7. Professors who refuse to use the internet
If you are 50 and under you have no excuse for not using the internet as much as possible. My mom is in her 50s and she could work at the freakin' Apple genius bar so anyone younger than she is has no excuse. The London School of Economics has the cool intranet thing going on called Moodle. It's similar to Blackboard but way more awesome. Professors can post reading lists and articles directly to the site. Plus students can create profiles and discuss the readings with other students. When the school will set this up for you, why the hell would you not use it? Thanks for the badly organized reading list buddy. I'm glad to see that you recently mastered the art of the word processor.
6. Odeon movie theaters
Odeon is one of the main theater chains in London. I am sure that other movie theaters in London suck as well, but since I haven't been to them, I'll give them a chance. Odeon charges you something like £10 for a basic ticket, £13 for a premier ticket. That's right, there are different levels of ticket for a movie theater. Oh, did I mention that the theater screen is barely wider than my laptop's 13.5 inch screen? Oh, and seats are assigned so you have no idea if you're not going to be able to switch seats even though you've wound up with the ADHD German girl with high hair sitting in front of you? Awesome. Plus the floor isn't slanted that much and the seat backs are high so good luck actually seeing the screen. I'm happy with most things in the UK, but America wins the movie theater prize.
5. People getting all huffy about "If x number of people join, I'll tattoo my face/donate to charity/contemplate possibly changing my name to urfacesmells.com!" Facebook groups
If you don't believe in them, then don't join! A lot of the time I tend to roll my eyes when I receive these invites and wind up just ignoring them. But occasionally I'll feel minimally moved and will feel inclined to join. Then the message boards and walls become filled with hateful messages about how crappy the Facebook group is. Have you ever participated in some sort of charity fundraising event? Ever? Before the internet was invented even? Don't they all function in similar manners? I mean, what does walking around a race track all night really do to raise cancer awareness? You've typically raised all of your money before the walk/run event begins, so why bother? Because they help to pull people together and raise even a small amount of awareness and that's how fundraising works people. If you don't want to be aware, then disable your Facebook profile and shut down your email account because people are going to be sending you these invitations until the end of time. In some cases, these groups will enlighten you as to how stupid people really are. Like this girl, who changed her name to cutout dissection.com because she opposes animal dissection in classrooms. Who doesn't love dissecting animals? I have to give it to her, she did manage to get her point across. Plus she managed to show how meaningless names and identities can really be. I can't wait until next week, when she changes her name to breast (milk) is best!
4. Which leads me to...bad advertising campaigns
I won't go into this too much because there are endless amounts of examples. Do you ever notice how once you've stopped using a website as much you'll get emails saying "Come back to us!!!" or "We miss you!!!"? Well I have and it's stupid. Websites should subtly try to lure me back with special savings, without mentioning the whole "we need you" whine aspect. Sure they want to make the customer feel special, but mostly it makes the company seem desperate. Amazon knows how to play the game. They send emails saying, "Oh remember that time you bought this really awesome video game? Well, guess what? LEGO Batman is now here!!" Okay, so they don't say it quite like that, but they know how to get me. Borders will send emails to me as though we are separated friends, who once got into a terrible argument, but can no longer remember why. I remember why: Amazon pwned them.
3. The idea of changing your middle name on Facebook to Hussein
I get the gist of it. Yes, we all know that Obama's middle name is Hussein, which gives him not one, but two slightly terrorist sounding names. Hussein seems to be a pretty common name, although not as much in the United States. I used to know a kid who's name sounded like Saddam Hussein and thought, wow that's really unfortunate, until I realized his name was probably not so far off from being a John Smith or what have you. We get it, you shouldn't not vote for someone because his or her middle name is scary. But aren't the majority of your Facebook friends registered democrats anyways? While the idea sounds like a good one, it comes off as kind of cultish.
2. Sarah Palin
Of course she angers me for all of the usual reasons: she's not a real female, she's not qualified, blah blah blah. But one thing that really annoyed the hell out of me was her saying during the VP debates (and I'm going from memory here so it won't be exact), "As Reagan so beautifully put it, America shall be like a city on a hill." Okay, so maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt and believe that Palin does not think that Reagan was the first person to say this. But the fact that she said "so beautifully put it" leads me to believe that she did. In fact, Reagan did say it, but Reagan was quoting John Winthrop from a few centuries ago. And John Winthrop was quoting someone else. And um, how can America be a shining beacon for freedom and democracy when books are banned from libraries? Maybe instead of trying to censor the knowledge seeking Joe Four Eyes, Palin should go check out a few American history books.
1. Spaceballs the Animated Series
Ever since the age of about 10, Spaceballs has been my favorite movie. It's completely daft and cheezy, but I can't stop myself from loving it. When I heard about the cartoon I got incredibly excited. The iTunes store was offering the pilot episode for free so I downloaded it hoping for some mild entertainment. Instead, I got the same jokes used in the movie paired with terrible, terrible voice acting and timing. I only made it through about 10 minutes before I had to stop. So thanks for ruining my favorite movie and my dream of one day being able to see Spaceballs the Sequel: The Search for More Money. And they don't even use the Spaceballs song for the theme song! Come on!
And now for a bonus:
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