Repent! Repent!

Less than one day to rapture time fun times!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/secret-funhouse

Because You're Bored: Netflix Boogaloo

Strikethrough means I've watched it completely.  A fraction represents the number of episodes in a TV show I've watched.

• Kids in the Hall
• Rocko's Modern Life 1/52
• Angry Beavers
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Up
• Can Man Make it to Mars?
• Super High Me
• Capitalism: A Love Story
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Good Will Hunting
• Black Snake Moan
• Sling Blade
• Casino
• Apollo 13
• Dead Snow
• Santa's Slay
• Hellraiser
• The Evil Dead
• Dreamcatcher
• Interview with the Vampire
• The Human Centipede
• The Crazies
• The Langoliers
• The Hole Story
• Beware! Children at Play
• Some Folks Call it A Sling Blade
• Star Trek
• Demolition Man
• Aliens
• Sphere
• Johnny Mnemonic
• The Man from Earth
• Ink
• Red Sonja
• Battlefield Earth
• Krull
• The Dark Side of the Moon
• The Stand
• Zardoz
• Boondock Saints
• Frozen
• The Mechanist
• Bad Lieutenant
• The Upright Citizens Brigade: ASSSSCAT
• Torchwood
• Robocop
• The Office (U.K.) 6/12
• Toy Story 3
• The Graduate
• Futurama
• 2012
• Wild Wild West
• Last Action Hero
• Commando
• Halo Legends
• Afro Samurai
• Ponyo
• The Land Before Time
• Ren and Stimpy
• Muppets from Space
• Stargate Continuum
• Battle for Terra
• Airplane II: The Sequel
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (T.V.)
• Stranded
• Doctor Who: The Ark in Space
• Sex Galaxy
• The Incredible Melting Man
• Gone with the Wind
• Lost
• Sometimes They Come Back
• 58 Episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000
• Dexter
• Scrubs
• The Office (U.S.)
• Jericho
• Farscape 22/88
• Sliders 1/89
• Exit Through the Gift Shop
• News Radio
• Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
• Pandorum
• Stargate SG-1
• Stargate Atlantis
• Xena: Warrior Princess
• Stargate Universe
• 3rd Rock from the Sun
• The X-Files
• Epoch
• Titanic 2
• 2010: Moby Dick
• Wings
• Reno 911
• Babylon 5
• The IT Crowd
• Cosmos
• Amadeus
• Precious
• The Fountain
• Where the Red Fern Grows
• Everything is Illuminated
• Wonder Boys
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• The Dead Zone (T.V.)
• Hyperdrive
• Upright Citizens Brigade
• Twin Peaks
• TerrorVision
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space
• Zone Troopers
• At the Earth's Core
• The Food of the Gods
• The Swarm
• Invader Zim
• Eddie Izzard: Dressed to Kill (About to watch)
• Batman Forever
• Bio-Dome
• Zombie Strippers
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• Creepshow
• Mega Piranha
• Bitch Slap
• Murder by Death
• Live Nude Comedy
• Pervert
• Joe's Apartment
• ThanksKilling
• Swamp Thing
• Alien Apocalypse
• Vampires: Los Muertos (Stars Jon Bon Jovi as Derek Bliss, vampire hunter)
• Caveman
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
• The Toxic Avenger
• True Lies
• Driving Miss Daisy
• The Right Stuff
• Malcom X
• Barton Fink
• Dances With Wolves
• Mac and Me
• Ever Since the World Ended
• Black Adder
• Dilbert
• Keeping Up Appearances
• Easy A
• Mutants
• Paintball
• Mega Shark vs. Crocosauras
• The Horde
• Zombie Women of Satan
• Tekwar
• Black Belt Jones
• I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
• Xanadu
• The Terminator
• The Thing with Two Heads
• Phantasm
• Phantasm II
• Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
• Elder Scrolls Phantasm IV: Oblivion
• Let the Right One In
• Eddie Izzard: Circle
• Eddie Izzard: Glorious
• Eddie Izzard: Unrepeatable
• Eddie Izzard: Definite Article
• The Office Special
• Mars Attacks!
• The Secret of Kells
• The Dark Crystal
• Insomnia
• Time Bandits
• King of the Hill
• The Cosby Show
• Monk
• Angel
• SNL Best of Christopher Walken
• Rocky and Bullwinkle
• Soap
• Earth 2
• Seaquest DSV
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
• Kick-Ass
• Sons of Anarchy
• Death Note
• Sherlock
• Cheers

Actually I'll watch Eddie Izzard after David Cross.

