America Disgusts Me Yet Again

Today is the day I have never been more ashamed, saddened and downright disgusted by the state of our government.

An issue I wish I had followed more closely, one that is so ridiculously important and a complete slam dunk in any person with even the most remote sense of morality, is going to be stymied today because of bi-partisan idiocy. There is a bill on the floor of the Senate today, December 22, 2010 that would provide $6.2 billion in aid to first-responders to the horrific attack on September 11, 2001.

I watched nearly two hours of video of these brave men and women speaking about their efforts to save and rescue as many people as possible. People that were speaking through vocoder voice synthesizers because of severe lung and throat cancers. People with missing limbs due to falling debris during the efforts. Many many others who aren't so disfigured but still suffer from terrible cancers, asthma, blindness and several other terrible ailments. These people risked everything they had to help the victims of that senseless crime. How are they being repaid for their efforts? Nine years of no governmental help. Many losing their jobs and not collecting workman's compensation, endless roadblocks put in place by insurance companies, astronomical medical bills or downright being unable to receive treatment and being left in a bed to die.

The bill in Senate today has enough votes to pass. A bill that will provide a large sum of money to help these heroic people. However, it's looking to be blocked and prevented from going to vote by just one man. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He has vowed to block this bill in any and all ways from getting to vote today. His reasoning being that it wasn't brought through proper committee votes and amendments. That we haven't had enough time to look through everything. That it's a democratic tactic to get some legislation pushed through before Congress decides to take two weeks off due to the holidays.

The fact of the matter is this: These people have been dying since a year or two after the attack. These aren't new problems and this bill isn't some new stack of papers to suddenly show up on Congress' desk. This has been in the works for years. Now this man wishes to push back the vote until after the holidays have concluded and the new Congress has been brought in. Sadly, it isn't because there is bad language in the bill, (There isn't. It closes a corporate loophole that will lose some billionaires a couple bucks) it's because there has become some insane necessity in our government to absolutely, no matter what, go against any legislation that the other side brings forth. Some have decent arguments, and some are just ridiculous positioning tactics. This one, however, is the biggest slam dunk vote that Congress has had in at least two decades.

I can't believe the kind of thoughts that go through a person's head, knowing how all these true American heroes are suffering and can actually, with a straight face, out and try to delay something that is needed so badly.

This is the last straw in an endless haystack that has made my blood boil over the last ten years. People in the government no longer wants what is best for their citizens and their country. They want to work solely for themselves and their party and gain and use any amount of power they can. It's disgusting.

I no longer want to be apart of this country anymore. If I had the ability to leave, I would in a heartbeat. If I had the money to pick up and go to Canada or England or wherever the hell else, I would start packing after I push "publish" on this post.

It is completely horrifying that people in this country are so partisan, that they can't get the most humanitarian bill proposed in decades passed. This hurts no one and only helps.

I'm not proofreading this. It needs to be posted as is.

Hmmmm...

I believe this is what they in the Internet business would be called getting Pwnd! April Fools Day chumps! Muahahahaha!

Think of the Future, Just Don't Forget Your Present.

The idea of God has been intriguing me a lot in the last ten years or so. I like to read and study people's perspective of God, what powers he has (or lacks) and what he personally does for people's lives. People's perception of the events that happen in their lives is also endlessly interesting. Something wonderful happens, God was watching over you. Something bad happens, he has a plan for you. Or he's testing you.

The “use” of their God also interests me. Some people pray that they won't run out of gas, or that they won't be late for work. Some people pray to fix their crummy lives with his divine power. Some say you shouldn't ask anything of God and just praise him and thank him for the fortunes you have been given. And still others merely ask for the strength to endure his arduous trials.

Those aside, where my real interest lies is in the complete devotion of this one super natural being. The strength, vigor and complete faith and worship of something that no one in the entire world can be completely sure of, is one of the most incredible things about human nature. Their entire perspective, their views on the world, the way they treat people or how they feel about people. All these things can be directly related to a holy figure they learned about during their life. Some people so devoted and so passionate that they create entire groups of people to watchdog and protest anything that might criticize their faith. When in fact, if that particular person had happened to be born in India, they'd be worshiping completely different Gods and still be fully convinced of their correctness.

According to the Christian God, your life is a test. You are born full of sin, despite never doing anything wrong yourself, and you must devote your life to praising Jesus and 100% committing that he is your savior. You live your life to the best of your ability, to a set of rules passed down from the ages. You are told if you follow these rules and live a good life, you'll be sent to paradise. Complete happiness and love for the rest of eternity. However, if you turn from this path, embrace feelings of your own or of another spiritual being, you are to be punished with eternal pain and suffering in a pit of fire.

There in lies the problem I have with the Christian religion. I don't like the thought of my existence; my entire life on this world being nothing but a test for something terrific, or possibly horrible later. It makes the entire journey of your life seem utterly meaningless. You follow a strict set of rules, spend every Sunday in church, listening to the same passages from the Bible you've heard a hundred times, for your entire life, on the chance that this God is real and you'll be avoiding eternal damnation. The way it sounds to me is a lot of people aren't living good Christian lives because it's the right thing to do. It seems a lot do it purely for the fact that they don't wish to be tortured until the end of time. This seems like a very poor approach when giving your entire life to something.

I suppose you can call me an Atheist or whatever. I personally don't believe in any kind of super natural being from any religion. However, I do respect people's devotion to it. The faith that people have in something they are so sure is real. It's the kind of faith I wish I had; to feel like there is someone I can't see, watching over me and guiding me down the path that was chosen for me. However, I don't have that faith. I've tried it and I can't have it. Sure, I could claim Jesus as my savior, but I'd know I didn't believe it. If God does exist, I'm sure he'd find more blasphemy in that falsehood than he would in my lack of belief.

I guess the overall picture I'm trying to portray here is, strive for the afterlife that you hope to find. Just don't forget about the one you have right here. If God is all knowing and all powerful, I'm sure he'll realize your devotion to Jesus would still be as strong if you let yourself get angry with a neighbor or have a few too many pieces of the chocolate cake you made for your friend's birthday. Think of your future, but don't forget about your present.

Get a Sense of Humor Already!

Very recently, I was talking to some friends and made a stupid joke. The type I make on a near constant basis and one of the people listening found the joke to be offensive and quickly told me it wasn't funny. The joke was something about blaming alcohol for anything wrong you ever do. I stated that I got out of three arson cases and a kidnapping using that defense. My reasoning leads me to believe that one of those two subjects is a sensitive one for that person. Which leads me to say...

Get a damn sense of humor already! There is no subject in the entire world that should be off limits to humor or comedy. There are some truly terrible things that happen in this world. If all you do is brood in the bad things that have happened to you, you stay locked in that moment for your entire life. You need to learn to lighten up and not relate any particular mention of a subject to your life and immediately become defensive when it comes up.

My Father is dead. A frequent joke back and forth with a friend of mine is for me to crack a silly joke about her, and her trump card is, "So what? Your Dad is dead." Do I find that offensive or hurtful at all? Absolutely not. Because I've made peace with that fact and I can take myself out of the tragedy of the experience and channel it into a fun conversation with my friend.

I was abused as a child. Perhaps not physically, but in every other way that you can be. However, I've also made peace with that a long time ago and have no problems making silly jokes about beating up my friends or putting their screaming babies into a cat carrier. And they take no offense to it, because they know it's a joke and something I would never do.

Please try and disassociate yourself from trigger words of bad things that have happened to you or someone you care about. Don't punish yourself and live in agony over one particular subject that might come up at any point in the future.

In the immortal words of Christopher Titus (and probably many many others): "Climb down off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge and get over it."

