FUNemployment

I'm not working at the moment, so it seemed like a good time to dust off the old blog. Wait, I haven't posted since 2014? Seriously? Shit, man. Shit.

Another good reason to start blogging again is it seems like reliable sources of information are going to be hard to come by in the Trump era. CNN is fake news? Who knew? Next you'll tell me Walter Cronkite was just making it all up. Does that mean the moon landing was fake after all and Kennedy is alive? This is explains SO MUCH.

Personally, I can't wait for Friday. Trump's going to get up on the inaugural platform and say, "April Fools, everybody!" It could happen, right? It's totally going to happen. No way this is real life now.

Trump becoming our next president is like something out of an episode of Sliders. Young Jerry O'Connell and the comic relief from Indiana Jones and the cute girl with the lesbian haircut and the token black guy all go to alternate earth 1138 or whatever and it's a world where a reality TV star who's a sexual predator and declared bankruptcy 6 times just got elected to America's highest office. Except it's not really America as we know it; it's a world where Nazis are kind of a thing still because racism. (For legal purposes, they can't call them Nazis, so in the show, they're renamed the "alt-right.") And, in typical Sliders fashion, someone takes the timer away and they spend the whole episode trying to get it back before they lose their window of opportunity to slide to the next sci-fi trope.

Please, take me with you, young Jerry O'Connell.

love me

I'm not liking this new trend in customer service where every product I use wants my constant feedback. Don't get me wrong—when I'm fired up about something, I relish a platform to speak my mind. However, when I don't have a particularly strong feeling about the way my online chat with a Sprint representative met my minimum expectations, just about anything sounds more fun than taking a brief survey to rate on a scale of 1-10 how adequately "Stephanie" in Mumbai answered my question today.

I get it: You need to be able to identify where customers aren't satisfied so you can make the changes you need to keep them. But endless probing about your performance comes off as a little needy and insecure.

For some companies, it's not enough to get feedback and fix problems where they exist. No, they demand perfection. If you don't give them an "excellent" rating for every category, they want to know why or what they can do better. I'll tell you why. Because excellence means doing more than simply what I asked. For that, you're "average"...maybe even "good." It's like when you were in school and the whole class did badly on a test and asked the teacher to grade it on a curve, and then the teacher said you wouldn't want that if you knew what it really meant—that most of you would get a C, not an A. As for what you can do better, it's not my responsibility to brainstorm ways you can impress me. Why can't you just be happy with your "good" rating knowing that I'm satisfied?

This is a slippery slope, my friends. Next will be the customer satisfaction survey to rate what we thought of the actual survey. "Well, question 5 was a little too personal for me, and I think only having the options of 'poor,' 'good,' and 'excellent' to choose from just smacks of racism."

no, I will not "like" your Facebook page...probably

I'm friends with a lot of people on Facebook. That statement is true in both of the senses you could take it: that a lot of people I consider to be friends happen to have Facebook accounts, and also that I have a lot connections to people via Facebook's site which, in their own parlance, makes those people my "friends" (in much the same way that a Twitter entry is called a "tweet" or a menu item at McDonald's is called a "hamburger").

But as much as I enjoy the Facebooking, Zuckerberg's code monkeys have done a rather insidious thing: they've allowed people to have a professional Facebook page that's separate from their personal page. Now, all of these Facebook "friends" expect me to like their professional pages too.

Here's a quick flowchart that predicts (with a small margin of error) whether or not I want to like your professional Facebook page:

If your professional Facebook page is for a dog grooming service and I don't even have a dog, on what basis can I like or dislike it? My "like" actually means something to me. It carries weight. I can't water it down because you want your thing to seem popular. What I "like" on Facebook says a lot about who I am as a person. How can I, in good conscience, possibly endorse a thing I haven't used myself?

Now, be a dear and like this blog post on Facebook.

video blog 1

news item

North Korea Backs Down to Avoid Conflict with U.S. "Gun Nuts"

PYONGYANG -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un backpedaled on threats to attack the United States this week, citing the recent debate in America over gun control as a leading factor in the decision. Said a high-ranking official for the Asian nation, "After weeks of making plans to invade, we've come to realize that we simply underestimated the resistance our troops would encounter from ridiculously overarmed gun nuts."

