I don't make resolutions. Resolutions are for people who:
1) enjoy being quitters
2) have nothing else to do in January anyway
3) like to impress other people (while they're oblivious of the fact that they're not)
4) like to piss me off by taking up space in the gym
As it often does, Calvin & Hobbes (the final black & white strip, from Saturday, December 30, 1995) sums it up nicely:
CROSBY HAS JUST SAVED HOCKEY AGAIN!
He just scored the winning goal in a shootout in a whiteout in Buffalo. Had the writers not already been on strike, I would have said that NBC scripted that ending.
(video courtesy of NBC via Cablevision via my HDTV via my camera)
I'm sure Kris thinks I'm just rubbing it in by showing his Sabres lose in a shootout, but that was exciting. Meanwhile, NBC showed that clip of Crosby bouncing the puck on his stick about 1000 times--okay, we get it, HE'S GOOD. And I love Doc Emrick but I turned my receiver's center channel down to -12 dB and smothered it with a pillow for the Whiteout Shootout. Much better.
Despite the lack of scoring and frequent ice maintenance stoppages, it couldn't have worked out better for the NHL. Except for the ratings.
That was fun. Let's do it again soon.
Let's face it: no one is going to be nostalgic for 2007. Absolutely nothing happened. Nothing. It was a shitastic year, and all I can say to it is good riddance. (And boy is it sad to hear Dick Clark on that New Year show, he really needs to retire.)
But things are already looking up for 2008, as we're kicking it off some OLD TIME OUTDOOR HOCKEY! The Penguins will play the Sabres today in the EXTREME AMPED TO THE MAX NHL Winter Classic in front of 73,000 crazy Western PA/NY hockey fans at Ralph Wilson Stadium, the first regular season pro hockey game to be played outside in the US. (That Heritage Classic game back in 2003 in Edmonton was the first outdoor game, but it doesn't count since it was in Canada, and we couldn't find a single bar that was showing it live.) Although I would have preferred if they had shoveled off a spot on Lake Erie and played pond hockey like real men, I guess they had to accommodate the sissy Europeans on the two squads.
I will probably be the only one watching it since it's up against FOUR BOWL GAMES (another brilliant decision by Gary Bettman, who already sucks in 2008), but I don't really care; if hockey is on in HD, I will watch it. At least the NHL decided to hold All-Star Weekend (sadly, in Atlanta, where they don't have water, much less frozen outdoor ponds) during the dead week before the NFL's "Big Game", making it possible that some desperate sports fans might accidentally tune in. NBC has the game here in the States, and they got Bob Costas to host. This is a coup, since according to his bio, he "has a history broadcasting hockey, serving as the play-by-play commentator for the Syracuse Blazers of the old Eastern Hockey League in 1973-74". That's like saying I should be the new drummer for Led Zeppelin because I rocked a toy drum set in the 3rd grade.
According to the Weather Channel, it will be 30-35 degrees with an 80-90% chance of snow. They already decided to split up the 3rd period into two 10 minute chunks because of the wind, but there are many other questions still unanswered. Will they take emergency Zamboni breaks if it snows? Will a record number of Buffalo wings be consumed? Will Buffalo finally be annexed by Canada? Will Sidney Crosby once again save hockey?
Regardless, I'm looking forward to it. And hey, if this is successful maybe they can do this in Phoenix or Tampa next year. (Okay, maybe not, but a Devils/Rangers game at Yankee Stadium in February would be fantastic.)
Follow along at these various sites:
Official Winter Classic Site [NHL.com]
AOL Fanhouse Winter Classic Live Blog [AOL Sports]
Ice Bowl Open Thread: Pens at The Ralph [Bflo Blog]
Liveblog [Ultimate Sports Road Trip]
Live Blog [Barry Melrose Rocks]
UPDATE (1:15 PM). Seriously, this game looks like it's going to be fantastic. It's snowing pretty steadily, Crosby looks adorable in those vintage powder blue PITT unis, Ryan "Red Light" Miller is wearing a wool cap (what the Canucks call a "tuque") on top of his goalie mask, they have a little "pond hockey" rink off to the side, they have a shot from the BLIMP, and it's in glorious HD. You are a serious asshat if you're watching two mediocre NCAA teams (like Florida/Michigan in the Capital One Bowl) play right now.
