Defenestration » Steve Elkham

I Believe The Children Are Our Future, Feed Them Well, And Then Throw A Donner Party Later On…

Defenestration — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:29:28 +0000

There was a pivotal point in my life where I realized that not all compliments were sincere, and often were people just shining sunlight up my ass for the social convention of “just being nice.” My mom would be the first to unintentionally reveal this. She was a very nurturing person, who consistently took me to various museums, and fed my creative tendencies with arts and crafts projects. These activities would in turn keep me out of her hair, while forcing me to be both creative and constructive. It really was a win-win situation for her. It was, however, during one of these creative endeavors involving Sculpey, where the horrible truth would be revealed me.

I decided to make a dragon and for his eyes I would use marbles. It would be the avatar of “awesome” in its most base, physical form (at least for a twelve year old me)!

However, by the time I was done, it looked like shit. I knew it. My mom apparently had forgotten to look, but said something along the lines “I love it, it looks wonderful” before going back to her happy place.

All these years of putting my drawings and crayon colored pictures washed over with watercolors up on the fridge.

All the years of my making pots, which now looked like someone took a pile of cow dung, made a depression in it, and then painted it with colors that would make even Lisa Frank scream in terror.

All the “art” that would make even the hipster Dadaists’ fecal matter on paper plates, drizzled with semen, and garnished with a dollar bill made to look like a sprig of parsley look like meaningful contributions to culture by comparison…

All of the compliments that went with them…

They were lies.

I felt… betrayed.

To my credit, I was one of the more decent artists in my elementary school, something that would serve me well when I was asked to be in my town’s elementary school art contest as an attempt to boost self-esteem (we won, but only because our work was an original beach scene, while the other competitors drew Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario… I shit you not). Still I was not happy with the final product.

“Why did we draw the sun? You’re never supposed to draw the sun! Birds don’t look like the McDonald’s symbol!! The beach ball doesn’t have a shadow! Clearly if the sun is out, it should have one!”

I was ruined. The lack of constructive criticism fed by an overwhelming urge to nurture the inner Michelangelo via forced compliments killed any sort of trust I would have in whatever positive things anyone would have to say. For fear of being disillusioned by the quality of my own products, and not wanting to expose the world to my crap, I became both jaded to any compliments and critical of my own work. Just poke through Etsy, or other Arts n’ Crap shows, and wonder in silence at how some of this stuff was deemed sellable, much less show-worthy.

Now I’m not saying ALL positive feedback is crap, but there is a point where some honesty is needed.

Case in point, the following child:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/02/23/teenage.tree.ambassador/index.html

This German 13-year-old is one feisty mofo. He runs his own organization to repopulate the planet with trees, and his organization only has one agenda: “taking adults to task for their lack of action on planting trees.”

Yes, let me quit my day job and go plant trees on property I don’t own. Let me plant a tree in an urban setting that will probably be demolished by local gang activity. I’ll get right on that… after I pay off school loans… rent… utilities… car payments… clean up my domicile…buy groceries… no, no, it’s on my list… somewhere… probably after the nap, and instilling goodwill and world peace into my fellow man–

–with a bat.

I think what gets me most though, is his snotty, little quip “We children understand that the adults know everything about these crises, but we children don’t understand why there’s so little action.”

Maybe because we’re too busy worrying about more domestic matters like rising gas costs and taxes, politics, and keeping our jobs, so we can feed and clothe ignorant children such as yourself that we, for whatever reason, decided to have via procreation or adoption. Maybe that’s why we’re not as concerned with planting trees. Go back to playing with your BRIO train set. It’s made from trees!

Trees planted by a former child tree ambassador!

My favorite line so far though is his saying that he “believes this tree crusade can only be successful if it is led by children.”

The last time children led a crusade they were sold into slavery, which isn’t too far from the case here. With “100,000 children participating in 91 countries with 3.5 million trees planted,” that’s a lot of free labor that we didn’t have to pay day-workers for, and many working hours that were spent keeping their grubby little hands busy and out of trouble.

