bbzzzzzzz....thwack!!!

Yes, it's time once again for a "Things That Bug Me!" session. It's generally where I get to rant about things I've seen, and you get to read it.

♣ I know everyone's frozen here in Conyers, GA, with the polar winds that have pummeled the area for the past week (and believe me, 40 degrees is balmy right now), and there has been some ice on the ground the past couple of days. But it's gone now, and hasn't been there forever. So what I want to know is, why do people, when I'm on my way to work up the 2 lane backroads to save time, insist on going 30 mph down the roads!!! And today was even worse. It was a Mustang sports car! Going 30... Now, as much as I totally don't care about cars or things like that, I can appreciate the potential of a Mustang when there are no police cars around. It would be the same as some old guy taking a Ferrari down the interstate at 40, when the speed limit was 70, and the car could easily go 90 without thinking about it. You bought the car! You know what it can do!! Use it!!!

It's like the guy on Price is Right this week. Fit, muscular, Adonis type guy, tall, in his mid 20's, and he gets to the Showcase Showdown and does one of these finesse spins to try and get a dollar. Spin. The. Wheel. Let it go around 8 times... show it who's boss! Drove me nuts!

I've talked about this before... using your natural talent to its fullest extent (which applies to everyone except me, see my Singing post a few weeks ago.) If you can sing...then sing. David Phelps went from this booming tenor voice with the Gaither Vocal Band to his solo career where he sang these weaker ballads. Let's punch the notes. And while my stepdad would have said that he was resting his voice, because you can actually harm it if you strain it too much over a given time, there's a part of me that says, "So?" Produce the best work you can for as long as you can, and then you can be proud of the creations that came forth. Or athletes.... Barry Sanders did it right (although for the wrong team.) He let it fly for a few years, then retired. I would suspect that he would have stayed longer had his efforts been equalled by anyone else in the organization, but the Lions are like that, even today.

♣ And I'm sure I've said this before, in another blog sometime in the past, but I'm gonna say it again. I went to Blockbuster and was instantly greeted by the cashier as I came in....well, sort of. She said, "Hello," but never looked up from what she was doing, never acknowledged I had come in outside of the bell on the door that announced that someone had come in. Unacceptable behavior, in my opinion. If I am working near a door at Borders, I will move around a shelf and make sure they see me. Make eye contact. It's the best way of letting some know you're there, and you care about them. Of course, if Blockbuster let's this behavior go on like they do (and this isn't the only Blockbuster I've seen that does this,) it's no wonder they look like they're on their last leg. They must have better customer service that that if they hope to stay open. That mistake alone would make me want to order from Netflix, or download them online through, um, other means.

Just imagine what Blockbuster would be like if there were employees there that truly cared about the product they were selling, and were experts at that field, and good in giving customer service. Then, all the customers that call up Borders and ask, "I'm lookin' for that movie that has Johnny Depp in it...you know the one I mean?" could call Blockbuster and the employees there would actually know and could order it or have it in stock. That would be a service that even Wal-Mart could not duplicate, even with the low prices. And then, if Blockbuster had contracts with the major studios, they could easily have a downloadable center where empty DVD's could be made into movies, complete with the covers on the DVD's, and the packaging...etc... Talk about a considerable cut in costs, as well as the availability of thousands of movies without actually having to process them or wait for them in the mail. This would set Blockbuster back on the road to profitability, but I doubt it will ever happen. I described something like this for bookstores a year or two back.

♣ And speaking of bugs...I think scientists need to introduce a DNA strand that makes cockroaches taste like chicken. Undoubtedly, bad taste is something that the bugs use to keep animals from eating them. Because my cat, while she'll chase after moths and lizards and whatever else, totally ignores roaches, even though they run about by the dozens. But if scientists were to introduce a slight change into the pests genetic makeup, like making them smell like tuna or something, they would become a viable food source for bigger animals. Just a thought..... :)

Replacements

Headline News was gushing about JT, and they were saying that it was a shame that Jay Leno had already given (forcibly) the Tonight Show job to Conan O'brien. Which got me to thinking... there are a number of TV shows that deserve to have the correct replacements (and most have been filled by the wrong people.)

Late Night Talk Shows: Okay, so Jay is leaving. And frankly, I'm counting the days for that to happen with as great anticipation as the Democrats are waiting for GWB to leave. It hasn't always been that way, however. Jay Leno used to be a very entertaining and worthwhile replacement for Johnny Carson. He maneuvered the rivers of post 9/11 American airwaves with skill (mostly with the help of Arsenio Hall, who was amazing), and it was a time when my mom and I actually looked forward to watching the monologue each night before I went to bed, especially during my teaching years, which was a nightmare. It was good to laugh those days. But sometime afterward, the executives at NBC decided that Leno needed to abandon his Conservative leanings (he only half-heartedly picked on GWB, and focused more on the Democrats in the news) and his writers started making jokes that put down the Republicans. Either it was a change in writers, or Leno just didn't care anymore, but now there are few good jokes, a whole lot of filler, and fewer laughs from the households. We turn on Leno only because we can be doing other things while waiting for Conan to come ..wards.

