’re strangling the secretary while screaming “YOU DID THIS TO ME.” As far as I’m aware though, that would be as close to any high off of a song alone as you will get.

Leave it to general mass hysteria to claim that this is a gateway to real drugs, the same way they claimed that rock-n-roll, comic books, dungeons and dragons, and video games would be gateways to other illicit criminal behavior. Some schools are even overreacting to a point where they are forbidding cell phones and music players; not because the kids don’t really need them in a learning environment, but because they don’t want kids to get high off of Miley Cyrus (who should just be banned account of stupidity. I mean, really now: “Movin’ my hips like yeah” passes as a good lyric?? Way to use your adjectives and metaphors! I love doing things like–yeah!).

God forbid some of them should walk outside and see a rainbow…

Anyone with any kind of sound (pun!) reasoning and a solid head on their shoulders could easily tell you that what kids are doing is nothing more than a form sensory deprivation . Headphones on, lying still, and sometimes even blindfolded to cut out the light and other visual distractions.

And guess what! Being in an monochromatic environment can lead to the same thing! Hear that concerned parents?! Leaving your baby in a dark room for 15 minutes or more could get your babies “high!” You are essentially drugging your babies with darkness in the amount of time it’d take you to switch to Geico! Quick, call the social workers! Won’t somebody think of the children!?!

Yves Klein, pusher of highs through "art."

Perhaps the real question isn’t whether i-dosing is a gateway drug, but rather why have people resorted to using it. Maybe if people weren’t so mentally derelict and overreacting to kids boring themselves with white noise, we wouldn’t feel the need to shut others out, find new barriers to drown out the noise, and escape. Perhaps if reality weren’t such a bitch of an existence with Satre’s “Hell is other people” being played out live and in person, we wouldn’t need to find ways to get away.

As it is, perhaps the real problem isn’t these escape devices being used, but rather our inability to cope and therefore overusing them. Who wants some alcoholism? No? WoW addiction perhaps? No, not that either? Oh, how about hours of searching Youtube for cat videos! My point is, we all have our escapes, the only real problem is when we become captive to these devices and are unable to function in society (well, less so than some people are already unable to do).

Also, kids pretending to get high either to prove how cool they are, or to piss off their parents, is nothing new. Cum granis salis bitches!

———-
Stephen Elkham appeared in the Defenestration office one day when Amber forgot to shut a window after closing up. In a bizarre twist of irony, Stephen actually joined Defenestration through infenestration…and a ladder. Genevieve, Andrew, Eileen, and even Ben Franklin all tried to shoo him out with various methods (Ben tried logic and reason, Eileen tried magic wardings, Genevieve tried verbal lashings, and Andrew merely whacked at him with a rolled up newspaper) while Bigfoot stood back and laughed his ass off. However, Stephen barely acknowledged any of them while creepily staring at the wall and sipping coffee. Soon after, that room was converted into the “Creepy Staring Guy With Coffee” room, and was mostly used for storage. One day, while moving some old equipment back there, Haratron had serendipitously stored a typewriter in front of Stephen. It wasn’t until a few days later that Eileen noticed that the “CSGWC” room was suddenly alive with the ticking of typewriter activity, and suddenly full of papers (one of them was the complete version of Hamlet all in caps, another was hundreds of pages with nothing more than “All werk n no plai, mayks Jack a LOLboi kthx,” and yet another was a scathing review on Jane Austen and how the Bronte sisters should’ve ganged up and shanked her via a time machine). It was clear the creepy guy had some sapience… plus there was now a seemingly endless source of material that could be added to the website (Jersey Devil was charged with filtering though and scanning in all the documents). Stephen is still referred to as CSGWC though…

Only the blood has been replaced by creamy sandwich spread.

Harkening back to my last column about how commercials have infected every nook and cranny of our live as they possibly can, I discovered a particularly horrible one while eating Thai carry-out (Thai food is the new Chinese) and catching up with South Park at southparkstudios.com.