Sorry for the depressing post. I'm working on some really funny stuff that should be up in a couple days. Well, at least I find it funny. You all will probably hate it. But oh well. As long as you read it, I still get page views which boosts my mediocre ego semi-higher.

MAC Vs. PC War Settled

They basically do the exact same shit. Buy whichever one you like better. War=Over. Thank you.

talk to type testing

in this particular blog post, I am attempting to write the entire thing without using my keyboard whatsoever. I just downloaded the new voice recognition program to see how well it would function. So far I am very impressed with what it can do. I believe long ago that this technology was abandoned because of its limitations and no one ever figured out how to properly use the technology.

I can say simple things as telling it to put in. Or,. As you can tell from that last sentence particular punctuation marks when you try to say them aloud puts the actual punctuation mark on the text, instead of actually spelling out the words. So, if I plan to use this program in the future for any potential writing, I will have to end up doing some editingbut overall this is then very easy to type"

It also does really neat things like moving to the next block of words that I cannot say because it will obviously do as it is told. I'll be using this program in the future to see how well this will help my writing. However, I can tell already that I am a lot more articulate well typing than I am while talking.

Thanks for reading this test blog post. It's been very interesting and I look forward to using it again in the future, albeit with some editing.

Hot=Notorious Mass-Murderer. Cold=Soothing Companion

Due to being a professional writer now, I feel I can more openly express pure, factual information to the masses. Before, I was timid and had no confidence. However, seeing that my blog has nearly reached 300 page views, I can confidently say that I am a professional and expert in the field of satirical literal non-fiction. Using this new post of power, I needed to warn and educate the masses about an epidemic that has plagued our planet for countless millenia. HOT!

Summer time has always been the bane of my year. It's so sticky and sweaty and hot and it basically just sucks. However, a great deal of people actually enjoy summer and enjoy the heat that it brings. These people are obviously deluded and have bought into all that "Warm Temperature" propaganda that's been circling around. Here is the cold hard facts people. Hot weather murders and destroys families. There, I said it.

From facts that I just made up, hot weather is guilty for nearly 2.736 billion deaths a year. You hear on the news all the time about poor old grandmothers that died because it was too hot. Poor dogs left in cars in the summer with the window rolled down only a crack. Countless trillions of ants that are barbecued with magnifying glasses.

Then you look at every one's good friend, Cold. Cold only kills about 36 people a year in the entire world. And most of those people deserve it because they go to Antarctica or made a terrible life choice by living in Alaska. Cold is a wonderful, caring and happy companion. Cold is the "Love Temperature." How often does summer give you a reason to cuddle up super close with that special someone? (Or that one chick you met behind Safeway and has the funny little sores around their lips) The answer to that question is NEVER! Cold contributes to wonderful physical contact with your significant other. Giving you time to bond and grow your relationship even more.

Summer makes people miserable and pushes loved ones away. No one in the entire world wants to snuggle close to another person when it's 105 in your bedroom. Summer is "The Season of Hatred." Hot is a crafty, dastardly villain. While it kindly strolls around for a few months, slaughtering countless humans and animals, it also provides weather in which crops grow. Summer is basically a drug dealer. It gives you something that makes you feel better and feel happy, all the while murdering anyone stupid enough to go out in it. It's manipulating the entire population!

Sure, cold has it's drawbacks. Frostbite is a bitch and really hurts and makes people lose toes and/or feet and various other body parts. But frostbite is basically the drunk uncle at the wedding that no one really likes, but still shows up anyway because he's family. That's how Cold and Frostbite are related. However you take even the worst possible thing about cold, death, and it's still not bad. In fact, it's pretty damn great! Tons of people say that freezing to death is one of the more humane and pleasant ways to die. (Right below being asleep) They say it's relaxing and nice. You kind of just drift off into a deep sleep that you don't wake from. And yes, the points leading up to your entire body going numb are pretty crappy, but there is that wonderful ending that will soothe even the most scared death victims.

Hot deaths? Being out in horribly hot temperature, all the fluids in your body being taken away in mere minutes. You succumbing to your fate, collapsing on the ground, essentially cooking your own flesh while you pray to every God figure that's ever been spoken of, for a glass of water. Your mouth so dry that the roof of it and your tongue stick together. Gasping for any kind of moisture from the air until you finally die a miserable, painful and horrendous death.

Yeah, Summer is a real pal. (That was sarcasm since you can't see me rolling my eyes.)

Of course, Summer and hot weather isn't 100% bad. It does have one thing and one thing only going for it. Women wear less clothes. That's about it. And even then, they are being bombarded by horrible "Super Gamma-Xray-Ultraviolet" radiation that will eventually turn their skin into the hide of a basketball and then murder them with skin cancer.

I have a solution. A solution I didn't think of, but was brought about by Professor Farnsworth of Futurama fame. We somehow shoot the Earth and the Moon away from the sun a good ways. Hence, making the year a little longer by about a week. That week will then be known as "Robot Party Week", and we'll all bring our robots to the park and enjoy a nice, refreshing, chilled day outside. Any rocket scientists/physicists that can make this happen, please contact The One World Government and get this plan into motion. Preferably before winter.

I just solved global warming. Suck it Al Gore!

Thank you for your time. Stay safe and out of the sight of the murderer in the sky.

Video Games Should Be Fun

The video game was created four centuries ago as an alternative to all that toiling and torture early American settlers had to endure. They were made to be fun and exciting and provide a little escape from the real world for awhile. Pure entertainment that wasn't just watching TV or a movie. Something interactive. Something you had control over. And that was a fantastic idea.

For a long time, video games enjoyed a run of fun. Sure, some games sucked. Just like some movies or TV shows suck. However, the overall idea was that they were played for fun. In the last few years, this has changed for some people, and I'm not exactly sure why.

Prime example would (of course) have to be World of Warcraft. This isn't going to be a WoW hating article you see every ten seconds on the internet. But this is easily the best example. WoW is the biggest online video game ever with currently around 11 million active subscriptions. And as popular as it has become, the game has become much more business than entertainment.

You'll walk into a 25 person raid. A raid that will usually take about two hours to finally bring together because people don't seem to be able to understand to go from where you are to another place. Once you get going, you fight (eventually) and kill everything in your path. Then rage happens. Loot comes up that you need. Someone else gets it. Then someone freaks out and starts calling you horrible names that I won't put in here. Screaming and yelling and fighting are all things very common in WoW. You fight and fight for two to three hours in a dungeon and almost everyone leaves basically empty handed. People get pissed off and rage-quit the game. Just shut it off and start cussing everyone out.

For so many people, the game isn't fun for them. I don't see tons of people having a laugh or a good time. I see instance or raid groups getting together and one person making a small mistake and getting screamed and cussed at and then kicked out of the group. Sure, I understand wanting to succeed, but losing your temper over a video game is fucking insane.

Next and last example. Modern Warfare 2. This game got tons of hype and is played by millions of people online. Since it's been out a long while now, regular players are raging constantly that the multiplayer is broken. Bitching about the spawning system sucking. Spawn traps and noob tubes. People getting so frustrated and pissed off, they feel the need to cuss out everyone on the voice chat.

I live by the code that games are meant to be fun. I play games all the time. And a lot of them I don't finish. Not because the game isn't good most times. It's just that I happen to not like the game. So, I'll stop playing it, delete it and move on to another and see if I like that.

The moral of the story is this. Games are meant to be fun. If whatever game you are playing gets to a point where you are not having fun, you need to put down the controller or shut off the computer. Stop playing it. Don't get pissed that something is broken. Don't get pissed because the other people are idiots. Don't get pissed off that the other people are assholes. Go. Just go. There are hundreds of thousands of video games to choose from out there. You can find something that you will enjoy if you try. Don't put undue stress on yourself, playing a game that is making you miserable.