I have to wonder what percentage of these 100k kids “participating” were doing so because their school told them to, perhaps by force, or by gift-wrapping the labor as a fun project (another thing I learned to see through at an early age; Bullshit). Still, it must be nice for the teachers. They get to help the environment by subjecting their students to manual labor, and if they’re really lucky, some of the students might fight over who gets to be the honorary hole-digger!

On second thought, this kid could be onto something.

Just like we have inmates cleaning up litter on the sides of the roads, we can have juvenile delinquents planting trees.

While I’m not completely heartless and I do applaud his willingness to do something other than play video games, that’s both ideologically beneficial and morally good, I’m wondering why anyone hasn’t brought this kid up to speed with reality? I’m sure a few years down the line, he’ll turn into professional arborist at best, a tree hugging hippy with granola dreams at worst, or another burned out apathetic adult.

But I suppose that all depends on the level of cynicism that reality eventually beats into all of us over time…

Join me next time as write about a 10-year-old fashion prodigy, and why I want Tim Gunn to give her the Project Runway treatment, and Anna Wintour to show her new fashionable ways to wear a belt around one’s neck.

Disclaimer: I do love children, I really do, but I love good parenting more. This means you are able to deal with your kid as best as possible in public (if your child screams for more than a minute, I will take a picture of it and post them on www.annoying-kids-and-the-parents-who-won’t-remove-them-for-an-attitude-adjustment.com), and also keeping them out of the public eye unless they are an actual prodigy, and not just packaged that way as a method of parents to unfairly achieve some level of fame by (I’m staring at you balloon boy parents) shamefully using their spawn.

———-
Steve Elkam really does love children. Preferably with a side of fries.

Jizzkickers: Sky Mall Has What You Don’t Need

Defenestration — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:46:23 +0000

Sky Mall! The perfect magazine for those of us who forgot to pack a book, or have to put our Kindle or iPad away because the EMF generated by such devices will cause the universe to divide by 0 thus bringing an end to existence as we know it, but not before the plane we’re on magically falls out of the sky in such a display that would make even Chicken Little exclaim “Oh Fuck…”

While getting caught in the aforementioned situation (the lack of on-flight entertainment caused by the electricity Nazis, not being in a plane crash), I picked up and perused through a SkyMall catalogue. Not that I’d ever order anything from there, since I might be able to find it cheaper online after I depart the air craft, I didn’t realize (or just can’t fathom) how tacky our tastes have become. I get that some people like Thomas Kinkade and Precious Moments in the same way some people like cutting themselves, but some of the featured products defy logic to a point that just leaves you wondering “WTH were they even thinking?” I mean really, I always thought SkyMall, while still hawking some somewhat useless stuff that kept Sharper Image in business (oh wait, nevermind), was still a step above Miles Kimball with their lunch meat syringes and the “personal massagers” which were really nothing more than a standard grade dildo being photographed on some woman’s shoulder.

So, behold the selection of woe and wtf I have selected for your viewing pleasure!

1: “Imagine not being tired anymore… imagine being pain free and filled with energy… STOP IMAGINING!” You mean stop imagining that the symbols adorning the sides of your Inspector Gadget spring heeled shoes are sperms? The diagram states they are a “slick Seed of Life Logo (because its cool!)”. I don’t know about you, but having pictures of sperm at my school would’ve probably gotten me gaybashed–or hit on by the creepy janitor. Seriously, just slap on some smiley faces on them, tell me it’s an advert for a sperm bank, and I’ll gladly make a deposit. Or just call them Jizzkickers…