These episodes are normally sponsored with one commercial that gets rotated out every so often, but this time it was for a new awesomely extreme(!!!!) product that was so mind-fucking-blowingly extreme it needed back-road dirt-bikers, dogs in crude wooden crates, and other illicit fun that would surely get these participating partiers stuck in jail… only if the cops could catch them after a series of Dukes of Hazzard-shenanigan-filled chase scenes just to show how bad-ass it is.

EXTREMISTS

This awesomely extreme product was none other than: Miracle Whip.

Yes, nothing says extreme like mayonnaise–well not technically mayonnaise, but fauxnaise!

For those of you who don’t know, Miracle Whip is a Kraft foods product (a fine purveyor of Kraft Mac n’ Fraux-mage) that was developed as a cheaper alternative to real Mayonnaise. The difference (to my understanding) is that Miracle Whip has more sugar, possibly other additives that we pretend not to see when reading the ingredients label of some of our favorite foods, and an unfitting campaign slogan.

“We Will Not Tone It Down!”

EXTREME!!!!

Now, this isn’t some new spicy Doritos flavor like Caliente Rojo Toro, whose mere name and sight can propagate the mind with visions of frat parties gone awry–or gone awesome if you enjoy waking up from a black-out in the shower stall, wearing someone’s bra incorrectly, and watching water gush forth from the broken toilet that someone (namely you under the guise of “El BRAvo”) decided needed a good smack-down after eating too many Caliente Rojo Toro chips and Jägermeister.

But Miracle Whip? Maybe if your idea of extreme is making a bologna sandwich for your kids’ lunches before sending them out the door for public schooling to babysit them for the day. For some people this might be the highlight of their day, but worthy of a slogan that promises to keep it real–not so much. I mean the name alone doesn’t exactly instill a desire to go skydiving or bungee jumping. It does, however, sound like a weapon from some RPG…

Now this ad campaign has been around for close to a year, with the same “WTF is this?!” sentiment stated by others that I echo here. It is because they still push their product in such a manner, that I feel the need toss in my lot to harp on it some more. Maybe then they’ll get a hint, though this is doubtful because they probably can’t see past how awesomely extreme their product is. I base this doubt off of all the youtube parodies, complete with equally derisive and sometimes hilarious comments associated with them.

DUDE, IT'S MIRACLE WHIP! Totally rad, brah!

You’d think for a company trying to make their product hipper than it actually is in order to appeal to a younger demographic, they would have a better feel for the pulse of society. Perhaps their hands are so far up their ass, they’re feeling the wrong pulse and just don’t know it. If they did, I’d like to think these advertising offenses would be removed, much less never have been created. Instead we have parodies and snark, and a banal product that gets made into potato salad.

Frat Dude A: Dude! you made it to the party!
Frat Dude B: Yeah man, I totally brought some kick-ass potato salad!
Frat Dude A: Dude!! Is it made with Miracle Whip?
Frat Dude B: Fuck yeah man!
Sorority Chick: Oh my god I’m so drunk… do I smell Miracle Whip?
Frat Dudes A and B: SCORE! *chest bump*
Sorority Chick: *falls down face first into the potato salad*

Dear Kraft, I do believe I have written your next commercial. Don’t forget to put in a group of young people eating a sandwich while playing Rock Band and laughing in the background. You can thank me later… with money.

———-
Stephen Elkham appeared in the Defenestration office one day when Amber forgot to shut a window after closing up. In a bizarre twist of irony, Stephen actually joined Defenestration through infenestration…and a ladder. Genevieve, Andrew, Eileen, and even Ben Franklin all tried to shoo him out with various methods (Ben tried logic and reason, Eileen tried magic wardings, Genevieve tried verbal lashings, and Andrew merely whacked at him with a rolled up newspaper) while Bigfoot stood back and laughed his ass off. However, Stephen barely acknowledged any of them while creepily staring at the wall and sipping coffee. Soon after, that room was converted into the “Creepy Staring Guy With Coffee” room, and was mostly used for storage. One day, while moving some old equipment back there, Haratron had serendipitously stored a typewriter in front of Stephen. It wasn’t until a few days later that Eileen noticed that the “CSGWC” room was suddenly alive with the ticking of typewriter activity, and suddenly full of papers (one of them was the complete version of Hamlet all in caps, another was hundreds of pages with nothing more than “All werk n no plai, mayks Jack a LOLboi kthx,” and yet another was a scathing review on Jane Austen and how the Bronte sisters should’ve ganged up and shanked her via a time machine). It was clear the creepy guy had some sapience… plus there was now a seemingly endless source of material that could be added to the website (Jersey Devil was charged with filtering though and scanning in all the documents). Stephen is still referred to as CSGWC though…

