Things Trying to get Into Your Head: Your Pets

I'm not much of a pet person to be totally honest.  Yes, puppies/kittens/giant pythons are adorable and all, but they also leave fur/snake skin all over the place.  They also make your house smell like an unfortunate combination of sweaty fat man and the the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.  Also, the bastards are all kinds of emotionally manipulative and they know it.

If I look cute enough, he won't mind the puke all over his clean laundry!

Seriously.  We all know that one lady with the entire feline population of a small country living in her house.  You don't really want to talk to her, you hate going over there and every night you keep up the same mental mantra: I swear to every higher power I can name, I will never, ever end up like that crazy cat lady.  I might end up dying in prision through a horrible combination of drinking pruno and getting raped, but at least I'll be better off than the crazy cat lady.

That could also be just me.

You see, the thing about crazy cat lady (CCL for short- using an acronym will also make me sound smart), is that the cats are her furry little children.  CCL exhibits the same behavior we expect mothers to show their little ones, except with her cats.  It is fucking terrifying to watch.

Watch the video- I won't describe it in text.  That is a CCL in her full glory.  Complete with a shining song about the greatest cat in the United States, Champer-Damper.

Also, I think she can be euthanized in 10 different states.

Men may also not be safe from CCL-like problems.  It is true that men generally bond better with dogs.  The research is still ongoing and nature likes symmetry, so I wouldn't be remotely shocked if puppies can replace kids for men, just like cats replace kids for women.  We don't see crazy dog guys because men already are under pressure to drink and be manly from society, but I've covered that already.

I'm not anti-pets at all, don't get me wrong.  I do want a cat (just one, no more), but I also want to name the cat Plato so I can yell at an ancient Greek philosopher to get off the counter.  Other name ideas I'm thinking about are those that have some religious significance.

Bad cat!  I told you not to go in there, Mohammad!

More Drinking Games!

I've got an old post about drinking games to play along with Disney movies because I think that copious amounts of booze improve any situation and that nothing is sacred.  I figure it is time to revisit that theme- but this time I'm gonna expand our drinking game topics to pretty much anything nerdy.

Many of the games I'm going to post rules for I've played- so this is a thank you to all my real life friends (yes, I have those.  Shocking) that have gotten trashed with me over rounds of Mario Kart.

The best kind of triforce- the Boozeforce.  It contains the powers of intoxication.

Note: If you're looking for some themed video game cocktails, I suggest the Drunken Moogle.  Also, they have a compendium of geeky bars in the world, so if you need computer help or want to argue about Star Trek, check that out.

On to the games!

The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Drinking Game

There is only one rule: take a drink for any and all references to anything to do with actual horses.  That's a drink for any time Nightmare Moon comes up, for example.  The opening title sequence has five drinks involved, just for reference.

Hardcore: Certain episodes fall under hardcore category all by themselves.  "Sweet and Elite" has at least 24 drinks in it, 19 happen within a 2 minute time period with the song, "A Pony Everypony Should Know".  Rarity wants to get you smashed.  The pilot is also pretty cruel, mainly because Twilight Sparkle will not shut up about Nightmare Moon or Canterlot.

However, if a particular episode just seems to be falling a little flat- "Sisterhooves Social" only has 10 drinks, if I remember correctly- then just drink every time the color pink is used gratuitously.

Drunk Driving: The Mario Kart Drinking Game
Open up a bottle of beer/pour yourself a glass of wine/crack open a can of jet fuel.  Start up a race.

You are not allowed to finish the race until your drink is empty.  Get a new drink for every new race.

Hardcore: drink jet fuel.  Seriously.

Super Smashed Bros: Brawl

Start up a 3 minute timed match with items on high, but the only item allowed is the Smash Ball.  Drink when:
-you die via someone's Final Smash
-you don't get the Final Smash
-you use your Final Smash and don't kill anyone (oh hai thar, Peach).

Hardcore: after the match, add up your KO's and deaths.  Take that many drinks.

Final Fantasy X: Fuck It, If I'm Drinking Alone, I Might as Well Play a Video Game


-drink every time a character ends a sentence with, "you know"
-drink after every overdrive
-drink after anyone talks to Tidus, but doesn't use his name
-drink every time Kihmari is in a scene but doesn't talk
-drink every time Tidus does something stupid
-drink every time Yuna apologizes (That's three for the "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sooo sorry" in Luca)

Hardcore: drink after every battle


Happy drinking!

Copyright laws and IPs- finally comming around to haunt the Internet

I do believe it was Shakespeare who first uttered the legendary "This shit writes itself" quote, but it could have been Mark Twain.

Because both writers are so damn similar and everything.  I was worried this was going to be the first day I would miss my posting schedule without a forwarding or at least  an apology.  It's 9:23 right now my time, I've been in a pair of restricted labs all day and I won't lie, writing up something for the blog slipped my mind.

This is one of the labs I work in.  You may now place bets on what I do.

