Tea For One

New boss

I have a new boss.   Well, technically he’s my boss’s boss’s boss.  It would have been nice if I didn’t have to find out by reading engadget early this morning, but that is how it goes sometimes.

Vote

Tomorrow is election day, so get out there and vote motherfuckers.  Vote it up real good.  I plan on hitting the voting booth so hard my vote counts twice.  I plan on voting so hard John McCain breaks a fucking hip.

An abortion of logic

This weekend I did my due diligence as a voter and read through the California Voter Information Guide to research the propositions.  Everything was making perfect sense until I got to the arguments for Prop 4.

Proposition 4 is a proposed constitutional amendment “prohibiting abortion for unemancipated minor until 48 hours after physician notifies minor’s parent, legal guardian, or in limited cases, substitute adult relative.”  I personally think this is a terrible idea, and I (along with the rest of the state) voted down similar propositions in 2005 and 2006.  But I decided to read the arguments for Prop 4 to ensure I get all the facts in order to make the most informed decision possible.  I swear this is the fucking argument in favor of Prop 4:

“Notification laws in thirty other states are reducing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and protecting young girls from being victimized by older men.”

What.  The.  Fuck.  

That logic doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.  How do abortions lead to old guys raping underage girls?  I felt like I must be missing something important so I located the official Yes on 4 website to do some research. Here is the scenraio they present:

1. An older men molests underage girl
2. Underage girl gets pregnant
3. Older man forces underage girl to get an abortion
4. Said abortion covers up the older man’s crime
5. Older man may now continue molesting underage girl

Therefore, abortions lead to older men molesting underage girls.  Q. E. Fucking D.

That is some stupid logic.  Lets see if I can take this ridiculous argument to its logical conclusion:

1. An older men molests underage girl
2. Older man wears a condom
3. Underage girl doesn’t get pregnant
4. Lack of pregnancy covers up the older man’s crime
5. Older man may now continue molesting underage girl

Therefore, condoms lead to older men molesting underage girls.  Clearly we need to ban condoms as well.

Yeah, I’ll be voting no on Prop 4.

Bullshit

The thing I hate most about watching football is the commercials.  While it shouldn’t come as a surprise, the ads are targeted at a very specific market segment: beer, trucks, and financial institutions.  (The later being unintentionally hilarious given an economy that is in the process of shitting itself).  As a result I see the same commercials over and over again, giving me plenty of time to analyze the marketing messages.  And most of them are compete bullshit.

The beer commercials are the absolute worst.  The latest offender is the “drinkability” ad campaign from Budweiser.  In one of the ads a guy attending a tailgating party turns down a Bud light because he claims “beer fills him up”.  At this point the action stops and an incredulous woman walks into the scene.  As she explains, all the crappy food you have been shoving down your pie hole is what fills you up, while Bud light cannot possibly fill you up because it possesses the elusive “drinkability” quality.  

That odor you smell is pure bullshit.

Ryan and I were just discussing this last night.  Beer is mostly water.  After you drink three bottles of Bud light you have 36 ounces of liquid in your belly, and that is going to “fill you up” regardless.  Even if you replaced all that beer with water you would have the same stomach situation, and nothing is more “drinkable” than water. The Budweiser marketing department expects us to believe their beer can violate the laws of physics.

And then there is Coors Light, which is marketed as the “coldest tasting beer”. This is so mind-boggling stupid that I have a hard time talking about.  Cold is a function of temperature - it is not a taste.   I repeat, it is not a fucking taste!  Furthermore, all beers become equally cold when placed in a frigid environment.  The crafters of Coors Light have not concocted a special brewing process that bends the laws of thermodynamics.  It’s like drinking from a bullshit firehose.

If only the bullshit was contained to beer commercials.  Sony has a particular irritating commercial in which a man is having a difficult time deciding which HD television to purchase from the overwhelming selection.  The wall of televisions slides away to reveal a panel of athletic celebrities, including the king of advertising-whoring Peyton Manning.  ”Since most major sports are shot with Sony HD cameras”, the panel of douchebags explain, “shouldn’t you watch them on a Sony TV?”.  The confused customer accepts this bullshit explanation as if it is a mathematical proof.  Q.E.D.

I don’t even have the energy to explain the multitude of technical inaccuracies which form the basis of that marketing message.  I’ve been buried by an avalanche of bullshit and I cannot even begin to dig myself out.  

I think was upsets me the most is that the people who unquestioningly believe this bullshit are the same people who are going to vote in a couple weeks.  I’m surprised John McCain hasn’t put out a series of ads proclaiming himself as the “coldest tasting presidential candidate”.

Balls

You have to admit: Apple’s marketing folks have giant balls.  These are not your grandpa’s balls. These are humongous orbs carved from single blocks of aluminum which, although quite large, are the lightest balls we ever made.  

Apple has balls to launch a nation-wide ad campaign taking Microsoft to task for spending too much money on their own ad campaign.  Granted, Apple makes a good point.  The Mojave commercials were misleading and insulting.  The Seinfeld “ads” were super pointless and super expensive.  The latest “I’m a PC” ads are trite and miss the fucking point by a mile. In other words, Microsoft’s recent ad strategy is a big yellow truck of fail.

But still, Apple has balls to call anyone out for spending too much on marketing.  Great big aesthetically pleasing balls.

Is this American enough?

Apparently vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin believes that some parts of the country are just more ‘merican that the rest, gosh darnit.  Unfortunately for Mrs. “I can see Russia in my pants” Palin they still let us less ‘merican folks vote, and come election day I plan on telling that dumbass to please go fuck herself.  Dontchaknow.

PoopDoctor.app

I’m trying to wrangle some VC funding for an iPhone application I want to write, but I am having difficulty.  I’m hoping someone out there will read this and help me out, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Here is the basic idea: have you ever taken a crap that, upon further inspection, didn’t look quite right?  If you are like me you never know what to do in this situation.  Do you call the Doctor?  Do you call your friends and brag?  With my new app, you will never have to deal with this uncertainty again.

Here is how it works: you take a picture of the feces in question with your iPhone.  The app then uploads the photo to a server where my patented Poop-alyzer algorithm will examine the photo.  The server will then send a detailed report back to the client which will use the data to generate feedback for the user.  Here are some examples of possible feedback:

1. The phone number for the Guinness World Records headquarters
2. A sample menu featuring high fiber foods
3. A Google maps link with a pin set on the closest emergency room while the phone dials 911

Trust me, you want to get in on this.  

Where is my credit card?

I hate watching TV at night.  All the commercials are either for DVDs of wild college girls getting drunk and naked or penis enlargement pills.  It seems the network believes the target demographic consists of old pathetic horny guys with tiny dicks.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.

I am not that old.

Loophole

From CNN.com:

Fannie Mae said it will set aside the loan of a woman who shot herself as sheriff’s deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home.

This is a really bad precedent to set.

Oops

In case you missed it, today was a completely bizarre day for Google’s stock.  Right at the closing bell the stock dropped 60 points for no apparent reason.  We were trying to figure out if there was some kind of disaster at the Google campus, like running out of Kobe beef at the cafeteria.  But as it turns out someone simply fucked up.

This is great news.  I’m now waiting for Nasdaq to announce that AAPL’s 17% fucktumble on Monday was also a mistake.

Yep.  Still waiting.