The Criticality Project

04222010 - Angry Mike's Guide to Mass Transit Vol. 2 - Protecting Your Personal Space

2010-04-22T19:57:00.005-04:00

In every major city and several minor ones, there is some sort of government-funded Mass Transit. Nowhere else will you find the scents of established wealth comingle with the reek of unwashed homelessness quite like on a subway car or public bus. Darwin smiles as his fittest enjoy the best seats, while those that are weak (either in body or in heart) are trodden upon.

Last week we looked at identifying your competition. These people exist solely to invade your personal space and interfere with the enjoyment of your very life. Fortunately, there are a few simple strategies that can prevent your co-riders from coming too close. Since they lack your superior level of intelligence, you cannot simply assume others will know that a bench seat with three cushions was really engineered to accommodate one passenger. Additionally, they likely do not realize that mass transit is really only intended for use in SimCity. Given the stupidity of the masses, it would be foolish to not implement some (or all) of the strategies below.

Be fat: It seems so simple. Remember the parable of the fat, snobby, dickhead Hollywood Writer/Director who was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight because he was too fat to sit in one seat? He would have had plenty of space on a subway car, because he takes up 2 1/2 seats. That leaves a quarter of a seat (minimum) on either side of him. Bear in mind that this is a conservative estimate, since most people want nothing to do at all with fat people, and will treat your obesity as if it were some sort of rare communicable cancer. They would likely prefer to eat their own eyes rather than be seen sitting next to your fat ass.

Sleep on the subway: This seems easy too, right? Just pay two bucks and ride the rails all day and all night. Physically, no one can sit next to you because you take up an entire bank of seats. Wrap yourself in one of December's Sports sections and dream dreams of Big Rock Candy Mountain. No one is coming close.

Smell like ass: Simple enough. Just don't bathe. Wear dirty clothing. Don't comb your hair or groom in any other way. You could develop a wiping problem. You could stop applying deodorant or perfume or cologne or, if your 16 and from New Jersey, Axe Body Spray. If no one can bear the stench in your train car, no one will be able to sit near you without a Brotherhood of Steel self-contained suit of power armor.

Be scary looking: Again, so simple. And don't think that looking all emo and wearing eye-shadow and listening to your iPod is going to cut it. No one is interested in your stupid antics anyway, so just get a haircut and go get a job. I mean that you need to be truly scary - you need to be operating outside of mainstream society. Dark and foreboding, unkempt and religious, be reserving a seat for your imaginary friend, have a needle full of some sort of liquid, wear a shirt that says "Welcome to Rape City, Population: You" on the front of it. Feel free to get creative, since the choices are limitless.

Eat an entire meal while chewing with your mouth open: There should be nothing to it, since most of you fucking disgraceful excuses for human flotsam do this already. While it loses impact if you’re eating something less humiliating like a wrap or a salad, it can still be effective. When you show the world that you are an ill-mannered slob, it makes people wonder what else you do. You probably piss in the shower and are of questionable parentage. While they have no evidence of this, it will make the enemy less likely to get into an emotional place where it’s okay for them to sit next to you.

Read a book with a dragon on the cover: This is an advanced technique that is only recommended for veteran travelers. If, by some miracle, you could incorporate elves or undead on the cover as well, that would just be gravy. Paperback is best, since people seeing you with a hardcover book will assume you have at least a couple dollars to your name. This will cause them to be less threatened by your taste in "literature" and more willing to gamble on a seat next to you.

Now, it’s important to remember that these are only half a dozen of what I find are the most successful ways to ensure that you will earn that all-important elbow room when using mass transit. These rules are not set in stone, and in fact are designed to encourage creativity. Perhaps you could be fat, smell badly and fall asleep. Or you could take it a totally different direction that has not been outlined here. The goal is to be left alone, and how you go about securing that space and privacy is entirely up to you.

Remember that it's a warzone out there, and that people want nothing more than to step on your face. Come back next week when I look at ways to board and exit trains and buses in the most advantageous ways. It's almost time to pay all those other fuckers back.

The Only Place Trains Should Be Allowed
Fat Hollywood Dickhead
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Book With A Dragon On The Cover

04132010 - Angry Mike's Guide to Mass Transit Vol. 1 - Identifying Other Riders

2010-04-13T21:28:00.005-04:00

I can't speak to how things are in your area, but here in Boston we have the glorious Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. This name was apparently selected in favor of the more descriptive alternative: Nepotistic Urine-soaked Casualty Factory. Being the sexier, more urbane equivalent of Bear Grylls that I am, I've come up with some survival techniques that will help you during your time using mass transit.

Being able to identify your fellow riders is important. The good news though, is that 99% of all commuters will fall into at least one of the following five classes. Today, we'll look at how fun and easy it is to identify your co-riders. Knowing your enemy is the first part of urban survival.

Ostentatious Dick-in-a-Suit: This overpaid afterbirth is easily identified by his graying hair, his Wall Street Journal, and the staggering aura of arrogance that he exudes. He is likely insulted by the fact that he has to rub shoulders with you, which is indicated by the faint smell of douche that surrounds him. It is important to note that there are two versions of this guy - the low grade version is a twentysomething who thinks he's the love child of Vin Diesel and Gordon fucking Gekko. Since they are pissed they have to rely on mass transit, they will sit near you only as a last resort.

Thugs: Also easily identified. You will probably hear them before you see them, since whatever urban musical putrescence they're pumping into their ears is so loud that it will spill out and infest the rest of your train car. If they don't have music, they will be carrying on an unintelligible conversation so loudly (either on a cell phone or with their friends) that you'll think there's a Pentecostal Church in your train car. If that's not it, then you will surely smell them. They will likely be wearing enough cologne or body spray to make you consider calling a fucking HAZMAT crew. If you suffer from both anosmia and goddamn deafness, you can identify them from their ill-fitting clothing and readily apparent drug habit. It is unlikely they will try to sit near you, since they want to put their feet up like the sign specifically tells them not to.

