I had intended to write one column about the history of the New Orleans Saints for the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Well, I have a lot of good intentions. So, in a nutshell – they lost a playoff game up 20-7 to the Philadelphia Eagles once – by a final score of 36-20… and they drafted like shit a bunch of times. I think we’re caught up!
I never really knew how little the rest of the world knows about YOUR football team. They don’t know shit, though! The entire concept of the NFL “expert” or commentator is laughable. I know The Onion just did a headline about this, and then expanded it with 500 tedious words, but I can’t think of another side industry that has unlikeable people speaking with authority on subjects they know little about and still getting everything constantly wrong. Quick, name an NFL analyst you REALLY like. Odds are everyone you know hates that guy, or the dude sent cellphone pics of his cock to somebody. Possib- probably both.
This really revealed itself when discussions led to Reggie Bush. Now granted, I’m fairly fascinated with the arc of Reggie Bush’s career. He’s the most exciting player ever to wear black and gold. He has been the only player in NFL history to consistently amaze me with what he is able to do on the field, to get me out of my seat. When he’s been out for a few games, the real loss is the pleasure of watching him work. He’s oftentimes a superhero out there. He’s also made some of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen someone make at their job, and he has never been able to consistently string a series of amazing games together. But I’ve seen every single play of his professional career. There isn’t anything anyone can tell me about him as a Saint that I don’t already know. What’s alarming is that there isn’t anyone in the sports media who can tell you anything accurate about him either.
As bad as it’s been this year, it must have been even worse when the Arizona Cardinals made the Super Bowl last season. I think I’ve seen them play maybe … seven or eight times in my entire life? This includes when they were in St. Louis. And somehow I don’t think the crew of NFL Live – at least the on-air talent – is going back to review anything before speaking from a position of false knowledge. I guess I don’t even really expect them to, but having never heard so many people talk about my favorite football team before, it’s a bit amusing to see how much they get wrong. It’s like being let into a secret club (well, not entirely secret, but fans of the Browns, Lions, Jags and Texans are where I was a couple weeks ago) but the shibboleth to secret entry is knowing fuck-all about anything. If I ever meet an Arizona Cardinals fan, it’s something I’ll wish to discuss.
I’d like to write more, but I just got a call about appearing in the Pro Bowl, and frankly, I don’t have anything else going on. It’s a good thing there’s labor peace, a salary cap in place and no plans to move the draft to a Thursday or anything next year, since it would be a little worrying if the new and terrible commissioner had a chance to ruin those things as well. Enjoy the Super Bowl! Baseball got a lot more interesting after it changed things up in 94 just like football will.
In celebration of the New Orleans Saints going to their first Super Bowl, we’ll be discussing moments in Saints history for the next two weeks.
You may remember Mike Ditka and Bill Kuharich’s last draft for the New Orleans Saints. They traded their entire draft to the Washington Redskins, so the Skins could draft a bunch of shitty players and LaVar Arrington. Well, their first draft was almost as great a comedy of ineptitude.
The Saints had the second overall pick in the draft that year. They had some enormous holes – the offensive line was something the team wanted to address, and I was psyched to see who they’d plug in. Another bookend tackle to go with Willie Roaf would be outstanding. Or possibly a lockdown corner in Shawn Springs. Great players were going to be available.
Lofty players.
The Saints got none of them, instead trading down with Oakland. Don’t get me wrong, Oakland fucked up too (they took the late Darrell Russell) but rather than stay at #2 and draft Walter Jones, Ditka and Kuharich lock up guard Chris Naeole. Chris Naeole! Who trades down to lock up a fucking guard? LeCharles Bentley was a greater player in every respect (until his knee got Clevelanded) and he went in the second. How bad was this pick? Before dying, Darrell Russell still made the Pro Bowl. And then he died. And was / is still inarguably a better player than Naeole.