The official then went on to say, "We had seen the statistics on gun violence and gun ownership in America and just assumed the numbers were inflated for propaganda purposes, like we've done reporting the size and prowess of our military. But go and threaten to enact sensible restrictions that 85% of the population supports and these guys just come out of the woodwork. We had no idea so many of your citizens were armed to the teeth just for hunting and self-defense purposes. The last thing the glorious nation of North Korea wants to do is land an invading force on American soil only to be met by a sea of rednecks with AR-15s."

The announcement was a victory for gun rights activists who have made a lot of hay arguing the importance of gun ownership as a deterrent against any force that would threaten our freedoms, including threats made by foreign powers.

simmer down, now

Kim Jong-un, you so crazy.

No, look—I get it. Your father left some big crazy shoes to fill, and now you feel like you have to look like a big man so your people will respect your authority. That's all well and good, but you're seriously treading some dangerous waters right now, getting all up in America's grill the way you are.

You have a nuclear program? Son, we invented nukes. If you have any doubts about the shitstorm we could rain down on you, just ask the survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki...if you can find any. You think North Korea is depressing now? Wait until it's a smoldering pile of rubble. Or, you know, you could just chillax for five minutes.

You say we're your arch nemesis? I'm sorry, who are you again? We had a real arch nemesis for a while during the Cold War. Remind me again—who won that thing? Oh, right. We did. And I hate to break it to you, but you're no Soviet Union.

And didn't we do this already in the 1950s? They made a TV show about it with wise-cracking medics. We got Alan Alda out of the deal. What more could we hope to gain?

If you think next-door-neighbor and last bastion of Communism China is going to have your back on this, think again. They want us to be around to pay back the money we owe them. Even Castro is cocking a bemused eyebrow at you. You're in way over your head, and there's no shame in admitting that. Just fess up that all this saber-rattling was a big misunderstanding and we can go back to pretending you don't exist. Trust me, that's the best case scenario for you—Obama has been really drone-happy lately.

the six dumbest characters in a galaxy far, far away

This was a piece I originally pitched to Cracked.com. They shot it down because apparently only their oh-so-wonderful, magnificent, glorious staff writers get to do editorials. Their loss is your incredible gain, particularly now that Star Wars is ramping up via Disney to potentially be a thing again.

Let’s face it: Just because you’re technologically advanced enough to clone Boba Fett’s dad, make the speed of light your bitch, or give Billy Dee Williams a purpose besides shilling for Colt 45 doesn’t necessarily mean you have the street smarts you need to thrive in a galaxy far, far away. Today, we look at the characters of Star Wars with lapses of intelligence so staggering, I’m surprised they can muster enough motor function to walk upright like a proper caveman.

Shmi Skywalker

Although Anakin Skywalker did ultimately grow up to be douchier than a Massengill factory, he was actually a sweet (albeit annoying) kid. So it’s perfectly understandable that his mother wouldn’t want him racing pods all over Tattooine and ending up pancaked on a canyon wall in a heap of flaming, twisted metal. Although I hear George Lucas was planning to add that scene the next time the movies were re-released.

So when Anakin volunteers to get behind the stick (or whatever you drive a racing pod with) to help a few outlanders he literally just met, Shmi’s chagrin is palpable. Which is why it’s somewhat surprising that, mere seconds later, she completely reverses her position. It’s almost as if her keen maternal instincts are overridden in a sudden moment of empathy or sloppy writing.

Yoda

In his twilight years, Yoda would instruct Luke in the ways of the Force, tempering the youthful Skywalker’s impatience and impertinence with a wisdom and restraint that came from (presumably) experience. But during the last days of the Republic, as the galaxy found itself facing an emerging Sith threat, Yoda was more clueless than a 1990s Alicia Silverstone vehicle.

Forget for a moment that Yoda has a speech impediment so glaring he would’ve automatically been relegated to the finest special ed classes the Dagobah Unified School District had to offer. He senses right away that something is off about Anakin when Qui Gon presents him before the Jedi Council. But rather than stick to his guns when Obi-Wan insists on training him, he just kind of shrugs his shoulders and says, “Boys, boys they will be.”

And when it comes time to hide Luke and Leia from Vader, whose chances of ever being conferred a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug are quickly diminishing by that point, Yoda sends Luke to stay with his uncle—Vader’s stepbrother. I guess he’s counting on the dark lord never wanting to swing by the old homestead one of these years for Space Thanksgiving.