2: The Brobdingnagian Sports Chair. Now as a child I used to envy the pictures of family vacations before I was born. These pictures were taken of various family members in over sized “giant” furniture. I so badly wanted to play on them, and then finally one day at a SeaWorld my wish came true! I had found some giant chairs and climbed up in them. Sure I was dwarfed and delighted in this experience, but the fact was, they were really fucking uncomfortable. I could not lean back, and when I did, my legs wouldn’t hang over the edge. Well, now with this chair I can relive those uncomfortable moments–or look like an attention whore–or someone who’s trying to (badly) overcompensate. I suppose this chair would be perfect if I should ever grow an extra two or three feet, or develop a baby or micro fetish… neither of which I see happening. I suppose if I were a hipster, I could get three of my friends to sit in the chair with me as we all silently judge others, and go on a tangent of the irony of how the chairs name mixes the machismo of sports with classic literature reference from Gulliver’s Travels.

3: Did you ever get the urge for do-it-yourself Surf n’ Turf? Where you can steam your hot dog next to a lobster claw and tail, whilst also heating some ranch dressing and boiling broccoli underneath? No? Same here…

4: Are drinking glasses against the wall not cutting it anymore for eavesdropping in on meetings where people are most definitely saying bad things about you (at least according to the voices in your head)? Then get this handy, “completely inconspicuous” (if you work in a Vegas casino), pen holder to leave in the middle of a conference room. It’s completely innocuous, so no one will ever suspect the sparkly, lit pen holder with a digital clock that shines like a reject Stephenie Meyer Vampire in the room, nor would they ever pick it up to wonder who left the tacky P.O.S. pen holder in the room in the first place!

5: If you’ve ever owned a cat and a computer, you’ll know how much Mittens loves to help you type those e-mails and surf for porn! Now, with the addition of these easy-to-setup screens you can keep Mr. Tibbles from invading your space… unless he jumps or climbs over the 2 foot tall dividers (which cats can’t do of course), or comes in via your lap, which when surfing for naughty images can be a bad thing when you have a -1 defense against kitty-claws due to your pants being around your ankles. Or you could just put your nosy pet outside of the room and close the door.

6: To quote the Insane Clown Posse: “Fucking Magnets! How do they work?!” Yes with the magic of magnets, you can miraculously make wine taste better… Never mind the pseudoscience behind it, or the years complex chemical reactions needed to properly give wine that desired taste. Do some research before buying into this one. Also if you’re a male, sticking your junk in the middle will make it bigger without harmful cancer risks form other penile enlargement products. I’m a scientist, so it must be true!

7: As if the devil himself had possessed the item to play Deck The Halls, this charming piano plays its own music when a music sheet is set upon it, and it can be yours for $139 (actually now it’s only $99 according to the website, but even still that’s too much though it does restore my faith in humanity to have good taste)! Don’t like the fact the keys eerily move on their own as though a disembodied spirit of a 9 year old piano student was there playing Ode to Joy? Worry not! For they’ve added a tacky, beady-eyed mouse to provide a physical physical presence! And for only $19.50 more you can add a small candelabra, and a French whore mouse (who somehow can climb up on top of a piano that’s just as tall as she is). Or for a better proportionate size ratio, you can put those now worthless Beanie Babies to some use by positioning them around the devil’s piano in an art form I like to call “Advanced Dust Collecting”.

———-

Steve Elkham is a total liar and has already ordered twelve Brobdingnagian Sports Chairs to create his own, lamer version of the Fellowship of the Ring. Luckily, Andrew looks awesome in a Gandalf wig.

The Garfield Effect

Defenestration — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:04:36 +0000

With the advent of the internet, people now have a new medium to “get discovered” on, hence my column…

In the sea of talent, there are dim bulbs who take Edison’s quote of “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration,” and focus on the 90% to pump out crap as if King Midas himself blessed them so that their creative genius hemorrhaged out literary or artistic gold, without ever really realizing that the necessary 10% to fully gain the “success” status had already considered them Persona Non Grata.

