http://www.rock106.ca

Yeah. It’s like that.

World of Warcraft hit its sixth year anniversary of 15 bucks a month from more people than the population of Belgium (a significant dollar amount). Not to mention other lucrative merchandising opportunities that this MMORPG has spawned as its own little nation of gamers.

And now, just in time for the Christmas season, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm; the fourth iteration of the World Of Warcraft series is out of the gate and rearin’ for a fight.

I picked this little diddy up relatively late compared to the real WoW players that were max level five hours after I opened the box. For those who’ve played the game before, there’s that feeling only fresh content can give and a certain degree of satisfaction at being able to fly around Stormwind. For those who don’t understand why flying in some place called Stormwindy or whatever, it’s pretty easy to spot that this World of Warcraft game has something good going on. Play is smooth, graphics are not exactly high quality but compared to other MMORPGs they’re solid, and as always there’s plenty of pop culture references and/or humour to make you giggle or groan. Probably groan.

A lot of this could very well lie with the root idea for Cataclysm – everything gets torn apart. I suppose the various Vitamin D deficient developers at Blizzard thought things were getting stale and said “You know what? Let’s blow up the world.” While this is a gross comparison, it’s just as if they tore the flesh and organs off of the WoW skeleton and filled it with loads and loads of goodies, put it’s skin back on and made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody

In a sentence: Everything’s the best it ever has been. It’s somewhat satisfying to experience too, especially as a chap who managed to play some of the game before it was out. This creature of WoW is alive, evolving often absorbing player-made game modifications into the writhing blob of canonical gameplay to make a bigger, more unstoppable gaming experience.

You really could say that they’re only doing this because they have a cash cow with huge udders giving them pure money. Honestly, 12 million people at 15 bucks a month? That there is 180 million every month. And while they obviously have big expenses to keep a beast like this from careening into a very glitchy wall, they can pay a whole lot of employees with that kind of scratch. Not to mention hold a convention for the only other two games currently in their development stable (which, I’m assuming, not only advertises their wares but makes them more money). They have all the dollar-sign-for-eyes signs of other would-be friendly corporations that’ll charge you a buck twenty-nine for Beatles songs you already own.

But like you might find with Google or Apple Inc., Blizzard is populated by a lot of people that are passionate not only about what they do but about the culture they’re generating and ingraining themselves in.

When Chris Metzen, VP for Creative Development at Blizzard, talks about bringing up his kids in the culture of geek he really does choke up. This guy not only runs a good chunk of the company but voices a lot of the sometimes cartoony sometimes epic characters of the games Blizzard makes. He’s the kind of people at Blizzard that make the success of World of Warcraft not so hard to believe. It’s the same in games as it is in music: inspired work is always better than uninspired work.

I have no proof but I highly suspect that the people at Blizzard are loving what they’re doing. Furthermore I think it shows when you play their games. They’re making games not just by some horrible scientific formula (but also by some horrible scientific formula) but making games and telling stories that they themselves would want to take part in. Once again, they have more WoW subscribers than there are people in Belgium and they can use that money combined with money from Starcraft II and all their other ventures to craft a universe to their liking. And because they’re so deeply involved in the culture of the same demographic they’re selling to – while somehow keeping a degree of objectivity – they can crank out more and more content.

And when they’ve lost their way, the players will just quit and play something else.

Until the Emerald Dream expansion.

And so the last British horse crosses the finish line.

Actually I have no idea whether or not any media coverage in the UK has focused on the potentially addictive nature of video games. Though it does seem a little silly to talk about now. But if they’re going to talk about it, I’m going to talk about it because it shows my penchant for deep intellectual thought.

Let’s get that obnoxious feeling out of your mind where you’re thinking you might have heard this before. You HAVE heard this before, likely from a lot of different places and/or concerned mothers/church groups. The most comedic presentation of why video games can be so addictive comes from a popular listing called 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying To Get You Addicted from the highly intellectual and always right Cracked.com.

This is the part where I sum up the Cracked article so you can spend less time reading something less entertaining instead of more time reading something more entertaining. If you obsessively read Cracked lists, or you just don’t care about the reasons, you can probably just skip ahead to the video of the dragon on fire for the summation of why games can be addictive.

