Whipped Cream Cheese Is A Scam.

You know what I'm talking about.  Selling me less of the same thing for more sounds pretty sweet if you're on the selling end of the deal.  But I can't really see why people buy that stuff.  Do they say "gee, I like cream cheese, I just wish I could spread more air on my bagel at the same time" ?

Liquid Anger.

See? I'm not the only one who's pissed off about stuff all the time. There's Joel Johnson formerly of Gizmodo, who came back with a scathing diatribe about bleeding edge junkies. For all my talk about shiny new toys, I absolutely agree. People plunk down their cash way to early after hearing about "the next big thing." The last thing I bought was my tv a year ago and I researched and deliberated the crap out of that purchase. Granted, I was about 4 millimeters from buying a Helio phone last week, but Verizon ended up saving me with their early service termination fee. Thanks Verizon, you're my buddy.

Anyway, Joel goes off in a very amusing article about how every one who reads and writes this stuff is an idiot. I especially like: "clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon" that's good condescension and rich imagery.

• Gizmodo: Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Next up is Kevin Cowherd who's had it up to here with the trash that is local news. We got a little snow yesterday, not really enough to shut down a city, but they found something to talk about. Ice. Its dangerous, its right outside, and it wants to kill you. His send-up isn't quite as biting as the last one but its what everyone is thinking.

"The report featured a parka-clad reporter demonstrating how to shovel the slush on the sidewalk, as if we lived in Barbados and no one had ever seen slush before."

We should all print out copies of this and send it to the TV news rooms. Cause I'm not going to put the time and effort into writing down how stupid they are. I can't wait till the first sensationalist TV news report about how TV news stations sensationalize stories. "tonight at 11, you trust them with your life, but they may be lying to you. Tune in to see how irresponsible reporting is killing America."

• Baltimore Sun: Better than a big snow emergency: the ice capades

I Bet Crude Oil Tastes Great!

Ethanol gets me so riled up. I mean, sure its a great way to stop using foreign oil and prop up the sagging farm industry. You know, aside from its general inefficiency, its failure to address the Neanderthalic burning-stuff-for-power lack of innovation, and the destruction of a perfectly useful commodity. People have been taking it up lately because that's a great way to impress the middle of the country. You know that same, unimproved commodity you're been growing all your life? Well turns out that it just got 7 times more expensive! Bullshit.

You want to grow power? Plant a field full of photo voltaic cells that do a much better job of harnessing sunlight and turning it into usable fuel. And I won't need to subsidize you cause it won't be ridiculously expensive to turn a mild profit.

Sorry I finally got around to watching "Who Killed the Electric Car" so I'm very angry about inferior alternatives being pushed out because they may benefit a small subset of people for a short time. These hydrogen and ethanol technologies that are the "salvation of the energy dependence" completely fail to address the issue of environmental efficacy. Electric cars have been around since the beginning of cars, but we've been distracted all this time by a better advertised, but less effective, alternative. Don't get suckered in again. Don't buy an "efficient" 42mpg hybrid, don't wait around 5 years for a "where the hell will the fuel come from, oh its expensive and inefficient to create" hydrogen drive vehicle. There are gigawatts of electricity out there in wind, sunlight, and waves just waiting to be harvested. And electric cars the possess durability and performance to make use of that free power NOW, without the need to throw billions into "future research".

So next time you feel pressured to use one of these "new innovations" in fuel, reply that you're more temped to crack open a can of 10W-30 instead of Gatorade at the gym.

• Ethanol in America: "Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country." (TreeHugger)
• Checkbiotech.org: Ethanol's corn-fed boom holds hidden costs: higher food prices

Tag.

You ever played a game of tag and intentionally got 'it', just so you could walk away with 'it' refusing to tag anyone and the game would stop? I have, but maybe I'm just mean. Well I kinda wish I could do that here.

I was reading the old ZNF and ran across something called blog-tag. Now you know I hate the 'b' word as much as anyone who actually maintains a blog, but this concept may be even more irritating.

Some one gets "tagged" and they're sposed to name five things that not too many people know and then name five people to go next.

Odd. But ok. I guess that's a 'fun' way for all these annoying little bloggers to get to know one another- wait a minute. Its not just the "this is how I feel today" or "my hampster is the best" blogs. Well known blogs; blogs I use for news are falling prey to this noise.

Lookit, I may appreciate reading some things you write, or I may value you as a reliable source of information. But I don't need tidbits of you as a person filtering through my RSS stream. I've already evaluated your credentials, that's how you made the list in the first place. I don't care about you as a person, and I 'm a man so I use the Internet for information, not relationships. My only feed that this may be acceptable in is Steve's The Sneeze. And that whole site is just about Steve's life and amusing anecdotes, not news or technology.

In the course of my investigation I came across Mark Cuban's response to the phenomenon. Now this is one insightful motherfucker. He thinks its stupid and a waste of peoples' time. If its good enough for Mark Cuban to hate, don't you spose its good enough for you too?

It has the same intellectual resonance as doing The Wave at an event. You are embarrased if you do it sober, beligerant to non wavers if you do it drunk.

You know that? I already hate this. So before you accuse me of just being bitter about not getting invited to the party, think about this. This is the same as those emails that your friends fill out about what colors they like and what movies they've seen and if you don't send it back to them you aren't really friends. If you're my friend and actually expect me to fire that back at you, you're insane.

Also, this looks to expand geometrically like a pyramid scheme. 1...5...25...125...625 But its a pyramid scheme of idiocy, increasingly blocking the flow of valuable information until the Internet pipes are choked with with favorite burrito toppings and water parks and turn-ons and car colors and sneaker sizes and mustache lengths and abnormal toe numbers and cornbread recipes.

Whatever you say. Its not a big deal. I should calm down. Doesn't mean I'm not right.

Magazine Of The Year: All Of Em EXCEPT Time.

Alright, so by now you've heard about TIME magazine's choice for the person of the year. That's right, its you! Feckin weak guys. Why don't you grow a pair and pick someone? Anyone. I mean how the hell do you call this the person of the year? If everyone is special, then no one is special. Its a non-statement. Yeah I know it technically falls in your guidelines for "person of the year": a profile on the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year." What? Group, idea, place or machine? Are you guys on crack? Maybe you should change it to "Noun of the year". Yeah the noun which most influenced verbs over the past year.

Lets face it, you've already changed it once. It used to be the "Man of the Year" back in 1927 when you ran Charles Lindbergh on the cover as the first Man of the Year. Oh wait, this whole thing only started because you forgot to run a Trans-Atlantic flight story in 1927 and wanted to make up for it when there was nothing going on. So its kinda like a yearly tribute to all the stuff that you should have done a better job covering. Its like a yearly apology issue. I mean, I forget to write about things sometimes but I'm not charging people for this stuff. Goodness.

Person of the Year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia