I just finished watching the first season of the new Sci-Fi Chanel version of Battlestar Gallactica. I wrote about it before, after having seen the opening movie, and while I wasn’t too impressed, I liked what I saw. (Luckily in sci-fi there are only two kinds of movies: good movies and funny movies. The first are usually intentional and very well planned out. The second usually aren’t.) I borrowed a copy of the DVDs from a friend (Thank you, Dora!) and decided to spend one night watching the whole season. Thankfully, while not a sci-fi nerd, The Wife likes sci-fi just enough to watch the series with me. What follows are a few observations I made regarding the show. This isn’t a review, so don’t expect one. Also, don’t expect it to be very serious: while the observations are real, remember than in sci-fi there are never any bad moments: only good ones and funny ones. Continue reading ‘Battlestar Galactica, Season 1 Observations’
Archive for the 'Rants and Raves' Category
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Ok, for way too long I’ve kept silence on a personal issue, and right now I need to let out some of my emotional outrage. If you feel like reading about the yellow-bellied, no morals, spineless, unprincipled, pussy-whipped coward that is (soon to be “was”) my brother-in-law, keep reading. Otherwise, stop right here. Continue reading ‘All-Out Rant: Gary’
As I’ve admitted before, I have a penchant for doing those tests which pigeonhole you into a particular category. Some are good, some are hilarious, and most just plain suck. Ever since I joined MySpace a week (or so) ago, I’ve seen more of those things than I could have possibly ever imagined. Seriously, it’s like everyone there has one of those things displayed in their profile page:
“Which Ninja Turtle are you?” ” What city do you belong in?” “How strange are you?” “Which member of the A-Team are you?” “Who’s your daddy?” “Who’s your mommy?” “How Paris Hilton-esque are you?” “Which mass murderer are you?” “What color do you taste like?” — AAARRRGGHHH!!!
Now, I like taking these tests and all — don’t ask me why — but most of these fall under the “just plain horrible” category, which means that they’re actually a form of mental vampire or sucubus trap, so if you take the time to take them your IQ falls 20 points and you automatically begin drooling.
Here’s the cool part, at least from a Web-page owner’s point of view: at the bottom of every single one of these tests, there’s always a link leading you to the test, which I’m sure is great for PageRank, provided Google even spiders MySpace. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. Google wants to organize all the world’s information, but MySpace is where they probably send their spiders to die. It’s like, if you’re a bad spider then *bam!* off to the MySpace Gulag, where you’ll spend the rest of your miserable, Web crawler life. I’m sure it’s a horrible death.)
You know, maybe I should write up a test like this. Maybe something like, “which one are you, a Ninja or a Pirate?” And I could write up questions like “Pick which one best describes you: (a) You usually surprise people because you can sneak up behind them with the silence of a church fart, or (b) People often tell you “Oh, I was just thinking about you,” and always just happen to know when you’re within a mile from them.” Heck, with the way some of these tests are built, that could be the only question and it would be enough to get me into some MySpace profiles, just so long as I put a funny picture associated with the result. No picture, no linking. Really, the only thing stopping me is that I don’t really know much PHP or JavaScript, and I’ve forgotten most of the HTML I knew (save for the basic stuff I use to make this page). Maybe there’s a test generator somewhere on the Web. (“Which personality type test are you…?”)
Another thing I noticed about MySpace pages: most people — wishing to express their individuality and show the world how unique and special they are — don’t stick with the basic theme. That’s all well and good. Heck, I’m a big proponent of individuality. The problem is that 99% of all MySpace themes suck. And I don’t just mean they suck in the put-a-straw-in-your-mouth-and-suck sort of way, I mean that these things give Hoover a run for its money. It’s like they could pick up bowling balls from the carpet just by their shier suckyness. Just open the page, and *sluuuuurrp* “whoa, why is all the furniture flying towards me?” Seriously, a depressurizing cabin in outer space doesn’t have the sucking power of some of these pages. Take this dork, for example. What the hell is up with having translucent text and images, with virtually no opacity, then sticking a picture of a yellow Ferrari in a high-contrast color photo as the background?! The only possible explanation I can come up with is that this guy just doesn’t want anyone reading his page. That’s it, nothing else. It’s like this guy couldn’t figure out how to use the “make profile private” button, so he decided instead to make his page totally unreadable to anyone, including himself. (This wasn’t the first instance of opacity abuses. I’ve seen many, many, MANY more.)
