"Why I Don't Want an iPad For Christmas"

Soooo, anybody know knows me, knows that I detest Apple products, and only slightly less, I detest the freaks, who do nothing to sing the praises for this company, and refuse to hear anything negative about their products. So perusing the Wall Street Journal, i stumbled across this article, and was pleased to find I wasn't the only educated asshole who thought this way. The article is listed below, but if for some reason, you don't believe me, you can read the actual article here. I'm particularly privy to reasons 5 and 10, especially since Adobe just released a major update to Flash in response to Jobs running his big, stupid mouth. Enjoy!


Everyone wants an iPad this Christmas, right?

Apple's tablet computer is this year's hottest adult toy. Sales are booming. James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Securities, expects the company to sell six million this quarter, half of them here in the U.S. It's driving the company toward what will probably be yet another blowout Christmas period. But you can count me out. I don't want an iPad for Christmas, thanks very much.

Sacrilege!

Why? Here are my reasons.

1. It'll be cheaper next year.

How dumb are people? Apple is coming out with iPad II in 2011. (Mr. Cordwell predicts April.) That means fanatics won't be seen dead with this year's model, and you'll be able to get it much cheaper. Try eBay or buy it "refurbished" direct from Apple. Price deflation in technology is a wonder to behold. Remember the first iPhones? The 8-gigabyte models cost $599. A few months later they cost $399. Now they're paperweights. The average middle-class American earns maybe $16 an hour after taxes. So if you save, say, $150 on a product, that's more than nine hours' extra work. Of course, if you love your job so much you like putting in an extra day for free, go ahead.

2. It's going to be better next year.

The next iPad will have new features—allegedly including video conferencing and maybe a better screen. This year's model will be so over. When Steve Jobs unveiled the second iPhone in 2008 he actually made fun of the slow first model—the same product that he had hailed a year earlier as the eighth wonder of the world. The audience yukked it up. Me? I'm not a fan of buying a product for $500 from a guy who's going to deride it a few months later.


3. Check out those profit margins!

OK, I admit it: I've been wrong about Apple stock lately. After correctly turning bullish at $85 two years ago, I turned cautious waaay too early. My mistake? This isn't a technology company. It's a luxury brand, like Hermès or Tiffany. And it's wooed customers so they'll pay almost anything for its products. Last Christmas, Apple's gross margins were 41%. That's incredible. It's good for Apple, good for stockholders—but not so good for shoppers. Me, I don't want to support someone else's 60% markups with my own dollars. Generally speaking, the smarter move is to invest in the Tiffanys of the world—and shop at the Wal-Marts.


4. Competitors are coming.

Right now the iPad has just one serious rival, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. So no wonder it's doing so well. But all that will change in just a few months. New tablets, many running on the Android platform, are expected to hit the market as soon as March. These will give you a much wider choice of size, style and operating system. And when these companies duke it out for market share, you know you'll be able to get a deal. So why would I buy now?


5. No Flash.

Do you want to watch video clips on the Web? On a boring old laptop or PC, you can do that for free. On the amazing new iPad? Only sometimes. Most Web video runs on Adobe Flash, and the iPad can't—or rather, won't—handle Flash. So there are plenty of video clips you won't be able to watch. And plenty of others you will have to pay to watch, either by renting them from Apple's iTunes, or by paying for a subscription service like Hulu Plus. Mr. Jobs had a very public bust-up with Adobe over Flash this year. I have sympathy for his position, as Flash can be unstable. But it's still the software most Web video clips use, and I want that choice.


6. The cost of the add-ons.

The iPad starts at $499 plus tax. That's nearly twice as much as a netbook. And I know if I get the cheapest iPad I'll regret it. It has only 16 gigabytes' storage. And it can only go online when you are in a WiFi hotspot, like at home or in Starbucks. A lot of the iPad's best features need an Internet connection. So if I want to use them wherever I go, I'll want the model with a 3G data plan that works everywhere. And those start at $629, plus at least $15 a month. Total cost: at least $809, plus tax, in the first year, and $989 over two years. This I don't need.


