Good, then take a deep breath and check out this psychedelic photo.
I saw it for the first time the other day while a bit tipsy and I’m pretty sure soon thereafter I was convinced I’d just been teleported into an alternate universe. Then I realized I’d just passed out in the freezer again. Luckily this time my mom didn’t get a chance to take pictures of me, so I count myself as being lucky.
Oh please, oh please, oh please.
Jericho fans, if this comes through…I can’t even begin to describe the implications it would have on future television shows. If nothing else, it’s brought attention to how poorly run many networks are operated and how shitty their methods are for determining who is watching what.
Whenever I post on HIF, I try to make the freebies somewhat funny, for what two things go better together than laughter and freebies? Sometimes I just make up random crap about what I might do with the freebies, but I usually try and think of how I can tie in one of my random escapades from my past and if I’m really lucky, I might remember a good tale to tell here on Shyzer.
Enter the free golf tees post from yesterday.
As the post scantily covers, my grandma used to live right next to a golf ball driving range. I would run over at least three or four balls every weekend as I mowed her tiny back yard, so it wasn’t long before I had a nice collection of what I viewed as ammo. I would sometimes stay with my grandma overnight since her health was deteriorating at the time, but once she went to bed at the crack of 6 PM, I always found that I was bored out of my mind. I’d read a little, listen to the radio (what I would have given for an iPod or laptop computer back then!), but every night I’d invariably find myself outside in the row of fur trees separating the range and her yard with a bucket of balls next to me.
For a while, I used to pick a target and see how many times it took me to hit it or I’d throw balls back towards the golfers just to see how close I could get. But it didn’t take long for me to either get bored again or run out of balls to throw and seeing as how I always tried to make a game out of any situation, I finally got the idea to run around.
On the range.
At night under the bright lights.
I do remember wearing a football helmet though. Because if there’s one thing I’m a stickler for, it’s safety! You know, while I’m voluntarily dodging lethal flying projectiles and spirit crushing insults from the golfers.
I don’t even remember what the point of the game was. At one point I started cleverly referring to it as “Dancing Golf Time.” I never did get beaned. Not once. I guess that doesn’t bode too well for South Carolina’s golfing elite. I’m pretty sure I just tried to stay out as long as I could, running around, flailing my arms and screaming insults back at the golfers before the acne ridden teenager who drove the golf ball collecting kart came flying like a bat out of hell towards me. Then I’d high tail it for the tree line and stealthily make my way back home, where I’d bask in the glow of my victory over cranial blunt trauma and enjoy a refreshing Diet Coke.
I think that’s all old people drink.
Anyways, a few friends eventually came over and started the Friday night ritual with me. And they say Spartanburg is boring to grow up in! After a few weeks, the owner had finally had as much as he could take, and thus he kindly gave us 10 seconds warning over the loudspeakers that he was about to release his four Dobermans off their leashes.
We thought he was just joking.
He wasn’t.
I honestly can’t think of a time where I’ve run faster than I did that night. I know the 200 yard head start we had on the beasts sounds impressive, but I seem to remember that gap shrinking at about an average of 100 yards a second, give or take. Somehow I ended up leading the way off the range and we wound up in a total stranger’s garage, slammed the door closed, and waited an hour before they finally slunk home.
And you know what? I have to tip my hat to that owner and those dogs, because it’s a testament to their ferociousnesses that the next weekend we weren’t playing “Temp the Dogs.”
Scene: Goob and two fellow teachers are outside with four full classes of kindergarten kids. What was meant to be an exercise where the kids could run around flying their recently made “kites” suddenly turned awry.
Teacher 1: You know, this didn’t really work out that well.
Goob: Yeah, I think we royally screwed this one up. Did you freaking hear the screams those three girls made when they all slammed into each other? Christ, I thought somebody had lost an eye or something.
Teacher 2 comes strolling up the nearby hill.
Teacher 2: Well that was a general clusterfuck. Did you see that boy run into the back of that truck?
Goob: What?!
Teacher 2: Yeah, that little boy in the red right there! He was just running around the field, strayed over near the farm, and slammed right into the farmers truck.
Goob: Wow. You know, I think I lost one of my kids
Teacher 1: Eh, we’re in the middle of nowhere, they’ll figure out soon enough we went inside. Let’s get the hell back inside.
A bus horn blares from behind the school building.
Goob: Ah! I just found my last kid.
Battlestar Galactica, which I anointed as the Best Television Show Ever last season, will officially end after their 4th season in 2008.