I'm Batman

I was planning on doing a lengthy observation of the practice of justifying a belief in God through wishy-washy apologetics and semantic games.  Instead I'm going to bitch about TV.  The following entry is going to be an exercise in nitpicking a subject which, for some of you, has been covered to death already.  You have been warned.

There are certain factually inaccurate movie/TV tropes which make me want to hurl a brick through whichever screen I may be watching them on.  They're things which you don't have to be an expert in (and I am by far not an expert) to notice the skull-fucking wrongness of them.

Guns, guns, guns.  People love guns.  I love guns.  Guns are fun.  And this is coming from mister lefty atheist socialist cut the defense budget by 100% so we can pay for everybody to get a good education and be healthy and make all their dreams come true until the end of time me here.  Guns is neat!  They go bang and things fly out of them.  Lots of people (and by lots I mean Americans) have a gun, have fired a gun, or generally know how they work.  Which begs the question, why the hell in movies do they treat pistols like old timey revolvers?  You don't have to rack the god damn thing!  Way to go wasting part of your severely limited ammo there, Action Steve!  The bullet will come out of the little hole at the end and make people dead, depending on your proficiency.

Allow me to paint a scene for you.  The hero has got the bad guy (or a sufficiently bad cronie) at gunpoint.  The the baddie is defiant, refusing to give our grizzled hero information vital to moving the plot along.  "Fuck you," spits the villain with much spittle.  "I am not at all intimidated by the loaded death blaster aimed at my body's central processing unit!  You, the virtuous embodiment of solid American morals who has heretofore not killed a single person in the previous fifty three minutes, would never end my wretched existence!"  The hero, without a word, racks the automatic pistol to prove that he is tough and serious.  The villain promptly wets himself and spills the beans.

This leads smoothly to another overused device in interrogation scenes.  "He said he'd kill me if I talked!"  In most cases this is nothing more than a plot speed bump.  In real life interrogations, this is where the interrogating authority figures offer protection and/or a plea bargain.  In movies, this is where Batman drops you off a fire escape or the generic hero acts even more mean or tough, so the suspect will break.  Literally break in the case of Batman.  I suppose I can forgive this, as in real life interrogation is really damn boring to watch.

I'm nowhere NEAR finished with this topic.  I expect you to expect more in the future.

Spazzy's Secret Funhouse 5/14/2011

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/secret-funhouse
Live show is Saturday at 4:00 pm Pacific / 7:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 pm GMT

http://bit.ly/9LcQNj Spazzy's Secret Funhouse audio archive

It's not every week though, so I announce it mostly through Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/spazfox

Short But Bitter

I haven't had hard alcohol in months.  I do ok.

I drink some tonight and I stay up way too late, get drunk, sing along and cry to Wish You Were Here, post online about how drunk I am, and masturbate myself to sleep.  Typical!

Burger God

A short post for my few viewers.

I just saw one of those giant, obnoxious ads on the top of YouTube's front page.  It was for the Thor movie.

THE WAIT IS OVER!

What fucking wait?  I, a connoisseur of movies both indie and blockbuster wasn't even aware of this Thor flick's existence until last week when I went into a Burger King and saw a poster for the stupid gender-role-centric tie-in toys they were offering with the child engorgement meals.  Seriously, all the girl toys were rings and rainbows and shit while the boy toys were badass action figures and hammers.  Talk about brainwashing our children to accept outmoded stereotypes!

What the hell was I talking about?

True Immersion

I'm going to try to keep this spoiler free, so you may have to take some of my assertions as gospel without my verification.

It's easy to argue that video games are all about escapism.  The means by witch one solves problems in a video game are typically violent, deceptive, fantastical, and so on.  Once in a while, though, a game will make you step back and point out to you that actions do have consequences.

Take Fallout 3.  For the most part the decisions you make which affect your karma fall either on namby pamby Care Bear good guy and Satan's unholy prolapsed rectum evildoer.  This makes it difficult to care about doing things like killing that friendly doctor who just healed your radiation sickness or nuking a town of wholesome, all-American settler type folk.

With the addition of Fallout 3's DLC The Pitt, the player's ultimate goal is a choice between one moral ambiguity and another.  Either choice will lead to harsh consequences.  When I played through it the first time I was honestly torn about what the right thing to do was.

