Let’s Tea-Bag, Baby!

He voted for Bush's massive expansion of the government twice.

He voted for Bush's massive expansion of the government twice.

Urban Dictionary defines Tea-Bagging as:

To dunk ones scrotum into the open mouth of another person
Usage: “Man, Brenda was all passed out with her mouth open and Billy tea-bagged her”
Tea-Bagging is also what the fake grass roots movement of the Far Right is calling their protest this tax day over President Obama’s administration. The protests scheduled around the country have been hyped by Fox News – which claims they aren’t promoting them – and they are expecting a massive turnout. The first pictures from these events are making their way onto the internet, and now we can all laugh at people wearing stupid hats like this douche while we’re stuck at work. I’m not going to cherry pick a bunch of photos for you all to look at, I’m too lazy. I’m sure you can find your own photos that’ll make you laugh your ass off.
The Tea-Baggers seem to have forgotten that they were Bush’s hardcore base who never stopped supporting him as he weakened an already crippled financial regulatory system and oversaw the largest government spending increase since dinosaurs roamed the earth.

I don't think she means "George W. Bush."

I don't think she means "George W. Bush."

The Tea-Baggers also don’t seem to realize that the adjustments to the tax code will LOWER taxes for the majority of the country while only raising them for a fraction of the population. And that 1% who will have their taxes raise will still be paying less than they have since the Regan administration. Another thing to remember: These nuts are protesting Bush’s taxes. The adjustments that President Obama has proposed won’t go into effect until next year.

Disney: Full of Laziness

Disney’s cartoons from the 70s were great. My favorite cartoon growing up was Robin Hood with the animal characters. I watched it until I wore out the tape. Then, a few years ago when I was all growed up, I got it on DVD.

Today, I found this gem through the Magic Of The Internets. It’s a composite of 5-6 different Disney cartoons where they had reused dances and fight scenes almost frame for frame in multiple movies.

From cinematical.com:

Did you ever notice some similarities beyond the love of princesses and their princes? Watching Disney over the years, they all seemed fairly diverse — Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Robin Hood. But they all have some really recognizable things in common

You had best believe that it took someone with mind-boggling levels of cartoon geekery to catch this.

Meta Geek Tagged

If you know these men by name, you're an Office Space geek.

If you know these men by name, you're an Office Space geek.

Being a geek to me means loving something to the point of marginalization. Anything.

Do you argue over whether 50 Cent is fiddy or fitty? Rap geek.
 
Do you know the individual ERA of your team’s entire bullpen over the last five years? Baseball geek.
 
Have you mentioned Thac0 at a party? D&D geek.
 
Can you recite the measurements of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Neil Bort? Teabag geek. (Could. Not. Help. Myself.)
 
It’s about marginalization. When you get passionate, does the conversation start flowing with you or does it stop and eyes start rolling? It’s “geeking out” when your passion surpasses the audiences tolerance for your obsessive interest. Now, this doesn’t mean a group of people can’t be geeky about a topic because within the group they aren’t marginalized. It just means if that room was full of average people, the dedication to the “geek out” would be relegated to, well, those geeking out. Believe me, when I start discussing Lockean linguistics with gamer friends, I can tell from their reactions that I’m the geek. 
 
So you aren’t either a geek or not a geek. Everyone’s a geek about something, likely more than one something. So you’re not a geek, you’re a geek about X. Like Curly said in City Slickers, it’s up to you decide what that one thing is. Except I still think it can be more than one thing. So it’s more like City Slickers two where Jack Palance’s zombie twin showed up.
 
But what about terms like dork and nerd? Okay, we should do a little parsing since it’s a clear definition we want. If geek implies obsessive interest, I think these days it does so without the added burden of intellectualism contained within nerd–and dork is just a diminutive without classification. Geeks have something to be geeky over, dorks are just “not us” without any burden of addressing what makes them dorks. It’s self-evident that a dorks dorkery is such because they simply are a dork and thus not us. Seriously, it’s hard to parse the term dork and not sound like a 5-year old. Embarrassingly hard. In fact, I concede the line of thought for now on its own silly merits.
 
So geekery is like a metatag. When you have a marginalized interest that you spend way too much time on per societal norms, welcome to geekdom. You’ll find a lot us around–everywhere you look. This is a place to revel in that obsessiveness.
 