Socially Inept Nerds: Cities generally have more than their fair share of colleges, biotech firms, engineering companies, and museums. That means that when they're not driving their 1987 Biodiesel Volkswagen Rabbit to some Enlightened Academic Hippiefest, they're taking up space on your train. They're easy to spot. They almost universally wear glasses and store things in the breast pocket of their dangerously tight Oxford shirt. Things that don't fit in their breast pocket are put into a 90s-style backpack - quite possibly the same monogrammed LL Bean backpack they used in 8th grade. They also look like they could give a two-hour lecture on Moore's Law or some other nonsense with no preparation whatsoever. They are a serious personal space threat - they lack the social skills to know that a two seat bench is really only meant for one person.

White Women: Either the career type (Burberry accessories, Blackberry, with a terrified look on their face) or the college type (sweatpants that say "Pink" across the ass, Ugg boots, terrified look on their face) or both may be on your train. The career types are generally dressed quite nicely, and they clutch their snazzy travel mugs as if it contained their deepest, darkest secret. They have that look in their eye that tells the world that they are terrified of being 30 and unmarried, along with resentment towards the magazines that lied to them about how they would feel okay if they put their careers first. Since you are obviously a potential rapist - because to them, everyone is a potential rapist - they will not sit next to you unless forced to.

Foreigners: I fucking hate foreigners. They fucking stink. They smell the way my nuts would smell after a long jog, if I were to ever take a long jog. Their clothing is at least 20 years behind the curve and their language can only be truly communicated in a full-throated shout. To someone not from Outer Slobovia, the 40 minute conversation will sound like some strange combination of The Tower of Babel and a turtles having sex. I hope you weren't planning on concentrating on ANYTHING while you were on your trip, because Glopdos and Buloogi have to talk about what an awesome time their Cousin Balki had in Chicago. They are the most severe threat to your personal space, because Europe is basically one big communal bathhouse.

That's all for now, but be sure to come back next week when I discuss ways to protect your personal space on the subway. It's a war zone out there, and people will step on your face if it means they'll get to work 2 milliseconds before you do.

Don't let them.

Bear Grylls
Gordon Gekko
Anosmia
Moore's Law
Cousin Balki

03302010 - The More Things Change...

2010-03-29T19:30:00.005-04:00

It's not even a word. “Xfinity.” Grassfuckers.

I want to know who the fuck you think you're kidding. Do you really think that that I'm going to fall for that? Do you think that after you combine some of the most douche-baggy practices that a company can possibly pull off that I will forgive everything if you change your name? Naturally, since I forgot all about the molestations when our homeboy changed his name from Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope Benedict, right? Apparently it's a valid rebranding gambit. Seriously. You must really think I'm sofa-king-we-todd-ed.

Now, the day you sign a contract with any telecommunications company - whether it's cellular, cable, satellite, whatever - they inscribe the one year anniversary of your signature on the side of a huge black dildo. When the date on the side of the dong matches the date on your Far Side Page-A-Day calendar, they fuck you with it. It’s plain and simple. They make you their prison bitch, and the only way that you can mitigate the pain is to point your toes inward and hope they're gentle.

The first thing you'll notice is that your bill is triple what it used to be. This forces you to decide just how much you like watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers having sex with every female in sight. Also, you're required to evaluate just how much you like playing Modern Warfare 2, unless you're okay with having your face violated every time you sign in due to latencies in the thousands. You probably want cable or better connectivity.

You also need to determine if you're hip enough to have your cell phone be your only phone. Think long and hard...do you get good signal everywhere in your house? Because if you don't, and you need to call 911 because your neighbor's baby has a 106-degree fever and he spent his money on tattoos and nipple piercings instead of medical care for his 4 month old daughter, and he bangs on your door and tells you to call 911 for him, you will carry the shitty image of an Insane Clown Posse fan holding a seizing infant like it’s a loaf of bread with you for the rest of your life, no matter how much it's his fault and not yours.

Now when you call to get things sorted out, it's important you follow the rules of calling customer service. Feel free to refer to my guide Clarity for tips. I hope you put some of your skill points in to Perform (Monkey Dance), because you're about to get transferred at least 5 times. Finally, Jugdesh and his buddy Baboo will restructure your plan so now you get HBO, Showtime, and ESPN Ocho, and your bill is only 180 bucks a month. Wow. What a deal. That's way better than the hundred I was paying two weeks ago.

Soon after, the outages will start. You see, Baboo's buddy Singh has a degree from the Calcutta Institute of Tech Support, and he saw something out of the ordinary with your router and decided to "fix" it. Now thanks to Singh your phone doesn't get dial tone, your Internet cuts out every time you microwave some leftovers and your DVR doesn't tape Lost, and now you have to kill everyone.

The outages aren't just limited to your cable service. Since Comcast is going steady with the power company, the two of them will have some sort of Hackers-inspired face-off where they alternate spotty service and power outages.

11 phone calls and 2 home visits later, things will seem back to normal, but let's not forget the bill that's $180. I'll say it again for the cheap seats: ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY (ONE EIGHT ZERO DOT ZERO ZERO) FUCKING DOLLARS to get buttfucked by Baboo from half a world away. Sure they call you with a survey to ask you how they're doing, but they do so in the middle of your motherfucking dinner. Or worse - they call while you're hunched over your computer screen watching a choppy-as-fuck streaming version of last Tuesday's Lost over their “high speed” Internet service. Baboo's cruelty knows no bounds.

You'll be given a 20 dollar statement credit for your troubles, as if that's supposed to take away your searing urge to flense the skin from everyone in their organization. In actuality, however, your bill is still 60% more than it used to be, but the company thinks you're so fucking stupid that you'll look at it like gaining 20 bucks instead of losing 60. I guess they can probably tell this sort of thing from your bill, since you ordered Hellboy 2, and that is proof that you at least enjoy a good intellectual slumming.

