Every now and then I must venture out of my secret hidden base and mingle amongst the plebeians of society. This provides a great cover to those who I wish not to know my world domination plans.
I did this very thing on February 13th. Met at friend's house at 8:30a.m., followed them to their friend's house in Soulard. Made beignet's, drank mimosas and bloody marys, mingled.
At approximately 11:15 we decide to venture out and check out the festivities, hurricanes in hand. We get about 500 feet from the house and I capture this Mardi Gras magic:
For those of you who are not local to St. Louis I'll fill you in on the Soulard Mardi Gras. It's the second biggest Mardi Gras celebration in the world. Second only to New Orleans. Like most people (including the people who attend) you probably don't even know what they're celebrating.I could do a bunch of research but I'm lazy. I think it has something to do with that Lent BS and everyone does it up the weekend before Lent and Fat Tuesday happens the day before Ash Wednesday and blah blah blah who cares.

Anyway, Soulard Mardi Gras is pretty gigantic and it seems to be growing exponentially every year.
It is the ultimate amateur hour. I would say the average age of those attending is probably between 20-30 with the occasional 30-50 year-old sprinkled about. AND of course you have your 50+ crowd who should not be there. Really, anyone with any sense should not be there. It is ridiculous.
Unless of course, you enjoy public intoxication, really loud morons puking everywhere and passing out. If this is your thing have at it.
The only thing that is not a drawback are the titties. They are usually popping out left and right for beads or just because the crowd demands it. This was not as prevalent this year because of the 30 degree weather. Which begged me to ask the question: What's the point?

Despite the gigantic, ever-growing crowd this year. The arrests and citations were somewhat minimal:
* 68 Minors in Possession of Alcohol
* 17 Urinating in Public
* 12 False Identification
* 4 DUI's
* 4 Supplying Alcohol to Minor
* 3 General Peace Disturbance
* 2 Resisting Arrest
* 2 Assault on a Law Enforcement Officer (an officer was punched and an officer was spit on while attempting to take a man into custody)
* 1 Selling Liquor without a License
* 1 3rd Degree Assault (a man got into a fight with a friend and punched him)
* 1 Property Damage (a man got into a fight at a friend's Soulard home and damaged a window at the home)
* 1 Marijuana Possession

Pretty tame if you ask me. What does the above list tell you? There weren't that many cops there.

My advice: If you want to celebrate Mardi Gras have your own party. Invite your friends over. Get everyone stupid drunk. At least make sure some of them are going to get their titties out. Then have them get the fuck out of your house when you're sick of them. (Call a cab of course.)


-Darth

Did you catch the 12 minutes of god-awful full force suck-tude that the Who perpetrated during the Superbowl Half Time Show? If not let me lay it out for you.

1. Roger Daltrey can't sing. Not a friggin' note! He screamed 80% of the crap he "sang". He's too old and his voice is shot I guess, though I'm not sure if he ever could sing.
2. Pete Townsend is just plain creepy looking. Personally his guitar playing has never been my thing, but now he's so "creepy old man" looking that all I could do was look at him and think, what the hell is that old pedophile doing on stage?
3. The laser light show that was going on was very high-tech, if today was February 8, 1990.
4. These songs (Pinball Wizard, Baba O'Reilly, Won't Get Fooled Again) are so dated. Pinball Wizard? I'll bet half the people watching the game have never played pinball.
5. These guys are old. Really old and they came off kind of sad. I'm not sure how the Stones do it, but the Who doesn't.

At least the NFL didn't actually pay the Who for their performance, they did it for free. Not sure why, maybe they had a crystal ball and saw how bad they were going to be.


Now the Half Time Show also includes the think-necked mental Special Olympics where the four commentators, James Brown, Dan Marino, Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe and Boomer Esiason all talk over each other, trying as hard as possible to get air-time and to get in a stupid pun or bad analogue. 


This year they had Shannon Sharpe who must have had a bag of marbles in his mouth. He was almost unintelligible. Since I'm not in the television production business I'm not certain but, I would think it might be helpful to listen to  the commentators talk before you actually put them on TV.


Overall the half time show was just what I expected, Sh!T. Just like every other year. You'd think the NFL could pull this thing together for once.


Good game though. I was thrilled to see the face of Payton Manning in complete disgust, near tears. I love it when the pedestal is knocked out from underneath the celebrated.