Long story short, a lot of games – especially subscription based ones – operate on the system of “push the button, get a reward”. One could argue that it doesn’t matter when the reward isn’t real but if you’ve spent money and invested time to get it that, by definition, makes the reward have inherent value. If that doesn’t sell you then Google “buy WoW gold” and see if you get any hits. And then wipe your hard drive. Visiting any of those sites is the computational equivalent of sticking a breakable glass rod where a breakable glass rod ought not be stuck. If I know anything about accounting – and I don’t – I know that thousands if not millions of dollars rifle back and forth through the selling of virtual currency of World of Warcraft alone not to mention any other number of online games where such a thing is possible.

So, push button, get reward that has value. Now make it so that the button doesn’t give a reward every time you press it. It gives the idea that not only does pressing the button a lot of times mean your chances of being rewarded are increased, it also gives you the idea of “I can’t quit now! The NEXT ONE could have the Sword of 1,000 Truths!” which sounds a lot like slot machine addiction. Or just super-optimism.

So, push button, get reward with value, but don’t get it all the time. Next step is to make the button far far away. The game starts you out with getting rewarded fast at first but progressively slower the more you play. This means that your level 1 character will get to level 2 a helluva lot faster than your level 84 character will get to level 85. Rather than pissing a player off, this just makes a player play harder when they’re just about at that next level. Like driving faster when you’re near the end of a long trip. Or a conveniently placed ramp…

Then they put that point of reward either at the end of a distant undertaking that you can’t stop doing doing midway or you don’t get rewarded OR at a point so close you can do a boatload of them rapid-fire style like eating chips. And if Mark Messier has taught me anything, it’s that I will miss my flight and forgo multimillion dollar contractual obligations for chips. Unless the chips ARE my contractual obligations… Whoa…

Oh, also, the game will punish you if you don’t keep pressing the button that sometimes rewards you. Usually in the form of degrading your achievements the same way a brown recluse spider bite will degrade YOU until you win the Oscar for best makeup.

So, push button that’s far away OR really close, get valuable reward, but not all the time. Or ELSE. Final step: make you enjoy it which is just good game design. To enjoy what you’re doing you need to have some say in what you’re doing, something to keep what you’re doing from being repetitive and some visible connection between what you’re doing and reward. And because a lot of games do this a hell of a lot better than pretty much any office job, you’re going to like your game more than your work.

The final formula becomes this:

Go push the button that’s far away without stopping before you get there OR the one that’s really close a whole bunch of times, get a valuable reward but not all the time. OR ELSE. Because this is kind of more fun than anything else you were going to do anyways.

It’s a pretty complex and involved process and based on the modifications over the years to World of Warcraft – because it’s what I know – you can see the game developers implementing more and more of these practices in their game. Possibly for fun, possibly to drain your soul or possibly because they don’t have anything more fun to do either.

I counter with we’re lazier than a hairy sloth on a hot day in July. Also, diminishing returns.

Diminishing returns is the idea that the more you have of something the less happiness you get from it. The example professor what’shisnuts gave me is that if you want an ice cream sundae more than anything right now, and you get an ice cream sundae, you will be pleased as punch at the prom (after its been spiked). Then you figure that sundae was so good, you’ll have another one. So you have another one and it’s pretty awesome. Then another and it’s still kind of awesome you guess. Then another and its alright. The pattern keeps going until not only does the sundae not make you happy but it’s making you UNhappy cause it’s making you sick and/or your stomach lining has torn and you’re leaking vanilla ice cream.

Even though today’s games are (sometimes) incredibly complex and designed to keep you from experiencing just such a stagnation of rewards, You’re still going to be going to the same game over and over again to get rewards that are, while maybe not identical, strikingly similar. If you’re paying attention to what you’re doing, you’re going to experience diminishing returns. Especially after you’re denied your Starcraft II victory by a professional gamer that averages 400 APM and kills you just by logging into the same match as you.

On its own, this would take a looooong time for you to wake up and smell the complete waste of the past 6 years of your life. But the diminished joy from in-game rewards doesn’t have to reach zero for you to get up and bugger off to play with a hoop and a stick.