Eventually though, you will reach the tipping point. Things have gotten really bad, and you're just about to switch to Cox, because at least Cox is a more honest name for a cable provider, Comcast pulls the ol' switcheroo on you and pops out of a telephone booth renamed Xfinity.

I feel like I'm Marla fucking Singer and I just walked in on Edward Norton with a bullet hole in the side of his face.

I don't understand how we allow companies to do this sort of thing to us. God damn you, Kabletown.

Xfinity
Pope Benedict, Molester-in-Chief
Sofa-king-we-todd-ed
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Sex Machine
Marla Singer

03232010 - Angry Mike Goes to the Movies 5: Now Angry in 3D!

2010-03-23T16:49:00.002-04:00

This week, instead of complaining about this movie or that, I'm going to turn the focus of the Angry Pulpit on the latest and greatest craze that's sweeping the galaxy. No, not Slurms MacKenzie. Movies in 3D.

Hollywood needs 3D like someone in renal failure needs dialysis. It's simply not an option for them. The reason is simple - no one in California has had an original idea in over 30 years. Being an unoriginal bunch of asshammers, Hollywood needs you to embrace 3D as if it were your own child. Ideally, you would be that little monkey who would rather starve next to something cuddly than be fed by something uncomfortable.

Don't let them win.

Most importantly, 3D is a gimmick. Hollywood is basically selling you a car with their right hand while the fuck your wife in the back seat of the car you're buying with their left. They want you to look at all the pretty, pretty pictures and smell the music and be distracted like you're Timothy Leary enjoying his latest batch of blotter paper. Meanwhilst you will not notice the fact that you're being shown the exact same shit that you can see on FX in a few months.

Take a similar technology - IMAX. It’s neat stuff. Oh my god that's a big fucking penguin. That’s amazing. Holy shit, we're in space. Jupiter is fucking enormous. It's a once in a while experience that's neat every couple of years, but to have it forced upon me well...that's about as appealing as having Walt Disney rise from the grave and rape my throat.

And after he's done with your throat he will move on to your wallet. Don't forget that most theaters are going to make you pay extra for those stupid glasses that have all the aesthetics of train wreck. Near me, the theater extorts an extra $1.50 for a pair of glasses that were probably made in a sweatshop outside of Kowloon for less than half a cent. They're probably injection molded out of hardened leftover toy car paint that China couldn't export, thanks to a recall attributed to the paint causing finger cancer.

That paint is probably the reason why whenever I watch a movie through those glasses, I leave the theater feeling like I have tumors growing on my optic nerves. The headache they give you is unlike any other. So you get to pay extra money to see (listen closely because this part's very important) THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING, and then leave in excruciating pain. It makes about as much sense as paying a dentist extra to deliberately fuck you up while he fills your cavity.

Oh and I almost forgot. When you're done they have a recycling box outside the theater so you can throw your glasses out. Try "so we can repackage them like fucking bowling shoes."

PT Barnum is probably in Hell, and he's probably laughing his ass off.

I also enjoy the way they advertise movies like the "new" (read as: "remake") of Clash of the Titans. In huge letters that are only marginally smaller than Liam Neeson's massive Paris-crushing cock, they tout the 3D release. Then, in letters smaller than a cigarette warning label, they tell you that it is also available in 2D for people with tiny penises who enjoy anonymous gay sex while watching Family Matters. Funny thing is that even if you want to see it in 2D, it's only showing is at 8:50am in Fairbanks, Alaska at the Fairbanks Meth-o-plex.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that there is no reason to continue to endorse this fad. In the words of Admiral Ackbar - "It's a trap!" It's a trick. It's more like like Smell-o-vision than Technicolor. People that tell you it's the new Technicolor are, quite simply, fucking liars. When last I looked, no one ran out of Avatar screaming, like they did when shit turned to color in the Wizard of Oz.

Well…people may have run out screaming, but not because it was in 3D.

Slurms MacKenzie
Cuddly Monkey Experiments
Timothy Leary
Admiral Fucking Ackbar
Smell-O-Vision

03182010 - Angry Mike Goes to the Movies 4: A Clockwork Angry

2010-03-18T20:44:00.011-04:00

So the time has come again to write another review, and while most everyone else goes out and uses a 5th Century Saint's Feast Day as an excuse to wear green and binge drink, I'm home writing this. Instead of wasting my money on some shitpile like Brooklyn’s Finest or whatever permutation of Jason Bourne that Matt Damon has signed on to play this week, I'm going all the way back to 1971. I’m watching Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Until recently I had never seen it, and I figured it was time to give this “classic” a shot.

I thought I’d write this because everyone is always dryhumping their anime body pillows over how awesome Stanley Kubrick is and I wanted to see something besides Full Metal Jacket, which is a movie I enjoyed for about 30 minutes. He made The Shining. He made 2001. People talk about him like he's some legendary super-director who has put every skill point he's ever gotten into Craft Wondrous Item (Cinema), and now he's basically the Elminster of filmmaking. Apparently he is for film what Jesus is for Christians.

Imagine my surprise when I turn on A Clockwork Orange. Let me just start by saying this movie is so incredibly fucked up, it made the person who did the music for so confused they got a sex change. That's right. It is so horrible and twisted that Walter Carlos is now Wendy Carlos. Look it up.

We’re dropped into the not-too-distant future, and London is about as safe as letting Michael J. Fox give your crotch a straight razor shave. The movie opens with a pre-Star Trek: Generations Malcolm McDowell and his droogs sitting in a bar enjoying some fine Miloko, laced perhaps with some tasty Velocet, to get them ready for some of the old ultraviolence. Oh yeah. The entire movie is scripted in the same storytelling style as the book. This means that just like you did with Precious (assuming you’re one of the 9 people that saw it), you're going to need to dedicate a percentage of your brain's processing power to trying to infer what in the shit the characters are saying.

