Smack Factory Stream The Latest Smack http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:57:07 +0000 60 Where are all the good men? http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3093
I keep hearing "Where did all the good men/women go?" Quite frankly, it's starting to get on my nerves, so I'm going to answer it.

In my opinion, which is worth almost exactly what you paid for it, the answer to your question is probably found somewhere in the convergence of a perfect social storm. First and foremost on the list is that were taught never to settle for anything less that what we absolutely want. I have no problem with this, but it does differ from generations past when people were limited geographically and by and large probably had to settle for the best of what was available.

Hey, I’m not saying your grandma is a bad lady, I’m just thinking maybe if your grandpa could have met a nice girl from Glendale…who knows? He might have held out, had that option been there. Didn’t mean grampa chuck and gramma Madeline weren’t a good pair, though.

Next, you have the Gimmie-Now generation, trained by the gen X and even Gen Y crew, so no pointing fingers there. (Gen Y? BECAUSE WE DESERVE IT!) We’ve become a society less interested in the journey and more interested in the destination. Do you know what a romantic is? Someone who enjoys the trip. Romantics are a dying breed, and it shows…people want to get into the land of great relationships without having to drive across the Plains of Monotony and the mountains of We-Really-Fucked-Up-This-Time. Savoring the experience isn’t the greatest alternative, I’ll grant, but it makes up for being lonely.

Added to our generally perceived inability to compromise and thinning skin, we get recipes for disaster. I’m pretty sure I broke most of the relationships I was in, or at least had a hand in it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it at the time. Turns out you’ve either got to admit it, or learn to get over it. It only took me twenty five years to figure that out, so it’s my gift to you.

I come across as a cynic, but I’m not. Really, I love people, I love the world. I want to believe that we’re all able to be incredible, given the chance, and it genuinely hurts to see us chose that path which is the most hurtful and the most destructive to us and those around us. The purpose in life is to love, and we’ve forgotten what we’re living for.

So where did all the good men go? They're the ones who are standing in front of you; the ones with the nose that might be a little to big or the eyes that aren't just right. They're the ones who are almost as lost as you are when it comes to what happens next, but are also afraid to admit it. They're the ones who smile at you but don't talk because the devil they know is better than the devil they don't.

They didn't go anywhere.

I guess that sums it up.]]> Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:43:41 +0000 http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3093 The New Mac Commercials http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2980 Mac commercials are out.

The kind of people who like those ads are the kind of people who deserve Macs inflicted upon them.

To me, that attitude borders on the impatient, holier-than-thou crap that appears in every nerd-vs-the-cool-crowd in every other office-cubicle, mountain-side, SUV, MTV-flavored us vs. them wanna-be ad.

Not too long ago, commercials could be clever. Now, in the absence of genuine effort, they lean on the crutch of vindictive exclusion, which is just what this world needs, right?

As an aside, this particular ad campaign relies on semantic shenanigans, since apparently we're counting every virus that's ever been made for the PC. I guess they decided to ignore OSX-LeapA (latestpics.tgz) and its ilk, and the rootkits that came out specifically for OSX, and the well-documented catalogue of viruses and virus-like programs aimed at BSD and other flavors of *N?X. Do you want to honestly tell me that hacks, cracks, and exploits don't exist for a unix-based (or at least non-windows based) OS? What is generally regarded as the first "in the wild" virus was written for Apple DOS. 14,000 viruses for PCs? How about a few thousand viruses and twelve thousand different varients of all the old ones? Perhaps the best thing about that commercial is that somewhere out there, a real hacker is watching that thinking "they're challenging me? Well, then..."

Congratulations to Mac - you produce sexy machines that have the fit and finish of a work of art. You use great parts, and have top-notch PR. You have service costs that are stupidly high, but you mitigate this by having a low average number of times your computers need serviced and great service when they need it. You have a nice OS, and a good racket going with your ability to produce your hardware and software and make them both proprietary, so that they function radiantly together. Your software is the computer world's equivelent of Nintendo's in-house game development – garnering the kind of accolades most developers would kill for – and you penetrate your entire market pervasively without being sued for creating monopolies, even if you DO put your own AV crap all over your computers. Other OS's should be so lucky. Instead, on what to do you base an ad campaign?

Instilling a false sense of security in an entire community of people willing to buy into a brand by making them feel impervious or "above" the common hacker. Creating a backhanded slap at MS by badmouthing the PC industry as a whole, which, after your switch to the (think different!) Intel crew, you are undoubtedly more a part of than ever. Playing to the nerd stereotype with your proto-funk average Joe vs. the PC geek juxtaposition. You have completed the transition from "Exclusive because we're cool" to "Cool because we're exclusive". Bravo.

It's easy to see why the commercials are vindictive, petty, and shallow. It appears the people making them are the same way.]]> Sun, 07 May 2006 02:15:45 +0000 http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2980 Substantially the Truth http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2915
I remember at one point writing a poem about the marvel that is the screw top lid, entitled "Ode to That Circular Ramp that is the Lever that Makes The Screw Top Lid Work". Tok just wanted to do boxing stuff, and I think Lukas was involved primarily because we forced him to do it, and he was too polite to tell us to piss off.

