Work it. Make it. Do it.

Wow. What a week. I honestly don’t know where to start. Oh wait, yes I do. Kayne West is a douchebag. ** THIS JUST IN KAYNE ASKED ME TO ADD THIS TO MY WEBSITE. Click Arc-Royal to see what he has to say.**



Seriously, I’ve been at odds with Kanye for a long time running now and until Chris Brown decided he wanted to get gangster on Rhianna’s face, he held the top slot. Chris Brown of course lost the slot to Rhianna when she decided to drop the charges undermining women’s rights, the law and decency.

But like so many other dependable things, you can’t keep a bad dog down no matter how many times you roll up a newspaper and hit him for being a naughty puppy. Hopefully he and his agent are "stronger" than the impending fallout. I’m sure I don’t need to post a link, but I do want to say that I am going to boycott anything in affiliation with Kanye West* for his douchebaggery. I’m almost 99% sure his immature actions are what caused Patrick Swayze to throw in the towel. R.I.P. Swayze, Red Dawn was the tits and almost all your other movies were the bee’s knees. We know you didn’t want to do Black Dog either.

Cheers to Jay Leno for putting him in his place. Apparently Kanye is now on suicide watch, let's hope he goes through with it.


In other MTV news, I just wanted to point out that has Katy Perry ever looked hotter? No, she hasn’t. It looks like for once, she recognized what mama gave her and came to impress. WHY MUST SHE HAVE JUNGLE FEVER!?

Ok, now that you’re done drooling over Ms. Hot n’ Cold, let’s get on to business.


In other news, I’ve been working hard on a lot of other projects from work to personal. A lot of effort is being pumped into What A Lame Excuse or www.whatalameexcuse.com for those of you who are particular about clicking links. It's a user-driven comedy content site and as long as we can get the word out, it has a lot of potential.

Right now, the site can’t rapidly expand until I have a network, a complete-interactive website, a logo and some awesome stickers and viral street teams to spread the word like the herps. I'm offering a $100 dollar challenge to the person who comes up with the best logo. Here's an example submitted by the talented Laura. Really the site's all about the baby steps right now. :)

Other than that, I’ve been working like crazy to get my two major events of the year, Insanity! and Thanksweenie in order. Insanity! is always an amazing adventure full of stories and Thanksweenie this year has a big surprise coming. Ok, not really a surprise, but it’s Kristal! Woot Woot!

Catch you all laters! I've got lots more to talk about soon! (HALO ODST IS OUT SO SOON!)

*Daft Punk is the one exception because they freaking rock and probably didn’t understand how big of a douche Kanye was being from France. If you haven’t seen this video do so now!

World War II is Serious Business

So this post is a little dated because I’ve been so caught up with What A Lame Excuse (WALE) aka www.whatalameexcuse.com. Yes I probably will promote the site like crazy for the months to come but I really want it to be a big success. Go there and submit stories and tell your friends!

I had a really rough day and I’d like to blame it all on World War Dos. I’ve been trying to beat Call of Duty: World at War on the hardest difficulty setting for a few days now and it’s about to drive me bat-shit crazy. Why? It’s flipping stupidly impossible. It’s one thing to have a game’s difficulty setting so high that you have to creep your way through to make progress, but you shouldn’t have to crawl at a snail pace to do it.

What makes it so hard? Well for one, every Axis bullet is magnetically attracted to my head. Nothing irks me more than seeing characters who are clearly scripted to do certain things in the game survive machine gun fire, grenades and tank rounds. They just get knocked on their butt, dust themselves off and on they go firing like an Imperial Stormtrooper. Me on the other hand? I get shot at before I come out of cover and if I stay in cover too long, three grenades get dropped in my hiding spot. I swear, the way COD:WAW plays I think they produced more grenades than bullets. And then there is the fact that the automatic save system requires you to clear out usually at least three or four areas before a checkpoint which makes the whole repetition thing pretty tedious. Needless to say the game is horribly flawed for the user.

It got so bad I was screaming at computer controlled Nazis to shoot at my allies who were Jews and leave me the hell alone.

Realizing I was way in the red, I tried to calm down by playing Battlefield: 1943. I usually kick ass at multiplayer shooters, but for the love of me I couldn’t do anything right in that game either. I was on the verge of throwing my controller through the TV. If they hadn’t been wireless I would have hung myself on the cord I was that furious.

