I get a lot of grief for being so critical of movies, TV shows and the like. I’m looking at you, Heroes, you bland, overrated piece of shit.

So when I read this, I felt a little better that there are others out there who actually believe that looking beyond the surface and analysing the inherent value of art is actually worth doing. Well said, I say. Well said.

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making – even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible” and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to think about a work of art. I don’t know anyone who thinks every work they encounter ought to only be enjoyed through conscious, active analysis – or if I do, they’re pretty annoying themselves. And I know many people who prefer not to think about much of what they consume, and with them I have no argument. I also have no argument with people who disagree with another person’s thoughts about a work of art. That should go without saying. Finally, this should also go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t: Believe me, the person who is annoying you so much by thinking about the art? They have already considered your revolutionary “just enjoy it” strategy, because it is not actually revolutionary at all. It is the default state for most of humanity.

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less – that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated – you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what’s going on in their own heads, you’re not helping anything; on the contrary, you’re acting as an advocate for entropy.

And most annoyingly of all, you’re contributing to the fucking conversation yourselves when you make your stupid, stupid comments. You are basically saying, “I think people shouldn’t think so much and share their thoughts, that’s my thought that I have to share.” If you really think people should just enjoy the movie without thinking about it, then why the fuck did you (1) click on the post in the first place, and (2) bother to leave a comment? If it bugs you so much, GO WATCH A GODDAMN FUNNY CAT VIDEO.

Hi there, long time no see. I went to Spain and stuff. It was brilliant. But enough of that.

Just time enough to share a link – from othieves.com, entitled “Crap Movie Comics”. Basically, they take a movie and re-write it into a bite-size comic delivered by the actors (and sometimes directors) from the movie, highlighting the biggest faults, inconsistencies and fallacies – basically what made the movie crap. The result is significantly more entertaining than the movie itself, and comes with the added bonus that you don’t need to spend £10 to go to the cinema to watch it and then wish you could un-watch it.

Those of you who remember my rant about that abominable remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves might enjoy their far less wordy, far funnier lampoon. Although I have to say, every single review of this movie – including my own – has exactly the same opening paragraph, just slightly reworded:

Hello, I’m Keanu Reeves. I’m a wooden, emotionless alien entity without the capacity for facial expression or vocal intonation. I am also playing a character in this movie.

Check out the whole list of Crap Movie Comics here. Some of my favourites:

• 10,000 BC
• Hancock
• Iron Man
• Wanted
• Resident Evil: Extinction

The funniest thing about them is that they are unbelievably, invariably accurate retellings of the movies in question. Awesome.

Shamelessly lifted, a ridiculously Americanised analogy, and a slight break from the normal stupid shit I post on here, but hey. Resonates.

I know a girl who broke up with a guy and she told him she wanted to ‘still be friends’. He said, “No thanks”. She wondered why he could’t fall back to being just friends after they had a romantic relationship. I came up with the “McDonalds Analogy” to try and explain it in a simple way that would help all women understand this tough question.

Imagine if you went to McDonalds a lot and ordered a Big Mac Combo meal. A Big Mac, Large Fries and a Coke. You really like this meal. One day, you pull up to the drivethrough and order the Big Mac Combo meal and the girl tells you, “I’m sorry – you can have the Big Mac and the Coke, but you can’t get fries with that any more”. You think about this for a moment, and sure – the Big Mac is the centerpiece of the meal, but McDonalds has some really good fries and you like their fries with your meal. So you say, I’ve been able to get fries with that before, why can’t I have fries with my Big Mac combo any more?” The girl says, “Well, I just think it is better if you only have the Big Mac and the Coke from here on out”.

At this point, a lot of guys are going to go to Wendy’s or BK and see if they can get fries with their combo at that drivethrough window. But there are some guys who REALLY like McDonalds Big Macs and they might think, “If I keep coming here and ordering the Big Mac and Coke, maybe she’ll change her mind and give me some fries with that later”. So they will keep on getting the combo without the fries until the deal breaker happens: One day that guy is going to order the Big Mac and Coke and then he’s going to pull up a little bit to pay, and someone else is going to pull up to the drivethrough speaker and order the Big Mac Combo, and he is going to hear the girl say, “Would you like fries with that?”

That’s why guys don’t like to be friends with a girl who breaks up with them.

There’s an older analogy on pretty much the same subject on bash.org, with fewer hamburgers:

DragonflyBlade21: A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.

