johnrobe

In Canada, we have public health care. Sometimes the hospitals look bland and institutional - heck, even sometimes run down. I usually get to see my doctor right away, but sometimes I have to wait an hour or so. The biggest advantage of it, to me, is that I never have to think about it. It’s there if I need it, when I need it, and it’s free (at least the same way that things like roads and the army are free).

In the US? You have commercials like this:

Yes, that’s Billy Mays, described on Wikipedia as “a television commercial and infomercial salesperson most notable for promoting OxiClean, Orange Glo, and other cleaning, home-based, and maintenance products. His signature yelling approach to pitching an array of products, along with his recognizable beard, have gained Mays a substantial amount of recognition.”

And he’s selling health insurance.

Is anyone besides me a little weirded out by this? At the risk of politicizing the place, I am glad that I live in a country where I don’t have to make health care decisions based on celebrity beard endorsements and 1-800 numbers.

John Television

Dear Harmonix, makers of Rock Band Wii,

I love your game. I don’t like that my Guitar Hero guitar doesn’t work with it (and your corporate speak explanation about how it’s all Activision’s fault comes across about as sincere as a telemarketer’s apology for interrupting your dinner) and I don’t like that I had to wait longer than everyone else to get Rock Band for my gaming platform of choice, but you are forgiven, because the game is so good.

Or at least, you are almost forgiven, because there is still one really annoying problem. See the movie above. That blinking light is what I see in my living room every day and every night. That blinking light represents the optimistic USB guitar dongle seeking the Wii wireless guitar in vain. The only way to stop it blinking is to unplug the dongle from the USB hub. You put an on/off switch on the guitar — why can’t you put on on the dongle? Heck, why not just make it so I have to push a button on the dongle every time I want to sync a guitar to it? I really wouldn’t be upset. This isn’t a function that is so critical that I’ll be upset if the dongle doesn’t instantly find every guitar that comes within 20 feet. If I play Rock Band once a day, do you know how often I need to use the wireless sync functionality? Once a day! Yet you have this thing seeking guitars 24 hours a day, endlessly blinking and blinking and blinking.

To top it all off - it doesn’t even sync very well! You would think that the benefit of all this vigilance would be that when I did want to play a little guitar that as soon as I turned the guitar on and came anywhere near the dongle - zap! It would be ready to go. Unfortunately, its actual track record is something like one time in five that it actually manages to notice the guitar at all. I have to stand next to the Wii, turning the guitar on and off, on and off, on and off, until the bastardly blinking light eventually goes solid to tell me that the dongle has deigned to notice my guitar. A coworker didn’t know about the “turn the guitar on and off” trick, so he used to reboot his Wii every time! This is what you’re making people do. Stop it! Stop the madness!

You can make it up to me with Rock Band 2.

John Rants

…and it’s also your best source for news and anal. Don’t just trust me, look at their own slogan / page title (on the Firefox tab shown above).

To quote Marge Simpson after seeing Homer come home with a bag of, “one of those porno magazines, large box of condoms, a bottle of Old Harper, a couple of those panty shields, and some illegal fireworks, and one of those disposable enemas… eh, make it two”, I don’t know what you’ve got planned for tonight, but count me out!

As a bonus, check out the story headline shown at the top of the page. Yes, it’s an old title (I forgot I took this screen shot) but you can’t beat that anal / testicles combination.

John The Weeb

John Shameless Consumerism

“And now, their fates were in the hands of Carrot Top.”

John Television

Yesterday we celebrated Tash’s PhD at a lovely patio in the afternoon sun and shade. Matej, looking stylish as always, was wearing a great blue hat (not pictured at right).

I’m quite pleased with this new trend for men to wear hats. As a fan of old movies, I miss that men don’t wear hats everywhere anymore. The only men you see wearing them are either balding or cutting edge fashion-wise, and even in the case of those who are on the cutting edge of fashion, the first assumption is that they’re a stylish bald man rather than just a stylish man. What I really want to see is far more of the latter, and that’s why I need as many stylish and completely non bald men like Matej wearing hats.

Like it or not, I know that I am not the most stylish man around. I don’t look right on the cutting edge. What I really need is for that cutting edge to get a little more dull, a little more normal, then I can be all over it too. I want people to see a guy in a hat and think, “Ahh, I like that hat.” Instead of “Ahh, another guy going bald.” That way, when *I* start going bald, I can wear hats and nobody will be the wiser!

It’s one of my most fiendish long term plans, really. So keep it up Matej and all you other stylish fully-haired guys out there, and thanks!

John General

Above is a video of a guy who built a computer controlled paintball sentry that attacks anything moving with about 70% accuracy. I am scared at the real world applications of this as much as I could really use it on garbage nights to keep raccoons away from the green bin.

I mean, have you ever been shot with a paintball gun at close range? It frickin’ hurts!

Now that this has been invented though, we’re getting closer to all the technology found in Aliens. Still required are androids who run on milk, robot exo-skeleton forklifts, cryogenic suspension and terraforming reactors. I’ll keep checking YouTube.

John General

You might have seen it - a series of commercials with a talking eyeball and talking tongues (plus various other body part guest stars) for Coke Zero.

The gist is that the tongues can’t believe it’s not regular Coke, despite what the snooty eyeball tells them. (The eyeball’s accent is French, in case you didn’t pick up on the snootiness from his attitude in general.)

It’s messing with my mind though… why is there only one eyeball but two tongues? If the idea is that tongues can only taste but not see, why can they hear what the eyeball is saying? And how do they all talk? (Well, I guess the tongues should be able to talk, kinda).

Then in this particular one I’ve embedded (which I haven’t seen on TV yet) there’s a severed finger / thumb that walks, talks and farts when you pull it. First of all, how has the eyeball never seen that trick before? Secondly, where does the fart come from? Sure, the pulled finger is the classic trigger for a fart gag, as any 4 year old will tell you, but that’s not where the fart comes from (we won’t go into that here). And lastly, thre is no tongue on earth that would enjoy being near that gag when it goes off. Sure, they probably can’t smell according to the weird logic of the commercial, but would you want to potentially taste one? Ew, not me.

John Television