Why Does This Keep Happening To Me?

Casey: Cathy....
Cathy: Casey?
Casey: We need to talk.
Cathy: Ok?
Casey: Here's how it is...
Casey: I'm pregnant. And it's yours.....
Cathy: Damnit Casey! You told me you used condiments!
Casey: I did! You are the one that bought the low-cal dressing!
Cathy: You said it would be fine!!!!
Casey: You got me drunk! That's basically rape you know. I could have your ass thrown in jail.....
Cathy: You can't rape the willing!!
Casey: You can when I have overpriced super lawyers that will make it that way!
Cathy: You wish!!

Bitches

No matter what social site you happen to frequent, you are guaranteed to come across numerous women claiming they are a bitch and not to mess with them or you'll regret it. Their profiles usually contain at least three pictures of them flipping off the camera and about five more showing off tattoos.

Where did this glorification of being a bitch come from? Why are people proud that they can be mean to others and not seem to care?

Is this some kind of ultra-feminist declaration to ward off the male preconception of female weakness? If that is so, aren't there far more productive ways to show dominance aside from proudly boasting about how good you are at swearing at people on the internet?

I'm all for being confident and loving who you are and not caring what other people think. However, if you really don't care what people think, I'd normally think you wouldn't have to boast about it in every online description box they can cram words into. You wouldn't care.

Why are all my blog posts between 3 and 5am when I am excessively tired and definitely not thinking clearly. There were so many more points I wanted to put into this and probably explain them a lot better as well. Oh well. This is my blog. And you can't have it!

My Version of Hell

If hell truly does exist, I know exactly what my experience will be like. Aside from the expected burning, torture, sodomy and Golden Girls marathons, the bulk of my horror will be in the form of progress bars.

I will be sat in an uncomfortable chair, at a desk with a computer. The computer will be doing something. Installing a program, exporting music or downloading really awesome porn that I'll never get to see. And there will be the progress bar, showing how far along the process is. I expect the initial bar to last a few millennia, as I stare at the monitor; begging, pleading, screaming, insulting and attempted punting of the computer to make the damn thing move faster.

And then it will near the end. 98%. Just a couple decades left to wait! 99%. Maybe one more decade of waiting. And then, a dialogue box will pop up saying something to the effect of "Windows has encountered an unexpected problem and needs to close. Would you like to send an error report?"

At last the breaking of my soul will be complete. I will have gone totally and completely mad. A raving lunatic with no hope of regaining my former sanity. And then the Devil will probably make me do that about 15 more times in between the before mentioned standard tortures.

Moral of the story: Progress bars are assholes and I hope they die. Thank you

I hate you. Yes, you! The one reading this. I hate you.

Recently I've discovered that I hate everyone. With only one exception, my Mother. There is nothing you could ever hate about her. But I really do hate you. I hate people and I don't want to be around them. When people gather, they like to talk, and talking sucks. There's never anything good to talk about.

Now I will list the people that I am hating the most right now. These are all personal friends of mine.

Brandy: I hate you. Your constant phone neglect has sent me into an emotional rollercoaster of disappointment, excessive happiness, complete and total rage, and warm feelings in my pants' region. I can't handle this kind of emotional (insert synonym for the figurative "rollercoaster" mentioned earlier because I can't think of another word and I don't want to be redundant) . Plus you don't cook me shit.

Jenna: Your obvious, overwhelming sexual desire for me is as apparent as your gargantuan breasts in one of your many excessively drooping neckline shirts you always wear around me. After you visit me and then leave, your "playful" way of making me rub your boobs over your shirt was cute at first and now has crossed that friend/sexual object area that we've treaded masterfully these 35 years we've known each other. I hate you.

Dan: I hate you. Your constant unavailability due to school work and your (formerly) devout girlfriend is annoying and takes away nearly all of our drinking time. And your car is beat up. I hate your fucking car too. He gets in one little fight and totally backs down and now it's damaged for life because it wouldn't stick up for itself.

John: Your unhealthy, sociopathic obsession with getting healthy is annoying. You live 3 minutes from me, and you have lots of days off of work. You could easily come over here (or me go there) and we could bomb through a bottle of booze and have a great time playing Mario Kart. But nooooooo. There is SUGAR in the booze. I sure would hate to ruin your mental illness about wellness by having some FUN! I hate most of you. The goatee was cool. I don't hate the goatee. And Jettas are girls cars.

Facebook Moms: I hate you so much. Due to the constant attention needed by those nefarious little bastards, most of your day is consumed by making sure they don't smash the TV with coffee table, or stab themselves while running with a pair of scissors. (which, by the way, is the most fun time you can have while holding scissors) So, nearly all your posts are about your devil spawn. Now, kids on the whole aren't totally evil. However when they are around me, they become more evil than Pat Robertson. I'll pick up your babies and one of three things will happen. One, they will puke on me. Two, they will drool on me. Three, they will scream their bloody heads off when I touch them, like I punched them in the face, even though I didn't, but I want to because they start crying, trying to make it look like I did punch them in the face and are trying to get me in trouble with their Mom. I hate you and I hate your children.

Adam Savage: I hate you a whole lot. You get the majority of the screen time because the producers find you charming, relatable and funny, when in fact, we all know that Jamie is 50x the scientist you will ever be. Only, Jamie get's 1/3 the screen time because he has the personality of a roofied woman at a bar.

I'm done typing now. It's 5:30 am and I hate the stupid clock for being so late/early. If you were not mentioned in the list, trust me, I hate you too. I just didn't have time to write about you. Thank you and have a pleasant day.

Why Nintendo Is Laughing Their Asses Off At Microsoft And Sony

Most "hardcore gamers" (God, I hate that term. Sounds so ridiculous and makes us sound like fanatics or worse...) have written off poor ol' Nintendo for their most recent console, the Wii. And I don't blame them in the least. Nintendo has taken the road less traveled and started appealing to the casual circuit of gamers that weren't getting any attention since around the Super Nintendo days. There weren't a lot of pick-up-and-play games during the Playstation 1 through XBox 360 and PS3 era. And as the graphics became more advanced, so did the controllers and so did the games. Most games were so inaccessible to someone who might just walk up to a controller sitting on the couch.

Now, Nintendo has seen the hardcore market fully saturated by Sony and Microsoft and knew they needed to take a new route. It started with the Gamecube and has now moved onto their enormously popular Wii console. The Gamecube was never tremendously popular. It wasn't the most attractive little box to have sitting in your entertainment center, but it was a great console and I had a wonderful time with mine. But I digress....

So, Nintendo comes up with this fancy little motion controller that you can wave at your TV and it does wonderful, magical things that can only really be explained by studying the Necronomicon or joining Scientology. But it got people off the couch and got people who had never played a video game in their life, to pick up that little remote.

It was a gamble, no doubt. Trying to appeal a console to an entire group that has never been into playing video games. But, as all smart people should, they bet on black and won. And they won big.

Despite what most gaming folk believe, Nintendo has never lost money from any console they've ever made, including the Gamecube. Sure it didn't perform as well as the other two systems did, but they still made a hefty profit while poor little Microsoft's original XBox lost over a billion dollars during it's lifespan. Yep...that's right. A BILLION dollars lost.

I am losing track of where I want to go with this stupid post. I hate that I can never organize my ideas correctly. A problem which will forever keep me from ever writing for a publication that more than 10 people read...ANYWAY!

