Facebook and Martial Law

So yesterday, Facebook blew up with thousands of stupid people posting a YouTube video involving a fictional Republican U.S. Representative named John Haller giving a speech at the Capitol regarding the installment of a form of martial law. Here's the video:

Now, as if the huge ONION in the bottom right corner wasn't evidence enough that it may not be from a real news source, the substance within the actor's speech is remarkably hilarious, obviously talking about a zombie apocalypse.

But alas, thousands of people began spamming their friends' feeds with this, stating things like, "SEE ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO VOTED DEMOCRAT, Obama IS the devil and is trying to take away your rights!!! YOUR tax dollars hard at work!!!!"

But see, as anyone who has an IQ over 70 knows, The Onion is a hilariously awesome fake-news company, using satire to really do nothing other than try to make people have a laugh. As their newspaper has evolved into a more web-based medium, it's becoming increasingly apparent that people aren't able to key into their satire very easily.

I would blame this on a simple lack of frame of reference for the most part, seeing as that I doubt that anybody who spread that video on Facebook has ever read the news in the first place. And it wouldn't really be a problem, except for this little old thing we have called democracy.

PLEAAAAAAASE, if you thought for a second that this video was anything other than facetious, take a good look at your education standing and attempt to gather information from sources with journalistic integrity before deciding to vote in [any] election.

This is the type of snowballing ignorance and naiveté that makes me scared for directly democratic policy-making decisions. The best analogy I can use to describe arguing with these types of people is this video of a man arguing with an Ibex:

Titanic Alternate Ending

Yeah, I reacted the same way.

When I found out that Titanic had an alternate ending, and that there was video on YouTube of the filmed version, I thought, "Oh, I bet it's a parody where Jack lives or something this should be greeeeat."

I'm using italics to signify immense sarcasm here, in case you can't tell.

But no, this is the completely real alternate ending that (whoever wrote Titanic) had stationed to end the movie (you might as well skip to the three minute mark):

So apparently Rose got all crazy and so did that searching-for-treasure guy. Whatever. It's probably good that Titanic didn't accidentally turn into a thriller like this after watching several hours worth of people dying in a catastrophic disaster.

3oh3 is SATIRE

Why am I the only one who seems to realize the fact that 3oh3 isn't being serious at all.

Granted, their songs are all across the board in terms of pop-charts and the radio, but please, you can't tell me these guys are serious. I have no doubt in my mind that 3oh3 is nothing more than an obscure, counterculture, satirical ploy that's made its way into the mainstream.

Watch this, and tell me if you still think they're serious business:

There's simply no way that these guys (who are awesome by the way - if you don't agree with me that they're awesome after watching that video then shame on you) are serious. And therefore they're awesome.

They're basically living everyone the dream of progressing a counterculture medium to such an extent that it infiltrates the mainstream and actually lands itself on the airwaves. Marilyn Manson did it, now we have 3oh3. (To be honest, I still think Lady Gaga's doing it too.)

Basically, when you're listening to 3oh3, you have to take into mind the irony of the circumstance, or else you're just another tool.

Lost without Flashbacks

If you're like me, a part of your soul died when you watched the final season of Lost this year.

If you're like me, you invested six years of your life into a crazy, mysterious show about an island where a bunch of people lived and had crazy, mysterious adventures with one another.

Then the final season came and in every episode there was a strange alternate universe (of which my friends and I passionately called the don't-care-niverse), where everything and everyone was different. Why? Because.

Then, [spoilers] we realize that the alternate universe was purgatory. Oh okay. So that makes the island of adventures, some, uh.. pre-purgatory purgatory?

Wait a second, that's kind of dumb. Don't you have a better explanation for that, JJ? What, you were basically just making it up as you went along? Oh, darn.

Well, a lot of fans are saying that they liked it and stuff, because it gave them some sort of happy ending that brought back all the characters together again. Whatever.

I'm in the crowd of people that thinks that the final season of Lost would have been a lot better without the flashbacks/flashforwards/flashsideways to the alternate universe. But, I guess we might as well live it down because it's never going to happen and we have to live with the pointless, flawed gimmick forever.

OR MAYBE WE DON'T. Check it out, this dude is single-handedly going through every episode of the final season to take out all the garbage. Although it pretty much cuts every episode's runtime in half, who cares, because it's all the not-stupid stuff!

