Blockbuster: Best Deal on Market or Closet Book Burners?

Shit, where to begin, haven’t had a chance to write in days I’ve been so busy and now the I’m all backed up with stuff to write about, and it’s one in the morning.

Well we’ll start with Blockbuster. The debate has been going on between Blockbuster and Netflix as to which is the better service to get. Netflix has a kick-ass selection of older and foreign movies, some imports, and HD movies. Blockbuster has a decent selection, but they also have games and in-store trade-ins and coupons allowing you to get more movies out at a time.

So why one over the other?

On May 10th, 1933 at the Opernplatz in Berlin, Nazi youth groups gathered and had themselves a little bonfire, burning over 20,000 books deemed by director of libraries Richard Euringer as being “un-Nazi-ish” (that’s a quote buddy, you can look it up, think I just sit here and make shit up to amuse myself over here, no sir, I am here to disseminate and inform, yup). Now this wasn’t the first occurance of book burning, no its history goes all the way back to 213 BC when Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, burned philosophy texts and hosted a live burial of the intellectuals that called him “Huang Low” (another fact, fine, don’t believe me, look, there’s a picture of him working his ancient Chinese magic, the schwartz is strong with him). There was even a comic book burning in 1948, 200 issues! Oh the inhumanity!

Where am I going with this? Who knows. Oh, I think that’s my cue, um, Blockbuster was supposedly rumored to reedit their movies. I did some research on this and found that there are an equal number of sites that say they do and an equal number that say nuh-uh. In my book, editing boobs out of a movie is on par with burning Thomas Mann’s classic bon mots, so I went right to the source. From their Q & A section on their website:

Q:Does BLOCKBUSTER edit the movies in the store?
A: No, Blockbuster does not edit the content of its films. We offer all movies for sale or rental in the exact condition we receive them from the movie studios.

Hmmm, but wait, what’s that a little lower on the page…

Blockbuster does not edit the content of its films. But whenever able, Blockbuster will order ‘edited for content’ versions from the studios that go light on displays of violent or sexual nature.

Wha? Edited for content? Wait, I’ve had this service for how long? How many nude/violent scenes have I been missing? I tend to fast-forward through all the bullshit at the beginning of the movie, the disavow by the studio that they had anything to with the movie’s message, the FBI we-will-hunt-you-down-like-a-dog-and-sue-your-ass-if-you-copy-this-film message, the same studio message again in two other languages…what if I missed a title card with “Edited for Content”?

God knows, I didn’t rent Primeval for the subtext and cinematography, what if I wasted my time and got ripped off PG-13 level partial nudity and mild swears??? It’s like they’re stealing from me! That is wrong!

But they have free video games!

Oh, I am so torn between value and principal. Torn just like this guy is about get torn…in half! But what if they edited right here and didn’t have the scene where he’s being slowly pulled apart by zombies and rotten pig entrails are falling out of his plasticene chest cavity? That would be sacriligeous!

I must get to the bottom of this, nothing will stop me–oh wait, it’s 1:30, good night.

Hey! Here’s an idea! Have some more fucking kids!

I took my nephew to Pier 39 this weekend and hol-ee shit there were a lot of people there. It took me about 20 minutes to walk five blocks there were so many tourists, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to change the film on their camera, not looking where they’re going just assuming everyone is just going to jump out of their way as they stampede for the 3 shirts for $10 stand. Yay! A Secret Service shirt! I will be the envy of all my friends, maybe they’ll wonder if I’m a secret agent!? Ooo! 4 die-cast cable-cars for the price of 3!

As I’m standing on the corner next to a group of teenagers in shorts and t-shirts, the girls in haltertops I guess, this huge woman drives by with her Surburban full of miserable looking kids and screams at the group next to me, “Put on some clothes!” How ’bout you lose some weight tons of fun? Stop judging everyone else and spend some time taking care of that sweaty stack of pancakes you call your body.

