My Dogs Are Barking

My Dogs Are Barking

The annual Toy Fair International is going on in New York right now. Now, I don't think most people know of this expo, but since I'm a nerd and some part of nerdom is collecting crap that is otherwise considered stuff for little kids, this is information that I just happen to know even though I haven't bought any "action figure" in a very long while.

The nice thing about Toy Fair is that you get a glimpse of the future in the stores. Most of all, you get to see what could potentially be the hot toy for Christmas. Yes, it may only be March, but to the people who are crafting up to take your money, it's already Christmas before Easter ever hits. So perhaps you should take note on this new toy that will be out in time for Christmas as your kids will be asking for it.



Well, I must disappoint you. Scientists have created no such collar. But one of the world’s largest toy companies, Mattel Inc, has made something even better: Puppy Tweets. Yes. You read that right. Twitter. For dogs.

Yes, you read that right. Twitter. For dogs. Well, it's called Puppy Tweets(TM). Yes, that's right. It's a god damn twitter based toy so social networking will be a major part of this useless Pokemon/digi-pet sort of thing. What does it do? Well, dog owners will just die happy now that they realize that their dog will be wearing a collar that randomly tweets into their own Doggie twitter account random things.

Wait. You must be thinking that this will allow your dog to talk or something. Send messages as to his current mood or where he be at, yo. No. No it wont. You should talk to your little child now and clear this up before they have a case of hopeful eyes like I did when I was a little kid and saw Back to the Future II and thought hover boards were just around the corner.

What Puppy Tweets(TM) does is sit on your pets collar and with a tag that has integrated motion and sound sensors on the dog's collar connects to a USB receiver. It comes with easy-to-use software, which is short speak to say that you will more than likely call one of the Geek Squad people over to install this, then after paying that huge tech support bill your dog is now connected to his own Twitter account.



So what does his twitter account do other than take up space on the internet and has all of two followers? It monitors what your dog does, which most likely is sleep, interprets these actions and then sends humorous tweets to the account. It's not reading the dogs mind. It's just randomly coming up with pre-set messages.

What would be the interesting things a dog would even say? Well.. I have no idea. When your daily life consist of sleeping,e eating, pooping, barking at small woodland animals and begging for one of the previous mentioned items.. and sometimes wanting a belly rub, I have no idea what sort of topic this animal can really provide. Here's the examples of the tweets:

"Guess what I'm licking right now?"

Oh boy.. could it be your balls?

"I finally caught that tail I've been chasing, and.... OOUUCCH!!"

Well gee, I'm sure glad that I set up my twitter account to follow this..

"I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home."

I can't wait for Kibbles and Bits to team up with them and have the tweets be advertisements. Nothing like your dog tweeting that they want some Kibbles and Bits brand dog food.



This is just the start of it. Mattel Brands President Neil Friedman told the soon to be dead L.A. Times that they think this could be the start of a new wave of products for people to interact with their pets. Again, how is it interacting with your pet? You're looking at your Twitter feed and see that your dog's collar randomly generated a message. Maybe you should have been fucking playing with your dog instead of spending your time online or looking at your phone to see who just tweeted.

So what's the damage to your wallet? $30 seems to get you this randomly tweeting machine you strap around your pet. You know what, don't even bother. With that money you could probably buy your dog some real food that isn't crap ground up and passed as nutritional substances.



Of course Cat owners are beyond pissed at this whole slap in the face by Mattel. Mattel has answered these spinsters call. While they would not say whether Kitty Tweets is on the way, they have said that this is indeed the beginning. Why start with dogs? They said that dogs get into more trouble while their owners are away at work.

This may be true, given the nature of cats to sleep, but just imagine how much extra income your average crazy cat lady has to spend considering she doesn't have any children to spend the money on. Mittens sure would look cute with some stupid tweeting collar.

Either way, these things are stupid plastic toys that are going to do nothing but become boring after all the predetermined generated tweets are cycled through on the twitter account that no one will want to follow no matter how annoying you are in pushing it on others.

But hey, I'm sure your kid will never forgive you if it's not under the tree this year. And if you don't have a pet you know you're also going to be asked for that puppy. So Costco should at least make a two pack of these items.