Then it just clicked. I was getting ticked off at something I had chosen to do for fun. It was a scary epiphany that something I always imagined I had under control was now controlling me. I don’t know who I was in those few hours, but I know that I didn’t like it. I hate the idea of wasting my time when I started it to have fun in the first place. In hindsight, if I ever try it again, I now know that World War II is serious business and shouldn’t be taken lightly.



On the work front, we had a special late fee erasing amnesty campaign that consisted of us calling as many people that we could with over $10 in late fees. Why the company wants to bring in it’s worst offenders seems like bad business to me. In all honesty it is. Since that store opened in 03, over 900 members have collected late fees grossing $35,000.00. I’m probably not supposed to share the particulars, but it’s this kind of forgive and forget ideology that only drives the knife deeper. If you figure that lump sum doesn’t even include lost product or people who just have the dollar or two late fee, I imagine it’s a lot higher.

Irresponsibility drives me bananas. All we’re doing is setting ourselves up to repeat our past.



On a lighter note, we received Wolverine. My co-worker and I couldn’t help but notice that the collector’s edition was a little 3D and bumpy and has the craziest raised eyebrows of all space and time. They were so pointy that had it been a topographical map their elevation would have been at least 250,000 feet. Mt. Everest wouldn’t have had nothing on them. The picture doesn’t give it justice, but Hugh Jackman means just as much business as World War II.

The other funny thing was the regular edition’s cover. If you noticed, it’s got Deadpool and Gambit flanking Wolverine. The funny (sad) thing is that poor Liev Schreiber who is in the ENTIRE movie gets dropped to the back portion of the cover so that they can pump the other hyped characters. Apparently Sabertooth has gotten too much spot light in the past.

What sucks is that Gambit and Deadpool are my favorite Marvel characters. I still buy Deadpool comics regularly and it angers me to no end how FOX butchered more Marvel (now Disney) property. Gambit talks like a Cajun for maybe two minutes, then pretends to be spider-man and that ‘s it.

Do the people that write and direct these films even read the comics?

Ryan Reynolds still is the perfect Deadpool, but he got zero screen time and the whole Weapon XI plus that secret ending that no one got to see just killed it for me. Explain how swords can exist when you have to bend at the elbows and maybe I’ll reconsider. Oh and btw Wolverine, Mortal Kombat called and they are suing you for copying Baraka. We’ll see how the spinoff Deadpool turns out, but I’m not holding my breath.

Hopefully Disney won't let this go down in the future.

What A Lame Excuse

My new brainchild is over at
What A Lame Excuse

My daddy always told me you don't have to necessarily come up with an original idea if you can improve upon an existing one.

Actually, truth be told, my daddy never told me crap.

But seriously. Go check it out. It's like FML, without the Fing or the Ling.


http://www.whatalameexcuse.com

The Most Interesting Man in the World.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to present to you the most interesting man in the world.

And guess what? He may not always eat fast-food, but when he does, he eats Jack in the Box.

This gentle paper-mache headed man has been gracing my town for a while and he's quite the talk of the town on the viral social underground. People pull over and say hello to take pictures. Others think he's come into rob the place only to find out he wants an iced coffee just like the rest of us.

His real name is David and by coincidence I know his full name, but it's not my place to kiss and tell. He's a fascinating individual. Maybe not the best social-minded character, but he can definitely tell you a story or two. Ask him about the hearse he just bought and is driving down from Portland, Oregon. I can't wait to see that. I told him to have Ronald McDonald's leg hanging pinned out of the back door.

The funny thing is that regardless of his quirks and habits, I've never met someone as focused as he is on his goals. It puts my own lethargic pursuits and habits to shame. It's like he deserves some huge freaking medal and award for not only demonstrating his prowess in 1st grade level arts and crafts, but career ambition as well. Think about that next time you see him. Just because he's got a huge mask on his head doesn't make him completely crazy. Only partially.

In other news, my iPod donation event was a success. I am now the brevet owner of a 4-gig nano named Tex. I was happy taking whatever I could get, and when I synced it with my iTunes something amazing happened. Since I couldn't fit over 82 gigs of music on board, the Genius feature turned on and spent the next FOUR hours crafting the ultimate 736 song play list to fill it to capacity. There isn't a SINGLE song I haven't completely loved.