I hope one day in the near future, advertising will come printed on rolls of duct tape that you can then tape around the heads of screaming children that will display such ads like “This moment of silence was brought you by Applebees, bring your kids here so we can shut them up with a sandwich next time,” or perhaps have a series of painted red mustaches over a swarthy looking set of dentures to promote Captain Morgan Rum. Nothing says awesome like mixing kids with booze (in fact, that’s often how some are made)!

Despite the cute, novel, and sometimes experimental forms of advertising that helps keep the field so fresh in a game where there’s constant one-upmanship, there are the occasional disasters that just make you blink and go WTF. But not WTF in a good way like Starburst’s Berries n’ Cream “Little Lad,” but in a very bad way.

Dance Little Lad, DANCE!

Guerrilla marketing is a personally loathed member in this group. Most of it blatantly lies to the consumer by pretending to be something it’s not. Take for instance Sony’s failed campaign led by Zipatoni to “assist” people in obtaining a handheld PSP device. Not only did they totally stereotype their audience as overprivileged idiot teens with bad grammar, but their underestimation of gamers intelligence led to their “Flog” being exposed, and then given the angry mob torch-and-pitchfork treatment. Anyone who plays online games knows that gamers are an unfortunate mix of nerds who will be more than happy to pick on the idiots by unleashing their inner grammar Nazi, the go-nowhere’s (the people who excel at nothing except breathing, and only serve to take up space and resources), and children whose parents probably had them after having too much Captain Morgan and now use a mix of TV and Xbox Live to babysit (and possibly raise) them. The latter two are usually easy to pick out, but hard to differentiate between, unless you have the unfortunate experience to hear them.

This gorilla? Not a marketer.

Guerrilla marketing, however, is at least somewhat creative, if not outright misleading. I’m not sure which bothers me more though. Being misled, or having my intelligence insulted.

In what appears to be the final act of outsourcing to Asia, companies have now created slogans for the ADHD Internet-dependent, who lose interest in what is being said after three words (I don’t have to worry about offending them, they stopped reading this a long time ago, that is if they even found this column).

“We Speak Car”: Ford came up with this great slogan. Really? You speak “Car?” Awesome, I was looking for a translator when I visit Autotopia! I wonder how much they paid the Chinese advertising sweat-shop workers for that one. Too bad an independent business beat you to that little gem. I know how many long hours must’ve been spent wracking the brains of monkeys at typewriters for that masterpiece. “Beep Beep-Beep Vroom Beep!” Haha, I speak car too!

“Let’s do amazing!”: With a price tag of 40 million spent by Hewlett Packard, it’s amazing that this illustrious ad campaign was even green-lighted. How exactly does one “do amazing?” I can do amazing things involving my ass and a trumpet! Is there a noisy child kicking the back of your seat on an airplane while their parent idly sits by as their little angel creates hell on wings? Watch what amazing things I can do with a roll of duct-tape to remedy the situation. I can, also, for 1/40th of the cost, come up with a better slogan! Amazing? I know!

Duct-tape: Advertising tool and modern child's binkie.

“Great Happens”: Great happens when you’re staying at a Hyatt. Shit Happens, however, when you have an imbecile creating your ad campaigns. Perhaps Great Things Happen, but certainly Great itself doesn’t just magically happen. The only thing “great” about this slogan is how grating it really is. Even with adding that missing “things,” the slogan only then becomes the banal and un-noteworthy quote that it is (over three million Google search hits with “great things happen”). Removing “things” entirely only makes it sound like you’re covering up that fact with an air of pretentiousness. It’s like disguising a fart by removing the sound. It still reeks.

