Finally, social media for your face!

I used to be really psyched about our inevitable evolution into cyborgs, but this kind of killed it for me. They're called Google glasses or something and they're easily the stupidest invention ever. Here, Google released a video, which you should totally watch. It's a grim foreshadowing of things to come!

"Your biological and technological distinctiveness shall be added 

to our own. You will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

-From the Google Project Glass press release

No, for real, my friend's cousin
who lives in California has one.

Fortunately, it's not so much a demonstration of the real thing, but a proof-of-concept. Which is kind of weird because it means they're sort of advertising something that hasn't been invented yet. It would be like saying Back to the Future 2 was a proof-of-concept for hoverboards. Anyway, from what I can tell the Google glasses are sort of like a smart-phone for your face. You control the interface verbally or with eye movements, but I'm not sure how you do the latter without looking like you're having a seizure.

It's just like Facebook, except you
have to start all over again. Enjoy!

The video highlights the social aspect of the glasses, probably because there's nothing like strapping a computer to your head to make you feel less like a human being. And I get that. Like almost everyone else on the planet I use the Facebook. It's alright. It's a convenient way to keep in touch with, and say Happy Birthday to, people I don't really like enough to call on the phone. But that said, I don't think I want to be on it all the time and I sure as hell don't want to be on Google's knock-off Facebook, Google+.

If I ever met this hipster-douche in real
life, I'd smack him in the ironic mustache.

Also, there's something really creepy about how hyper-dependent the dude in the video is. I mean, he can't get through his day without the glasses chirping in his ears all the time. "The subway's closed? Oh shit, better go back to my lonely one-bedroom and wait for death. What's that, glasses? I can just walk the two blocks? Wow, thanks disembodied voice!" And then when he gets to the bookstore, he can't be bothered to browse around but instead asks his robo-butler to guide him to the Ukulele section. God, I hate this guy. I've never met him and we don't even see him in the video, but I hate him.

Of course you could also try not
playing the ukulele for your girlfriend.
Just a thought.

I don't usually jump to the defense of warm-squishy humans over the cold and efficient forward march of technological progress, but the Google-brand future presented in this video makes me yearn for the days of rotary telephones and polio. Imagine you're the guy from the video and you dropped your precious Google glasses. How would you know when to meet Paul at the Strand? Or how to serenade your girlfriend with your new-found ukulele skills? You wouldn't, that's how. You'd just be trapped helpless in your gorgeous $2000 a month New York apartment, cut off from the hive mind, paralyzed with Google withdrawal.

Withdrawal symptoms may include headache, nausea and recurring night-terrors
about those terrible things you did while jacked into the machine.

Happy First Contact Day!

Of course he also predicted we'd explore
the galaxy in one-piece lycra bodysuits.
So really, what'd he know?

Holy crap, I almost forgot: Today is First Contact Day! It's the celebration that marks the future anniversary of the Earth's first contact with another life-form as shown in that documentary Star Trek: First Contact (aka the decent TNG movie). The climactic meeting between Zephram Cochrane and the Vulcan Commander marks the beginning of the bright, hopeful future Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberrry predicted for mankind. Of course, you and I are pretty screwed because the movie also predicts that first contact comes 10 years after an apocalyptic third world war. Enjoy!

"Welcome to the smoldering remains of post
WWIII Earth. Did you guys get lost or something?"

"Alright, please step out of the vehicle and remove your pants."

Depending on where you quarter
18th century British soldiers, it may
also violate the 3rd amendment. 

If you ever hear that from a cop after getting pulled over, don't be alarmed, it's perfectly legal. Just close your eyes and relax, it'll be over soon. The Supreme Court has just handed down a decision that allows law enforcement to perform a strip search on anyone arrested for anything. Anything at all. The logic here is that arrestees (yeah, it's a word) could be smuggling contraband into jails, which is true, but now officers no longer need reasonable suspicion to conduct a search. Critics say this ruling violates 4th amendment protections and is extremely pervy.

I mean, shouldn't there be a reason to search and a particular thing to search for? It's the difference between searching someone for heroin because they've been arrested for heroin possession and someone arrested for back taxes undergoing a cavity search for rare birds.

