OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOY!!!

I started my new job, and so far, I'm impressin' the heck outta 'em! I even worked late on Friday to help meet a deadline, and for those of you that don't know - stayin' late ain't sumpthin' I typically do on a voluntary basis.

I also have received a wonderful Mac Powerbook from Julia's dad, Joe. I believe that I am in love with this machine, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm typing on it now! Look at me go!

Lastly, I had jury duty today, and it SUH-SUH-SUCKED. After eight hours, I was not picked, but I WAS fortunate enough to be seated next to the CFO from my last job - literally, the guy who signed my checks. Awk-ward!

There was one sort of weird bright point, though. Some dude came in wearing a cowboy hat with an American flag bandanna wrapped over the top of it. He had a denim jacket with the American flag stitched, in denim, across the back of it, and he was wearing a T-shirt that said, "USA: Defenders of Freedom!" But that is not all - oh, no! He also was wearing red jeans that were tucked into the coup de grace - something so bizarre that it's needs it's own paragraph:

Imagine, if you will, a pair of cheap, white, Wal-Mart athletic shoes. Then, imagine a pair of excessively American-ized cowboy boots, complete with big stars and stripes on the sides. Now, if you were to cut the tops off of those very lovely boots and graft them onto the sneakers so that you could then pull those very lovely sneakers onto your legs LIKE boots, you would have something like this guy has - and you, too, could tuck your red jeans into 'em.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, this footwear is SO chic that I can't even find anything similar on Google, so I'm gonna have to call 'em what I called 'em in my head when I first saw 'em: Homeless Shoes.

I may be mistaken, but he might have been humming a Mellencamp song, too. Americ...reepy.

When Flag-Man entered the room, the judge asked him to remove his hat, explaining that everyone should remove their hats in the room out of respect for the legal system. Instead, Flag-Man approached the bench to say (loud enough for me to hear in the back of the room), "I cain't take it off, Judge. The only one who's ever seen me without my hat is Jesus."

Even the judge cringed at that.

Needless to say, he was NOT chosen to perform his civic duty today.

Since I couldn't find a picture of the Homeless Shoes for you, here's something else I came across that made me laugh until I had to pee.
















That's it!

You should all feel special, for this week (and perhaps this week only), I am HEAPING blog love onto you. Heap! Heap!

I am sitting in Seattle's Best Coffee right now, very reluctantly listening to contemporary rock over their stereo system. I am here to keep Julia company while she does homework, and as such, I blog. This post is gonna be long, because I have little else to do.

Prepare thyself.

Enough time has passed, I hope, that I can bring up a somewhat selfish point about the Virginia Tech shootings without sounding insensitive. While the whole thing is an absolute tragedy, I want to talk about a peripheral issue: video games.

At this point in time, nearly everyone under 40 either owns or has had considerable exposure to video games in their lives. I have three console game systems and a Game Boy at home myself. Even my parents (both sets) own video game consoles. I have grown up with video games, starting around age 5 with an Atari 2600. I say this not to discount the severity of this incident, but to raise a point about it. One of the first news articles I read about the VA shootings announced that the killer played a lot of video games at home.

I have no desire to fight, kill, maim, or otherwise hurt another human being, but I sure do love fraggin' fools in Halo 2. My dad plays WWII first-person shooters, and my stepmom loves puzzle games. My mom has really gotten into the Nintendo Wii, and my stepdad would play Tetris until his eyeballs disintegrated if my mom didn't stop him every once in a while. I'm not concerned in the least about the possibility that one of them is going to *SNAP* and decide to stuff somebody into a wood-chipper.

If you have not heard of him, there is an opportunistic lawyer/lobbyist/weasel named Jack Thompson, and he has been raising a huge public ruckus for the past few years, claiming that video games not only promote and glorify actual violence, but that they are capable of reprogramming a normal, socially adjusted person into a killing machine. Thompson has positioned himself as a sort of consumer advocate, particularly defending conservative Christian ideals, yet none of his claims are based on any actual research.

Thompson has said that violent video games are "murder simulators" that enable kids to plan out real-life violence. He has since laid blame for the Virginia shootings on the kid's video game hobby/habit. He has also been suing distributors - Best Buy, Gamestop, Electronics Boutique - for negligence in providing these games to minors. Um...last time I checked, minors didn't have jobs, so it's probably mommy and daddy's money they're spending - let's hold the right people accountable, Jack.

A couple of Thompson quotes:

“If some whacked-out adult wants to spend his time playing Grand Theft Auto, one has to wonder why he doesn’t get a life, but when it comes to kids, it has a demonstrable impact on their behavior and the development of the frontal lobes of their brain."