7. The games.

Yes, they're great. But that's the problem. Computer games are as addictive as cigarettes. And this is a habit everyone is taking up, not quitting. This is why I dumped my iPod Touch. Am I alone? Maybe. But I don't think so. I know lots of people with horror stories about addiction to immersive games. Someone I know—now, as it happens, a British member of parliament—once sat down to play Civilization, a role-playing game, on a PC one Saturday evening and didn't finish until three o'clock ... Thursday morning. (He stopped when he ran out of cigarettes.) And that was on an old PC. Games on the iPad are more intense than ever. A friend recently showed me some of the serious news apps on his iPad. I noticed that to get to them he first had to "wave" us past several screens of games. Is he really using his iPad to read that article about the Indonesian economy, or is he playing Angry Birds? Hmmm. You make the call.


8. The waste.

The scarcest resource in life isn't money, land, fresh water or gold. For singles under 25, the scarcest resource is sex, and for the rest of us it's time. And the biggest waste of time I've ever discovered—after games (see above)—is the Web. Nothing comes close. It's a total black hole. Do I want to carry a device that lets me surf the Web endlessly wherever I am? That's easy. It's amazing how much time I have to read now that I never look at Facebook.


9. It'll get boring.

This year's totem is next year's meh. Economists call this "the hedonic treadmill." Human beings quickly get bored of each new item. We always want the buzz from something newer, better, bigger, faster or fancier. But the treadmill never stops. Think of how amazing the first Palm Pilots seemed back in the 1990s. Look at them now. The iPad may look like the eighth wonder of the world today. Soon it will seem so old.


10. The whole Apple cult is starting to creep me out.

OK, I already knew about the fans. Last summer, three-quarters of the people standing in line so they could buy the new iPhone the moment it went on sale already owned an iPhone. But now it's the company, too. Look at how it reacted last spring, when a Silicon Valley blogger scooped an early iPhone 4: Next thing he knew he was being handcuffed on his lawn in front of his wife while police ransacked his house. And think of Steve Jobs, complaining that news coverage of the iPhone 4's troubled aerial had been "blown so out of proportion that it's incredible." Hmmm, out-of-proportion media coverage—you sure you want to go there, Steve? This is the guy marketing a new telephone under the slogan "This changes everything. Again." Maybe this stuff shouldn't matter to me, but I have to confess it's turning me off.

Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com

Poetry Lover

Contentious

A cartoon I have begun.

An alien just asked me what a bar is

" I’m an alien -- an admittedly, 100% humanoid and incredibly attractive alien. Being the incredibly helpful person you are, what is the deal with these “bar” things that you humans seem so fond of? Specifically, why do people go? What is there to do at bars in theory? What do people usually do there in practice? Remember – I know NOTHING about your culture, or rationale, or anything – so no detail is too obvious, obscure, or irrelevant. Lay it on me. Gender differences, what a person’s drink says about them, etc."

Well, there are really three types of bars, lounges, dives, and

Clubs. I will describe each individually. Though they differ in many

ways, for all three, the major motivations are 1) to mate, and 2) to have a

good time.

1) Lounges

Lounges are generally the most expensive, thus also the classiest. Generally dimly lit, they are often filled with either trendy or ultra-modern furnishings.

The mixed drink and wine rule here, mostly in the liquor on the rocks variety. Professionals frequent these spots after they finish work. Attire includes work suits, gowns, cocktail dresses and the like. The ambiance is completed with quiet jazz, classical or new wave music playing softly in the background. This is without a doubt the best bar for a date situation.

the female/mael ratios are normally as follows

Female: 50%

Male: 50%

2) Dive bars

There are really three subcategories of dive bars: "sports bars", "college bars”, and "eternal bars" (those that have been around forever.) In most ways they are all pretty similar. Dive bars are generally loud, but only due to the sheer volume of guests. Given the options of bar games such as foosball, pool, darts, or arcade games, people mill around in the dark, crowded bar.

Be it in pitcher form, for large groups or in the more individual choice of cans, bottles, or single glasses, beer is often the most popular choice. Visual projections showing recorded moving images, known as TV screens, make up much of the interior decoration, showing sports games. Of course, sports bars have a much larger number of TV screens than the other two.