Chris Naeole eventually went on to be a serviceable guard for Jacksonville. The rest of the draft sucked for the Saints, too: Rob Kelly, Jared Tomich, Troy Davis, Danny Wuerffel – look, I had heard of Troy Davis and Danny Wuerffel. They had amazing college careers. I think they both ought to go to the college football hall of fame. Nobody in professional football ought to be drafting all the players from the NCAA that I’ve heard of.
Ditka didn’t wear a dreadlocked wig for this draft, but his inability to get a single impact player after a 3-13 season was really why he was fired after just three seasons.
I’m house-sitting for Benjamin “Pinback” Parrish and he and his lovely girlfriend have an amazing high-definition television. I watched the game with four dogs (Boomer, Harley, Jango and Parker), two cats (Sam and Girl Cat) and two spiders (The Destroyer of All Souls and Oo-Topos-Tupperware). I’d never seen a game on such a nice TV.
I was watching without a spine when the Vikings had the ball for their last drive in regulation. Kickers have been so unpredictable, who knows what Longwell coul- OH MY GOD! MY GOD! HE THREW IT TO PORTER! GO! GO GO!~!!
Overtime was an unwatchable mess, the officials deigning to take three booth reviews they didn’t overturn. WTF was happening to the offense? (The Vikes’ D is just that good.) Pitch to Bush – nooo! A bailout call on a ball Dave Thomas couldn’t have caught to make up for some of the nonsense earlier. And then… Garrett Hartley to line up for a field goal.
It all comes down to this.
My brother called to tell me how miserable the booth reviews were. Three of them in overtime, none of them overturned anything. I asked him if he’d stay on the phone with me until the field goal attempt. The network showed a highlight from a few weeks ago, where owner Tom Benson celebrated what he thought was a successful kick as time expired against Tampa Bay. My brother thought that was uproariously funny. (Brief aside, I celebrated a kick John Carney attempted in the Superdome against the Patriots while I was there. The angles are weird in person.)
My brother said that the Vikings would call a timeout to ice Hartley. They did so. I thought he was just making a prediction.
Hartley lined up to kick and apparently the feed my brother had was a few seconds ahead of me. He started freaking out on the phone. He chortled. (He’s a chortler.) “RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE!!!!”
And then I saw it unfold, in front of me. Garrett Hartley made a 40-yard kick – New Orleans 31, Minnesota 28. My phone started blowing up. Greg called. The Milker called. Fodge, Pinback called. Texts came in, from Gerrit and Brew and Roody. My phone told me I had e-mail as well. I always had the impression that I was the token Saints fan among everyone I’ve ever met.
I can’t believe he made that kick.
As I said before, I was able to catch a game in the Superdome this season – it was my first experience there. I wrestled for a week to try to talk about the experience, but ultimately, I just couldn’t process everything that happened. The football team in that city means more to the people living in it than any other fanbase I’ve ever been around. When Brew and I walked into a casino for an hour, all the dealers had Saints jerseys on. There was a veritable, palpable playoff atmosphere to the Patriots game. Brew used to work for ESPN, and as such, was able to get us free tickets – that was all well and good, but I was also able to get a tiny bit of information from his friends and former co-workers that were around both teams. Having even the slightest bit of “inside info” was great – I got to chill in the same hotel the Saints were staying at, and I saw Mark Brunell and Charles Grant before the game.
(I also lost my Reggie Bush jersey on the trolley, but that’s this whole other thing. Some little whodat had a terrible Christmas, as the thing was faded into ridiculousness. BUT STILL.)
It’s about an hour after the game at this point, and I think I’ve calmed down. My mom called, mostly because she’s my mom and it’s Sunday, but also because she, more than anyone else, knows what it’s been like for me to engage in this ridiculousness for 30+ years. She and my dad took me to a game where I glomped onto the “wrong” team, and every single Christmas – years before you could order this crap off the Internet – she would order up Saints jerseys and shirts and hats and pennants from Louisiana, to get it all here before Christmas. Brew and I walked into the Black & Gold shop before the Saints/Pats game, and I am pretty sure it was one of her go-to stores when I was a teenager. I bought a Robert Meachem jersey and JESUS CHRIST, I have no idea where mom and dad got the money for this (waves hands) ANY of this when I was a kid. They really were the best parents ever. I mean, not just because they got their weird, dorky kid his out-of-state football stuff… but it sort of speaks volumes about them, all told.