The movie's messages of social decay seem to get lost in all the ultraviolence you'll have to vidi. Maybe that's the point, but within the first 15 minutes of we're shown the surprisingly unfunny beating of a homeless man, an attempted gang rape that’s broken up by a gang fight, a car theft, a break-in, another beating, and of course another rape (successful this time). To add an exponential level of creepiness, the second rape takes place while the main character sings "Singin' in the Rain” to the victim’s husband.

Based on this, I can only imagine what kind of websites Kubrick would frequent if he were alive today. Jesus.

Did I mention there were penises EVERYWHERE in this movie? They are typically displayed next to busts of Ludwig Van Beethoven. What. The. Fuck.

Eventually our brother Alex is arrested (big fucking surprise) for doing his best impression of a gay Niko Bellic by beating a crazy cat lady to death with a huge ceramic dick. Seriously. This movie makes Superbad seem somehow anti-dick. In prison he volunteers for an experimental treatment whereby he will be conditioned to feel ill when exposed to the prospect of sex, violence, or Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Everyone agrees that Alex is cured of his love for deaf composers, and he's released out into the world. He gets jumped by his old buddies, and shortly thereafter pulls a “Brooks was here” and tries to kill himself by jumping face first out a window. What a fucking ingrate. All those tax dollars down the shitter. The powers that be realize they can't take the heat for this kid trying to off himself, so they reverse his conditioning. It turns out there's no cure for violence and sexual deviousness and society is fucked after all. Huzzah! Crippling depression for all! No happy ending for you here, no matter how much you tip.

The book apparently has a fourth act that's not included in the movie. This chapter is allegedly about Alex's redemption or some shit. I wouldn't know, because even though this book was assigned to me in Mr. Martin's 12th Grade English class, I never read the motherfucker, so it might as well be about pork and pumpkin pie.

At the end of all things, I would have selected a less esoteric title. I would have stayed away from obscure Cockney sayings, and instead just gone with something more descriptive:

Rape ‘n’ Beethoven.

Japanese Body Pillow
Elminster
Walter Carlos
Niko Bellic
Brooks Was Here

03122010 - Angry Mike Goes To The Movies 3: Angry In Wonderland

2010-03-12T10:37:00.010-05:00

It’s true that there aren't many guarantees in life, but one of them is that if you marry a girl named Alice, you can pretty much count on becoming intimately familiar with Lewis Carroll, his stories, and every interpretation of his work in every possible medium. Over the last year alone this includes: a borderline pornographic comic book from Zenescape Comics, a SyFy adaptation involving Tim Curry and Big Love's Roman Grant, and now Tim Burton's batshit crazy interpretation of Alice In Wonderland.

Tim Burton, the "genius" behind such gems as Batman Returns and some other crap from the 90s, employs his usual suspects in Alice in Wonderland. His wife Helena Bonham Carter, and of course his bottom, Johnny Depp, are both present. Burton's butlers Christopher Lee and Alan Rickman provide voice talent. It's like they said "I saw the fuckin' costume you have Depp in, and you can fuckin' forget it." The Cult of Burton also welcomes two novitiates - Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.

We start out presumably in London, and a grade-school Alice is unable to sleep, complaining about how her character is being crushed under a steaming pile of foreshadowing. Fast-forward like 10 years and Alice is now about to be engaged to some Victorian era d-bag. After a few hallucinations of rabbits, our heroine finally says to an entire party of rich British jerkoffs that she is out like Harvey Milk at a Liberace concert.

From here on in, the world is basically entirely CG. And not just any CG - the movie is filmed entirely in Burton's trademarked InsanoVision, right down to Johnny Depp’s ridiculous googly eyes. This means that every single thing is going to be highly stylised. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it is absolutely fucking terrifying. Since Tim Burton is apparently an original member of Dethklok, moats are filled with the severed heads of the Queen's victims and the Knave of Hearts has a heart-shaped eyepatch like he's some kind of gay emo Nick Fury. The March Hare is completely and utterly beyond redemption insane, while Tweedledee and Tweedledum look like twin retarded Jonah Hill fetuses. The magical part of all this is that because Burton's pervasive vision is equally nutzors throughout, it all seems to go together.

So after a couple hours of an improbable string of wardrobe malfunctions due to Alice's binging on magical foodstuffs (she ends up going through outfits like a heroin-addicted diabetic goes through needles), all the pieces are in place and it's time for the final rumble. Blondie gets one last bit of guidance from the caterpillar version of Severus Snape before he does the caterpillar version of falling out a window of Nakatomi Plaza. After that she's off to fight the Red Queen’s Jaberwocky, just like the Marauder's Map-inspired prophecy says to. This seems like a perfectly logical reason to fight the fantasy equivalent of a fucking Super Star Destroyer, right?

The Jaberwocky, voiced by Dracula-turned-evil-sorcery-guy Christopher Lee, greets his foe with dialogue that is virtually plagarised from Attack of the Clones (this is not a compliment). As an audience member, you're basically like "Fuckin' great. Now she has to fight Count Dooku," and you know how this is gonna go, since Alice is essentially a live action version of Chi Chi from Dragonballz, and promptly makes with the shitwreckin'.

This is a Disney movie, so I’m not really spoiling the ending by telling you what you know has to happen. Let’s just say though that Christopher Lee is the cinematic combat equivalent of the Chicago Cubs. Here, he is Miss Rhode Island and Alice is Mike Tyson. You get the idea yet? Lee is basically any female, while Alice is Ben Roethlisberger, and Wonderland is a woman’s bathroom in a bar in Georgia. How about now?

Your enjoyment of this movie will almost certainly hinge upon your preconceived notions of Tim Burton. The bottom line is that if you're the type that dresses up every Halloween as Jack Skellington, you will likely spend most of this movie pinching your nipples while humming tunes from Sweeney Todd in a display of temporary Asperger's. If you were never a fan of Burton to begin with, you will enjoy this movie about as much as you would enjoy gay sex with a lawn dart.

For my part, I fear that Disney has lost it's muchness.

