Another Social Media Update

So I’m still using the recommended feeds on both Threads and Bluesky, because the following content on both is more of a trickle and the algorithmic feeds aren’t a firehose yet.

The main difference between the two is that when Threads shows me something I do not give a shit about, it’s almost always some banal attempt at manufactured engagement, or, occasionally, sports news.

When Bluesky shows me something I don’t give two shits about it’s INVARIABLY some kind of nerdy sex thing like a cartoon wolf in tight briefs with a bulging crotch. But it is at least presented genuinely as “this is a thing I made I hope you like it and/or masturbate to it”, even if I can’t seem to train its algorithm to understand “no, thank you” yet.

It's been a while since I've mentioned Lisa Wright, hasn't it? But she's STILL DUMB.

Precis for new readers - Lisa Wright is a morning DJ on a Minneapolis 80's radio station. The one I wake up to in the morning. Because Minneapolis Radio sucks, because news and classical don't wake me up, and because hideous beeping noises wake me up with so much excess hate and rage that I'd have to start a second website. LIsa Wright is also an idiot.

This morning, Lisa Wright was discussing Barbara Walters' most fascinating people of 2004. Of which there were ten, but only four were discussed on the radio - Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and the super-secret #1 pick. Wright then proceeded to embarass herself more than usual. First, by making fun of Barbara Walters accent slash speech impediment, calling her "Baba Wawa". Which, as a comedy touchstone, is five years too old for an 80's RETRO STATION. Whatever hole she pulled that out of was covered with a thick stone block with warnings of a curse carved into it. I know you can't qualify as a morning DJ without the uncanny ability to fail at every single joke they attempt, but, BABA FUCKING WAWA?

Then she proceeded to make fun of Trump's new fiancee as a golddigger while simultaneously saying she'd do the same thing, proving once again that Lisa Wright is to feminism what strychnine is to cuisine. But then it was time to "reveal" Walters' already-revealed #1 pick, Karl Rove, and Wright was SHOCKED.

"I thought it would be Britney Spears, or Barry Bonds."* Yes, Lisa. How could the guy who masterminded the last two presidential elections be more fascinating than the woman who had "Toxic" written for her? Britney and Barry are both famous this year for one reason - sticking things in 'em that they shouldn't have. And despite Paris Hilton's inclusion on Walters' list, that does NOT in fact make someone "fascinating".

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It's gotta suck to be Donald Rumsfeld right now. Publicly shamed and embarassed by a grunt at a photo op, and having to put a brave face on it for at least four days until everyone, including the media, forgets who Sgt. Thomas Wilson Is and the government can safely toss him into Gitmo and stick electrodes to his scrotum.

But until that sweet, sweet day comes, again, next Tuesday or Wednesday, Rumsfeld's gotta suck it up and say nice things about how "healthy" it is for the troops to question him about why they're digging through junkyards for scrap-metal armor. He's gotta smile and be nice and talk about improving the problems. He's gotta live with his weak-ass answer about "the Army we have" being replayed ad infinitum, and hope that a whole bunch of people don't make the connection that he's the one responsible for the condition of the Army we have. And whatever he does, he has to make sure he doesn't say anything that sounds like a vaguely ominous threat of reprisals. It's ALPHA QUEBEC TANGO!

"I don't know what the facts are, but somebody is certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know." - Donald Rumsfeld, today. Oops. Reports that Rumsfeld found Wilson's lack of faith... disturbing were unconfirmed as of press time.

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At the risk of sounding very 1998, America Online can continue to go fuck itself. Admittedly, they're not the blight on the Internet they were six, seven years ago, back when AOL was the major conduit for stupid fucks making it on to the Internet. Now you can barely exchange a packet over a network without it brushing up against some idiot's e-mailed Flash cartoon about a transvestite Republican penguin.

But running ads claiming to "make the Internet better"? Please. Animated emoticons do not make the Internet better. Taking all the porn out of it does not make the Internet better. Giving people anti-virus software doesn't make the Internet better. You'd think it might, but if it weren't for rampant viruses culling the herd by making their computers spontaneously combust, the net would have 30% more dipshits by weight than we do already. You don't take away a species' only natural predator without horrible environmental results.

On its home page, AOL has a link that people can click on. Clicking on this link runs software that checks the clicker's PC to tell this person if they have AOL installed ON THEIR OWN PC. Anyone who needs to be told this is not going to make the Internet better, no matter how many housewives stand on boardroom tables.

* All Lisa Wright quotes in You Are Dumb are, by necessity, rough approximations, as they are heard in the blurry, pre-morning haze and then written down 60-90 minutes later. The essential spirit is there, though. Those were the names.