Why is Nintendo laughing at mega giants Sony and Microsoft? A good place to start would be to check the all time best selling console/handheld games list. Among the top 20 best sellers list, 18 of them are, in fact, made by Nintendo themselves. (The other two being Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) Now I know what you (non-existent) Microsoft and Sony fanboys might say right here. "But Casey. Those probably count all the games back in the NES and Gameboy days when they had no real competition!"

To which I must reply, that of the 18 best selling games of all time, 12 of those games have been made in the last seven years. Now, let's take a deeper look at why Nintendo is laughing so incredibly hard. Take the game "Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes a Day" This silly little game was made to train your brain a little and maybe kinda help you think better, possibly. This fun little game was developed, marketed and shipped on the hefty little price tag of about half a million dollars, total. Selling for $30 a piece, it has gone on to sell 18.7 million copies. And hopefully my math isn't failing me here, but that should add up to about $560 million in profit.

Now we shall take a look at the best selling game of the two mega consoles of this generation, made by studios in their particular house. (As in, made by either Sony or Microsoft) And that game is no doubt, Halo 3. Halo 3 sold a very impressive $8.1 million units. That is exceptionally strong for a console game that sits with a $60 price tag. So, let's do a little quick math here. So, at 60 bucks and selling 8.1 million, the money made from the game comes to around $486 million. But now we must all factor in the $40 million it cost just to develop the game. (not counting TV ads, print ads, packaging, and shipping) So, without all the extras we'll say the game made about $446 million bucks. Not too shabby.

A piece of the Nintendo laugh comes in at the fact that "Brain Age" mentioned earlier is that it's only the 3rd best selling game on the Nintendo DS and 7th overall. The two games above it being Nintendogs and New Super Mario Bros. also made those ridiculous piles of cash. And this is just on their silly little handheld system! Let's take a look at the Wii now.

The top 3 best selling console games of all time happen to be Wii games. Those being Wii Play (27.4 million sold) Wii Fit (22.6 million) and Mario Kart Wii (22.5 million) Analysts have put the cost to develop a Wii game at about $8-9 million or so. Much much less than the $20-30 million per game it costs the Microsoft and Sony consoles. So, we'll do some quick math yet again with Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii (Wii Fit has the balance board in it and costs a hundred bucks. I have no clue how much the balance board costs to make so I don't want to use it in the example) Both of these games sold at $50 a piece. So we are looking at $1.37 BILLION made from Wii Play and 1.125 BILLION from Mario Kart. Subtract out the 8 or 9 million for development costs and hell, take out another 10 million for advertising both games and you still have two games that made Nintendo a billion dollars each. Just two games.

The list can go on and on about how much Nintendo makes on their games. Sure, the system is full of crap games that are made because of the small cost of development and people are trying to make easy cash. But in the world I live in, I always look at scoreboard. And scoreboard says that every single Nintendo executive is swimming around in their own Scrooge McDuck style money vault.

And now, Microsoft and Sony have both seen how large Nintendo's money vaults actually are and how much money they are losing. They really want a piece of that action. So, Sony has developed it's own motion sensitive controller that will be coming out soon and Microsoft is releasing their Natal system that uses a camera mounted on your TV to sense motion. This is a last ditch, desperate attempt to get in on that casual gaming market that Sony and Microsoft had forgotten existed. Only time will tell if these new gadgets will pay off...or if it will be too little too late.

Wow this was written like crap. Oh well, I liked it. Later.

Fannin Eleven

This is going to be a really odd post for me I think. You all are probably going to think I've lost my mind or have finally gone off that deep end you all have seen coming for years now. But I assure you, I'm quite sane (relatively speaking) and whoever reads this thing needs to check out this family. I posted a link to their Youtube channel a long time ago, but I doubt anyone really looked at them. So, the point of this post is to try and show how wonderful these people really are.

Fannin Eleven are a family of 11 brothers and sisters that are very musical. They all sing and most play an instrument of some kind. They have a Youtube channel where they get their family together and sing popular songs. But this isn't just some cheesey group cover they do. The rearrange and cover the songs, making them their own. A number of their videos are full acapella and (in my opinion) are the best ones. Just listening to the harmonies in their voices, the strong leads they have sing the verses, it's just incredible.

The audio quality in the videos isn't that great. It isn't terrible but definitely not great. And for me, this is a terrific thing. When they sing, they sing to the microphone on the camera they use to record and I love it. If they had studio/professional sound, I think some of the magic would be lost by their songs. It has an amateur-ish quality to the sound that really makes it feel real. It's all done in real time. No punch ins (with the exception of the Jason Mraz song. They split it up between the family) and no fancy editing or filter work is done. It's just raw, pure singing of this family sitting around the kitchen table. It's just magical watching a family this close do something so creative and so wonderful.

However, the greatness of these videos doesn't just stop at the singing. The videos themselves are fantastic as well. They very well could just show themselves sitting around the kitchen table and singing and I would be happy as hell. But that isn't what they do. Mixed in with showing them all singing, there are always clips of the family doing some activity together. Whether it be playing Wii or DDR, a hilarious session of them biting into lemons and limes and watching their reactions, to just old family photos or video. The videos are inviting and wonderful and everytime you see one, you wish you were apart of the family.

So, basically what I am saying is....all of my readers, you need to check out this family. Give a song or two a listen and I'm quite confident you'll find the happy and joy that I do whenever I watch one of their videos.

www.youtube.com/fannineleven
www.fannineleven.com

Sorry, even though I've been interneting forever and a day, I still have no clue how to make clicky links. Please just copy and paste into your browser. Sorry I suck!

Television Writing

Here is another pointless post that no one will care about, but maybe by the end, people will give a tiny bit more respect to the hard work that television writers must endure.

I will start by saying I am no expert. All I do is read a lot and I soak in information about things I love and television is easily that. I'm obviously a terrible writer with no ability to write fiction at all but I greatly respect the people that can and try my best to study their craft to the best of my ability.

People do not understand how incredibly difficult it is to write just one script for a show, let alone 22-24 for an entire season. So, let's walk through some of the things that your lowly TV writer has to deal with.

Length: The script for a one hour television show is usually around 60 pages. 60 pages worth of dialogue, stage direction and character emotion. You college people remember how stressed you were when your 10 page papers were due for class? Try 60 pages that will be judged by millions of people. That's rough.

Of course, TV writing is a collaborative effort. Most popular shows have around 20 or so writers on the staff. The person that gets the writing credit at the beginning of the episode is the person that wrote the first draft. After that draft is written, it is combed over by the producers and other writers, taking out things, adding things and refining things to make the story flow as well as possible. Regardless of all the help, that one poor soul has to crank out a 60 page script with a good enough story to not just get thrown in the trash and then watch your work be mangled by 20-30 other people. I couldn't do that at all.

TV Running Time: There are two major areas where the writer has to constantly be aware. One are commercial breaks. There have to be a certain number of commercial breaks per episode and the writers have to make the whole story flow in just a way so that they leave the story in the perfect spot so the viewer can be taken away. You can't just write a good story how you want to. It is so highly structured and so many rules have to apply that it must be maddening.

Secondly, when the show ends. The script has to be written so nearly precise that the show doesn't run longer than 22 minutes or 44-48 minutes. Trying to write a good story, making the pacing just right, writing good, strong dialogue that will keep watchers attention, all with trying to cram it into such a precise space is a problem I couldn't even imagine coping with.

Stars: Many stars have written into their contracts that they have a certain number of lines or episodes that they appear in that season. Hypothetically speaking let's take the show "House" for a moment. (None of this is fact. This is just hypothetical but does tell how every show on TV works.) Let's say Omar Epps has in his contract that he needs about 200 minutes of face time during an entire season...or perhaps he has a line minimum. The writers must work around that, plus every other cast member on the show. They have to make sure that each star's contract is lived up to for every episode, and still construct that great story everyone wants to see.

