JoeBeaudoinDOTnet

I’ve noticed something interesting about BlogRush, a service I use to syndicate the RSS feeds of the blogs I run for my own sites, including Battlestar Wiki and Frak Media!

They don’t syndicate things with vulgarisms in the title (which isn’t a bad thing, in and of itself) or, in fact, technical terms for genitalia. Like the “penis lantern“, which happens to be the 3,000th article on the English-language edition of Battlestar Wiki. I noticed this because the two blogs I’ve posted on BW and FM weren’t syndicated, which kinda pissed me off, seeing as “penis lantern” is a benign term and should have been syndicated, regardless.

I should also note that they didn’t syndicate my blog on Best Buy fucking over their employees by forcing them to off-the-clock searches or working through mandatory lunch breaks. This is because of the word “fuck” in the title.

Of course, it’ll be hilarious if this blog post gets syndicated, despite the use of the word “penis” in the body of this blog. This would only prove that people can manipulate BlogRush as so long as their blog’s titles are innocent and uncontentious, but the content is anything but thus.

I ran across this video. Although it has that overused “Requiem for a Dream” music running in the background, the information there is priceless. Scientology is truly a dangerous cult, and its “founding father” is nothing more than a “sci-fi” hack who couldn’t hack it as a writer and concocted the ultimate pyramid scheme: a “religion” based on a “science”.

For more, take a look at Operation Clambake.

So I received this little gem in my e-mail. It’s from BusinessWire.com and covers the fact that a class action lawsuit has been filed in New York over the fact that people are being forced to work through their lunch breaks and are being held in the building for “security checks” after being punched out.

Basically, your standard Best Buy SOP that I can fully attest to, because I’ve worked through my lunch breaks and have had to wait for the fucking closing manager to stop playing with themselves. (Oh, I’ll also mention that I’ve had to search manager’s bags while off the clock as well during closing! Yeah. Go figure.)

Now, if this class action lawsuit becomes a country-wide thing, that would be wonderful. Hell, I’ll happily join in, even if the result is a monetary pittance.

There is a new video with Tom Cruise discussing Scientology in what is being called an “indoctrination video”. First, need I point out that Nazis produced far superior indoctrination videos? Secondly, this video (with the odd Mission Impossible music loop) is not an indoctrination video. It’s a case-in-point analysis of why Tom Cruise is a horrible, overrated actor who can’t act his way out of a bag without a script. Or his attempt to be deliver dialogue in an over-emotive William Effing Shatner fashion — the originator of which, by the way, has more acting acumen than this clown.

<cruise>It’s… it’s like… I have the power to help. You, you know, help people. I’d like to go on the Internet, have fun and play… but… I can’t do that… maybe if I… (laughing hysterically) change the world… then we can all go on the Internet to have fun and play. We are the experts. (begins counting with fingers) We can cure illness. We can decriminalize the criminals. We can rebuild people. We have the technology… We are Scientologists. We are the Incomprehensible Missive Force. (cue Mission Impossible music)</cruise>

Although the video has been yanked from YouTube, Google, and various other sites repeatedly, it is located here.

Watch for yourself, then try to figure out what the fuck you just watched… If it wasn’t an example of a very, very bad ad libbing session, I don’t know what is.

“Tearjerker”, episode 12 of American Dad!’s Season 3, is a riff on the James Bond films. Of course, all the obvious conceits, Bond shots, sexual innuendo, are all lampooned and accounted for.

Frankly, it was good. Not the greatest American Dad! ever produced, though. Watch for yourself and read my mini-analysis!

Some high points:

• Roger, who plays “Tearjerker” in this riff, is the highlight of this episode. Some of his jokes fall fat, I mean flat, namely his jokes about his weight.
• The “Oscar Gold” trailer is the high point of this show. I would have hated to see the movie. I would have died laughing.
• Francine… Hot. I’m sorry, I know it’s not that healthy to look at an animated character like this, but…
• Last but not least, Stan.
  • A feat of circular logic:
    Stan: Nobody needs America’s help, until they need it.
  • In Mount Fiji:
    Stan: Of course sir, but why are we dressed up like this?
    Bullock: Because I thought we can be secret asians.
    Stan: A 16 hour flight for a bad pun? … Yes… Yes…
  • Stan introduces himself:
    Stan: Smith. Stan Smith.
    Tearjerker: I didn’t ask you for your name, but O.K.

Some low points:

• Klaus as a movie director. A squandered opportunity. What would have been nice is if Tchochkie Schmear (Klaus) vied for Sexpun T’Come’s (Francine’s) affections, now that he has a human body. Not to mention Tearjerker’s reaction to it. Alas, hitherto a Squandered opportunity.
• Peacenickel (Hayley Smith) has only two lines. Both are typical gold, but it pisses me off. So… low point.
• “B” (Steve Smith) and his obvious breast enhancing “Q”-like gizmos. Obvious. Unavoidably so, however.
• The obvious crappy names. Tchochkie Schmear, Sexpun T’Come… all horribly corny. Lowbrow. Of course, something you’d come to expect from Seth McFarlane and company.

So, I found this little gem on Hulu, initially unsure what it was all about. Other than MySpace. As you can likely surmise, I gave it a try.

The premise of this skit is that a guy is teaching a class on how to create a profile on MySpace. Instead of teaching a younger group, the instructor discovers that the group is older than his target audience: it consists of a mother (played by Julia Dreyfus) and six middle-aged men.

And the sad part is, SNL actually grabbed the cultural zeitgeist by the balls with this one.

To much fan fare from the Wikipedians and Wikia, the for-profit service, launched their vaunted human-editable and maintainable search engine a few days ago. Essentially, the philosophy behind it is the same as it is with Wikipedia in that you can create and edit what search engines spew out whenever you search for a term.

Of course, having just tried it, I am wholly unimpressed. Then again, this is the same group of people who are involved in MediaWiki development who can’t give us an internal search engine worth a damn… I have to use Google to look up terms on Wikipedia! Bah!

I know that it is a beta, but there are several concerns which ring the alert klaxons immediately.

The more immediate one for me is this: I don’t trust Jimbo’s Jabronis to tell me what I need to know. Just look at the watchdog group Wikipedia-Watch.org and what they’ve dredged up over the years about so-called power-tripping Wikipedians in high powered positions. Frankly, I find the most ardent Wikipedians to be blood-shot eyed liberal extermists who believe in raping and pillaging information to suit their worldview. It really is like the concepts laid out by The Party in 1984 are coming true! “Neutral Point of View” my ass. It is more a case of “Might makes Right Point of View”.

Now, I must note that the ardent, outspoken bloodshot eyed liberal extremists who comprise Wikipedia and some of Wikia are a small minority of their contributor base. However, they are in positions of power, and thus explains my “might makes right” comment. (Axiom of the day, courtesy of Shakespeare: “There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.”)

Secondly, there is a reason why search engine algorithms are hidden from the public. If they were released under GNU or other open software license, spammers and the like would easily be able to manipulate search engine results to produce more garbage. Wikia, which says that it’s search engine code will be revealed to all, will be exploited ruthlessly by spammers and scammers wanting to make a buck because they know how it works. It’s like telling a thief who wants to steal from Fort Knox everything about the security setup!

To summarize, it’s really simple why Wikia’s Search will fail, and it all boils down to these tried and true axioms:

1. Money talks, bullshit walks.
2. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3. History is written by the victors.

I’ll leave you with this tidbit from 1984:

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

This is the future. Fight it ’til we can’t.

In my drive to update my blog more often than, oh, once every month or two, I’m posting clips from Hulu (legally!) from things I like.

It’s all good, and I’ll probably add my own comments.