A Whole New Word

Memo to Tony Perkins: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's Monday, and you all know what that means! It's time for a NEW WORD TO HATE! Like we've done so many* Mondays before, we take a look at a new word coined to represent a new idea - a new idea that is stupid and wrong and nobody needs and should crawl back into the hole from whence it came.

So this Monday's New Word To Hate is.... drum roll...BLOGOZINE. A "blogozine" merges the best of two worlds - the timeliness of a magazine, and the writing quality of the blog!

The specific originator of the "blogozine" concept is AlwaysOn - a new quarterly magazine from web entrepreneur Tony Perkins based on his blog, AlwaysOn. Yes, every three months, you can pay good money for a dead-tree version of old blogs and ads. IT CAN'T POSSIBLY FAIL.

The "blogosphere" has already crawled so far up it's own ass that telling it to go fuck itself is pointless and redundant. But then, we're a nation that tends to fall in love with the tool rather than the content, the medium instead of the message. I mean, sure, there are a couple of people out there using web log tools to disseminate useful and interesting information, but if you use those same tools to whine about your weekend, show pictures of your cat, or tell us incessently what your mood is and what you're listening to, that does not put you on the same plane as the Daily Kos.

And that goes triple for people that think the shit they say on the Internet might be interesting when it's not on the Internet. According to the AP, "About half the so-called 'blogozine' will be devoted to the most provocative posts on his Web site, like a recent debate about whether a new computer video game re-creating the assassination of John Kennedy should be rated more obscene than online pornography."

Move over Dante, because Tony Perkins has created a modern vision of Hell that makes brimstone taste like sweet, sweet candy. I can think of no greater torment than to open up a magazine and find it full of PEOPLE ARGUING ON THE INTERNET.

Trust me, folks. I've been arguing with people online for two frickin' decades, back when "blogs" were called "bulletin boards" and the text appeared on the screen slower than you could read it. The only thing appealing about arguing on the Internet is that it's fast, it's easy, it's free, and you can say brazenly opinionated shit without getting a broken beer bottle shoved in your face. None of which is remotely applicable to a "blogozine".

I don't want to read arguments about the stupid "JFK videogame" NOW, much less three months from now, in the airport, when people will have taken their insipid, pointless, misdirected outrage at the JFK game and remisdirected it towards something else I'll probably be yelling about here. But Perkins thinks different. It's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"It makes my heart go pitter patter when I think about it. I really think this is where the media is going to go in the future." - At which point, we'll all be BEGGING for reruns of "The Real Gilligan's Island". Or we'll be hoping they accept our application to be on The Running Man. Anything to escape from the bleak future media of nerds arguing with each other online.

The "blogozine" idea is so dumb that its innate stupidity has actually LEAKED and infected some of its critics. OK, just this one guy the AP reporter bothered to talk to. Jason Pontin, who worked for Perkins at the dot-com-boom magazine Red Herring, is next up in the grand tradition that is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The blogosphere doesn't have the capacity to produce analytical, well-researched journalism." - Neither does Maxim, and it seems to be doing just fine. A blog is just a publishing format, like a newspaper, a magazine, or a daily web-based column maligning idiots. Blogging attracts self-centered idiocy, but it doesn't REQUIRE it. But even the best blog content is going to be old and stale by the time it sees print.

And AlwaysOn is not the best blog content. A website full of middle-aged white IT guys should not have a section entitled "Weekly Rap", and if the kind of "provocative posts" that will see print include examples like the currently highlighted "What Does God Say", "Root of 'Male Enhanement [sic] Movement ID", and the unintentional meta-commentary of "The End Of Originality?", then maybe they should rethink their business plan. Perkins heart may be pitter-patter, but his brain is purest flatline.

* For values of "so many" equal to zero.

Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week (Day Five)

Memo to Creationists: JUST 'CAUSE THE WEEK'S OVER, YOU DON'T STOP BEING DUMB.

Welcome to the final day of Creationists: The Stupidest People On Earth Week here at You Are Dumb. We've covered a lot of ground this week, ranging from stupid creationists to idiot creationists to moron creationists to racist innumerate fucktard creationists to a president who has no problem supporting creationists.

Let's take one last peek into the fucked up minds of the Six Thousand Year Universe people, shall we? Or even, in the case of "Molatar Seth Pyrargent", the ten thousand year old universe people.

You may have seen references to "MSP" on the Internet this week - his site appears to have been discovered and passed around to the point of server-crashing. MSP is a self-proclaimed transspecies dragon shapeshifting evangelist who feels it is his job to bring the Gospel to the furry and werewolf communities.

Molatar is one of the Broken People. People who, for whatever reason, cannot cope with the world at all, and retreat into fantasy worlds and subcultures in an attempt to find a purpose, a place for themselves. Molatar is fairly unique in this regard in that usually people EITHER hook up with the Sonic-Fuckers OR the Psycho Jesus-Freaks, but Molatar has dedicated himself to uniting the worlds of people who like drawings of centaur dicks and people who like big-eyed porcelain angels.