She was just one case of these obnoxiously enormous families with 6-12 kids swarming everywhere completely out of control. You know what? It’s 2007. There’s almost 7 billion people on the planet. You don’t have to have a half dozen kids anymore. I know the church told you to poop out as many fuck trophies as you could so your faith could claim global hegemony, but you can stop now. If it’s more an urge control issue, there’s a little something industrialized socieities have called “condoms.” You may want to look into an operation called a “vasectomy,” maybe get yer tubes tied.

I know having all those kids isn’t making you happy. Look at your face in the mirror, you’re exhausted. You probably haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a decade. Your dreams are plagued with the sounds of screaming kids. Your days are plagued with the sound of screaming kids. Screaming kids! Everywhere! All the time! I know, I was behind your family in the aquarium, abot 50% of them were screaming at any given time, the rest were trying to crack the glass in an attempt to bring down the entire overhead tank on top of us. You obviously can’t control that many munchkins, stop fooling yourself. Just relax, you’ve done your duty to make sure the planet has plenty of people swarming all over it. See that on the left there, it’s enough already, it’s enough.

God told me, you can stop.

Hey! Here’s an idea! Have some more fucking kids!

I took my nephew to Pier 39 this weekend and hol-ee shit there were a lot of people there. It took me about 20 minutes to walk five blocks there were so many tourists, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to change the film on their camera, not looking where they’re going just assuming everyone is just going to jump out of their way as they stampede for the 3 shirts for $10 stand. Yay! A Secret Service shirt! I will be the envy of all my friends, maybe they’ll wonder if I’m a secret agent!? Ooo! 4 die-cast cable-cars for the price of 3!

As I’m standing on the corner next to a group of teenagers in shorts and t-shirts, the girls in haltertops I guess, this huge woman drives by with her Surburban full of miserable looking kids and screams at the group next to me, “Put on some clothes!” How ’bout you lose some weight tons of fun? Stop judging everyone else and spend some time taking care of that sweaty stack of pancakes you call your body.

She was just one case of these obnoxiously enormous families with 6-12 kids swarming everywhere completely out of control. You know what? It’s 2007. There’s almost 7 billion people on the planet. You don’t have to have a half dozen kids anymore. I know the church told you to poop out as many fuck trophies as you could so your faith could claim global hegemony, but you can stop now. If it’s more an urge control issue, there’s a little something industrialized socieities have called “condoms.” You may want to look into an operation called a “vasectomy,” maybe get yer tubes tied.

I know having all those kids isn’t making you happy. Look at your face in the mirror, you’re exhausted. You probably haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a decade. Your dreams are plagued with the sounds of screaming kids. Your days are plagued with the sound of screaming kids. Screaming kids! Everywhere! All the time! I know, I was behind your family in the aquarium, abot 50% of them were screaming at any given time, the rest were trying to crack the glass in an attempt to bring down the entire overhead tank on top of us. You obviously can’t control that many munchkins, stop fooling yourself. Just relax, you’ve done your duty to make sure the planet has plenty of people swarming all over it. See that on the left there, it’s enough already, it’s enough.

God told me, you can stop.

Suck all the snot out of a dog’s head

I was really torn with the title of this post, it was either gonna be the above, or The Hour of the Wolf, wow, that’s really fucking deep, so that’s right out. Sorry Bergman, I loved the part when the dude turns into a bat, nutty shit you Swedish pastry you. Check that shit out, those of you who haven’t seen it. Though, I gotta say the most arrogant bastards I ever met on my travels were the Swedes, but rightly so, universal medical care, low unemployment rate, hotter chicks, mmm, the lead singer of the Cardigans is way hot, and she’s talented to boot! Look at that! She looks like a fucking gelfling! Mmm, gelfling! You get better juice out of em than those lousy pod-muppets.

GD it’s hard to write a post when you’re listening to Cassetteboy, whew, talk about crazy juxtapositions. Anyway, this Swede I met in Edinborough once told me that the common perception by most of the EU was that Americans were on the most perceived as being fat obnoxious assholes. I would have disagreed with him but I was on a bus to Dachau in Poland the week before and a family of obese Americans were cracking jokes about concentraion camps the whole way there, so I guess he has a point. These are the same fuckers you see eating a cheeseburger, driving an H3, screaming in their celly, ignoring the ambulance on their bumper, with a W in 04 sticker on their bumper. What country did I grow up in?