Or Playstation. Whatever. The point is that with the real world requiring you to, at very least, get more money to keep playing your games, you’re going to be exposed to things that will seem more and more appealing than getting another in-game achievement. Or, like Kevin Butler up there will tell you, there are other video games that also want to be played with. Many of them using the exact same eeeevil techniques to get and sink their claws into your woefully short attention span for more than an hour. That may be just like saying “you’ll kick that blow addiction as soon as you start eyeing up the meth” but that’s only if meth is convenient. Any true gamer has his or her focus on one specific field meaning if they play Halo they won’t go anywhere near a Playstation and the Final Fantasies contained therein for fear of being ridiculed by the rest of their Combat Evolved bretheren for being gay. If they want to switch they have to put some effort into it. So the lure of other games really only gets them off of the game that they’re on because the next drug is too far away.

Really, all it takes is one person to show romantic and/or sexual interest in the gamer at that point and they’re pretty much done.

Also, this whole thing only really applies to gamers forced to live off of their own income. Child gamers especially don’t need anything this complex to get them absorbed and don’t need a whole lot more than parental intervention to make them stop either. When your child freaks out over not being able to play his or her game, the kid should probably be cut off. Or if it’s a man-boy-child, you should probably just leave him to his reward button.

Warning: Language and hilarious rage to follow

I think, if there was a point to all this, the point would be that if games are to become addictive, the gamer has to have almost nothing else rewarding going on in his life to an even greater degree than he or she would to become addicted to drugs or gambling or tanning.

Having said that I’m going to buy the fourth version of World of Warcraft tomorrow.

Hold my calls.

Something about this eats me up inside. It tears my very soul from its housing and sets it aflame. And it’s really annoying.

Laughtracks, man. They’re in sitcoms like lice in a kindergartner. It’s get to the point where I want to smash laughtracks with a baseball bat just like that damn Crazy Frog. But it’s still a staple of pert near every half hour show in the 7 to 11 TV timeslot.

I’m probably going to have a yellow umbrella put through my windshield for this one but I don’t like How I Met Your Mother. I like several of the people in it. Alyson Hannigan has some great roots in the nerd world. So does Neil Patrick Harris and even that Jason Segel fellow serves up laughs on a regular basis. But the show itself grates on my brain due, in part, to the laughtrack. I really can’t deny, though, that NPH playing a pretentious, shallow broski that only lives to sex up anything with breasts is funny. That really has nothing to do with the show, though.

I’m told that laughtracks are there to tell you when to laugh which sounds stupid and makes sense at the same time. If no one else is laughing, then it’s harder for you to laugh. But when you hear other people laughing, it verifies the comedy in the given situation and you feel it’s okay to laugh too. The thing that I don’t like, though, is that it also means that the comedy doesn’t have to be as funny in order to make you laugh. A lot of us have experienced something so funny that we couldn’t help but burst out laughing and then get those weird looks for said outburst. But if enough laughtrack is slathered on, the comedy can be downright awful and still get some chuckles.

Four college brains sitting around on their laptops playing games while the camera does a slow pan right, not that funny. Though I will admit, the second declaration of “I am the sword master” IS funny. But try this on for size: same show, no laugh track.

In the best case scenario, the show actually becomes more funny because of the awkwardness that’s quite plain now that there’s no pre-recorded hyenas cackling every time the skinny guy says anything at all. In the worst case scenario, the show just ain’t funny anymore. It’s just real life with a more fluid delivery and less comedy.

The diminishing returns on laughtracks have become bad enough for me that when I hear a laughtrack, I like the joke and the whole show less. You can rattle off a whole mess of sitcoms with laughtracks in them and the actual amount of comedy in them is not nearly enough to fill the time they’re on your screen. Granted it’s no easy task to come up with a solid gold half hour of comedy when you have to crank it out almost as fast as you can AND your show has no long-term laughs that you can go off of. The other thing, too, is that sitcom writers are human just like me and, probably, you and they don’t want to have to work hard to get their paycheck (again, especially when you have to continually invent ‘hilarious’ scenarios for the characters to blunder into because the premise of the show is really weak). Hell, if someone chained me to a desk in the writing department for Two and a Half Men, I’d have wondered if the samurai were on to something; I would also have killed off Charlie Sheen’s character through some sort of STI that he got in the first episode.

