Monday, March 16, 2009

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...

11 comments:

Fiat Lex said...

G4, apart from Code Monkeys, appears to be one long commercial. Out of curiosity me and Dave DVR'd an episode of Attack of the Show. It was basically an hour of commercials for things, with the things alternating between ruinously expensive gadgets and shit we can get for free on the internet. (Or, in the case of the dog that woke itself up from a cool chasing dream by sleep-running into a wall, on the local evening news. Because, y'know, there's nothing in local Chicago politics, finance or culture worth more airtime than a sleep-running dog.)

Tell me, do you think any Mattress Worlds in my area need people to stand by the highway? Because the need for experienced administrative support types willing to temp downtown for 10-15 an hour is apparently nil.

All the fundies with whom I am currently attempting to mend fences are more into podcasts anyway. Why would they stoop to being pandered to by the History Channel when they can get higher-quality historical analysis from people who already have a track record within their preferred subculture? I think the History Channel's former target demographic has mostly become too poor to afford cable, and besides, they kinda like to read books anyway. So they're desperately trying to grab ratings. Bible stories are the History Channel's equivalent of House introducing a bi female doctor and having her inspect her girlfriend's nude body for spider bites while they talk about the quality of the sex they'd been having. It's strapping sequins and a multicolored wig on the shark you're jumping.

And I just killed my pint of Ben & Jerry's "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" during tonight's episode. I don't think I can afford to continue having the ice cream as part of my weeknightly ritual, but damn, I like that show enough that I wish I could.

PersonalFailure said...

Welcome to the ranks of the bitterly cashless. I just fed my dog the protein portion of my dinner. Tonight, I am having rice and biscuits.

I really think the History Channel is misfiring with the whole fundy thing. A fundy message board had a vote on the most "satanic" channels- History and Discovery won by a long shot. The MTV just doesn't pack the devilish punch it used to, I guess.

Oh, and I would way rather see any of those battles you mentioned. Or a discussion of them.

(I just realized that any discussion of history pretty much counts as foreplay for me.)

Anonymous said...

I prefer my description of G4's eye candy: modestly hot girls. Like, they're hot, but since they're into geek stuff they can't be unrealistic hot, yeah? Attainable hot, maybe. Like in high school, where if I could play Mario Kart with a girl I figured I was halfway to second base.

GoDaddy lost me when I watched the extended version of the Danica Patrick commercial. Your read is dead-on. I'll stick to sex and porn, because those things are fun, thanks.

I can't even watch the history channel anymore. The only reason I ever watched it was because I thought we were supposed to learn from history, and apply it to the present. Nothing I see on the channel seems to tell me where we're going, or what the hell we're going to do when we get there. It's mostly about people dying, which I think is lame, because all of the people from most of those eras are dead anyway.

If the Mattress World is near the expressway, that must mean... it's near a blue line stop? I'd head out there just to get a nice Geds-as--giant-chicken shot. Then get a huge print of the picture, put it on my bedroom wall, crank "Goodbye Horses", and see where it leads. I mean... nevermind.

Geds said...

So, um, would this be a bad time to point out that I'm not actually holding signs by the freeway? I just wanted to poke a sharp stick at AIG and I really didn't want to discuss the real reason I've been otherwise engaged the last couple weeks.

Fiat: I will say this about G4. They show re-runs of The Chasers War on Everything, which is a pretty funny show. And Attack of the Show is useless. My conclusion: G4 is basically Spike for geeks.

PF: How, exactly, does one come up with the idea that the History and Discovery channels are the most satanic? Are the Mythbusters trying to conjure their dark lord Satan by blowing stuff up and setting things on fire? I would honestly love to know what the metric is here.

Also, why can't I meet women in Chicago for whom a discussion of history counts as foreplay? I might actually get laid some time this century...

(Not actually) Anon: Dude, I don't want to know what you're doing over there right now...

Anonymous said...

Right now, just being bummed I won't get to have a Geds-as-chicken picture. Devastated is the word.

PersonalFailure said...

and i love watching G4, because it makes me feel uberhot. spankin' crazy uberhot.

and if i'm really feeling down about the incipient wrinkles and increasing grey, i go down to the gamestop in a low cut top, start talking about my latest gears of war adventure and watch the employees trip over themselves to "assist" me.

Geds said...

Why aren't you my new best friend?

Although Gamestops are funny. I wandered in to my local one the other day. I'd barely been using my Xbox 360, but then I went and bought myself a 37" Sharp Aquos and decided I needed more than GTA IV and COD 4 to play, since I could now see what was going on (ten year old 25" Samsung CRTs are nice, but they're kinda fuzzy...).

There was a girl working there. I, uh, I wouldn't really say she was pretty, but she wasn't unattractive. She asked if I needed help, I said I was good, but that I'd just bought a new TV and it seemed a shame to let my Xbox rot.

She said, "You know what will really make your TV look good? A Playstation 3." And she then proceeded to spend the next couple minutes attempting to convince me that I really wanted to spend $600 right then and there because the hardware on the PS3 is better than the hardware on the 360.

Now, if I'd been paying more attention to what was going on (it's weird, I totally picked up on it, but apparently my asshole reflex was a little slow. Or I'm still too damn nice), I probably should have said, "So does that actually work? I mean, do you get a lot of loser guys who come in here, think you're flirting with them, and drop close to a grand on a new system and peripherals?"

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe she really did like me. I should go buy a PS3 tonight so I can find out...

PersonalFailure said...

the barrista at the coffee shop totally wants you, too.

and the waitress at denny's.

trust me, she sells a lot of ps3's that way.

as for my feelings on the system- ps3?! you should have given her an exorcism.

Geds said...

Hey, hey, I know for a fact that the barista at the Starbucks doesn't want me. It's not so long ago that I used to be kinda-sorta dating a Starbucks barista and, well, you don't want me going in to those stories again.

Oh, wait, you weren't around yet during the self-absorbed Geds phase here at Accidental Historian. It wasn't pleasant. I mean, apparently I wrote some interesting stuff, but it still wasn't particularly pleasant...

And I will say this about the PS3: it'll be a requirement to play any and all future God of War games. And I do enjoy the hell out of God of War.

By the way, do you still have my copy of God of War II, Dave? I know you're out there somewhere...

PersonalFailure said...

depending on your tastes, simply replace god of war with gears of war 2 or fallout 3.

save yourself $1000 and possession by demonic spirits bent on vengeance.

Anonymous said...

Just woke up. I had a dream where I was crushed to death at a concert. Odds I will be joining you at Glasvegas are slightly less good than they were 12 hours ago.

And yeah, I gots your God of War II.