So congratulations all you postmodern we-don’t-need-no-grammar-in-our-advertising companies. Whenever I am in need of the services you provide, you will have just moved yourselves further down my list of people I’ll go to. Now I’m off to Quiznos. The sponge-monkeys have informed me that they have a pepper-bar!

———–
Stephen Elkham appeared in the Defenestration office one day when Amber forgot to shut a window after closing up. In a bizarre twist of irony, Stephen actually joined Defenestration through infenestration…and a ladder. Genevieve, Andrew, Eileen, and even Ben Franklin all tried to shoo him out with various methods (Ben tried logic and reason, Eileen tried magic wardings, Genevieve tried verbal lashings, and Andrew merely whacked at him with a rolled up newspaper) while Bigfoot stood back and laughed his ass off. However, Stephen barely acknowledged any of them while creepily staring at the wall and sipping coffee. Soon after, that room was converted into the “Creepy Staring Guy With Coffee” room, and was mostly used for storage. One day, while moving some old equipment back there, Haratron had serendipitously stored a typewriter in front of Stephen. It wasn’t until a few days later that Eileen noticed that the “CSGWC” room was suddenly alive with the ticking of typewriter activity, and suddenly full of papers (one of them was the complete version of Hamlet all in caps, another was hundreds of pages with nothing more than “All werk n no plai, mayks Jack a LOLboi kthx,” and yet another was a scathing review on Jane Austen and how the Bronte sisters should’ve ganged up and shanked her via a time machine). It was clear the creepy guy had some sapience… plus there was now a seemingly endless source of material that could be added to the website (Jersey Devil was charged with filtering though and scanning in all the documents). Stephen is still referred to as CSGWC though…

Yes, language is constantly changing based on societal standards, but really… unfriend?? It  is a verb soley applied to a website that may one day be defunct, or perhaps an internet activity that may one day be obsolete.

That is unless by unfriend you mean going over to your soon-to-be-ex-friend’s house and take back all your stuff, send back all their texts and e-mails ever sent, and maybe punch them in the face for good measure…

In short, un- usually implies a reversal in process of sorts. (unwind, unravel, unsee) Frankly I think the prefix de- would be a better one than un- for real life friend removal (some might argue a well placed knife, or a good dose of cyanide would also suffice), but I’m sure I’m on the losing side of this argument.

Personally I hate being 1 out of 600 people on someone’s friend list. It’s not that I want to feel special, but rather I don’t want to feel like an object in someone’s electronic Beanie Baby collection. That being said, I keep my own list below 100 (and even then do some pruning if there’s a long term lack of communication, monosyllabic postings, or too many Facebook application postings).

Then we get asinine news articles with headlines like “Is Facebook Cheapening Our Friendships?”

Uh… no.

Rather people are friending everyone they run into with wanton abandon, and then usually regretting it later, much like going home with that porn star at the bar only to wake up next to lord fugly, and then trying to find a way to sneak out the next morning (sorry I killed your dog Giselle, he would’ve woken you up… I’ll call you!) I have personally told people who ask if I have a Facebook, that I keep mine between close friends and private.

I don’t have my boss

I don’t have my family

I don’t have random friends of friends whom I met once at a party

or the hooker from last night (I found her on craigslist, but that’s a story for another day).

By keeping my list small and intimate, I’m able to keep such pics like the time I got wasted at party, met friends of friends, who then took pictures of me passed out on the couch while some guy in a fur-suit teabagged me, and then posted them on their facebook for their 600 friends to see.

If I had added these friends of friends, surely I would’ve had some lovely stories to tell my boss and family (if I added them too) once my drunken-addled visage crowned with furry balls was tagged with my name.