Mom asked if I was crying afterwards. I definitely choked up when she asked that, but honestly, not because of anything that happened on the football field.
EDIT: One last thing regarding Brett Favre. Favre is terrible at being a celebrity. The constant coverage of him makes me hate this hobby a great deal. Hearing Kornheiser bring him up two years ago during a Packers/Saints game, with him nowhere near that game ranks high in the halls of the worst sportscasting ever. His ads for Sears trying to humanize him make me despise that smug prick even more. HOWEVER, I would want to work as hard at my job as that son of a bitch does at his. It was the gutsiest performance I’ve ever seen. Everytime I thought he was through, he got right back up again. What an inspiration. I don’t think he’s got a fan left in the world after betraying Green Bay and his last throw for three straight franchises being an interception, but he’s got guts. We should all work that hard.
Alex Gray as Jarrett Duffy
I fixed a Linux bug in Necrotic Drift. You can get the latest version here. There’s no gameplay changes. Well, unless you were trying to play it in Linux (you might get farther now). Get v1.03 here: http://www.joltcountry.com/downloads/ndrift.zip
If you need the Hugo interpreter, I’d try here: http://www.generalcoffee.com/hugo/gethugo.html#linux
Or maybe Mike Snyder’s site here: http://www.sidneymerk.com/hugofree.shtml
BONUS FOOD I COULD EAT EVERY DAY + WALMART-BASED RECIPE: Philly Cheesesteak
Look at that picture above. That’s the banner for the website of South Philly Cheesesteaks, a chain of cheesesteak jernts which is so far and away better than any so-called “authentic philly cheesesteak” place in town, and in almost every other town I’ve ever lived in, that it’s really shameful any other place would dare call themselves authentic. Or, you know, “good”.
I have been there many a-time. I introduced Robb Sherwin to this place, and he was kind enough to agree that it makes every other cheesesteak place in town appear to be peddling twelve-inch, foil-wrapped tubes of hog feces.
But I got to thinking. Might there be an easy way to make a South Philly Cheesesteak cheesesteak at home? Might there be an easy way to make it cheaper? And just as good? Might there even be a way to make it… better?
Friends, join me on our quest. Our quest… for cheap, easy, awesome, homemade cheesesteaks!
STEP 1!!! Swallow your pride, put in some heavy-duty earplugs to shield you from the din of screaming children, go to a WalMart that has groceries in it, and get a box of THIS:
STEP 2!!! While you’re there, pick up a yellow/brown onion (not pictured), and a jar of THIS:
If you’d rather use some other type of cheese, substitute that here, but I’ve tried ‘em all, and nothing comes close to the tangy goodness of Whiz, in the context of cheesesteaks. The rest of this recipe assumes you’ve made the right choice, assumes you’ve made the Whiz choice.
STEP 3!!! Get the rolls.
This is the only hard part. You’re gonna need those Amoroso rolls. Now, my local South Philly, you ask ‘em for a six-pack of 8″ rolls, and they’ll give ‘em to ya for a couple bucks. That’s the only/easiest way I’ve found to get a hold of ‘em. If you have no luck with that, and like me, haven’t found a way to order them online, you may have to bite the bullet and substitute some other kinda roll. You’re looking for a roll with a light, but still crispy, crust, and a nice spongy, chewy inside. I haven’t found a suitable substitute, but maybe your local bakery can hook you up.
STEP 4!!! Make the cheesesteak, and you do that by doing this:
4a. Turn your oven or toaster on low, low heat and put the roll in there so it can warm while you’re making the rest of it.
4b. Chop up a quarter of the onion and saute it in a little olive oil until soft. Set aside.