SID THE KID > TEBOW
This video cracked me up: Charlie Brown Christmas dubbed over by the cast of "Scrubs".
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!
"My Charlie Brown Christmas" by The Cast of Scrubs [YouTube]
It was a pretty desolate Saturday night in Nyack last week, because of a predicted snowstorm that didn't actually turn out to be any big deal. In a nearly empty Bourbon Street, we finally got Ray to play Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" after bugging him for, I don't know, over three years. I understand his reluctance, since there's no way to figure out what the lyrics are; we ended up "singing" it for him from a sad combination of an awful internet "translation" and our equally awful "memory".
Here's "Misheard Lyrics Guy" and his best guess as to what the hell Eddie Vedder is warbling:
Make me fries!
Misheard Lyrics to Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" [YouTube]
. . . some kisses."
That might be the line of the year. That's one of the double entendres from the song "Let's Duet", featured in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, starring John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer.
Although this looks like a one-joke movie, it's a funny joke. This rips apart the Hollywood conventions shoved down our throats by biopics such as Ray and Walk The Line, and it's about damn time. I cannot tell you how many times I screamed at the screen, "That never happened!" during those two fake, melodramatic movies.
Here's a clip from the movie, where Dewey meets the Beatles.
"Let's Duet" from Walk Hard [YouTube]
Dewey Meets The Beatles (Walk Hard) [YouTube]
This is the last Top 10 of 2007. Enjoy!
10. It's not supposed to get above 30° today, which in meteorological terms is "fucking freezing". I have to say that the snow looks amazing; because there was a little ice/rain at the end of the snowstorm on Sunday, there is a glistening, frozen shell over everything. My first thought was: how far could I putt a golf ball across that?
9. You know the little bag that a Lipton teabag comes in? What's that called? A teabag bag? I wonder if that's on the Lipton.com FAQ.
8. I went to the bar three days last week, at least one of those trips was in order to get a discount to join the gym from one of the bartenders (name withheld). After all that drinking, I never got the form from her (okay, her name is Stalky McStalkerson). I guess that means I have to drink EVEN MORE so eventually I can join up. Ironic, isn't it?
7. After two seasons, Ricky Gervais' "Extras" wrapped up with a "series finale special" the way a quality show is supposed to. Not only did it make a statement about the vacuous, empty lives of celebrities, it also left its two main characters on an 'up' note (unlike the depressing BBC version of "The Office"). In other words, something ACTUALLY HAPPENED on the show's series finale, unlike "The Sopranos". Plus, George Michael and Clive Owen did hilarious, self-deprecating cameos, and where else are you going to find that?
6. Barry Zuckerkorn > Arthur Fonzerelli.
5. The Giants suck. They lost to the pathetic Redskins last night, powered by Elisha Manning's 18/52 for 184 performance, his 34 incompletions being the worst shitshow since Joe "I Wanna Kiss You" Namath did it in 1967. Why do I bother? What a shitastic team this 2007 squad is. I've said I'm not talking about Coughlin anymore until he's fired, but of course he won't since they'll back into the playoffs because the NFC is god awful.
4. I am tired of Xmas shopping. I had to buy something at TJ Maxx last week, and they invariably have the world's slowest lines--it made me want to stab someone in the neck. And for some reason, every time I have to return something at Target there's always some elderly person in front of me that wants to return something without a receipt that they bought from a Montgomery Ward catalogue from 1959 and still expect to get cash back for. Oh, and from now on, NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO WRITE CHECKS. Get a free debit card, it will save everyone time, for Christ's sake. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!
3. HBO's "The Wire" is a better crime drama than "The Sopranos". Period. The acting is better, the story lines more interesting, and overall it's a hell of a lot more realistic. And technically speaking, "The Sopranos" never spent that much time on the actual crime, it was always A.J. crying or some nonsense about Meadow's boyfriend--gah! Anyway, I'm halfway through Season 2, and trying to catch up in time for Season 5 which starts in less than a month (Jan 6, 2008). Wish me luck.