In all honesty, there's no way I'm going back to watch any of the last season of Lost (it killed a part of my soul, remember?). I simply thought it was cool that this dude hated the season enough to re-edit hours upon hours of footage to try to find some way to enjoy it.

"Based on a True Story"

Does anybody else ever stop to think about how boring movies would be if they were based more on real life?

Now, I'm not meaning to get into the realm of "cell phones" and other basic means of communication that should make horror films nonexistent. I'm thinking more like, the Internet.

Think about all the movies you've seen lately. How much of the movie consisted of the characters within the film sitting down at a desk and surfing websites like reddit, College Humor, and The Very Unimpressive? Probably zero of the movie.

I'm just saying, if a movie is "based on a true story," there better be a good portion of the film devoted to a dude staring blankly at a computer screen.

What's the Deal with Klingons?

The following is a conversation that my good friend Owen Dennis and I had the other day regarding Klingons. I felt it interesting enough to post here. Can anyone answer any of our questions? Here's the convo:

Owen

Alright this has been bothering me. I've now watched all the Star Trek movies, a number of the original series, and I'm onto season 2 of TNG. Can you explain to me why people like Klingons? People go to conventions and stuff dressed as Klingons, why is this?
Klingons are the most one dimensional species ever:

"I'm an ugly alien that wears ugly cloths and I speak a language that sounds like I'm throwing up. Also I am a warrior race so that's the only thing I care about and everything I ever do is about fighting. The End."

"How are you today?"

"I'm a Klingon so I will fight you now."

"Do you wanna watch soccer with me?"

"I'm a Klingon so I will fight you now."

They have no other desires or motivations, just fighting.
Jawas, a species we see for 10 minutes in one movie in 1977, have more to their personalities than Klingons do. Hell, Gungans have more individual characteristics than Klingons do. Klingons are boring and I groan every time they come on screen.
What is the fascination here? Why do people enjoy this species? Even more, why do people intentionally dress up as such an ugly race? Most people try to dress up to be a little more cool or sexy or something, not to become intentionally more ugly.

Me

I simply don't understand how their culture was able to evolve to the point where they have star ships if all they do is act irrationally angry all the time.

Owen

This is a good point. They get so mad I would assume they would not be able to put up with the scientific process for more than a minute before they destroyed all their experiments in a fit of rage.

Daleks are more than one dimensional purely because they realize they are one dimensional and proud of it whereas Klingons are not self aware at all and in fact are their own parodies.

Me

If, too, their culture is pretty much solely based off of battles, fighting, and general anger issues, then that must mean their society had it instilled early. Meaning, before reaching warp speed (thereby meeting intelligent life outside their own planet).

This would mean that cultures within the race itself had to have been battle-ridden throughout much of history. Are they all at peace with one another now, now that they realize there are other, more different cultures to be angry at? Or are there different subspecies that still hate each other, because obviously Klingons don't get over grudges?

Owen

True. Humans are all like "we've learned not to hate each other and we've eliminated all needs and wants" but klingons are like the opposite of that and they seem to like to be the opposite of that? They must still hate each other seeing as how they hate everything.

Yes, this is the type of stuff that my friends and I sometimes talk about.
What you gonna do about it?

How Do You Win the Lottery Four Times?

How many times do you have to win the lottery before it's pretty much proof that you sold your soul to the devil?

So, most people would assume that if you win the lottery, you're pretty darn lucky. Now, if you win again, that might be proof that you are the luckiest effing person to ever live.

But, what if you won three times? Then things would begin to get scary, right? I know I'd think so. But what if you won the lottery... four times?

Well, then you'd be Las Vegas resident Joan R. Ginther. Yes, that's right. She literally just won the lottery for her FOURTH TIME.

As if winning millions upon millions of dollars in early winnings wasn't enough, for some reason she just kept on buying lottery tickets, because of course, there are more millions to win.

She's currently requesting to have minimal publicity over her most recent winning, because, I assume, she knows she will be asked a wide range of questions regarding whom she sold her soul to.

My New Favorite Commercial 2

Awhile ago, I discovered my new favorite commercial. It was a Dunkin' Donuts ad that included a couple of dudes with an awesome song in the background.

