Also,  I gave Battle of the Bods a try and got only 10 minutes in. I don’t think I get it? So, 5 girls stand on circles to rank themselves to match the scores given to them by a bunch of fraternity bros behind a curtain? Unsurprisingly, this is a Fox “original”. I wonder if they just lifted this show straight from an average mixer at skull and bones where this “contest” is just a warm-up to a long night full of jungle juice and regrets.

Kicked Out has some potential but I can’t completely get behind it because it’s really just a bunch of over-privileged twats who, despite being “kicked out”, are still on gold-plated training wheels. All of the challenges are structured and provided for them. That is, they have to work a job so they get hooked up with a hospital or local news station. Come on.

If they survive for five fucking days two weeks, they get a prize. If ABC had any balls they’d make it 30 days like Spurlock’s show and the only challenge would be to not starve.

The shit I watch pretty much falls into one of three categories: some sort of skills based adventure quest (The Mole, Amazing Race), a 16 week job interview (Top Model, Hell’s Kitchen), and the high school model dramarama (Top Model, True Beauty).

Anyway, my current list of faves:

• True Beauty SE2. Unsurprisingly, Tara Banks is an exec producer of this show because after doing a kajillion seasons of Top Model I think they finally realized why we watch that shit to begin with: it’s not the modeling, it’s the constant interpersonal drama. True Beauty is the distilled, 180 proof version of Top Model.
• Hell’s Kitchen. Bbut this is starting to wear on me, this shit is always the same except that Ramsay gets “whackier”. I may have to drop this one because all of the contestants are just blending at this point.
• Top Shot. This show is fucking terrible but I enjoy watching all of the big ego retards get butthurt over everything. Wha, my beretta is not a glock. Also, COLBY, Jesus you suck.
• Solitary. Actually, I dunno, it is kind of interesting. Like, I kind of like the deprivation aspect of the game where contestants just fuck with themselves but it lacks the critical component of alcohol-fueled idiots sparring off over bullshit interpersonal drama. I will give it a few more episodes.
• Pawn Stars. Antiques Roadshow sucked because it never had any guns or powerboats. I am such a redneck.

I’m sure it works. It’s not very nuanced or detailed. Now compare the above to this awesome pain-scale:

I want a poster of this pain-scale to put in my office. This amazing creation comes from an equally amazing blog called Hyperbole and a Half. If you’ve never read it before, set aside an afternoon as this blog will devastate your productivity.

Now, to be fair, booze dispensing in the North West has many, many pluses. The first plus, of couse, is just accessibility: beer is sold everywhere.  Grocery stores, corner stores, pharmacies, gas stations, they all sell beer. The other up side is the cost: that is, the cost is very low. Back in Ontario, we used to drink Lakeport beer because, even before returning empties, the beer worked out to just over a buck a bottle. Everything else got progressively close to two bucks or more. Anyway, something like Fat Tire—a really nice beer— will set you back $15 for a case of 12 or $1.25 a bottle. Lastly, the quality of the beer in this area is exceptional. The New Beligium Brewing Company and Rogue Ales are two that immediately spring to mind.

So, despite the relative plusses of boozing it up in America, the real problem, for me, with booze in the North West has more to do with the buying and returning of the beer. First of all, this is how you buy beer at the Beer Store:

1) Enter the store

2) Stare at The Wall

3) Point

4) Pay

5) Beer gleefully rolls toward you on the magic conveyor

Returning empties works in reverse.

1) Find a container. The original box is fine but that’s not very creative. Plastic bags, an old blanket, or a garbage can are fine.

2) Fling beer bottles or cans into your container. Are they filled with cigarette butts? No problem. Missing label? No problem. Did you shoot your cans with your .22? No problem. Throw ‘em into your now beer-soaked blanket.

3) Drive to the Beer Store

4) Dump your empties onto the magic conveyor

5) Stick hand out

6) Receive money

7) Stare at The Wall

8) Rinse, repeat

This is what civilization looks like. I don’t have a problem with buying beer in the North West, per se, as it is no different from buying anything else. It’s the returning that is demeaning. You’re expected to remember which beers you got at what store because beers not sold from a store cannot be returned there. That is, say, Albertson’s sells Fat Tire. I can return Fat Tire there. Let’s say they don’t sell Kokanee. I can’t take a box of Kokanee there. I know, I know, why not?

Well, the first problem is this:

Here’s how it works:

1) You put a bottle in

2) The machine scans the UPC code on the bottle

3) If it is a bottle that comes from the store that this machine resides in, it accepts it, the smashes the bottle.

4) The door opens, you insert another bottle.

If the bottle you insert is not sold from the store, the machine ejects the bottle. Ok, does anyone else see a problem yet? Why the hell does it matter what the fuck bottle I insert in the slot if you’re going to fucking smash it anyway? If you’re just interested in glass  crumble why not just pay for the glass by the pound. Secondly, why the fuck are you smashing the bottles? Can’t you, I dunno, reuse the bottles? Maybe you can wash them out and put more beer in them? It seems like a retarded amount of wasted energy to take a perfectly functional bottle, smash it, melt it down and make a new fucking bottle. What was wrong with the other bottle?

I only make this argument because I’ve taken the “tour the Sleeman brewery and get a few cases of free beer” tour at Sleeman’s and I’ve seen the high-pressure steam cleaning assembly line. That thing can blast a bottle crammed with cigarette butts clean in a second. It’s amazing.

I think this bottle return machine is like the parable of the broken window in that it creates unnecessary work for dubious benefit (5¢ a bottle? seriously?)  and, in fact, creates waste where no waste had previously existed while having the appearance of being convenient and time saving. Oh, and you can only return a certain number of bottles per day.