So Conan is going to take over June 1st, 2009. Can't wait. I wonder what they're going to do with the set, with Kevin (who deserves special note, because without him, Leno would be barely watchable), with Max Weinburg (sp) (who deserves to go with Conan, since he is as much of Conan's act as Kevin is for Leno.), and more importantly, who they're going to use as Conan's replacement. They've announced that SNL alumni Jimmy Fallon is going to take over there, which is good. It leaves Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Central channel, making tons of money to stay where they are, I'm sure. The only other person I'd like to see there would be Justin Timberlake, and maybe he'll do that, in 10 years or so after his sex symbol status wears off (see prior blog).

TPIR: But the choice was wrong. Bob Barker made The Price is Right. And when he retired, it was the same as Johnny Carson leaving his show. So it was up to CBS to find a replacement, and the field was wide open. You know who they picked, and it was a bad choice. Drew Carey should have stayed on Whose Line.. and done what he's definitely good at. My choice would have been either Marc Summers (sp), of Nickelodeon's Double Dare fame, and more recently of Food Network's Unwrapped, or John O'Hurley, who is an animal lover himself and has hosted Family Feud for a few years. His personality was perfect, his mannerisms almost exactly like Barker. The old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." was so blatantly ignored here. Now I don't even watch TPIR anymore, and I watched it religiously before that. (I did a prior blog on this some time ago...)

Brett Farve...has lost his mind. He was a legend up in Green Bay, and now he's nothing more than a nuisance. And yes he'll be in the Hall of Fame some day, but right now the Packers are trying to pay him not to play. He's the joke line of the Espys, of Sportscenter every night, and it used to be that Farve was looked up to as a legend. Now he's ridiculed, and it shouldn't be that way. Aaron Rodgers (his replacement) deserves better than the treatment he's getting.

And speaking of football...legend John Madden, now making millions off his cursed EA sports game (poor Farve, the curse strikes again), will at some point leave MNF (now SNF) and leave NBC looking for a replacement. It either has to be a coach, or a player. In the coach ranks, rivals Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson come to mind (although Fox will probably not let Johnson go.), and for players, how about Farve? Naahh... but there is one person who would be perfect, if he doesn't decide to become an actor afterward. Put Payton in after he retires, and his mind could dissect plays just a easily as John Madden could in his prime, before he went senile.

I'm sure there are a lot more "Replacement" issues I could bring up, but I'll leave it at that for now. It's all fluff anyway. :)

The Altador Cup, TPIR, and Mario Party

I'm currently in the middle of the latest feature on the Neopets website. The Altador Cup is a soccer type game taking place with 16 different teams and millions of people playing it all over the world. It's thrilling for me to be involved in a contest of that magnitude. And it's interesting that I'm actually at least not bad at the game itself, because I'll be the first to confess that my eye-hand coordination is not the best in the world, and you have to get the angles just right. I'm a member of the Mystery Island team (partially because the Goalie is a Yurble), and we're doing really well. Should be in 4th or 5th place right now. Krawk Island and Roo Island are in 1st and 2nd place. I know this doesn't make any sense to have someone who just analyzed the works of Carl Jung be so enthralled with a child's game, but it's quite addicting. Honestly, it makes you feel like you're part of a community, and since that's the main reasoning behind much of what human's do, and the Internet does it so well. Like my brother, who plays Everquest or WOW or whatever, I'm joining into a community on a much simpler level.

One of the things I considered as I played this game was exactly how much of the game is actually fixed by the Neopets company. Little things that they could do if they wanted to influence the outcome of the game. And it's quite possible for them to do it without the knowledge of the people playing it. Little things, like tweaking the speed in which the computer's goalie intercepts the ball, or changing the randomness from which we get the Mutant or Dragian balls. The only thing they can't influence is the amount of playing that the players do, or their skill in doing so. It's very similar to playing Mario Party on the Nintendo 64. Now, to be fair, I've not played Mario Party 2 on up, just one, but let's take it as an example. Playing it on an emulator on my computer, I was able to save the game at any instance and force the computer to re-roll the dice on the board game. To my astonishment, every time I did that, the computer rolled the exact same roll. The game had been designed to roll whatever at whatever time. The only randomness was my skill at playing the mini-games. Thus the game was not truly random at all, but fixed to give the players, computer or human, a distinct advantage or disadvantage.

Also, take the game show The Price is Right. I know it's blasphemy to talk about such an icon of television culture, and I watch the show religiously, but there are parts of the game that are influenced by the outcome of the taping. The prices that are wrong can be made easier or harder to make the games easier or harder based on how many people are winning. Take "Half Off" for instance. Those prices are so easy to determine which ones are wrong, because they want you to be able to have at least a 25% chance of getting the money. The odds have to be correct. And with Wheel of Fortune, the puzzles at the end can be easy or hard, depending on how much money has been won. They would never let me on TPIR, because, for one, I'm too calm. And also, I know the ways to influence the odds to be more in my favor.

It's not exactly cheating, but it is influencing the game to make the outcome desirable for the people who's interests it serves. Not that that makes me not enjoy the games any less (a triple negative, you figure it out), on the contrary, it adds a bit of fun at figuring out how the powers that be want the game to come out. And we'll not even talk about the Reality TV shows, which are probably more fixed than anything else.

And I'm not dissing Neopets, either. They do a wonderful job at getting us all addicted to the games they have, and make us care about the events happening on their virtual world. So GO MI!! And I hope we win at least third place, or at least, I hope that TNT (the Neopets team) lets us try for it anyway.