Ghost Hunters, on Syfy.

I’ve noticed something really vexxing in the world of television: networks copying each other’s shows. This is hardly new, of course. The Flintstones, for example, was basically a Stone Age retread of The Honeymooners. But it seems to have reached really annoying levels lately.

I’m talking about the fact that there’s at least two cake decorating shows out there (Cake Boss on TLC and Ace of Cakes on the Food Network), at least two “ghost hunting” shows (Ghost Hunters on SyFy (and its two spinoffs), Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel, and I’m pretty sure at least one on Discovery and one on History, but I don’t recall the names), at least a couple tattoo shows (L.A. Ink and Miami Ink, on TLC and Inked on History), and multiple “blue collar” jobs shows (Deadliest Catch, Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers, Swords, Roughnecks, Ax Men and others).

The not-at-all similar Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel!

This is a really sad situation. First off, most of these shows air on networks that haven’t got anything to do with the show’s subject matter. What the hell does something about people driving trucks on the ice have to do with history? But I’ve made that complaint before.

Much worse is the incredible lack of creativity these copycat shows embody. It takes no real effort to look around at someone else’s hit show and say, “hey, we can do that, too!”

I dunno. We the audience deserve better than this crap, but I know they wouldn’t make it if we didn’t watch it. I’m not sure who is more damned by that statement.

I’m watching CNN right now and they just had two stories on about people dying. One was a Texas woman who was killed in a motorcycle accident and another was a teenager who was killed when police Tasered him from a moving vehicle. I have nothing really to say about either of those cases.

But what I do have to talk about are the incredibly tacky t-shirts the families in both cases are wearing. Each one shows faces of their loved ones with some sort of “we’ll miss you” and birth/death date. They look really, really gaudy.

So if I should ever die in some horrible, yet hopefully amusing, fashion, please, everyone I know who reads this, don’t make t-shirts with my face on them. It’s bad enough I’ll be dead; there’s no point in making fashion a victim, too.

Since the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, there’s been a great hue and cry on the part of the Right, trying to figure out how to fight back against someone who is Hispanic and female without appearing to be a pack of racist/sexist jerks. Of course, the way to do this is to fight someone on their record which is, more or less, what they’re doing.

I have, however, noticed an annoying trend by people on the issue of her confirmation. One thing that’s come up, raised by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, is the possibility that she’s someone who is dedicated to putting Hispanics first and everyone else second. The word for this behavior is “racist”.

Now I don’t think that’s what she’s done. I think she’s delivered some well-reasoned opinions on legal cases so far and I expect she’ll continue to do so after she sails through confirmation. But I don’t have a problem with thinking the Right is wrong on this issue, I just have a problem with a term they often use; “reverse racism”.

I hate that term on so many levels. First, it implies that only white people can be actual racists. Everyone else can’t. That’s very stupid.

But second, what does “reverse racism” actually mean? I know what it implies (see above), but what does the term itself mean? Surely it means someone who isn’t white and puts their race ahead of all others, especially whites. But the word for that is “racist”.

Of course the media just lets use of this word slide on by and even tends to use it themselves. It’s somehow “better” than actually just calling someone’s attitudes or behavior racist, especially if they’re members of a group frequently targeted for racist treatment themselves.

Oh, well. As I’ve said before, I long for the day we can move past such meaningless distinctions as the color of someone’s skin. It’s got to be one of the most pointless things to focus on. I’m sure there’s far better ways we as a society can spend our time.

A quick note to all of you who live in apartment complexes and have children, especially ones that are under 10.

DO NOT LET THEM RUN AROUND SCREAMING THEIR LUNGS OUT AND PISSING OFF THEIR NEIGHBORS!

Thank you.

So Repower America, a group with the fine notion of bringing more “green” energy sources to the USA, has felt the need to insult the vast middle regions of America again.

Here’s the video in question:

Argh, the stupid, it burns!

This is the second ad this group has run with this particular character. While this one is marginally better than the first, it’s still pretty awful, and I’m 90% sure it doesn’t get the message across to the people they seem to be trying to target.

The goals of this group are fine, but their ads are terrible. Come on, guys, you can do better than this!

This may be one of the more random Random Bitching articles I’ve done, but here goes.

I work in tech support for a large retail auto parts chain. I deal with stores calling in for us to solve whatever problems they are having. It’s a basically decent job and I do fairly well with it, though I do get very tired dealing with some of the stupidity.

But one thing that really vexes me (aside from them answering the phone by saying, “This is [employee name], I can help!” Of course you can bloody well help, or you wouldn’t be answering the damn phone!), is when people refer to me as “boss”, saying things like, “Sure, boss, I’ll do that!”