CNN are the biggest fearmongerers on the goddamn planet, yesterday in the gym they’ve got this elaborate animated gif going in the lower right hand side of the screen: NEW YORK EXPLOSION!!! Hmm, is it terror? OMG! It is after all threat level orange right? What does that mean? It means, um, get the fucking casserole out of the oven, it’s gonna burn damn it, let’s eat dinner. Does anyone know what threat level orange really means? Regardless, total freak out session. Everyone on their elipitical machine was riveted, at least until 30 minutes hit. Turns out it was an overstressed steam pipe. Wow, let’s bomb Iran. All we’re looking for is an excuse. Coming up next! Those who are lobbying to eliminate the separation of church and state, no I am not shitting you. America is deevolving. Two weeks ago I was in the zoo watching these two gorillas go at it. 98% shared chromosones, but no stem cell research. No throw those fetuses in the garbage, that’s where they belong! Jebus said so! Check it, it’s in the bible motherfuckers, it’s in the bible.

Anyway, back to what’s important, I just climbed a 5.9 level wall on the rockclimbing wall, and it was awesome. Your mind just completely goes away when you’re hanging upside down 40 feet in the air with no one around to spot you. I originally got into climbing because my parents’ house backed up to a major state park with a huge natural rock formation that was condusive to bouldering, or climbing 20-30 foot rocks without ropes. Back then I idolized climbers like John Long and dreamt about pitch-climbing Half-Dome. Anyway, anything over a 5.5 usually warrants ropes and someone to belay you, it’s a step above scrabbling up a mild rock face. 5.9 is still pretty low on the difficulty scale compared to the smooth finger holds and hail-mary leaps you would have to make to grab your next handhold on say a 5.11, but it’s still pretty hairy. 5.14 is considered expert, and these are the guys who have finger boards hung above their door jams in their apartments and lead climbing tours up K2 for a living. The thing that makes the gym wall especially exhilirating is the auto-belay system. Unlike having a lving belay partner, you can’t call out slack and hope your buddy is ready for you to potentially take a major drop. No, the auto-belay works on friction alone, which means you basically have to trust fall for it to initiate support. I saw a kid today getting checked out on it and he couldn’t let go of the wall at the top. He started screaming that he was scared. Rather undignified, methinks. He ended up slowly lowering himself halfway down the wall before tentatively falling back and reluctantly enjoying the descent. As soon as the instructor was gone, he unstrapped and headed for the locker room. The climb I did today required a leap of about 6 feet from one handhold to another reasonalbly concave handhold far above. You still had to basically jump though, and that was really exciting. Once I got to the top, my poor under-excercised CG forearms were screaming for mercy. But they would get none! No it was on to the equally challenging 5.8 overhang, good ladder-like handholds, but still inverted, so you were basically climbing upside-down. Awesome! Reminded me of the time I climbed a face on Mt Whitney that once about 60 feet up, my legs were shaking so bad from fear and exhaustion I was sure I was going to turn into a blood hand grenade if I slipped up. I slid over the top and lay on my back panting and hooting with joy at the accomplishment and thrill of being alive. Nothing like it in the world. Except flying sometimes.

Like Brian Dennehy’s character said in Never Cry Wolf, “You know what the cure for boredom is?” as he climbs out on the wing of his ducktaped Cessna, Farly Mowat asks frantically, “What!?!” desperately gripping the yoke.

Dennehy shakes his monkey wrench in defiance against the howling wind, “Adventure!”

“Adventure!”

ps. get Patton Oswalt’s standup, crazy shit in there about Dennehy and producer Robert Evans, AWESOME_O!!!

Suck all the snot out of a dog’s head

I was really torn with the title of this post, it was either gonna be the above, or The Hour of the Wolf, wow, that’s really fucking deep, so that’s right out. Sorry Bergman, I loved the part when the dude turns into a bat, nutty shit you Swedish pastry you. Check that shit out, those of you who haven’t seen it. Though, I gotta say the most arrogant bastards I ever met on my travels were the Swedes, but rightly so, universal medical care, low unemployment rate, hotter chicks, mmm, the lead singer of the Cardigans is way hot, and she’s talented to boot! Look at that! She looks like a fucking gelfling! Mmm, gelfling! You get better juice out of em than those lousy pod-muppets.

