Finishing a book can be a very satisfying experience, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a moment to ruin that for any Harry Potter fans out there. Right now, somewhere in Orange County, Billy Ray (the guy who wrote the iPhone review, and couldn’t get through the title without making a serious grammatical error) is also feverishly making his way through Harry’s latest magical adventure. This is the same fellow who limits his non-Potter reading to Star Wars novels (not joking) yet cannot pronounce the word heir or spell the word rogue.
Something never rubbed me the right way about the Potter series from the beginning. They work well as 90 minute flicks, but I couldn’t bring myself to get more than a few pages into any of the novels. In discussing the last book with my sister, who was very satisfied to have finished it last night, I think I figured out why I have such a problem with them. I just identify way too much with the bad guy. Let’s break down a young wizard’s life, in chronological order:
- You are born into a magical world where you’re told to segregate yourself from the non-magical folk (unless you find a cute one, then you fuck her and have half-breed babies) due to a mixture of precaution and racial elitism.
- Somewhere around your eighth birthday, you accidentally blow up a family pet. Your father brings it back from the dead, and then goes back to grilling up some dragonburgers. Business as usual.
- You go off to school just like a normal chump, but you get to learn how to turn animals into cups and fly around on brooms.
- You hook up with numerous chicks, partly due to teenage rebellion, partly due to the fact that Quiddich really gets those panties wet.
- Your later scholastic career is a whirlwind experience of the supernatural, where you are constantly reminded that you must restrain yourself because your powers are too great to wield all willy-nilly.
- Finally, your graduation day looms. And despite the fact that you can blow up anything by pointing a stick at it, your guidance counselor tells you that you’d make an excellent file clerk.
I can see why you might go power crazy and start killing some motherfuckers. Shit, look at Ron’s family. How can you be poor when you can fly? Fuck the Ministry of Magic or whatever, I’m going to be the world’s richest courier. You can teleport from place to place through the Goddamned chimneys, and you don’t decide to become a drug mule?
And I know, there are rules and restrictions. The ministry will throw your ass into Azkaban, a place where they torture and maim the souls of the inmates. So you’ve gotta go around living your life like a normal schlub, except you can do all kinds of amazing things that you’re not really allowed to do. Then you have to sit back and watch the non-magical people fuck up the planet with pollution and war. You can turn tanks into carousels, but you’re not allowed to round up a few dozen colleagues to go solve the Iraq conflict. Christ, the world of wizards is almost a police state. Voldermort wasn’t a villain, he was a liberator.
…wow, I’ll do just about anything to avoid work.
The dead walk the earth again,
by FaaQ on July 20, 2007 @ 6:12 am
uAnd it appears that Larry King is interviewing them. Jesus Saves! Unless you profit your entire life from his teachings.
I am a apple whore!
by Billyray on July 15, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
I now know the love of a PDA. It is almost like the soft touch of a woman that I had to pay $650 for. Yes, I have purchased the new apple iPhone. It is now my duty to give my pros and cons to you, the loyal BAMF army. After over two weeks of use, I think I made a good buy and here is why:
1. The Internet and mail options work just as they would on your Mac or PC. Though the Edge network takes a while to load, when it is using a wifi hotspot it loads pretty fast. I am also typing this post with it.
2. It is a iPod. I would compare it to a Nano that plays video. Granted the space is a little bit small, but it does work well for travel and curing small bits of boredom. I have the small season of Firefly and about 8 albums on it and I still have four gigs to work with.
3. The touch screen works just as well as you’ve seen in the commercials. You open up a web site and can pinch the screen to zoom in and out. Going through the contacts on your phone is as easy as a flick of your finger. The keypad takes a bit to get use to, but once you do get it, it is easy.
4. The small features surprise you. Having Google maps as already saved me a bunch of grief and heartache. The You-tube feature is neat, but not to useful. The camera takes great pictures and it is fun to set up themes for your contact list. It also has iCal to use as a calendar, which works as well as any other program. Then you have little things, like weather, stocks, calculator and time. All the buttons are little Apple widgets, and they are easy to use.