Recurring Characters: Networks love recurring characters. Characters that pop in during a season and stay around for 4-6 episodes usually. Now the writers must take everything else I've stated above plus write a character that people will see for a long time and make them compelling. Always knowing that this person is only going to be around for...say...5 episodes. They have to write their entrance. They have to write a clever way for them to be interactive with the main cast and write them in a way to make them have chemistry, write through their story arch and then find an entertaining, plausible and non-pissoffish way for them to leave once their run is over.

Writing Time: Let's take "House" as another example. From their DVD release, I know that it takes them 8 days to purely shoot an episode. That is before post production; editing, special effects, re-dubs and things of that nature. That's just 8 days of shooting plus probably two weeks or more of post to get a show ready to air. So, let's take a look at the time we spend here. One episode, 8 days of shooting and 14 days of post production. That is 23 days for one show. And they usually have 22 episode seasons. You take those 23 days for one show and multiply by 22 episodes you come up with 506 days to complete a season.

Now obviously that is impossible seeing as there are only 365 days in a year, plus the show takes a 3 month break every year in the summer. So, obviously episodes are being produced concurrently. So, to take a 506 day schedule and compress that down into (roughly) a 297 day production schedule, writers have to be on their toes and their fingers have to be flying like crazy to get episodes out and ready to be shot.

Overview: Let's write a good episode. All we have to remember is to make an enriching story, that pushes along the show and highlights the main cast of characters. Plus we have to make sure it's about 60 pages so after it's written we have to go to about 3 different table reads to get things right. We have a lot of story to get through, but we have 44 minutes to do it in. Also, the lead star renegotiated his contract for 10% more viewing time so the love story arch between the two supporting characters has to be trimmed down and still find a way to make it believable and make it so the viewers care about it. But damn it, we have Heather Locklear coming in and running for 6 episodes so we have to set up her arch too and find a way to get her out at the end. And I have to do this all in about a week and a half time. SHOULD BE FUN!

The things I just said above are not accurate but relative enough to give you an idea of what it takes to get words for your favorite characters to say.

When you complain about how your favorite show isn't as good as it once was, or that a show completely sucks, just remember what it takes to get the show on the air in the first place. Writing an episode isn't like sitting down to write a short story. You have so many things to juggle all at once that it's amazing to me any people could take up this profession.

There's some time you'll never get back and I own it now. Suck it internets.

PS: Not proofread and written at 4am. Probably mistakes galore. I'm not fixing them. Live with it!

Creative Trainwreck

For the last couple of months I've been on some kind of insane creative kick to where I want to produce something, something that other people will read/listen to/see. However, these ideas never get anywhere at all. I'll get a plan to do something and have no substance to make the plan a reality. This blog was it for awhile, but I know I'm getting no one reading it. No one ever just pops on here to check if something is posted. The very few readers I get are people that feel obligated because I post a link on my Facebook.

This lack of confidence is really stemming from the fact that I'm really not very good at anything. I don't have a special knowledge about anything. I don't really have any real talents or insight into anything that people would care about. Sure, I love TV but there are only about 500 million TV reviewers. I love trance music, but I am so far from an expert on it, and once again, it's very well covered by people a billion times more knowledgeable than I am.

I just feel stuck and in a rut. I want to create something so badly. And maybe creating anything at all, just for the sake of myself should be good enough. But I guess I feel like I want my work to be validated somehow by getting an audience. Putting in hours of work on a project to show no one else seems like such a waste.

Right now I want to start an audio project. Podcastish style I guess. Do a few episodes just for myself to try and get the form down. Figure out how I need to edit it all together and then make some for real. However, I don't have any kind of topic to talk about. There is nothing that I can do remotely well that isn't being done much much better by someone else.

It's frustrating. All this time I spend just dorking around on my computer seems like it could be used for something constructive. However, through my musical production attempts (around 4 years worth) never came anything but amateurish crap that wouldn't have even sounded good in a Super Nintendo game. My writing here which is fine I guess, but no one that ever does read it tells others to check it out. I have no crafting skills. I can't make anything with my hands. I've just never had that ability.

So, basically I am totally lost. I need an avenue to do something. Right now I am doing nothing with my life whatsoever. I need at least one thing to maybe make me think that I'm not a complete waste of space. Something that I can do that might actually matter.

The Simpsons vs. Family Guy vs. South Park

Anyone that knows me even a little bit usually has knowledge about my insane addiction to cartoons and animation. Ever since a kid, I was in love. The terrific shows of the 90s got me hooked and I never stopped. I still watch the kid's shows on Nick and Cartoon Network when I find a show I actually like. However, the one show that took me down a completely different animated road, was of course, The Simpsons.

The Simpsons premiered in 1989 on Fox. (The show. Not the crap filler clips from Tracey Ulman) I watched it and instantly loved it. Even though it was so simple and hadn't even come close to reaching it's potential, the show was amazing. The main cast were easy to relate to. Homer the idiot, Marge the stereotypical housewife/mother, Maggie...the..umm...baby? Lisa the know-it-all, brainy little sister. And Bart, the rebellious little hell raiser that kids wanted to be.

The show progressed rather quickly, and by the third season, it was easily the funniest show on television. By then I was ridiculously hooked and did the best I could to watch every Sunday. However, my parents made that very difficult for me to do. The Simpsons had a reputation in the beginning of being a edgy show. An openly alcoholic father that was completely stupid and a near out of control child that swore at adults, broke the law, and slacked at his schoolwork were just not things you saw at that time. And thanks to President Bush 41, a lot of families did not watch the show, believing it to be a bad influence.

The show progressed however. As everyone knows, controversy makes people pay attention. And people payed an ass load of attention to The Simpsons. As soon as season four had completed, Fox, and everyone that worked on the show made about 320 dump trucks full of money each from the syndication. And the show kept rolling on.

The show came to be known as the height of intelligent, witty humor of the sitcom landscape. During seasons three through about season twelve, every episode were packed with so many insanely witty jokes, that you almost relish the commercial break because your sides hurt so much from laughing. But the people getting those big laughs have a much more sophisticated appreciation of humor than others.

Let's move ahead to 1997. Comedy Central noticed the success adult oriented animated shows were having and decided to jump on board as well. So, two guys named Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut together a 22 minute episode of a show they called South Park. That show was made entirely out of construction paper and shot as a stop-motion animated show. That episode is known as Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. The show went out, people saw it and people laughed. They laughed hard. Why did they laugh, because South Park began to cater to the side of humor that The Simpsons didn't. The youth. The show was full of swears that were perfectly censored so you could pretty much still hear the swear, but enough not to make sponsors of the show pee their pants.

In the beginning, South Park was brilliant in a whole new way. They had a very effective way of delivering outrageous, raunchy, disgusting humor that had been absent since the days of Beavis and Butthead. And the youth ate that shit up like hand fulls of ecstasy pills. This was the opposite of the Simpsons. They used outlandish, ridiculous situations (Barbra Streisand Godzilla for one example) to drive their humor. A long with a long list of creative swearing, anti-antisemitism and plain old gross out humor. The redeeming fact that South Park had was, they always had a moral to the story. Usually very good ones.

So fast forward to 1999. Fox Network is enjoying great success with The Simpsons and King of the Hill. (The Critic was terrific but could never gain any kind of viewer foothold. Still wondering where syndication is for that show. It deserves it.) So, Fox decided to take another chance on an up and coming cartoonist/actor that had a pretty good idea. Seth MacFarlane was given a chance to do a pilot for his show Family Guy. The show was funny. Really really funny and Fox obviously thought so too. So Family guy got picked up for a season and they began to run.