GD it’s hard to write a post when you’re listening to Cassetteboy, whew, talk about crazy juxtapositions. Anyway, this Swede I met in Edinborough once told me that the common perception by most of the EU was that Americans were on the most perceived as being fat obnoxious assholes. I would have disagreed with him but I was on a bus to Dachau in Poland the week before and a family of obese Americans were cracking jokes about concentraion camps the whole way there, so I guess he has a point. These are the same fuckers you see eating a cheeseburger, driving an H3, screaming in their celly, ignoring the ambulance on their bumper, with a W in 04 sticker on their bumper. What country did I grow up in?

CNN are the biggest fearmongerers on the goddamn planet, yesterday in the gym they’ve got this elaborate animated gif going in the lower right hand side of the screen: NEW YORK EXPLOSION!!! Hmm, is it terror? OMG! It is after all threat level orange right? What does that mean? It means, um, get the fucking casserole out of the oven, it’s gonna burn damn it, let’s eat dinner. Does anyone know what threat level orange really means? Regardless, total freak out session. Everyone on their elipitical machine was riveted, at least until 30 minutes hit. Turns out it was an overstressed steam pipe. Wow, let’s bomb Iran. All we’re looking for is an excuse. Coming up next! Those who are lobbying to eliminate the separation of church and state, no I am not shitting you. America is deevolving. Two weeks ago I was in the zoo watching these two gorillas go at it. 98% shared chromosones, but no stem cell research. No throw those fetuses in the garbage, that’s where they belong! Jebus said so! Check it, it’s in the bible motherfuckers, it’s in the bible.

Anyway, back to what’s important, I just climbed a 5.9 level wall on the rockclimbing wall, and it was awesome. Your mind just completely goes away when you’re hanging upside down 40 feet in the air with no one around to spot you. I originally got into climbing because my parents’ house backed up to a major state park with a huge natural rock formation that was condusive to bouldering, or climbing 20-30 foot rocks without ropes. Back then I idolized climbers like John Long and dreamt about pitch-climbing Half-Dome. Anyway, anything over a 5.5 usually warrants ropes and someone to belay you, it’s a step above scrabbling up a mild rock face. 5.9 is still pretty low on the difficulty scale compared to the smooth finger holds and hail-mary leaps you would have to make to grab your next handhold on say a 5.11, but it’s still pretty hairy. 5.14 is considered expert, and these are the guys who have finger boards hung above their door jams in their apartments and lead climbing tours up K2 for a living. The thing that makes the gym wall especially exhilirating is the auto-belay system. Unlike having a lving belay partner, you can’t call out slack and hope your buddy is ready for you to potentially take a major drop. No, the auto-belay works on friction alone, which means you basically have to trust fall for it to initiate support. I saw a kid today getting checked out on it and he couldn’t let go of the wall at the top. He started screaming that he was scared. Rather undignified, methinks. He ended up slowly lowering himself halfway down the wall before tentatively falling back and reluctantly enjoying the descent. As soon as the instructor was gone, he unstrapped and headed for the locker room. The climb I did today required a leap of about 6 feet from one handhold to another reasonalbly concave handhold far above. You still had to basically jump though, and that was really exciting. Once I got to the top, my poor under-excercised CG forearms were screaming for mercy. But they would get none! No it was on to the equally challenging 5.8 overhang, good ladder-like handholds, but still inverted, so you were basically climbing upside-down. Awesome! Reminded me of the time I climbed a face on Mt Whitney that once about 60 feet up, my legs were shaking so bad from fear and exhaustion I was sure I was going to turn into a blood hand grenade if I slipped up. I slid over the top and lay on my back panting and hooting with joy at the accomplishment and thrill of being alive. Nothing like it in the world. Except flying sometimes.

