Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/10
Police Officer Shot a Man in the Back and was Caught Lying About it
If you click through to the link, there is video of a man being shot to death. That’s important to know because you might not want to watch such a thing.
Early reports about this incident indicated that the victim tried to take the officer’s taser and the officer shot him in self-defense. That was the story the officer repeated over and over again. And it was a lie.
If I said I didn’t like ice cream, it would also be a lie. A harmless lie. So when the officer lied to save his skin, it’s kind of like that, right?
Even if the victim had tried to take a taser before the video starts, it is obvious he posed no threat to the officer when he was running away and eight bullets were fired at his back.
Without that video, the officer would not be facing murder charges. Thousands of people would be telling us that we weren’t there so we couldn’t know what really happened. We should take the word of the police officer because why would he lie?
I don’t know. Maybe for the same reasons as anyone else?
Kickstarting into High Gear
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m the head writer on a new web series called “Vermin.”
Well, I’ll be the head writer if we can reach our Kickstarter goal and with 16 days left, we haven’t even reached the 25% mark yet. I still think we can make it but we are going to need help. Whose help?
If you are reading this, yours!
I’m going to put this into perspective for you. Over the last week, a pizza restaurant in Indiana publicly announced they would never cater same-sex weddings. As a result of their public declaration, they found themselves attacked and threatened by gay rights advocates who were pretty angry.
Threats, by the way, are never OK. The people who did that should rightfully be called out for their hateful behavior.
Because of the threats, the pizzeria chose to close their doors for a short time and a GoFundMe campaign was initiated to help support their gay unfriendly business. In short order, they raised over $800,000 from 1700 individual donors.
Putting it Together – Share My Stuff
The internet is a noisy place and it is going to keep getting noisier. Yet here I am on the internet adding to the noise because that is where the people are.
I’m talking a lot about trying to make a career out of being a writer. So far I’m doing well at making a hobby out of being a writer because I’m not getting paid all that much to do it. The most important part of the equation is getting people to read what I’m writing.
It’s hard to do that when the majority of information that people see in their Facebook feeds is Buzzfeed quizzes and Upworthy videos.
That isn’t anyone’s fault, you understand, that is the algorithm that Facebook uses to make money. It is annoying, yes, but we are using a free tool and that means we have to live with their rules. I’m trying to game the rules a little bit, though.
Here’s advice I can give to you if you enjoy my (or anyone else’s) stuff. When we post it to Facebook, like it. Even if you don’t read it. Like it. The more people who like something, the more people will see that thing in their news feeds.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 9/27
Popular Science Shuts off Their Comments
Hey, I don’t really care if anybody comments on a Popular Science article ever again. Comment threads on the internet are typically the realm of madness.
Which is precisely the point. Popular Science shut off comments on their science articles because people are more likely to believe the comments than they are to believe the article.
Yeah. That’s right. People read an article with citations and evidence and they are less likely to believe that than a one paragraph rebuttal that is basically nothing more than someone saying “oh yeah? I know you but what am I?”
Everyone KNOWS that you can’t trust results from experiments that use beakers! Some guy said so on the internet!
We benefit from scientific research every day of our lives but somehow, in spite of everything science does for us, we are more inclined to believe FrankNFurther2098 than someone who is publishing a researched and peer reviewed article. The practical result is that Popular Science is turning off their comments so people will pay attention to the science and not the bullshit.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 6/21
There are Almost Literally No Movies Featuring Women any More
The article I link to points out that 90 percent of the films showing last weekend we all about guys or groups of guys. That’s pretty pathetic.
Now I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy watching movies about guys. I’m a big fan of Iron Man 3 and I don’t think it’d be better if it was about a woman. You can’t really make a movie about Superman without making a movie about SuperMAN.
I’m just curious as to why those are the only movies being made. The movie industry will probably tell you that it is because movies about women don’t make as much.
That may or may to be true but there sure isn’t a lot of data one way or the other, is there? Catwoman didn’t make any money because it sucked, not because it featured a woman as a protagonist.
Why isn’t there a Black Widow movie in development? You can’t tell me the legions of Marvel fans wouldn’t like to watch it. Wonder Woman is also languishing in development hell.
A Black Widow film would probably be all about Hawkeye anyway.
I don’t honestly think filmmakers have any idea how to make movies featuring women as protagonists. I understand it is difficult but I don’t think anyone actually gives a fuck as long as Man of Steel has a 100MM opening.
And that kind of sucks for anyone who has a daughter, doesn’t it?
Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bad Apple
This week, Kickstarter funded a project that pisses me off. A lot.
The results of this asshole’s project, though, bug me even more.
The project is a book wherein some dude from Reddit gives all sorts of horrible relationship advice to other dudes from Reddit. The excerpts I’ve read are, at best, encouraging sexual assault and, at worst, encouraging rape. Further, they seem to imply that women really want to get raped so it is all OK.
I don’t get the feeling the guy is trying to write a satirical piece. I think he’s dead serious. I have no idea if he is getting a lot of “action” using the techniques he will be describing in his book but if he is, I’m not thinking that he has a lot of repeat dates.
The very idea that all women are the same and you could write a book that will somehow provide dudes a “cheat code” is pretty insulting to 1/2 our population already but when that supposed “cheat code” involves behavior that could easily be rape, it crosses a line.
Geeks Without God Gets Reflective about Comedy
This week’s episode features emergency fill-in guest Joseph Scrimshaw. Joseph is in the midst of a big Kickstarter campaign so it seemed like a great time to feature him on the podcast. We got him to tell us all about the Kickstarter (of course) and then we talked about Joseph’s favorite obsession, comic theory.
Speaking of Joseph’s Kickstarter, my band, The Dregs, will be contributing a song to his Flaw Fest album assuming it gets funded so now I’m not just excited because I like the idea, I’m also excited because I want to write a song about guilt for Joseph’s album.
He also decided that Bugs Bunny is an atheist and I’m all for putting Bugs in our court.
So hey, listen to the podcast and support the Kickstarter! It’s what friends do!
KickStart Me Up
I’ve been talking up the latest Kickstarter I’ve been running and guess what? I’m going to talk it up some more.
On April 12th, the Dregs and 4 Pints Shy will be doing a show together. This in itself is a big deal because we haven’t really done one before. Not like this anyway.
We’ve performed a couple of brief shows together at the festival and they were a lot of fun so the idea surfaced to do a full-scale show together and at first that was all it was going to be – a show.
Kickstart me!
We launched a Kickstarter last Friday for the Vilification Tennis home game and while there is a lot of information on the Kickstarter page, I’m going to blog about why I wanted to do it in the first place and some of the stretch goals we have in mind if we can reach our initial goal fast enough.
Why do I want to create a real version of a game we created specifically for on stage entertainment?
Because it’s a lot of fun. When you play the game, very little of what you come up with is golden. It is funny simply because you have to come up with something funny very quickly and that is kind of impressive. It makes unfunny stuff funnier.
Grail Diary 