How do they find me?

The Uncomfortable-Comment-Maker is a person who can stop a perfectly normal conversation dead in it’s tracks by saying something so uncalled for, so off-topic, and so awkward that you literally have two possible responses. (1) “Um… well… right… ok… I uh… um… yeah.” (2) Complete tomb-like silence. I am quite sure that you have met a person like this before, and in truth we have probably all said something in the course of a conversation that caused it to come to a screeching halt, but there are certainly degrees of offense that can occur and I believe that most of us would fall on the low end of the scale when compared to the individual that I had the misfortune of not being able to avoid interacting with.

It happened while I was on a call to an office that manages vacation rental properties. (My wife and I are going to the Gulf Coast for a week and have rented a beach house. I was simply calling to confirm that everything was in order and that there wouldn’t be any unpleasant surprises when we got there. ) I was speaking with what I thought was a very nice and normal-sounding lady when the following dialog occurred:

Nice-Lady: I see your address is in [My Town], Alabama. Where is that exactly?

 

Me: It’s near Birmingham.

 

Nice-Lady: Oh, ok. My brother was murdered in Jackson, Alabama.

Me: Um… well… right… ok… I uh… um… yeah.

Look, I have all the sympathy in the world for this lady. Having a close family member murdered would certainly be an experience that would haunt me for the rest of my life and I’m sure it would fuck me up plenty, HOWEVER, I seriously doubt that it is something that I would ever, ever, EVER, bring up in a phone conversation with a COMPLETE FUCKING STRANGER!!! I have, in fact, lost family members in rather tragic circumstances. (I would wager that most people have. Tragedy is an unfortunate but inevitable part of life.) I haven’t personally encountered anything as horrible as murder, but the family members are equally dead, and the tragedy level is roughly equivalent. I can’t imagine ever talking about any of these things to someone that was not either (a) a member of my family or (b) a very close friend. And in both cases, the subject would have to come up in a proper context, such as a friend asking me, “So man, how are you dealing with the loss of So-and-so?”. As a completely fictional example, the following is NOT a conversation that I would ever have:

Me: So what do you do for a living?

Unsuspecting person who is about to get more information than they need: I run a tree farm.

Me: Interesting. My uncle Farley got his head cut off in a logging accident.

Poor bastard who wishes he had said “I’m a mime”: Um… well… right… ok… I uh… um… yeah.

So now I’m all worried about this poor lady and her murdered brother. Did this happen recently? Did they catch the person who did it? Is she now a terrified hermit who only leaves her fortified house on bright, sunny days at high noon, and then only with an armed bodyguard? Gahtdammit, I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight because of this shit. How do these motherfuckers FIND me?

Posted by Cranefolder @ 6:46 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Incredible bargain on "Grindhouse" DVDs

When Raste and I went to see the "Grindhouse" double feature last year we had an absolute blast.  "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" are both fantastic movies separately, but when watched back-to-back in a real movie theater with all the fake movie trailers in between it was an entertainment experience that I don't think will ever be surpassed.  If you didn't get a chance to go see these films in the theater, (and odds are that you didn't since they were about as popular as a fat chick at a frat party) then I urge you to at least rent them, especially "Planet Terror".

I was very interested in picking these films up on DVD, but when they were released they were kind of expensive at $20 each.  Hey, I liked the movies, but I was looking for some kind of package deal.  Since I've had a Netflix membership for nearly 6 years, I find it very hard to buy DVDs unless I can get them on the cheap.  But I still really wanted them, especially since both DVDs were supposed to be extended cuts that included the "missing scenes" from the theatrical releases.  (Note about the "missing scenes":  In keeping with the "Grindhouse" theme, both Tarantino and Rodriquez cut the best parts of the "steamy" scenes from their films.  This was their homage to the time honored practice of theater projectionists cutting the best "skin" sections out of movies and then splicing them together into their own "highlight reels".  A cool idea, but a bit frustrating when you can tell that this hot chick is just about to get wild and then the film suddenly cuts forward about 5 minutes.)  So I've been keeping an eye on both of these movies and hoping for a price cut.  Today I got my wish.