With all due respect,
The Chief

Well, I'm not the kind to do a lot of dissin' on Apple, but I must say that the release of the iPad to the public was a major disappointment! Apple has done a lot of innovating in the last decade, shit for that matter most of it's existence! This thing, as released is a TURD!! I shall count the ways...
1. No camera! WTF!? That means no video chats or conferences, no photo taking, no video taking, NADA!
2. No app multi-tasking. With a processor this fast it's a waste of resources not to take advantage of that! I'm using X app and want to listen to say Pandora... NOPE! No can to dummy!
3. No true 1080p HD. When you want to watch a movie that's say filmed in 2.35:1, which a lot more theatrical releases are nowadays, you're only gonna take up about half the screen in portrait mode!! BUMMER!
4. No selection of other data carriers. I personally haven't had one problem with AT&T( and I even moved across the country with my first gen, nary a blip in service, except in mountains which I'd expect). I, on the other hand, just in principal don't like seeing any of the cell providers get too big or get a lock on anything!!
FUCK EM!! This is possibly the biggest faux pas on Apple's behalf! A lot of other humans HATE AT&T!!
5. No tactile feedback or more complex Gestures, as can be had on say, the newer MacBooks! Shit! Those even have 3 and 4 finger Gesture support!! LAME!
6. This is just a personal gripe of mine... FUCK E-BOOKS!!! Fuck em all to Hell!! Gearing us up for 

Fahrenheit 451 and shit!! I'd much rather have the ground up, chain sawn down, ozone depleting real thing in my hands! Ever see the e-book selections out there???!!! Hope you like reading the same shit as most everyone else!!

Legion
Directed by Scott Stewart
Written by Peter Schink and Scott Stewart

WorldFullofIdiots Rating:

Saturday my wife and I went to the movies. The plan was to see Daybreakers, the latest vampire movies. It looked good, but apparently its not. Its been out only a few weeks and its already down to one show, at 10pm on the smallest screen in the theater.

So we went for my next choice, another movie that during the trailer I remember saying, "oh fuck that looks goood," Legion.

The plot basics of this movie are nothing new, its about Judgement Day or Armagedeon, or whatever name (insert name of religion here) calls the end of the world at god's hand. The twist this time is that god is mad at us, and decides that he isn't going to put up with any more of our bullshit so he send a legion of angels to earth to kill us all. The crazy thing is that the angels possess our bodies and turn us into evil, flesh eating zombies.

I'm not sure but I think angel-possesion-induced-flesh eating-zombieism is mentioned in Leviticus.

Anyway the deal is that the angels are to wipe us out, buuuuut, god missed something. He didn't remember that this trailer trash little whore in the desert of New Mexico somewhere, is pregnant with what is eluded to be never called the Second Coming.

It's weird that omniscient God missed this. Seemed obvious enough to me within the first 10 minute.

Ok maybe the first 5 minutes.

So he send the Archangel Michael down to kill the mother or the baby or something. Its never really spelled out because before we know what is is supposed to do, we discover that he's not going to do it.

So far, pretty cool. Michael is some dude I've never seen before but he reminds me of whatever that guy's name is that play James Bond now and he seems to be capable of ass kicking.

The movie dissolves to a scene out in the aforementioned desert where the pregnant girl is working as a waitress in a shitty little diner owned by Dennis Quaid. The first and only scary scene in the movies occurs here and you've already seen it. The one with the demon-old lady? Yep that one and its pretty cool, but I had already seen it, for free, in the trailer. Kind of like when you used to by a CD for 14 bucks to later realize the only good song is on the radio, for free.

After this scene the movie begins to suffer from EXTREMELY poor editing. There's a bit where everyone is in a truck trying to get the victim of the old lady to a hospital. They're driving like mad across the desert straight in to a plague of flies. Next scene everyone is back at the diner, like the last 5 minutes never happened, leaving me wondering "how did they get back and who is the shit head that edited this movie?"

Editing is obvious throughout the movie, something that good editing should never be leaving you with several instances asking what just happened. Steven Kemper and the director Scott Stewart need to go back to film school and retake The Art and Craft of Film Editing. UCLA is offering it this spring through their extension campus.

The remainder of the film suffers from overwriting. Each of the characters that are in the diner at the beginning of the movie are given a sappy soliloquy about the tragic life, to the point that you hope the angel-possesion-induced-flesh eating-zombies come and eat them all and get it over with. I think the most memorable line is one delivered by Charles S Dutton playing Percy Walker the amputee fry cook. He tells us that when he was a little boy his daddy used to sit with him before he fell asleep and would ask him if he died in his sleep tonight, would he beproud of what he had done in his life so far, because if not he needs to get square. Or something like that.

