Groonkly Bits

Amazon’s new e-book reader thing, formally named the Kindle snuck up on me. It’s a bit early in the week to be pointing out Black Hats. Technically it hasn’t done anything to me personally to be considered ill-tempered, but as I’m about to be net-blind, thanks to embarassing amounts of turkey being shoved down my gullet, I’m willing to split a hair or two. In the meantime, let’s keep this brief.

TO: Amazon R & D
FROM: Consumer Groonk
RE: Hideous Clunky Overpriced Thing (Kindle)

Let’s address this by issue:

1) Kindle is ugly. The Future is many things my friends, but it should not be ugly. It should be sleek and contoured. It should have a color screen. It must be sexy. When I look at it, I should want to have sex with it on sight. (Not saying that I would have sex with it. I’m just saying I should *want* to have sex with it. Use the iPhone as a reference.)

2) Kindle is big. Before I appreciate the technologies of e-paper, it must be able to slip inside an encyclopedia and go unnoticed. It should also be able to hold the unabridged Oxford English Dicitonary on it’s wafer-thin harddrive. In my pocket I currently have my phone, iPod*, wallet, camera, keys and money. I can’t be bothered with trying to shove a Kindle in there too.

3) Kindle is not worth $399. For that money I could get an iPhone that will, mark my words, be able to do the same damn thing the Kindle can in a few generations. I’m thinking the 3rd or 4th generation iPhone will be more than capable of doubling…tripling…fourthling(?) as an e-reader.

Sidenote: Don’t even get me started on your video share feature on Kindle’s sell-page not involving some kind of embed device. When videos are offered for sharing, I’m expecting actual sharing. Not some random link where I’m duped to enter a friend’s email and you get one more corporate spam victim.

I guess I was wrong. You are a villain after all.

*Yes, most of these things could be dropped from the list of pocket renters but not today. Please refer back to number 3 on the list.

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GREY’S ANATOMY did the thinkable. They made me bump a villain to next week. So I’m sitting there, minding my own business and avoiding important projects by watching the nation’s fascination, GREY’S ANATOMY.

Then they hang an old man’s grapefruit-sized swollen balls from the top of my TV set. The shock tactic: 1) stunned my primetime watching eyes, 2) made me laugh uncontrollably for two minutes flat, and 3) made me wonder, “How did they get this past the Inscrutable Censors?

The Inscrutable Censors are the mysterious lot that make morality judgments for us so that we don’t have to. The ICs tend to bring incredibly useless and laughable notes on what qualifies as decent to new levels of the absurd. Yet these same folk decided seeing Candiru-Infected Old Man Balls was the one thing they’d let slip through their bulldog grip.

I’m not sure whether I should thank them, cause the comedy of that scene was worth dealing with the 40 minutes of whiny, pretty doctors that followed, or hate them because, yikes, Candiru-Infected Old Man Balls was just on my TV.

There are few who aren’t scarred by that sight. They live in the dark corners of the internet. They are teh ones who thin a woman, wearing high heels, furiously stomping her foot inside a flushing toilet is an excitable thing. I fear any recognition of their dark desires will only embolden their cause and eventually topple society as we know it.

Then again, comedy is comedy. Even if it’s a cheap easy gag. Hell, it worked for SOMETHING ABOUT MARY.

Since the villain I had lined up for today has a long shelf life and anything GREY’S ANATOMY will be old hat by the weekend, the ANATOMY Team will have to take one for the team and be evil.

I could give GA permanent villain status for wasting Sara Ramirez‘s genius talent on a weekly basis. I recently learned she was in Spamalot: The Musical. Correction, she *owned* Spamalot: The Musical whenever she hit the stage.

Yeah, wasting talent definitely makes them evil.

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When the internet tells me that my not having sex is a “good thing.” I know I’ve crossed into the mirror-verse where Pepsi is greater than Coke and goatees are the requirement and not some yet-to-die facial hair fad.

*I’m not doing a graphic for their this because of time and their noise is blatantly retarded.

(found@warrenellies.com)

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I took a gander at the Geraldo Rivera vs Bill O’Reilly drunk driving debate to kill precious time. It ended up filling my heart with blind hate and disdain for showboating, loudmouthed psycho people.

FOX News is the wacky cartoon show inside a Flinstone episode. Pointless, useless, and so far from any kind of journalism it’s a parody of decency.

Yet somehow, deep wthin this laughable villain lay newshounds.tv. Their main purpose in weblife is: “We watch FOX so you don’t have to.” I was sure that was what THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT were for.

I may have to re-think my position on silver linings hiding inside clouds.

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Pardon my dust. I can only say things are gonna get worse before they get better. Spring Break is upon me and despite the horror that that two words still have any sort of meaning in my life, I’m a bit behind on a whole helluva a lot of things and will use the break to catch up. Next week will be sparse on both blogs as I will be visiting parentals because they seem to like having me around from time to time. It’s not a bad thing seeing them, too.

Onward to this week’s villain.

If you haven’t noticed, a pair of videos have been burning up You Tube. They feature amateur footage of a very angry Director Russell having a bitchfest with an equally angry Lily Tomlin from the I HEART HUCKABEES set. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty damn pathetic to see grown people acting less grown-up than all of my little nieces and nephews at an all you can eat ice cream social.