Twitter Should Be Nationalized

Twitter Should Be Nationalized

I mean, seriously. It's used by every fucking congress person, senator, president.. every agency uses it. Fuck, the California DMV has its hands in Twitter. You can actually follow the DMV on twitter. Who is oddly enough following Caltrains, The Ca. Sheriffs Dept, etc. The only question is how long do you have to wait in line to read their post?

Obama should just go out and nationalize twitter. Sure, it's just cell phone text messages posted publicly on the internet. But it seems to be the latest craze in this continuing craze to become famous, even if it's just on the internet.


Could someone help these guys out with their excel graphs, they really don't get how to show data in sensible ways

Twitter and Facebook are products of the "look at me! am I famous yet?!?!" generation. I can't say it's the worst generation, but they sure don't have much going for them so far. Do we really need to know that you're just feeeling things right now. How unique you must be because you have feelings and internal dialogue. Most of the time it's completely useless and very much crossing the lines of too much information needed.

Facebook Status: Taking a shit
Facebook Message: New pictures added 04-09-09 Title "My bowel movements"

Comment: Hay GUYZ N GURLZ THOUGHT U MIgHT BE INTEReSTED IN WHAT COMES OUT OF MY BUTT. LOVE AND BLESS ~~~<3

And yet still, I suppose it is all inane shit on the internet. It's like piling a dead skunk into a garbage dump and then complaining about the stink. It's par the course of the internet to contain loads and loads of inane shit. Maybe the fact that senators and other important types can reach a global audience instantaneously far outweighs the tripe of inconsequential teens.


LOOOOOK ATTTTT MMEEEEEEEE!!!

Oh, who am I kidding, it's actually distracting them. Look at Barbara Boxer's twitter to see that she simply spends her time thanking people. A bunch of circle jerking going on there. During a Presidential speech you could find many congressmen and women twittering away. Shouldn't they be paying attention to what is going on instead of commenting on how boring something is or what someone is wearing?

This isn't just me being old. I'm not hating because it's pointless. I'm sure there's some use for it but it comes across as being used for completely pointless purposes currently. Just think of all the exciting new technologies and forms of communication I'll be faced with down the line and able to loathe and misunderstand as I make my way through my 30's, 40's and 50's, until finally I'm too old and holovision makes no fucking sense and why can't these motherfucking kids just go back to regular e-mail like normal people.

More so that I think TWITTER is such a pussy name for a program to use. I would update it a lot more if it had some manly name. Nothing more pansy like than saying you just made a tweet. Something like Dumpster. Oh man, I would so update my DUMPSTER account so much more. Yeah, that'll be a good thing. "Just killed a man cause he looked at me cross ways!"

But hey, there has to be some good out of all of it, isn't there? Sure. Here's some cool/useful twitter accounts going that can give you a chuckle or actually be informative

Follow Shaq

Common Squirrel

Some random Pokemon

The Onion

Fake but funny Obama

Jack in the Box

The Terminator

Food Network

No Reservations w/ Tony Bourdain

You can see the Earth's Vital Signs...

And with that, I'll stop this since I clearly went over the 140 character limit.

Twittering Across The Internet

Twittering Across The Internet

I may not be as "hip" with the web 2.0 crowd but I do consider myself one that is able to judge how much something is worth. So when I'm told that Twitter turned down a 250 million offer I was left dumbstruck

Twitter, which just recently turned down a half billion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook (albeit to be paid mostly with Facebook stock), is dipping back into the venture capital market, we've heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. They've signed a term sheet with at least one venture fund to raise a new round at a $250 million valuation. We are still gathering information on how much they're raising and from whom.

I mean, do you know what twitter is? Seriously. All "Social Media" and "web 2.0" aside, it's just a facebook or Myspace status update without all the features. Why do people think anyone else cares what they are doing every minute. Does anyone actually read blogs or twitter or whatever other then the people who wrote them. I'm pretty sure the click count for this very blog is small. But at least this provides content... well, something resembling content at the very least.



Is their ad revenue seriously enough to make them worth $250,000,000? Actually, nope. Not at all. At the current time there's no ads. Twitter apparently hasn't even got a plan for making money. They haven't even figured out how to monetize it, how the fuck can they turn down a quarter billion dollars?