At this I turned to my wife and asked, "who the fuck says that to a little kid right before he goes to bed?"

The movie's action and plot follow along a highly predictable formula; tough guy Michael, fights God's other right hand man Gabriel to the finish, saving the trampy waitress and her unborn baby, the diner owners semi-retarded son ends up with the waitress and all the angel/zombies go away and everything is fine.

I guess there is very little originality anymore, and even less in biblical fiction, but come on this was the best they could come up with?

All in all the movies gets a one ass-fist out of five, which means it sucked.

The Chief

"How many hours are in a day when you don't spend half of them watching television?
When is the last time any of us REALLY worked to get something that we wanted?
How long has it been since any of us really NEEDED something that we WANTED?
The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility.
An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe casing the dead to rise and feed on the living.
In a matter of months society has crumbled, no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV.
In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living."


This is the text that appears on the back of every collected volume of The Walking Dead. I challenge you to find a better written book series out there. Far better written than that Twilight crap for 12-year-olds and more suspenseful and engaging than Charlaine Harris' "True Blood" books that seem to be written BY a 12-year-old. The funny thing is, it's not even a novel. It's a monthly B&W comic book.
It is by far, the best thing out there in literature. Yes. Literature.
Now, I'm not going to go into the argument of of great comic books are and how they're under-appreciated blah blah blah. It's all been done. Instead I'm going to give a quick breakdown of the premise of this great book in the hopes that you literary snobs out there will pick up an issue and get hooked.

Officer Rick Grimes is shot on the job. He wakes up from a coma in a hospital months later to find the staff gone and zombies roaming the halls. He sets off to find his wife and son. On his journey he runs into a variety of survivors and forms a group that struggle to stay alive while fighting off the dead, the elements and lack of food. They find that the most dangerous obstacle out there is not the dead but the living.
Not everyone is going to make it and you never know when your favorite character is going to bite the dust. There are constant WTF moments in the book. I have, on occasion, put the book down in disbelief at what just happened. Whether it's a major character getting bit by a zombie, someone getting their hand cut off or some atrocity being committed by people who exist in a world where there is complete anarchy. You will also witness the slow disintegration of a character's decency and sanity while you ask yourself what you would do in the same situation.

The book really pulls you in and gets you involved with the characters, good or bad, and what their fate will be. It's not just the great writing of Robert Kirkman but also the superb, minimalistic art of Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn. Together they are master storytellers who aptly convey the desperation and fear in each character while they drive the story with great panels and a splash page here and there which blows you away with each little reveal.

Right now AMC has ordered a pilot for The Walking Dead TV series. It will swing into production in a couple months. Normally I'd be worried about something that I love so much getting the hollywood treatment but Kirkman will be producing along with Frank Darabont. Frank Darabont is the only guy to successfully adapt Stephen King onto the big screen with The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist.

Let's face it folks, the majority of great movies out there these days are pulled from the comic book genre. Maybe it's because Hollywood has finally figured out how to do it right along with the fact that they are running out of good ideas. I'm perfectly fine with that. If they can pull off The Watchmen, Iron Man and 300 there's hope. We just can't forget travesties like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, Judge Dread, Batman & Robin and Superman III and IV.
So pick up The Walking Dead. It's available in Trade Paperback format, which is how I read it. They collect 6 issues in every trade. Right now it is up to Volume 11. Each trade will run you about 15 bucks. Well worth it. They are readily available at any Barnes and Noble or Borders or better yet, your local comic book store. My only advice: Try to spread them out. I read the first 8 trades over a 4 month period. Now I have to wait 3-4 months for each issue. It's a bit torchoreous.

Turn off your TV and read a book you idiots. It doesn't matter if it has pictures in it. It still counts.


