“We need nuts in our Honey Cheerios!” – Marketing guy
“Nuts sir?” - Perveted cereal mixer
“Yes.  Nuts.  Round small nuts”
“Um… what kind of nuts sir?”
“You know, nuts.  Like squirrel nuts.”
“Okay sir…”
(Two days later)
“So, I found some squirrel nuts and put them into the cereal vats”
*holds out bag of bloody squirrel testicles*
“Good god man!  I meant walnuts, peanuts, cashews!  Ack!”
“But… the people loved it in taste tests…”
“Oh… well… I guess we just don’t tell anyone. ”
“We’ll just call it… Honey Nut Cheerios.  Don’t mention the squirrels”
“Yeah.  They’ll never guess it.  Muhahaha!”

Shifty-eyed, devil-red, and grinning like a frat boy at an orgy, Wahoo was called “racist, degrading and demeaning” by the American Indian Education Center in Cleveland during one of many protests over the years. – http://www.slate.com/id/2164062/slideshow/2164626/fs/0//entry/2164640/’

Now, I’m not one to be picky, but isn’t perpetuating the stereotype of frat boys as being sexually promiscuous and proud of it while discussing racist stereotypes in advertising kind of missing the point?  I doubt there was any deep meta-meaning in their choice of words, it was a careless turn of phrase to make their point more vivid.  Shame on them.

• If they can get away with it, assume they did it.
• Follow the money.
  • Corollary: Follow the oil.
• Democratic capitalism always favors those with capital.
  • Corollary: 90% of the capital in the hands of 20% of population isn’t very democratic.
• The squeaky wheels get the grease.
  • Corollary: Those really needing lube don’t get any.

I mean, I understand why people do it. If a video is getting hits, then its responses are going to get exposure, and the people who post responses are all about exposure. The why is simple. People are sluts. What I don’t get is how most of the responders don’t understand the irony of their responses.

You see, I was watching a YouTube video of someone doing a picture using fries and ketchup. Of the cover of Supersize Me, no less. There is a lot of speed drawing videos on YouTube, and they’re all pretty much the same. The addition of interesting tools made it unique for me. I was captivated for the speed-enhanced 3 minutes it took to watch. And then, I saw them. Responses. I knew better, but I clicked one…

It was done by a 16 year old male with a headset mic and a decent webcam. He babbled about how the ketchup video wasn’t very creative compared to others, not very much artistic talent, not really worth being an internet video, etc. Not worth being an internet video…. wait a second. Did it not register in his puny little mind that if the ketchup video wasn’t worthy of the internet, that a response to the ketchup video inhabits a rung far below it on the ladder of worthiness?

This is what I don’t get. Almost all of these responses are bashing other people’s amateur attempts at 15 minutes of fame. And yet, if you honestly believe their 15 minutes of fame wasn’t worth putting onto the internet, how could your 3 minutes of griping about it rank above that? Are a mic and a desire to hear your own voice enough? I mean, it works for Colbert… but at least he’s funny. These people are Serious.

Of course, I have to ask myself, is responding to the responses to an internet video any better? Well, yes, of course. I thought the ketchup video was pretty cool. I wish I could do that with fries and ketchup. I also wish that people didn’t feel the need to tell someone “I know, you think that was pretty cool, but it wasn’t really cool, and I’m cool for telling you that it isn’t cool.” Sadly, I doubt either of these will happen. Though I’m holding out for the fries and ketchup thing.

Bethany is off to San Fran, leaving me to work all weekend.  Crunch time, and it’s not even a crunch for retail release, just a beta.  Fairly important stuff, though, since without setup there is no product.  Since I don’t really have a reason to be home, I’ll probably be working most of the weekend.  Go me, taking one for the team.  Man, doesn’t that sound familiar. 

I guess everyone will just get to stare at this on the main page for awhile, as I doubt I’ll have time to spiffy up the site and make it more what it’s supposed to be and less what it is.  Given that amount of downtime my current work has, expect a lot of rambling nonsensical posts.  I can hear the cheers.

Of course, at the current rate it will never happen, because I don’t tend to get to the productive web development stage until about hour 2 of a session and by then it’s either time for bed or food or whatever.  Which sucks, because I have a lot of cool ideas I’d like to try, as well as resurrecting PHPIM and the survey system and other web dev goodness.  And get our pictures up here, build my own forum (because I can, hopefully), and all other kinds of things that would make real developers shun me.  Javascript minesweeper anyone?

Oh yeah, welcome to my 2×2 little shanty on the web.  Here I’ll be complaining about all the stupid things people do or the smart things that they don’t.  Or about anything else I can get my grubby little hands on.  Or maybe I’ll talk about all the amazing cool things I think of that make my wife roll her eyes at me.  Or I could talk about my job and technology related stuff.  More than likely, you’ll get to hear a little bit of all of this stuff.  Or nothing, as I’m notorious for not updating these bloody things.  But hey, new domain, new host, new leaf. 

Welcome to 4200 One Monkey Way.  It’s not a barrel full of monkeys yet, but we’re recruiting.