My office building is located right next to a Super Target (big ole store like Wal-Mart or K-Mart for those of you unfortunate enough not to have experienced the shopping nirvana that is a Super Target) and I go there about once a week to grab a sandwich from the deli and then just walk around to blow off some steam and sift aimlessly through the clearance racks.  After finishing up a delectable grilled Cuban sandwich, I started my normal rounds of the store.  I always save the electronics department for last since it is closest to the exit anyway.  And on the last display I walked past were a bunch of DVDs on sale for just $10, among them the extended 2-disc editions of "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof".  "Oh hells yeah!", I thought, "Get in my BUGGY!!"  And as I picked them up to get a closer look and make sure that they hadn't been put on the wrong rack by mistake I noticed something else, there was a special offer sticker on the "Planet Terror" DVD.  The sticker said that there would be a coupon inside the case for $5 off of "Death Proof".  Holy shit could this get any better!?!?  As it turns out, yes it could…

So I went through the line and bought "Planet Terror" for $10.90 including tax.  Then I walked outside, opened the DVD and retrieved the coupon.  Oops.  The damn thing said the offer expired on 12/31/2007.  Oh well, $10 is still a good deal, right?  I went back in the store to buy "Death Proof" and I figured I would still try to use the coupon.  Sometimes those things will work after the expiration date, but I didn't have very high hopes for it.  To my surprise it worked just fine and I scored my copy of "Death Proof" for just $5.90.  WOOT!  Maybe this is payback for all the rotten luck I had last week.  I left the store with a smile on my face, feeling like I had finally had a chance to get one over on the system.  But little did I know, things would soon get EVEN BETTER…

When I got back to the office I decided to open my copy of "Death Proof", just for grins.  And what do you think was inside?  If you guessed a $5 off coupon for the movie "Planet Terror", then give your nuts a good scratching because you deserve it for being such a smart cookie.  (If you are a chick and you guessed right, then you may scratch my nuts as a reward.  Just be careful with the nails.)  So now I can go back to Target and buy another copy of "Planet Terror" for just $5.90 and then return it unopened using the receipt from the first copy that I bought for $10.90.  (Did you follow that? 'Cause my head hurts…)  When all is said and done, I will have picked up both movies for a grand total of just $11.80 with tax included.

I am a bargain hunting FOOL and this kind of stuff just totally geeks me out.  I don't know if anybody else would be willing to go through this much trouble just to save $10, but I sure as hell will.  It probably wouldn't have been worth it if I had to drive across town or something, since gas is $3 per gallon.  But the Target is within walking distance of my office, so it worked like a charm for me.  If anybody out there reading this gets inspired by my foolishness and decides to try this out, let me know how it turns out for you.  Happy hunting!

Posted by Cranefolder @ 4:15 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

WTF?!?! (Subtitle - Microsoft can now OFFICIALLY suck my cock!)

So, I've been having a kinda shitty week as I detailed in my last blog.  But then Wednesday passed without incident, and today my wife got a rental car and made arrangements to get hers fixed so things were starting to look up.  I damn near had a smile on my face by the end of my workday.  Not so fast asshole.  I just got home from work and checked my e-mail, only to find this message from Xbox Live:

Umm....   what?

I mean seriously...

What.

The.

FUCK!!!!!!

Are you motherfucking KIDDING me!  The disc drive on your fucking piece-of-dogshit console broke on Monday and now your tattletale fucktard system for reporting "inappropriate" behavior on Xbox Live has resulted in my account getting BANNED!  Well the joke's on you FUCKERS because since your ass-reaming hardware broke on Monday I wasn't going to be playing on Xbox Live ANYWAY!  You may now commence making a lunch out of my balls.  Afterwards you can gargle my spunk and floss with my pubes.

What in the hell kind of a joke horseshit email is this anyway?  They received feedback about my "inappropriate content" on the service?  You mean my semi-coherent ramblings into my microphone count as fucking CONTENT?!?!  And what the hell do they mean that they "deleted" the content?!?!  What the fuck was there to "delete"?  Are they recording every fucking conversation by every last fucking person playing on Xbox Live.  I seriously goddamned doubt that shit.  I haven't sent any messages to anybody that isn't on my friends list, so I know they aren't referring to me sending someone an inappropriate message.  What the hell could this POSSIBLY even MEAN?