I'm not going to make too much fun of Molatar - there's no sport in the powerless, terminally fucked-up. Plus, if he does succeed in turning the furries into rabid (so to speak) Christians, I might have to start showing up at Sunday services just to watch the resulting culture-clash implosion. But what's interesting about Molatar is that, even in the grips of MULTIPLE psychotic delusions, he's able to say that "I don't believe the Earth is as young as 6000 years." Admittedly, he then goes on to add only 4,000 years to the total, and spout some completely insane bullshit about God making the Earth's magnetic field super-strong, but he's still, technically, 67% more sane than the people petitioning your school board these days. And he thinks he can turn into a dragon if he concentrates hard enough.

Molatar is not the problem. You are. Or, rather, the person next to you is.

Just this week, a CBS News poll shows that 55% of the people they surveyed (885 adults, margin of error +/- three percent) believe that humans were placed on Earth in their current form by God. That humans didn't, and don't, evolve. About half that number, 27%, take the more reasonable view that humans did evolve, but that God created the process of evolution. And about half of THAT number, 13%, believe that whatever god or gods exist or don't stayed the fuck out of the whole species thing.

If the poll is correct, some form of creationism ends up with a higher margin of victory than BUSH. An even higher margin, 65%, felt that creationism should be taught side-by-side with evolution in public schools, and a whopping 37% thougth that creationism should REPLACE evolution in schools.

Lest you think, by the way, that this is ENTIRELY a red/blue state thing. out of those 885 people, some unspecified number (around 40%) voted for Kerry. And of those who voted for Kerry, nearly a quarter also felt that evolution should be scrapped in schools in favor of the Judeo-Christian creation myth. And the Democrats wants to move farther to the right to appeal to 2008 voters? I think they've locked up all the drooling morons they can manage at this point.

And this, by the way, is after 17 years of creationism being booted out of the public schools. So what can we do about it? We have to grow a pair. We have to stop respecting the opinions of people who say the sky is plaid. We have to realize that "Intelligent Design" theory boils down to "we don't know and we can never know", and thus, even if it weren't complete bullshit, is not a topic that belongs in BIOLOGY textbooks. Save it for philosophy class. We have to reject, outright, the efforts of people to demean and devalue the work of thousands of dedicated scientists just because it doesn't mesh with what they larnt in Sunday scherl.

If these people want to rot their own children's brains, that's fine. That's what their home life is for, after all. Believe what you want to believe. Spend 28 grand on a Virgin Mary cheese sandwich. But that's not what they want. They want the rest of us to follow their rules, too. Eat what their book says we should eat. Fuck who and when their book says it's OK for us to fuck. And learn only what their book tells us we need to know, plus maybe a class on Microsoft Word so we can print angel borders for our fucking scrapbooking projects.

Fuck them and the dinosaurs they rode in on.

My Guardian Angel Will Kick You In The Nuts

Memo to positive thinkers: YOU ARE DUMB.

Allow me to clarify. I don't have anything against positive thoughts as such, even if they really aren't my stock in trade. But people can't have ordinary positive thoughts anymore. The middle ground between enlightened, bitter cynicism and that which would make a My Little Pony vomit pink, chunky foam has been obliterated, demolished by a flood of guardian angels, sparkles, and general ugliness.

Case in point and primary example, www.positivethoughts.com, a website I stumbled across in my travels. It carries within its virtual walls a degree of horrifying kitsch that would make a Cracker Barrel decorator go goth. It takes taste, subtlety, and design, cuts their throats, mutilates their corpses, and has sex with their pets, before filling the air with rainbows and sparkles made from the bones of its victims.

It's pretty fuckin' awful. Take my word for it. Don't go see for yourselves. You don't want to know. Allow me to explain, instead.

The site allows you to download a free "Angel Bar", an IE toolbar that lets you send sites to your friends! And I'm sure, like all free toolbars available on the Internet, it's attractive, functional, easily uninstalled if you don't like it, and contains no malicious code of any kind. Plus, you know. Angels.

Angels are big in the modern, fluffy, Positive Thoughts crowd. Angels are always saving children from horrible car crashies that leave them orphans, or helping people find their keys, or other acts of dubious theological provenance. On the website in question, they also animate and play little violins and waggle their little wings. If I were an angel, which I know is a huge fucking stretch, but bear with me. If I were an angel, and had, over the course of two centuries, gone from being portrayed in great works of sculpture and paint by the world's artistic masters all the way down to showing up super-deformed in animated GIF files, I would check the stockroom to see just how lax the security on the flaming swords was. Some fuckers would need to burn, is all I'm saying.

