Welcome back, me.

So after my post last December I decided to take an 11 month hiatus to refresh my brain fluids, refuel my creative cran-grape juices, and do other things that make it seem like I really needed a break but really mean I was being lazy. Now I generally write about things that are current and culturally relevant (R.I.P. Michael Jackson), but there is one thing I was waiting to write about because no one would shut up about it and I didn't want to get lost in a sea of useless ramblings, my thoughts matter and people need to know that. (Really, if you don't know that, you will die. That knowledge is a necessity of life.) Anyways, enough useless rambling. Over the summer I saw a little indie film called "The Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and that girl from "Juno" (not Michael Cera, the other girl). The basic idea is that Leo's character is a "dream specialist" (which basically means he sleeps way too much) and he is hired by Warner Brothers to invade the dreams of M. Night Shayamalan so that he will wake up thinking he can make a good movie out of "The Last Airbender" and convince Paramount and Nickelodeon to drop $150,000,000 in his lap so he can finally hang out with the guys at Industrial Light & Magic instead of spending time actually making a good movie. These might not be the exact details, but I fell asleep halfway through the first 5 minutes, so bear with me. I mean, how do you expect me to stay awake in a non 3D movie. Good story just isn't enough anymore. Regardless, Leo is finally able to invade the dreams of his antagonist after entering deeper and deeper into the dream world, which I like to call, being more and more tired. The whole idea of the movie is ridiculous when you think about it. The characters didn't actually do anything, they just slept through the whole movie (which, ironically, is exactly what I did). Yet somehow, when I woke up at the end of the movie, I thought to myself, "that was an excellent movie." Must have been the music. Now if someone would just "incept" a good idea for a blog post in my brain, maybe I'll post another writing before October 2011. If anyone is interested, I'm generally always asleep between the hours of 2am-8am, so just let me know.

James Cameron's "The Last Avatar"

I'm breaking a long hiatus from the blogging businazz to review a movie I have yet to see, James Cameron's "Avatar." The movie has been highly anticipated for some since 1999, which is when Cameron originally intended to release it, but he claimed that the technology simply did not exist to carry out his vision for the film... so he pushed it back a decade. Actually in 2005 it was announced that Cameron was working on a project titled "Project 880" alongside another project of his called "Battle Angel." He was hoping to release "Battle Angel" in 2007 and "Project 880" in 2009. Then he changed his mind and decided to release "Project 880" in 2007 and "Battle Angel" in 2009. Then he announced that "Project 880" is actually a revamped version of "Avatar" and may be released as late as 2008. Well hello May 22, 2009, you will be the day that this film will finally be released... except that Cameron wanted to have an extra 7 months to use for post production work. Well hello December 18, 2009, hopefully you will be the final release date of this highly procrastinated anticipated film. Diving into the movie itself (again I have not seen this film, but I will not be 1-upped by Roger Ebert), the story is about as hard to follow as the history of the movie, everybody looks like a smurf with big ears, and if the movie is anything like the video game, the controls are horrible (I have not played the game either). From what I understand about the movie, the main character (the Avatar) has the power to control the four elements and has to use this power to stop the trees from releasing a gas that causes everyone to commit suicide in gruesome and horrible ways (I may be confusing this with the works of M. Night Shyamalan... Mark Walburg's acting in "The Happening" made me want to commit suicide). The Avatar lives in the world of Pandora that lets you build your own radio station based on only the music that you like. The movie is set to be released in stereoscopic 3D, so if the story is a complete failure, people will still think it was cool because it was like a roller coaster. I plan on seeing the movie this weekend, unless of course they put it on hold for another ten years.

I do want to take a moment and apologize to my fans for not posting anything for a while, but like James Cameron, I too am waiting for the technology to make my blog fulfill my vision, and I simply cannot do that without a computer to write clever things for me. Unfortunately computers still don't have real humor programming, so I'll just have to wait until they do before I can be really creative and regularly post on my blog.

Social Algorithm for Video Gaming (and other competitive activities)

Playing multiplayer video games is something that I have recently taken up to fill my free time. I have always been a fan of single player games, but since I discovered that a few of my friends have actually invested in more than one controller, I decided to give this multiplayer thing a try. I did hear someone mention some interweb muti-online-player network which requires no social interaction at all, but I'm pretty sure that was a myth. How could someone go about playing games over the internet. What would happen if you had to take out the cartridge and blow all the dust out of it because it stopped working. Would the internet collapse in on itself. Or perhaps some of the eraser bits that you used to clean out the cartridge might clog up the internet tubes. Back to that later (or not at all). One of the things I have picked up in my experience with these particular games is a simple calculation to make sure that you minimize the ridicule placed upon you, as these games can get quite competitive, and the insults can start becoming quite piercing to ones dignity. I have learned that the two people that get made fun of the most are those who place either first or last. The one who places last is made fun of in the obvious way. They endure things such as "Only idiots use the sniper rifle in open combat" or "You just got pwned big time" or "Looks like somebody needs to learn that your not supposed to use the rocket launcher close range because you'll blow yourself up too, idiot." On the other side of the spectrum are those who are excellent at the game and therefore dominate the competition. They get such ridicules as "Somebody needs to get a girlfriend" or "I guess I just don't have the time to play this game every waking moment seeing as I have a job and friends and all" or possibly "I hate you." So for those who are just absolutely horrible at such multiplayer games, the best thing to do is to act like you really don't care. Spend most of your time just walking around. Never identify which corner of the screen when you are filling, and when someone asks "Who just (did such and such of an idiotic move)?" never respond because they will very quickly get re-immersed into their virtual fantasy world of killing and violence and will forget what they were saying. Basically just have fun. Now for those who can instantly dominate the game in subject before even touching the controller, back it down a few notches. Maybe settle for second place. Or if you are too insecure to settle for second place, just make your winning margin 1 or 2 kills instead of 15 or 20. Don't act like you don't care though, because then people will realize that you are just faking and that you really do play the game way too much, which will bring about the aforementioned ridicules anyways. If you are one of those people who are constantly in second or third, stay there. Don't even entertain the thought of what it would be like to win every game. Sure the occasional win is good, and probably even healthy, but don't obsess over it. So the next time you are over at your friend's house playing Halo, Call of Duty, Madden, or Cooking Mama (that game can get pretty intense), be sure to practice these basic principles. And also tell them to give me $10 dollars for intellectual property royalties every time they avoid being made fun of.