My suspension will end tomorrow, so I guess it wasn't that serious, and is probably just the result of some fucking Timmies that got PWNED in a CoD4 match I was in (and I wouldn't have been doing any PWNING, that would have been my teammates) and then decided collectively "Hey you know what?  FUCK that Cranefolder motherfucker!  Fuck him in the EAR!  I'm leaving negative feedback and telling people that he used racial slurs and then said he was going to rape my whole family just before he burned a cross on my lawn!  That'll teach him to be on the winning team!"  Seriously, this self-policing bullshit is just NEVER GOING TO WORK!!!  EVER!!!

EVER, you fucking hear me?  EVARRRRRRR!!!!!11SHIFTONE111!!!!!

The reason it will never work is because of the sheer size of the membership of Xbox Live.  You've got literally tens of millions of people that have accounts, and they are not all fucking saints.  Some of them are monkey-fuck-crazy little shit-heel sons-of-bitches with nothing better to do than grief the fuck out of everyone they encounter.  I bet the same little cum-stains that I hear talking in their squeaky my-balls-haven't-dropped voices about how they fucked my grandma last night and how much they hate ni##ers are the same mental-midgets that send in reports of "inappropriate content".

I realize that Microsoft is under pressure to police the community.  Last week I was reading an article about a family that was very upset because their son was encountering a lot of racist comments when he played online.  I can certainly sympathize with their anger, because I feel it too.  Just because I'm not black doesn't mean I don't get mad as all hell when I hear some vacuous racist bag-of-douche spouting off garbage that you know he damned sure wouldn't be brave enough to do in the presence of any other human.  That shit makes me fucking FURIOUS!  But I also recognize that there ain't a mother fucking thing that Microsoft will ever be able to do to stop it.  EVER.  But these poor parents don't know that.  The father was quoted as saying something to the effect of "Microsoft knows this is happening, but they aren't doing anything to prevent it.  This means they can be held liable for the content and we are going to sue them."  I just had to shake my head.  This guy just has NO IDEA how pervasive this sort of language is on the service.  He also probably has no concept of how MANY people are on the service and what kind of staff it would take to have people actually investigate each and every claim of "inappropriate content".  My heart goes out to that parent, because he is frustrated and justifiably angry and wants something to be DONE.  But there is nothing logistically POSSIBLE that could ever be done without violating all kinds of rights.

Seriously, what could Microsoft ever do to fix this problem?  Good luck with trying to record every word that is said on all of Xbox Live.  I can't even begin to fathom the kind of storage space you would need for such an effort.  I write software for a living, and although I'm not the most experienced programmer on earth, I can say with some certainty that you would never be able to pull this off without spending a RETARDED amount of money on hardware and infrastructure ALONE.  Not to mention the fact that every time a complaint came in, some actual person would have to search for the offending game session and then listen to all of the dialog to determine if "inappropriate content" was in fact distributed via the Xbox Live service.

So yeah, I'm mad as fuck about having my account suspended even though it really doesn't matter because, need I remind you, my fucking 360 is BROKEN!  I'm mad because I am now the victim of a shitty system that was created in a futile effort to combat a problem that can never be solved through software.  If you don't want racist/sexist/obscene/profane content on Xbox Live then you will have to stamp out all racist/sexist/obscene/profane behavior EVERYWHERE on the PLANET!  Only when there are no morons will there be no offensive encounters on Live.  And I don't know if you have noticed, but the morons out there are breeding like rabbits because they put condoms on their TOES!

Probably the worst part of all of this is that I have no idea what I am actually getting banned for.  None.  I just know that I contributed "inappropriate content" and that the content has now been "deleted" and I better not ever do it again.  I read through the horrendously vague terms-of-service agreement, and from what it says in there it looks like they can ban you for whatever the fuck reason they feel like.  You can't spread "profanity" for one thing.  Well what the FUCK counts as profane?  Can I say "damn", or "shit"?  I would assume that your biggies like "fuck-stick", "cock-gobbler" and "chode-snuffling-wank-monger" would be over the line, but what about the word "crap".  I know that word wouldn't be allowed in my mother's house, but is "crap" profane?  Of course, it's not like any of this matters anyway.  I guaran-fuckin-tee you that there wasn't a single human being involved in the decision to ban my account for 24 hours.  Just some little service, written by some asshole programmer like myself, running on a machine somewhere that counts up the number of complaints filed against you and then fires off an email and shuts down your account for a day once it crosses a certain threshold.  I bet the poor slob who had to write that knew damned good and well that it wouldn't fix anything, but hey, everybody's got to pay the rent some way.  I ain't mad at him/her.