2. Note to people who don't clean off their car roof before driving on the highway: screw you. If I see you walking behind me at the store, I'm going to randomly throw ice cubes over my shoulder at your head. Maybe you can swerve out of the way of them, maybe you can't. Either way, I would suggest wearing a helmet.
1. Zooey Deschanel rocks. Here's a clip of her from the movie "Elf" singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" (with Will Ferrell). I wouldn't mind the cold outside if Zooey was in my shower.
In the epic battle between the 3-10 Jets vs. the 13-0 Patriots, a game for the ages in which the Patriots were initially favored by 27 points--ahhh, who are we kidding? This is going to be a complete shitshow. I'll tune in, but I'm really just praying for a snowstorm, a season-ending injury and a possible fist fight between coaches.
How could the NFL make this game more competitive? We asked the experts (ourselves) and here's some of their proposals:
For all of you that complain that there's not enough hockey here at Open Hockey, here's a Martin Gaborik breakaway that is canceled by Hasek in an original way.
That was completely unnecessary, especially considering Hasek had a 5-0 lead with 2:22 left.
I go to Fark from time to time...usually those times when I'm looking to kill 15 minutes or 3 hours, I happen onto their site to check out some of the crazy happenings of the world. It's like Yahoo! Odd News, but on a much grander scale...I never thought of Fark as any type of revolutionary thing...Although the idiots that spend their days on there are fucking scary...They have Photoshop contests that are posted at 12:51pm and there are 5 photoshopped pics up there by 12:55pm...That's dedication or something.
Anyway, I read yesterday that Drew Curtis, Fark's creator, was trying to copyright/trademark "NSFW". Obviously, like everyone else in the free world I said (and here I'm avoiding the obvious 'WTF'), "what a fucking idiot."
Today there's an interview with Drew (audio) and he explains himself. He wants to "make a statement about the state of copyright affairs." He does a good job at convincing the local DJ's (who wouldn't, they're local fucking DJs) that he's not looking to make money off of this. But who's he kidding. If he could go after (or send his little asshole minions from Fark.com after) every established site that uses NSFW...Holy shit, he'd make a mint for the three hours it took for the internets to make a new acronym.
I'm just going to get out ahead here and start the copyrighting procedure for DIBD (Drew is a big Dick) and DIBA (asshole) which will eventually replace NSFW in the lexicon. Patent pending, patent pending.
For some reason, I was thinking about some of the New Years Eves that I've had. I think it's because I supposed to rent a tux for this year's...I don't think that that is going to happen...What the fuck! I have a nice wool suit and nice leather shoes...Why do I want to some polyester shit and plastic shoes that 400 other fucks have puked in? Fuck that...I still think the hosts should be happy that I don't show up in jeans and "Kiss me I'm Irish" t-shirt. Anyway, enough tangents.
December 31, 1996. My first news years home since I'd graduated from high school. I brought my then-current girlfriend to the backwoods of central New York. Some high school buddies of mine were getting together at one guys house, so we go along...For some reason the TV wasn't working so we watched countdown in black&white snow. The new year goes off without a hitch and then around 2am, for some reason my old classmate put his fist through the wall in his brother's room. We all laughed, as drunks are wont to do at 2am-well everyone laughed but the brother. He went and got a shotgun. Then he got shotgun shells. Then he loaded said shotgun with said shells. Then he crunched the pump and put the muzzle on his brother's chest and started screaming something.
What happened next is a bit hazy in my mind...I remember my girlfriend screaming at me to do something (that wasn't going to happen - I don't want to see anyone shot, but I'll be goddamned that I'm going to step between two angry brothers and a gun), I remember the third brother laughing and saying that the one holding the gun didn't have the balls to pull the trigger (I'm really not kidding here). After that I don't remember what happened. The trigger was not pulled, of that I'm sure. I got the feeling that this wasn't the first time that this type of thing had taken place.
Brother #2 (target) is now a cop in CT. Brother #3 (taunter) is a small business owner in upstate NY. Brother #1 (potential shooter) - I do not know what happened to him. Last time I heard he was still alive and non-incarcerated.
While upstate NY may not be West Virginia, there are certain aspects that are Deliverance-esque. It's not all cider mills and foilage.