Save the earth, save the world.

Due to the increasing temperatures lately, I have become increasingly aware of an epidemic called global warming. Apparently it has been around for a while, but it seems to have just taken effect. Think about it. This time three months ago it was at least 20 degrees cooler than it is now. How could the temperature increase so much in such a short amount of time. If your not sure, just form a broken hypothesis and get the government to throw massive amounts of money at you (that's how I spend my weekends). Unfortunately this problem already has an answer, and it's Global Warming (Greenpeace told me they would give me a dollar if I capitalized it just then). Naturally I've been looking into a solution for this problem, and all I can seem to find are the obscure instructions to "go green." So I've been interpreting this as well as I can. I've taken a hint from NBC and have changed the colors of my website to a green color palette, probably the best thing we could all do right now. Also I have posted a new "Green" version of that stupid Facebook taggy thing that is spreading like wildfire amongst the young minds of UNC Charlotte according to my inside sources.

You know, this whole green thing is kind of cool. We should make a holiday out of it. Everyone should wear green clothes on "green day" (maybe not the best name), and if they don't... you should sue them and make them go back home until they have reached EPEAT Gold standards (after you pinch them, of course). Red and blue... your days are numbered.

A Look Back

In order to keep all you folks interested and not lose your attention, I have devised a plan that keeps me from having to work hard on a new blog entry, but also keeps you all intrigued. So I am posting the links to all of the entries from my two stagnant facebook groups (one is seasonally inappropriate). So feel free to reminisce on the hilarity.

A post on a group about groups.

A new discovery. Not magic. I checked.

Some political business.

A dabble in the Ebert and Roeper thing. (Spoiler Alert)

Some science news.

Some biblical matters.

A contribution from my friend Matt Perkins

Some begging/reprimanding.

A solution to overplayed Christmas music. (seasonal)

A petition. (seasonal also)

One V.I.P. Shopping Keychain Card to Rule Them All.

DISCLAIMER: The following topic is not an original thought. It was given to me from an anonymous source who shall remain nameless so I can take most of the credit anyway.

So you've probably got those little keychain cards on your key ring for places like Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Bi-Lo, or pretty much any other grocery chain in the 48 contiguous states. They're often called names like V.I.P. to make you feel like you are accomplishing something great by getting products at only slightly more expensive than Wal-Mart, unless, of course, you used your spouse's keys and realized that they don't have one of the tiny cards, in which case you must either pay for both half gallons of ice-cream, or apply for a new card under an improvised alias, then endure the ridicule of confirming with the clerk that your name is indeed Mr. Dumpface and you do, in fact, live in Poopsville (it's got a great downtown district) all because you don't want to ruin the chance at a seemingly good deal. I don't know where these retailers get off at making us carry these dumb things around. At least the government is polite enough to give us full sized cards for things like driving that we can put in our wallets or purses so we don't have to deal with the mess of extra crap on our key rings. But for retail outlets to make us deal with this hassle is unacceptable. Imagine if everywhere you shopped, you had to show some sort of membership card in order to pay the regular price, otherwise you would have to pay double. The fast food restaurant industry would dissolve overnight because nobody would be able to find the retarded key card in under 5 minutes (although that might be the solution to America's obesity problem). The point is that this trend must be stopped because I am not going to wait 30 minutes in the express checkout lane (10 items or less my butt) for some old lady to go through all the little Super Saver cards so she can save $.20 on her cat food. At the very least, link my membership to something that I always have on me, like my driver's license. Or better yet link it to my DNA. Or, even better, charge acceptable prices.

That thing looks nothing like me.

I'm talking about those odd looking creatures in the pictures that people tag other people in based on their personality. For example...

I was recently tagged as "The Geek" in the above photo, which may not be true, I was recently asked to name all the alkali metals in the periodic table and I completely mixed up Antonium and Rubidium because of their atomic symbol (I was never that good in Honors Chemistry). But I can't complain. A friend of mine was recently tagged in at least seven of these ridiculous posters (I never pictured her as the gangster type, I guess that's how they come nowadays). My biggest contretemps with these posters are that they are a completely inaccurate in their depiction of those tagged in the posters. So I have decided to conjure up my own foolproof personality poster for those people who just can't resist the urge to try these dumb things, but don't want to exaggerate the personalities of their friends.

This one has equal spaces for guys and girls, so as long as your friends are completely normal, or even if they aren't, they have a gender appropriate space for them that says absolutely nothing unique about their personality. This should be much more accurate in depicting your friends as they actually are. You are welcome. And, yes, I did make that myself, and, yes, you may use it.