Now, I wish this guy had the worst page I’d seen, but no: although his page is horribly stupidly designed, it’s not as eye-gougingly hideous as most of the pages I’ve seen. Seriously, if you want a good laugh, just go to MySpace, click “Browse” and start clicking around. I guarantee it won’t be more than 1 minute before you run into some of the butt-ugliest, sucktastic Web pages you have ever seen. Remember Angelfire? Well, it’s worse than that. The only thing I can possibly compare it to is watching a retarded bear at the circus. I mean, you wanna laugh, ’cause he’s riding on the tricycle and everything, but you feel bad because the bear’s retarded, and you just want to say “Just… stop it. Please. Leave it be.” That’s the same way I feel when I see some of these pages, like they were done by retarded circus bears.
Please, people, if you don’t know how to design, grab a template or something. Hell, pay someone $10 to make you a theme, or better yet, just keep the basic theme and pay attention to little things like page widths (because nothing sucks more than having to horizontally scroll to read a page because a picture somewhere in the page is too frig’n big).
Anyway, I’m done ranting for now. Just had to get that out of my system.
A couple of weeks back I got an email from a friend. The email, which seemed frantic at best, ignored most of the laws of conventional English in that there were no capitalizations, no complete sentences, and all punctuations were replaced with ellipses (…). As I read it, my heart began to race, my blood pressure arose, and I suddenly found myself sweating, even though the temperature was at about 75-degrees (Fahrenheit). “Why do people write like that?!” I thought. I shrugged it off as it just being one of those emails written in a hurry, where information is being communicated just well enough for the reader to both understand it and understand that it was done super quickly. After all, this friends was always a great writer and this was something I didn’t exactly associate with her.
A few days ago, I got another email from the same person. This email was written in the same frantic style, making my head feel again as if it was about to explode. “What,” I thought, “could have possibly gotten into her?!” I didn’t actually ask, since I didn’t want to offend, but I couldn’t help think that some form of parasite had burrowed into her brain. I’ll admit, I’m being a bit anal about this matter, but c’mon: I’m a writer and an editor. It comes with the territory. (Note: I know, I know — I don’t edit this blog as much as I could/should. It’s not meant to be that professional anyway. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. Hypocrisy be damned!)
Yesterday, I was at my parent’s place. My younger sister, who has her own MySpace page and circle of friends, was sitting at the computer writing an email to one of her MySpace pals. Being the cyber-quidnunc that I am (sometimes), I looked over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
There it was again: the writing.
hey…didnt c u at Amp last night… tell mel i’ll be flying in at 12… i dont plan on staying up too late either… yeah, I feel old too, but at least u’re already doing what older people are supposed to do….lol….responsibilities!! I will definitely keep u updated…
It seems like the Internet’s spawned yet another lingo: MySpaceTalk.
MySpace has always been a bit of an enigma to me. In fact, I hadn’t heard of it until about a year ago, when someone told me that it was “like LiveJournal, but different.” Yeah, real descriptive there, buddy. Other than that, I’ve pretty much ignored it until recently, when I began to hear that a lot of people were using MySpace as a way of getting in touch with old friends. “That’s not a bad idea,” I thought. After all, MySpace has something like 75,000,000 subscribed users (or about 10% of all Internet users world wide, if you don’t account for the myriad of users with multiple accounts), so I’m sure at least a few people I know are probably there.
After looking around for a bit, I decided to take the plunge and open up my own MySpace page. I figured it could help me network by helping people who may be looking for me (and who can’t find me via Google, which has Gnorb.NET on the second page for the search term “Norbert Cartagena” after a few meta tag blunders I made with this site when I revamped it), find me. Furthermore, I figured I could use it as a technique to drive visitors to this site while still allowing them to comment on MySpace if they should choose. This one I’m still a bit unsure about, but I’ll see how it turns out.
The one thing I still have to do…aside from setting up my MySpace profile…is work on my MySpaceTalk cos that way i can communicate with people and seem like im all busy…which i am so dont bother me…j/k hahahaha…. loves ya!
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