So to those people, listen up: stop it with the false obsequiousness. Have a little self-respect. I am not your boss. If I were, I’d probably fire you for your idiotic levels of incompetence. You may call me “mister” or “sir” or, in a pinch, by the name I give you when I answer the phone, but please do not call me “boss”. It’s stupid, insulting to you and irritating to me.

So I’m watching The Matrix for only about the third time since it came out in 1999 (egad, 10 years! Can you believe it?). As I watch it, I’m thinking to myself, “What a bad movie”. I mean, consider: the morals displayed by the main characters are horrible (kill all the innocents you want, it’s ok!). No one ever smiles (if I could do half of what they do in the movie, I’d be grinning ear-to-ear). Human bodies don’t generate enough energy to use as a power source. There’s no mention of how society would exist after everyone is freed, assuming the “good guys” won. The movie is soaked in pretention and stoner philosophy. Really, the only thing good in the film is the SFX. It’s the ultimate triumph of style over substance.

One of the other things that annoyed me about the movie is the whole concept of “if you die in the Matrix, you die in real-life”. Morpheus (real name: Ralph, perhaps. I don’t think we ever learn, cause real names wouldn’t be uber-kewl), says something along the lines of “The body can’t live if the brain thinks it’s dead.”

Now, to be fair, this is a concept that turns up often in science fiction; the notion that if you die in some sort of virtual reality thing, you’ll be dead in real life. This never made sense to me. To me this is like saying, “If Mario dies while you’re playing a video game, you’ll be dead in real life!”

I mean, really, is your brain that stupid? Is your brain stupid enough that it says, “Well, we’ve just been shot. Of course there’s no actual trauma or anything, but I guess it’s time to check out anyhow!”? I’d like to think my brain at least is smarter than that.

Virtual reality is not real reality. Your brain is not stupid enough to kill you if it thinks your body is dead. That’s not how it works.

Fine 19th century German craftsmanship!

So I am watching a show on History International all about Indiana Jones, as told from a historical perspective. I came in part-way through and right in time for them to start talking about the crystal skulls.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way. The crystal skulls are all made with modern tools and the best studies show they were made in Germany from crystal that came from places like Madagascar and were crafted in the 19th century. This is what science tells us.

What this show, however, is telling us, and what many other people want us to believe, is that these are “magic”, and they have mysterious orgins! The show is going on about them featuring in American Indian mythos (they don’t), and all about the healing powers they have (but actually haven’t), and all about the special legends and myths that date back thousands of years (if the 20th century is counted as thousands of years). Hell, they flat-out lie in this show about the origins of the skulls and completely fail to mention any of the evidence of them being anything other than what the con-artists say they are.

*sigh* You know, I like the History Channel and History International, I really do. I just wish they’d spend more time covering actual, real history and debunk pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory like what they are pushing on this program.

I’ve bitched about the History Channels before, and I’ll continue to do so as long as they continue to crank out credulous crap like this.

It’s that time of year again, boys and girls! Yes, the United States is entering Daylight Savings Time! This means everyone sets their clock forward one hour!

Well, almost everyone.

See, I live in Arizona, and we’re just not down with that whole DST thing. No, we don’t cooperate. We just scull about, doing our own thing.

The reason for this, apparently, is cause people here don’t want to deal with an extra hour of sunlight during the summer when it’s 115 out. I can understand this, but we still end up with the same number of hours of sun, so why bother?

All that really happens with us not time shifting is that while we’re technically in the Mountain Time Zone, we spend most of the year on Pacific Time. It also means that since the cable providers don’t change their programming schedule for us, I have to spend about 15 minutes twice each year reprogramming my DVR.

Ah, well. Things could be worse, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I gotta like it!

Back in July I had an Xbox 360 I had it only for a short time and then got bored with it.

Well, I bought a new one back on Friday. This is at least in part due to a friend of mine who has one and I want to be able to play online with him. I also wanted to be able to play Fable 2 and I wanted to get Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3, thinking that it might help me to exercise a bit more.

Anyhow, I bought the thing at Wal-Mart back on Friday. Now I’d heard about the various problems 360’s have had, but my first one didn’t give me and guff, so I figured my second one wouldn’t either.

Wrong.

On the second day I owned it, it froze while playing a game. It froze twice more with that same game over the course of the next couple days. I figured, well, it’s a problem with that game. Then Fable 2 showed up. It froze repeatedly; seven times during the first day I had it. At this point I thought that perhaps something was amiss.

So I took it back to Wal-Mart and exchanged it for a new one. The new one runs quieter and I haven’t had any problems so far. The only real issue was that I had to give them the hard drive I’d been using, since it came with the one I’d bought on Friday, and that means I lost all my save games. Bummer there.

Hopefully the one I have now will work much better. Wish me luck! Oh, and for those who want to find me on the 360, my gamertag is Parskell.