If I ever invented *anything* that resulted in me being offered $100m plus $400m worth of any stock, I would sell before you could say twitter. I really, really don't understand why people would turn down these huge offers when stuff like this can disappear as fast as it popped up. Take Napster for example. It just about had monopoly back in the day, now almost no one uses it for anything.

Even if the $400,000,000 worth was in Facebook stock. They should have took it and ran. Even if it's just facebook.... stock? hee hee. To be honest, i do kinda need to diversity my portfolio with xanga and myspace stock.



It seems like a great way to capitalize on the Stickam / Myspace "Social networking = popularity" generation the internet seems to have spawned. Nowadays everything's about "me", what better than a site dedicated to what a person is doing at any time for those types of people?

I know what you're thinking, "Its what all the kids are doing. Why don't you stop hating GRANDPA." Well you know what. I just got a phone with large number buttons on it, cause I must be old. Nah, I get it. You kids like giving your status on the minute by minute bases. This whole blog thing must be something crazy to you kids. More than 140 characters to express yourself? I must be crazy!

The big problem with Twitter and its ilk is that the user base is exactly the kind that will jump ship the moment it starts costing them real money to use, not to mention the tech-savvy crowd are exactly the sort of people who would waste no time at all in bringing out a free alternative - at which point the next chapter in the Twitter life story then becomes Napster redux.


This whale needs to be harpooned

It's also a money pit of servers that go down at the slightest provocation, and doesn't generate any revenue. $250 mil is rampant speculation that someday, somehow, they'll figure out how to monetize it. Which they haven't in almost 3 years. Maybe they should take the money and buy servers that don't shit the bed every 5 minutes posted one minute ago from twitteriffic

You're going to tell me that Google doesn't charge for their services and yet still "magically" makes money. But then I'll correct you when I tell you that Google rakes in massive piles of money licensing their search engine technology, various APIs, advertising, etc. Twitter is an equivalent to "multiplayer notepad".

Then there's pieces like this youtube twitter parody which explains why I could hate it..

OMG! WEB 2.0!!!!1111

Twitter is for social marketing, "social media" and "web 2.0" people love it. Where else can you follow Shaq? Or M.C. Hammer? Yes, twitter is also good if you want to e-stalk your favorite web-savvy celebrity (porn stars mostly). All it does is status updates, the same thing AIM away messages, and facebook/myspace statuses have been doing for years, but without all those pesky "features".

But get it straight, it’s Twittr not Twitter. I mean really, is it that hard to drop the last vowel and put the r right next to t - Posted from the bathroom

Oh Ashley B, You So Crazy!

The True Story Revealed: Ashley Todd

Most of you have probably heard of the case of Ashley Todd, the former Ron Paul supporter turned College Republican/McCain campaign worker who shocked the dumb portion of the world with her story of being attacked by a large black man outside of an ATM who carved the letter B in her cheek. Here's a news article if you missed all this:

Todd handed the man $60 she had in her pocket and stepped away from him, investigators said. The man then noticed the bumper sticker on the woman's car, which was parked in front of the ATM. The man became very angry, made comments to Todd about John McCain and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, police said.

"He continued to kick and punch her repeatedly and said he would teach her a lesson for supporting John McCain," said police Chief Nate Harper.

The man then carved the "B" into Todd's right cheek.

Todd's friend offered to drive her back in the direction she came from to look at ATMs until she found the right one, police said. A police officer followed until Todd pointed out a Citizens Bank ATM at Liberty and Pearl, police said.

She declined medical treatment at the scene and said she would go to a hospital today.

There were some problems with her story, of course. The first is that, like me, she twitters her every waking moment, she obsessively documented on Twitter every step of her night. Except maybe she was setting things up a little too conveniently for what she would have no way of knowing was going to happen next. Oh, and maybe she got a few bits of info wrong too, referring to the Citizens Bank as a Bank of America, and saying things like "this is definitely a bad part of town, I'm gonna get mugged by an angry political black man I bet" about a not bad part of town.

Oh, also maybe the B was backwards and didn't break the skin. Like how it'd be if you drew one really hard with your fingernail in the mirror.

Then, despite her airtight story, Ashley failed to shock the world by announcing that she had made it all up.

Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, a police report said.

"This has wasted so much time...It's just a lot of wasted man hours," Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a briefing.

But there's a twist:

"She is stating that she was in her vehicle driving around, and she came up with this idea," [Bryant] said. "She said she has prior mental problems and doesn't know how the backward letter 'B' got on her face."