One last thing:  The ONLY reason I have a 360 is because of Xbox Live.  If it weren't for the folks at 2old2play that I like to game with, I would have absolutely no reason to put up with the dodgy 360 hardware.  Nearly all of the games I like to play have also come out on PC, so it won't exactly break my heart to kick this plastic brick to the curb.  I can play The Orange Box by MYSELF, fuck-you-very-much.  If the Live service starts to head downhill, with more outages and more bullshit bans, then I will sell this fucking defective hunk of junk faster than Whitney Houston can snort a line of coke.

Bank on that shit.

**NOTE**

I marked this as NSFW because of language.  To any of you who clicked on my blog looking for dirty pictures, I apologize.  It was not my intent to cock-tease you.

Posted by Cranefolder @ 7:09 pm EDT | Permalink | 9 Comments

What next?

I am off to a GREAT start this week. My wife was in a minor car accident on Monday morning. She is completely fine but her vehicle is going to need some work and is not currently driveable. It was the other douche's fault, so our insurance won't be picking up the tab, but the downside is we have to wait for his insurance company to get their act together before we can get the car fixed. Of course we COULD go ahead and get it fixed, pay for it ourselves, and THEN try to get reimbursed, but that is always way more of a hassle than just waiting it out and carpooling until they get around to handling our case. So I've got this fantastic clusterfrak to look forward to over the next week or two. Yippee.

So, Monday sucked big time, but Mondays usually do and that knowledge somewhat softened the blow. I wasn't really prepared for Tuesday though. I had fired up my 360 on Sunday afternoon for a bit and played some single-player CoD4 for about an hour. The game gave me a disc read error the first time I tried to run it, but I just ejected the disc, put it back in, and it worked without a fuss. I didn't get a chance to play anything on Monday, but last night I had a couple of free hours and thought I would get on and game with my friends, crossing my fingers and hoping that Xbox Live would be behaving better and that I could actually get into a game.

I need not have worried about Xbox Live, because I didn't even get that far. My 360's disc drive wasn't able to read ANY of my game discs. It wasn't even trying to run them at all. I'd put in a game disc (I tried all 6 that I own) and the dashboard would say "Reading…" but then the message would change back to "Open Tray" after a couple of seconds. The damned thing was acting like there wasn't even a disc IN THE FRAKIN' TRAY!!!

I looked around online and tried some different tricks, like removing your hard drive and rebooting, patting your head while rubbing your tummy, etc. but no dice. After futzing around with it for about half an hour I realized I would just have to request a "coffin" and send off for repairs. This is just frakin' rediculous.

My 360 was manufactured only 6 months ago and I don't play it that much. When I do play (maybe once or twice a week) it is usually for less than an hour. And a lot of times I've been playing Carcassonne with my wife and that doesn't even USE THE DISC DRIVE! My gahdamned gamerscore is 750, so it is painfully obvious that the 360 disc drive did not fail because of overuse. And I don't abuse the hardware. The machine has always been laid flat and has only been moved TWICE since I brought it home from the store. What I'm saying is that my 360 has to be one of the most lightly used and pristine gaming consoles ON EARTH and yet it has died on me. Frak you Microsoft.

As I was filling out the online forms to request a coffin for my gaming machine I realized that I was doing PRECISELY what I had most feared I would be doing. On the day I bought the 360 and Halo 3, a day that SHOULD have been nothing but fun, I had this nagging sense of impending doom that cast a dark cloud over the whole experience. Sure, I had fun, but deep down I knew that the day would come when I would regret that I had ever sent any of my hard earned monies in the direction of MacroShaft. And yesterday that day finally came to pass.

In a couple of days (or maybe weeks if I get unlucky like SoupNazi) I'll get my 360 "coffin" and send if off for repair. And then several days (or weeks) later I'll get it back, and what I will have then is a repaired piece of dogshit excuse for a gaming console. Man, I just CANNOT wait. It is going to be so awesome.

**EDIT**
By the way, I've started watching Battlestar Gallactica and I'm trying to soften up my language a bit by using the word "frak" instead of .... well, you know.  My wife appreciates it.

