Sigh...wake me up when they get rid of the stupid people

Last night Sunny and I drove to the gas station to fill up her car.

On the way, I heard something on the radio that scored a 15 out of 10 on my bullshit-o-meter.

Basically, the Snicker’s Superbowl commercial (in which two auto-mechanics accidentally kiss, then say “Quick, do something manly!”), has been branded racist by a bunch of busybodies with far too much time on their hands.

Apparently, it’s offensive to homosexuals because it implies that two men kissing isn’t “manly”.

Of course, the homosexual and bisexual community aren’t actually the ones making a huge fuss out of this. It’s the “politically correct” crowd.

Now, the thing that pisses me off is that this is a typical uninformed knee-jerk reaction.

Think about this for a second. Who is this actually poking fun at? Gays? Or straight men that are so insecure about their sexuality that an accidental kiss leads to one of them ripping out his chest hair in order to prove to himself he’s not “caught ‘gay’”.

The fact he pulls out his chest hair is also blatantly pointing out that the guy isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, and that his reaction is totally overblown and stupid. They’re the Tim Taylor kind of manly. The point is you laugh at them, not with them

Yes, guys like that may believe one guy kissing another isn’t “manly”, but they’re obviously represented as guys who think acts of insane, self-torturing stupidity is manly.

I mean, is that not obvious?

Basically, I have three theories about these kinds of people:

1) The busy body, middle-class people who are constantly up in arms about shit like this don’t actually have any real problems. So they have to manufacture their own. “I have no problems of my own, so I’m going to be a champion for people who I perceive to be downtrodden or repressed, whether they want to or not.”

Of course, this has the exact opposite effect, in that right now, there are plenty of rednecks all over America complaining about how oversensitive the “fags” are, and how they can’t take a joke.

2) The Jack Thompson Complex.

Take a big rich corporation like Mars, a big social issue, and an imagined insult to a minority…and you’ve got the makings of the next big moral panic that’s absolutely perfect to get you on TV, satisfy your power-hungry, media-whore instincts and you might just make a few bucks on the side. After all, there are plenty of rich white folks, with lots of money, all living in their nice sheltered sub-divisions that are just dying to get behind the next big moral crusade to salve their own guilt at not being a downtrodden minority.

3) Stupidity and a total lack of a sense of humor.

This one’s pretty self explanatory. In that a lot of people are just plain incapable of seeing past their own noses, unable to recognize parody and satire and don’t understand that just raising a topic is not automatically a negative thing.

Seriously though, I have gay friends, both male and female…and I can’t see any of them actually getting offended by this. They might laugh their asses off at the incredibly dumb straight guy who’d be willing to rip out a chunk of his own chest hair just to prove to himself and another dumbass that he was “manly”.

Finally though, I have to say…if you are homosexual, and you are offended by this, grow a sense of humor and get over it.

As a Brit in America, I’ve heard a ton of what could be described as anti-brit jokes and stereotypes. You know, “British people all have bad teeth”, “Brits think that a man dressed in womens’ clothing is the height of humor.”, “You saved our asses in WW2”, “All Brits are drunken football hooligans”.

Do I need to go on?

The point is, I don’t get offended by any of that, because it’s a joke, and if anyone says anything that’s intended as an insult, I don’t get offended either…I just do what I always do when I come across someone who makes a bigoted, prejudice statement.

I pity their lack of intelligence.

Viral? You Decide

While websurfing today, I stumbled across something that set both my “Viral Marketing” sense tingling, and my “God, this is fucking stupid” sense tingling at the same time.

It’s a site called www.dontdatehimgirl.com

So what is it?

Well, this idea is that if you’ve had a really spectacularly bad date, you post how terrible it was (including the guy’s picture, name and what city and state he’s from).

In other words, it’s a site for women to bitch about how terrible men are, and to “name and shame” them.

Of course, this absolutely reeks of viral marketing.

The thing is, if this site is for real, it’s an absolute lawsuit magnet. It’s a slander machine.

Given America’s love affair with suing everything that moves, and how the average male would react if he discovered a girl he went out with had put up a post about what a complete bastard he is… in a searchable database of loser guys…well, you can see what’s coming.

Now, it’s true that in America, an opinion cannot be viewed as slander or libel under the law. In other words, if I say on this blog that I think a Jack Thompson is a complete and total asshat, there’s nothing he can do about it. Well, he’d probably impotently threaten me, but because it’s my opinion and presented as such, it’s protected by free speech.

On the other hand, once you present something as fact, “This guy is a pervert and has a half inch penis”. Unless that guy actually has a half inch penis…prepare to get sued.