The site features cards, stories, and something called "FunPages", around the themes of friendship, Christianity, and Inspirational. We will not, in deference to our religious brethren, openly mock the dogmatically iffy "Christian" section today, except to mention that the item marked "Repetition of Sin" is CLEARLY mislabeled, as it involves neither repetition, nor sin. It should more accurately be titled "Iterations of Crappy Metaphor", but that would require a level of honest evaluation that is completely at odds with THINKING POSITIVELY.

In the other sections, we have such poorly-formatted gems as "Recipe from Heaven", which allows you to call your friend a joy-glazed hug-cookie that's received generous loving. On a background composed of thousands of red, purple, and pink hearts. You may think I am joking or exaggerating, but I implore you to take these words at their face value.

Then there's the disappointingly-titled "Know Yourself" Flash animation, in which a picture of a river moves up the screen, leaving faded afterimages of itself in the background. Overlaid on these faded afterimages are two Lao Tzu quotes in white text that vanishes on the background. I don't know why it's a Flash animation at all, because all that moves is the picture, and all it does is move up a bit, but there you go. Know yourself.

If you truly hate yourself, and have done something heartless and cruel, and wish to atone, you may visit the site yourself and select the "Tater People" page. It's too long to sum up effectively here, but be warned. I'm not talking about atoning for forgetting to take out the trash here. I'm talking "If you feel bad about annexing Poland that one time" kind of guilt. Tater People will flagellate you appropriately.

And then there's "Guardian Angels", which, like many items, appears to violate the strict separation between the "Christian", "Friendship", and "Inspirational" sections. On this page, we are informed that the guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high* as to be beyond our sight**, but they are always looking down upon us. What do they mean, "sometimes"? "Sometimes" implies occasionally. Less than half the time. Semantically, it's the opposite of "most of the time". Are most of the guardian angels flying around at street level in plain view? Am I the guy that's always looking the wrong way when one swoops past to save a fundie from dropping her ice cream on the sidewalk? And will my guardian angel really help me win a PS2 as indicated by the flashing box below the aphorism?

It's obvious that when they say "Positive Thoughts", there's a distinct emphasis on the positive at the expense of the thought.

* At which point we are interrupted with a picture of either a floating halo or a cock ring. I'm not sure which would be worse. I mean, a cock ring is just a cock ring, but a disembodied halo implies that your guardian angel got sucked through the engine of a 747.

** At which point we are interrupted with a horrific, 3D-shaded picture of what I assume is an angel bobbing up and down, but it's difficult to tell. It could also be a man in a bowler hat and a dress giving a blowjob to a swan. I cannot stress strongly enough to the purveyors of religious clip art the importance of clarity in your design.

Does Whatever A Loser Can

Memo to fanfilm nerds: YOU ARE DUMB.

Especially the fanfilm nerds at www.secretspidermanmovie.com. I mean, the Batman one, the Robin one, the for fucksake World's Finest one... at least these got made, as deluded and misguided as they were. The Secret Spider-Man Movie nerdthings are just -talking- about making a movie.

Across the board, the motives are... suspect at best. The World's Finest one, if you haven't seen it, has a huge "please don't sue us" notice at the end full of fanspeak like "homage" and "honor" and "icon" and "legend" which no judge in the world actually cares about. But these people have a lot of time on their hands, digital video is cheaper than monkey shit these days, and all they're really wasting is their lives in a new way.

Being fan films, of course, there's not the tiniest bit of originality in any of it. "Fan Creations" borders on oxymoron. Fandom is about slavish devotion to something someone ELSE created. So when a fan "creates" something based on what he's slavishly devoted to, all he can pour into it is every bit of low-budget production values you can manage. They can't create or add something, because if they could, they wouldn't want to dress up in Jedi robes and wave a stick around in the first place. Fucksake, the Robin and World's Finest ones are just trailers for a fake/unmade "movie", and these TRAILERS are just like every summer movie trailer ever.

But the pinnacle of unkempt, vaguely soiled, zombie nerddom has to be the Secret Spider-Man Movie. They're out to save the entire fucking universe from crappy superhero movies like Daredevil, Catwoman, X-Men, X-Men 2, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and oh, by the way, every single superhero movie ever made. These movies failed because they diverged (even the tiniest bit) from their original source material, you see. And since that crime against humanity cannot be allowed to stand, a few brave souls will, and this is their actual plan, I swear to Vishnu... they're going to make their own version of Spider-Man 3 that's 100% faithful to the comic, bring it to Marvel, and once Marvel sees it can be done, Marvel will pressure Sony and Columbia to take the exact same approach with the REAL Spidey 3.