Like Brian Dennehy’s character said in Never Cry Wolf, “You know what the cure for boredom is?” as he climbs out on the wing of his ducktaped Cessna, Farly Mowat asks frantically, “What!?!” desperately gripping the yoke.

Dennehy shakes his monkey wrench in defiance against the howling wind, “Adventure!”

“Adventure!”

ps. get Patton Oswalt’s standup, crazy shit in there about Dennehy and producer Robert Evans, AWESOME_O!!!

Ikea is an Unholy Labyrinth of Torture and Deception

Ok, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit, but apparently I’m not alone. Heh, look at her, she’s nuts, awesome. So I had to break the promise I made to myself not to buy anymore crappy furniture because I had four boxes of shitty books on my living room floor that I can’t bring myself to throw out and had to store them somewhere because a member of the opposite sex was coming over. I liked the design of one their wall bookcases a couple of my dj friends had in their places, the unit was cheap, and I needed something fast, so I set my jaw and journeyed to the giant yellow blue fortress on the bad side of town.

First off, I was annoyed that you get routed through the little Ikea sucker maze where they try to pander off all sorts of useless cheap crap that you don’t need. The path is long and obnoxious and there are few shortcuts to cut back to the showroom if you know what you want and just want to get it and go. Luckily I had found the employee hallway leading to the cash registers and snuck my way into the intimidating warehouse of shit.

After searching for roughly 15 minutes, I located my two ton bookcase separated into two unweildy boxes, muscled them onto my flimsy cart and started my way back toward the rows of tired disgruntled Ikea shoppers eating 99 cent hot dogs while they waited in snaking lines that would make Communist Russia jealous.

I finally reach the checkout stand and the woman tells me that my boxes don’t match. The only way she knows this is from the bar code granted. So I have to lug this Cyssophsian load back across the warehouse because some stockboy is colorblind? Yes, and added bonus, I get to wait in line again.

On the way home a woman on her cellphone tailgates me with her Land Rover, gesticulating wildly as if this is going to make me go faster. There are two lanes idiot, I am in the slow lane, the other lane? It is empty. You can go around.

Sadly this logic is wasted on the lower half of the bell curve.

OMG!

Breaking footage from 1-18-08!!!

You saw it here fuckers!

Bukowski, drink your liver out

Las Vegas trip drinking roll call:

Friday night:
6-8pm – Two Heinkens – drive to airport
8-11pm – One Grande Pilsner and a little pint sidekick while waiting for the delayed plane
11-12pm – One Bicardi avec Coke, Two Vodkas avec Coke coloring
12-12:30pm – Cab to hotel, check-in, unfortunately, no drinking
12:30pm – 4:30am – One large glass of Washington Apple (hurk), Three Large Very Strong Rum and Cokes, Three Beers at Cesear’s
5am – Return to hotel, cry self to sleep

Saturday Afternoon:
2pm – Awake, peel self out of bed, crawl to bathroom, dry heave
3pm – Shower, dry heave, dress, dry heave, hurl myself out the door into the 100 degree heat, ride the monorail and hike from the Hilton to the Mirage pool, collapse in cabana, pass out
4pm – One 22 ounce Bud Light, One Quart of Captain and Coke, recover from hangover for approximately 20 minutes
5pm – Slip back into skull-splitting hangover, stumble back to Hilton, almost defoul two casino garbage cans and one monorail car, pass out in cavernous hotel room
8:30pm – Rise from the grave, dinner at Galagher’s, one bottle of Pinot Noir
10pm – 5:30am – Three Large Rum and Coke’s at the Rio, Nine Rum and Coke’s at Score’s
6am – Return to hotel room, drool self to sleep

Sunday morning:
10am – Awake, feeling bloody, shower, shovel omelet in face, cab to airport, six hours of flying and sitting in airports, horribly hungover

All in all, 4 out of 5 star Vegas trip (minus one star for no Warp Core Breach)

Um?

No comment.

Into the pit with those blood-thirsty sons of whores!

