HOW ABOUT SOME NON-POLITICAL OPINIONS

I have those, too!

- Let me get this straight. The iPad doesn't multitask, I can't use it as a netbook (no Flash isn't just a dealbreaker -- there's literally no deal even on the table without Flash if you want to use it as a web device), and it costs five hundred dollars? I almost want to say "fuck you" instead of just "no." Sorry, Apple: your thing is not for me. Who's it really for, though? People who want to say "Yeah, this economy's a rough one, but I had half a grand to blow on a broken tablet computer" without printing up stickers? Their choice, I guess.

-- I will admit that if it had been called the iPADD and run something that looked like LCARS, I'd've given it serious consideration.

- Having now seen a bunch of posters for it, I'm prepared to call it: the new Alice in Wonderland movie looks like a paint factory tried to make a drunk baby with a Mark Ryden painting, except one or both were high on unpleasant hallucinogens and kept barfing throughout the process. This is one in the column for the director-as-auteur theory, though, because my best guess is that a box office spreadsheet somewhere told Tim Burton to hike up the quirkskirt like nobody's business. I'm, uh, not gonna see this one, in case you were wondering.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS

Mass Effect 2 came out. I could buy it today, but I know I won't have the time to play it until at least next week. Possibly longer. I need there to be about six extra hours in the day, or else eliminate my need for sleep entirely.

A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF FLUID DYNAMICS

You know those umbrellas that are deeper than regular umbrellas? The ones that are shaped in a way that gives better personal coverage than your standard shallow umbrella? Did you know it was possible for someone to use them wrong? I didn't, until I saw this walk past me this morning:



I got nothin', people. I'm not sure if this man understood how water flows in physical space.

TYRANT KING OF AMERICA

All right, fuck it, let's do this.  If you're reading this blog, you should do one of these, too.  Let's armchair-quarterback the shit out of this country!

- I, (YOUR NAME HERE), TYRANT KING/QUEEN OF AMERICA
- No more than ten bullet points.  Just give the highlights.

I, JON SUNG, TYRANT KING OF AMERICA

- We get us a health care system that's actually on par with any fucking first-world European nation.

- Some of the CEO-type motherfuckers who got us in this economic mess are going the fuck to jail.

- Abortion's legal. Period. Deal with it or move out, I don't give a fuck anymore.

- Gay marriage is legal, too. That's right.

- Stem cell research is on. Cry about it on your own time, we won't stop you.

- Intelligent design gets taught in fucking Sunday school, if anywhere. In real school, kids learn real science, for fucksake. Fuck! Also, real teachers get paid more.

- If you're convicted of a hate crime, you get a limb hacked off and no prosthetic (it's harder to lynch people one-handed); if you're convicted repeatedly, we're just going to keep sawing limbs the fuck off until you're a torso on a skateboard -- you could find a useful profession as a football, maybe.

- News media are now constrained to report just the facts, and tell us what's important first. Just the facts! Shit like calling a senatorial election in Massachusetts "a stinging referendum on Obama's health care initiative" gets you fined. Opinion assholes can still be on the air, but the start of every show and end of every commercial break must contain the announcement "And now some opinions from an asshole" -- there's no more dressing this shit up as fact.

- Turbo election rules from here on out, until the end of time.

- You want kids? You need to pass a basic exam that proves you're a competent fucking human being with some ethics.

And because I am TYRANT KING OF AMERICA, I get a bonus one:

- The following movies are to be stricken from the record and remade under my personal watchful eye:
-- Transformers 1 and 2
-- All three Star Wars prequels
-- Star Trek: Nemesis
-- The ending to Battlestar Galactica

History will vindicate me!

PROFANE OPINIONPOST

I'm going to limit my political opinions to just this one post and see how that works out for everyone involved.

God fucking dammit, Democrats, you can't get your shit together just this once for long enough to elect one fucking senator?  One fucking senator who is somehow the single One True Keystone to getting health care reform passed?  On your home fucking turf?

