Over and Out

I'm so pissed off about this whole Chris Benoit thing, and in a number of ways.

I have to tell you up front that I hope the guy rots in Hell for what he's done. I do. Whatever mitigating circumstances there might be, there's no excuse for what he did. None. I don't care what kind of drugs he might have been on, there's no excuse for killing your kid, unless you've got testimony from at least two priests who will say that the child is the devil; and even then, they have to at least perform an exorcism or two before they can give up hope.

Anyway, I just got home from karaoke, and I'm watching the Nancy Grace show, despite the fact that I know Nancy Grace is the most abhorrent show on television; as believing half of the shit that the anchor of that show (generally Nancy Grace) says is tantamount to lobotomizing oneself with a spoon, watching six hours of Fox News Network, and then reading a Bill O'Reilly book. Anyway, I'm watching this broad substitute for Nancy Grace, and she does the job exceptionally well, except for the fact that she's a brunette, and her teeth aren't as blindingly white, and she's got Bret Hart on as a guest commentator.

Now, Bret Hart is a legend. I just have to say that. I've never liked the guy much, but I do recognize his prominence as a wrestler, as I will ultimately recognize Peyton Manning, despite the fact that he robbed my Bears of a Superbowl victory. Regardless, Bret Hart's been out of the game for a couple of years, and he certainly has no reason to defend Vince McMahon, and so he goes on the show to be some sort of voice of reason...

If there's one thing the Nancy Grace show frowns upon, it's reason. They prefer to jump to the simplest possible conclusion, or the second-simplest, if that one will provide better ratings than the simplest conclusion. Nancy Grace is a big fan of finding guilt where the authorities have not yet determined reasonable expectation for guilt to exist, almost as though she's the world's biggest fan of Occam's Razor. The problem is, the world doesn't necessarily exist like this.

Take the Benoit case for example: Guy kills his wife and kid, then kills himself. Steroids are found in his home, along with painkillers and other drugs, all of which the local sheriff whatever spokesman said were legitimately prescribed (this is Tuesday, mind you). Now, the Nancy Grace show hears the word "steroids" and immediately assumes they're being taken by Chris Benoit, without considering the fact that Benoit's kid had Fragile X Syndrome, which is a form of autism, one of the side-effects is an extremely low degree of muscle mass. We're not talking about "oh, the kid's a little underweight," we're talking about something along the lines of the kid beyond beyond the Nicole Richie degree of being thin. The kid's gone past being gaunt.

Okay, so I'm not trying to excuse Chris Benoit's actions; I'm just trying to understand them. So, if this big, beefy professional wrestler had a kid who needed constant attention and wasn't ever going to be a normal kid, never going to be a normal adult, who was going to require constant attention for the remainder of his life, the wrestler's going to think, "What the fuck happened?" Again, I don't excuse the guy. He certainly had enough of an opportunity to find some sort of support network (although I understand it's very difficult to find a support network for Fragile X), but he didn't want to be a spokesman for the syndrome, according to something I found on WWE's website. And I can partially understand his desire to keep his private life private, but I still have to think that he was in a unique position to be a hero to a lot of wrestling fans who might have children or other relatives with Fragile X or other forms of autism.

Two or three days after the discovery of the bodies of Benoit and his family, the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy announced that they have been able to reverse the effects of Fragile X in mice. Maybe if the news had come out a week sooner, if it was the stress of his son's condition that caused Chris Benoit to kill his family and himself, maybe Benoit would have found the strength to hold on for a while longer. Granted, it's going to be years before this discovery hits human trials, but it's hope for a lot of people.

And if it wasn't his son's condition that drove Benoit to do it, maybe it was the drugs; and I'm not talking about steroids, here, because nothing in this case screams, "'Roid Rage!!!" No, the Bibles at the bedsides of the victims doesn't shout, "Yeah, I'm fuckin' batshit insane;" it's more along the lines of an act of contrition. Furthermore, these guys get knocked over the top rope every week, get body-slammed, suplexed, clotheslined, powerbombed, you name it. They're in a lot of pain after every match. If you think wrestling is fake, you're wrong. The wrestling is real; the outcome of the match is predetermined, but the wrestling is real. So maybe the guy was on a bad cocktail of pain-killing drugs.

Now, I don't know if they have one or several or none at all, but I would hope that the WWE would take this opportunity to enlist at least one, if not a permanent staff, of psychiatrists to keep track of these guys. Granted, the WWE probably isn't liable for Benoit's actions, but it's really in the best interest of the company to make sure that their employees are as sound of mind as they are of body.

I just find this whole situation tremendously sad for all parties. I find it sad for the extended family of Chris Benoit and his wife; I find it sad for the WWE corporation, because they're being burned at the stake right now, as much as Chris Benoit is; I find it sad for the fans who have taken down their posters of Chris Benoit because he's rotting in Hell as we speak; but I find it sad, most of all, for Daniel Benoit, whose only sin was being born with an unusual X-chromosome.