I've covered this in the past, but it's always a good conversation starter at corporate holiday parties and cocktail parties with vague acquaintances: TSG reports on the Canadian government's Q3 efforts to keep Canadians moral.
Interesting highlights:
*Napoleon Dynamite: [for better or worse] Admitted
*Tom "Ropes" McGurk has to win some sort of tenacity prize...he must have 50 videos banned, but he keeps sending them to Customs for review. (edit: I was going to try to link his website or something...I googled his name and google spits out Tom 'Ropes' McGurk - All Male Bondage Website. I didn't click through...You all are welcome to go right ahead.)
*Chloroform Rape: Prohibited (yeah for some reason I think it would be it hard to convince anyone that this isn't obscene)
*Fist Uro Collector Edition 1 & 2, Fist Uro 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17: Prohibited
*Fist Uro 8: Admitted (The system works)
*Horny Black Mothers & Daughters: Admitted
*Mother and Daughter Incest 1, Mother Daughter Incest 6, Real Mother Daughter Incest 6: Prohibited (could the 51st state be making a racial statement?)
*Stop or I'll Squirt: Admitted (great title)
(Regardless of our feelings on free-market or libertarianism or government control, I think we can all say that the Canadian Government made the correct decision on this next one.)
*Diarrhea Bukkake: Prohibited
As far as I can tell, Ron Jeremy is not in fact banned in Canada, but I needed a picture to use and even the non-porn watching public would tend to recognize him.
Sometime back in the 17th century, political debates were a vital forum for candidates to state where they stand on certain issues, and propose their solutions for the nation's problems (I assume). However, in the current 24/7 news media climate we live in, the whole purpose of these debates seems to be to not say anything of substance, or even answer a question in a straightforward way. These politicians all act like lawyers, making sure they say nothing incriminating, questionable, or concrete that you can call them out on at a later date. The best sound bite that one can hope for is a cheeky comment like the one from Mike "I Heart" Huckabee who, when asked the asinine question, "What would Jesus do about the death penalty?", his cheeky reply was, "Jesus was too smart to run for public office." Oh boy, we've reduced political discourse to a punchline. That's fantastic.
In my attempt to be a good, informed citizen, I attempted to watch one of these "debates", but the candidates' complete inability and unwillingness to ACTUALLY ANSWER A QUESTION was completely infuriating. Here's a sample from the 5 minutes that I recently endured of last week's CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Debate (the very name makes me want to puke blood). This is taken from the transcript and features the sassy Anderson Cooper trying (and failing) to get a straight answer out of Governor Mitt Romney. (Personally, I would never vote for someone named after a baseball glove, but maybe that's just me.)
Cooper: Governor Romney, you said in 1994 that you looked forward to the day when gays and lesbians could serve, and I quote, "openly and honestly in our nation's military." Do you stand by that?
Romney: This isn't that time. This is not that time. We're in the middle of a war. The people who have...
Cooper: Do you look forward to that time, though, one day?
Romney: I'm going to listen to the people who run the military to see what the circumstances are like. And my view is that, at this stage, this is not the time for us to make that kind of...
Cooper: Is that a change in your position...
Romney: Yes, I didn't think it would work. I didn't think "don't ask/don't tell" would work. That was my -- I didn't think that would work. I thought that was a policy, when I heard about it, I laughed. I said that doesn't make any sense to me.
And you know what? It's been there now for, what, 15 years? It seems to have worked.
Cooper: So, just so I'm clear, at this point, do you still look forward to a day when gays can serve openly in the military or no longer?
Romney: I look forward to hearing from the military exactly what they believe is the right way to have the right kind of cohesion and support in our troops and I listen to what they have to say.
"No one party has the monopoly on bullshit . . . "
"I've always been a big fan of Hillary. She's so full of bullshit."
This of course goes without saying: Myspace is the perfect example of why human beings will be extinct in less than 50 years.