Students who live or attend university nearby populate the college bars. Sports bars are mostly attended by all sorts of people, all nterested in getting drunk while watching whatever sports team they prefer. The less popular category, the Eternal bars, do not boast such a high clientele. Homeless people, those who have lived in the area forever, and random stragglers with nothing better to do, make up the regulars at the Eternal bars.

The music played is usually composed of guitars drums, and vocalist, known as the genre “rock”. Dive bars are also the most likely to allow an assortment of drinking games, including quarters, a game involving bouncing a monetary metal discuss into a cup. Beer pong, popular amongst students, entails tossing a small spherical white object into another team’s cups from a distance. An assortment of card related games are also readily available. Be wary; the consumers at these establishments are the most territorial about the locale, and can sometimes be unwelcoming to strangers that show any amount of disrespect. Attire consists of Jeans and a T-shirt, Sports jerseys, tank tops, and leather or jean jackets.

The female/male ratio is as follows

Female 20%

Male 80%

3) Clubs-

Club-goers are by far the most obsessed with finding a mate. They are also primarily centered on dancing. More often then not, the dancing involves the “bump and grind”, a ritualistic dance involving extremely close contact with your dance partner while reenacting bodily movements very similar to mating. You will often find hundreds of couples on the dance floor all doing the same dance. The music mostly falls into two categories, the first being electronic music, music mostly synthesized by a person known as a DJ operating a computer. Hip-hop, music centered on poetic spoken word over a heavy beat, is the other popular choice. The heavy base lines of both types of music make the “bump and grind” dance easy to perform. This type of bar regularly charges an entrance fee, as well as for pricier drinks inside. It can often have a very selective line on the outside, only permitting a few people at a time.

More often then not, Clubs are centered on having a higher female to male ratio due to the highly sexual atmosphere inside, and the club owners prefer to keep it that way. Drinks are mostly hard liquor, either in a small, condensed, highly volatile form, known as a shot. Hard liquor can also be mixed with fruity or savory, non-alcoholic liquids to produce a “mixed drink”. If you are able to afford it, you may pay for a table, a designated area for you and your compatriots to sit and enjoy yourself. These tables are provided with their own server and come with a choice of a hard liquor bottle. These tables are also extremely expensive.

The attire for men mostly involves similar attire to lounges, though the shirts are generally flashier. Also, depending on the person and neighborhood, one may where track suits. This dress code is meant for the male to wear his most expensive clothing, while the woman must wear the least amount of clothing without appearing to be a "slut", a woman who sleeps with too many men. The woman’s apparel usually comes in the form of mini-dresses and skirts, tube tops, and heavy jewelry.

The female/male ratio is as follows

Female 60%

Male 40%

So be weary my fellow alien compatriot a bar can be very fun but also a very dangerous and mysterious locale.

-Edited by Rachel Heine

It's Tron-O-Clock!!

During this time of thanks, here are a couple of TRON: LEGACY trailers for your viewing pleasure. The first is a music video set to the music of French-Techno-Wonders, Daft Punk - If you weren't aware, they are scoring the movie, which is AWESOME!!

The second video is the latest trailer for Tron, revealing the main storyline of the movie. It too, is quite awesome.

It's Like Fighting Fire with Candy Corn.

Recently I've been spending a lot of car travel time listening to this new radio station here in LA - 97.1 AMP Radio. Carson Daly does the morning show, bless his little TRL heart. While the station does right by pop fans by playing a lot of good pop/hip hop music, the station has a playlist of what seems to be about... 15 songs.

Now this is all well and good, but this means I get to hear Katy Perry's "California Gurls" about 48 times a day. And I only spend maybe 30 minutes in my car a day, at best. Yeah, do the math on that one.

As I listen to this song, and my brain slowly dies because of the music, I started breaking down the song. "Why?" you may find yourself asking. The answer is quite simple. Katy wrote this song as a response to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind." Don't believe me? Read about it here.

Now I've heard some pretty dumb things living in this state, but this definitely makes the top 15. Lets break down why:


- Jay-Z's song is filled with references to New York - images that conjure feelings of nostalgia and affection. Terms and groups, and places that people can identify with: Bed-Stuy, Knicks games, Yankees, and in the process he embodies the NY spirit and attitude.