Anyway, back to Bret Hart. I'm not a fan, generally. Never have been. But the thing that drives me absolutely batshit insane about the Nancy Grace show is that any time that someone starts to make sense of a situation, particularly when that bit of sense runs against whatever sensationalistic angle the show happens to be running with, they cut the person off as soon as humanly possible, despite the fact that the commentator might actually be a legitimate source of actual information. So Bret Hart, wrestling legend, was pretty much limited to about thirty or so seconds of comment before being cut off for either a commercial or some schmuck who thinks this is all the result of 'Roid Rage.

Bret Hart, today, you are my hero. I only wish there were any channels out there that were actually devoted to finding truth, rather than just getting ratings. I loved the way they said under Bret Hart's name, "Close friend of Chris Benoit," when everything I've read said that Chris Benoit really didn't have any close friends. Clearly, being a fellow Canadian and professional wrestler is close enough for Headline News to deem "close friendship."

So, in closing, fuck you, Nancy Grace Show. Fuck you, your substitute hosts, your producers, your sponsors, and anyone at the corporate level involved with keeping your show alive.


On a lighter note, I wholeheartedly recommend dropping ninety-nine cents on the Chris Cornell cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." It is as good as you'd think it is, just from reading that sentence.

AIM: therbmcc71

Stupid Typo

So, I thought I was going to look at pornography this evening, but instead I'm reading about rhotic versus non-rhotic accents. I had no idea there was even such a thing or terminology to define it. I figured accents just vary so wildly that it's impossible to simply categorize them as one or the other. During all of this, I started to read about African American Vernacular English, which is actually quite entertaining once you get to one simple conclusion:

There are people (generally college professors) who think this shit is monumentally important.

Why, no, I've never been a fan of Noam Chomsky's work. Why do you ask?


AIM: therbmcc71

Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk

So I can't find the notebook in which I placed the review of the opening band for the last show I went to. Oh well, I think we'll all live. I'll find it eventually and cruelty will ensue.
At the moment, I'm involved in a war of comments over at Joystiq, with regard to the sales of the Sony PSP versus the Nintendo DS. There's a PSP fanboy over there who seems to think that the DS and the DS Lite are two completely separate creatures, and that their sales should be regarded separately, which would allow him to say that the PSP has outsold the DS Lite in the worldwide arena. First, this is probably untrue, since DS Lites started appearing on shelves again, as well as a nice boost in sales since the two new Pokemon games came out. Second, he's throwing logic to the wind, which inevitably causes me to do the same, but he doesn't understand that I do it from the standpoint of satire, mocking his idiocy. For proof of his idiocy, he thinks that four movie titles in a month being released on the PSP qualifies as support for the UMD format, despite the fact that the only studio releasing movies on UMD happens to be... Sony.

Unfortunately, he hasn't responded to my last comment in about ten minutes, which means he's probably waiting a few hours until I go to sleep so he can get the last word in. In the meantime, we'll cover the day's news:

• Jerry Falwell is dead. Can't say I'm any more upset by this than he would be upset if a gay man died of AIDS. I guess the good lord didn't love Jerry Falwell enough to keep him alive.
• Apple's increased the clockspeed on the MacBook line, but the graphics processor remains the Intel GMA950, which is incapable of doing on-chip Transform & Lighting rendering, which drives me batshit insane.
• Smashing Pumpkins are coming back... except it's Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, and ... well, some people to fill the roles of D'arcy Wretzky and James Iha, so doesn't that technically make it more of a Zwan comeback?
• Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming up to do an animated Tintin trilogy. I fuckin' hate Tintin. Have since grade school.
• The movie Mr. Sardonicus is free on the local movie-on-demand service. I've watched it twice, because it's such a bad movie. Seriously, if you've got Comcast, give it a whirl and then come back and tell me the main character (not Sardonicus) doesn't look just like David Hasselhoff.

Yeah, that's all I've got right now. Slow news day.

AIM: therbmcc71

Come Sail Away

So it didn't hit me what Danimal's passing really meant to me on a personal level until probably twenty-four hours after I made my last post: I'm never going to be able to sing "Come Sail Away" ever again, because I've lost my Chef. I don't do anything else well at karaoke, and now my Chef is gone. So it reminds me of this tribute to Mel Blanc:



I have to be at a funeral in seven hours, so you'll have to excuse my being so brief. By the way, the next time I post, it is going to be about that band I saw last Friday. Life's too short to lock something like that away forever.

AIM: therbmcc71

Fell On Black Days

So I was going to post this running commentary I was scribbling last night while I was out seeing the band, but I'm not going to bother doing that today because my friend (and the guy who runs the karaoke I regularly attend) Dan died suddenly yesterday. One of those "just dropped dead" things. So I'm not really in the mood to type up something really extravagantly entertaining. I think he'd have enjoyed what I wrote last night, but now's not really the time to giggle to myself as I type.