You know, because the suspect could have an ass full of exotic red-breasted cockatoos.

"Ma'am, please hold still, the guy from Hertz
is having trouble making out your breasts."

While likely well-intended, there is an exactly 0.03% chance that this broad, new power will not end in abuse. Remember those backscatter security scanners the TSA uses to check out your junk and give you cancer? Security agents at the airport in Dallas managed to turn those into $150,000 worth of blurry sexual assault. Sure, there will be times when police are conducting a legitimate search under the law, but if they don't find anything there's no way the searchee (ok, not a word) isn't going to be left with the reasonable suspicion that they just got groped.


And as if the 'ick' factor wasn't enough, doesn't this kind of smack of anti-protestor bullshit? I mean, how will this effect the turn-out at demonstrations if getting arrested now means police have an all-access pass to your tender insides?

 "What? He could have anything up there: joints, Phish tickets, WMD's, anything."

-Officer Grabby McPurvington

Let's declare war on the MPAA!

Post-apocalyptic tweens killing each other
in a state-sanctioned Thunderdome on the
other hand is story that must be told: PG-13

The producers of the upcoming documentary 'Bully' are releasing their film without an MPAA rating. Who cares? We all should. 'Bully' follows the lives of five teenage victims of bullying in order to raise awareness of a legitimate social pandemic (suck on that Rick) that affects kids across the nation. The MPAA wanted to give it an 'R' rating which means that the film's most important demographic (kids in middle and high school) can't see the movie without a parent or guardian.

Trust me MPAA, kids have heard it all.

So what's the MPAA's beef? Why should a documentary about a serious problem affecting millions of children be rated R? Swearing. Yup, the MPAA wants to protect America's youth from the language they hear and use every fucking day of their life. Apparently the Motion Picture Association of America and parents everywhere are blissfully unaware of Xbox Live and the terrifyingly racist, homophobic and misogynistic putrescence that spews forth from the mouths of children. Like seriously: Halo, teenagers and anonymity are a terrible combination.

'Your movie shall be rated...J and no
one under 6'3" shall be admitted.
What do you think of that?'

Have you ever seen This Film is Not Yet Rated? Well, you should. It's a totally excellent exposé about the people who rate movies. It turns out they're a group of self-appointed censors who can arbitrarily hand out ratings based entirely on there own personal standards. They're not elected, there's no oversight or accountability and while you can release a movie without them, no major movie theaters will pick it up. This effectively gives them unlimited power over the movie industry (and possibly time and space, but I can't prove it...yet).


The issue isn't so much that a ratings board exists, but that it's broken. In theory the entire thing is designed around what the board feels is appropriate for children, but sex, nudity and swearing send the rating much higher than violence. Machine guns, murder and 'splosions? Fun for all ages. Someone utters a curse word or there's a nipple? You're in R country. What's up with that?

Both of these movies are rated 'R.' Both of them. See the problem?

Michael Bay just told us to shut up.

+10 to your dork roll if you get this one.

"Fans need to take a breath and chill. They have not read the script...Relax, we are including everything that made you become fans in the first place. We are just building a richer world."

-Michael Bay telling us all to shut the hell up

"Michael Bay made Revenge of the Fallen."

-Me, on why we're right to be concerned 

Yeah, I'm talking about this again. Michael Bay had to know that making some crazy town statement like: 'These turtles are from an alien race' was going to piss fans off. That's why they call us fans: if we were reasonable people we wouldn't be having this discussion. And yes, I did notice the cleverly revisionist use of 'Ninja Turtles' instead of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' well played, well played.

My problem with the Watchmen movie was that there weren't enough aliens.
The lesson to be learned here is that I'm going to hate whatever they do.

Michael Bay: A master of
rich, complex storytelling.