And what is this with health care reform thing anyway, that you can't lose a single fucking senator without it all falling the fuck apart?  Don't you motherfuckers run Congress now?  Isn't one of your own in the fucking White House?  It's like we handed you idiots a lightsaber to fight a street gang, but instead of turning it on, you pulled your own pants down and jammed it up your collective ass with your own two hands and just laid down on the fucking sidewalk to be kicked to death.

Even with the Democrats in power, the Republican assholes still win?  What kind of fucking logic is that?  What the fuck world is this?

This is your fucking job, you miserable fuckstains.  You're supposed to blaze a path toward a better fucking world for all of us.  Enough of us believe in that better world to have voted your incompetent asses into power; would you get your fucking shit together and fucking do something with it?  For fucksake.

DAYS OF RAIN

Holy crap do we ever need this rain. I'm ready for it. So ready. Except that I don't have boots. I think I just figured out the purpose of high rain boots: they keep the bottoms of your pants dry, don't they? If I'm walking around with an umbrella, the bottoms of my pants tend to get rained on; I bet if I tucked them into a pair of boots, they'd stay dry. I don't know why it took me this long to make that connection.

Unrelatedly, I updated the Dogblog yesterday and forgot to say anything here.

I HAVE A CONCERN

Anyone who's eaten a single-serving bag of Kettle Chips knows that those bags only open one way: they provide a little tear in the top of the bag that allows you to rip it open down the side. Or more like forces you to open it that way. You can't do it the normal damn way!

What was wrong with the normal way, Kettle Chips people? You grab it at the top and use the flap to pull the top apart. This method is not possible with Kettle Chips. You just can't do it; something about the adhesive they use or the manufacturing process for the bags makes it god damn near impossible.

Why do this. It's not just that this feels like an inferior way to open a bag of chips. It's taking choice away! This chip company is taking away my freedom! What the fuck country am I in, if not America?! SHALL NOT THE FLAG OF FREEDOM FLY FREE?!?! ?!?!?!

THE STRENGTH OF FRUIT KNOWLEDGE

I'm about to fill this knowledge hole by looking it up on the internet, but I'm wondering if I'm not the only one who has it. Behold:

- Apples. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"
- Oranges. Vitamin C
- Bananas. Potassium
- Cranberries. Vitamin C?
- Pineapples. ??????

What are pineapples good for, aside from being fruit? Does anyone else not know this off the top of their head? And come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure how apples promote health. This just occurred to me because I love pineapples to the point where I suspect they're actually not good for you, based on how awesome they taste.

JUST STOP ALREADY

As most of us probably do, I keep a Yahoo mail account around for all of the bullshit corporate signup email I need to have an address handy for. When I open it, it always gives me the top five headlines off Yahoo news, and for the past I-don't-know-how-long, I've been seeing a story pop up that takes the form of

Job Losses (Dip/Rise)* Unexpectedly This Week/Month; Employers/Job Seekers (Optimistic/Discouraged)*

* One of these two words will be used. How do you know which one? What month is it? What's the phase of the moon? Flip a coin.

Is shit getting better or not? Who the fuck knows? Not these people, from what it sounds like. Can we relax with this bullshit and get a report on some other metric that's actually fucking useful, from professionals who know what they're talking about? I'd be interested in that. This is just an idea I'm having. Don't give me any bullshit about whether that type of news is actually available in the Wall Street Journal or some other specialty magazine or paper or some crap -- this is news everybody should be getting with their Yahoo mail like me.

Actually, as long as I'm bitching about something vaguely related to Yahoo, what's the deal with their ad campaign about "making the web personal"? Was my web browsing not ... personal before? Was there someone else standing next to my computer this whole time making my decisions for me on what I wanted to see? Who was that asshole?

I HAVE GREAT IDEAS ALL THE TIME

I can see them in my mind's eye and I don't even have to squint: poster ads for the interiors of buses that say things like "You know we can hear you, right?" and "Everybody's listening to your conversation," with photos depicting someone talking on their cellphone while everyone else around them just stares. We need these. Someone get on this.