This is, of course, now known as a blog.

Let me tell you why I’m not a suitable blogger:

My life isn’t very interesting.

Oh, some people may think so, but then, it’s because some people are sick and twisted, and have a morbid set of voyeuristic tendencies. This is why we hang around to watch someone fall into a manhole (or “access hatch”, as they’re now known in the world of the thin-skinned and politically correct. I, for one, think there is something decidedly and amusingly Freudian about a gaping maw in the earth—in which lies sewage, trash, and rats the size of shelties—called a “man hole”). Don’t lie, because we both know you’d watch.

There are a stunning number of blogs on the interweb now, and I’ll be honest with you, I did one back in 1997, before the word was even invented, on Geocities, back when you could still FTP in and write your crap on the hi-flying Netscape Composer; WYSISWYG editor of the stars. Like many bloggers, I thought my life was interesting. In fact, I still do. It is interesting - to me. Everyone thinks his or her own life is interesting. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t bother with them. Let’s be honest…life is mostly a pain in the ass. The fact is when one is of the position that one’s life is interesting, one is more inclined to hang around to see what’s going to happen tomorrow.

It’s the same deal with babies: We all think our babies are cute, too. It’s nature’s way of keeping us from eating them (or disposing of them otherwise), which is the way of the ferrets. We must rise above the ferrets.

So you may indeed find me interesting, and if you do, I have this to say:

Sooner or later I will say something ridiculously offensive, ridiculously untrue, or just plain ridiculous. It’s my nature. As I look back at the wake I’ve made in lake of fire that is the social landscape of my life, I see a good many people barely treading water, requiring mystical water wings to keep them afloat in a situation they may or may not understand and indeed may not have even been involved in (or if you are grammatically inclined and a parsing genius: “…they may or may not understand and indeed in which they may not have even been involved”), and wondering how, exactly, they became involved in my wretched humdinger of a metaphor.

And then there are those, of course, who have simply forgone the inevitable, and put the water wings on their ankles, thus properly orientating them to deal with me, in general. They’re the one’s I’ve really pissed off. They’re hard to count, since I like to call each foot a separate person, to inflate my numbers and my ego, but there are at least a good many and probably closer to a disturbing amount.

I can promise you one thing…I’ll make fun of myself as much as I’ll make fun of anyone else. Probably not on a 1:1 basis, you understand, since my ego is a fragile thing, and requires constant love on the order of the care and feeding of some rare and exotic Italian car.

Those who know me will understand, if they are not already bobbing about face-down in a lake of fire.

Also, I can’t spell.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m not a great blogger.]]> Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:32:13 +0000 http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2915 <![CDATA[We're Back]]> http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2885
Should be resolved!]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2005 04:52:29 +0000 http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2885 FAQ http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2778
  • Did you quit/give up on this story?
    No. You may notice the forums in genral have been pretty dead lately...I do this in my free time. Lately I've had less free time than I need to properly revise, update, and do all the things associated with keeping this page and my projects going. If I win the lotto, you can bet I'll update more often.
  • Why don't you update more?
    Usually because I forget.
  • Are you going to quit now that HPatDH is out?
    No. I won't be changing anything to reflect what happened in HBP, as this story was really done long ago, and I'm basically in the long, long process of revision and rewriting.
  • Why is there an American in your story?
    I'm pretty much an OC hater. I think JKR has had 6 books to develop people, and it's silly to replace them with some flat and ill-developed characters. Very little makes me more irate (other than slash) than some dumb, poorly developed characters jumping in and taking the place of some one perfectly fine. That being said, sometimes you introduce ideas that require a new character. I had an idea that required a new character. The character needed to be from somewhere far away. I wanted someone alien enough to be enigmatic, while still being culturally accessible. To top it off, I happen to be American.
    You can always quit reading it, if it really bothers you, but I think ultimately you'd end up regretting it.
  • Why can't I read it? It's a bunch of squares and such.
    It's in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. If you need something that will read it, this is a good place to start.
  • Why do you upload the whole story when you update it, and not just the one/two chapters?
    When I update, it's often not just one chapter. I'm continuously revising everything up the point at which I am at in the process. Sometimes the changes are merely grammatical, sometimes they're actually more. The basic story won't change, but certain events are fluid until I'm completely done.
  • Why does it look like only 5/10/20 people have looked at your story?
    Because no one likes me. Also, it's listed at Fanfiction.net and Schnoogle, where it's had about 10,000 hits. Most of the people who are likely to read it do it there, I guess.
  • Are you going to do a sequel/prequel?
    Not unless people beg. I have a hardcore contingent of about 30 people that read this story and constantly bug me about finishing it, and thats about all I hear from. It'll take some serious pushing to get me to do more of this.
  • How can I be notified when you update?
    Go To the top. Choose Track This Topic in the Options drop down list on the top right. Then you'll be automagically notified when I update.
    • Thats all for now! I'll add more as the questions come in.]]>     Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:03:12 +0000 http://www.smack-factory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2778