Here’s a bit of fun, though. What about laughtracks and their very obvious purposes used as a comedic tool on their own? This isn’t my idea, this is the internet’s idea. Because that’s what the internet is full of: good ideas.

The Dark Knight + Laughtrack had me right from Commissioner Gordon entering the interrogation room to the kind of cheering normally reserved for Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld. Laughtrack used in a situation where there isn’t a laughtrack becomes funny again because you don’t expect it to be there.

I would really really like to pin all of the blame for horrible parts of horrible sitcoms on laughtracks but realistically it takes more than that to make a group of paid actors churn out mediocrity. I’m sure a lot of people in TV would be able to fill you in on how each process of making any given show is so full of garbage that the whole thing should be scrapped.  That’s how it is though, not every show can be great and even if they were all great, we wouldn’t know because we wouldn’t have terrible shows to compare them to. But even if we’re going to churn out the same type of comedy, could we ditch the laughtrack? We don’t NEED one to get laughs!

Oh and if anyone wants to mention Friends or Seinfield as arguments FOR laughtracks in sitcoms, you need to understand that the laughtracks had nothing to do with why those shows were funny. Friends, the characters grew (even though they grew from people I didn’t like into people I didn’t like even more) and in Seinfeld it was all about ridiculously overblown situations that normally no one cares about and/or that everyone have experienced.

Also, Friends just sucks.

So does The Office.

Originally I was going to get the bee out of my bonnet over the bad review Roger Ebert gave Kick-Ass skillfully using his review of Lost In Translation to prove his own foolishness.

But that’s boring to everyone that isn’t me. Including Roger Ebert.

Instead I found a new review to pick on because that’s what fanboys do: rage, internet style.

The Walking Dead is the best iteration of zombie storytelling in analog telecommunications media today. While Romero loves himself some metaphor, The Walking Dead (and Frank Darabont) loves itself (himself) some emotion. The very first episode has a pretty powerful moment with a man, a rifle and a zombie wife and none of those people (maybe the rifle) could be considered main characters. That says something about the work that’s going into this show.

Some people don’t feel the same way.

This one guy I’ve never heard of wrote a really really long review (a lot of which is spent talking about Mister Zombie Grandpa’s movies) about how The Walking Dead is a lazy piece of undead poop with racist/dumb characters. Also, George Soros is really rich, apparently.To his credit, he makes it a whole five paragraphs before he mentions anything about George Romero. I only made it… 0.5, maybe.

To speed up this overall process, I’m going to try and hit the highlights of this… holy smokes… 22 paragraph review. The reviewer has a beef with the characters in the show continually doing stupid things. Sounds like an honest complaint; a lot of horror movie/TV characters do many stupid things. Something to consider, though, is that this reviewer (who we shall call… Schlichter) has “spent over 20 years in the Army on both active duty and in the National Guard”. He knows, or should know, how to scout out hostile territory, how to take an enemy building, how to move relatively silent and how to set up a defensible position. My guess is that a sheriff’s deputy, his cop buddy, a pizza delivery boy and that one guy with a sweet old man hat aren’t equally qualified.

The reviewer has further beef with the characters parking out on a hilltop in the woods by a quarry with only one road in or out with only sweet hat man on an RV as a guard. This is because Schlichter would “probably, you know, find a defensible position with multiple exits and integrate the fighting positions should they get past my outer security”. For the record, most people who use the phrase ‘defensible position’ have been combat trained. The rest have not. The problem with most defensible positions is that they’re very bunker-esque. The problem with most bunker-esque positions is that they’re normally not in areas heavily populated by flora or fauna. That is to say that there are no crops or even much in the way of wild growth to forage food from and very few animals living in the area that you could feed a dozen people on. And if the animals and plants aren’t there, the water is probably a few tens of feet straight down where your handy shovel/pick isn’t getting to. These are not issues, Lieutenant Colonel Schlichter, until your rations are done by suppertime from a dozen folk all needing to be fed and watered. Of course, you could always go into Atlanta where the survivors are closely located to do a grocery run. Unless you get bit. In which point I’m throwing you to Merle and Darryl Dixon.