To say this goal is unrealistic would be a smidge understatementesque. Every single person involved in this project has a greater probability of having a night of wild, passionate abandon with Kirsten Dunst AND Jessica Alba than they have of even getting someone at Marvel to take their call to tell them they can't bring their movie over, much less influence the creative direction of Spidey 3. In case you think I'm being hyperbolic, allow me to remind you of Amazing Fantasy #20, page 4, panel 2, where Peter Parker CLEARLY informs Aunt May that he cannot take out the garbage because it is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"They underestimated the audience, they made changes that didn't need to be made just to simplify the story. They altered the history Spider-Man the comic, and in doing so they have created an entirely new and misinformed legion of comic fans who now believe Spidey shoots webs organically. This might not seem like a big deal in the scheme of things, but we look at it as just the beginning. It's only going to get worse. With 20 new comic films in development as we speak, other studios will see that box office doesn't depend on authenticity, but rather on celebrities, special effects, and glitz. The history of all comics are at great risk!"

Look, you psychos, I'm going to tell you something every single one of your girlfriends has told you at one time or another. Maybe it'll sink in this time, because it's ON THE INTERNET. Just because you like something... hell, just because you love something more than life itself, that DOES NOT MAKE IT YOURS. I don't care how much you love Buffy, the bank will still not let you cash checks made out to Joss Whedon. I don't care how much you've spent, in time, energy, and money, on merchandise and cosplay and letter writing campaigns and websites and LiveJournals and message boards. At the end of the day, for all your effort, you're just a consumer. Your job is to consume. You have, and you can count this on your dick if you want, ONE piece of input into the creative process, and that is to GO or NOT GO; BUY or NOT BUY. If you had something to say, or something to contribute, you'd be behind the table and not in the audience.

And that, frankly, is how it should be. Even the astonishingly incompetent people who made Catwoman did not do it because they have been waiting all their lives to accurately translate Catwoman to the screen.* They did it because they (somehow) make movies for a living and someone scraped up 100 million dollars and flung it around VERY cavalierly. And as awful as they are, they are about 22% less DUMB than you lot.

* Obviously.

Port Whine Cheese Blog

Memo to Whiny Bloggers: YOU ARE DUMB.

So I flip past Wired, and see this big story about Blog Burnout. What's happening is that bloggers are starting blogs, the blogger's blogs are getting popular, the bloggers feel compelled to constantly blog because they're popular, and the blogging bloggers get blogged out and stop blogging.

BOO. FUCKING. HOO.

Some people continue to wonder why I insist that You Are Dumb is NOT A BLOG. Well, here's one reason why. I don't need to be lumped in with a bunch of whiny-pants wusses who fold like a Holiday Inn towel during an origami convention under the crushing weight of audience expectations, real or imagined. Nobody goes around calling Sluggy Freelance a blog even though it's updated every day and automatically archived, you know.

So what causes the dreaded Blog Burnout? In some cases, it's the fact that the Internet is full of assholes who will constantly and repeatedly give you their unwanted opinion if you give them half a chance. That's what took down the Whisky Bar, home of blogger "Billmon."

"In the end, monitoring comments on my blog was becoming a progressively larger part of my blogging time, and I just got to the point where I wasn't able to keep up with it." Billmon did the sensible thing, and shut off the comments, but since he set the whole site up as a "bar" metaphor, he's now left with metaphorically shouting through his metaphorical window at all the actual assholes metaphorically sitting on his metaphorical stoop.

Billmon still proclaims that "That's one of the most exciting things about blogging, that ability to have dialogue with your readers." I don't understand that kind of blind optimism. I mean, here is a man who was just forced to stop having dialogue with his readers because he had to spend way too much of his time herding the little 'tards and keeping them from pissing on the furniture, and yet he still talks about "dialogue with the readers" as if it's something that should not only be permitted, but encouraged.*

Still, I have to give "Billmon" a bit more begrudging respect than, say, a Jason Kottke, a Glenn Reynolds, or the Daily Kos guy, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who seem to have lost sight of the whole point of Saying Stuff On The Internet Because You Can. So I'll offer my unsolicited advice, based on their whining to Wired.

Jason Kottke: You start to feel like the readers are depending on you, and ... like you have to post something whether you feel like it or not, and that can be depressing.". The solution to this dilemma is simple. All people "depend" on free Net content for is to make it through another dull day in their cubicle. If people do not get their Free Internet Content, they will continue to breathe, eat, shit, and fuck as normal, and at worst, may be forced to buy a newspaper to read in the can. This is, as a blogger, NOT YOUR PROBLEM. You don't HAVE to do anything unless you've explicitly stated you would and you can't bear the consequences if you don't. This is why YAD, despite having been daily for months now, doesn't promise anywhere on the site that it's daily. SORTED. NEXT.