Now, I wasn't trying to create an account for "me". My company needs all the linking help that it can get and apparently according to the good great amazing wonderful awesome people at Google, the more links from high PageRanked sites (normally the ones that have lots and lots of retards on them; i.e. Myspace), the better PageRanked you become. Since it shouldn't have been too much trouble to create a corporate account and link to my corporate website (excuse me for one second) [mobilier diner, produits coca cola, produits deco années 50] (right, where was I). Oh yeah, so I went to create a Myspace account. First, they didn't like my password, so I changed it, then they didn't like my [of lack a] gender, finally I got to that anti-spammer fucked-up letter screen. It took about 10 screens before I could decipher it correctly - then they told me that my password was too close to my "First Name". Long story short...Myspace finally and completely proved that I don't belong on there, in personal or corporate guise. Fuck them and their 40-year old teenage girls.
I have been thinking about posting about Facebook for a few weeks now, because I actually do have an account over there...but it just such a waste of time (both Facebook and writing about it). I will say this though: For all you stupid nancy-boy pricks who are bitching because Facebook is using your information to make money [go figure], if you don't like it you have this funny little function in Facebook:
I'm not a real connoisseur of music...I like some stuff, I don't like some stuff, but I just don't have the energy or the drive to really seek out music. I try not to listen to pop radio too much, instead listen to the local college station or the off-beat, independent station whenever possible. And sometimes something pretty good just kinda runs into me. Recently, that was Amy Macdonald. I like the the folky, acoustic guitar mixed with 'er thicker-than-a-Scottish-fog accent.
Sorry for the mediocre quality of this video live @ HMV (Her Majesty's Virgin [MegaStore]?) Braehead. Her website has the video for This is the Life, but the 12-year olds on Youtube haven't managed to post it yet.
Here's one of the first singles, Mr. Rock and Roll, from her debut album, "This is the Life."
It took five different illegal head-hunting shots before the assholes in Toronto even thought about speaking with the management of Philly?
Seriously, and the league didn't lay down any actual, you know, concrete punishment if any of Philly's goons (or even normal players, because this is well beyond normal goon behavior) hurt anyone else.
What is it, Colin, the "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" philosophy? Well, since you guys are taking such a stand, I'm going to assume that you won't have to wait long before you need to make a decision regarding Holmgren & co's punishment.
This "warning" really shows the fucking league management's true colors...we don't care fuck-all for the safety and welfare of our players, but we'll make tiny changes if it will get the critics to shut up.
Fuck you Bettman. You suck! Oh and Colin Campbell, you pussy, you're no better than Gary-the-dick.
[Sportsline]
10. This has been one cah-ray-zee NCAA football season, am I right? (Hence the need to give the word "crazy" an extra syllable.) On Saturday, #1 Missouri lost to Oklahoma (which everyone saw coming) and West Virgina, being #2, was required by law to lose to Pitt. And with Ohio State and LSU chosen to meet in the Big Game sometime in mid-January, people are whining about the BCS bowl system! Shocking! Just put the frigging bowl games on and I'll watch them. Anyway, screw the BCS (British Cardiovascular Society), they haven't helped me once.
CapitalOne Bowl Week preview coming soon!
9. Stephen Colbert will be doing "The Colbert Report" live at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in NYC at 6:30 PM tonight. Man, I wish I had tickets. Regardless, I've been talking about it for years, so I think it's time I saw a comedy show down there. (Whatever happened to the Rascals Comedy Club in the Palisades Mall? Did it ever open? They put a sign up, and that's it?)
8. The New York Times wrote an article on bourbon and didn't even mention Booker's? BLASPHEMY! I guess they didn't taste anything above 101 proof, which is really is a shame: everyone should feel the glorious burn that is Booker's. The top bourbons they chose (Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 20-Year-Old ($99), Vintage 17-Year-Old ($54), Knob Creek ($20)) must be pretty damn good, because according to them "Maker's Mark didn't come close". Well then.
7. My favorites from the Tim Tebow Facts: "Tim Tebow can divide by zero" and "Tim Tebow CAN believe it's not butter". I submitted this one: "When Tim Tebow stares at the sun, the sun has to look away".
6. "Funeral for a Fiend" was the funniest Simpsons episode I've seen in a long time, definitely the best of the season. I just really like what Kelsey Grammar does with the Sideshow Bob character. Of course, FOX in their infinite wisdom decided that while every show is in hiatus because of the writers' strike, this Sunday was a good time to show a repeat.
