Mental Flatulence

So things have been pretty busy in Gedsmoland the last couple weeks. I, uh, I recently had to take up a second job. It turns out I won't be getting my $10 million bonus. Apparently I forgot to put, "Run the economy of the country straight in to the fucking ground," on my year-end goals. Damn AIG. Always coming up with the good ideas. If anybody's wondering where 1421 has been the last two weeks, I've been busy dressing up like a chicken and holding signs by the freeway. It turns out Mattress Planet is going out of business and you can get some great deals. So I'll handle some business and we can all get back to our lives. Our pathetic, cashless lives. ----------------------- Two deeply important questions: 1. So I just started getting (noticing that I get?) G4. I'd love to know how a network that caters to, well, me, or at least my demographic, keeps putting so many basically average women on screen. I mean, it's not that they're unattractive, it's just that it kind of looks like they ran casting by walking down the street and picking the first four women they wouldn't have to be drunk to take to bed. Oh, right, I need to form some sort of actual question, so here goes: what's up with that? 2. Meanwhile, is it just me or does GoDaddy seem to have an entire business plan built on cock teasing? I mean, seriously. ----------------------- Stephen Colbert is awesome. With a single statement he managed to make bull out of pretty much everything the right's been trying to do to discredit the New Deal. For those who are living under rocks, they're taking the fact that WWII ultimately pulled out out of the Great Depression and claiming that means the New Deal was pointless. Which is pretty much a self-evidently stupid statement. Colbert basically said that the New Deal's massive government spending was useless compared to World War II's massive government spending. When it gets right down to it, what is warfare if not for Keynesian economics on a grand scale? Nobody's going to order tanks except the government. Massive buildups of troops are basically the equivalent of hiring people to dig a hole and then fill it in again. But, shhh, don't tell anyone... ----------------------- I'd love to know how much of a demographic the History Channel thinks it's going to get out of fundies. Seriously. A couple weeks ago I DVRed a special on the seven signs of the apocalypse, which includes the expert opinions of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (but, sadly, not the guy who dresses like Nostradamus and walks around scaring small children). I figured I needed to do my due diligence and rant about it on the blogosphere for a while. Haven't gotten there yet. Somebody got to Mattress Planet and buy a damn mattress already. Anyway, last week they started up a new show called Battles BC. Okay, first things first: it's BCE, jackasses. I know you're supposed to be popular history and BC works better for the rhyme scheme. But I don't care. The first episode was about Hannibal, who was awesome. And they have, like, real historians doing real historian things. Which is nice. But they couldn't just have the historians sitting in libraries or something. Oh, no. They've got them sitting in front of some backdrop that looks like it came out of one of Frank Miller's wet dreams. And they make graphics that look like what would happen if 300 had sex with a cut scene from God of War. And in order to show strategic maps they use stupid little graphics that don't account for anything other than which side is which. There's nothing to indicate the type of unit. And if the Romans have six tiles, then Hannibal has six tiles. It doesn't matter if Hannibal was outnumbered two-to-one or outnumbered the Romans five-to-one. Nope. We wouldn't want to get a sense of scale or anything. However, here's the thing that pisses me off. Episode two is David. Yes, that David. And I get the distinct impression that Moses is coming up, too. Call it a hunch. Here's the thing. Off the top of my head, here are some significantly more interesting and better documented things they could have done with episode two of Battles BC: The first invasion of Greece by Persia The second invasion of Greece by Persia The Peloponnesian War Xenophon's Anabasis Spartacus's Revolt Julius Caesar's campaigns against the Gauls Alexander the Great's...pretty much anything Cyrus the Great's solidification of the Persian Empire One of the other Punic Wars Hell, Scipio Africanus's retaliation for Hannibal's invasion of Italy Anything from the various barbarian invasions of Rome Constantine's accession to take over Rome Oh, and in case anybody's thinking this is too limited, I'll bet there's a bunch of stuff from China and Japan and various other places in Asia. I just don't know any famous battles from that era in Asia. Hey, wait, there's an idea: why doesn't the History Channel tell me about some battles I've never heard of? Or would that be too damn educational? Either way, David? Why? Do the sort of people who care more about David's military career than, say, something more interesting that doesn't involve giants and other such improbable things, really watch the History Channel? Or am I just getting pissed over nothing? Anyway, I'm out. Try not to cry too hard...