Thankfully, most of these people never get “discovered,” and so they blissfully remain in obscurity. I remember going to one “Con” sometime back, where one of the forums presented to the attendees was called “So you want to start a webcomic.” Having no desire at the time to start my own webcomic (mainly due to the oversaturization of webcomics) I did not attend. It was, however, a sign of the times, and something that led me to a phenomenon that I call the “Garfield Effect.”

Garfield Effect: A comic that is supposedly humor based, and flounders in its own efforts to bring forth amusement or laughter from its viewer, either because it has grown stale over time (and the creator’s well of inspiration has run dry, or they simply no longer care), or because it was never funny to begin with. See Garfield the comic strip for an example.

Both Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side are saints in my book of Sunday comic history, not only because they were so great, but because they died gracefully, leaving us with fond memories and happy times, while comics like Cathy continued to drone on into the background, recycling old jokes about gaining weight and bathing suit season (Ack!).

It is with the proliferation of the web into our lives that we no longer have to wait till Sunday to grab a doughnut, a coffee, and some mild amusement. We can now do that at work. Daily. And get paid for it if we’re good enough….

However, there are the occasional traps we fall into, where we want our 10 seconds of life back. The bad comics with humor that could’ve been conjured up by a fifth grader with a book of “jokes” from his or her local public elementary school library (and I’m not talking about the book of dirty jokes placed there by the high school teens to corrupt the young minds). With this I present you an atrocity, so unfunny, if it were a movie it would be considered one of the worst movies ever, and gain cult like status that only drunk people would enjoy because they find amusement in the tragedy.

I present you with *drumroll*

PocketPC Dayz (they spelled “days” with a ‘z’ because they are so cool and hip, just like you!)

(Or because it leaves you in a “daze” of “WTF”… either work.)

...

HAHAHAHA “A WIZARD OF OZ” REFERENCE!! I GET IT! BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BLOWN AWAY LIKE DOROTHY!! AMIRITE!?!?

I find the sentient PocketPC (which may be this man’s only friend) rather obnoxious. Keep in mind, the PocketPC was the distant Neanderthal cousin of that iPhone or Android phone that’s in your pocket… unless you’re just happy to see me, in which I case I suggest you go to a doctor (that doesn’t even look like a healthy shape).

Does anyone else find it odd that this man is at an IT show and it’s just him and a bunch of vendors? Normally I would take this to be a bad sign, though clearly seeing the forest for the trees is not something this man does well, nor can his electronic BFF help.

...

Doomed to stay indoors?! Well, in my time we have these things called “laptops.” You see, they allow you to move your computer functionality around at relative ease, while being able to type up documents such as this one, instead of mangling words with your sausage fingers, so the following text of “Grandma gave me some cookies” doesn’t come out as “Grandpa gave me some nookie” followed by some cursing at the autocorrect feature. Even with my Droid’s ease of access to the web, I still have problem traversing sites on its small screen. I will say my Droid takes better sexy bathroom mirror pics of me than my laptop ever did…

...

Apparently Alex and his magic walkie-talkie get paid to play games all day. Judging by the setting, they also take public transportation where people usually shut their pieholes, and pretend the smelly foreigner who doesn’t believe in showers is merely a cloud of flatulence that will soon pass and nothing more. Yelling “You go Napoleon!” is not only a lame rip on “You go girl!”, but will most likely get you dirty looks from people who can hear you through their iPods, and gain you notoriety as that “weird guy who probably has Tourettes.” At least you’ll get the seat all to yourself!

...

Alex and his magic walkie-talkie go to France! You can tell by the Eiffel tower, the little flags above the crepe stand, and the person of indeterminate gender with what looks to be a mutant beret in one panel that turns into a fez in the last panel.