Wait. Hold it there.

She admits to making it up, but she doesn't know how she ended up with a fake black eye and a backwards B very very lightly carved on her face? I guess that makes perfect sense. Sometimes minor stuff just slips our minds.

Which is why I've decided to help jog her memory by coming up with a few possibilities as to how it all actually went down:

Scenario 1

Ashley Todd was at a Citizens Fargo Bank of America ATM, getting her money and minding her own business in a bad part of a good part of town when a large black man came up to her.

"Hi," he said. "I see you work for the McCain campaign."

"Yeah..." she said.

"Cool! I work for the McCain campaign as well," he said. "You want a temporary McCain tattoo?"

"Sure."

"Ok, I'm just going to put a J on your face for 'John'. So there's the first swoop and I'll finish it up and...oops."

"Ow!"

"Yeah, my hand slipped. Looks like I kinda added a second swoop on that J. My bad."

"No worries," said Ashley, "I'll just say that you kicked and punched me repeatedly and said you would teach me a lesson for supporting John McCain."

"Ha, good one. Alright, have a nice night now."

Scenario 2

Ashley Todd was about to head out the door to go for a late night food run when it suddenly struck her that she might forget what she was setting out to buy.

"My memory's usually so good," she said to her kitchen table, "but maybe I should make a list."

She searched and searched, but couldn't find a scrap of paper anywhere.

"Now what am I going to do?" she said to the microwave.

Then an idea struck her. It was a great idea. The perfect idea.

"The only thing I really need right now is bread. I'll just scratch a B on my face with the edge of my credit card."

And she did. She admired the fading pink B lightly etched in her cheek.

"Yeah," she said. "There's just no way I'll forget what this is for. Just no way."

Then she kissed the giant poster of McCain that covered like half her bedroom wall, and she left. Except as she was going she also said: "It would basically be impossible for me to carve a B in my face and then forget doing it. That's the best part of this idea.

"No way in hell I would forget this. Nope. Not gonna happen."

Scenario 3

"But I'm telling the truth," said Ashley. "I don't know what else you want to hear."

"It doesn't matter what we want to hear," said Police Chief Nate Harper. He leaned back, and unbuttoned his shirt halfway. Sweat glistened from the landscape of curly hair and bronzed skin that was his chest. "Honey, we're only keeping you here until we can reasonably say you cracked and admitted it was all fake."

Ashley felt herself flush with frustration, especially her cheek, which definitely had a real wound shaped like a backwards B.

"I don't believe it. I thought you people were here to help," she cried.

Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant threw down her styrofoam coffee cup in disgust and strode across the room.

"Don't waste our time, little girl!" Bryant sneered. "This has wasted so much time. ... It's just a lot of wasted man hours."

"I guess she still doesn't get it," said Harper. He took one thick meaty hand and dug into the flesh at the base of his broad neck. The skin began to warp and stretch like warm play-doh. His entire face peeled back revealing Barack Obama.

Bryant grabbed her pony tail and yanked up like she was taking off a hat. Her mask popped off instantly. It was also Barack Obama.

"Soon, little girl, your pitiful human race will belong to us," said the two in unison. They began to laugh. Cold, cruel, inhuman laughter.

Ashley looked back and forth at the two Obamas, their faces wet and slimy, like newborns. The backwards B was hard red against the soft white of her cheek. Then she grabbed her ears and pulled sideways.

"Oh, my bad. I didn't realize," the third Obama said, shaking off the last of the Ashley mask. "It can be hard to keep track of all of us. Whew, we almost tried to conspiracy each other!"

"Whoops ha ha!" said the second Obama.

"Classic," said the first Obama. "Ok, let's get these disguises back on and go bullshit the press."

Hate Floats

Hate Floats

I've always been counter Internet culture. If a large number of people find something entertaining, interesting or funny, chances are I've mocked it, hated it or probably ridiculed it for no reason other than the fact that I'm an insecure twenty-somethings who didn't do too well in school, didn't fit in with the other kids, and has little prospects for a future that doesn't involve spending long nights spamming my resumes to various temp agencies desperately hoping something will stick. Or maybe I'm just projecting.