The best part? I'm hearing some of the songs for the first time. I'm slowly and surely becoming an apple fan. And I'm not just talking about the fruit here.

On the music front, I found something from the past that I'd like to share because I'm rather proud of it. It's a mix CD I made a while ago that narrate the story of dating. It usually gets me over the awkward hump of time between girlfriends. I entitled the mix Reality of Relations. It's important to listen to it in sequence if you want the story it tells. For those of you that make it I hope you enjoy it.

Reality of Relations
1. make it wit chu - queens of the stone age
2. baby girl, i'm a blur - say anything
3. the district sleeps alone tonight - the postal service
4. breathe me - sia
5. the walk - imogen heap
6. suture up your future - queens of the stone age
7. momma sed - puscifer
8. only you - portishead
9. change - deftones
10. just like you imagined - nine inch nails
11. roads - portishead
12. silence - blindside
13. burn first - alexisonfire
14. loser - beck
15. prayer for the refugee (acoustic) - rise against

It can be mailed to you for 1.99 for some S+H. I won't even charge tax, I just need your address. Supplies limited.

The song selection isn't exactly my usual taste. Luckily for me this was made before I discovered either Anthony Dallas Green, two legendary singers in their own way. Seriously, if you don't have their stuff buy it now! Either way it's easy listening.

Finally, a post wouldn't be complete without a work story, I discovered something that I'm quite pleased with. Every morning my boss leaves company voice mails as down-the-ladders communiques. The other day while fidgeting with buttons, I found out I can slow down or speed up the voice mails delivery. There hasn't been one time I don't laugh hysterically listening to my stiff and rigid boss either sound like a stoned, drunk surfer or a lollipop gang member on crystal meth. Good times I tell you. I'm going to try and record one for listening pleasure soon.

That about wraps it up, but as a question, what is the best cover song you've ever heard (not live, but that's been recorded)?

Until next time.....



Represent.

Internet killed the Video Clerk

I would ask you to study the above picture for a moment. Yes, that is a real check, its staggering sum of $2.97 paid in full courtesy of Bank of America. No, that is not my paycheck, but rather my bonus.

What it really boils down to is pathetic.

I’m not complaining about the check, I just laugh at the irony that this bonus check was printed, cut and FedEx expressed to me costing considerably more than what it was worth.

Plus, it's not like any rental company with the exception of NetFlix is making a profit right now. I was always under the impression a company had to do positively to receive anything extra skimmed off the top. Maybe, on a much smaller scale this is exactly what happened with our economy. A notion that regardless, you deserve something and if you still can't afford it, you slap down a credit card.

Maybe this is just a picture perfect example of why I believe Hollywood Video is spiraling the drain. I don’t have to have insider’s knowledge to recognize the trends and patterns. It’s as plain as day.

The company is scrambling to upsell and retain cash, enforcing more and more quotas and percentages daily from people paid minimum wage that have never experienced such demands before. They withhold basic supply purchasing and strap our labor usage tightly around the belt.

When you can’t afford light bulbs to relight your store; that’s a pretty good warning side.

It’s a shame too see because I believe in the video store concept. Hollywood Video squandered this responsibility like asking a toddler to only go and eat one cookie out of the jar. But I believe in having an easily and readily accessible place to get anything to fulfill your cinephile needs. Be it the next big new release or venerable classic, people’s taste have varying and eclectic ranges. It’s too bad the concept has to suffer and the bequest of the corporate wig-wams who ran it into the ground.

Instead, people are slowly growing accustomed to waiting out the storm, waiting days for a movie to arrive or even further limiting to themselves to what’s available via download or what RedBox supplies.

Personally, I can’t tell you what I’ll be in the mood for an hour from now let alone the three days I’d have to wait for something to come.

I guess I just can’t figure when going to your local video store became so damn inconvenient. Was it when people got to fat and lazy to get off their couches or was it like everything else viral and digital that has helped cripple our normal business infrastructure?

So as my job slowing sinks with me as its captain at the helm, I’m starting to realize that despite appearances, it was a pretty good run.

Any suggestions on what I should spend my bonus on to make it memorable?