5. The NFL claims to want to "give more football to the fans", but this is clearly not the case. Not only did very few get to see Green Bay get beat by Dallas on Thursday, but they've also eliminated those great Saturday afternoon games, and instead give us one Saturday night matchup. Memo to all sports league commissioners: don't insult my intelligence, just say it's a business decision and move on. My favorite description of the NFL Network: "24 hours of live football, 8736 hours of filler".
BLOGNOSTICATION ALERT: The New England Patriots are going to go undefeated this season, including the playoffs. That's 19-0. Congratulations, Pats!
4. Two new HD channels were added to Cablevision this week: HGTV and Food Network. I can't wait for CSPAN2-HD and Game Show HD, since the latter will allow me to view those "Match Game '79" episodes the way God (and Charles Nelson Reilly) intended.
3. I decided that I would rather go to happy hour early on Friday than attend my company holiday party. Does that make me an alcoholic? No, I think it's just common sense. There was no place to sit when I actually bothered to attend last year, so screw them.
2. After seeing someone post this online, this song was in my head all day. It's Nick Rivers "Skeet Surfin'", from the 1984 movie Top Secret!, one of the most underrated and overlooked comedies of all time.
Nick Rivers & Tammy Wynette "Your Skeetin' Heart" cracks me up every time. The East German National Anthem is priceless too: "Hail, Hail East Germany, Land of Vine And Grape, Land Where You'll Regret, Any Try To Escape!"
1. When you type in "BETTMAN SUCKS" into Google, the first image that comes up in the search is the header for this blog! We're really going places. Oh, and Bettman sucks.
Hey, it's an excuse to post my first picture taken with the new SD1000 camera: SNOW!
Okay, that's not all that impressive, I know. Even though it was only about 1 inch here in the lowlands of New City barely covering the leaves in the backyard, it at least looks white and wintry around here. We didn't get any appreciable snowfall until Jan 19th last winter. Today was a cold day too, never getting above freezing. Global warming, my ass.
To offset the steaming piles of hate that Salo has served up on the OH blog (not to mention the wealth of Bettman sucks posts), I thought I'd give a nod to the good guys.
Digital cameras are the best, and worst, inventions to come along in quite some time. They've given photographers of every ilk a nearly infinite amount of control over their pictures and how they end up looking and being displayed. However, with amateurs this can be a bad thing, especially where quality is concerned. My mom is no photographer, she's a chronic snapshooter. While she will occasionally (often accidentally) take some great pictures, she always chooses to save them in "email" resolution (640 x 480) to make downloading and sending easier. The result is tiny pictures that look horrible when blown up or printed out, which is the equivalent of throwing out your 35MM negatives and just making a photocopy of the original. (Plus, she uses off-brand ink cartridges so the reds on her printed out pictures more closely resemble the color of a traffic cone--but I digress.) Since people will almost always choose convenience over quality (hence, the proliferation of poor sounding MP3s and iPod AAC music files), personal photography isn't going to improve over the years, it's actually going to deteriorate. But really, it's up to you.
This digital revolution is certainly the best thing to happen to camera manufacturers. Every couple of months, they can tweak the design of their cameras, maybe add a half a megapixel, a screen that's a millimeter wider, or a body that's a millimeter thinner--just enough to make the one you bought last year unwieldy and obsolete. You used to be able to buy a world-class SLR camera and use it for decades, because while the electronic components of the camera might change, the 35MM film and lenses would essentially stay the same. Now, you buy a camera and maybe get 3 to 4 years of use out of it, at best. It's a virtual goldmine.
I joined this trend in the summer of 2003 when I sold my Nikon N2002 and Tamron 28-200mm lens on Ebay and bought a Canon PowerShot S230 ELPH digital camera. However, after 4 great years of snapshottery it began to crap out late this summer, with the sensor only sporadically working when I would power it on. I resigned myself to the fact that it was probably about to give up the ghost, and began to shop for a replacement. In a last ditch attempt to squeeze more usage out of it, I Googled the model number to see if anyone else had the same issue. Sure enough, I found a posting about faulty CCDs (actually made by Sony) in several Canon models which had a link to the Canon website. It was a known defect, and I decided to call the customer service number, not expecting much. Let me correct that: I expected nothing.