- Darth

In my attempt to expand my home music producing abilities, I purchased the M-Audio w/Pro Tools production suite, a.k.a. Fast Track. I distinctly remember asking the sales person if it was compatible with OS 10.6.2. The reply was YES. 
Off I was to the homestead to configure my new tool. This was a really great deal being that it had Pro Tools bundled, albeit a scaled down version for $99. Following each instruction, I eagerly installed the drivers and configured the hardware. The last step at hand was to install the Pro Tools suite. Insert the disk I did only to wait 45 minutes while the Goddamn load bar stalled at 95%. After an hour and 15 minutes... I get a message from my OS stating that the install failed and to contact the manufacturer. FUCK!
I went to M-Audio's website where I was informed that if I even remotely wanted help, I would have to register my software. ????????? Let's see here, register something I can't even get installed in the first fucking place!! That's classic! 
All of this to ultimately have a stripped down version of ProTools anyway!! 
So, after utilizing all of my options that stood before me, I decide to call M-Audio's tech support, which I wouldn't be able to do unless I had registered the fucking thing I can't use to begin with. I dial the number which just so happens to be some area code I had no knowledge of. Yes!!! Not even a 1-800 number! It was bothersome, but I have some 8000 plus minutes banked and figured what the Hell. As long as I get this resolved I can deal with a few lost cell minutes. And  NO I don't have a land line, so don't go there. I had 45  minutes before I had to pick the wife up from work, being it that I had the day off. Thirty minutes pass, and I listen to neo-techno Muzak! Real Horror Show! I have to go!!! I hop in the car and drive the 15 miles to my woman's work, she gets in and we start heading home. All the while, still on hold! Half way back to the house, dude gets on the line and sounds ever so happy to be working for M-Audio. I tell him my plight, in turn he tells me,"well sir, our site tells you that that particular piece of hardware isn't yet compatible with OS 10.6.2. But if I'd be patient an update should be forthcoming." When? I ask. He didn't know...... S.O.L. I exclaim that that is bullshit and unless you really want to sit down and search their website for an hour to find out it is not compatible with my OS, is really poor customer support and relations.
The long and short of this review and story is, in my humble opinion, DON'T BUY SHIT FROM M-AUDIO!!! Unless you appreciate being treated like a piece of human rubbish!! Die a quick death M-Audio or work like Hell on your customer support!!!

I don't know about you but I am thrilled that the holidays are finally over.
I'm certainly no Scrooge but, really, I'm glad that sh*t is over.
Why?
The reasons are too numerous and we've covered a few of them already. Namely, peoples' lame-ass inflatable yard decorations and lights.
Here's a few others.

Christmas Cards.
OK folks. Only send these if they are a regular Christmas card that has a short, personalized inscription.
DO NOT send Christmas cards that are just a lame picture of your kids.I was over at a friend's house and noticed the abundance of tacky Christmas cards. There's your typical family portrait ones. That's OK. No big deal. But guess what? I don't want to see pictures of just your kids on the front. If they're my relatives. Barely appropriate.
My beef is when you send a pretentious POS card that has photos of your kids engaged in polo, football or swimming. WHO CARES? Face it; no one likes your kids as much as you do.
These are very typical "Look-At-Me" people.
And don't send Christmas letters. Get on Facebook and update people that way, you narcissist.

Cookie Parties.
Don't do these anymore. A group of wives will bake cookies and get together and trade them off. No one ever makes them as good as you. If there was a guy version of this and the dudes brought beer you would be the one bringing the fancy imported sh*t and everyone else would bring Miller Light and PBR.
I take it back. Men respect each other more than that.

Gifts.
Admit it. Your gifts suck every year since you've been a grown-up/parent. As much thought that your spouse or kids FEEL they have put into your gift it will NEVER come close to the AT-AT your parents (Santa) got you when you were 9.

Politically Correct "Happy Holidays" Crap
It's Christmas, people. I'm far from being a christian but I agree that the season needs to be called Christmas. I'm not offended if the checkout person says "Merry Christmas." Anyone who doesn't recognize this as Christmas just stay home. Screw Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. Those are separate, and let's face it, one is just made up.I'm sure I'll expand this list next Christmas. After all, I'm getting more negative and crotchety in my old age.

'til next time, you whipper-snappers!

-Darth

Last night my family and I drove around our general area to enjoy the local Christmas light displays. This is something that we do every year, at least a couple times, while typically eating some ice cream. Why ice cream and Christmas lights? I don't know, why not?

Most of our time is spent singing made up lyrics to the Christmas songs that are playing on the radio like "Jingle balls, jingle balls, jingle all the way, oh what pain it is to go with them left loose to sway-ay!", and making fun of people stupid inflatable shit.

Since my kids are pretty snarky like me, fun is had by all. Even though my wife doesn't make funny of anyone herself, she does appreciate our humor.

Our favorite display style to make fun of is those which contain more than one inflatable or animatronic. Usually people that have more than one of either have multiples of both, which creates a sort of creepy scifi Christmas at the droid factory / Christmas in the land of misfit toys look.