The other big problem Lieutenant Colonel Schlichter (rolls right off the tongue) has with this movie is that the racists are racists, sort of. Merle Dixon is a big loudmouth that likes to endanger the group and hit black people mostly because they’re black and he’s white. Schlicter thinks that because this is the first redneck we see it means that “if you live east of I-5 and south of the Mason-Dixon, you’ve got a sheet and a flammable cross in the back of your pick-up and you could someday grow up to be a revered Democratic senator”. I’m not even sure what that means but the fact of the matter is that he goes on to throw this one out at the end of the review:

“I also find the fact that these people only have about five guns between them bizarre.  The producers decided to center the show on the only group of people in the American South who can’t find guns.  Hell, in Georgia most of the guns themselves own a couple guns.”

So after complaining that the entire entertainment industry is pigeonholing southerners into the redneck stereotype, he says that everyone in Georgia not only owns a gun, their guns own two or more guns. The next logical step is complain when they can’t fix a car and then say everyone in Georgia has three Ford’s worth of car parts on their front lawn.

It’s enough to make you wonder if Lieutenant Colonel Schlichter is a troll.

Also, the lead character of this whole series is played by a British man. I feel like that has some sort of relevance.

But let’s not squabble over who’s right, who’s wrong and how very wrong Lieutenant Colonel Schlichter of the elite 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry (Reconnaissance-Surveillance-Target Acquisition) really is. Let’s simply agree that The Walking Dead isn’t a show about how an ex-army man would handle a zombie apocalypse for a week before he died. It’s a show about how stupid people keep living their stupid lives with decreased access to supplies, shelter and morality.

Also, Rick Grimes wears a very stylish deputy cowboy hat so suck it.

Hostel, Touristas, The Last House on the Left. These fit into the new category of torture porn.

Torture porn is a phrase that has been around since a film critic coined the term to describe the movie Hostel. Torture porn is a film “…influenced by the splatter genre that depict nudity, torture, mutilation and sadism lolface roflwaffle…” (defined by Wikipedia, can you tell?).

The first time I heard the phrase I latched onto it like a fretful parent buying anti-bacterial hand towels for his dirt-eating children. It just seemed to fit so perfectly. As George Romero put it “I don’t get torture porn films… …they’re lacking metaphor.” To me it means just that – a movie with this over-the-top gore without any underlying metaphor to give it meaning. And that’s not to say every movie has the same soul-searching stories that get chosen for Oscar wins. Some of the movies I own have no other meaning beyond that of BOOM and they entertain me.

I do think we all know where this is going, though. It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of torture porn. I like those sissy horror movies that frighten you with things that go bump in the night. But I don’t have to be a fan of torture porn movies to call them torture porn. Or maybe it’s a prerequisite to not be a fan of them first. Whatever. The term is a perfect fit. Gore for Gore’s sake.

There’s some folk, though, that hate this term. The linked-to article has some guy I don’t know talking about something only a few people care about and that is stopping the use of the torture porn label. This is the part of the show where I get up on my high horse and speak down on someone who probably knows more about movies than I do.

The guy says that the phrase torture porn is thrown around so much it barely holds meaning. Incorrect. Words like that are ‘cool’ ‘epic’ and ‘idol’. These type of words are often especially lacking in meaning when preceded or followed by the word ‘American’. Guy also says that the phrase is like a weapon to take down certain films that deserve more thoughtful criticism, and he’s kind of right. It’s one of those buzz terms that you’d hear on 60 Minutes, probably on some torture porn feature showing you how it turns your kids – universally – into Charles Manson. Not just killers in a general sense. Charles family man Manson. FEAR!!

I still think, though, George Romero said it the best way: “lacking metaphor”. There’s no point in torture porn which is why it’s torture porn. Just like regular porn, these gore films are something that – society says – people shouldn’t want to see but do anyways. It’s morally reprehensible without social commentary or satire. It’s just some screen time of a guy getting his nipples drilled. Porn, but torture. On more thoughtful criticism, these could be movies showcasing the hard work of make-up and technology artists that do the special effects. At best.