I just finished the fourth installment of the Back to the Future game.  Being created by the same folks who created Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Sam and Max it's no surprise that this particular puzzle game involves achieving a goal through the most humorous and unlikely means possible.  Near the end of this particular episode though, when everything you've been building up to in order to fix the timeline is about to fall into place, you're forced to consider the ramifications of what you're about to do.  In changing history one way or the other, you're altering the lives of people in ways they may not want.  And, as with The Pitt, this leads to harsh consequences.

These are just a couple examples of how actions taken in a video game can reflect the gray areas of reality, and of how doing the wrong things for the right reason can possibly lead to tragedy.

Killer Grammar

Riding my bike home from the local bagelry I passed an antiques store.  Out front this store had a sandwich board sign.  Writ upon the sign is the following advertisement:

Antique's,

Unique's,

And More...

Reading this sign nearly made me swerve into traffic to save me the agony of knowing such a horrible abuse of the English language could be displayed proudly; flaunted in the sunlight of a beautiful day, rather than hidden away beneath a rock or at the bottom of a well.

There is so much wrong with this.  Those commas just hanging off in space, the improper ellipses, pluralizing an adjective, and those god damn apostrophes!  Just...fffffffffffffffffffff!

On a side note, I am well aware that I bastardize the English language for comic effect.  However, my distortions are based firmly in a strong understanding of how English works.  They make sense in a way.  They're understandable.  And, damn it, they're funny.

The Sandwich Man Can't

Near to where I live there is a co-op grocery store. In their deli/cafe sector one can purchase all manner of ethnic cuisine by the pound. They also make sandwiches. I've been a big fan of their sandwiches for going on six years. Alas, hard times have hit us all, and the co-op has had to raise the price of their sandwiches yet again.

It didn't bother me when the price rose from five dollars to five fifty, nor when it went from five fifty to six. This time it went from six dollars to seven. Pretty steep considering I could go to Subway and pay two dollars less. Ah, but Subway's bread is vastly inferior, consisting of air-puffed, half-cooked dough, whereas the co-op uses fat, dense rolls. Their cheese selection is also much greater, and I can pretend the salami sandwich made using locally grown vegetables is somehow healthier than the salami sandwich made with some kind of sneaky out of town vegetables.

Normally this particular price increase wouldn't bother me either, except that it only applies to sandwiches with meat. They're charging an extra dollar for meat on a sandwich. Insanity, I know. Oh, they'll still let you enjoy your evil non-vegan cow slavery cheese, but meat, the whole POINT of a sandwich, that's gonna be an extra dollar for omnivore tax.

"Very well," I said to myself when the price increased. "I shall get tofu instead and salt the fuck out of that bastard so I can pretend I'm getting meat. Ha HA! That extra dollar is MINE!"

No, I have no problem with tofu. I can already hear people going, "EEEEEEEEW! It's made from BEANS!" Christ, people. I wonder how most of you would survive visiting a foreign country if you can't get over something as harmless as freaking tofu.

Several times my tofu plan worked out just fine. Six bucks as per usual. Then I went in yesterday. I looked at the sticker on the sandwich wrapper, saw the horrible mistake the sandwich maker had made in charging me seven dollars, and pointed out to her the error.

The sandwich order forms handily indicate items which will cost extra. For example, cucumbers and olives each raise the cost. They also explain that extra meat, cheese or tofu raise the cost. So I told the sandwich lady that I was not getting EXTRA tofu, or tofu in addition to meat, I was just getting tofu. I also told her how I had been charged six dollars in the past.

"Oh, but tofu is extra," she said.

"But it says additional tofu is a dollar," I told her.

"This is how we're supposed to be charging."

I did not point out that by her logic getting one meat filling on a seven dollar meat-filled sandwich would cost eight dollars because it costs more for extra meat. By this time she had given me the angry customer discount and I wanted to fuck off from there. I also did not point out that, in the future, for seven fifty I can get a sandwich with meat, all the veggies I please (olives and cucumbers included), a soda, and two cookies at the Subway which is both closer to walk to and less busy.

Spazzy's Secret Funhouse 4/30/11

Live show is Saturday at 4:00 pm Pacific / 7:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 pm GMT

It's not every week though, so I announce it mostly through Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/spazfox