But hey, usually my hate for things on the Internet is focused on others and not on myself, unless I can convince myself that I was there at the start of the fad. Then it's awesome, like Pokey the Penguin.

Check out this awesome Flash game!

I've seen things, things you wouldn't believe. I was there at the start of All Your Base, the highs of It's a Trap, the lows of and lows of Goatse.cx. I witnessed lemon party long before it become some 30 rock joke. Who else besides Dave Chappelle flips out over catchphrases like I do? I'm so full of hate I hate being on the ground floor of the internet's greatest successes!

I've scoffed at other web sites that have chosen to not to act like massive dicks to everyone they come into contact with. What do they have to show for it besides millions of dollars? Not resentment and jealousy, two traits that have made America what it is today, that's for sure.

That's why, when I consider my long history of acting like an inhuman monster, it disturbs me when I realize that I'm starting to well... like things.

What happened to me? It seems like only yesterday I was bashing myspace, mirror pictures and blogs in general as anything other than a spawn of live journal and the emo invasion. I would never take advice from strangers on the internet as to where to eat like I do now on Yelp. No way would I be saying catch phrases like Zerg Rush or Haxor the Gibson. I'm getting sloppy in my old age.

It ends up that the phrase "you become what you hate" is true. It was only natural to happen. A sort of Stockholm syndrome that effects those with Asperger syndrome first and then eventually works it way to the normal folks on the internet. Surrounded by this online culture whenever I come on to check my spam filled mail box, it was only a matter of time before the hater became the hated.

It's time to band together and re-join the collective internet social hive mind. Here's what I forgot to hate.

Newgrounds

Why you love it now: In 2002 the founder of Newgrounds founded a video game development company called The Behemoth that would be tasked with porting some of its more popular Flash games to consoles. Yeah, really.

MAYBE IF YOU FUCKERS DIDN'T LOUNGE AROUND SO MUCH I COULD BE PLAYING MULTIPLAYER IN YOUR SHITTY GAME RIGHT NOW. Uh, I mean, that's what I would say if I had purchased your game. Heh...

The Behemoth enjoyed success with its first foray into the wonderful world of console ports, Alien Hominid, which was basically a rip off of Metal Slug. However, instead of playing Metal Slug people somehow felt compelled to buy it for the Gamecube and again on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, most of Newground's audience was still in diapers when Metal Slug was released and might possibly still be.

With The Behemoth's latest release titled Castle Crashers, users are finding themselves digging deep in order to purchase some Microsoft fun bucks for the privilege of downloading what basically amounts to Turtles in Time but with some RPG elements tacked on. Sorry, but I didn't play Turtles as a kid and lament that I couldn't level up Donatello. Everything old is new again with RPG elements! Any jerkoff will buy your game as long as you can level up. Ding! Now that this is aired out, can we put an end to all this leveling up? I went outside and killed some grass hoppers and gained no life experience. It just doesn't work this way Video game companies.

Because The Behemoth is billed as an indie company it makes them somehow less evil than the likes of EA. Sorry, but I just can't support things like Q&A, online multiplayer working out of the box, and saved games not suddenly disappearing for no reason. I heard Larry Probst personally raped every single underpaid programmer at EA. It's enough to make an anonymous housewife stick up for her pussy husband on LiveJournal.

What you forgot to hate: Newgrounds is the clearinghouse for every crappy flash animation featuring Sonic fighting Goku or Mario and Mario shits his pants for some reason, made by guys who just finished downloading Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. That Newgrounds doesn't at least owe part of its fortune to The Pirate Bay would be hard to believe.

The clientele is every loser who wore a Slipknot shirt in junior high school and quotes Borat in college. Newground's success in the world of console games should only infuriate you more.

Penny Arcade

Why you love it now: Score another one for the "indie game developers can do no wrong" crowd, though I never imagined in a million years that a couple of guys would be able to finance a series of games off a damn web comic. If I weren't so full of irrational hatred I'd be pretty damn impressed.

Penny Arcade is making a game? Well that sounds kind of dum- YOU MEAN IT'S AN RPG?! Count me the hell in!

Expecting a backlash against the gruesome twosome's video game debut I was shocked to find that Penny Arcade's game was, gasp, well-received by the general masses.

And then I realized it has RPG elements. Well there you go.

