Tag: Idiots

Memo to NRO

Spoiler

You've got malware

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Please clean the damned malware off your site NOW. While you’re at it, undo all the recent “improvements” that have made NRO a tedious, unreadable mess, too.

By the way, don’t call that number. I recommend that everyone stay away from National Review Online until get they their act together.

Update: According to some online diagnostic services, National Review‘s site is clean. A scan of my hard drive found no malware. Nevertheless, I still got redirected to a site that wanted to install a bogus Flash update the last time I visited. I would guess that whatever agency handles the advertising on the NR site is running some tainted ads. It looks like I’m not going to spend much time with Kevin and Jonah for a while.

Update II (April 3): Whatever was hijacking my browsers seems to be gone from the site now. NR is still a pain to navigate, though.

Maybe they can pixelate them out

What is going to give American critics more problems with Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie? This:

Although “The Wind Rises” has a strong pacifist message, it is essentially a biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer whose contribution to the world was a killing machine. His designs led to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, which was used to devastating effect during World War II.

or this:

Mr. Miyazaki’s film, which is aimed at adults, also features at least eight scenes in which characters smoke cigarettes….

It’s just a matter of time before Haibane Renmei is rated “NC-17” for Reki’s horrifying habit.

Quote of the day

The Sanity Inspector:

In the 30s, serious intellectuals traveled to the Soviet Union to hail it as the future of humanity. In the 60s and 70s, writers, actors & other assorted glitterati went to Cuba to be schmoozed by El Jefe. And now North Korea has hauled in…a retired basketball player with a penchant for shock publicity. The quality of useful idiots is on a definite downward trajectory.

Attention, Funimation

Do you want me to stick to downloading fansubs? If not, then why do you put unskippable previews for series I have zero interest in on your DVDs? ((Yeah, there are ways around this, e.g., playing the disc with VLC or making a modified copy with Mac the Ripper. But these tactics shouldn’t be necessary.)) Punishing your audience is not good business practice. Also, please don’t have characters say “I could care less” when they mean the opposite.

Bonus, unrelated grumble: The hour you gain in the fall doesn’t compensate for the hour you lose in the spring.

Memo to …

… the lady in the seat in front of mine at Mass last Sunday: Please choose shirts that extend below the top of your jeans when you go to church, and find pants that rise all the way up to your waist. You have no idea how distracting it was to see that you were wearing thong underwear.

… the bicyclist trying to light a cigarette while riding no-hands in the middle of the street: Idiot.

… the Department of Health and Human Services: I have never had the slightest interest in tobacco. However, whenever you subject me to one of your recent gross-out anti-smoking ads, as happens every single time I watch an episode of Soul Eater on Funimation, I get a powerful urge to buy a carton of cigarettes so I can blow smoke in your faces, you damned hectoring nitwit nannies.

The triumph of dullness

Here’s a list.

Who’s missing? Here’s a name: Yes. Here are some other names: King Crimson, John Mayall, the Pogues, Deep Purple, Fairport Convention, ELP, Joe Satriani and Weird Al. I can add many more, and so can you. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame claims that “… musical excellence shall be the essential qualification of induction,” but are the Sex Pistols really better musicians than the band that recorded Fragile? In my lexicon, “critic” is a synonym for “idiot.” It’s nice that someone remembers the Small Faces, but induction into the R&RHoF is as meaningless an honor as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not entirely unrelated: Twelve extremely disappointing facts about popular music.

(Via Professor Mondo.)

Bonus stupidity: Pearl Harbor? It was all America’s fault.

Paging James Vogh

This is just too perfect. From today’s newspaper:

Astrologers warn against pop astrology that dooms chatty Gemini and hardworking Capricorn or decrees that dependable Taurus and sensitive Pisces are an ideal match. A person’s sun sign (the sign you check for your horoscope) is a small fraction of what determines cosmic compatibility, and it’s important to take into account the rising sign, the moon and the planetary angles to capture the full spectrum of a person’s being, said Hilary Young, a California hair salon owner who founded AstrologyDating.com.

I think I’ve mentioned before that that my sign is “No parking; violators will be towed at owner expense.”