Yeah, I thought that was cool, but this new Old Spice advertising campaign kind of blows it out of the water in terms of awesome:

So, just as before, Old Spice should do several things:

1. Keep making these commercials, because they're amazingly awesome.

2. Make an entire series of this dude for TV, where hopefully the entire series would involve transitioning weird backgrounds and complex activities that all stream together while he goes about his daily business.

3. Give me an unlimited supply of Old Spice products for totally unintentionally advertising for their company.

Stupid viral videos and their easiness of being liked. I feel like such a tool.

M. Night Does it Again!

As I sit here, eating my Honeycomb cereal (the best cereal there is), checking through Rotten Tomatoes, I can't help but notice that M. Night Shyamalan did it again.

At the time of this writing, his latest film, The Last Airbender sits at a staggering 8%. This is literally one of the lowest scores I've ever seen on Rotten Tomatoes, and that's saying something.

Now, I know that I've discussed this matter before, but I really do want to know who in Hollywood keeps thinking that M. Night Shyamalan isn't going to screw a movie up when handed a bunch of money.

In fact, this movie is so bad on so many levels, that Roger Ebert is sort of leading an online campaign against the film, claiming it to be racist, and, "an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented."

That's pretty much the worst thing I've ever heard said about a movie.

This summer, Avatar: The Last Airbender (the Nickelodeon cartoon show) came on Netflix, and I've been trying to furiously get through season one so that I could enjoy it in full before seeing the movie. Now that the film has been released, my main motivation to see it isn't so much that I liked the show and would like to see a live action form of it, but because I want to see how bad it really is.

M. Night, I think it's time to switch up your roles if the main motivation of people to want to see your film is to laugh at it.

What is the motivation of horseflies?

I was outside mowing the lawn the other day, and I couldn't help but notice that I was getting absolute dive-bombed by a swarm of horseflies.

The horseflies that we have in our yard bit me once last year on my back, and I seriously had a noticeable huge one-inch diameter bite for about a month.

Now, whatever. I get the motivation for most insects.

Ants wanna build huge mountains and collect stuff, cool. Bumblebees want to collect pollen and suicide kill you if you get anywhere near them, I get it.

But what I don't understand is how I can be minding my own business, literally no where near anything but grass in a 30 yards in any direction, and all of a sudden finding myself to be in a complete war zone.

To me, there are few things more frightening than knowing there's a horsefly hovering around my head. Wasps and bees might sting you, but usually afterward they give you a "TAKE THAT" and fly away.

Not horseflies, they bite you and bite you. And then, just when you think you killed the horsefly that's been biting you, one of his stupid friends comes and starts dive-bombing you.

Horseflies are nature's terrorists.

Elect Jon Stewart!

What would it be like if Jon Stewart was elected to office? Well, the world has finally given us an example of a satirical comedian being elected to an executive office... and keeping the satirical comedy coming.

Yes, Minnesota might have elected Al Franken to become their latest United States Senator, but once elected, he actually got all serious and stuff.

Iceland, on the other hand, has elected this gentleman named Jon Gnarr, who has decided to not drop his satirical approach to politics. In his acceptance speech, he realized he had to calm the majority of people who did not vote for him in his pluralistic win. What did he say?

No one has to be afraid of the Best Party,” he said, “because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.

Well, of course, it all makes sense now. But, did he claim to make any absurd promises to grab the attention of the populace? He did? What did he promise?

• A polar bear display for the zoo
• Free towels at public swimming pools
• A Disneyland at the airport
• A drug-free Parliament by 2020

So, due to global warming, a bunch of polar bears have been swimming to Iceland to try to live and stuff, only to be shot on site. This law now puts them in zoos. And apparently the towel law was meant as a push to begin following European Union laws more closely, along with the fact that the country has a bunch of nice sulfur baths to relax in.

Either way, this is completely awesome. If they can do this, we can. I know I would vote for Jon Stewart.

I don't hate Justin Bieber

Okay, this might allot to me getting some flack, but I've decided that (so far), I don't hate Justin Bieber.

I understand that it's the "cool thing" right now, especially on the Internet, to hate him, but I've decided to not conform to that crowd.

Outside of the fact that he's like 12 and already hanging out with girls that everyone else in the world wants to get with, he's actually got some mad music talent. Besides singing, he's way better than me at drums, actually plays the guitar on his own acoustic versions (it's only like one or two chords, but whatever) he can do this too and I can't, and is pretty cool to little three year old fans.