Is this somewhat of a slippery slope argument? Perhaps, but at least I can trust my 44 friends that they have sound judgement and would not post such material, much less submit it to some social ridicule site like LameBook. You really have to wonder what’s going through the head of someone who posts how their water broke at the grocery store causing them to slip and fall, and go into labor, but worry not, for they are now in the hospital with a concussion and are posting this update from their iPhone as they give birth for all 600 friends to see!

In order to keep these situations down though, I do often prune my list. Sure I have people from High School who added me out of sentimentality (and to maybe help stroke their ego by playing the “Ha Ha, look at me! I have a successful career as a doctor, a house, and a baby!” game), and then never say anything, or respond to any of my love-notes I send. But do I really want them to see those pictures of me coyly staring into the camera while wearing a neon pink speedo?

Only if they’re hot…

Which they aren’t…

So *snip snip* let the defriending begin!

Now if you have even 100 friends, that’s like 1 birthday every 3-4 days, which means they get pushed off to weekends, and then stacked with weddings and baby showers. It’s enough to make me go a little Quasimodo, climb a nearby tower, scream sanctuary, and then fire off a few rounds. As it stands, my 44 friends are scattered, meaning I can still keep in touch with them without having to spend every weekend doing something, and still post scatological-based updates without fear that people will think less of me (they’re all used to me at this point, save for some cringing here and there)

Oh but I use it for networking! Great, there’s LinkedIn to post your resume and make your life as oatmeal bland as possible, in order to get hired into a job where you can post crap on your Facebook like “Haha, I just took a dump in the coffee!”

Oh but LinkedIn isn’t as popular! Fine, then set up a dummy account to take up space on other people’s dummy accounts! It’s not that hard people!

Oh but if I defriend people they’ll talk shit about me on their Twitter! Really, and if they do that you really want them as a friend? Kill yourself now! No, do it! Don’t worry, I’ll be here to take your wallet, or you could just give it to me to hold onto while you tape that plastic bag around your head.

I personally think it’s a sad state of affairs when we have online help guides from newspaper publications for how to behave online (http://live.washingtonpost.com/web-hostess-031010.html). Really though, if you need to ask, you should probably just get off the ride now, before you fall and hurt yourself and ruin it for others (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35816198/ns/technology_and_science-security/).

I’ll let you figure out which one I fall into…

EA's Dante's Inferno: Dante's in stitches. Zing!

When I was but a wee lad with the original Nintendo system there was a game by the name of Battle of Olympus. It basically used the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as a backbone plot, while stuffing it full of Greek mythology (sans Zeus procreating with every female possible). Let’s face it: with the numerous monsters, beasts, and Gods, it had all the substance to make a great game.

God of War would be another game to follow in this tradition, except you’re playing some muscle-bound psychopath, hell-bent on revenge. I like to call it Battle of Olympus: Meathead Edition.

What bothers me is when they’ll take a specific title, and bastardize it. It’s like that cliched, Hollywood approach to taking something wonderful, adding a bunch of extraneous crap, and then fucking it up beyond all recognition till it barely resembles the original masterpiece.

Get it Girl!

I speak, of course, of EA’s Dante’s Inferno. I was at first tantalized by what could have been a great survival horror game: instead what I got was a game targeted towards the “frat boy.” Blood, boobs, and all.

In Dante’s Inferno, you play as the great poet Dante–only now he’s a muscle-bound crusader (and not a poet) who likes stitching tapestry into his chest because he’s so awesomely extreme and macho like that (he has yet to discover tattoos, I guess)! After slaughtering heretics for the crusade and then conquering Death (no really… in a form of elementary school level dramatic irony you kill the Grim Reaper with his own scythe, and then take it as a trophy), Dante returns home to see something directly ripped from one of the opening sequences of Russel Crowe’s Gladiator.

His home has been pillaged. There’s a dead guy on floor, stabbed in the face with a gilded cross (the perpetrators probably needed lessons in pillaging it seems). His voluptuous wife Beatrice has been murdered, and her breast is exposed (clearly this exposure is for breast cancer awareness and/or artistic expression, but certainly not for fapping).