I could have tried to pirate the post.  Steal someone else's idea, hope to the flying spaghetti monster that they actually did decent research and just copy and paste.  It would be a little fitting, to be honest.  Considering how much piracy and file sharing goes on the Internet these days, a stolen blog post would be really funny in a not-funny-at-all hipsterish way.

But I hear hipsters don't like mathematics (the language that describes the universe) because it's too mainstream (the entire universe digs it), so they can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.  Also, I hear hipsters find sex to mainstream, so be prepared to have a "physical-love-conjuncture" instead.  Because that's so romantic.

Yeah, a nerd is calling out a hispter for sucking at romance.  It may not get any more ironic... aw, shit.

Anyway, I didn't have to go hipsterfy myself because I got more lucky than the Lucky Charms mascot, who isn't lucky that he still has his cereal- he has magic for that- but is incredibly lucky those kids haven't murdered the hell out of him yet.  Everyone knows a young child will do what it takes for marshmallows.  Whatever. It. Takes.

Now that I look at a box, Lucky's lucky his cocaine high hasn't ended yet

So, away from making fun of cereal box mascots and back to tech.  It turns out that the RIAA pirates the living fuck out of TV shows.  How many many TV shows?  Try something along the lines of nine million dollars worth of TV shows.

Daaaaaamn.  That takes dedication.  Like, wow.  You have to be intentionally creating things just to steal them to steal that much.  Oh wait- it was full seasons of just Dexter?  Just that one show?  That was worth nine million dollars?

Now, this is mildly unfair to RIAA- because to get to nine million, we have to play by their own outrageous rules.  In order for one to that high, you simply use the RIAA guidelines that the shareholders can sue for $150,000 dollars an episode, or maybe more, depending on how you look at the phrase "copyrighted works".  Is each word copyrighted?  Each line?  How about the opening theme, is that an additional one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?  Or any original bit of music from the sound track?

Considering the recent debacle with the Megaupload song and Universal, a lot of old copyright protection techniques just seem retarded in this day and age.

Also, Youtube (and by extension, Google) doesn't have a soul or a lick of backbone, as apparently Universal has a contract with Youtube that lets them use the content management system to take down videos that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, people who fight for a traditional implementation of copyright law are often found the biggest perpetrators of file sharing- movie studios are often caught pirating their own movies.

The whole damn thing is sorta ironic- maybe the hipsters and I have more in common than I like.

Board Games: Serious Business

Everyone has there own value system.  I get that- we all find different things important.  For example, if I were to start talked about mathematical algorithm analysis and optimization, most of you would either stab me in the throat to make the words stop coming, or offer me your wallet in an attempt to bribe me to shut up.

In fact, this is my primary source of income.  I've gotten very good at dodging knife thrusts to the throat.

There is, however, some things we all take way to seriously.  Things that always start out as a night of family fun and end up with doors slammed, kids crying and spouses threatening divorce.  In fact, when they made a video game based on these things, it became the quickest way to turn your friends into your enemies.  Mario Party, I'm looking at you.

Kart racing takes a very close second.

Board Games.  Maybe it stems from the fact that we all have that memory of having a Candyland victory robbed from us by getting that godforsaken Plumpy card right as we're about to win, or maybe it stems later, when you can't get your first whore of a peg on the game field in Sorry for ten turns because the dice refuse to grant you a 6.

No matter what the source, everyone always takes board games very seriously.  Its the inverse of bowling- in bowling, everything is hardcore until you get that first gutter ball-- then the shame breaks your resolve and you stop caring about the game.  With board games, everything starts out lighthearted and fun, then things slowly grow more and more serious until death threats become a common place.

The concept of Holy War does apply to friends/roommates/family over Chutes and Ladders

These games get so intense, that the freakin' British royal family is not allowed to play Monopoly because it "gets to vicious".  These are people that have had a centuries of breeding to make them diplomatic and restrained, and they can't even handle Monopoly.

Think you're better than them?  I'd be careful if I were you- people have been murdered over Monopoly (with the added benefit of the killers trying to make the corpse looked like it was raped), Chess (to be fair, the murderer was trying to get to death row- probably over the fact he lost a chess match), Checkers (although the murderer claims the victim accidentally stabbed himself to death with a shank), Dominoes (the killer actually hid out in an amusement park called "Joyland" after the incident), and Dice (where someone was killed over a six dollar gambling debt).

Oh, almost forgot about Yahtzee, where a mother was killed by her son for simply suggesting they play the game together.

Thank Christ she didn't suggest Risk, they would have went postal on the whole city block.

You know what the best part about all of this is?  I am making exactly none of it up.  Listen up, Jack Thompson, I think you're going after the wrong guy.  I'm a bit more concerned about board games than video games at this point.

The Waffle House Index

I'm going to assume everyone here has eaten at a Waffle House at some point.  If you haven't, let me fill you in: its basically a less classy IHOP.  Aside: has anyone ever left an IHOP feeling like hopping?  From personal experience, its more like, "I just ate enough grease to run a biofuel car for three years".  But I guess IJAEGTRABCFTY makes a shitty acronym.

International my ass.  I've never seen an IHOP in any other country I've been in.