It’s rare that you find a Craigslist bestof that not only has a title you can’t resist (“To the guy in my closet: you don’t have AIDS”), but gets increasingly hilarious as the post goes on. I feel kinda bad for the guy, but this is vengeful quick thinking at its very best.

Entire text follows – if you have the attention span of the average internet user, click away now. In fact, if you’re that way inclined, what the fuck are you doing on this blog anyway? It’s pretty clear that I couldn’t be concise if my life depended on it.

First off I want to relieve your fears that you probably don’t or at least I hope you don’t have AIDS.

When I came home 3 days ago I heard what was obviously mediocre sex going on in my bedroom. Since I quickly made the deduction that someone had probably not broken into my apartment for some quick copulation I figured I had just caught my wife cheating on me which I had long suspected. Your ofish grunts were so loud that I actually had to reopen the door and slam it again for you two to hear me. I stood in the entry for a while as I heard you both scramble before calling out that I was home.

When I walked into the bedroom my wife had some excuse about having a headache and when asked about the nighty she was wearing she said it was the most comfortable thing she could find. Oh…and btw, I don’t know how many affairs that you participate in but a word of advice is that when you hide in the closest from an angry husbands you shouldn’t leave a few toes hanging out from under the door. At this point I am in a bit of a predicament…. I could have the typical masculine response and open the door and beat the piss out of you but then you might file charges and quite frankly I just don’t really care enough. Not to mention I don’t know how big you are and I couldn’t think of anything much worse than finding your wife cheating on you and then get pummeled by her new lover. It entered my mind to have some marathon sex and make you stand and watch the whole thing but seeing how she is a dirty whore the idea grossed me out a little. I came pretty close to just hanging out and masterbating but I am glad I went the direction I did.

So in liue of those options I thought of the funniest thing I could do for my own personal amusement. I sat her down on the bed and looked deeply in her eyes and told her that I had been diagnosed with early stages of AIDS. Recently I have had a series of colds and went to the doctor who told me it was probably just a string of bad luck and it was going around a little bit. The whole thing took about 2 hours and involved a lot of yelling, accusing and crying.

I felt like I hadn’t punished you quite enough, even though I fully acknowledge that it really isn’t your fault at all, so I told her that the illness was making me tired so I needed to lay down. I could hear her on the phone making an appointment with the doctor and I could hear you rustling around in the closest. You did a great job holding still seeing how you probably aren’t used to standing in a 3′x4′ closest for hours and hours on end but if I hadn’t already known you were there you would have been caught for sure.

After about another hour of laying in bed thinking of what I was going to do I felt sorry for you to be mixed up in this crazy thing so I said I was going to go fill the prescriptions the doctor gave me and left the apartment so you could leave. I hope that you weren’t too uncomfortable in there and actually felt a little guilty about it later.

Anyways, I put this in missed connections because I actually wouldn’t mind taking you out and buying you a drink. After all that is some funny stuff to laugh about and you are saving me thousands in alimony since my wife cheated and the least I can do is repay you for a $4.00 beer.

Again no hard feelings and best of luck!

BTW, you might still want to get your self tested since my wife is a dirty whore.

Big Brother has been axed. Finally. For all the wrong reasons, of course – viewership figures, rather than the utterly moronic format and contestants – but it has been axed nonetheless. The show that brought to light the utterly irrelevant antics of the vacuous waste of oxygen Jade Goody has finally been put out of its misery, and the nation couldn’t be happier.

Looks like the average IQ of TV viewers is set to increase by approximately 35 points. Now all they need to do is kill the fucker who came up with the idea, and sterilise anybody who says that they will miss it.

Good fucking riddance.

Thanks to Wendy for the link, though as she correctly surmises, I would have seen it once I’d got into work anyway. So, I guess some thanks should go to Reddit, too.

From Randall Munroe’s nerdgasmic webcomic xkcd, this “Tech Support Cheat Sheet” almost completely sums up the exact process I go through every time I’m asked to fix somebody’s computer. Click to make big.

I’m not actually officially ‘tech support’ at work, but I fill in since there’s nobody else to do it. People at work in particular are constantly amazed when I fix their problems, paying me undeserved compliments such as calling me a ‘genius’, or ‘hero’, or that I ‘know everything’. In a poor attempt at modesty I tell them that I’m nothing of the sort, but I usually don’t tell them that judicious use of common sense (and Google, for the love of Gordon Ramsey, GOOGLE) is generally preferable to any tech support training.