I know people put this shit in their yard to entertain their kids, but it does spread joy to guys like me as well. The joy of making fun of what a mockery they have turned Christmas into. Just how many semi-inflated snowmen and robotic Rudolfs do you need to get into Heaven anyway Jesus?

Most people put lights in their trees, around their bushes, their front doors, maybe down the drive way like some kind of fucking landing strip (which I totally don't get; probably the same people who as kids drew stick figures). Some folks do blinking lights and icicle lights on the house and eaves, but some people just have no taste.

At all.

Like the ass-wipe that puts five different colors of lights all over his yard then uses net lights on the bushes to get that whole "fish net Christmas" thing and finishes it off with the creepy three candles with the orange flames in the windows. You know the ones that they USED to sell in the 70's, that they must have either kept when their grandmother passed away or bought at a garage sale.

Or the people that run three strands of multi-colored lights around on goddamn straggly ass tree in their yard, in front of their 8,000 square foot three story. Come on douche, like you could afford another box of lights?

But aside from the tacky and creepy there are two displays that I totally want to get out and knock over. The first is the manger scene. I don't care that Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of Jesus. Especially since he wasn't born in December anyway. The manger is creepy. Bunch of fucking bearded dudes with hooks standing around looking at a baby while his mother tries to cover him up and the step father collects the gifts all in a horse stall with hay everywhere and farm animals milling about, probably lamb shit all over the place. Creepy.

The second display that makes me want to get out of the car, knock on the door and ask the douche bag who put it up to take it down is the strand of white lights up a pole with a half-ass star on top. Too religious, not fun, not Christmasy, all it lacks is an inflatable Pope in front of it.

Finally, what is the deal with LED lights? They are so frigging bright that it hurst my eyes and who the hell pays $11 for a strand of 100 lights, when I can get a strand of 100 regular lights for $3? In the words of Charlie Brown, Good Grief! Give that extra Christmas light money to the bell ringer Griswold!

With all due respect,
The Chief

I hate Microsoft. Lets just get that out of the way.
Actually thats not accurate, I hate Windows. I actually really like Office, but Windows regardless of the version is complete shit.

Shut up, yes it is. You know it as well as I do. How many times in the last month have you had to restart your PC because it just locked up? How about in the last week? How many times have you had to get out the restore disc to get that Piece-of-Chit working again?

Ok how many times have you not been able to print to a printer that you just used? How many updates and security patches have you installed? How about the number of times you've tried to shut down or restart for whatever reason and watched the "Windows Is Shutting Down" message on the screen for an hour?

Probably more times than I have, I guarantee it in all cases.

Now that I've laid that out, lets look at Windows 7, otherwise known as Windows Vista - Pig in Makeup Edition. 100% backward compatibility. Remember the commercials? Or the ads? I do. I remember a faint tinge of fear that they might actually get it right this time forcing me to stop bashing their shitty OS. But no, the one thing Microsoft never lets me down with is their ability to NOT DELIVER.

Windows 7 was supposed to be 100% compatible with XP programs and all hardware that was "current". Really, they actually stuck out their skinny geek necks and promised 100% compatibility. But what they didn't tell you 100% backward compatibility is not available to everyone.

In fact some XP and Vista users, will not have access to XP compatibility at all unless they fork up the $199 to upgrade to Ultimate.

You see, in the Microsoft viewpoint there are no poor students or families just able to afford their computers or any customer respect. No just greed.

To get XP compatibility you have to run your XP programs in a "virtualized environment". Essentially Windows creates a second computer running XP inside your Windowns 7 computer. You can imagine that this is probably not going to give you the speed, graphic performance or stability that running the program in regular XP would, and you'd be imagining right.

The funny thing is that I run Windows apps on my Mac all day long doing the exact same thing, the difference being it doesn't crash my Mac or make it run slow and the rest of my computing experience is stable and smooth and doesn't require weekly security patches.

My most recent personal experience with this was with a new netbook computer running Windows 7. I bought it for work purposes and installed the one and only PC app that it had to run, which was written for XP. Guess what? The little netbook only comes with a crippled version of 7 called Starter and Starter doesn't include XP mode or even support it. My options were two, buy the $199 upgrade making my $400 netbook a $600 one or send the fucking thing back.

Give you one guess as to the option I chose.

What I don't understand though is why some many people are willing to put up with this crappy company, their crappy products and their complete lack of customer appreciation. I guess the world really is full of idiots.

Like you didn't see that coming.

With all due respect,
The Chief