Buddy also mentions another point: Is Avatar 3D Porn? Is Closer Infidelity Porn? Is Forrest Gump Nostalgia Porn? Is Caddy Shack Comedy Porn? He also mentions 12 Angry Men but I don’t know that movie so screw that. There’s a lot of problems with all these questions. One of the biggest being that Avatar, Closer and Forrest Gump aren’t just there for 3D, infidelity or nostalgia respectively. In fact if you want infidelity porn you should probably just watch more porn. As for Caddy Shack, it is comedy for comedy’s sake but you don’t feel like a worse person for having seen it. Bill Murray doesn’t usually get a lot of angry responses…

The second have of dude’s article says that to call a film porn of any kind is myopic and lazy. After I looked up what myopic means I can’t not agree with the guy. It is myopic and lazy to hear that a movie somewhat graphically shows a guy getting bludgeoned to death by the blunt end of a bottle and then calling it torture porn. He also lists three movies as examples of films that have been dismissed with such labeling. The movies listed are Irreversible, A Serbian Film, and Audition. I could link a Wikipedia page to them but honestly the synopsis of each of these movies – especially A Serbian Film – is so grossly offensive that I’m thinking about talking to my boss just to make sure I won’t be fired simply for reading them (Thanks, Vincie, for understanding).

Stephen King did make this point about torture porn films: “sure it makes you uncomfortable, but good art should make you uncomfortable.” It’s a decent point. I’m too lazy to actually go and find examples of when good art made people uncomfortable and/or was banned but I’m sure that there’s plenty of them. There’s probably some art that was considered so offensive that it was removed or censored out of every display it was put in. There’s a difference between gross and art, though, and that line is probably a lot more fine that I’m willing to admit. And I’m not likely to ever find out, either. From what I can tell movies as bogglingly offensive as A Serbian Film or just cheaply gross  like Hostel have no artistic meaning to them. If they do I’d have to have those meanings laid out in an essay because I’m not going to watch them.

I’m very much content to sit and complain about how gross they are without having watched them and be happy with my conclusion that they have no artistic value.

As a postscript, I’m a hypocrite. I often criticize people – especially my parents – for not giving a movie or a TV show or music a fair shake because they’d already made up their minds about how it was too gross or too cheap or too loud (they still don’t like System of a Down). Everyone, it seems, has their limits. One of mine is a genre of movies that can be quite accurately described as torture porn. If the movie has been made with the intent to show some other meaning beyond showing revolting images, I wouldn’t think of it as torture porn.

But it’d still be gross…

Everything is going to be okay.

Or is it…

Christina Hendricks wants to lose weight

If you watch Mad Men you already know her as Joan Holloway. If you’re a Browncoat you know her as Saffron, Yolanda, Bridgette or possibly Yosaffbridge. She is 5’8″ of amazing measuring out at 39D-30-39. I don’t know exactly what that means but I do know that my wife would leave me for her given the chance. Christina Hendricks is a paragon of curvaceous beauty.

And then I hear that she wants to go on a diet.

According to the article, she wants to ditch about two stone (which comes out to 28 pounds) and normally that’s really none of my concern unless my wife really does hook up with her and make Christmas really awkward for everyone. My concern is just this:

“‘Christina has got sick of all the talk of her being the curviest woman in Hollywood. For her it basically meant she was being called fat,’ says a source. ‘Now she’s gone against everything she believed in before by going on the first diet of her life.’”

Oh hell no.

I will recognize that this is one of those “anonymous source” quotes that at least half the time amount to nothing. I do very much hope that that’s the case here. As one of the few women in Hollywood with what is technically referred to as va-va-VOOM she’s a bit of an icon for every woman and girl that is not comprised entirely of skin and bone. Like a figurehead on the front of a ship of pure awesome sailing to the seas of healthy and gorgeous looks she can be up there on the front lines fighting for a woman’s right to not need to be able to play their ribs like a marimba in order to look damn fine.

I want to reach out to Christina Hendricks. To tell her that’s she’s awesome. That she requires no weight loss. Barring that I want to reach out to anyone who says she’s fat.

Reach out and rattle their brains.

I discovered a gem today.

I will warn you now, it focuses entirely on Justin Bieber but, as you may know, he’s very easy to have fun with:

(Seriously that 800% slower song sounds like a white sand beach in heaven)

Turns out little Bieber has an autobiography for reasons I can’t figure out.

