I dare you
Just try and figure out how to get back onto the freeway, I effing dare you.
Refunds abound
Like some piece of delicious candy being ripped from a child’s hand I’ve been made to return Halo 3. My replacement copy via Amazon was, somehow, more damaged than my original. After calling the folks in the customer service center, and declining their offer of a 7-10 day refund, I talked to a “team leader” who offered me a near instant 24-48hr refund to shut me up. Apparently the delectable video game fruit is too fragile to be shipped. This I blame on the combination of all parties involved. Bungie/MS for designing a case so pathetic that it fails nearly every time. Amazon for not putting a single shred of “packing material” in either box I received and finally UPS for being the worlds worst shipping service. What can brown do for you? Brown can somehow mangle a box so badly that it looks like an acordian when it arrives. And that’s overnight. I’d hate to see how Express Saver ends up.
So, the end result of this fiasco is that I’ve had to wait all week for a game I could have simply picked up at Target on the 25th. My refund from Amazon proceeded this morning so I’ll pick it up on my lunch break or on my way home. Target, by the way, is my new video game retailer of choice. Actual knowledgeable and most of all helpful employees, good prices (not that video prices vary) and a seemingly abundant supply of new releases. Above all, they don’t engage in the open box policies of EB and GS. Nope, you get new games in all their shrink wrapped glory. It also doesn’t hurt that I’ve got someone on the inside, in the mobster sense, that routinely holds new releases for me.
All was not lost however, in the time I had I was able to finish Bioshock and start in on Skate. I had picked up Skate a little while ago but never started playing it, having devoted myself to playing Bioshock strait through. I have to say that the new control system, the openness of the environment and the next generation graphics and physics really kick the hell out of anything from the Tony Hawk camp. There’s no super-mega-1080 donkey flips. Most of your tricks are kickflips, ollies, maybe the occasional 180. Why? Because you actually have to perform these tricks, with you thumb, on the right analog stick. I’m sure out there somewhere there is a little asian kid who can whip out some 720 varials or something, but I can’t, at least not yet. I’m actually enjoying just riding around the levels doing ollies. Go figure.
So, alls well that ends well. I’ll get Halo tonight and this whole thing will be done with. It teaches me a valuable lesson… Never preorder anything ever again. Something in this much demand is bound to have a sufficient supply to simply go and purchase. Or, at the very least, never preorder anything slightly fragile. I’m sure that preordering a book would be quite safe. Those glass civil war figures you’ve had your eye on are a different story.
Boiling Point
My collectors edition of Halo 3 is here… and it’s all fucked up. Apparently, rumors that had been circulating last week about the packaging being “weak” were indeed true. The measly plastic knobs that hold the CDs within the metal tin are truly pathetic and as soon as I opened the box from Amazon I could hear the disks rattling around. Both disks are scratched beyond playability. This wasn’t exactly Amazon’s fault, but the “customer service” lady bore my full and unending wrath. With little choice the world’s largest online retailer is indeed sending me another copy, overnight, and it had best arrive unscathed or I’ll personally fly to Washington and start beating Bungie marketing department employees. Stupid fucking tin. Who orders a tin these days? DAMNIT!
On a completely related side note, the game, being played via my boss’ copy, is truly awesome. I got a good 3 hours in last night. He let me borrow his copy for the evening because he hadn’t plans and wouldn’t be playing it and mine hadn’t arrived yet. I’ll elaborate more on this when I get to play it in-depth with MY copy.
You’re not special
I caught sight of something on Digg today that brought me back in time to college and all the bullshit that so called artists come up with. Looking through the stories this morning I happened to see a story on what information is really in a barcode. I’m not all that interested in barcodes, I know the basics of their design, so I skipped over it. That is, until I saw what website it was directing people to. It was barcodeart.com. That site is owned by Scott Blake.
I went to school with Scott. He was in several of my classes. He is a tool.
Technically, there’s nothing “wrong” with Scott. His only problem is that he jumped into the world of conceptual art with both feet and is drowning in his own bullshit. You see, people who can’t make real art (purest would call this retinal art, aka: art you can see – painting, photograph, sculpture, etc) often make up reasons why their conceptual art is actual art AND reasons why you don’t get it. Most of the time these people believe that the “art is the process” by which they created their crap. Marcel Duchamp would be a perfect example of this. For those of you who didn’t take Modern Art History 101, Duchamp is world famous for taking a common urinal, putting it upside down on a pedestal and declaring it art. The idea and the subsequent movement were based apon ideas of absurdity and anti-art. The concept was that something was “art” because the “artist” declared it so and that anything could potentially be art. It was a conceptual evolution of the idea that “beauty (and art) is in the eye of the beholder”.
It’s also complete BS. Alas, my opinion on the matter is not the prevailing one of academia. Art professors creamed their pants over things like this and continue to do so to this day. I like to call this shit out when I see it.
Scott fits perfectly into this category. His “art” takes a basic element and a basic concept of how to execute that element and stops there. The “meaning” behind pieces of art like this are justified only by the artist themselves. “I have created this, and thus it must be art”. Scott takes it one step further, removing the process almost entirely, except for some cheap inkjet prints. You can see this in action if you watch one of the interviews he’s done, as posted on his own website (press – tv and radio – tech tv interview). In it, there are quite a few statements that will let you into the mind of someone who simply doesn’t get art.
“Elvis, I feel like I know him, I read about him in the papers. But what do I really know of him? I know his music. And what is his music? His music is just a bunch of binary data encoded onto a CD.”
That’s right Scott, that’s what Elvis was thinking when he recorded music. That one day his art would be nothing to you but binary data. I’m sure he wasn’t concerned about making anything SOUND GOOD! If that’s what you think about “musical art”, I’ve got a nice CD full of very artistic white noise for you to buy.
“I like all my portraits to be standardized, so that they all look the same.”
Announcer – “It took Blake 6 months to automate Photoshop down to one button. A portrait that once took him four days, now takes him just four minutes.”
I’ll repeat that for those of you who didn’t catch it. He created a Photoshop action… wait for it… to do his art for him. That’s right, his painstakingly created art involves running a script and hitting print. Way to go Scott. You’ve rocked the art world.
Actually, I shouldn’t be so hard on Scott, I’m actually very jealous of his amazing skills. I wanted to be just like him so badly that I went online and found “Easy Mosaic Maker” for $19.99. Now I can be awesome, just like him. But shhhhh, don’t tell anyone, I think I’m actually better than him. My “art” program can do things in color, and he just does things in black and white. I rule!
Seriously though, my main problem with this tool box was always his attitude. In every class I had with him he’d either complete an assignment late, not at all, or completely incorrectly and then use his “artistic license” to explain it away. He was at SCAD on a portfolio scholarship and apparently that meant his shit didn’t stink. As a final project in Modern Art and the Web, he created a cardboard box with a TV in it. On the TV was a video loop of the person in the box. You hit a button and the screen went blank. That was it. According to Scott you were “killing your own self image” in some sort of act of bohemian suicide. I called it TURNING OFF THE FUCKING TV.
I called him out on it several times but unfortunately for every great conceptual artist, there are at least a dozen people trying to suck their wang to appear hip and artsy. Retarded art lesbians who moisten their loins over anything anti-establishment or purple headed multipierced hippies who think anyone who disagrees with them is either stupid or “the man”.
The end result is that people like Scott do these singular art project and then fade into obscurity as the fade dies out. Then, 20 years from now, when they’ve worked their way to “Head Barista” at the local coffee hole, we get to hear all about how no one “gets” their art any more and it’s the world that’s changed and that no one appreciates good art anymore. It’s not that we don’t appreciate good art Scott, it’s that you never made any. Now hurry the fuck up with my double Macchiato.
Exclusivity is bad for everyone
Word just dropped YESTERDAY about a multiplayer beta for Call of Duty 4 on the 360. Of course, reading the news today, I headed over to their website to sign up. That was of course, before the 10 layers of bullshit I had to sit through. First off, going to the homepage gives you nothing but a link to more information (unless you enjoy special sneak previews of the packaging materials). It’s bigger than shit. A big giant button that says “click me for more information”. That link is of course “for members only”. Clicking on “register” gives you the normal “join our forums” bullcrap with required fields for everything including your hometown. Really? For a beta? After you type all your hopefully fake information in and click ok, you’re greeted with a wonderful message: Sorry, but you’re not eligible to join at this time. WTF? You just announced the beta? The site then provides you with a link to Activision’s corporate site, which is absolutely no help whatsoever. Reading online, there seems to be a good amount of confusion. Details provided by Activision say that anyone that can answer three trivia questions can get a beta key, for as long as they have them, first come first serve. What the hell do I have to register at some bullcrap marketing site for?