I'll post it at some point. It's not as entertaining as the show with Gypsy the Biker, but there are some good zingers in there. But it'll have to wait.


AIM: therbmcc71

Boys Don't Cry

So I told Kevin that I'd try to update. To be specific, I told him that I'd try to try, but I took the time to hit iTunes and go shopping. I still haven't found anything that I particularly want to buy, but at least I'm out of this bizarre week-long fetish that I had for post-Rammstein European electronica/industrial music that I only use for playing player-versus-player in World of Warcraft, which I've fallen back into ever since they released the expansion back in January, at which point I decided to make myself a Paladin on a new server. It's quite the experience, and it's been taking up a fair bit of my time.

Right now I'm listening to this rather eclectic mix of Unplugged performances, from Alanis Morissette to Oasis to Paul Simon to Elton John to Lenny Kravitz. I'd mention Hootie and the Blowfish, because it's in there, but will be deleted at my earliest possible convenience. But the mention of music kind of hinges on the reason that I stopped blogging some four or so months ago:

I realized that I'm starting to get old, and I made a note to myself that by my next birthday, in standing with a promise I made to myself several years ago, that I have to put together a Bruce Springsteen cover band. I've always wanted to be in a bar band, and I've always thought the E Street Band is probably the best bar band on the planet, and so it makes perfect sense that I'd like to be Bruce Springsteen. After all, who wouldn't? I figure I'm halfway there, with my Parker P-36 "Telly knockoff" that I'm fabulously in love with but don't play nearly enough. Sadly, I can't sing like Springsteen, but Kevin said, "Just scream," which is probably about accurate. I mean, hell, I can sing "The River" or "Brilliant Disguise," but "Born to Run" and "Born in the U.S.A." and the end of "Jungleland" are a bit of a challenge.

But I saw Kevin and the boys (read: Small Shiny Things) tonight, and it was a good time. Probably would've been better if they'd gone on earlier, but I can't complain, because I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in several months, a few that I really wasn't expecting to see, and a lot of people that it was a real joy to see. My friend Shawn was unexpectedly in attendance, and he showed me his new tattoo of Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise. It was a really good St. Patrick's Day show.

I would elaborate, but I just had to switch over to iTunes and immediately delete the Bjork song that was on there. Stupid compilation CD's. There are precious few things that I will not listen to willingly: Screaming children who are not related to me, Imogen Heap, and Bjork. I can tolerate most other things, but those are the big three that make me want to hit people.

While I'm on the subject of music, I've asked all of the girls at work who went to the Justin Timberlake concert, and none of them can answer this for me: What the fuck is "Sexyback" about? Every single one of them says, "I don't know," and it pisses me off, because it takes one or two listens to a Springsteen song to get the gist of it. It took me more than a few listens to Nirvana's Nevermind before I got the joke and realized, "Y'know what? These songs don't mean shit."

I need a vacation. I really do. Unfortunately, situations at work preclude this, because we have this one girl who's completely incompetent, and I can't leave for more than two days until she's off the schedule (read: hopefully fired) without thinking that she's trying to burn down my lab. Unfortunately, I have no control over this and management doesn't seem to think it's a priority, as I can't prove to them with invoices and things the dollar amount of things that she's destroying on a daily basis. But I really want to take a vacation, or at least have three or four days off in a row without work calling me to ask how to do some particularly complicated thing that they shouldn't be doing in the first place.

I've bought a number of videogames, a few movies, and probably several other things that I should have commented on over the last few months, but I'm not going to at the moment, because my comments are quite wordy. I'm trying to figure out how to put together a new site, but I need a domain name and a lot of control over the layout; far more than Blogger is willing to offer me. I'm trying to do something with a page in which there's no scrolling involved, and the pages look and flip like a magazine or newspaper. I find that columns are a hell of a lot easier to read than the "wall of text" that comprise most blogs. For some sites, you'll find something like this on the front page, but then you'll find walls of text on the subsequent pages, but I'm looking for something uniform, which means a lot of work up front, and I'm really not sure how long I'd like to keep it up, anyway. At this point, this paragraph should look like a wall of text in your browser, so you now see what I'm bitching about.

Anyway. I'm going to go to sleep now, as I have to work tomorrow. I'm going to fall asleep watching the Miami Vice movie, as I have the last two times I tried to watch it. As much as I like Michael Mann films, for some reason I don't think this movie is as good as the TV show. And I don't mean the TV show as a whole, but pretty much any episode Michael Mann ever had anything to do with. Given the several years of Nash Bridges, I never figured I'd want to see Don Johnson step back into the loafers and bright pink shirt of Sonny Crockett, but I just don't think Colin Farrell really brings much to the table in the role. I think it's the fault of Michael Mann's script, as I've seen Colin Farrell make much more out of a lot less (read: Daredevil), but I watch the movie and keep thinking to myself, "Y'know, I bet Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas would have been badass in this movie."

Yeah, so like I said. Sleep. I told you I'd update, Kevin! Ha-ha!


AIM: therbmcc71