My geekery? Game systems, words, rhetoric, football, politics, linguistics, philosophy, 80s pop culture, and addressing minutia in overly analytical ways…
     

Update to Social Networking Bullshit

I remembered the analogy I wanted to make about MySpace.

MySpace is this generation’s version of Geocities. Just set the font color to red and background to black, slap a midi file of “Video Killed The Radio Star” up there, and let the mid-90s websites roll over you like waves of angst filled teenage memories.

On definitions.

It’s hard to say whether or not a geek has come out of the basement, as one must define “the basement” before this statement has any purpose or meaning. It seems there are essentially two interpretations:

  1. The basement is literal, as in the cubby hole in which the geek seeks comfort, outfitted with the tools of their particular geeky flavor.
  2. The basement is figurative, an expression encompassing the comfort zone surrounding someone and their geeky hobbies that encompasses not necessarily a place but also the people who serve as companions and/or confidants.

As an architecture and gaming (video, board, and RP) geek, the first interpretation interests me as physical space. Everything from the kitchen table to a home theater falls within this category. Some geeks only engage in their chosen hobby in a particular locale, either out of necessity (a video game console is generally required to play video games) or preference (the kitchen table has the memories of countless campaigns etched into its scarred surface). “Coming out,” in this case, generally means removing oneself from this ensconced location (or a similar venue) and going somewhere where the activity in question may be observed by those who do not participate. Perhaps this means a coffee shop for a pen-and-paper roleplaying group, or a gaming room at a convention (such as what Austin had during SXSW).

Other people will pursue their interests wherever and whenever they can. To them, space matters not, for the pursuit of the activity is tantamount. They still insulate themselves from the outside world, however, through their environs and/or companions. Gaming in the living room or the local hobby store is no different to the guy with his trusty dice bag and clip board of character sheets in his backpack. The second interpretation applies more to this type, as coming out of the basement means removing themselves from the protective bubble shielding them from what they interpret as the “outside.” An example for our dice-toter may be teaching his RPG-neophyte friends how to play D&D at home.

Naturally, these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and may depend on the hobby in question. As I mentioned earlier, some require special conditions or equipment, or they may require multiple people. Technology has a hand in blurring these lines, however. Thanks to portable game systems like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, a video gaming geek can “come out of the basement” in a park or on public transportation. Laptops, PDFs, and dice rolling programs allow RPG geeks to throw dice almost anywhere. Coming out of the basement, therefore, is getting easier to do. The preponderance of technology in our lives makes the executive sitting on the commuter train, staring and poking away at a little box cradled in his hands barely worth noting. Maybe he’s reviewing today’s meeting schedule on his Blackberry, but perhaps – just maybe – he’s finally tracked down that elusive, rare Pokemon.

Social Networking Sites Are Bullshit

There. I said it.

Oh, they were alright back when Tribes was good for getting laid and you could be emo before emo was a word on LiveJournal, but these days? Not so much. Sure, there are some out there that serve an actual purpose like LinkedIn, but for the most part? Bullshit.

But here’s the thing, social networking sites are one of the biggest things out there that promotes the mainstreaming of Geekitude. So here I am, a geek, looking for broader acceptance of my geekery, basicly biting the hand that feeds me. Why? Because you should all be ashamed of MySpace.

Here’s a look at the current big three in social networking:

MySpace. This is what hell would look like if the devil was a 14 year old with an obession with My Chemical Romance and taking pictures of themselves. Speaking of taking pictures of themselves… It’s MySpace’s fault that I now know who Miley Cyrus is. Do you think that idiot knew that it was just a matter of time before her self-pics that verge on child pornography ended up in the public domain? Who cares. I now have this crap in my brain and it’s all MySpace’s fault. MySpace is great if you want to make people look at animated gifs and listen to music that’s so overplayed, even pop radio stations won’t touch it any more. My little brother used to use MySpace to share music he created with the masses. Talking about that now embarrasses him horribly. I had a great analogy about MySpace being this generation’s {Blank}, but it completely slipped my mind. Sorry.