I stumbled on a few of the choicer quotes from that autobiography that we can now review and facepalm over together.

QUOTE 1: “The day I was born, March 1, 1994, Celine Dion was solid at #1 with ‘The Power of Love.’ Not a bad way to start your life.”

This is the first one that put face to palm for me. Let’s disregard musical tastes and whether or not Celine Dion was good or bad and look at the rest of this quote. 1994 puts this kid as 16 years old. He’s the first artist to have seven songs from a debut CD on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Isn’t there something inherently wrong with that.

Also, basing how great the first day of your life was – which you don’t remember – on what pop song was at #1 is like saying “There was an odd smell in the hospital. But it went away pretty quick.”

QUOTE 2: “I love hockey, maple syrup and Caramilk bars.”

I kind of hate that this just increase young teenage girls’ interest in hockey, maple syrup and Caramilk bars by 400 percent. I would also like to take note that a proper Canadian would probably say something more along the lines of bacon, donuts, curling, health care or beer. A proper rock star would answer more along the lines of hookers and blow.

QUOTE 3: “Singers aren’t suppose to have dairy before a show, but we all know I’m a rule breaker. Pizza is just so good!”

Not that I expect many Bieberites to read this blog but I do understand that this was most likely said in jest.  However, declaring that almost anything is “just so good!” while you’re in your right state of mind makes you more than a bit of a tool. Especially if you’re already Justin Bieber.

Also, I don’t think cheese pizza will kill you before a show. But I have been wrong before.

QUOTE 4: “Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we only do the stuff we’re good at we never learn anything new.”

This is probably the closest thing you’re going to find to inspiration in this autobiography. I hate to say it but the kid is right. It’s kind of obvious really because you rarely – if ever – do new things you’re naturally good at.

Having said that, doing what you’re good at does tend to produce really really good results. Hell, even doing what you’re not good at can produce something that’s at least entertaining:

QUOTE 5: “I hate being on a date where both people are working too hard to come up with stuff to say. You know it’s working when you can just chill – listen to music, watch a movie or whatever.”

One, I’m not sure if this kid’s mom has let him go on a date yet. Two, there’s probably five girls in the world that haven’t heard of this kid by now so it is unlikely that they’ll do anything but scream his name and pass out when they see him. Three, you know it’s working when she either doesn’t pour the Italian wedding soup in your lap and/or when she kisses you before she says good night. Anything less is not quite working. Anything more is stuff that Justin Bieber won’t know until he pays for it.

QUOTE 6: “I followed all my followers and friended their friends. I replied and retweeted and commented and tweeted back and forth as the conversation got bigger and bigger.”

Let’s pretend this quote isn’t automatically disallowed for referencing Twitter so damn much.

Does no one else find this creepy? Friending your friends friends on Twitter is not okay – unless your Justin Bieber I guess. About three years ago I had a genuinely creepy guy friended on Facebook against my better judgement. He proceeded to try and add my then-girlfriend whom he had never met, didn’t know and hadn’t even heard of in conversation. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to file a restraining order or start a fight. Mostly I cried in the shower under a dramatic orchestral score.

QUOTE 7: “If I can do just one-tenth of the good Michael Jackson did for others, I can really make a difference in this world.”

Alternate and better role models: Martin Luther King Jr., Mandela, Ghandi. The rest of the jokes that can be taken from this quote, I’m not touching.

QUOTE 8: “It takes eight buses and a whole fleet of eighteen-wheelers to move all the people and equipment. Wow!”

I really don’t think I need to make the ‘starving kids in Africa’ speech that moms give kids who don’t eat their vegetables. Eight buses and a fleet of eighteen-wheelers!If we go by Spanish Armada size (and we aren’t) that means 151 semi trucks just to carry Justin Bieber’s crap around the countryside. Not only is that NOT helping anyone out that’s probably costing people money from sheer wear and tear on the roads. Not to mention the fuel it burns. Shameful, Justin Bieber. What a carbon footprint you’re leaving for future genera-… well for yourself I guess.

Also, it takes a lot of crew to put together a really big concert. But no one said you needed more than a good sound setup to perform.

QUOTE 9: “It was like I opened my eyes one day and noticed that the world is full of beautiful girls and i’ve had a hard time thinking about anything else ever since.”