Now, granted, he doesn't know what "German" means, but this video alone should prove that he's minimally, pretty funny:

I guess at least what I'm saying is that there are celebrities out there who deserve our hate way much more than Justin Bieber.

Brontosaurus: The Fake Dinosaur

Usually I'm pretty up to date with useless, mundane information, but for some reason, I learned something astonishing that I never knew today: this thing never existed:

That's right, we've been living a lie our entire lives. I remember even being taught in school that this thing existed and reading picture books of lies and fallacies in first grade. Even Jurassic Park fed us this falsehood, and it tears me apart (not really) to know that that opening scene from that movie can never happen no matter how much ancient fly blood we drill.

Unbeknown to me, nor anyone who could have notified me earlier, the Brontosaurus was actually a bunch of bones that were put together from more than one Dinosaur.

The curious thing is that they kept going with the notion of this dinosaur even though the final construct didn't actually have a head. I mean, that seems like a pretty important part, right?

What's that, you don't have a head? Well, the most logical thing to do is to obviously just take some other dinosaur head and claim it to be the right one.

That'll solve everything, right? Oh wait, no, you forgot you're dealing with scientists.

Good luck!

Zach Anner and Oprah's Voting Fraud

Okay, so I hadn't gotten around to making a blog post yet, because I didn't figure there would be so much startling news coming out surrounding it.

First off, there is this dude who just happens to be awesome. His name is Zach Anner:

That was the video he posted for Oprah's current contest for her reality television show contest (vote at that link), and he flew to the top very quickly. Now, a lot of people might be thinking of this as a case of hundreds of thousands of people from the Internet feeling sympathy for a man due to his physical condition (cerebral palsy). But this simply is not the case.

The case, is that he's absolutely hysterical and everybody needs to watch his videos:

Great poise and timing, and he's actually gone out of his way to help nay-sayers realize that his idea for a show can be done. His idea for a show in which he travels around in a wheelchair to show that everyone can travel has the potential to be adventurous and inspiring. The Internet isn't coming out in droves to vote for Zach Anner because he's got cerebral palsy, "the sexiest of the palsies," but because they (and I) really do want to see this show come to life.

As I said before, Zach Anner cruised to the top of the list extremely fast, and was leaving everyone else pretty much in the dust (by millions of votes). But, out of no where, this nobody named Dr. Phyllis skyrocketed ahead of Zach by hundreds of thousands of votes.

With the amount of online support that Zach Anner has, there literally is no way that somebody else can possibly beat him. He simply has too much of a force behind him, what with reddit and other, even more powerful forums so strongly on his side.

The skyrocketing of posts (about 300,000 in a matter of TWENTY MINUTES) has been shown in graph form by a member of the reddit community here. This invariably means that Oprah (or more likely, her producers) are selfishly taking control of the contest and rigging it to ensure that the person they want wins. This is disgusting to me, primarily because Zach Anner is awesome, but because the person who's (at the time of this writing) beating him is boring as all hell.

Now, go out there and vote for Zach!

Philadelphia Phillies' Mascot

Seriously, wtf is this:

Does that really count as a mascot? I think that if your mascot is simply an assortment of shapes and colors, it shouldn't really count. I understand that you Philadelphians might think that as long as you throw a uniform on something and cleverly use alliteration to name it (Phillie Phanatic), it can count as a mascot. But that's not how the world works.

In order for a mascot to be motivational and intimidating to any extent, it shouldn't be a nightmare Muppet from Hell with somewhat anthropomorphic characteristics.

I literally laughed aloud when I read the Wikipedia's description of the monster:

"He is a fat, furry, green creature that somewhat resembles a bird from the rear view with a cylindrical beak containing a tongue that sticks out and is one of the most popular and most easily recognized mascots in all of sports."

So.. in the dire late innings of baseball games in Philadelphia, when almost all hope is lost and the fans have all but given up, who do they turn to? A fat green creature that somewhat resembles a bird. Go team!

You know, the more I think of it, the more ingenious having a nightmarish character as your mascot seems to be. I mean, what better way to distract your opponent than by having them see this before going to bat:

Absolutely. Horrifying.

The Most Important Site on the Internet?