Glenn Reynolds: "I know that if I go more than about five or six hours without posting, or telling people that I'm not going to be blogging for the rest of the day, [I get e-mails like] 'You haven't posted anything in five or six hours. Are you OK?'"These people are idiots. Even assuming that something has gone Horribly Wrong, that you've had a stroke or your brother spontaneously combusted or your cat killed your ferret, what makes them think you'll be able to answer your e-mail? And what makes them think there's anything they can do to help you from their boring cubicle? Fuck them. Delete their messages and add their names to your e-mail filter so that you never hear from them again. Then mock them openly in your blog. SORTED. NEXT.

Kos Guy: "There's always pressure to have new content up on the site. And it's not like my readers are calling me up and saying, 'What the hell?' But you can sense it. You can sense it when you post something new and 10 minutes later there's 50 comments. You can almost feel they were sitting there waiting. I'm always feeling like I'm letting people down if I don't have any new stuff up on the site." This is not only the readers' problem, but it's a problem you are PROJECTING onto your readership. If they are not giving you money, and odds are they ain't, then they can suck it up or go hang. SORTED. NEXT.

Kottke again!: Sometimes it gets harder to find interesting stuff to talk about. There are 3 million blogs, and everyone is talking about everything. It's tough to deal with that sometimes, and you don't want to just be another person talking about the same stuff that everybody else is talking about." Tough shit. You ARE just another person talking about the same stuff. So am I. Accept that. If the stuff you say is interesting enough to catch the eyes of bored cubiicle drones, then it's good enough for them. Get over it. SORTED. NEXT.

Reynolds, again!: "There are times that people want me to have an opinion on stuff that I just don't have an opinion on,"Then either shut up, or lie your ass off. SORTED.

Leave it to the Internet to create the blog, a system that allows people to say whatever they want whenever they want, on no particular schedule, whenever the whim strikes them, and then turn it into some hideous online codependent neurosis-fest. Get over yourselves.

*I realize this statement is, in many ways, fundamentally at odds with the very existence of the YAD Forum, but at least, like Super Chicken, I have the common sense to have known the job was dangerous when I took it.

Rated "D" For Really, Really Stupid

Memo to Jack Valenti and the MPAA: YOU ARE DUMB.

I hate to do this to a man who made fun of his own cheeks on Freakazoid!, but Valenti and the MPAA have their cheeks so far up their own cheeks on the piracy thing it's insane. They are in the midst of a golden moment, a perfect opportunity to discourage 99.8% of all illegal movie downloading. It'll only take a week, tops, but they won't do it.

Here's what they're doing instead. First, they ran a series of ads in which average, blue collar stuntmen, lighting guys, and fluffers talked about how every time you download a movie off the Internet, one of their many children goes to bed hungry. And they ran these ads in movie theaters. Right before movies. Showing them to a bunch of people who had ALREADY decided to go to a theater and watch a movie instead of pirating it. Brilliant maneuver there. Valenti. Odds are, most of the people who saw those ads learned, for the first time, from those ads, that it was even POSSIBLE to download movies from the Internet.

It's a good thing Valenti wasn't the president of Redi-Whip. He'd put big signs up in supermarkets that say "If you hold the can like THIS..." (and there'd be a helpful picture of a puppy or something holding the can up to its snout) "... and sniff, you'll get really high for a little while. That wastes the dehydrated milk protein and carageenan loaded into these cans by hard-working members of the whip industry. So don't do it, OK? Even if you will get REALLY HIGH."

And now, this weekend, Valenti is rolling out a multimillion dollar ad campaign in newspapers and magazines. Valenti, who is four thousand years old, thinks that "...it's a pretty damn good ad. We're optimistic." * The ads say: "Parental Guidance Suggested: Illegal downloading inappropriate for all ages.".

Some optimism. That's the kind of ad campaign that makes me want to go and download a movie this weekend just to spite him. Maybe "Garfield". Not like I'm gonna watch it or anything.

You want to know what ad campaign would stop illegal movie downloading in its tracks? It's simple. It would have worked much better, say, six months ago, but it'll work fine now. All you have to do is run ads in every major newspaper in the country. The ads say "Now, you can download movies for free off the Internet", and give a link to a site like suprnova or whatever that has links to movie downloads.

I know this seems counterintuitive, but bear with me. Let's take a sample of, say, 1,000 people who see the ads, think that's a great idea, and try to go to the site. Here's how it'll break down.

• Number of people unable to connect to the site at all, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 172.
• Number of people who connect to the site and realize that it'll take a month for their dialup connection to get the movie, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 316
• Number of people who connect to the site, click on a link, and can't figure out what a "torrent" is, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 198.
• Number of people who figure out what a torrent is, install the proper software, and can't get it to work properly, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 105.
• Number of people who get their download started, but are unable to complete it within two days, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 78.
• Number of people who successfully download a movie, try to run it, and only get the soundtrack because they have the wrong codec installed, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 53.
• Number of people who have the correct codec installed, are able to watch the movie, and learn that it's a crappy camcorder bootleg where you can hear the guy in the next seat coughing up a lung for the entire movie, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 41.
• Number of people who get a decent bootleg of a movie, watch it, and get annoyed because it's really not that convenient to watch movies by yourself in your home office sitting at a desk chair for two hours in front of a cheap Gateway 15" LCD monitor, and as a result, never bother trying to download a movie again: 35.