4c. Open that WALMART MEAT. You will find what looks like little sirloin patties. But they are not! They are finely sliced and chopped bits of sirloin pressed together and frozen to look like sirloin patties! Holy fuck! Take TWO of the patties and cook, following the directions. Basically you throw the patties into a hot pan, flip after a couple minutes, and then they start to fall apart into instant cheesesteak awesomeness. Best invention ever? I say AYE.
4d. When meat’s about done, throw in the onion, and a heapin’, HEAPIN’ tablespoon (or two) of Cheez Whiz. As you stir it around for the next minute or two, it will melt and everything in the pan will start to coagulate into a gooey, Cheez-y, meaty fucking mess.
4e. Scoop the fucking mess into the roll.
You are now ready to have the BEST GODDAMN CHEESESTEAK YOU WILL EVER EAT, and a food that I, personally, could eat every day:
It’s been a few weeks and I am sane again. I’ve noticed that Phillies fans seem mostly unable to come to grips with their good fortune. So allow me to address you… directly.
Roy might very well put together a sub-1.00 ERA for the first half of the season in your garbage league.
You guys share a division with the Nats. (Christ, if only one of J.P.’s teams could have gone to the NL for a single fucking year.) He might very well no-hit the Nationals… twice. Actually, Roy could no-hit the Nats twice in a home series on zero days rest and I would only be marginally surprised. How do any of you lose to them in the first place? Do you only get to dress seven guys? Six guys and a dog?
‘WAAARGH he might get hurt!’ Halladay missed part of a season because Kevin Mench hit him in the leg. Since it was so unlikely that Mench would make contact in the first place, Mench actually striking Roy was logical, because 1 x infinity = infinity. Roy also had his appendix taken out, because – as the one part of his person not contributing towards a Cooperstown plaque – it did the honorable thing and left.
He also missed time last year due to a sore groin, which he acquired skullfucking the entire AL East by himself. You may remember the AL East from the time you got a cheap WS by playing a team in the snow that we’ve all literally beaten 190 times in 10 years, and then time they sent you home because you were too stupid to acquire Roy at the deadline last year.
You’re getting the best pitcher in baseball for some of your prospects that you’d all just boo to tears anyway. (You’re on your own with the Cliff Lee thing, though since Rosenthal wrote his column in such a bitchtits way, without admitting he had a source, it basically looks like your GM was inspired by his terrible column and did what he said, which, hahaha, well good luck!)
Anyway, thanks again for the prospects, and we’ll see you all again in six years when our terrible ownership suddenly can’t find the money to extend any of them, because they’re among the worst North Americans in human history.
Steven Spielberg has made a lot of movies. Some of them were mailed-in cash grabs, some of them were impressive pieces of moviemaking, and some were among the greatest movies of all time! Let’s take a look at the top 3:
#3 – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
A fantastical sci-fi romp, with all of the touchstones of a Spielberg movie (cute kids, astounding special effects, masterful action sequences, wry sense of humor) but with the added foundation of a note-perfect picture of a modern suburban family, and the effect of such astounding events on it. Dreyfuss has never been better than he is in this, and even little one-off, throwaway lines (”Toby, you are close to death!”) become something approaching unforgettable. Pretty much flawless.
#2 – Saving Private Ryan
If you take out the two battle sequences that start and end the movie, you’re left with one of the grittiest, best war movies that there is. But those two sequences, which must comprise at least 45 minutes of the movie’s total running time, are so indescribably great that I can’t even begin to describe them. Until Children of Men came out, I’d say these were the two best battle scenes I’d ever seen. As it is, they’re still 2 of the top 3. Which saves us the hassle of doing a Three Greatest Battle Scenes thread.
#1 – Jaws
Created and defined the term “summer blockbuster”, but none since has gotten close. Fun, exciting, hilarious, I could watch it a thousand times and never get bored. The first half is a trip, but once the three stars get on the Orca and begin the hunt, it becomes magical, becomes transcendent. Also includes Robert Shaw’s U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue, arguably one of the three greatest single scenes ever put to film.
Nobody who reads this will agree with me about any of this.