Harvey Milk
Dethklok
Nick Fury
Marauder's Map
Nakatomi Plaza
Chi Chi
Miss Rhode Island and Mike Tyson

03022010 - Angry Mike Goes to the Movies 2: Mike Stays In

2010-03-02T19:53:00.007-05:00

So this week, instead of wasting my money on Kevin Smith's steaming pile of fish ejaculate entitled Cop Out, I have instead turned my attention to something that I was able to DVR. SyFy was kind enough to air The ENTIRE FUCKING Stand in an effort to compete with the Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics. So if terrifying inflatable Mounties and Greek National Anthems are not your thing, you had options. The TV version runs for 8 hours, but with the DVD copy you can clock in at a marginally more merciful 366 minutes.

To be fair, I watched this monstrosity in two sittings. To put things into some sort of frame of reference, consider what else you could turn your attention to with that time. You could: fly to Chicago, eat at Gino's East, and fly the fuck home; beat the single player mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 twice; go to Church eight times; perform a fucking heart transplant. Entire baseball seasons will come and go while you watch The Stand. However, if instead of all these things you still crave the quintessential buffet of early 90s television, you've come to the right place. This shit makes Twin Peaks it’s bitch.

Gary Sinese, cast at the pinnacle of his inexplicable popularity, takes a break from space-related movies to play Stu Barnes, who is basically St. Joseph from East Texas. So convincing is he in this role people are required to refer to him as "East Texas" so they can remind you that the dropout from Apollo 13 is from East Texas. Other blasts from the past involve Molly fucking Ringwald, epically miscast as some sort of weepy Mary figure, Rob Lowe as a deaf and mute analog of an occasionally shirtless Jesus, quintessential backup player Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg, and an assortment of other faceless role-player types from the 90s. If you take the time to watch The Stand, I promise you that you will spend most of your time saying "I know that guy from somewhere!" Problem is that "somewhere" is probably Nickelodeon's Hey Dude, or something equally obscure.

I'm not fucking kidding. The dad from Hey Dude is one of Randall Flagg's henchmen.

It's pretty obvious from the beginning of the story that this is basically "Stephen King Rewrites The Revelation to John". An Ace of Base version of H1N1 kills just about everybody, and only a handful of people are immune. The survivors have dreams that lure them either to fucking Oklahoma (uh...what?) or Las Vegas (win). Eventually, the "good" migrate to Boulder, CO (possibly for a glimpse of some sweet tricks performed by Shawn White) while the "evil" people are still chillin' in Vegas (probably because they rule). Eventually, the elderly black lady that has lured folks to Colorado with dreams and candy appoints a group of leaders comprised exclusively of the main characters. If that's not providence, I don't know what is.

There's some additional adversity, like when the kid in the GOTCHA! shirt, who hates the good guys with the realness (because mega-pimp Gary Sinese cockblocked his chances at having sex with an already-pregnant Molly Ringwald), blows up President Bartlett's Deputy Communications Director with a shoebox. The uglier of the two ugly chicks from Just Shoot Me has epic chin sex with the devil, while The Retard is turned into a one man sleeper cell and sent off to spy on the people in Vegas. Thankfully, the old bitch dies. She's dehydrated or beaten to death or something. I really don’t know because I was in the kitchen making some Ramen, and couldn't be bothered to rewind my DVR since I hated this character and her down-homey wisdom from the second I saw her guitar-playin' ass. Anyway, since the old lady critically fails her Fortitude save to avoid death, she’s off to meet Billy Mays, but not until after she tells the dude from CSI: New York to confront the guy from Law and Order: Criminal Intent out in Vegas.

So, of course, because they were told to by a dead (probably) hooker (probably) they used to have dreams about, they obey. You'll find that this sort of thing happens a lot in The Stand. Thanks to their faith, Gary Sinese eats shit wicked hard and breaks his leg trying to climb a hill and his boys are like "Fuck this noise - this isn't The Hangover" and keep going to Vegas without him. The preachy old dude in the fedora sacks up and actually mouths off to The Denim Devil who, in turn, has his boy smote the old dude with a .38 Special, whilst the remaining two good guys (the one who looks like he's straight out of Empire Records and the other who is straight out of...well…nothing else because he sucks and is fat) manage to get strung up on the rack. Just when they're about to be executed, one of the Randall Flagg's own people drives into town with a nuclear warhead, which is promptly detonated by a Level 9 Cleric Spell “90s Special Effect Hand of God”.

A nuclear bomb. Are you fucking kidding me? Eight fucking hours and you decide to kill Satan with a nuclear weapon? I wish Stephen King would just break into my house and cum on my face while I'm sleeping.

I was sitting there, like the illiterate retard, saying "I wish I wasn't so retarded."

But it’s not over. This happened at the 7 hour 35 minute mark of the telecast. Stephen King’s walking interpretation of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (Gary and The Retard) make their way back to Boulder, only to discover that Pretty In Pink has finally given birth to her bastard child. The audience knows that everything is going to be okay because some kid has a vision of the old black lady from before. Or, to be more specific, HER DISEMBODIED FACE IN THE NURSERY HOVERING OVER MOLLY RINGWALD'S BABY! Oh. My. Fucking. God. The creepy-ass old lady face-hoverage is far and away the most terrifying part of the entire series, and with that, the credits roll.

M-O-O-N…that spells shitty ending. Laws yes.

Gino's East
Hey Dude
Gotcha!
Deputy Communications Director

02242010 - Angry Mike Goes To The Movies

2010-02-24T18:59:00.019-05:00

So after months of buildup going back to last fall, and culminating in weeks of advertising spots during prime time, Shutter Island finally debuted in theaters. The last time I saw a Martin Scorsese movie in the theater, the guy I had previously known as President Bartlett was doing a double gainer off the roof of a soon-to-be-overpriced building, due largely to his association with the Boston Police Department and a smartass remark about Notre Dame Law School.