“Murder simulators are not constitutionally protected speech. They’re not even speech. They’re dangerous physical appliances that teach a kid how to kill efficiently and to love it.”

He also said that the vibration function of some game controllers operate under the same principle as a Skinner box, subliminally reinforcing violent behavior - the controller "gives you a pleasurable buzz back into your hands with each kill."

And here I thought it added to the realism of a [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] slide tackle in my soccer games.

You know, I don't have any problem if you think a game is inappropriate for your children or even if you feel that it is inappropriate for you. Don't buy it. Don't let your children play it. Teach your kids the difference between fantasy and reality. And certainly don't make blanket accusations about video games (and video gamers!) - my favorite video game is a prostitute-free and gunplay-free hockey game, and while I can get pretty riled up during a game, I don't think that it has any [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] negative effect on me.

Additionally, it HAS been scientifically proven that squad-based military tactics games have dramatically improved teamwork and complex problem-solving skills not only for kids, but for adults as well.

What really gets me about all this [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] is that Jack Thompson has all but lost his credibility with the courts, Congress, and the media - but his impact has been so great that we assume there's some truth to it. As I said, the first NEWS story I read about the Virginia shootings announced that the shooter played a lot of video games. Well, dern it, that MUST be it! Mario and Luigi are training kids to be snipers.

This kid had a LOT of serious problems, and a remarkably different perception of the world than most folks. He needed help, and felt that he could not get it. There are a ka-jillion other people like him out in the world, however, and it only takes a little bit to push 'em across that line. I don't think that the abolishment of video games is the answer to all the problems of mankind.

I'm gonna start my own campaign, and blame everything on onions, because I hate onions. Onions will be the downfall of humanity, and they must be destroyed.

[mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO]
[mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO]
[mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO]
[mUSt kiLL Ja...



S

Two words:

KEYTAR SOLO!!!


Awesomeness shoots from this guy's fingertips like rocket-propelled grenades.



S

Never one to shirk my blogging duties - here again, I write.

We went to see the movie Hot Fuzz the other night, and I liked it almost as much as I LOVED Shaun of the Dead. Here is my highly intellectual and expertly critical review:

S'funny. Go see it. Then, go see Shaun of the Dead. Simon Pegg is a comedic genius, and I want to have his babies.

There it is.

Also, sorry about my previous rant about the blog thievery. I'm taking the moral high ground here, and have declared myself beyond such petty trivialities. Plus, now I can act all snooty and high-falootin' when I talk about my blog. For example:

"I have made my blog available to you because I am Sam, and I am beautiful."

I have a headache, so that's it for now.

Two things:

First, the website is in full gear now, so check it out and email your ideas to unpleasantlysexy@gmail.com.

The second thing needs a little bit of explaining.

From the very beginning, I have had the option of putting ads on this blog, and I could make a small amount of money from those ads, but I have chosen not to - primarily because I think it ruins my idea of an open forum. I don't want to subject you guys to targeted ads, whether they be worthwhile or not. So...

There is a new website called "Bitacle" that has begun to blatantly steal creative material. They are copying it onto their servers (not linking to it), and re-posting it to their own web pages without any attribution whatsoever to the author(s). They have sprinkled these new, duplicated pages with ads, and they are now making loads of money off of stolen intellectual property.

I discovered that they have duplicated my entire blog. They are making money off of every single entry I have made. They have also added the link to my new website to their server, so they'll be making money off of that, as well.

Needless to say, I'm rather f*ck-all angry.

My email addresses, my web pages...some jerk is even making money off of that cute picture of Julia dancing at our wedding (and it ain't me).

In pursuing a solution to this, I have also found that Bitacle is blocking the IP addresses of its victims - meaning that I cannot get access to their main site to complain about the issue. Several victims have been receiving vulgar, taunting emails (in Spanish) that suggest that whoever is running this scam feels impervious to copyright law. I haven't been getting those yet, but we'll see.

The audacity of these people is staggering, yet I have no real recourse beyond signing online petitions to block Bitacle from US servers. You might be aware of how well that has worked in the past (Napster, Kazaa, The Pirate Bay, Allofmp3.com, etc.) - it hasn't done a damned thing.

My next post will be a little brighter, I promise, but for now...

...I hope that every single employee of Bitacle.com gets a skycraper plunged up their butt.