Honestly, most of the tech problems I solve stem from 3 areas: mainly common sense and knowing how to use Google; and occasionally any previous experience with whatever software or hardware is generating the problem. I’ve never had formal IT training, I’ve simply been fixing computers for my family and friends for far too long.

This morning, a particularly lovely workmate couldn’t fathom why on earth her numpad was moving the cursor around her screen instead of typing numbers. She found it even more confusing when I walked up to her computer, tapped the ‘Num Lock’ key, gave her a short hug and walked away.

This comic has a more serious point than most xkcd strips, I reckon. Everybody has that techie friend they call upon whenever something goes wrong (some are lucky enough to have several), but for the benefit of their patience and sanity (and their motivation to help you when you actually have a problem more serious than “my text is coming out all in capital letters”), remember at least to do a quick Google search and spend a few minutes looking around before relying on others.

I have noticed, however, that my dad and I talk rather less often since the day I taught him to use Google…

So when I came across twitition.com, once again I marvelled (slightly) at the inventiveness of somebody who realised that Twitter would be a good platform for encouraging users to sign petitions. With its increasingly worldwide following, Twitition could be a powerful tool in spreading awareness and demonstrating public opinion on some of the world’s most heinous atrocities. It could, for example, show just how universally vilified the current political situation in Iran is.

So the question I’m sure you’re all asking is: with their current count of 2747 petitions and 117,250 signatures, what are the main talking points on Twitition? What petitions have captured the public’s imagination and caused them to fervently scribble their virtual names in exercise of democracy, humanity and good will?

Well, it’s all very serious stuff. Far and away in the lead is the petitioned titled we the undersigned petition AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices (currently 15389 signatures).

Political insurgency? Wars for oil? Child labour? To the denizens of Twitter, such paltry issues pale in comparison to their immovable whining that they have to pay more to upgrade their already overpriced iPhones to the latest model. Boo fucking hoo.

Besides the English contingent of moaning iPhone douchebags (it’s the same petition but shouting out O2 instead of AT&T), also high on the hitlist is we the undersigned petition Chris Brown to peform a MJ tribute at the @BetAwards (currently 3685 signatures).

Well, clearly the antics of this dancing wifebeater are integral to the continued well-being of the human race.

What next? We the undersigned petition to put Tom Fletcher on Heat’s 100 Sexiest Men List (currently 1352 signatures).

Wow. Just… wow.

As usual, it isn’t the product/service that I hate. It’s the users. Much as fans of Apple products are invariably posturing twats, heavy Twitter users are too often shallow, celebrity-obsessed teen shitwits with no better outlet for their misdirected angst.

So. What have we learned from this? Well, in terms of the ability to address a short, poignant message to (potentially) millions of like-minded people at the click of a mouse button, the wait is over. Now we just need to wait for somebody to come along with something worth saying.

Saw this picture this morning on Reddit – it honestly couldn’t be more true.

Perhaps proof that Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for compiling information that you probably wouldn’t find collated elsewhere, this list of the origins of the names of famous bands entertained me for a good 10 minutes today. I knew that Steely Dan were named after a dildo, and that the Pogues were originally named Pogue Mahone (Gaelic for “kiss my ass”), but some of the other etymologies are really rather interesting…

Some of my favourites:

Bay City Rollers — from Bay City, Michigan, which had been randomly selected by the band from a map.

Beastie Boys — According to frontman Mike D., BEASTIE stands for Boys Entering Anarchistic Stages Towards Internal Excellence.

Faith No More — Named after a race horse they saw listed on a racing form.

Led Zeppelin — Jimmy Page was drinking with The Who’s Drummer Keith Moon and Bassist John Entwhistle, who were complaining about their band mates Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. They joked about the two of them starting a band with Jimmy, and Keith Moon said “Yeah, that will go over like a lead zeppelin”. When Jimmy formed his own band, he remembered this and thought “Lead Zeppelin” would be good, both from that conversation and the heavy/light contradiction similar to the band named Iron Butterfly. They decided to drop the “a” so Americans wouldn’t mispronounce it.

Lynyrd Skynyrd — They were named after Leonard Skinner, a gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School who was notorious for strictly enforcing the school’s policy against boys having long hair.

Queen — Were originally called Smile. Singer Freddie Mercury came up with the new name for the band, later saying: “Years ago I thought up the name ‘Queen’ … It’s just a name, but it’s very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid … It’s a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of gay connotations, but that was just one face of it.”

The Velvet Underground — Were named after a book about sadomasochism by Michael Leigh.