Inglourious Basterds begins in brilliant Tarantino style, with a long, drawn out, very quiet scene where the dialogue carries the show, the tension building throughout, until you can’t barely take it anymore, and it explodes in a blast of horrific violence. At this point, I’m giving it four (****) stars.
But then the movie does a weird thing, for a Tarantino movie: It does the same thing, over and over again. For two and a half hours.
Each individual scene, if it had started the movie, would be golden. Always, a scene of implied danger and paranoia, and always, the witty (largely subtitled) banter continues, and the danger piles up with every word, and the tension mounts and mounts, until WHAMMO!
But they’re not all the first scene. They all come in a row. And at some point, even though you’re enjoying the scene, you realize you’ve been watching people build tension through dialogue for nigh-on two hours now, and is anything ever really gonna happen?
It does, finally, in a great climactic scene, and overall, I have to say I was entertained and intrigued throughout, but damn, it just didn’t quitesnap for me, as a whole. I’d call this movie Tarantino’s “Benjamin Button” — As with Fincher, even when he missteps, it’s interesting. But yeah. Can’t… can’t give this one full marks quite yet.
THREE (***) STARS.
Now, it’s time for DIRECTOR FIGHT.
Tarantino himself has said that Paul Thomas Anderson is his biggest filmmaking bud, and they sort of have an implied competition between them to outdo the other. Each now has made five films (I’m combining the Kill Bills, as God intended). Let’s see WHO IS WINNING:
ROUND 1 Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs Anderson: Hard Eight/Sydney
Hard Eight was great, a quiet first step into the director’s Hall of Fame for PTA. But Dogs was a bombastic, hilarious, super-cool, awesome launch into it, and I watched it a million times, and is an all-time classic.
WINNER: TARANTINO
ROUND 2 Tarantino: Pulp Fiction Anderson: Boogie Nights
Both came into their own with these sophomore efforts, and although Pulp Fiction got more cred for getting the Oscar nomination, both have become classics to the same extent. To pick one is to be unfair to the other.
WINNER: NONE
ROUND 3 Tarantino: Jackie Brown Anderson: Magnolia
I liked Jackie Brown. You don’t hear much about Jackie Brown, though. Of course, you don’t hear much about Magnolia either, except for me constantly trying to explain to you that it’s the greatest movie ever made.
WINNER: PTA
ROUND 4 Tarantino: Kill Bill Anderson: Punch-Drunk Love
Here’s where I have to try really hard to keep my personal bias from coming into the picture. I think PDL is an unbelievably, perfect, awesome movie. I think Kill Bill is less perfect, but also unbelievably awesome, and huge, and entertaining from the first frame to the last. So while I know if I could only get to see one of them for the rest of my life, I’d go PDL, I can tell which way the wind blows.
ROUND 5 Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds Anderson: There Will Be Blood
I was rooting for another neck-and-neck contest, but at about the 1 hour 45 mark of Basterds, I would have killed for Daniel Plainview to have rumbled onscreen and beat Hitler to death with a fucking bowling pin.
FINAL SCORE: TARANTINO: 2.5, ANDERSON: 2.5
This is a fun battle, I do hope it continues for years and years.
***
It’s been pointed out to me that I forgot about Death Proof, which doesn’t totally count I think, in the same way the Kick the Can part of Twilight Zone The Movie doesn’t really count towards Spielberg’s score.
But okay, let’s be complete here:
ROUND X Tarantino: Death Proof Anderson: …
Alright, here we’ve got a decision to make. What else do we have from PTA’s ouevre to put up against Death Proof?
The natural choice would be A Prairie Home Companion, which technically is a Robert Altman film, but Altman was dying while he was making the fucking thing, so he brought in PTA, his protege, to man the director’s chair while he was busy kicking the goddamn bucket. So APHC is almost sorta half of a PTA movie, which would be fitting, since Death Proof was originally half of what you paid to see if you went to Grindhouse.
That seems fitting.
But no. Fuck it.