The Jedi Council, in general

If Yoda was the only bonehead on the Jedi Council, there might have been some hope for these guys. Unfortunately, they were all completely asleep at the wheel as Palpatine engineered a clone army behind everyone’s backs, somehow convinced them that said army was in no way suspicious, and then had the clones do an abrupt about-face, staging the most spectacular coup d’état in galactic history.

All of that could have been avoided if a practicing Sith lord in their midst would’ve triggered just one of their spider senses. But I guess maybe that’s expecting too much of the most attuned Force-users in the whole frigging galaxy. With that level of obliviousness, I imagine there probably were credits to be made selling their e-mail addresses to a “Nigerian Prince.”

And that whole prophecy about the Chosen One bringing balance to the Force? I guess they just forgot that there was a Dark Side to the Force. And, you know, what the word “balance” means.

Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader

I get it. I mean, what guy living hasn’t done something dumb because of a girl? But Anakin really takes the taco. When he has a premonition that Padme will die in childbirth, he’ll do anything to keep that from happening. “Anything,” in this case, means selling out his principles, trying to kill his best friend, and aiding and abetting his galaxy’s equivalent of Hitler. But, in the end, Padme dies anyway when she succumbs to an incurable case of irony. The Emperor then tells Gullible McSucker that he was directly responsible for her death, prompting him to scream “Noooooo!” as he senses a gaping plot hole in the Force.

Let’s not forget that Vader was totally planning to stab the Emperor in the back if he could’ve gotten Padme to team up with him—a strategy that he would try to employ years later with Luke. Luke, of course, doesn’t go for it either, deciding instead to fight the evilest guy in the galaxy on his own terms—by not fighting him—so it’s really no surprise when the Emperor just up and starts electrocuting the young Jedi. Vader, at this point, feels pity for Luke, but instead of blocking the Force lightning with his lightsaber like he saw Mace Windu do years earlier, he decides the best way to stop his boss from zapping the shit of out his kid is to pick him up one-handed and slam-dunk him down an improbably convenient exhaust shaft, conducting a lethal amount of electricity in the process. Or he could’ve just declined when the Emperor asked him to participate in “take your son to work day.”

Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine

When Senator Palpatine wasn’t actively representing the people of his home planet of Naboo or moonlighting as a robe model, he was conspiring to seize power and rule the galaxy with an iron fist. So he devised a plan so diabolically genius that it relied on complete and utter failure literally every step of the way if it ever had any chance of success in the long run. Let’s work from the end result backwards:

At the end of The Phantom Menace, Palpatine supplants Valorum as Chancellor when the latter can no longer provide the leadership needed to end the crisis on Naboo or convince anyone to kneel before Zod. (It's Terrance Effing Stamp, gang!) But ousting him was dependent on being able to manipulate Queen Amidala to call for the vote of no confidence. You know, the same Queen Amidala that should’ve been captured in the invasion Palpatine orchestrated or, barring that, by Darth Maul. Had Queen Amidala been successfully caught, she never would’ve gone to Coruscant and appeared before the Senate. She also would’ve been forced to sign a treaty legitimizing the Trade Federation’s occupation of her planet, thereby prematurely ending the crisis our friend the Senator drummed up to seize power. But even if Palpatine was counting on Amidala escaping capture multiple times, she was going to need the help of her Jedi companions to do so. You know, the same Jedi that Palpatine, as Darth Sidious, ordered the Trade Federation to kill in the first 5 min. of the movie.

The master stroke of Operation Epic Fail isn’t revealed, however, until Revenge of the Sith, when the now Chancellor hints to Anakin that he used the Force to conceive him, undoubtedly hoping that a kid would fix his marriage to Mrs. Palpatine. But Anakin would never have been discovered, freed, and trained as a Jedi—in short, never arrived at that moment where he became the Emperor’s apprentice—if any of the people operating on Sidious’ orders in Episode I had been competent enough to do a single goddamned thing he told them to do.

But before you go thinking that’s possibly the worst plan in history of the galaxy,

consider the hare-brained scheme Palpatine hatched later on to try to turn Luke to the Dark Side. It went something like this:

Emperor: Hey, I know you’re really super invested in being a good, honorable Jedi and all that, but is there any way I can convince you to forsake everything you believe in and do a complete 180 on your principles?

Luke: Um…no.

Emperor: Shit. All I’ve got for a plan B is my wicked awesome lightning fingers.

And the number one dumbest character in Star Wars?

Admiral Ozzel

Seriously? Coming out of light speed so close to the system? What a fucking ‘tard.