Well, I think it might have happened. I think I might have finally found the most important site on the Internet. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that my website is the best site on the Internet, but it may not be the most important.

Now, what might be the specifications and attributes of the most important website on the Internet? Well, I would expect it to diligently follow a few criteria:

1. It should have something to do with movies.

2. It should have something to do with counting something mundane within those movies.

3. It should be run by people whose greatest motivation is boredom.

4. It should make me laugh.

5. Wikipedia doesn't count.

I have only found one website in my life that has completely satisfied all the above criteria, and that is a glorious website called BodyCounters.com.

Yes, that's right. These dudes are actually cool enough to, presumably, carry around a notebook to every movie, marking down a check at the site of someone dying.

What's hilarious to me, is that they actually have a distinguished criteria all on their own on what actually classifies as a death. What's that? someone died in a dream? Doesn't count. These guys are ruthless.

So, what movie has the highest death count? You'll never guess...


Yeah, that's right. The most violent, murderous (whoa, murderous is a word?) film in the history of cinema involves a guy named Arthur and his small robot friend Marvin.

Toy Story 3 Sucks

Just kidding. It's amazing.

If you think Toy Story 3 is bad, or simply have avoided seeing it because you think Pixar is trying to make some easy money off making another sequel to one of their masterpieces, you are wrong. It is phenomenal.

I went to see Toy Story in the theaters when I was a young child three times. I remember that my favorite toy throughout my childhood was a Buzz Lightyear action figure that I got in a Happy Meal from McDonald's. Toy Story was an epic achievement of great proportions, and this movie is a continuation on that story.

Without giving too much of the movie away, it seems to really bring the story to a close, and I'm not ashamed to say I teared up a little at the ending. I kind of feel like it wrapped up my childhood in a way, but maybe I'm just really sentimental about it.

Regardless, there are some people out there who are giving this film bad reviews solely for the shock value. At the time of this writing, there are three bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, bringing what should be 100% down to 98%. All three of those douches are probably reaping the benefits of huge increases in unique visitors to their websites, simply for being ardently disagreeable.

These are bad people. Go see the film!

World Cup

So, it has become increasingly obvious that, although the United States doesn't really care about soccer or the World Cup, we do care about drama in sports. The latest and biggest drama going on in the World Cup has to do with this referee named Koman Coulibaly.

See, the U.S. scored a completely legitimate goal against the Slovenia, but this dude decided to disallow it, for apparently no reason at all. See the video of it happening here:

Now, I don't claim to be a soccer/football/futbol/whatever fan whatsoever, but it's amazing to me to see the whirlwind of controversy this has caused, and the reaction of the American people.

Even though the U.S.'s second draw will likely not stop them from proceeding to the second round of the tournament, it's so funny to me that the entire country can come to a standstill because of a single guy:


Yeah, we're all thinking the same thing.

You're Old

Just a couple reminders to help you remember you're getting really old.

First off, remember when we all went to see Independence Day back in the 90's? Yeah, those were the days before CGI (and for some reason, the special effects were way more realistic with the miniature action) and Will Smith was just becoming huge.

Well, Will Smith has had a child or two since then, and one of them, whom during the release of the movie hadn't been born yet just released a music video with that Beibbebebber kid. He was almost born in the year 2000.



Side note - what's going to happen once Beiber goes through puberty? I'm excited to see!

But, as if that wasn't enough, check out this picture of someone you know:


Yup, that's "Dewey," the youngest kid from the Fox show, Malcolm in the Middle.

You're old.

Vuvuzelas!

With all this talk about the nonsensical noise pollution that's been taking place inside the stadiums at the 2010 World Cup, I find it astonishing and amusing that people are ignoring the one true inarguable fact regarding the culprit noise-maker:

The word "vuvuzela" is awesome!

Seriously, how many times have you been able to pronounce the word "vu" in without saying it with "deja vu?" Never, I bet. And here you get to say it twice.

Yeah, this is pretty stupid humor, but what are you expecting when the major news stories right now are the World Cup and a big oil spill?

What's funny to me is that the only major news regarding the oil spill that seems to come to the surface lately is the fact that BP is blatantly attempting to not allow photos to get out in a massive (and hilarious?) coverup.

So instead, let's just take a glance what the BP oil spill would look like if it was in the the Super Mario Mushroom Kingdom:



Game Over.