Family Guy filled in the gargantuan gap in comedy styles that The Simpsons and South Park had. The Simpsons were cleaver, witty comedy. South Park was raunchy, shock value comedy. And Seth jumped right in the middle, taking from both. Family Guy had a thin line to walk ask to not get too dirty and had many many rewrites to do from the Fox censors to make the show fit for airing on Fox. MacFarlane's main character is Peter Griffin. An alcoholic, lazy, idiotic man that generally ignores his kids because he has his own adventures to take on. If that description sounds familiar, it should. Peter Griffin is Homer Simpson. Undeniable, complete and total ripoff. A point that The Simpsons have pointed out in at least two instances in my viewing of the show.

Family Guy went through hell in it's run on Fox. There was no Animation Domination block like they have now where all their animated comedies run on one night. Family Guy was bounced around from time slot to time slot and was failing miserably because viewers never knew where to find the show. The show was fantastic and funnier than 90% of the comedy of that decade. They just couldn't get a steady audience. And after three excellent seasons, the show was canceled not once. Not twice. But three separate times and eventually died it's terrible death.

Meanwhile, The Simpsons were still going strong. During Family Guy's run they had gone through seasons ten through twelve. Sure, they're numbers were dropping a bit, but they (In my most expert opinion being as big of an avid watcher as anyone) were still making high quality and wonderfully entertaining shows, and still making those dump trucks of money for the network.

By the time 2000 came around, South Park used up the best material it had. The last episode of South Park I had consistently laughed through the whole episode was their boy band parody episode. From there, the humor died. It was replaced by more and more disgusting situations. More and more taboo topics that were merely controversial and offered very little humor aside from seeing someone get shit on and getting the gross out laughs. From that time on, the fans of South Park (Sorry Dan) were basically idiots. The show still offered their morals to the story, which I always thought were a terrific part of that show. But the humor died, replaced solely by too much swearing, too many disgusting jokes and no humor to drive the story along.

However, the legions of fans South Park had kept following the show regardless of the falling quality. The rebellious nature of the youth of the last few decades is basically what kept a once fantastic show going, well past it's prime. South Park does still come up with some good ideas and funny concepts for shows. However, any episode I watch now is humorless dialogue splashed all over the episodes, only to be broken up for two minute segments of gross out humor. Their stories still push along, they still have some morals to tell you about, but the funny died too many years ago.

Now we'll fast forward yet again to the years 2002-2004. Cartoon Network decided they wanted to start an adult comedy show block later at night. Before, their regular, kid targeted cartoons would run all night long and obviously get very poor ratings due to the fact that the little brats had school in the morning and weren't staying awake watching Dexter's Laboratory. Thus, Adult Swim was created. In the beginning, Adult Swim was populated by many anime series. They figured they could cash in on the Japanese shows seeing as they had unbelievable success with the show Dragonball Z that played in the afternoon. It worked to some extent. There were plenty of anime nerds that enjoyed the shows but they weren't doing too much better than they were running the kid targeted shows they previously had done.

Cartoon Network rallied up their cash and they bought two canceled animated sitcoms from Fox under syndication. Those shows were Family Guy and Futurama. The episodes ran. In the beginning, just one episode of each per night. Then run their anime block after that. Both shows exploded in ratings. Family Guy was much more popular than Futurama was, but they both did indescribably well. On several occasions, Family Guy would pick up higher ratings than the broadcast network shows running their popular late night talk shows such as the Tonight Show and Late Night.

For over two years, both shows ran almost nonstop. Family Guy would run two shows a night. Futurama would run two shows a night. All the success from those shows gave Cartoon Network the money they needed to create their own original adult programming to fill in the block. Hence things like Space Ghost: Coast 2 Coast, The Brak Show and others were born. Later on fueling popular shows like Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and many others.

Side note here. Every single original Adult Swim show is complete and utter shit. There is not one, even remotely watchable series that has ever been created from their adult programming. Any of you that watch or enjoy any of these shows are complete idiots. Don't try and convince me, I'm not buying it. They are all god awful and you should be ashamed of yourselves for supporting such embarrassing shows.

And moving on to 2005. After the wild success of Family Guy on Cartoon Network, then eventually TBS and one or two more Turner owned networks, Fox reevaluated the series and it was picked back up again. And Family Guy has been going very strong until this very day. Sure, the series has dropped in quality a bit. It isn't quite as good as it use to be. However it is fairly watchable and can give me a chuckle or two when I watch.

The Simpsons are now in their 21st season on television. The longest running scripted television show in history. (Gunsmoke ran for 635 episodes but only ran for 20 seasons. The Simpsons have made 456 episodes as of today but are in the 21st season due to expenses now days that weren't present in Gunsmoke's day.) Many cry for the death of the show. It isn't nearly as funny as it were back in seasons 3-12, however, they still come up with fresh ideas every week. No matter what, I will always get a chuckle or two from an episode.

The Simpsons have gone beyond that of a simple animated TV show. It is a dynasty. It's a benchmark of quality that every other comedy show has to live up to, animated or live action. Every comedy writer that really aspires to get places in the world of comedy television always looks for a job at The Simpsons. You take them the same way you take Saturday Night Live or you take The Tonight Show. Sure, they aren't as great as they use to be. But they are pivotal series that mean more and are more than just giggles and chuckles. The Simpsons have carried Sunday nights for Fox for 17 years. It is the perfect lead in show for their new animated series. (God, Cleveland Show, please go away. I hate you so much. Send Cleveland back to Family Guy where he belongs and mercy kill this turd of a show)

Matt Groening has said that the show still makes money. They are still creatively active and still have many ideas to run through. He sees no reason for the show to stop as long as it is still generating viewers and revenue for Fox. Yes, production costs are going way up. Mostly due to the cast asking for larger and larger salaries as the years go on. Not that I can blame them, during the first 10 years of the show each actor were getting $30,000 per episode. That may seem like a lot, but when you compare to things like Kelsey Grammer and the cast of Friends making around $300-500,000 per episode, they really were getting the shaft money-wise. Now each cast member is making 300,000 per show and the cost has gone way up. But if they can still turn a profit. If the the shows that follow The Simpsons are still benefiting from them, then damn it, let the show go on.

I don't really know what happened to this post. It kind of just got away from me and kept going and going. I appreciate any of you that might still be reading after all this insufferable analyzing and oratory about adult animation. It happens to be a huge passion of mine and it gave me something to kill an hour or two with.

Thanks for reading,
Keep it gangsta internets.

Update On Casey

My last few posts have been rants about different things that I care about. I don't want this blog to become to impersonal, so I will give an update about myself.

How am I doing? I am doing pretty weirdly. (Intentionally awesome non-word.) I've been taken off my long term nausea medication that was keeping me semi-functional for many years. I started showing minimal, permanent side effects from the long term use of that particular medication. The doctor immediately refused to refill my prescription of them.

I was off those pills for two full days and both of those days were misery. The only way I can explain it is you (the reader) taking the worst stomach flu you've ever had, and multiply it by about five. I have a massive, irrational fear of vomiting in the first place and not having my pills made it just terrible. I was in a living hell for those two days and I finally had to call the doctor back and tell him what was going on.

He then prescribed me a new medication. An anxiety medication. Due to all my previous medical testing coming back negative, he went to the next logical step and thinking that my health problems are psychological. So I began this wonderful journey with these new pills. And....wow.