S

CAPTAIN'S BLOG, SUPPLEMENTAL

This is the email I received this morning from my soon-to-be new supervisor:

Hi Sam,

I hear you were offered the position and that you accepted it! Just want to let you know that I'm so pleased we will be working together. You have a great attitude and so many natural talents. I hope you find Harcourt as unendingly interesting as I do. Look forward to seeing you on the 26th!

Anne-Marie De Witt

As you can see, she really seems to actually give a patoot about the job - and I think that will make a huge difference for me. I'm thrilled to finally work for someone who, you know, has standards.

And, I suspect that little dancing goblins with pointy shoes will be stuffing cash into my pockets all day long while I'm at work, and THAT will make a huge difference, too.


Whee!

Wanna know why all these Germans are carrying the "Log of Celebration"?














They carry this log because I just got a new job!

The log is painted blue to symbolize the buckets of cash I'll be earning - I believe the German word for "blue" roughly translates to dolla bills, y'all. Don't go check. I'm right.

I had my second interview today at 10am, and I got the job offer at around 5:30. You are now reading the fantastically witty blog of Rigby Professional Development's brand new Technical Editor. I will be responsible for editing and proofreading the shooting scripts for educational DVDs and many other as-yet-unnamed duties. I am the right hand of doom for my new supervisor, which means I'll be taking on all sorts of various assignments to help alleviate her workload.

Woo-freakin'-HOO!

I start on April 26th, so I now have a little two-week vacation, too.

Stress-free and highly relieved, it is now my intention to play video games for several hours.


Durch die Energie von Grayskull, ich habe die Energie!!!


S

I'm not posting much this week, because I'm preparing for my big job interview on Thursday, but I did find this video, and it blew me away. It's long (nine minutes), but stick with it - I promise you that you will quickly find it hard to look away. This guy is AMAZING.

Here's the story - there's a game show in Japan called "Ninja Warrior" that pits contestants against a massive obstacle course (like American Gladiators, only we 'Mer'cans can't do anything like THIS). The guy you're about to see is only the second person out of 500 to complete it.

Go to this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBkZpK-fYQ

Oh yeah - mute your speakers, unless you like very loud Japanese sports commentary.

Love and sour cream ninjaladas for all!

I had a job interview today for a "technical editing" position with Harcourt Achieve, a textbook editing company.

I kicked so much butt that I got tired and had to switch to my other kickin' leg in the middle of it!

They called me back already to schedule a second interview with the big boss, and while I certainly don't have the job yet, I really won 'em over today and I'm excited.

If this pans out, the job pays 20-24 bucks an hour, which means that I'll have enough money to cover our bills, my gadgetry and comic book expenses, AND still have enough left over to pile up on the floor and roll around in! Whee!

All right...calm down. I'll keep you posted as the deets develop.

Next on the agenda: I'm in the process of buildin' me a website! I hope to put drawings and stories and music and all sorts o' goodies up on it, and you all should check it out. The URL is:



It sorta sucks as far as memorability goes, but that's it.

A word of warning, though - as of now, there's nothing on it, and it may remain that way for a while, so don't get impatient with me. I'm just tryin' to catch this "inter-web" wave while it's hot - I don't know what I'm doing yet, and I have no real content to put up there right now.

However, FEAR NOT, brave comrades! I will soon be putting up a sci-fi story I've begun writing, and it shall be the start of a great experiment. I'm gonna set up a way for you guys (the handful of you that might have an interest in reading what I write), to submit criticism and, hopefully, your own ideas for the story arc - kinda like an online Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, but not really. I'll be cherry-picking the stuff that best fits with my overall story structure, so not everyone's stuff will make it in, but it should eventually produce a cool twist on my own tale. I'll also be writing the story to completion on my own (leaving in any similarities between my original outline and the Frankenstein-ed one), so it should make a really interesting comparison when they are both complete.

I think that, if I provide a framework and general criteria for each section so that everybody knows the narrative path, it will help keep the suggestions somewhat controlled and on point. Otherwise, anything goes. For example, I may say, "Now accepting submissions for chapter 7. Bob will be dead by the end of this chapter. Based on what you know of the characters so far, I want you to come up with the details involving his demise. The only limitation is that Heather didn't have anything to do with Bob's death."

It'll be more like a social-networking-produced novella, I guess. Let me know what you guys think of this, because I can take it somewhere else if it doesn't interest (or out-dorks) you. It won't hurt my feelings, either - there's plenty of writer forums out there to join.

So yeah...that's my idea. It may never happen - we'll see as time goes on, but I think it could be pretty cool.

Man, I'm a genius!

Oh, and happy Easter, all you Easter-celebratin' crazies!



S