Marty's inexplicably bizarre (and obviously sexual) obsession with Beantown continues unabated in the accent-rich film Shutter Island. I found out after the fact that it's all based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. It's also available in Graphic Novel form for those of you that can't get through a book without pretty, pretty pictures. Evidently this same guy also wrote Mystic River, and obviously I have no intention of reading any of these due to an existing backlog of toilet material.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays "doooly ahppointed federal maaaahshal" Teddy Daniels, a fan of Lucky Strikes and ugly-as-fuck neckties. Leo's partner Chuck Aule is portrayed by an unremarkable flesh-colored sack of flab named Mark Ruffalo. Other supporting cast members include Sir Ben Kingsley playing a psychiatrist who deserves some sort of medal for keeping a straight face while listening to Max Von Sydow's English as a Second Language. Seriously. Sir Ben has to chill while Max and Leo actually have a scene in which they debate whose accent bites more dicks. Von Sydow displays his range by playing an arrogant, elderly German assweed. Someone needs to tell the old European crapstain that he peaked in 1998 during Needful Things.

The movie opens with some super-manly vomiting from Leo (surprising since he has boat movie experience), and Leo and Ruffalo exchange some flaccid dialogue and immediately uncork the "Dead Wife/Widower" plot bottle. This is a ploy for sympathy that you've seen before - you were browbeaten with it by Russell Crowe in Gladiator and roofied with it by Jude Law in The Holiday. The boat ride ends with a poor man's Tony Soprano meeting Leoffalo (they're dating now) on the docks of the titular island and showing them around Isolated Foggy-Ass Island Fortress of Solitude Filled With Batshit Crazy Violent Offenders.

We're told the Marshals are there to locate an escaped convict/patient to further the plot, and Boston Marty uses clever camera angles and music cues to fill in the space between scenes from the movie's commercials, and we get a guided tour of what Lost would be like if it were filmed in Boston Harbor circa 1950. Eventually we discover that the female escapee left behind a note in her cell with a clue on it. The hiding place is straight out of fucking ConAir, and the writer must have just seen Die Hard With A Vengeance, since the clue itself is apparently inspired by Jeremy Irons' magical mystery riddles that cause John McClane to hit his Limit Break and take out Jeremy's helicopter with a fucking pistol and/or Omnislash.

But I digress.

After a meeting with Doctor Ghandi and partaking in the aforementioned Great Accent Pissing Match of 2010, Leoffalo decide they're going to get some shuteye. By the time Leo wakes up, we've learned a few things. One - he has sweaty nightmares about his wife bleeding to death while she's on fire. Fuck. Two - he has flashbacks to his service in WWII and his experiences at Dachau. Fuck. Three - The writers are lazy as shit and have used the Plot-O-Matic 5000 to cause a massive storm to keep anyone from leaving the island and also a power outage. Convenient as fuck.

You see, the storm causes Leoffalo to end up cuddling together in a mausoleum talking about how The Old Guy From BloodRayne and Max the Creepy Nazi (how the English guy and the German guy in 1950 are buddies and haven't beaten the shit out of each other is beyond me), along with Amateur Tony Soprano, are all in on this big conspiracy to keep Leoffalo from the truth. At this point, after 20 dollars for tickets and 25 more for a dollar of soda, you're starting to get the feeling that you're being date-raped by the head of the AV club.

We meet a few other characters from here on out, all of whom are minor players as the story unravels. There's the crazy cat lady that tells Leo to flee like a bitch, there's the crazy warden who offers to bite Leo's eye a la the Jerky Boys' Pet Cobra, and yet another crazy lady that lives in a cave, and it's all very reminiscent of a foggy, shorter version of Lost. You know how you get the feeling you know where it's going for the most part, and you're only sticking around to see how the director and writers are going to get you there?

Let's just say that by the time they finally rely on yet another time-honored Hollywood trick, you've upgraded from date-rape to feeling like the good people at the movie studio gave you a Cleveland Steamer against your will.

I guess in the end, it reminded me of The Good Shepherd. I don't know though that I would see it in the theater if I wasn't a movie guy to begin with. Critics will probably jizz in their pants and talk about how Super-Mega-Xtreme-InsanO Awesome it is, because they are basically whores. It'll be worth a spot in your Netflix queue because despite all of the above, it's still better than most at what it does. Give it some thought if you want a movie that is The Usual Suspects meets The Shawshank Redemption meets Revolution Road meets Memento. In Boston Harbor.

So sure, there were some significant plot details here, but it's vague enough that nothing will totally ruin the movie for you. If it did, well, that's too fucking bad for you I guess unless you've trained your mind to unread what you've just read. Oh, you can't CTRL+Z undo that shit? Instead, why don't you go watch Contact? In space she sees her dad.

Cleveland Steamer
John McClane
Omnislash
Jerky Boys - Pet Cobra

02122010 - Clarity

2010-02-12T10:01:00.007-05:00

It's been a while since I wrote anything here, and it's largely because I am not the type of person that finishes things. I like to get to about 90-98% completion, and then abandon whatever I'm working on. This applies to a lot of different aspects of my life: video games, movies, books, college applications, friendships, etc. For that, I apologize. It's something I'm working on...but not that hard, of course.

So I answer a phone for one of the nation's largest financial institutions. I'm not going to tell you which one (and if you already know then just keep it to your fucking self) because it's not relevant. I wanted to shed some light on what it's like when you call a company that provides a service for you. Just remember through all this, that I am one of the more compassionate employees at my company. Imagine what it will be like for you when stupid Johnny Fucko who only works to afford his crush videos answers the phone.

Someone will answer the phone and (because they're required to) tell you who you've called, their name, and ask what it is you feel is so fucking dire. The death of their soul starts the second they take their first call, and every time they answer the phone, it dies a little bit more. It's basically the opposite of what happens to an angel when a bell rings.

Next, you will explain your problem. Let me remind you that most people that call customer service are essentially one step away from being criminally insane. You will call in expecting a refund or a discount or some changes to be made because you're assuming some experience you've had is somehow strange or unique. In actuality, you are about as unique as a one dollar bill.

