TEN JACK TEN

Either the Chinese are overcompensating and betraying their own self-perceived inferiority or they’re just really shallow as a culture.  They’re showing it in so many ways, the spectacles of building construction, the facade of lip-syncing children, the busing-in of people to fill the stands, and the especially the cheating at gymnastics. There is no way in hell that their gymnasts are of proper age.  Good thing the folks that run the Olympics are just as corrupt as the Chinese government, or there might have been consequences.

—

Oh, how I dislike sports with subjective scoring.  Give me a straight-up race any day over deductions for inadequate rotation.

—

Phelps is done winning medals and I think I’m done giving a damn about the Olympics.  He got away with one on the 100m butterfly, but then just about every streak has one of those really close escapes.  I was never really sure exactly what the Serbian officials’ protest over the end was, other than “hey, we thought our guy was going to win.”  They certainly would have had no problem with it if their guy had won by the .01 second instead of the American.

—

Until Women’s Beach Volleyball, I did not realize how much time I would be willing to stare at women in bikinis who I did not personally find attractive.  Not that they give a hoot about what I think.

—

I say Costas is wearing a hairpiece, My Lovely Wife maintains it’s just a bad dye-job.  Come on, dear.  That thing is Shatner-esque.

—

Good thing Phelps won all those medals or Visa would have wasted a lot of Morgan Freeman’s voice-over time.  And why was Phelps swimming in a pool full of urine?  That’s not art.

—

Hey, it’s Saturday. Everybody’s watching.  Now would be a great time to do a multi-hour real time broadcast of the Women’s Marathon.  Good grief.  I can’t watch someone suffer for that long, even if they’re foreign and there are commercial breaks.

—

I am so damn sick of Honda ads with “Mister Opportunity.”  No wait, I was damn sick of that half-assed animated Chandler Bing knockoff two freaking years ago.  Now I’m just homicidal.

—

Would it kill NBC to provide some context for the events?  Leaderboards, elimination requirements, brackets?  Nope, it’s just a bunch of personal-interest features, the sports version of a chick flick.  Good for the NBC camera crew that they got to go to Jamaica to film little kids running in a field, but now I have to have my time wasted with it.

What some call cynicism, I call reality-based thinking.

Will Ferrell is on the verge of digging a comedy rut so deep he won’t be able to climb out of it.

The only thing a concert review in the newspaper tells me is:  “Ha ha, I got my employer to pay for me to go see a concert.”  It’s not like I could go see it if the review was good.

Good news tends to come in the mail, bad news tends to come in a phone call.

Kids lose things.  Handing them something of value is always a risk.

Spending some time at a public swimming pool is a great way to remind yourself that everyone is funny-looking in their own special way.

Two patties on the burger is the sweet spot.  Three or one don’t have the right meat-to-bun ratio.

Mushrooms are nature’s boogers.

There’s something in my brain that refuses to believe that I’ve given up on a book I’ve stopped reading.  I may have stopped reading it, set it aside for a year or so, forgotten what page I was on, started reading another book, or misplaced the book itself — but I’m still reading it.

Always install or play used software before the return period is over. 

Nothing like the VH1 video countdown to show you just how out of ideas the music industry is.  All the bands sound the same, all the solo female artists sound the same, all the hiphoppers and rappers sound the same.  The only thing that seems to sound different is Death Cab For Cutie — and I don’t like them.  I’m having to look harder and harder to music that isn’t completely boring.

— 

So Madonna got Timbaland to produce a song and Justin Timberlake to do the video with her and make her relevant again, to the point where she seems like a guest star in “her own” song.  As far as I can tell, she’s got four minutes to save the world, but all she & Justin do is dance around in a bathroom, a supermarket, wherever.  

Until the creeping wall of negativity eats their faces off.  I don’t think I’d be in a hurry to put either of those two in charge of anything important.

—

And then there’s another song that’s climbed the VH1 charts about how the chick “keeps bleeding in love.”  Keeps, keeps bleeding in love.

And all I can think is that she must be on her love period.  Ew.

Prostitute must be a better job than telemarketer, because some people are actually glad to run across an on-duty prostitute.

Amy Winehouse’s press coverage is disproportionate to her actual talent.

If I had a vistor from outer space, and that visitor did not understand the concept of “body odor,” we could zap ourselves over to Six Flags Over Texas and have several examples for him in less than a minute.

You can put a space for it on the credit card reciept, but I will not be guilted into giving a tip to someone who does nothing for me other than running a cash register.

I’m not white enough to fully appreciate the appeal of Jimmy Buffett and his lifestyle marketing juggernaut.

Text messages are not the proper format for communication that contains any degree of significance.