- Katy Perry talks about how hot California girls are. That's pretty much the song. No references to anything cool in California. No references to any cities, or histoic events, or famous people (aside from "Snoop Doggy Dog on the radio"). There is nothing that recreates a sense of nostalgia, no ideas that people can identify with, except that girls are hot.

- Jay-Z teams up with the super-sexy, super-talented Alicia Keys, who sings an amazing catchy hook about NY that everyone knows and can easily sing along with. If you wanna talk about visuals, The video is riddled with pictures of New York, and Alicia is dressed in this sexy sexy outfit and plays a piano.

- Katy's song is so repetitive, that its hard to tell what part is the hook, and its so difficult to sing, most people just sing along with "oh oh oh oh oh" part, of which there are far to many. Snoop sounds sooo bored in this song, I would imagine he phoned it in from New York, hungover, having partied with Jay-Z all night. Her Music video is themed like Candy-Land, which makes NO sense, and instead of picking out a sexy costume, she gets naked and sits on a cloud. Its like going all the way on the first date. A first date that seems to involve Acid, and a whole lot of candy.

This is supposed to be a retort - a response to an amazing video. And Katy Perry steps up to the plate? That should have been the first warning sign. I have no idea what she was thinking while she jerry-rigged this steaming pile of crap together. I can only assume she misspelled "Gurls" on purpose out of respect to the Beach Boys, but even that failed, because now when you hear the phrase "California Girls," everyone's mind jumps to Katy Perry. Google agrees with me. Sorry boys, but your classic song about the west coast has been buried under some pop icon wearing a purple wig, who can't stop saying "oh."

Its like having a debate with someone, and after they make a valid point, your response is "Yeah? That's not what your mom said last night. OHHHHHH!!!!"

If the West Coast wanted a good retort to Empire State of Mind, we should have just put Pac and Dre's "California Love" back on the radio.

Here are the videos, if you want to know what I'm talking about. For the record? Perry's video? Almost 16,800,000 views at the time of this posting. Jay-Z's? over 67,105,000. Numbers don't lie.

Katy Perry - New Music - More Music Videos

How to Write Internet Commentary

You're surfing a video on YouTube, or FunnyOrDie. Maybe you're reading an article on politics or badgers. And now you're ready to make your voice heard: to add... a comment!

What follows are five basic rules to make your comment both popular and meaningful:

1. Show that you were first
If you are the first to comment on something, be sure to write, "Yes! I'm first!" or something to that effect. Everyone else who reads the article will be impressed with your quick thinking, and ability to click things more quickly than others.


2. Check your grammar at the door
People who post internet comments are very busy and important, and do not have time to bother with things like spelling or grammar. It is also important to interject internet slang such as OMG and LOL, at seemingly random intervals. This slang can also be used to bookend your comment. Please note the following example:

Initial Sentence: "I found your article on the proliferation of nuclear weaponry to be profoundly enlightening."

Internet Commentary Sentence: "OMG therr are somany of those ppl who have thez bumbs they r evrywear! LOL!!!"


3. Remember your racism
If you don't understand the video/article, you should instead try to incite some sort of racial, or otherwise bigoted hatred.
Popular topics include: Jews, Blacks and Homosexuals. But hey, don't feel limited by these options, there are plenty of minority groups to espouse.

Example: "i hte the IRish cuzz theey r abunch of potatos LOL!!!"

Your random racial rantings will draw far more of a response than any rational discussion of the video/article ever could!


4. Quoting is everything
If you're watching a video, it's a great idea to quote the funniest line/lines from it in the commentary. Most people who have watched the video have already forgotten the parts that made them laugh, so it's a great help for them to be able to see your quote as a reminder. For those who have not seen the video, your comment will give them an idea of what to look for, so they won't have to be surprised by the humor.


5. Refuse to accept irony
If the video/article is clearly being sarcastic or joking, you should absolutely take it at face value and assume they are being serious. The following would be an acceptable response to an article about using kittens as an alternative fuel source:

Example: "U R SOOO STUPUD! OMG kitens r not sumthan to burn LOL yur goingg to hel lke the JEWS!"


By following these five rules, you will be sure to gain the respect and admiration of your fellow internet commentators. This is a marvelous thing to have, because there is no one more important and sophisticated than someone who posts a comment on the internet.

-Sam