So I’m flying again (what you say? So soon? ‘fraid so), and decide this time to use some my frequent flyer miles, you know, watch the finances having just moved, redecorated, and dating again and trying to be Mr. Big-Spender (the ladies seem to like Mr. Big Spender more than Mr. Big-Cheapskate, hmmm), and no, for once I got through airport security without devolving into an angry mountain gorilla and throwing my own shit, or the metaphorical equivalent thereof.

But that’s not what this post is all about, cause no one wants to hear about how I’m enjoying a nice quiet seven beers while waiting for my plane, no, whatdadeucer’s want the rage! And by gum, I aim to deliver!

No, this story takes places in a little country off the Indian Ocean, ironically called…India, where a handful of its hardworking citizens employed as United customer service agents are about to get a nasty phone visit from your pal, the nefarious Mr. Question Mark (See ?).

So as a loyal United Mileage Plus customer, you have two phone choices on how to reserve your airfare, you can (A) attempt a series of phonetic arguments with a voice recognition automated robot commanding data flow over thousands of flights covering the globe all operating with the computing capacity of a 1980 Speak N’ Spell, or (B) try your luck with a staff of hundreds of dedicated Indian flight reservation agents with a minimal grasp of the English language.

After the sophisticated, top of the line robot botched recognition of the word “Yes” five times in a row (I shit you not), I frantically began jamming the 0 key on my phone and requested an agent, it got that one right away, go figure. Soon I was basking in the 64 bitrate muzac version of United’s classical music theme, Rhapsody in Blue, gloriously waiting on hold, awash on a sea of potential disapointment only a seasoned veteran of the customer service battlefield could anticipate. Oh the possibilities…

In the past I enjoyed such experiences with Indian United customer service as, attempting to change my flight to New Orleans at the outbreak of Hurricane Katrina, for some reason, this request was unfathomable, even as FEMA was searching for their ass with two hands in an attempt to deliver water to the city (it took them 5 days, maybe I should have bought some Aquafina and went anyway, could have sold that shit at a premium). That one cumulated in a shouting match with a supervisor with a heavy accent going by the dubious moniker John Smith that eventually, after terrifying my work cubemates, resulted in a full refund of my miles and a free roundtrip domestic flight. Who says it doesn’t pay to Hulk out every once and awhile (coming soon…the Seagate Chronicles!)?

So I’ll skip the first half dozen calls on this particular occasion that ended in total frustration after agent after agent tried to pander a 430am flight with six connections from one adjacent state to another, only to finally cough up the semi-decent late night direct flight that I reserved, and then mysteriously lost due to agent ineptitude. Ive never had to spell my first name more times in my life, but then, there’s Honey Kettle who challenged the title, and lost!

No, this is about the final epic phone call to Indian customer service to confirm my held reservation that transformed the mild-mannered ? into his green muscled nemesis that you love to read about. When I called in this penultimate time I was calm and reserved at first, basking in the reassurance that my reservation was safe. I got a pleasant agent who asked for my first name three times, stepped me slowly through the 20 minute confirmation process, only to hit me with an $75 fee for confirming my reservation on the 6th day before the flight. Keep in my mind, none of the 12 other representatives and supervisors told me about this bullshit charge. The agent stammers then puts me on hold to ask his supervisor to override the charge, based on no one informing me of this in the multiple times I called in before. More muzac.

10 minutes pass and guess what, he’s so sorry, so I ask for his boss. Brother’s gonna work it out. 10 more minutes, I fucking hate Gershwin so much now. I get the inflexible arrogant supervisor who tells me I have two options, option (A) go back through the Apple 2C robot and theoritically not get charged (yeah right, I know a ploy to dump a dissatisfied caller from a mile off), or option (B) take a 75 doller voucher to offset the cost of the charge. Why can’t just take the original charge off? Why can’t he provide better service than a robot? He doesn’t know, he probably hasn’t seen Terminator, the machines will rise motherfucker, they will rise. Guess where your job is going? As soon as they upgrade to a 386, you guys are fucked.

The wheels are turning, I take the voucher. I call back and get a representative and use the voucher to reverse the original charge. Wow. Really was that so hard? For Indian customer service, apparently so.

Thank you, come again.