My promise to myself not to use this blog for whining has resulted in long gaps between posts.

There is no great pearl of wisdom that will come to you as a result of growing to adulthood, other than the realization that no such wisdom exists and that everybody’s trying to muddle through as best they can.

Corporate CEO’s are not highly paid because they are particularly good at what they do, they’re highly paid because everyone with authority over paying them is part of the “let’s all pay each other shitloads of money” club.

You and I are not going to be invited into the aforementioned club.

Unless the person in question has actually invaded another country, set up concentration camps, or has attempted genocide, comparing them to Hitler is a silly exaggeration that undermines your argument.

If I were famous, someone would point to the above statement and claim I was defending Hitler.

If this country is not going to allow any new mining, drilling, refining, or nuclear plants, it really has no business whining about the cost of energy.

Team Fortress 2 is seriously addictive.

No matter how many more times they go through the washer, those new towels aren’t going to get more absorbent.

Nobody’s going to give you a book contract to say nice things about your Republican former boss.

My belief that $4/gal. gasoline would reduce my commuting time by thinning out the other people on the highways was incorrect.

There are two kinds of people in politics:  the ones who care about issues, and the ones who care about being in politics.  The latter ones tend to give up in disgust less often.

Once a podcast goes over the 1 hour mark, it’s a warning sign that self indulgence has won the battle over entertaining the audience.

Grand Theft Auto IV doesn’t deserve those 10/10 reviews. 

My first thought when I heard that Clay Aiken was expecting a child was:  “Who’s the father?”

—

About once or twice a month, I get spam that is identified as coming from my own work email address.  So, either they’re using my address to spam from (which I regard as unlikely) or they’re using a spoof that makes it look like the recipient is the sender.  I think responding to spam is stupid in the first place, but honestly, responding to spam from your own address is double stupid with a backflip and a side of stupid sauce.

—

After re-watching it with the kids, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was by far the weakest of the original three movies, and it’s due to two factors:  (1)  Kate Capshaw’s constant whining, and (2) the high number of unnecessary gross-out moments.  I blame Speilberg for the first, Lucas for the latter.  The boys loved Short Round, though.

A Shot At Love II With Tila Tequila is conclusive proof that MTV hates your brain and wants it to die.

30 Rock was the best comedy on TV this season.  My Name Is Earl lost its way with the prison plotline (I blame Jamie Pressly’s pregnancy).

In however many seasons there have been of American Idol, there has not been one contestant that would motivate me to buy their recordings.

Saturday Night Live was a little better after the Writer’s Guild Strike ended, but they are still at the mercy of the quality of their guest hosts.  Christopher Walken is always worth watching when he’s hosting SNL.  Surprisingly, Justin Timberlake is too.

Krtisten Wiig isn’t as funny as SNL thinks she is.  But then, I can’t think of any cast member that is.  Oh wait, Andy Samberg is actually better than his amount of screen time reflects.

Seth Meyer is a poor replacement for Tina Fey on SNL’s Weekend Update.  But then, I suppose I tend to be biased against smug little pricks.

Grey’s Anatomy would be a much better show if they devoted as much energy to creating characters we could root for as they did to making sure every post-strike episode featured a same-sex kiss.

Mad TV is still funnier than SNL.  The humor is more biting and fearless.

House was the best drama on TV this season, and it’s almost entirely due to Hugh Laurie’s acting and their ability to throw good actors up against him.  It’s certainly not the disease-of-the-week plotlines.

When an entire season of a show accumulates on your DVR and you haven’t found yourself motivated to watch it, it’s probably time to admit you’d rather not bother with it. 

-  the way William Shatner talks 

-  the experience of having a song you don’t like running through your head

-  the mental state that leads people to appear on reality shows

-  the smell of things that have been completely permeated by cigarette smoke (and no, smartass, “smoky” isn’t specific enough)

If the media is currently describing the place where you live as a “compound,” things aren’t going your way right now.

A lot of Country music is not much more than aggressively presented whining. Yeah, I work hard, too. Suck it up, cowboy.

Al Gore won’t run for President again because it means the sphere of constant ass-kissing he currently lives in would vanish.

Legos + dark rug + walking in the middle of the night = PAIN.

The Dixie Chicks thought the First Amendment meant that other people should listen to them and not talk back and tell them they were full of crap. Famous people make this mistake all the time.

If something ever happened to me, the toilet paper in my house would never get put on the roller again.

Coffee machines aren’t made to handle more than three years of daily use.

Presenting a rational response to an irrational argument is a surprisingly difficult thing to do.

Target stores that don’t serve the high-income suburban demographic are more likely to have good videogames for cheap clearance prices.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, and especially Knocked Up were all about 30 minutes too long.