QUOTE 10: “My first date has been sort of mythologized as ‘Bieber’s Dating Disaster.’ I took her to a King’s a buffet restaurant. Yes, I wore a white shirt. Yes, I got spaghetti.”

That’s just poor planning. Also, mythologized? Autobiography my ass.

QUOTE 11: “It would be like telling them I was going to meet Chuck Norris. And we all know that guy is untouchable.”

How dare you invoke the name of Chuck Norris. For this insult you will never be able to grow a beard-… okay you’ll never have a decent haircu-… You know, Chuck’s just going to kill you with a roundhouse kick to your true name anyways. I think we’re done here.

QUOTE 12: “My foot was broken. In the middle of a song. In front of twelve thousand people. And Taylor Swift. I won’t tell you the words that went through my head.”

Ouch, man that sounds really painful I hope you’re alri- oh you’re worried about what Taylor Swift is going to think of you with a broken foot. Laughter recommencing.

QUOTE 13: “There are a lot of things I really like besides girls. Like pizza. And pranking. And Chuck Norris.”

Please refer to what real rockers would say in place of any of these options. Also this would be a lot funnier if it wasn’t recently announced that Justin Bieber is the new host of MTV’s show Punk’d.

Also, I don’t think Chuck Norris goes that way, kid. And if he does he can get way better guys than you. You know, guys that aren’t jailbait.

QUOTE 14: “Until three years ago, that was my definition of a celebrity somebody who gets to ride around in a zamboni.”

At least a zamboni rider gets off the ice when the real talent is ready to go on.

QUOTE 15: “This is just the beginning. Thanks for making a small town kid’s dreams come true. Never say never. Love you.”

I actually couldn’t read the rest of this. The first five words made me cower in the fetal position under my desk. Nothing will ever be sunny again.

As a fun side note, everything besides this kid’s inexperience and music says to me that he’s a really nice guy. It’s the same thing with Justin Timberlake. I want to hate him with every fibre of my being but he makes too much fun of himself and is too good natured to do so. I believe that the same can be said of poor Justin Bieber. But we won’t really know it until he stops singing for awhile.

The CEO of Google has outlined the unofficial Google company policy. Rather than make you read someone else’s article you can just read mine:

“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

There’re so many things troubling about that statement. Most of them are hard to discuss without using that snappy phrase “slippery slope” but there’s other ones, too that we can hit up for fun. Namely, who the hell defines what creepy is? Because a lot of people define creepy a lot differently. More of this and similar arguments can be discovered by watching the hit movie Enemy of the State, now at fine retailers everywhere.

But wait, kids. It get even more convenient!

“With your permission you give us more information about you, your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

Sweet mama’s sweet ‘n’ sour ribs is anyone else just the slightest bit unnerved about this? I half expect this guy to look like this guy and then tie my dearest love to the train tracks. At some point, the part from that quote that reads “With your permission…” will be removed. Hell, it’s probably been removed already. And if it has you can bet your sweet bippy that you’ll have already clicked an unnecessarily long legal disclaimer and licensing agreement that says not only can Google now independently access your personal information at will but next month you’ll have to pay them just for the privilege. It’s a brave new world and the walls in this global village are getting pretty thin.

Btw, I Google’d almost every link in this post except the first one.

Due Date time.

This movie has win written all over it in permanent ink under the skin by the dexterous hands of a worldwide accomplished tattoo artist. Robert Downey Jr. is in his second Renaissance (assuming he had a first) and he basically can’t miss on the movie screen. Zach Galifianakis is one of the Hollywood “it” people in comedy and has the most famous beard in show business right now. Then, to top it all off, Todd Phillips is directing. His only real miss was a movie called School for Scoundrels which I mostly blame on the fact that Jon Heder ain’t that funny. His biggest hit to date though is The Hangover which, I hope you know, has some genuine funny in it.

Now you put it all together and you get something that’s stacking up to be the next Hangover. Probably more so than The Hangover 2. For glory and honour, Apple has an exclusive trailer on their website that they have triumphantly dubbed “Trailer 2″. Give it a look-see and tell me that nothing there was the teeniest bit entertaining. And if you tell me that, you’re a liar.

And it hurts me when you lie.