What you forgot to hate: The fact that these guys achieved an incredible amount of success and your comic about dudes with 'tudes who play video games and are occasionally reprimanded by a stereotypical female character who is always complaining about her period and the hands are never in proportion to the rest of the characters' bodies never got off the ground.

Most of all, have you've seen these guys in person? Not at all like their comic self. Harvey Pekar may look like he's the poster boy for NPR and This American Life, but at least American Splendor is true to the characters. I bet I say something mean about the two I can get a feud going between them. Wouldn't that be exciting?

Can you imagine what the Internet would be like without petty feuds? It'd be a place to communicate with people who are different than you. It'd be a place to learn new things, enrich your life and the lives of others, and help make the world a better place. An Internet without drama and the web sites devoted to cataloging that drama? I can't imagine such an Internet.

Then there's the factor that they unleashed hell in the form of the now situational web comic typecast roles. You need two human characters. Just change out the hair and cloths so you can recycle the face. Toss in a random animal or object that can talk. With all that you have yourself your very own comedy web comic.

So when a couple of otherwise okay guys attempt to make a couple of bucks through a collaborative vision, hard work and determination, just say no. We don't tolerate that sort of bullshit around here.

Web 2.0

Why you love it now: I signed up on Twitter. The Horror...The Horror

What you forgot to hate: Just because you submit yourself to the glorious hive mind mentality of constantly maintaining communication doesn't mean you have to sign up to everything. Jesus.

Anyway, Twitter continues to become more popular than anything in the free world as days go by. The site allows users to send and receive text messages from friends and family about any old thing. It isn't exactly new technology but it's the ease at which messages can be sent and received.

Well what do you know, access to a seemingly endless supply of images of breasts does get boring.

From your profile you can type in a short message about what you're currently up to. Those who "follow" you receive the message on their phone. Conversely, you may receive a message like, "Just got out of the shower, soaking wet, looking to get fucked tonight -Mom".

With the ability to send and receive messages to and from your friends about every little thing you are doing, it only leads me to one question, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT WHEN YOU MEET UP WITH THOSE PEOPLE?

"Oh hey! I was just at the store and you won't believe who I saw!"

"You told me on Twitter."

"Oh."

"Hmmm."

"Okay, see you on Twitter then."

One of the benefits of leaving the house to go do something is being able to come back and tell someone everything you did. Usually that person doesn't care, so why would they want to sign up to receive real-time status reports about you? And yet they do.

It appears that communication is an activity that's best avoided unless it can be done in bite-sized nuggets and as inane as possible. Twitter makes it easy to transmit any superfluous thought you may have such as "Do you think John Ritter is boring God in heaven right now?", otherwise these thoughts would just stay in your head. And who would want that?

Social Networking Sites in General

Why you love it now: You're reading this on one now.

What you forgot to hate: Because you're reading this on one now.

It goes to show you that any yahoo with a computer, a keyboard, and some sort of six degrees of separation from someone hot can try to meet you. 10 years from now people will question how anyone met new friends before the internet. The scary aspect of all this is that it now outnumbers porn as the most clicked on item on the internet.

Think about it people. PORN! My grandpa spoke about the great depression. How without any booze and any money, the only thing that kept him going for those 13 years was that he could get a peek at some ladies legs at the peep show for 3 cents. Sure, he had to boil a boot for food, but on the flip side he wasn't bombarded with friend request followed by "THANKS FOR THE ADD!!" whenever he went to see some bare shins.

Sign off..... after you've read this, of course.

The majority of the time spent on these sites is in an effort to get laid. So perhaps it passing up porn isn't that much of an issue since in the end of things, the web is being used to get your rocks off.

Even worse is that it's not limited to your Goth teenagers anymore. Pets can actually jump in on the social networking on sites like Catster /Dogster. It's important that your pets have a social life. Then maybe they'll stop bugging me to take them for a walk or scratch their butt as they can get one of their pet friends to do that for them.

Are you back with me now? I thought I lost you there for a while. Now that I write all this out and get it in the open, perhaps I'll sufficiently retrained in the art of hating everything I hate (well, the four examples I could think of anyway), the healing process can begin.

I recommend making slanderous claims about web comic authors you don't think are funny, not accepting friend request from spam, bands or anyone else for that matter on myspace. I've always hated those people! How dare they try to be my friend!

Oh, joy! It's like I never stopped hating these things.