This is where the lies commence. You will know that you have entered the Realm of Falsehood when the associate says something to the effect of "I'll be happy to help." Some shitbirds actually say things like "I'd be delighted," or "Of course. I apologize. Let me assist you." For me, this is where the self-loathing really kicks in.

There are basically two kinds of calls. There are the kind where you want me to tell you how to do something because you are too fucking lazy or self-important to read instructions. Falling under this category are also calls where you want to know what will happen if you do something. "If I eat my debit card, will my shit hurt the day after tomorrow?" Then there are calls where you want me to do something. This is purely risk-seeking behavior. These are my favorites, because they're the calls during which you throw yourself at my feet, beg me to make it all better, and hope I don't fuck you with a rake. "Can you refund my fee for [whatever retard move you pulled to earn a fee] for me?"

Let's look at the factors that go into determining if you get what you want.

1- Did you ask nicely, or are you being a huge douche? Telephone gangstas that yell and scream may have compliant spouses, but you cannot hit me because you love me. You do not intimidate me, and I will drop the hammer on you and call your local police department and give them your address. It's been done before. Ask the guy from Pittsburgh who threatened to blow me up if I didn't give back his late fee. I know you're angry, but take your flaccid rage and tuck it back between your legs, little man.

2- Where are you from? I can tell where you are from your area code, which pops up on my phone. So without seeing any of your information, I know how your request is going to go. This is different for each associate, but for my part, I am more inclined to help you or give you good guidance if you are from 920, 312, 610 or 215, 203 or 860 and maybe 252. Seem unfair? It is. Too fucking bad. Eat a dick.

3- What kind of products do you already have with my company? I am much more likely to hook up someone if they have a Yankees credit card. Now here's where it gets dicey for you as the customer when you decide on a product or service. Do I get the Yankees card, knowing that there are likely many many people out there that hate them? It could go either way. You could get fuckin' Jimmy O'Shea from Southie on the phone, or you could get Mike V. whose family is from Jerome fucking Avenue in the Bronx.

Or you could get fuckin' Ravidam Patel and then it wouldn't matter either way.

4- Are you calling for your child? Mummsies and Dadsies that call for their college-aged children make me want to actually increase the charges that are already on the account. I can't talk to you about their information anyway, you useless fucking mouth-breather. You can suck on a popscicle made of frozen AIDS virus if you think that just because you failed as a parent to instill your children with the presence of mind to manage their adult business relationships, that you can now expect extraordinary consideration.

5- Did you bother to learn how your product or service works before agreeing to it? If not, I can't help you. You have painted yourself into a corner, and I am not about to put myself out to help you. Didn't know you had to pay your mortgage even though you were refinancing? Didn't know that you weren't on Daddy's insurance the second you finished college? You need to take the pacifier out of your cramhole long enough to ask these questions, or take the fucking blinders off long enough to read your disclosures. Companies DISCLOSE shit in them. Salespeople are in sales because they're good at lying to you about what's expected of you.

I can't help you if you bend over and let the salespeople fuck you.

6- Are you poor? Are you poor because you get 800 dollars a month in Social Security, but spend 200 dollars a month on your iPhone, and 500 dollars at Yackov's Bling Explosion? Can you no longer afford food for the month? You can fuck your own mouth if you think you are getting special treatment from me. I really hate poor people.

7- Did you ask correctly? I don't mean "did you ask the right questions," because I decided back when I saw your area code if I was going to go out of my way for you. I mean "did you utilize the English language properly, or did you take more liberties with it than Pacman Jones takes with a Las Vegas stripper?" If you have poor diction, or talk like you're on fucking Gossip Girl, I can pretty much promise you will walk away more disappointed than my father is whenever I speak to him.

I guess, in summation, I've realized that deciding to help you or not is the closest I'll ever get to Jesus Christ. I get to decide on you, not just on your problem. I get to pick you, or I can discard you. All those games of kickball are coming home to roost, motherfuckers.

Crush Videos
Pacman Jones

01282010 - Forced To Create

2010-01-28T22:51:00.000-05:00

So here we have what happens when someone as emotionally constipated as I am tries to crap out something meaningful.

I was talking to a friend of mine at work the other day.

Wait. Stop there. Reboot. You have a friend? Yes dicksmoke, I have a friend. I used to have two friends. One of them left for a better job somewhere else, so now I have a friend.

I'm sorry for interrupting. Please continue.

Thank you for your permission to continue my own blog, Oh Masterful And Generally More In Control Of Things Other Self.

So I was talking to a friend of mine at work the other day about forcing oneself to create. He's a gifted artist, and I'm convinced I'm a passable writer. Now, as I mentioned earlier in my blog, I am the only child of two relatively wealthy individuals. This is a fact I will not hesitate to remind you of at every possible turn, since it's basically all I have going for me. I hope you are enjoying me browbeating you with my family's wealth. Moving right along, I was essentially raised to think that everything I ever did was fabricated out of liquid awesome. While not far from the truth, the turkeys that I made out of the outline of my hand are far from hanging in the Louvre.

Shitty macaroni necklaces that were sprayed with this horrible gold spray paint that was so toxic it made you an honorary member of the Rolling Stones. It never seems to dry because you went batshit with the can of paint, and your mother now has 20 pieces of uncooked gold penne with which she can decorate the inside of a trash can. You disappoint her.

Fucking terrible graphical representations of a Philadelphia street in which you misspell the name of one of the stores and label it "Bloomidales". You are also incapable of fitting all 12 numbers inside the clock face of Independence Hall. You are a bucket of failure.

The cut-and-paste afterbirths you were assigned that essentially became massive sandwiches of paper/chunks of Elmer's paste/paper. The best part was after, when you realized you forgot to color it before it was cut out. Instead of a desk as your coloring surface you are now forced to color on glue. Nice work, fuckwit.