This leaves, out of every thousand people who actually try to download a movie off of the Internet, a grand total of TWO people not completely annoyed and disillusioned by the entire process. And these two people probably have so much in the way of gear that they've already put a much higher percentage of their income into the entertainment industry than the average person ever will in their lifetime. But like anything, downloading movies is just going to get easier as time goes by. You've got to get people trying it now, while it's a huge fucking hassle. Encourage downloading! It's the only way to stop it.

You Are Dumb Dot Net: Solving the world's problems, one mental deficient at a time.

* As a result of saying the word "damn", Valenti was forced to immediately rate his statement PG (mild profanity). Valenti is appealing the rating.

Dedications

Today's column is dedicated to the millions of souls out there, the millions of artists, writers, and everyday individuals who have dedicated things to others. Your selfless act of dedication has ensured that none of us stand alone. No man is an island, as long as something, somewhere, is dedicated to that island. And so I dedicate this column to you, in the hopes that from this point forward, you will cut that DUMB shit out. Thank you.

Personally, I blame Casey Kasem. Before Casey Kasem, in order to dedicate something to somebody, you had to actually create an artistic work. Whether it be a cheap dimestore novel, one of those old timey megaphone songs, or 8-millimeter hardcore Bob Crane pornography, you had to make the thing you were dedicating to something else, and that kept the lid on, frankly.

But then Casey came along, with America's Top 40, and the "Long Distance Dedication". Thanks to that, any middle-American asshole could take some piece of ART created by someone else, some other ARTIST, like, say, Starland Vocal band's "Afternoon Delight", and by merely writing a single touching letter to Kasem, dedicate "Afternoon Delight" to someone else and have the entire nation hear it. No effort required. Just a sob story, some stationery, and, ideally, a dead girlfriend in another state who has the same name as someone in a Toto song..

And while I'm on the subject of Casey Kasem, can anybody explain why it is, as I get older, I find that more and more of my past is revealed to have some sort of Kasem connection? When I was growing up, he was the guy on the radio. THAT WAS IT. About ten years ago, I learned he was Shaggy. I watched Shaggy all the time! Casey Kasem was Shaggy! Then, after that, I realized he was Robin on the Superfriends. Well, shit! More mysterious Casey in my past. It's like recovering repressed memories, only with a lilting, mellifluous tone and a bit of non-threatening swarthiness.

But I digress. Once the cat got out of the bag, and the American public got the impression that you could dedicate anything to anybody for any reason, things started to get out of hand. And you know how I know things are out of hand? Video game FAQs.

Video game FAQs are like the hint books suckers pay ten bucks a pop for, only they're written by dudes on the Internet who just play the game a lot. This means that they are of widely varying quality, formatting, and grammar, which means that, except for the lack of pictures, they're EXACTLY LIKE the ones you pay for.

Anyway, it's come to my attention that one particular FAQ author has added a lengthy dedication to his many, many FAQs. Colin "CMoriarty" Moriarty, as he is known, has dedicated his works far and wide. OK, not that far, and not that wide, since pretty much all of his FAQs are for old-school Nintendo games, like the Mega Man 4 Boss FAQ, the Castlevania III Character FAQ, and the Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past (SNES Version) Chirs Houlihan Room FAQ. If you're wondering how to defeat Ring Man, equip the Skull Barrier, then, when the counter counts down to ACTUAL QUOTE TIME, jump on his head.

"This FAQ, and all 24 other of my FAQ/Walkthroughs, are now dedicated to the over 6,000 innocent people killed in the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks in New York City, New York, and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. To all of the innocent working people, and FDNY Firemen, as well as other emergency workers, you will always be remembered. We won't stop until we bring these criminals to justice, your deaths were NOT IN VAIN! God Bless America, death to all terrorists of all races everywhere."

Which is just funny on so many levels. First, you can't tell this from the quote, but depending on the FAQ, "6,000" is occasionally the more accurate "3,000". Then, of course, there's that pristine, preserved-in-amber specimen of post-9/11 hairshirt jingoism. But the thing that kills me is the line "your deaths were NOT IN VAIN!".

Let's assume, for a moment, that there is a Heaven. Let's also assume that Heaven is tricked out with pristine-condition NES consoles and high speed Internet access, because frankly, if it isn't, what's the goddamned point? I think that we can safely assume that at least one of the between 3,000 and 6,000 dead people from 9/11 qualified to get into Heaven. So they're up there, chillin' on a cloud with a Red Bull, and decide to pop in some old-school Castlevania III. But there's a problem. Despite being in heaven, this individual is unsure as to the primary weapon of Sypha Belnades. No problem! Hop onto GameFAQ's, check out this Character FAQ, and... hey! Wow! MY DEATH WAS NOT IN VAIN! I feel so much better now! Gimme another Red Bull!