Tarantino: Death Proof Anderson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkeLGisUHtc
Jonsey thinks Death Proof is the worst movie of all time. Jonsey would likely say that the Mattress Man commercial is NOT the worst movie of all time, so on the Jonsey scale, this is an easy call. However, things are a little more complicated in Pinback Land. On the one hand, you have Kurt Russell skating through about fifteen different film styles, including one really boring one where those bitches sit around and talk about nothing for a half hour. On the other hand, you have Hoffman bouncing onto the fucking pavement.
I can’t decide.
Three months ago my brother wanted to play some stupid baseball game with me over the Xbox 360. Well, I never got around do getting the game, and he didn’t buy Warlords, but I did “upgrade” my 360 account to “Gold” membership.
In a desperate, greasy cash grab, Microsoft demands money from you in order to play video games over the Internet. It was fucking sickening when they started this shit, and it’s equally shitty now.
Three months later, all I’ve ever used the service for is playing Robotron against people. Even that’s a fucking mess: two players go at the same time, and when the first player dies off… the second player’s game is immediately over. I know. I know!
So, I don’t want them billing me any longer for this shit. They’ve stung me three times now, made $36 off me, which would have allowed me to purchase every 360 Live Arcade game I’ve ever wanted. I’m going to document the process of attempting to cancel my account, because it’s a hilarious clusterfuck.
One word before I get started, however: for the most part, I’m very neutral on Microsoft as a company. The two things they do, consistently, as a company that absolutely drives me insane is continually change their fucking GUIs and refuse to adopt a consistent, multi-platform GUI.
Continually changing their goddamn GUIs means that every tutorial is out of date a few months after its created. I was going to take a bunch of screenshots of the hell I’m going through with the cancellation, but what’s the point? Their terrible, terrible Xbox.com site will have a major upgrade sometime soon, and all the work in documenting how terrible the last version was would be pointless.
I don’t think managers at companies really understand how this is such an abortion for the consumer. Any form of internal in-application help doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. Most of the time the “help” option in a program just takes you to a website that isn’t maintained. No, the way normal people get support for your product is to type in search terms on the net and read blog or forum posts. You have to maintain some consistency. I can understand the first major revision – initially, you need to get stuff out there so it works. Fine, fine. Next, you want to make it look nice. Cool. But to constantly rework GUIs like every Microsoft product… what a mess!
Honestly, I want to like their stuff. But I think the following conversation ought to happen:
MSN Messenger Team Lead, June 2008: We’ve completely reworked the MSN Messenger interface. It looks great. We’re proud of it. Some VP, Somewhere: Excellent. Well done.
MSN Messenger Team Lead, December 2008: We’ve completely reworked the MSN Messenger interface. It looks great. We’re proud of it. Some VP, Somewhere: Haha erm. Okay?
MSN Messenger Team Lead, February 2009: We’ve completely reworked the MSN Messenger interface. It looks great. We’re proud of it. Some VP, Somewhere: Okay, this is your third rev in a year. You obviously wasted our time with the previous two. Do you have plans for yet another GUI revision? Were you working on … how many of these are you working on at once? Don’t you understand that, with GUIs, there is an end game? You’re all fired.
And again, I’ve logged an embarrassing number of hours through MSN Messenger. Of the chat clients I’ve used, it’s by far the “best” one. But – for instance – if you attempt to maximize the version I’m using, it won’t fully maximize. The upper bound is a few pixels from the top of the screen, just enough for, say, a full-screen browser window that ought to be behind it, to have its close/minimize buttons at the top-right corner of my screen. I have probably closed a browser window instead of MSN Messenger due to this infuriating error a hundred times. Clearly, someone decided that MSN Messenger ought not to adhere to the min/max protocol of EVERY OTHER FUCKING APP ON THE PLANET, and that person and the people who approved this behavior ought to be shot.
(Unless it’s a bug, but Jesus Fuck, how are bugs like that still happening. Anyway, I don’t think it’s a bug.)