And you know what? I’m not crushed. Hell, I wasn’t even that bummed when I initially heard the news and here’s why: This means BSG can now only go out on top and with a bang. Think for a minute, when was the last series finale that you were absolutely thrilled with after it aired? Seinfeld’s was kind of stupid, as was Friends’ and West Wing’s. Many shows that are hits stay on the air until they become stale or, more importantly in the network’s eyes, stop making money. Hell, the only thing worse than a great show being canceled too early is when a network or creator refuses to let it die. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MATT GROENING!
So when a writing staff or executive producer has the gaul to come out and say, “You know, we’re doing great, but let’s not drag this thing out too long. How about we just go out on top?,” you have to applaud them. LOST did this a few weeks ago, announcing they were only going to make three more seasons before they called it quits and I have a hunch that in the not too distant future, more and more shows are going to be doing this, which is fantastic.
Viewing habits of most Americans have drastically shifted in the past three years, what with the rise of TiVo, iTunes, torrents, YouTube, and cable plans with millions of channels. As a result, we’re more accustomed to not only watching TV whenever we want, but skipping the crap we don’t like and finding alternative shows. Thus, more and more dramas like BSG and LOST are going to have to plan ahead and know where the hell they’re going if they expect to keep things not only fresh, but exciting as well for their viewers. As a result, we’re left with fewer “filler” episodes that shows always air in months like October and April and instead get seasons where the plot is moved significantly all year long.
From the marketing aspect, it’s also a smart move. When shows like ER and Desperate Housewives have no real end date in sight and the story just seems to keep dragging on and on, it’s easy to kind of shrug and not get excited about a new episode. (Not that I watch either of those) But even if the end date is far in the future, just having that date set in stone makes it a bit easier to go, “Hell, there’s not that many new episodes left, I’m gonna watch this!” On the flip side, competition between advertisers may increase as they know there is only a limited number of shows left where they can pitch their product. Of course, this won’t work as well on some shows as others, but a smart ad ex could certainly work some magic if they knew what they were doing. I bet Travelocity or Expedia would pay a little more if they knew Amazing Race only had two more seasons left or Chevy would sponsor more episodes if 24 was only having a few more days (which, after this last season, needs to happen. Seriously, that show sucks now, but whatever.)
So bravo, BSG. I can’t fraking wait to see what happens next and how this epic show actually ends.
EDIT: Here’s a pretty cool video of the computer:
EDIT 2: I’ve moved the video to below the fold, so just click the title here to see it if you want:
The future is finally here.
Personal jetpacks and hover cars will soon be distributed to every able bodied adult. I’ve already booked my vacation package for a week on the moon, where I’ll enjoy low gravity golf and Martian hunts. My own robot slave will soon begin typing these very Shyzer posts for me, as work, thought, and effort will join the likes of polio and the Dodo bird. And lest we forget about the underprivileged, as the homeless will soon be relocated into holographic suites, where they’ll be able to enjoy all the replicated food they can imagine.
Ok, well maybe not, but pretty soon Microsoft will be giving us this damn cool gadget.
Microsoft Corp. will unveil a coffee-table-shaped “surface computer” Wednesday in a major step towards co-founder Bill Gates’s view of a future where the mouse and keyboard are replaced by more natural interaction using voice, pen and touch.
Microsoft Surface, which has a 30-inch display under a hard-plastic tabletop, allows people to touch and move objects on screen for everything from digital finger painting and jigsaw puzzles to ordering off a virtual menu in a restaurant.
It also recognizes and interacts with devices placed on its surface, so cell phone users can easily buy ringtones or change payment plans by placing their handsets on in-store displays, or a group of people gathered round the table can check out the photos on a digital camera placed on top.
Of course, the first few batches will cost a cool 10K, but the way computer prices depreciate, it won’t be long before we’re all able to invite friends over, get drunk, and then smash our coffee table computer to pieces when we pass out on them.
I can’t wait.
Apparently the post I made late last month has been attracting a lot of traffic from a British sex fetish search engine all thanks to my usage of the word “spanking” in the title. (If you want to see the site in question, you’ll have to find it on your own.)
Which leads to the obvious question. There’s a British search engine dedicated just to sexual fetishes?! Is there really that big of a market of people out there who are unable to find a proper smack around that a search engine has to be created for them? Seriously?
You know, I’m not even surprised such a site exists, which I think is an even bigger issue. Hell, I bet this post is just gonna keep ‘em coming now. Well, I might as well welcome you crazy Brits! The tea and crumpets are over in the corner and I’ve got old reruns of The Office on the telly. Oh, and there are plenty iPods around here to be spanked if the mood feels so.