The wind comes sweeping down the plains in Texas, too. And blows out your pilot light a couple of times a year.

Either an entire generation of women has funny-looking asses, or jeans aren’t being made to flatter the female figure anymore.

Every couple of years, motherboard manufacturers add yet another power connector to their boards, forcing you to upgrade your power supply or scrounge for an adapter.

A good way to make all of those ideas floating around in your head go away is to fire up the PC and try to write them down.

If you used your credit card at the pump to gas up your car, you can’t use the same credit card to buy something inside the 7-11.

WordPress’ post editor is entirely too fond of adding line breaks instead of paragraph breaks. Especially if you’re using Firefox.

Sony has good warranty service for its TVs.

Infinity has excellent warranty service for their speakers, once you figure out how to reach them.

JVC has crap warranty service that treats you like a moron before you even make personal contact with them.

Children will eat just about anything that comes in a McDonald’s bag.

If the device doesn’t specifically say that it supports high capacity SD cards, it probably doesn’t.

If the Akismet Spam filter thinks a comment is spam, then it’s spam.

Drinking at an airport is an expensive proposition, even if it’s just a couple of beers.

American Airlines intentionally understaffs its check-in counters at DFW. This is probably to encourage people to use the self-check-in terminals, but the result is still extremely poor customer service.

The PS3 can deliver a better online gaming experience for free than the Xbox 360 can for $50 a year — dedicated servers always beat peer-to-peer matchmaking.

I am comparatively more handsome in Albuquerque.

If a woman is more concerned about the wedding than the marriage, you might have a problem later.

I’m not buying another cell phone that doesn’t have a standard headphone jack.

My lawn guy has me confused with an ATM.

That garage isn’t going to clean itself.

Yes, it’s raining in Seattle.

Women in Seattle love big umbrellas and not caring whether they hit you in the face with them.

Not much touristy stuff goes on after 6pm in downtown Seattle.

Yes, there’s a Starbucks every two blocks in Seattle.

Upscale malls in the United States are pretty much interchangable.

The movie theater in downtown Seattle is too classy to show the new Will Ferrell movie.

The only movie I’m interested in paying to see in the theater right now is the new Will Ferrell movie.

If you don’t wear your white iPod headphones on the outside of your jacket, people might think you bought a cheap MP3 player.

Shrinking a 90-minute movie down to 260meg results in an unacceptable level of compression.

Always bring a magazine to read on the plane when you’re not allowed to use your electronics.

The passage of time can soften my dislike of a particular band or song. This does not apply to Mister Mister.

It’s better to turn off attached USB devices when starting up a PC, they can interfere with the boot process.

Once iTunes adds the files in a folder to your library, it won’t look at any changes you make to those files that aren’t done in iTunes.

Once iTunes adds a folder to your library, you can’t remove it. The only solution is to move or rename the folder and delete the entries from iTunes.

Toshiba laptops won’t talk to iPods and other types of MP3 players. Toshiba doesn’t particularly care about fixing this problem.

Sometimes it’s more important that a report be filed on time than it is for the report be accurate.

I don’t like champagne.

By the sixth year of a president’s term, everybody’s pretty much tired of him.

Once an entree costs more than $12, my expectations become so high that I usually won’t enjoy it.

When ripping to MP3, a 192k bitrate is a good compromise between sound quality and file size.

I keep waiting for someone to report that Heath Ledger said something about killing himself if he heard one more damn Brokeback Mountain joke, but I guess that’s not going to happen.

—

Is anybody buying the crying Hillary act?

—

If you were flipping the channels any time around the Super Bowl, you might have run across the Puppy Bowl IV on Animal Planet.  If you didn’t, it was basically a bunch of puppies playing with each other in a play area made up to look like a football stadium.  Occasionally, some guy in a referee’s suit would “substitute” a puppy. 

My immediate thought was that this would be something to watch while really, really drunk.

The solemn duty of all weather broadcasters is to cause widespread public panic whenever possible.

Failure to treat others with respect is a sign of immaturity or insecurity, or both.

Do not mix negative emotions with vodka. Just don’t.

Government’s preferred response to a slow economy is to spend more money. Government’s preferred response to a booming economy is to spend more money.

Non-gamers view videogames and the people who enjoy them with equal parts condescension and suspicion.

Nothing focuses my attention like a deadline. No deadline, no discipline.

When you show up at the ER in an ambulance, you get to go to the front of the line.

The lower the stakes, the more vicious the fight.

The media thrives on conflict. That’s why if an election or some other public competition is not competitive, the media will do its best to make it at least appear competitive.

Katherine Heigl is getting the movie roles that Ashley Judd was getting five years ago.