Extreme Sunbathing

From that point on her soul escapes, tells you something important (I’m not sure what though I couldn’t hear over her spiritual boobs) as it’s taken away by a ominous cloudy figure. We see her one last time, fully exposed, on a chapel altar in what seems to be coital bliss with an invisible force, before magically levitating in the air and disappearing like a sexy David Copperfield trick!

Nothing's worse than that not so fresh feeling.

And then it all goes downhill from there–in more ways than one.

While I’m sure the gameplay itself might be fun (if you’re into those scripted-attack games, with a touch of the ultra-violence), and it’s graphics are very detailed, this monstrosity was not what I had hoped for.

It would be like taking Pride and Prejudice and turning it into a First Person Shooter, instead of making it into a Dating Sim (one of those weird Japanese dating games where you try to pick the best choice/comment to make based on your object-of-affection’s personality, while avoiding used-panties vending machines). At the very least making it into some cat-fight over Mr. Darcy would be more believable, while keeping an element of “action.”

While the setup of the game follows Dante Alighieri’s path through Inferno, there are numerous “artistic license” changes made. For one it’s practically devoid of the metaphors, and the relations between the sins and their associated punishments. Many of the characters are now statues such as the centaurs, Minotaur, Geryon, and the resident sinners in the Malebolge just for the sake of keeping them in the game. In what I can only infer is an homage to Ridley Scott’s Legend, Beatrice is turned toward the side of Lucifer and given an evily seductive outfit to befit her change without the aid of Tangerine Dream.

Dante reminds you: get your yearly mammogram, or we'll do it for you.

Oh and he also fondles her boobs, and they make out… all this in time for Valentines Day!

As it stands, Dante’s Inferno is nothing more than another Battle of Olympus that uses a title from classic literature to garner attention. I tend to think that this a form of false advertising. It’s exactly like going to a movie based on a novel, and then seeing that the movie took liberty with creative licensing and in the end leaves you feeling cheated.

So, in lieu of EA’s Dante’s Inferno, I submit my own ideas for books improperly made into games:

Sim A Tale of Two Cities: Can you build your city up while keeping the revolutionaries down? New buildings to this edition include: the Shoe Maker, the Wine Shop, and Bastille!

Catamari Damacy’s Cradle: Ice-9 has turned the earth into a giant snowball! It’s your job to roll your bucky-ball and gather as much as you can before blasting it into the sun! Play the game, and become part of the granfalloon!

Beloved Fantasy: In this RPG you must enlist the help of the local townspeople to help exorcise your house of the spirits possessing it! This game features a unique element-themed battle system, airships, and a music score by Nobuo Uematsu!

————

Stephen Elkham appeared in the Defenestration office one day when Amber forgot to shut a window after closing up. In a bizarre twist of irony, Stephen actually joined Defenestration through infenestration…and a ladder. Genevieve, Andrew, Eileen, and even Ben Franklin all tried to shoo him out with various methods (Ben tried logic and reason, Eileen tried magic wardings, Genevieve tried verbal lashings, and Andrew merely whacked at him with a rolled up newspaper) while Bigfoot stood back and laughed his ass off. However, Stephen barely acknowledged any of them while creepily staring at the wall and sipping coffee. Soon after, that room was converted into the “Creepy Staring Guy With Coffee” room, and was mostly used for storage. One day, while moving some old equipment back there, Haratron had serendipitously stored a typewriter in front of Stephen. It wasn’t until a few days later that Eileen noticed that the “CSGWC” room was suddenly alive with the ticking of typewriter activity, and suddenly full of papers (one of them was the complete version of Hamlet all in caps, another was hundreds of pages with nothing more than “All werk n no plai, mayks Jack a LOLboi kthx,” and yet another was a scathing review on Jane Austen and how the Bronte sisters should’ve ganged up and shanked her via a time machine). It was clear the creepy guy had some sapience… plus there was now a seemingly endless source of material that could be added to the website (Jersey Devil was charged with filtering though and scanning in all the documents). Stephen is still referred to as CSGWC though…