Posted by Cranefolder @ 11:53 am EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Thirty, 30

I am 30 years old today.

Thirty.
Years.
Old.

I usually don't give a frag about my birthday, and most years I don't even give this day a second thought.  Certain numbers though, do seem to stand out.  At 16 I could drive, at 18 I could vote, and 21 meant I could stop getting other people to buy my alcohol.  But since then, none of the numbers have really meant anything to me, I mean seriously, who could get all worked up about celebrating their 27th birthday?  Get over yourself already.

But 30?  I mean damn.  THIRTY?  Am I really thirty gahdamned years old?  I actually had a very sobering moment a few weeks ago while watching one of my favorite movies, "Mallrats".  I was sitting there enjoying all of that fantastic, quotable dialog ("That kid is BACK on the escalator!") when it suddenly struck me just how long ago the movie was made.  "Mallrats" was released in 1995, just as I was starting my senior year of high-school.  I was 17 years old.  SEVENTEEN!  The movie is now more than 12 years old, and it really seems like just yesterday that I was watching it for the first time.   The 90's, the decade that I spent in high-school and college, is LONG GONE.  Music that I love from that time is now showing up on classic rock stations, mixed in with garbage from Van Halen, Journey and Styx.  Jesus-h-rimjobbing-christmas-tree!  The Foo Fighters might not be the best band on the planet, but do they really deserve to have their songs sandwiched in between 80's hair-band ass-hattery and 70's pussified soft-rock circle-jerk-a-ration?

Probably the worst part about turning 30 is all the "helpful" folks who keep reminding you that it isn't a big deal.  I mean, no shit, I'm not fucking retarded.  I'm fully aware that I am really only a day older than I was yesterday, that age is just a number, that getting older beats the alternative, and at least I'm not turning 50 (har-de-har-har), every birthday cliché in the book.  My own mother noted in my birthday card that I am more than halfway to being a senior citizen.  Had I just been left alone, I probably would have been able to just let this day slip by like any other, but people just won't let it go.  At least after this I probably won't get bothered about a birthday again until I'm 40, so I've got THAT to look forward to.

One thing that softens the blow of this "milestone" is the knowledge that I am in better physical shape than I was when I turned 26.  I'm only about 5'9", and I weighed about 205 just before my 26th birthday.  I did a pretty good job getting in shape after that and got down to about 170 at my lowest.  I slowly got back up to about 195 just before my 29th, but I knocked it back down again and kept my weight around 175 for all of last year.  I found about 5 more pounds over the holidays, but I'm still doing OK.  I've got to get back on the wagon and do the final push to get rid of a little extra baggage, but at least I don't feel disgusting anymore.  I was talking to Sunburned Goose about this at work a few days ago.  (He is just about the same age as me.)  Is this what our lives have come down to now?  Having to closely monitor what we eat and how much we exercise to make sure that we don't swell up like a possum corpse rotting on the side of a sweltering Alabama highway?  Dammit, I want to be able to eat an entire pizza for dinner, finish off a sixer of beer for dessert, and wake up the next day feeling fantastic.  Those days are gone.  GONE!  So when I get home this afternoon, I'll be heading down to my basement to spend some time on my home gym, because it's time to stop screwing around and start getting serious about treating my body as nicely as I can.  Thirty might seem old now, but hopefully I have many more decades ahead of me and I'd like to spend them living in a temple, not a tent, if you know what I'm saying.

I don't know where I was going with this blog post, but maybe that is the point.  I'm getting old and I ramble a lot more than I used to.  This is particularly worrisome if you know how much I had a tendency to ramble on even when I was a young goober of just 16.  By the time I turn 50 I'll probably just be blabbing all gahdamned day about the weather, kids these days, what's wrong with politics, and how much better the world was when I was in college.

To wrap this up, I thought I would share the names of some famous folks that have the good fortune of being born on the same day as me.  I already knew about Muhammad Ali, Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman, but I found a couple new ones on the interwebs today.  I can also claim Benjamin Franklin and Al Capone as my birthday brothers.  Coolness, our nation's wildest founding father and a criminal psychopath with syphillis.

Posted by Cranefolder @ 4:14 pm EDT | Permalink | 8 Comments