My head has been so foggy, it's a strain to put a coherent sentence together when I'm talking with someone. I stumble over easy words, I completely forget conversations I had five minutes before. I walk into a room for something and can't remember why I went in. Friends have told me my personality has changed as well. I'm acting more awkward and unsure of myself.

However in the last few days, I have become more creatively motivated than I have ever been in my entire life. Ideas are coming to me all the time and it's hard to keep track of them. I had to open a notepad file on the computer to write things down because due to my memory problems, I will forget it and never get it back again.

On the nausea front, the pills are effective. I'm feeling pretty well. If I'm having the same or better results with this anxiety medication than I was with actual nausea medication, it pretty much proves that this shit is in my head. I don't know if what I am taking can be taken long term. If it can, I'm not sure I'm going to want to with how fuzzy it's made me. I do like the creativity however. As you can probably tell by the fact this will be my second blog posted in an hour at 3:27am.

Anyway, that's about all there is with me lately. Thanks for reading.

Tolerance Isn't Enough

I just finished watching a Youtube video from my favorite people. During which they were having a birthday party for one of their friends. Two of the people were trying to do a super hard high five while they were filming. A black guy walks through the shot and one of the high fivers said something to the effect of "It's bad luck when a black guy crosses your path!" Everyone gets a big laugh including the guy who walked past and yelled back "Watch where you're swinging that Jew nose Kassem!" Everyone laughed their asses off, including myself.

To any of you that think either of those statements are racist, you are so completely wrong. That is exactly what we as a society should be evolving into. Poking fun at ourselves like that in the company of mixed races and no one's feelings getting hurt is fantastic.

Tolerance was taught to me in school. You don't have to like someone that is different than you, but you need to respect their differences. That is just not enough. Embracing those differences is what is really going to make the human race fully progressive and actually eliminate racism, sexism or any other kind of prejudice. Everyone walking around and pretending like we are all the same is narrow minded and completely counter-productive.

These two friends were able to poke fun at themselves because of their differences and had a big laugh doing so. People need to get past all these insecurities and programming that has been given since...well, forever.

I'm not saying every joke needs to involve race or gender or sexuality. But it shouldn't be something we should have to shy away from either. Humanity should have evolved past things like this by now.

Youtube Partnership Program

Next in my continuing series of things no one that reads this stupid blog cares about....TA DA! The Youtube partnership program. Those unfamiliar with the program, it works like this. Since Google bought Youtube awhile back, Google has been trying very hard to make money from the site (which at the moment is failing miserably. Youtube is a huge cash suck and they lose money every day due to the fact it costs over 1 million dollars PER DAY to keep the site online) and in doing so, have given incentives to the most watched content creators to keep making videos for their site. That incentive being, a percentage of the advertising money they make on their particular channels and videos. Any idiots out there that don't use Firefox's fantastic addon "AdBlockPlus" are constantly assaulted with ads on Youtube. Be it in the sidebar next to the video, little annoying pop ups during the videos, or even full video ads before the viewing of a particularly highly viewed video. (As I said before. Use Firefox and get "AdBlockPlus" I've never seen one single ad or had a single video interrupted on pretty much any site on the internet.)

The way these content creators make money is by the number of views they get in their videos and how many "clicks" they get from the viewers. Clicks, being people actually clicking on the ads to be taken from Youtube to whatever they might be selling. The more clicks they get, the bigger the content creator's paycheck from Youtube will be. Additionally the higher the view count, the more money they make as well. Simply for the fact that even if people don't click on the ads, more people are actually seeing the ads all over the video.

You also might have noticed many creators on Youtube have a "question of the day" or ask you to rate the videos 5 stars every time you watch. The reason this is done is because of a fairly recent addition Youtube made to the viewing of random videos. There is now a "Popular" section you can see on Youtube and has a list of videos. How they determine what is popular is complicated and I've yet to hear a coherent explanation of how it works. Basically, the more times a video gets rated 5 stars, the more comments that each video gets, the more "Popular" it becomes. Hence, getting their videos featured on that particular page. Hence making it easier for people to find their videos and then getting more viewers and more clickers and more money.

This partnership program has pretty drastically changed Youtube since it began. Before, regularly posted content from popular channels were not usually very high in quality (best example of this being the most subscribed person on Youtube, nigahiga. His older videos looked like total bullshit. His videos were hilarious and hence he still got truck loads of views) due to the fact that people were just doing it for fun. Now that Youtube has become a business, you can see a massive rise in quality of the content being created.

A good sized portion of the Youtube community has become upset at this new business model for the content creators. For the fact that the major players on Youtube, this is now their job. This is what they do to make money and support themselves and their family. And the most subscribed creators on Youtube are making very very comfortable lives for themselves as well. The popular gossip Michael Buckley (WHATTHEBUCK) went on an old media campaign awhile back (old media being television. That's the new buzz phrase for big internet players these days) and was asked several times how much he makes for his videos on Youtube. And his slightly vague response was that he makes six figures a year from his videos. Another famous Youtuber by the name of Philip DeFranco gave an interview last year. The interviewer commented about something on his Myspace page where it said how much money he makes per year. Phil's page said it was $250,000+. The interviewer asked him if that was accurate or if it was just a joke. Phil replied when he did that, it initially was a joke. But as of 2009, that had become pretty much accurate.

A much less popular channel whose show is called "Is it Okay to Microwave This?" is exactly what it sounds like. They put random and awesome things in a microwave and just watches what happens. About a year or so back, they made a video that discussed their participation in the program (when they were much less popular. They had a recent spike and are now almost at 300k subscribers) and he said that they make a couple thousand dollars a month. Which is enough for them to get by with bills and keep funding the show. So, 2k a month for 12 months in a year, 24k for putting flash bulbs, dynamite, RC cars and a car airbag in a microwave is a pretty damn nice gig.

Youtube purists are getting mad at these partners because they feel the community should all be about just making the videos and they should not be making money off loyal viewers. My response to this is...

That is fucking retarded. Internet video is skyrocketing at a pace that few things in this world do. Youtube has stated that there is 20 hours of videos that get uploaded to their site every minute. Let me say that again. Twenty HOURS of video that gets uploaded EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. Top Youtubers like Ryan Higa, Shane Dawson and Philip DeFranco are being watched by more people than the top television shows on cable. Sorry to break it to you internet. But video is a business now. And I applaud the ones that can make a living doing what they do.

Would all these people still be making videos if the partnership program was never invented? Most of them probably still would. Much less often, but when they got some free time, sure, they'd still throw stuff up. Now that this is their job. That they are getting paid handsomely for, so much more content is available to see. Personally, that is fantastic. The more time I get to waste, watching people that I like, the better.

To all you haters out there (I love how I delude myself to the fact that people will ever read this) I have one thing to say. Shut the fuck up. Don't be pissed at these people because they didn't respond to your comment. Don't be pissed because they didn't write back to you from that email you sent. Quit bitching that they don't care about their viewers anymore and it's all about money. Yes, about 90% of it is about money. That is their job. If you go around flaming every person because they can make a living doing this, then you must also go into a restaurant, yell at the cooks, the waitresses and the bus boys for being there doing their jobs and taking home a pay check. "YOUR JUS DOIN IT FER DA MONEYZZZZ!!!" Exactly. That is their job.

Don't be pissed off because they have a better job than you.

(To my two readers out there, I am sorry about the punctuation in all of my posts. I am the furthest possible thing from a professional writer and I know I punctuate sooooo badly. It drives me crazy too because I never learned how to do it correctly.)

Keep it gangsta internets.