When I look back, and think of a mental image of what that child must have looked like working on that cut-and-paste project during Phonics. I would like to send that little 6-year-old boy at Scenic Hills Elementary School in Springfield, Pennsylvania one thing:

"Jesus Christ. Look at yourself.
You are a fucking mess."

So here we are. You can be forced to create, but only by a grade school teacher. You will likely be less than 8 years old and your mother will probably cry and/or start drinking after you show her what you've "created". And with that, this abortive effort of a thought experiment has come to an end. As you can plainly see this post is no Ship of Theseus. Perhaps it is more akin to a Shit of Pheseus. Ha. See what I did just there?

If you meet Pheseus, ask to see his shit, and get back to me.

Ship of Theseus

01242010 - Craptacular

2010-01-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

I should post drunk all the time. That last post was actually alarmingly entertaining.

So I had to put in a four hour shift at the bank on Saturday. For those of you that don't know I have worked at one of the nation's largest financial institutions since I got off active duty back in 2006. It's been a rough few years, and if my personal distates for the nation of Iraq hadn't completely soured me on the potential of the human race, then certainly working in a call center for over three years has finished the job.

Moving right along, I came to a realization today.

I have crapped in a lot of places. I often have to shit literally within seconds of finishing a meal. This forces me to use a lot of see-thru one-ply toilet paper in a lot of public restrooms. My time in the Army has forced me to adapt and make boomboom in the woods as well as the desert, as well as an alarmingly large number of chemical toilets. It occurs to me though that this isn't such a bad thing, as I do 90% of my thinking and 100% of my reading in the can.

At work, however, it's a little different. I go to the bathroom to get a much needed respite. Silence. Silence that smells like urine, but silence nonetheless. I get away from the prattle about trusts and estates and oh my God did you hear about so-and-so at the party and I would never have let them do that to me with an automatic cake mixer in front of all those people and blah blah blah.

Also, I get to partake in one of my favorite activities...the demo of Blockbreaker Deluxe on my cellphone. Those of you who still reside in 2007 and have a Motorola RAZR might be familiar with the first two levels of this little gem. I used to play mad Bejeweled in 90 second demos at a time, but now I play me some Blockbreaker Deluxe. It's like a cross between Arkanoid and a terrible Japanese Role Playing Game, and I use my multiballs and lasers to crush that bitch like 6 times in a single 15 minute break. Waste of a break? I don't think so. For 15 minutes twice a day, I'm a god. A hero to so many fictitious patrons of the fictitious bar in a cell phone game demo.

Arkanoid

Terrible Japanese RPG

So that's the highlight of my day. Fuck. I hate myself.

01222010 - A Day That Will Live In Infamity

2010-01-22T21:40:00.000-05:00

Yo fuck Facebook. How many people do you know who have failed to properly move on from social circles? Well add someone to the list. Me. I fucking hate myself. But I'm excited to make friends, and link up with people with whom I haven't spoken to in a while.

I know that I am totally awesome and everyone wants to be me. It's true, there's no denying it. The issue that we run into is that nobody likes me. Follow my blog, friend me on Facebook and bask in the awesomeness that is me.

So this is what a post looks like after half a bottle of vodka and multiple shots of Sailor Jerry. If you came here from my Failbook then you already know that if you haven't had Sailor Jerry then you are sexually weak. It's true.

I'll be back with something angrier at some point in the future.

01092010 - The Foundation

2010-01-09T18:31:00.000-05:00

Critical mass is the amount of mass required for a nuclear reaction to become self-sustaining. It would then stand to reason that the Criticality Project is a globe-spanning epic investment of financial and human capital to abolish all nuclear weapons. In actuality it's only a clever name that I gave to a collection of self-serving rants regarding the little things in life that set me off. Just as it is possible for a handheld ball of fissile material to snowball out of control, so too can something relatively inconsequential be the difference between annoyance and fury. For the record, it is "globe-spanning" insofar as the Internet can be accessed worldwide, smartass.

A little background on me. I am an only child, son of the nouveau riche. As you can see things will basically be all about me at all times. I am staggeringly undercredentialed, since my equally staggering sense of entitlement prevented me from actually trying in school. I scored alarmingly high on aptitude tests throughout my life. I managed gain acceptance to a prestigious college, but never bothered to pursue that acceptance. There are two resounding accomplishments in my life: I am a infantry veteran of the Iraq War, and somehow I managed to convince the most amazing woman I've ever met to marry me.

I work a white-collar (of course) job at one of the nation's largest financial institutions (of course). It's actually infuriating because I lack any real dignity in my position due to my lack of education, but at the same time my snobbery prevents me from earning more money doing something physically demanding. As an employee of a bank, however, I am reviled along with everyone else in my industry by the entire fucking Republic. Poor me.

You may be saying to yourself "But lazy rich kids don't enlist in the military though, do they?" Generally, the answer is a resounding "no". It's basically month after month of someone less intelligent and more poor telling you what to do. They earn this authority by doing more pushups than you or enlisting before you did. Some even had the audacity to fucking try at college, and as a result they are referred to as "officers".

So why Criticality? Just as there are a few factors that go into a nuclear accident, there are a few forces at work during my fits of rage. Let's investigate.

1- I'm Italian. Stereotypes exist because they're grounded in fact. And for that reason I have a propensity for a few different things, including but not limited to Diabetes, vendettas and knife-wielding acts of violence.

2- VA officials and an independent MD have diagnosed me with PTSD. Something about the lizard brain and fuckin' fight or flight responses and seeing crushed bodies and lower jaws blown off or some shit.

3- The aforementioned staggering sense of entitlement. Never really wanting for anything as a child has really caused me to expect absolutely everything as an adult.

With these points and back story in mind, won't you join me in celebrating how face-meltingly awesome I am? You should make it a point to validate this awesomeness in the form of comments, parades, and Federal holidays. I'm interesting, Goddammit. So welcome to the headspace of a person who hates just about everything, and expects everyone to behave accordingly.