I just got back from spending a few days down in South Carolina. The main purpose of the trip was to be there for Waynus’ high school graduation, which still doesn’t sound quite right to me. I still remember when I used to wrap him up in blankets, then strap them tight with belts before finally stuffing him in a closet and turning the lights off. I think if I tried that now, he’d just punch me in the face and laugh at me for a while.
And that, my friends, is proof enough that life is unfair.
Congrats again, bro. And to everybody I got to see and hang out with, it was fun.
A while back I wrote how I thought some of the new TV shows of the season were shaping up. What I didn’t mention was how Heroes first episode of sucktitude screwed me over.
This past August I was looking to start a new website and I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to take it. I already had a pointless, no-monetary-goal-whatsoever site in Shyzer and a “up-and-comer” that required a bit of work day in a day out in Hey, It’s Free! So I was looking for something in the middle, something that could one day make some coin but at the same time didn’t require much work. I looked into buying a turnkey website, something like an arcade site or a Myspace resource site, but I decided against it since there are around 28 thousand of each of those already.
In the end, I settled on making a blog that would focus on a niche topic, like with HIF. But since I didn’t want to be putting in as much work on this new venture as I did on HIF, I tried to think of something topical that didn’t have breaking news that I’d need to be posting every day. And that’s about the time I remembered about LOST.
You see, back when LOST first hit the net, two or three guys each started their own fansites centered around the show. They’d post a recap of the week’s episode every Thursday morning and then just post links to any related news articles they found during the week. When the show exploded, they were the only sites dedicated specifically to it and they freaking took off. Thousands of people joined the forums, pretty soon the readers were making their own crazy thoughts and ideas that the owners could just copy and paste on the site and when the DVD box sets came out, they made for perfect little advertisements on the sidebar of the site right snug between some Google Ads.
Long story short, they were making a fair bit of spare change for not much work. And that’s always a winning strategy in my book.
So I took a look at the upcoming Fall lineup last August and I tried to envision A) What might take off and be a smash hit while B) having a type of plot line that would highly interest nerds. You see, it’s kinda hard to run a blog dedicated to Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives because their main demographic audience isn’t the type to jump on-line and start blogging about it after the episode ends. Thus, I had to eliminate any dramas, sitcoms, comedies, or reality shows (the latter being ruled out because I think I might have stabbed myself in the eyes by Thanksgiving if I had been forced to actually watch such show.)
It didn’t take long to realize that Heroes was going to be the best shot at what I wanted to do. It was on at a prime time, it had the type of story that would get computer nerds and college kids interested, and it seemed like something that I would actually throughly enjoy watching. I looked at what fansites were already created for it, they were pretty shit, and so I thought I’d go for it.
Then I saw the first episode.
And it sucked.
We’re talking suuuuuuucked. Seriously, go back and watch that first episode and marvel in the craptacularness that it is. If you’re anything like me, you probably saw that first episode and stopped watching. And if you’re still anything else like me, you probably gave it another shot later on after hearing about how awesome it was, realized that the show had finally gotten good, and then tried kicking yourself in the nuts when you realized that everybody and their cousin had already started a fansite for the show.
In the end I created Facebook Talk, which I can’t say turned out poorly for me. And I probably won’t bother trying to create a fansite for a show this upcoming season, because it’s gotten to the point now where large companies are creating fansites for every show on the major network lineups and then just sticking with the ones that are good.
But it really would have been helpful had that first episode not sucked.
Apparently I was tagged by the awesome Angela in what I think is the first time ever in the 4 1/2 years I’ve been running this place. That either means I don’t have enough Internet friends or the ones I have just suck.
Anyways, the tagged topic is simply one question: Why do I blog? Well, that’s actually pretty. Besides all the obvious benefits, like the throngs of adoring fan girls who follow me around everywhere and the massive bankroll I pull in every month thanks to all those ads under the “Sponsors” section, I blog for one additional reason. Because I get bored.
Seriously, that’s about the only reason I keep this site running day in and day out. It clearly doesn’t have a focal purpose, as opposed to Hey, It’s Free! Back when I first started it, I just wanted a place where I could put down any random thoughts that I wanted to share with people and I thought if others might comment and respond to them, then all the better. Half of the enjoyment comes in trolling through the archives when I’m bored and reading all of the random crap that I posted forever ago and promptly forgot about. Seriously, give it a shot sometime. You’ll be surprised at how much I’ve written on here and some of it isn’t even that crappy 
So I guess this is the part where I have to tag people? Man, I always sucked at Tag whenever I was it. I tended to just go watch TV and leave all the people hiding in the trees and behind trash cans, but I guess for now I’ll just pass this along to Ally and leave it at that.