THE SOUP‘s Joel McHale suggests the vids are faked. Writer/director James Gunn thinks the incident is simply “disgusting” and follows with news that this type of behavior is not the norm in his town.

I agree with Gunn. I don’t care how cool and understated I HEART HUCKABEES was or how awesome THREE KINGS turned out. “Creative brilliance” does not excuse unprofessional shittyness:

If it’s fake: why? If it’s real, well, I stand by my previous comments.

The videos are mysteriously excorcised as soon as anybody notices their existence. I can’t garuntee how long the above will be around.

UPDATE: Lily Tomlin weighed in on the HUCKBEE noise earlier this week.

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Villains lie in wait all about us. They brood and plot and stalk their nemeses constantly looking for that opening in which to strike. They never make themselves known until the time is ripe.

Captain America’s “Dead.” Long Live, Captain America

Marvel decided to kill off Captain America last week and the mainstream news was all abuzz. Actions like this are old hat to those people who have been entrenched in comics for the long haul.

People like me.

I’ve noted the fall and rise and fall again of Jean Grey. Sure, she takes her name after the phoenix but it’s beginning to feel like they’re not quite sure what to do with her.

DC killed off Superman in the early 90s. That was well and good, I guess. He had the mandatory fight the good fight death. Not surprisingly, he returned not more than 2 years later.

Cap’s a flagship character. He won’t stay dead long. Hell, if I’m reading this right, and if the information is even half right, he was already on his second life. When a creator kills a character off the reason is often sound. When a corporation does the same, it’s usually for notice and a slight bump in sales. Such is the way of a business. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Making statements through literature, even a comic book, is the prerogative of whoever’s running that show. Stan Lee and jack Kirby did it with creating mutants and all the social animosity that’s followed them for decades. Marvel did it with the Mutant Registration Act during the 1980s and again with this Civil War spectacle(of which I’m behind on reading). But if Captain America stays dead for more than 3 years, I’ll eat my hat raw and with salt. The salt adds the danger. Hypertension, you know.

» List of Dead Comic Book Characters

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This will disturb your shit.

…

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It is too early in the week for villainy. Yet villainy is always afoot: waiting, lurking, ready to tie damsels to train tracks and twirl its mustache lasciviously. Villains do not always wait for week’s end to find a victim.

Mr Bill Gates, after enduring a 10 minute “interview” of you by THE DAILY SHOW’s. Jon Stewart, whose formidable comedic skills were unable to save any part of the bit, I watched with great amusement as you ran, not walked, from your gracious, bewildered host(above video. skip to the end or just go here). Your host that was willing to let you come on his show and give a 10 minute stock boardroom speech about the new Windows Vista OS.

You are a busy man, Mr Gates. I get that. You have places to go, companies to subvert to your will, and many other dastardly, er, genius innovative machinations that made the Zune the iPod killer it is today. But not being able to wait a measly 5 seconds for the cameras to cut to commercial, that was just plain rude.

Why do I give a damn? I didn’t until the next night the DAILY SHOW gang took time out of their schedule to mock the bajeesus out of your rudeness.

That made me think, “Why would a humanitarian act like an ass?” And that’s when it kicked me in the face. Giving truckloads of money to those in need doesn’t make you a humanitarian, that makes you a generous cash prize donor. It’s actions and common civility that make you humane. I’ve watched many a guest with larger axes than yours, who want to bury said tree cutters deep inside Stewart’s head, stick around the desk til after the fade to black. Why couldn’t you?

I *know* why. It’s because you’re a c….

Well played, sirrah. Well played, indeed.

(THE DAILY SHOW Jan. 29, 2007 vid clip via comedycentral.com’s Motherload embed thingie. See? I’m meeting you halfway, PTBs)

(via quickly departing youtube)

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This new Orville Redenbacher commercial features a company that has repurposed old footage of their founder and created a new color and setting via special FX in order to make him fit in the 21st century market.

Digital Frankensteining is not a new thing. But the Redenbacher people managed to make a ghoulish, unnerving spectacle.

When The PTBs used this affect on Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier it turned out to be nowhere near this ghoulish. Whoever approved this creepy mess should have leaves sown into their flesh and dropped in a den of leaf cutter ants.

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I was crass and skeptical. I convinced myself the iPhone wouldn’t be worth my time. Partly because I’m not incredibly attracted to having a multi-tasking super futurephone. Mostly because I knew my wallet would suffer from Apple’s ingenuity. I refused to believe The Cool(tm).

But I just had to visit Apple’s damn site and scope their shit out.

Damn my curiosity. Damn its eyes straight to hell. I love and hate this thing so much that it’s pulling double duty as both hero and villain. The hero part is obvious. The villain threatens my bank account, my newly professional posting schedule and my very sanity.

Now that I’ve seen it and all the insanely convincing demos(special love to the phone demo for that last hard sell), sweet merciful gods, I want one. All I can do is plot on getting one.

I want one.

I want one.
I want one.
I want one.
I want one.
I must have one
I might kick puppies to get one.
I would definitely kick you to own one.

Go forth, kids, and obey my commands. Bring me an iPhone and your rewards will range far beyond handsome. Your spoils will be sexy futhermuckers.

The digital, semi-benevolent, dictators for life, Masters, await your patronage on my behalf.

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