Let's leave the dedicating to the experts, folks.

People Who Don't Listen To Me

Memo to people not listening to me: YOU ARE DUMB.

Now, I don't like to gloat.

Wait. What am I thinking of? I love gloating. I must have been thinking about skiing. I hate skiing. Don't know what you people see in it. But gloating? Gloating/s great.

Remember last week, how I may have mentioned in passing that the Internet lies to you? Well, it lied to a paralegal in Aliso Viejo, California, too.

And because of the Internet lying, the Aliso Viejo city council came THIS CLOSE to voting on a ban on styrofoam cups, because the paralegal (whose gender the Associated Press failed to mention in a clear ploy to make me have to write awkward pronouns on a virally-tinged Monday) learned that styrofoam cups were manufactured using the hazardous chemical... dihydrogen monoxide.

Yes, the old dihydrogen monoxide gag. If you haven't searched it out before, you should, it's pretty funny. Dihydrogen, two hydrogens. Monoxide, one oxygen. H2O. Deadly when inhaled, and also prone to causing deep embarrassment if it's found in your record collection.

Meanwhile, another $30 million worth of people also failed to listen to me, so the Jesus is up to $260 million, and pundits are predicting big numbers for the upcoming Easter weekend, which, if the seasonal aisle at Target is any indication, should be pretty soon.

Call me an old-fashioned traditionalist, but I really miss the days when Easter was about chocolate, rabbits, chocolate rabbits, plastic grass, and not eating the black jellybeans. It's almost as if we've forgotten about the TRUE meaning of Easter in our mad rush to the multiplexes to watch some bearded dude get tortured and flayed. Especially when it's not Bruce Vilanch.

E-Mail Forwarders

Memo to you. Yeah, you. With your mouse pointer hovering over the Forward button. YOU ARE DUMB.

Don't click it. Don't. DON'T. I know you want to, but fifteen plus years of e-mail history have taught us an important lesson, and you ignore it at your peril. Slowly slide the cursor away from the Forward button. That's it. Nice and easy. Oh, and you should really get rid of that Comet Cursor shit. That's bad news.

Oh, right. The lesson. That lesson, gleaned from fifteen years worth of e-mail traffic, is that nobody's lives have ever been even incrementally improved by receiving a forwarded e-mail. NEVER. It doesn't happen. Anyone who tells you it happened to them is either a bald-faced liar or very delusional, and you should smile, nod, and run like hell.

I do not know what it takes for you people to get this through your skulls. The Internet LIES TO YOU. Constantly. Especially in e-mail. Especially especially in any e-mail that suggests you forward it to people you know.

If it's a horrible warning, it's a lie. If it's a funny story, it's a lie. If it's a Darwin Award, it's a lie. If it's a call to action to support a cause, it's not a lie so much as it's just wrong, because forwarding the e-mail is not action and will not support your cause, as previously discussed. Nobody in Nigeria actually wants to give you money, nobody has a secret crush on you, and giving a 30-year-old pigtails and a lollipop does not make them a hot teen slut.

And that "screensaver" you clicked on just erased your hard drive. Because the Internet lies. Except when it's too busy being not funny to lie.

There shouldn't even be a Forward button. If you absolutely need to forward something, software should make you go to the trouble of copying it and pasting it into a new e-mail. Put a tiny hurdle in your way. It'd probably cut e-mail traffic by a third.

Can we at least settle for not forwarding things to co-workers? Co-workers in the same building? Co-workers in the same room? Even on the off chance the guy in the next cube is one of the half dozen people on the planet who hasn't seen the monkey falling out of the tree, or heard the vocal stylings of American Idol's William Hung*, they could, oh, maybe walk over to your computer and see it, instead of the room filling up with a half-dozen staggered versions of the same goddamn web page.

Just cut it out. You've had the culmination of hundreds of years of advances in human communication handed to you on a silver platter, and this is the best you can manage? Taking up valuable porn and free music bandwidth with your bogus recipes and your ten reasons men are different from women and your DUMB. Cut it out.

* I bid a hearty welcome to Internet searchers. While I don't know why anyone would want to search out information on American Idol's William Hung, I did find that the last time I mentioned American Idol's William Hung in a column, a number of people searching on American Idol's William Hung discovered You Are Dumb Dot Net in the process. So, when I realized I had another opportunity to mention American Idol's William Hung in context, I shamelessly took it. I hope you don't feel too bad, but remember, the Internet lies to you. Even about American Idol's William Hung.