An Objective Analysis of Miley Cyrus

This may seem like an odd topic for me to write about. I would have to completely agree with you. For the most part, I turn my back on all of the pre-packaged bubblegum, 1 hour photo music artists that are in the mainstream. It just doesn't work for me. And I will say the same for Miley Cyrus. No, I am not a fan by any means. She is a pop singer and that genre doesn't have any appeal to me. However, this particular person is something I need to address.

Miley is bashed relentlessly in every corner of the internet from people outside her target demographic. There are two kinds of people. The "I love Miley, she's super fantastical and I worship the ground she walks on!" kind of people. And then there are the, "I want to stab that dumb bitch in the face with a broken beer bottle!" group.

Seeing that the majority of music videos that get watched these days are on Youtube, Miley's "7 Things" video is the third most watched video of all time, raking in over 111 million views. Seeing as everyone on the internet is a professional reviewer for everything that has ever been created, I figured I'd go over some of the more popular criticisms from the comments on her Youtube videos.

Popular flame number 1. SHE SUCKZZZZ!!!1111!!!!!

Before writing this, I asked a few Miley haters that I happen to talk to on the internet why they think she sucks. The most popular response I got is, "Dude, she just sucks." So, let's go over her music. Are her songs lyrically powerful? No, they really aren't. The most emotional song I've been able to find was her "7 Things" video talking about her breakup with one of the Jonas Brothers. (I don't know which one. They all look the same to me.) The song was obviously written with feeling which is good to have in music. The chorus was incredibly catchy and no matter how much you may like or hate her, the damn song will get stuck in your head. For a pop song, I think that's what most singers are going for.

As for her other songs, most of them are very very catchy. The choruses are easy to memorize and easy to sing along with. Once again, probably what pop singers are looking for. However, like almost all popular music (regardless of genre) this is becoming ever more apparent. I read somewhere (I can't cite sources. I'm not a professional. I'm an alcoholic who is waiting for season 3 of Battlestar Galactica to download so I'm doing this for kicks) that most of the songs in the last several years to be in the top 20 on the Billboard charts consist of 75% chorus of the running length of the song. That's awful. Just awful. And, Miss Cyrus is guilty of this as well.

The people who write her songs (yes she co-writes some and completely writes others but none of the songs she has fully written herself have become famous at all) know this very well and it has worked for many people over the years, most notably, Miss Britany Spears. So, what I'm getting at, lyrically, she isn't phenomenal. Her songs are written to be played on the radio and not to be really appreciated for much longer than the normal radio song's lifespan.

Let's move on to the music itself. The newer Miley is starting to get comparisons to Avril Lav...blah blah blah I don't care how her last name is spelled. She is infusing a lot of pop-punkesque riffs in the music instead of the typical slow jam, pop star music everyone else uses. Which I think is fairly commendable. It does stand out a bit more and makes me take more notice when I'm being forced to listen to the radio. And yes, I realize she also has those slow jam pop generic songs too. (The Climb, I'm looking at you.) Bottom line. Is the music good? For a pop singer these days, yes. I think her music is helping her step out of the shadow that she might have fallen into.

Her voice. On album her voice basically sounds fine. That's about it. It's just okay. She is most obviously auto-tuned like just about everyone else in the business. But her voice is pretty strong and I don't hate it. It's just...fine. Live, her voice is not as great. She gets pretty pitchy and misses a lot of notes and just doesn't sound that great. She does also use an overlay track in her live performances as well, so if she has to stop singing, lyrics can still be heard from a pre-recording. Does this bother me? Yes and no. Yes because I think if someone can't put on a strong performance live, they aren't worth paying to see. The "no" is that she is very active on stage. She has huge set designs and is running up and down and all over the massive stage and would obviously lose her breath after awhile. So, live performance, Eh.

Let's move onto the internet troll's next biggest complaint. "SHE'D BE NOBODY WITHOUT DADDY AND DISNEY!"

First of all, if you were going to get a bump from a star parent, Billy Ray Fucking Cyrus is not one that is going to do it. He was a one hit wonder and his song wasn't even liked. It was made fun of. He didn't get famous for a good song. He got famous for a really annoying song that was ripe for satire. Secondly, Disney. Would she be famous right now without Disney? The answer is obviously no. Hannah Montana made her who she is. Disney knows how to make money and they know how to market the living HELL out of anything they sell. This is proven quite well where at my store we have a full supply of Hannah Montana hand sanitizer and an even larger supply of Camp Rock notebooks, binders, pencils, pens and many many other things. Would she be so big if Disney just put out a couple T-shirts and backpacks and just ran promos for her show on Disney? No she wouldn't. Disney bombarded the entire world with her face in every corner they could cram it.

For a singer, publicity is a good thing. But all her publicity comes with a huge price. She is owned by Disney. She has no creative freedom. She is owned and I doubt you'll ever see an album of hers released outside of Hollywood Records. (Owned by Disney) Bottom line, she is a product of a corporation. She didn't get there on her merits. She got there because of a multimillion dollar advertising campaign.

Last most popular internet complaint. OMGZZZ SHE IZ SUCH A SLUTTT!!!!

I believe this comment has come about lately due to the fact that Miley has begun to wear more provocative clothing than she use to. Her "Party in the USA" video had her dancing around in booty shorts and a low cut shirt (I think. I don't want to go watch the video to be exact here.) Her performance at some award show nonsense, she was seen holding onto a stripper pole that was moving around. People were screaming she was dancing like a stripper when in fact she did nothing with the pole except hold onto it so she didn't fall on her ass while that contraption was moving.

Here are the facts folks. She doesn't want to be Hannah Montana forever. She's 16 or 17 now. She wants to be an actual singer that isn't a novelty act for a kids television show. She has to start changing her image if she is going to have a career after her TV show is over. Her publicists know this and she knows this. So, she's starting to look and dress like teenagers dress these days. She has a nice body and she's starting to show it off. If you think that makes her a slut, I expect you to call every single pretty girl you ever see walking down the street a slut because they wear a short skirt or a low cut top that reveals cleavage.

The next reason this is being done is because sex sells everything. In the music world, skin is everywhere. I cannot think of one single singer from the last 10 years that has been hugely successful without also being seen as a sex symbol. (With the exception of Taylor Swift, but we all know that bitch can't sing a note to save her life outside of a recording studio. Proof? Watch some her live performances lately. They were some of the worst shit I've ever heard) Eventually, they all start showing skin. Yes, it sucks that most have to do that, but the hard fact is, it works. Their bodies sell magazines and posters and their music videos get watched millions of times. It just works. She is doing nothing here that hasn't been done a thousand times before by other singers.

And then there were her "racy photos" that showed up all over the internet awhile back. If any single one of you finds those photos "racy" at all, feel free to lie down in the freeway and do us all a favor. She is a teenager with a camera. Those kinds of pictures, not to mention far far worse ones, are taken by millions of teenage girls every single day. If you call her a slut for those pictures, once again, use the example above of calling out pretty much every teenage girl in the country.

I could go on but seeing as this analysis has gone on about five times longer than I originally intended it to, I'll just start my parting here. Does Miley Cyrus deserve all the criticism she gets? No, she doesn't at all. She's a kid that's trying to make her way in the music business and trying to get her songs heard. She has faults. She's a teenager. I promise every single one of you 5 people who read this have done worse things when you were her age. Don't hate her because she's popular. If you really want to show protest, don't watch her videos. Don't leave comments on them. Stop talking about her. All the hate and attention just makes her flame even bigger.

Lastly, if any of you are wondering why I seem to know all these things about Miley Cyrus, yes I would probably call me gay too. Some I learn because I am on the internet all the time and that stuff just can't be avoided sometimes. And for some, yes I did research. I was hoping to make my points as best I could.

LEAVE MILEY ALONE!!!!