Convenience!

Let’s see how long that lasts.

fuck

5:48am

in the truck and on the road ffffffffffffffff

6:14am

CHICKEN DINNER ROAD CHICKEN DINNER ROAD
[HTML1]

6:37am

no blackberry signal, no internet

7:20am

middle of the east oregon dessert sage bushes everywhere I am trying to say something witty right now but this uniform, sagey landscape has completely robbed me of my wit also I’ve been up for 2 hours and it’s only 7:20 ffffffffffffffffffff

8:24am

Jesus

Still in the desert

8:34am

NEVADA
And more desert
Fuck

8:35am

Some crash up ahead has 95 closed

8:36am

no alt route, trapped in mcdermitt send he;lp

8:56am

Turns out some kids from the grad class got drunk and smashed into a pole or whatever

I am having the buckaroo breakfast

9:17am

Freeeeeeee

9:20am

whoa shit this was one fucked up crash

I didn’t snap a pic of the mangled wreck but it looked alot like this

except right-side up

10:26am

Winnemucccca: city of paved streets

12:51pm

I slept for all of nevada which is arguably the ideal way to experience this state. Bye bye reno.

12:54pm

Driver has decided on a rock station or something. Not classic rock, not new rock, just sort of rock in general. Sort of. Like a mishmash. Anyway, I just realized how sad it must be to be a dj for a station that doesn’t play new music. Hay guys here’s some music you already know. For like 15 years….  Tada … oh look witty banter about flip flops … Oh also cats amirite? Cats are craaaaaazy so what I do is product placement…
…
…

1:16pm

Do you know how you know you’re in california? The roads are shit

2:34pm

Also fires. Fires are a good way to know you’re in California

4:45pm

Slept some more, almost in Sunnyvale, no pics, playing DS

And now we have this:

Something about this seems familiar.

There are multiple burgers on a single tray that operate together. Doesn’t this sort of remind anyone else of multicore CPUs? There are diminishing returns in pushing for higher speeds on a CPU. In addition, pushing for higher frequencies also increases heat, reduces CPU lifespan and requires more elaborate cooling solutions. The alternative was to make multiple processes work in parallel rather than making them go faster. So we have multicore CPUs where you can dump individual processes on different CPU core or split a single process across multiple cores.

Actually, that sounds alot like the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak

Which, if I remember correctly, has two engines (one in the front, one in the back) driving separate sets of wheels (front engine drives front wheels) because it was a more efficient way to transmit maximum power to the wheels. A single, twelve cylinder engine would need to transmit power through two differentials, across four axles, and two driveshafts. That’s alot of lost power.

ANZWAZ

It seems we now have a multicore BURGER.

The 6 Pack, which costs £4.49 on its own or £5.69 as part of a meal, comprises one big Aberdeen Angus patty inside six rolls, stuck together to allow consumers to tear off portions. In one pair of rolls the burger is topped with ketchup, the second has a cheese topping, and the third bacon and cheese.

They are distributing toppings to different burger cores.

Ostensibly it’s to share because, I think, they realize how repellent it would be to announce that this flat of burger meat is for a single individual. However I believe that this is a solution to addressing the problem of how to put more meat and crap on a single burger bun. Burger King had reached the diminishing returns wall of bread structural integrity and is branching out into parallel bun technology

From Consumerist:

Monsanto failed to get the FDA to ban “rBGH-free” labeling nationally, and it’s had mixed success at the state level. Now the company and its gang of ethics-free dairy farmers (those are the ones who use rBGH to increase profits, but want that truth kept out of the marketplace because it’s unpopular with consumers) have scored a significant win in Ohio this week. Yesterday the state passed a law that forces extra, rBGH-friendly fine print on every milk label that promotes itself as “rBGH-free.” The goal of the ruling: to require expensive label redesigns on competitors, and to crowd the label with unnecessary fine print in order to dilute the marketing power of the “rBGH-free” label.

Dear Monsanto:

Die in a fire.

omgkthx

Punishment alone isn’t really enough of a motivator to stop someone from doing whatever it is they’re not supposed to do. What everyone does is simply balances the possible positive outcome against the possible negative outcome and decides whether taking a chance at attaining the positive outcome is worth having to pay the negative outcome. If the risk is worth it they’ll engage in that behaviour. Obviously this is a gross oversimplification but for the purpose of this blog post it’ll suffice.

Along this line, there’s a blog post by Becker and Posner here re-examining the wisdom in total de-regulation. Posner writes, “I suspect that the deregulation (though again partial) of banking has been a factor in the current credit crisis.” So, in hindsight, getting rid of all of the rules results in people in positions of power taking advantage of the situation for their own benefit. More so, if all risk is removed–that is, bail-outs are assured–then there is no barrier to highly risky and exploitative behaviour because all successes lead to big payoffs while failures are someone else’s problem.

And by someone else I mean you. It’s your problem.

What’s worse in this situation is banks are balancing the possible reward of a large income generated from sub-prime borrowers against the risk of, well, nothing. They got fucked and now there is talk of the government bailing them out like they do with large airlines and pretty much any other corporate welfare queen.

Anyway, if I were to ask you what would happen to a classroom of children if the teacher walked in and told them that there were no longer any rules–and we assume that appropriate proof is provided such that the children believe the teacher–I think we can all predict the outcome. Whoever believes that a banking executive who is used to getting his or her way would somehow not behave in this manner in the same situation is either delusional or ignorant.

Or an economist.

hooray for gadgets