Jar Of Eyeballs

This is just too crazy for words. Anti-gaming douchebag Jack Thompson has returned and is sueing Facebook for 120 million. The reason? Facebook hasn’t removed content mocking him. If you don’t know who this retard is, Jack Thompson is a former lawyer (more on the “former” part later) who blames everything that goes wrong in society on video games. All youth crime and violence is to blame on games, even if the criminal never played video games.

The guy is also a flaming retard. He sued Take 2, the developer of Grand Theft Auto, for a fucking ping pong game! And he’s a popular target of ridicule in several gaming-related webcomics, such as the magnificent Penny Arcade. He even ran into trouble with the creators of Penny Arcade after they humiliated him bigtime. A few years ago, Jack Thompson promised to give $10000 to a charity if someone made a game about someone taking revenge on the gaming industry. Such a game was made, but Thompson refused to cough up the money, claiming his offer was satirical. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the creators of Penny Arcade, then donated the money instead, with the comment “For Jack Thompson, because Jack Thompson won’t”. This resulted in a lawsuit (again), with Thompson claiming Holkins and Krahulik were harassing him.

In 2007, he was disbarred for acting like a jackass. The court even wanted his mental health examined, though you don’t really need a psychiatrist to tell he’s nuts, of course. Being the idiot he is, he plans to continue his job as if he never was disbarred, though. And now he’s sueing Facebook. There are quite a lot of groups on Facebook ridiculing and mocking him. There’s even a few that threaten him, but those usually get removed. Thompson, however, wants everything criticizing him removed. He sent several faxes to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the content to be removed. That’s like sending a fax to the president to complain about an annoying neighbour!

So apparently, Jack Thompson doesn’t like freedom of speech. Okay, you shouldn’t say stuff like “Kill Jack Thompson”. Encouraging violence isn’t free speech. But saying he’s a douchebag, retard, moron, jackass, imbecile or motherfucker is. So go ahead, Jack Thompson, sue me! Oh, wait, you can’t, because I’m in Belgium and you’re in the USA. And guess what, you’re as unpopular here as you are there!

I realized something today. I haven’t posted any rants lately. And if there’s one thing the internet needs more of, it’s pointless, stupid rants. So here we go! This being a rant, I’ll probably swear and curse like Gordon fucking Ramsey. Today’s topic is: things that annoy the fucking hell out of me!

• Canned vegetables. This plain and simply isn’t food! The best example are carrots. Take a fresh carrot. Tasty and crunchy. Then take one from a can. It’s so soft you can squish it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue and I don’t know what it tastes like, but it sure as hell ain’t a carrot! I don’t understand how anyone can eat this shit. The only exception: tomatoes. Even Heston Blumenthal prefers canned tomatoes over fresh ones for making pizza.
• People who STILL don’t know how to use turn signals on a roundabout. I don’t know what the rules for this are wherever the hell you live, but here in Belgium it’s like this: you use your turn signal when you get off a roundabout. Not when you get on it, not when you’re on it, only when you get OFF it! Anyone with more than one brain cell should be able to figure this out on his own, but apparently there’s still plenty of morons who don’t have the mental capacity for such a simple task. If you use your left turn signal while on a roundabout you’re a braindead moron who should be shot in the face with a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun.
• People who still aren’t used to the Euro. Up until 2001, the Belgian currency was the Belgian Franc. In 2002, it was replaced by the Euro. I can perfectly understand the fact that older people have trouble getting used to it and still have to convert prices. I could perfectly understand people having some trouble with it for the first year or so. But if you’re a thirty-year old who is still counting in the old currency more than seven years later, you’re either retarded or a lazy son of a bitch! It’s people like you that are ruining our civilization and you should be ashamed for being born.
• Conspiracy theorists. People are very bad at keeping their mouth shut. Even the most powerful man on the planet couldn’t keep a simple blowjob a secret, and that involved only a few people. Do you really think it’s possible to keep people quiet about the massive conspiracies you morons are always talking about? Screw your shapeshifting reptilian world domination plots, mind control experiments, moon landing hoaxes and new world order. If these things were real, you wouldn’t even be talking about them in the first place, because you would have been killed, put away in a secret prison or simply brainwashed to keep your mouth shut by some sort of mind control ray. The simple fact that you’re running prisonplanet.com (yes, I’m looking at you, Alex Jones!) and you’re getting away with it without anyone trying to stop you is the best proof you’re full of shit.
• Apple fanboys. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? My PC costs about the same as the best iMac, but has way better specs. What fucking excuse does Apple have for making their stuff so incredibly expensive? And don’t claim MacOS is so much better than Windows. The last time Vista crashed on my computer was when one of the memory chips malfunctioned. Speaking of memory, why does an extra gigabyte on a Mac cost so much more than the exact same gigabyte on a PC? It’s the same fucking memory! But the most annoying thing, of course, is the cult-like following they have. Have you ever seen people camping in front of a store when a new Nokia or Samsung phone is released?
• Drivers that don’t pay attention when in front of a traffic light. Here’s how it goes. The light turns green, but it still takes about five seconds before the finally realize it and get going. Does it take so long for their brain to process the information? Or are they picking their nose, going “Dumdeedum… Dumdeedeedum… Ooooh, it’s green, perhaps I should start driving again!”. It’s people like this that made me wish I had a rocket launcher from time to time. Reaction speed should be part of a driving test. As is paying some fucking attention when in front of a traffic light! If you’re one of there idiots, please do us all a favor and set your car on fire with your stupid ass in it.

As you can see, there’s plenty of stuff to be pissed about. Seriously, why do there have to be so much morons in the world? Why hasn’t evolution gotten rid of stupidity by now? It has had millions of years and there seem to be more dumb people than ever.

No, not for you, the reader. I’ve got news for car stereo manufacturers. Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood and all the rest, did it perhaps occur to you there might be other MP3 players around besides the fucking iPod? Today I was searching for a new car stereo. The one I currently have is the one that came with the car. Of course, this means it’s the cheapest no-brand FM radio CD player combo. It worked fine until now, but lately the CD player started skipping like mad even if I hit a speedbump. I started searching for a new one, and I noticed almost all car stereos have an iPod connector. But what if you own something else? That’s right, there are other MP3 players besides the iPod, as shocking as that may sound to some people! Most also have a USB port you can plug a USB stick into, but that’s too inconvenient. Try finding a song on a big USB stick full of music on a small display! As far as I know, the only solution is a stereo with a line input on the front panel, so I can connect the headphone output to it. I do that for my stereo in the living room and it works perfectly. The problem is, only a very few have this feature, and no store around seems to have them. And yes, I know there are these small FM transmitters, but that’s junk. The same goes for home entertainment systems. There’s a million accessories for the iPod. Speakers, docking stations with remote controls, everything! Hardly anything for other types, though.

As you can probably guess, I don’t own an iPod and I never will. My current player is a Creative Zen Vision M. It’s a few years old and a bit bulky compared to current players (it was one of the last players to have a harddrive), but it still works perfectly. When I bought it, it cost about 100 euro less than an iPod with the same capacity (30 gigabyte). And it did exactly the same thing as the iPod! This is the same for all Apple products. They are a lot more expensive than similar products, but still sell like hell. Of course, everybody knows why this is: cult-like fanboyism. Apple fans buy everything with an Apple logo on it, no matter how expensive, worship Steve Jobs the way North Koreans worship Kim Jong Il and get pissed off when you even dare to suggest a Creative Zen is as good as an iPod (or, even worse, claim it’s actually better, even though the Creative Zen XFI really is better).

If you’ll excuse me now, I’m gonna continue searching for a decent car stereo.