Let me get this strait, you want me to give you all of my personal information, for a website that’s already down, so that I can get a beta key for a game that comes out in October. This is August right? Should multiplayer testing be…ummm… done! Being exclusive douchbags about a beta hurts everyone. I was personally pissed when I got rejected to play the Halo 3 beta. They had so few tickets that they basically went to people from the press and hard core fan boys who do nothing else but jerk off to pictures of the Master Chief. I’m sorry, I read about it a day late, I was busy living my freaking life. If you’re not on these sites, hitting refresh over and over when this site happens, you simply don’t get in. You know what Activision, I was excited about CoD4, I thought it was going to be cool, but now I’m going to buy something else in October and wait till your shitty ass game is in the “greatest hits” section for $20. Jog on!
Anger keeps me warm at night
Stupid things I’ve heard today, and my justifiably sarcastic response.
Apple Fan Boy: “Mac’s are better because every Windows peripheral works with them.”
Me: It’s called USB you fuck-knob. USB works with both equally well. That’s why it’s a hardware standard. That’s almost as fucking stupid as saying “Macs are better because they had Photoshop first”.
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Article from Digg: “Everyone knew that Osama Bin Laden was the one who had attacked us. Everyone knew it, that is, up until about the Fall of 2002 when guess what? Saddam Hussein, our corporate news dutifully informed us, had actually been behind the attacks of 9/11.”
Me: You conspiracy theory believing retard. I have NEVER heard anyone say “Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11”. The theory at the time was that Iraq supported terrorism. I hate to break it to you, but that overweight Tom Selic mustache wearing mother-fucker couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag. Why do you think we found him in a hole instead of some super fortified bunker? You’d think after the first time we bombed his ass back to the stone-age he would have been better prepared if he was indeed some devious mastermind. Go find your tinfoil helmet.
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Comment section of same article: This photo is proof of what hit the pentagon. It was a missle, painted to look like an airplane.
Me: Are you high? That has got to be the worst PhotoChop job I’ve ever seen. You even cut and pasted the WINDOWS of the plane onto whatever missle you were doodling in MS Paint. Seriously? You people believe this is actual proof? I weep for our future.
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Digg article tagline: “US has covertly been arming Gulf States since 2004. A recently disclosed US agreement with Saudi Arabia for a 10-year, $20 billion dollar arms sale is a done deal.” (Me: followed by tons of shocked and angry comments)
Me: Ummmm, yeah. Actually, we’ve been arming them since the late 70’s. We armed Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and have been for decades. Do you people ever actually read history do you just drop your jaws every time CNN drops a nugget of partial truth on you? WE ROUTINELY SELL ARMS TO OTHER COUNTRIES. There’s nothing “covert” about it. Why do you think the Saudi airforce flys F-16s?
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CNN yesterday, just after the bridge collapse: Nancy Grace, talking to an eye witness – “So, are you saying you heard an explosive before this happened” Eyewitness: “No, I said I heard a rumble as it was falling down”. NG: “So, what you’re telling me is that you don’t think it was natural?” EW: “If by natural you mean an earthquake or something, then no.” NG: “You heard it here, the i35 bridge in Minneapolis, brought down by some human factor. Were terrorists involved? We’re looking into it.”
Me: I can’t even explain how much I hate you. I heard this at 6:45, about 20 minutes after the bridge collapsed. It took 20 minutes for CNN to stop reporting the actual news of this tragedy and start trying to spin it. 20 fucking minutes. They make me sick. Of course, after everyone started talking about the bridge and it’s structural issues, they dropped the terrorist angle like a hot potato. Still, that was the first place they went? Something bad just happened, must have been the terrorists. I almost threw the remote at the TV. It was then I remembered that Shark Week was on and I turned off Nancy Grace’s fucking sideways, mongoloid face in favor of a different kind of bottom feeding animal.
That is all.
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