As we all know, customer service is a thing of the past. While I don't believe there was ever a time when every company stood by their products with 100% satisfaction guaranteed for life, it certainly hasn't been any worse than it is now. Today, it seems the vast majority of companies stop caring once the product is sold, and their "support" department is merely a formality built to frustrate you into submission.
Enter Canon. In a rare flash of customer support excellence, they replaced my 4 year old S230 with a refurbished SD1000. It was astonishingly painless too. I called the 800 number, where a friendly agent from their Indiana (shockingly, in the US!) office took my information and sent me a free UPS label via email. They soon determined it was indeed the faulty CCD, and told me it would be fixed free of charge. However, since they did not have the parts available, they simply gave me a refurbished current model. I'm shocked. I'm stunned. I'm shocked AND stunned.
This new camera is in every way superior: a giant LCD screen (that I swear is twice the size), more than double the megapixels (3.2 to 7.1), more features (red eye reduction, face recognition), and an incredibly slim body with a better zoom lens (3x optical vs. the old 2x). I consider myself lucky to have gotten this treatment, which is sadly a rarity in today's consumer market. Are they one of the good guys, or a merely facilitator of planned obsolescence? Either way, it doesn't matter to me; I'm happy with this turn of events, and only have to spend $18 on a new 2 GB SD memory card, and every photo I can get out of this camera is gravy. And as Kris said, what camera manufacturer is going to come to mind when it's time to replace this one? Probably a five letter word starting with C.
STUDY ABROAD QUERIED AFTER ITALY KILLING screams the fucking absolutely worthless headline on MSNBC today (edit - it's actually an AP article).
As with most main-stream media reports about things of which they know little, this story just enrages me to the point that I can't even think clearly...My brain just feeds out a stream of profanities.
It's hard (for me at least - I searched Google for a total of 2 minutes!) to determine the exact number of American students that study abroad each year, but if we consider that the American Institute for Foreign Exchange has 50,000 students exchanged each year (so one-half are Americans if it's a "true" exchange), that's 25,000 students for one program. Let's be conservative and say that it's double that (I'm sure it's more, but I don't want to over-estimate). That's 50,000 US students that go abroad every year and study at a foreign school. How many are arrested for murder or suspicion of murder? As far as I can remember the total number, after accounting for statistical variation inherent in this type of higher math, is one in the last 10 years or so (so 0.10/year). Yet all of the sudden we're going to start questioning study abroad programs. FUCK YOU NBC (and you too Billy G, since you prostitute your name to this "news" source) and the AP.
Some of the arguments against study abroad (which as a really short aside was an incredible experience for me. It very influential in my transition from a US college student to an adult): The students are going to these places to drink and do drugs (did anyone have any problems getting alcohol at their US university when they were under 21? drugs if that was your thing? yeah I didn't think so); It's only the "English-speaking" (Brits & Aussies count) who are raising Cain in the streets of these pristine "European capitals" (any reporter who has ever set foot in a European capital knows that it's not just the "anglos" who are running rampant...every weekend all types of students run amok in all the cities of Europe - just like...wait for it...the US. Amazingly college students will be college students, sans geographical limitations); it's obvious that these foreign bars are targeting anglos/Americans "out to get drunk" because the bar signs are in English!!! (and the restaurants in NYC are targeting the French only because they have Boeuf Bourguignon & Filet Mignon on the menu and sommeliers on staff). Fuck you MSNBC and the AP.
Quote of the day: “For [the foreign students], it is a new world. They come here, have fun and get trashed in the evening.” (Holy shit, 'cause that is so much more different that what I did as a college student in upstate NY - we all just sat around every night and watched prime-time TV or discussed the history of the Chinese dynasties).
Anyway, I just happened across this article and couldn't resist the urge to point out the absolute lunacy of it all.
Further proving that MSNBC is a highly reputable news source - the #3 viewed article today is "Did Reese and Jake join the mile-high club?" That, my friends, is hard-hitting, spare-no-feelings, news reporting right there.
Fuck you MSNBC. Oh and lest you forget, Bettman Sucks.