FaceBook. Remember that guy in highschool? The one who fucked with you all through your algebra class freshman year? Well, he’s 15 years older and the rosey glow of nostalgia makes him want to be your bestest friend ever and tell you all about his job as a sales associate at the local Ford dealership. Facebook might have started out as a way for real social groups to keep in contact online, but these days? Not so much. It’s now the Nostalgia Machine where all the people you made an effort to avoid after graduation can find you and tell you about their children. And here’s a dirty little secret you probably aren’t even telling yourself: If you had wanted to keep in touch with any of the hundreds of people on FaceBook desperate to make a connection with someone who also went to BFE High 17 years ago, you fucking would have done it. You wouldn’t have lost touch with those people in the first place. You would have made the effort to call them every couple of months, or send them an email. you wouldn’t need to have them remind you who they are and how you should know them. My girlfriend recently got a FaceBook account and she’s been telling me about all the asshats from high school who want to be friends with her now that everyone’s hormones have settled and the pecking order that seemed set in concrete back then as ben revealed as meaningless.

Twitter. 140 character microblog site. You can update as you go about your day, and check updates on other twitter account with your phone or whatever. The site’s ease of use promotes constant updating, and a lot of the accounts I’ve followed have at one point or another forgotten that there is no privacy on Twitter. Once you make your account public, everyone can see every post you’ve ever made. Sometimes that’s funny, but other times it’s just sad. Like the congressional Republicans bitch-tweeting during President Obama’s first speech before congress. Then there’s the TMI tweeting: “Just saw A Lot of Penis…” (This precious update was from earlier in the week on an account that’s being followed by someone else I follow.) Honestly, Twitter is the social networking site I have the least problem with. It’s only as “social” as you want it to be and you just need to remember that everyone can see the crap you choose to post about.

Confession time: I have a twitter account. And yeah, it occasionally brings me shame. I resisted getting an account on Twitter longer than your grandma did. Fear my herculian powers of resisting peer pressure. I got it for a journalism class last year and I kept it once I found I could use it to get all the reporting updates on local politics in one place. I’m too lazy to use RSS feeds, I suppose.

Pirates Still Cooler Than Zombies?

Creative Commons Photo by Marcus Metropolis

Creative Commons Photo by Marcus Metropolis

So, I’ve heard increasing chatter that pirates might be losing their geek cache due to certain real world events (yeah, I’m looking at you Somalia).

@omarg even wondered earlier today if Talk Like a Pirate Day would ever be the same again. So, have pirates been downgraded in coolness by their recent rise on the world stage? It’s important because pirates completely pervade geekdom. Consider:

If pirates become a “real” again, does homeland security start freezing the assets of Texas Tech coach Mike Leach? (and Mike a pirate can beat a soldier, just not a Navy SEAL–but no worry, the Aggies will never be that competent)

Should we rename electronic piracy to distance theft from “real” piracy? WotC would you like to weigh in on this? Is Adobe Acrobat the AK-47 of the 21st century?

Finally, when discussing if zombies, vikings, or pirates are more cool, must we now include Navy SEALs?   CNN cleaned up this article, when I first read it they used headshot at least four times. 

On the last question, I think the SEALs win. I mean even a zombie pirate dies from a headshot. However, a Valhalla-risen zombie viking may not be stopped by a headshot. Frankly, I’m not sure what stops one and hope never to find out. Unless some SEALs are around.

Continuing the Zombie Theme…

I just got home from running a table top role playing game where a group of people have to survive a zombie outbreak.

Currently, they’ve foolishly chosen to help others who were trapped in their homes when the zombies attacked, and now they have a group of 70 survivors they can’t feed or protect.

Bad things are gonna happen. And it’s gonna be great.

(But yeah. despite this post, if this turns into a role playing only discussion site, I’m going to have to set you all on fire.)

Speaking of Zombies…

(See the comments on Mike’s post.)

The group Metric released a new song, Help I’m Alive, just prior to the release of their new album. I liked the song enough to check out and then buy the album once it was released.

My view of the song was slightly changed- perhaps for the better, even- when someone on 101x’s Chillville made an offhand comment along the lines that she must be being chased by zombies. It makes one appreciate the song in a whole new way. ^^;

Maybe I’ve played too much Left 4 Dead.

Or maybe I haven’t played enough. Hmm.

#amazonfail Update

Looks like Amazon has elaborated a bit on the glitch. Also, Seattle PI has some theories from an ex-employee of Amazon about how this happened. Basically, that it was a coding area that propogated from version of Amazon throughout the system recatorgizing tens of thousands of books.

Still, it’s an important lesson about the power of search, ranking, and rating technology.