Oh, and just to be clear: my problem is not that aliens are being introduced into TMNT. There have always been aliens in TMNT. Krang, Triceratons, and sometimes even The Shredder. My problem is the suggestion that Bay is somehow improving on the subject matter by adding a 'more complex backstory.' Poppycock I say. Ninja Turtles is basically about ninja fighting and pizza, it's not Shakespeare. Why do the people who make adaptations of comic book characters always insist on putting their own needlessly complex spin on the origin story, Christopher Nolan? Just mutate the damn turtles before the title credits and then let them spend the rest of the time beating up the Foot Clan and cracking wise, that's what everybody came to see.

Feel free to check my ninja math here, but I'm pretty
sure the Turtles are already awesome.

Update!

"Behold: the power of nerds
complaining on the internet!"

Check out this interview Collider (via io9) did with the reboot's director Jonathan Liebesman. In it, he reminds us that the ooze that mutates the turtles is alien and that they're still 'sitting in a room figuring everything out.' The ooze being invented by aliens is true in most versions of the origin story and is not at all the same thing as the turtles themselves coming from another planet. This means that either Michael Bay doesn't know what he's talking about or they're caving to fan outrage. I suspect that both are a little true.

What I want to know is how fired is Geraldo?

Far be it from me to dispute the wisdom that dribbles out from under Geraldo's mighty stash (see below), but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the inexplicably armed neighborhood watch guy who gunned down a teenager for absolutely no reason is exactly 2000% more responsible for Trayvon Martin's death than the hoodie he was wearing.

'I think the hoodie is as much responsible for 

Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was.'

-Geraldo Rivera opening his damn mouth 

See? Kittens! And
they're in a basket!

Huffington also posted some Tweets Rivera, uh, tweeted, including this amazing douchefecta in which he manages to blame the victim, the victim's parents and minorities in general:

'Its sad that I have to be the one reminding minority parents of the risk that comes with being a kid of color in America--channel the rage'

That emotion you're feeling? I call it 'vomitus ultra-fury.' Don't be alarmed, it will pass. In the mean time, look at these kittens (right) to calm down. 

NARTH is neither national, nor research nor therapy: discuss.

NARTH!

A friend of mine whose job includes keeping tabs on terrible people and their hobbies, kicked me this link and I though I'd share. It's an article about the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality which I had never heard of before but apparently they're huge in the world of right-wing propaganda. NARTH's goal is to provide a counter to the increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians in our culture because if there is one thing Jesus absolutely can not stand it's when people get along and treat each other like brothers.

NARTH's argument is that homosexuality is a mental disorder and, if this was 1950, they wouldn't be alone in that opinion. But despite every reputable physiological organization abandoning that stance decades ago, NARTH is still clinging to it like old people on AOL.

"Anyone who doesn't want to crank out five or six of these
 little disease carrying, money sponges is obviously a lunatic."

-NARTH logic

Put these guys in lab coats and
they'd still be assholes.

So what's the big deal if a bunch of medieval dickweeds want to pretend that gayness is a form of crazy? Well, I'll tell you the big deal. This article is from The Intelligence Report, the publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center and it's their job to track hate groups in America. NARTH, as a leading fountain of anti-gay horseshit falls into that category. They are to the LGBT community what the Klan is to everybody who isn't white and crazy except they do it under the pretense of science and therapy and this is where my biscuits get oh so thoroughly burnt.

NARTH presents itself as a non-partisan group that supports the notion that homosexuality is not a choice (which is true) but is 'curable' (which is not). Rhetorically, calling something curable implies that it's a disease so right off the top these guys have an agenda.

Although there is hope for members of NARTH as
scientists are making great strides in the fight against stupid.

"Vote for me! I hate
everyone you hate."

Science is science and science says that gayness is just a human trait like eye color or being Canadian. What pisses me off about NARTH is that they package their homophobic vitriol as science which is then picked up by groups like Focus on the Family who then turn around and endorse people like Rick Santorum. It's not so much that I care about who FOF is endorsing, but it's really messed up that actual hate groups can endorse Republican candidates and no one so much as bats an eye.

 With endorsements from Focus on the Family and Glenn Beck already in hand,
all Rick Santorum needs now is a nod from Westboro Baptists Church and he can build a hotel.
(incidentally, the pool at the Santorum Inn and Motor lodge is 'Whites Only')