Oh, and the “Pepe LePeu” reference “HAHAHAHAHA OMG SO FUNNEEE!!!111)

Before Fandango tried selling movie tickets online with paper bags, I guess they were a translation application called Handango. I could be wrong though. I probably am, but still… Also, based on the person of indeterminate gender speaking English in the last panel, I’m willing to bet, Alex doesn’t need Handango. It’s just a theory though… He does get points for avoiding the use of “Voulez vous couchez avec moi?”

...

Which would you rather read an eBook on? I mean if someone put a gun to your head and forced you, you Luddite?! An eBook reader such as a Kindle or a Nook, or your iPhone? Yeah, me too. Oh! You don’t say! A cottage-cheese-like discharge? Well… you should really go get that checked out!

Granted if I had to pick reading a book, or reading the text on my Droid, I’d still choose the book, because I don’t want to squint at a small screen any more than I have to, in order to avoid talking to people. And I don’t know about you, but my leisurely forays into the wonderful world of Britannica, just aren’t the same when viewed on my phone’s tiny screen. However, it’s great for when trying to remember some useless fact at dinner. (Just the other day I looked up “rennet” when trying to remember the bacteria harvested from stomach lining used to make cheese! Fascinating!)

The magic walkie-talkie’s use of “Neanderthal” and “stone-age”, however, seems prophetic. Keep in mind these comics were made back in 2005. How I miss that bygone era.

...

Now for the kicker… for all that talk about how PCs are like soooo yesterday, here we have an advert showing the magazine featuring these comics, not on a PocketPC, but a *gasp* laptop! Furthermore, a few of these strips were actually found in print form! Oh, if the creator only knew his opus was being displayed in such a medium…

These comics could’ve been pulled off better without the main character looking like a total pompous douchebag (See? You don’t need Ed Hardy clothing to achieve that status) who loves shoving their new iPad in your face while belittling your current methods of “getting’ shit done!” They too could’ve used some actually wit, other than some hackneyed Oz or Looney Tunes reference being used. Alas, the PocketPC went down in history as being nothing more than a glorified PDA, and I’d like to think that this offense of a comic strip helped.

You can, however, thank the PocketPC for the existence of your iPhone. Just pretend the comic never happened.

———-
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…

Getting High Off The Sound Of Music

Defenestration — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:38:46 +0000

So. Kids have once again found another back door to getting “high” because they can’t stand being under their parents ever vigilant, controlling thumbs in an attempt to make them more perfect than those snotty Joneses kids—that and the fact that most kids can’t stand each other (or pretty much anything that doesn’t involve themselves).

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!

Badvertising

Defenestration — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:00:17 +0000

Our culture has a love-hate relationship with commercials. They run the gamut from catchy to annoying to sexy to meme-tastic. Some however, are just so mind-numbly insipid, that they go down in infamy, and end up on blogs devoted to asinine advertising. Thankfully I have traded in my cable (and lost the cable companies firm love-grip from around my wallet’s balls), forsaken the TV for the most part, and live on internet alone. While this has helped shield my already commercially addled brain (thank you 80′s) from new crap, our advertisement driven society still seeps in through the cracks of unused space. Sides of buses, floors of metro stations, and right before any movie begins in theaters, we are constantly bombarded with advertising. Some of it can be cute, but most often it’s apathetic or just down right nauseating.

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!

Lets De Friends!

Defenestration — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:05:05 +0000

The fact that my word processor has underlined one word in this opening with the red-line of “No! You idiot!!”, should be some indication that “unfriend” is not a real word. Oxford (in their divine intelligence) has, however, decided otherwise. I have issues with this.

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/).

Dante’s Inferred, No?

Defenestration — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:00:07 +0000

I do a lot of gaming. It keeps me from doing stupid things, like going out on weekends and spending money on excessively priced drinks. As a gamer I fall into one of two categories: the frat boy (the ones who actually buy EA’s sports clones, and play games with bloodlust and mass destruction), or the geek (the ones who still play Kings Quest, and also play games with bloodlust and mass destruction mainly to live out of some projected revenge fantasy against the “frat boy” type).

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!