Given that unless each and every post is moderated by the site owner, it’s pretty much guaranteed that someone is going to present and untrue statement as fact…They might as hit Jack Thompson over the head with an Xbox while throwing copies of Grand Theft Auto at him.

So, here’s my prediction. There’ll be a movie entitled “Don’t Date Him, Girl!” out within the next few months.

Either that, or the site will magically disappear within a couple weeks.

I'd buy a lottery ticket...but...

I really do have almost no luck.

First of all, today I log into Second Life to find that yet another wonderful glitch has returned my entire studio building and all its contents to my inventory.

This means I had to spend a couple of hours putting the building back together jigsaw puzzle-like, hanging the pictures back on the walls (it is a photography studio after all) and then replace and reset all my equipment.

Know what else? When I want to put up a new picture, I just duplicate one of the existing ones and just slap the new texture on there.

Why is that a problem? Well, it means I had 50 objects returned that where all simply named “Object”. Imagine trying to sort through that shit.

Now, that probably won’t interest you unless you play SL. This next part might.

Having put everything back the way it was, and seeing no-one I particularly wanted to talk to online, I decided to explore a little. I ended up in a casino, playing roulette. (I don’t gamble in real life, but enjoy the games, so I like betting with “pretend” money.)

Now a while ago, I remember someone telling me a “sure-fire” way to win at roulette.

Here’s the system. You pick a color and always bet on that color. You bet 10. If you lose, you bet again, but this time bet 20. If you lose, you bet 40 and so on and so on.

In short, your bet has a 50/50 chance of winning. By doubling your bet each time, the first time you win, getting double your bet back, you’re back where you started. The problem is, by doubling, your bets get really big really fast, and once you hit the max bet limit, you’re screwed.

I managed to lose 10 50/50 chances in a row. I started with a 10L bet, and the table limit was 100. In other words, I was screwed.

Now you’re probably thinking the table is fixed. Trust me, it isn’t. There’s plenty of checks and balances in place to stop this from happening. Plus, I was playing at the same time as multiple other players…and they where winning just fine!

So I tried my hand at Blackjack. After playing while, I almost broke even.

Then I tried poker. I lost…a lot.

At that point, I gave up. I’d reached the limit I’d allow myself to lose. (Even though it’s ‘pretend’ money, I don’t like losing, so I give myself a set amount to gamble with. IE, if I lose X amount, I quit.)

Now, this might not seem so strange. Everyone’s had bad luck streaks, especially when it comes to gambling. It was what happened next that surprised me.

I went back to my place, and sorting through some freebies, I discovered I had a couple gaming machines. I had a blackjack table…so I broke it out and started playing.

(Note : These are ‘real’ machines that take SL money. Some of the same ones you play “for real” in SL Casinos. However, I was gambling against myself. In other words, they work the same way as machines owned by other people, but if I lose a 100L bet, I’m losing 100L to myself, so my actual account balance never changes).

So, I bet 100 and win. In fact, I get a 5 card trick.

I win eleven times on the run before I lose a hand. If this machine was owned an operated by someone else, at 100L a bet, that would have been 1000 Linden Dollars winnings.

WTF???

I ‘open’ the machine and check the script that runs it. It’s a simple random number generator that chooses cards from a library at random. It’s a ‘simple’ game. No way to set the odds of winning, it’s as random as playing regular blackjack at a casino.

It didn’t make me feel any better that I’d been reamed in the past using exactly the same game owned by other people.

So I pull out a video poker machine I also had. I broke even on two hands, then got a Royal Flush, the highest scoring hand in the game. With a 100L bet, I would have won 20,000.

So I open that one up and check the script. It’s just like the other one. The only “changeable” variables are cost per “spin”.

Then we come to the really weird part.

I had a game called “Crashing Mania”. It looks like a laptop, and it’s a pure “random” game, no skill involved whatsoever. Basically, you pay a certain amount, and the laptop tries to “boot-up”, if it boots successfully, you win double your bet. If you get the “blue screen of death”, you lose your bet.

So I started playing, and won five times on the run before losing.

I opened it up and checked the script again. This one you could set the chances of winning. It was set to a 5% chance of winning.

That’s a one in 20 chance of winning.

If I remember my high-school math correctly, (I do, I just looked it up), you multiply odds together to work out the probabilities of these things happening on the run. For example, the chances of randomly pulling the ace of spades out of a deck of cards is 1/52. Putting the ace back in the deck, shuffling and pulling it out again is 1/52 X 1/52 = 1/2704….in other words, a 1 in 2704 chance of happening.

So me winning 5 times on the run at a 1 in 20 chance is 20x20x20x20x20.

That’s a 1 in 3200000 chance! That’s twice as difficult as winning the lottery!.