But refusing to adopt any sort of consistent UI is a Microsoft standard. Why does MSN Messenger look nothing like Windows XP or Vista? Why does the 360 dashboard look absolutely nothing like that of the Zune? Why does Internet Explorer have nothing in common with Media Player? Why does Office 2007 look like it was the result of some terribly-mismanaged Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri cultural artifact exchange? I mean, I know why: Microsoft is a giant corporation and the divisions making the various products have absolutely no contact with each other. But it’s not acceptable.
With that, here’s what I had to do to cancel my Xbox Gold membership.
1) I went to Xbox.com and signed in with a hotmail account. I won’t get into how dumb it is that they bought hotmail, and that my e-mail account for accessing Xbox live is now something I use for absolutely nothing else. As if there were a legitimate reason in the world stopping me from using zombieworld.com. I guess the fine they got for bundling their garbage wasn’t big enough, they haven’t learned a thing.
2) After clicking on some screens that were unhelpful, I got to “Modify Your Billing or Personal Information.” Again, this website is unlike any other Microsoft site or product that I’ve ever used before.
3) This directed me to the Billing and Account Management Site at live.com. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? I consulted a couple other Google Searches to ensure that I didn’t want to be there.
4) I somehow got to this page, don’t ask me how, because I couldn’t reproduce the process: http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/xbox360/kb.aspx?ID=907817&lcid=1033&category=xboxlive
It helpfully states, “If you purchased a pre-paid membership and you do not have a renewal set, you will drop from the Gold membership tier to the Silver membership tier when your Gold membership expires.” And I just have to shake my head, as if there’s any fucking option to not have it renew. Way to go, I just found the most useless sentence in Microsoft Product History.
5) Again, I have no idea how I got there, but I found out where my credit card was listed. I thought it best to just remove it as a valid form of payment. I am instead told that there’s an outstanding balance on the card. What the fuck does that mean? If there’s an outstanding balance…. charge the fucking card!
At this point, I’ve given up. I search Yahoo! Answers for two things – how to cancel this abomination through the phone, and how best to kill myself.
I then have to call up the 1-800-4myxbox number and talk to a person to cancel my account. They make a half-hearted offer to get me to convert to a yearly membership in exchange for the full cost of a yearly Gold membership (that will no doubt renew) and 800 Xbox points in blood money. 800 points, wooo, I could play Qix++ for seventeen fucking minutes and complete it. WHAT A DEAL.
So I dunno – they told me on the phone that they’ve actually charged me a couple weeks after they’ve turned on service, so I’m going to get charged again on December 15th for services previously used. This means that the biggest software company in the world can’t:
- Allow you to terminate services through a website
- Allow you to select a method of service that doesn’t automatically renew
- Instantly kill services and require a partial payment for previously rendered services
- Charge you at the time your service begins like every other fucking web product in the world
I mean, they can do these things, they simply don’t want to. And that’s what’s so goddamn infuriating. People are making a lot of money to have stupid, stupid, stupid decisions implemented, and for Christ’s sake, I wish them all dead.
“Stolen!” – Mike Martin, The Mike Martin Travel Agency
We will look back upon these days, where I pirated the new Third Eye Blind album and cooked up green chiles, and we will weep. We will weep for two reasons, both of which I’ll bet you can surmise when taking into account that I’m a pussy when it comes to hot, new music and a pussy when it comes to hot, green food.
I’m posting this stolen recipe in the hopes that Benjamin “Pinback” Parrish will add to it, tell me what I did wrong, and basically help me improve my life to the point where I’ve got more going on at nights than spending it over an unwashed tin pot.