Now it is time for my issues with it.
1. When you send out a text message, it can only be sent to one person at a time. So no more blanket text messages of my ass to my friends at the end of the night. I know a few people who are disappointed about that. It also lacks a IM program, but I’m sure that can be fixed with a update.
2. No games as of yet. I know most people don’t care to much about that, but I miss my Bejeweled. It would just kill time, and sometimes I need that. There are rumors that Nintendo is going to make games for it, and that could make up for my pain.
3. No flash plugins! I don’t mind You-tube, but I love all internet videos. I can’t watch them from my phone and that is not cool. Again, I believe that can be fixed with a update.
4. Small crashes and little bugs. It being a first gen, I expected this. Sometimes I will be online and Safari will crash. It’s a little pain in the grand scale of the phone. Also, when I get a call while I’m on the phone, sometimes I will lose both calls if I try to answer. A problem that can be fixed with updates.
5. No Ring-tones. I too cant stand hearing “This is Why I’m Hot” everytime a phone rings, but I do like having one personalized tone for myself. I have heard that iTunes will soon have a button to convert songs to ring-tones, but it will cost just as much as buying a song. I liked having the ability to make my own ring-tones on my RAZR. It sucks that Apple is blocking creativity.
If I was to give it a grade right now, it would be a B+ with room to improve. I’m sure the great debate’s will now rage, but I’m happy with my product.
Any phone that gives me Pie on the go is good.
The dead walk the earth,
by FaaQ on July 13, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Bulls-4, Idiots-0
by FaaQ on @ 11:49 am
Entire photo album, with post-goring photos of smiling idiots
Screw the Taliban
by FaaQ on July 11, 2007 @ 10:34 am
Open this page in a new tab, and let it sit open forever if you can Sure its a small thing to do, but you too can suck up the Talibans wealth by eating their bandwidth like the gluttonous swine you are.
Best Obit Evar!
by FaaQ on July 6, 2007 @ 5:52 am
Really the only thing missing is severed pig heads… oh wait
The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany’s Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.
Sadly I Still Can’t Think People To Death
by Sharkey on July 5, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
6-Year Old Girl Disemboweled In Kiddie Pool
This is very sad, but it’s oddly the exact beginning of a Chuck Pahlaniuk story called “Guts.” I went over to Chuck’s site to make sure I had the title right, and the bastard had already put this article up and made the comparison. So since he stole that idea from my brain, I say you forgo buying any of his books and just steal them somehow. As his books generally revolve around the darker side of humanity, I can’t imagine he could blame you.
Britney Spears Branches Out Into Comedy
by Sharkey on @ 10:49 pm
That’s really the only explanation for her latest blog post:
I apologize to the pap for a stunt that was done 4 months ago regarding an umbrella. I was preparing my character for a role in a movie where the husband never plays his part so they switch places accidentally. I take all my roles very seriously and got a little carried away. Unfortunately I didn’t get the part.
What makes it even better is knowing that Britney must have done the initial post on her own, as she left in a few hillbilly-identifying misspellings amidst her lies and vacant apologies.
So considering the fact that Ms Spears-Federline-Alexander is a method actor, much like her contemporaries Brando and Deniro, one must wonder if she’s currently studying for a role as a fat, washed-up coke whore. If so, this is going to be one fan-fucking-tastic flick.
Slice Of The Day: Megan Fox
by Sharkey on @ 10:25 pm
There’s not much one can say about Megan Fox, other than “she’s a stone cold… uh… sex panther. yeah, that’s it.” Honestly, I’m usually too hard to say anything, what with the blood loss and all.
For those of you living in a cave without internet access, television, or fully functioning private parts, Megan here is the smokin’ hot babe in Transformers. Go ahead and check out Megan’s full gallery over at SOTD.