Of course, at this point, I thought the thing was just jiggered, so I tried again, and won twice in 20 tries.

I reset the script, tried again and got nothing out of the ordinary.

So apparently, if I’m gambling for real, I can lose 10 50/50 chances in a row. Then I can only break even at blackjack and poker.

Then, when I’m playing some of the same machines, but only wining money from myself:

I can beat the dealer at Blackjack 11 times on the run.

I can get a royal flush at poker (a 1 in 649,740 chance).

Then in a game of pure chance, I can hit on a 1 in 3200000 chance

I shudder to think what the odds are of all three of these things happening in an hour’s time.

For Real...

My regular readers will know this about me:

I'm an incredibly cynical, sarcastic, nit-picking bastard. I could find the down-side in Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel and Adriana Lima walking into my bedroom naked, carrying a 10 gallon jug of KY Jelly, and a note from my missus that says "Have a good time, and there's a steak waiting for you when you're done!"

So bear this in mind when I say that the Discworld series of books, written by Terry Pratchett is quite simply the greatest work of fiction ever written.

They're a series of books that can only be categorised as "Comic Fantasy", but they have managed to make me laugh out loud like a manic, actually cry, and they're capable of actually make you feel the whole spectrum of emotions.

Add to that the fact that Pratchett's writing style is almost magical. He's the first writer I've ever read that can describe a complex scene in a couple of sentences, but do this so well you can actually see what he's writing about.

In case I haven't sold you yet, if I was locked in a room for the rest of my life and was given the option of access to every book ever written minus Terry Pratchett, or my pick of 5 of his books...I'd take the five Pratchetts without a moment's hesitation.

Check them out.

Curtains....The Silent Killer

Ever have on of those moments where you’re really glad nobody is around? When you do something really embarrassing or stupid, and just know it’s one of those “haunt you for the rest of your life” events? The story your wife always tells about you at parties, just knowing it’s going to get a big laugh?

Well, I just had one of those moments…and I’m going to share it with you.

Why? Call it a mixture of internet based anonymity, and 3000 mile safety buffer between me and the people who actually know me, and the fact I’m always willing to humiliate myself if it’s truly funny.

Ok…here goes.

My house is old. The kind of old that guarantees all kinds of draughts.

In summer this isn’t a huge deal. As long as the A/C is left on, it stays reasonably cool in here. On the other hand, winter is an entirely different story. You can leave two heaters on full blast in the same room, and end up with a room that’s just mildly cold instead of absolutely freezing.

This means that every winter we go around and try and “cold proof” the house. Thick heavy curtains over the windows. Plastic put up over the air conditioner, draught excluders put under all the doors.

Well, you get the idea.

Well, what I didn’t know, was my darling wife had covered up the door to the water-heater cupboard with a thick, black sheet of material.

So I’m walking to the bathroom down the corridor. As usual, I didn’t bother turning on the lights, so I’m walking down there in the dark. Now, this corridor is fairly thin, about enough space for two people to stand side by side.

Then, just as I’m approaching the heater cupboard, the tape she’d used to hang the material to cover the door comes unstuck. Now, in the dark, and the angle I’m viewing it from, what it actually looks like, is a freaking huge shape walking out of the bathroom and turning to face me.

Did I mention it’s nearly 2am, and that I’m home alone, and not expecting to see what appears to be a 7 foot tall intruder walking out of my bathroom?

So, purely on instinct, and powered by the brown adrenaline, I swing a huge punch at it…aimed at where the head should be.

Know what happens when you swing a powerful punch at a piece of unsupported material?

I swing straight through it, my fist connecting squarely with the wall behind it.

I recoil back, smack my head on the door behind me, and fall over, pulling the curtain that covers that door on top of me.

At this point, I’ve still got absolutely no fucking clue what’s going on. It’s bloody dark, so for all I know, there really is an intruder, who just managed to sidestep my punch

So basically I’m on the floor, my heart is going at about 180 beats per minute, and I’m wrapped up in a fallen curtain that I can’t quite get free from. There may also be a 7 foot tall intruder standing over me.

So I fight to stand back up again, and I manage to get half to my feet…before tripping and falling flat on my face again.

At this point I look up, to see the dog, who was attracted by the commotion, sitting on the floor right in front of me. He looks at me, looks at the wall behind me, and looks back at me with a facial expression that is clearly saying:

“Dude? What the FUCK are you doing?”

I whirl around on the floor, wondering why Buddy isn’t barking or leaping to my rescue…to see the loose end of my attacker just waving in the breeze.

It was at this point, despite the searing pain in my hand, that I laughed so hard I damn near shit in my pants.

On the upside….I kicked that curtain’s ass!