If you've never eaten at either of these places, you've never been drunk and hungry at 3 am, which is also the only time its really acceptable to actually go to a Waffle House.  Because if you go at any other time, you'll take one look at the place and wonder why the gas station bathroom has decided to start serving waffles.

Seriously, I don't think Waffle House gives a single fuck about how they appear to any of their patrons.  Its like a white trash convention in there(if you're from Mississippi, a family reunion)- the bus boys are generally drunker than the patrons, there are at least 3 drug deals going down at any given time and your waitress' crabs have herpes.

They have a valtrex prescription at the local pharmacy under the name Eugene H. Krabs

Not to mention they actively cater to the drunk with pictures of their food on their menu.  Screw drunk, they cater to the outright totally hammered/wasted.  I've been smashed, but I've never forgotten what a waffle looks like.

I mean, I guess it makes sense, if your face is numb from Everclear shots, you won't be able to taste the fine layer of cigarette ash that is certain to be on every waffle, because the cook is smoking outside of a hole in the side of his neck due to the fact he has throat cancer worse than Batman in Dark Night.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I found out FEMA uses Waffle House conditions to figure out how hard an area has been hit by a natural disaster.  Considering Waffle House is basically a disaster (even the sign looks like a ransom note) I did find it a little ironic that it was used as a scale to judge other disasters.

But it turns out, Waffle House has found a niche.  They've matched up the fucks they don't give with people who desperately need fucks.  Wait, stop, I didn't mean it that way!

Waffle House does not cater to sexually frustrated nerds.  Does it sound like Waffle House caters to me?

Waffle house has started to market (and plan for) being the first business up and running after some catastrophe has struck an area.  So basically, they make up for a total lack of any quality by being the only choice available, which again, is brilliant.  They even have a mobile command center that travels from disaster to disaster, being the only option for people devastated by some calamity.

I mean, after a hurricane, whats a few ash covered waffles anyway?

How to watch Disney movies as an adult

How does one watch Disney movies past around 10?  The movies are clearly aimed at the little buggers- after a certain age, cynicism just makes watching a picture perfect love plot impossible.  It takes all your effort not the scream out with your world-weary adult mind that this is all bullshit anyway and we're just setting unobtainable standards for our kids and how can we possibly feel good about that?

I'll tell you how.  With booze.  Preferably enough of it to make you call up a bunch of ex-girlfriends and leave tear strained voice mail about when did we go wrong and why can't it just work out between us like it does for Ariel in the Little Mermaid?  It doesn't have to be so hard, after all the incorrect half of her was a fish.


Oh.  I guess I'm the only one whose done that then. hm.  Awkward.

So, without further ado, I present to you several sets of rules to use for a few Disney classics.  Each of the specific rule sets comes with an optional "hardcore" rule designed to make it so that the only way to play the rule is to literally have a keg going directly into your blood stream via IV.

A pair of general rules before we begin: Take a salute gulp any time a memorable character appears for the first time in the movie (or any time any memorable character appears at all).  Also, drink for every musical number.  If you want to experience liver failure, you may start drinking at the start of each musical number and not finish until after the number is over.

Mulan:

•  Drink something on fire whenever Mushu's antics continue Mulan's involvement with the war, or the war effort as a whole.
• If you're a guy, chug a chick drink, if you're a girl, take a shot of whiskey for every cross dressing reference
• Drink for every instance of people eating with chopsticks
• Drink every time a dragon is mentioned or appears on screen
• Hardcore: Drink for anything that is Asian 

Aladdin:

• Drink two for every instance of animal abuse
• Start drinking for every instance of sexual tension, and don't stop until the tension is over
• Take a drink every time Aladdin pussies out of something
• Take a drink every time the Genie references something that doesn't exist yet, but no one misses a beat
• Hardcore: Drink for anything that is Middle Eastern. 

Robin Hood:

• Take a drink and weep for all the future furies every time Maid Marian tries to play up sex appeal in any way (Female version- any time Robin shows off to her, make the amount of alcohol in your cup less by way of your throat).  Side Rule- take an additional drink to deal with your shame if you ever felt that way about either of them.
• drink every time an arrow is shot or seen flying through the air
• drink for every rabbit on the screen
• drink any time anyone is running away from something
• Hardcore: Actually follow those above three rules during the final chase scene.  Its 51 sips in about five minutes, if you wanted to know.

Princess and the Frog:

• Take a sip from a Hurricane every time New Orleans is mentioned or shown
• Take a drink and sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green" every time one of the Frogs starts complaining about anything, or looks annoyed with the other frog
• Salute to badassery: take several large gulps during the villain death scene
• Take a drink and roll your eyes every time Prince Naveen looks longingly at Tiana.  Bonus rule- take an additional drink every time it flies over her head.
• Hardcore: Drink for every instance of racial stereotyping.  Bonus drink for every racist reference, and triple bonus drinkage multiplier for every additional sexist reference.  So, for a reference that is stereotypical, racist, and sexist, that's six drinks (and yes, there are several parts of the movie that qualify for the six drink special)