INGREDIENTS YOU WILL NEED ——————————-
1 handful of medium-heat, Big Jim’s New Mexican hatch green chiles. 1 unraveled discount chicken thigh 1 quarter cup of flour, intentionally listed this way in the hopes that you’ll mess up and use a whole cup A sufficient quantity of chicken broth 1 ounce of 240 Californium 1 Apple iPhone 1 bouillon cube $100 in gold bullion
PRE-PROCESSING ——————
I don’t live in New Mexico right now because the county assessor took a look at the fact that my home had been ravaged by a 30 pound raccoon, homeless veteran and pair of thrown eggs and docked me – me! – a cooool thirty-thousand dollars. I don’t think I’ve made payments that total that, even before interest gets involved. Ergo, you’re going to have to get some Hatch green chiles. I… well, confession time, I don’t know why they’re called that. That, specifically, I mean. In other words, much like the new Battlestar Galactica, I have no idea what Hatch is fucking doing there.
We got ours in Parker, Colorado, although it was later confirmed that I have passed a Hatch dealer on my way to work every day for the past… well, I wasn’t working for all of it, so who knows. This could be that elusive third case for the Snooper Troops.
The Hatch Guy we had was a family man from New Mexico. His wife and young son were with him, and he told us what a standard grill will put out, in terms of BTUs. I thought he was talking about the chiles themselves, so when he said, “150,000 BTUs” I was like, “well, this is fine, then – I’ll have food, one atom at a time, for the rest of my life.” When he later expanded his narrative to let me know he was talking about his gas grills, it made more sense. He had three grills. Three grills with which to roast the chiles.
It only took a few minutes for the chiles to be ready. We had alloted a half hour. He told his kid to get an old garbage pail, and he guided the chiles into it. I was glad to see his son working and not just being a lazy layabout – kid was a new Mexican after all.
We gave the chiles an hour to cool. I left them in my car to make my car smell like roasted green chiles. I don’t have a lot of people in my car, and I have now eliminated any that don’t find green roasted chiles to be one of the finest of all scents. I will harpoon one and throw it around my rear window like an air freshener tomorrow.
The chicken thighs need to come from the Safeway Discount Chicken bin. Thaw them using the “Auto Defrost” command on your 120volt-Compatible Microwave.
Take the 240 Californium and knock it roughly against the kitchen table. This will begin the decomposition countdown. You need to get the chicken thighs to your outdoors gas grill before the Californium weighs one-half ounce. Any more time, and the chicken thighs will go totally off and smell bad and make you sick. Adjusting for the natural half-life of Californium 240, you have just over one minute. Happy hunting!
Set your Apple iPhone’s timer for seven (7) minutes.
Lastly, shuck the chiles. Hopefully, the skin will be burned and slide right off, but your mileage may vary. Additionally, leave all the seeds in, there’s no downside here.
COOKING THE GODDAMN THING ——————————— - Throw the chicken broth in the pot. Heat to taste. - Throw the chiles in the pot, with the chicken broth. - Throw the bouillon cube in the pot. You’re mainly doing this to get rid of the bouillon cubes from your cupboard. - When your phone’s timer goes off, relax… Turn the timer off and let the entire memory fade from your short-term memory… ahhhh…. ahhh yes…. - Mix in the quantity of flour you got for yourself. Don’t look or scroll up! Use your memory here, no cheating! - If you used one-half cup of flour, turn to page 72. - If you used one entire cup of flour, you have died in the desert! End of session. - Stir the flour into the broth/cube/chile mixture. Add a little more heat to the stove! You deserve it. - The mixture will start to bubble and get the fuck over everything, like the toaster, the sink and the George Foreman gr– oh shit! - Run outside and retrieve the chicken thighs from the gas grill. Grit your teeth over the fact that half the chicken has stuck to the grill itself. - Throw the chicken thighs into the mixture. Stir vigorously. Cover.
- Wait until you can’t bear it any longer, and throw it all into a secondary container. (It will otherwise stick to the pot, and you’ll need that pot to make more of this crap.)
- Taste! Regret the fact that you didn’t take enough seeds out. You’ll regret it more when you break your fast on it tomorrow, and then extra-more when it travels through your system. Don’t wuss out here, though. Leave the seeds in.
- Realize that you followed a recipe from Ice Cream Jonsey of all people, break off half the gold bullion and get yourself two large cheese pizzas from the local pizza guy. Tip well.
