The Anti-Social Network

"Hey Jon! Use Facebook! It's so cool, it helps you keep in touch with your friends!"

Yeah, that's the false pretence in which I was introduced to Facebook. I always thought it would be neat to see how a friend that I hung out with a handful of times during high school would be doing ten years later. Not to mention watching to see who has had kids and who married who (and who still has their hair). I also enjoyed seeing pictures of fun things that friends and I did together. It is a constant reminder of where you have been and how you've dealt with certain times of your life. To me the initial idea was to be able to be a 70 year old and literally have your life flash before your eyes any time you want it to. The problem however, was that Facebook had different plans for itself.

First off, let it be said that I don't give a rats ass about your fictional farm. I don't care if you're in the middle of a fictional gang war, and most importantly I don't want to be automatically added to your bullshit group. Seriously, whatever happened to getting an invite and deciding for yourself. Facebook has seen dollar signs and if you notice, the layout keeps changing more and more to make the cool things about Facebook less cool less and to accommodate the things that make Facebook worse. It's bullshit!

At this point, if people would just start using Google +, I'd abandon Facebook completely. I like it's no nonsense approach. I like how I can make people I hardly know into just an acquaintance. I like that I can add semi celebrities onto my follow list, and I love how I can post for specific groups only to see it. Let's call a spade a spade here. If you have 200 people on your Facebook as your Facebook friends, chances are about 150 of them are acquaintances you never talk to.

Now, I need to point the finger elsewhere for a minute. Remember what I said that I liked about Facebook? That I could keep in touch with people and see what they are up to for years to come. The people using Facebook are as much idiots as the people controlling it. First off, so many religiously play Facebook's rinkydink games for 25% of their day (I'm looking at you Canadian government). Facebook has changed their focus because you people have showed them that it works! It's really your fault! Secondly it's called Facebook. Face....book. STOP POSTING PICTURES YOU THINK ARE FUNNY AS YOUR GODDAMN PROFILE PICTURE! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR KIDS LOOK LIKE...and so on and so on. Post pictures of yourself as your profile picture. I don't care what the picture looks like but it should at very least have you in it. Make an album for those other things. The site is set up for it, you know. Finally, stop changing your names. For you idiots who think you are being super original making your name Ivana Humpalot, I want you off my friends list immediately. The important point of being able to check in with people you know, is to know who these people you know are! Duh!

Anyway, Facebook and it's users are pretty terrible. I saw someone refer to Google plus users as hipsters the other day. To that I retort with the following...Go play Farmville you twat!

The T-Shirt Crisis

This just in! I'm writing a fashion blog now!! After all, I'm something of a fashion icon in my own right. I'm known for wearing my comfy jeans and plain t-shirts. Ideally my t-shirts have nothing on them, as I don't feel I should be paying money to advertise for others. That said, I would gladly accept money to market your product on a t-shirt, given it is a decent product or if the money is good!

Recently, I went up to the better mall in my city in a time killing quest. My friend and I had just finished Conan The Barbarian and I had some time to kill before work. Suddenly it hit me that maybe I'd like a new shirt. However, if there is one thing that I've realized about this world, it is that if I like something, somebody has to screw it up for me.

WARNING: THE IMAGES POSTED BELOW MAY BE DISTURBING, VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

EXIBIT A: UNDEAD STUFF

Oh good! I remember a time when zombies were something only the, so called, misfits and strange people talked about. As usual, like all things good, eventually, mainstream society discovered that zombies were really interesting and brought them in. Unfortunately, that is never where it ends though. Those damn hipsters have to change the beloved formerly nerdy things and in no time at all, you end up with overplayed fads, ruining what we had for so long, before them. They decided that they could make zombies something that would be able to be thrown in anywhere for comedy. These shirts are not funny. 

I probably should have taken the time to take the pictures of the other zombie shirts in this place too. Seriously, when you have a selection of 4-8 zombie joke shirts, you are seriously crossing some lines!

Also, those (classic literature) with zombies books, can seriously go pound sand!

EXIBIT B: BAD DUDEZ

Ah, now this I can get behind. Perhaps I'll buy one, wear it to the bars, act like I have a barely double digit rating on the IQ scale and instantly pick up an underage girl. I think that's called being a douche. These shirts would totally help me master that.

In fact, what the hell are these shirts anyway? They kinda look like ink blots if you think about it. For fun, next time you are out and some guy wearing one of these walks by, tell them you want to try to analyze their shirt. Relax your eyes for a minute, really look at the strange symbols, and then say. Nope, I still only see a douchebag. If you do this and you are a girl, then you should be fine, but if you are a guy, be careful. Chances are, if they are wearing a shirt like this, they still react like their neanderthal predecessor (whom they seem to admire so much), and you will be promptly clubbed.

What's the point of having TAPOUT written on your shirt anyway? Are you trying to walk around and tell the world I'm a super badass fighter, no one can beat me." Again, unless you are an MMA fighter with T-shirts that have your own name on them, you look like a twat. In fact, even under that pretense, you look like a twat.

The sad thing is that these are both from two different stores in the mall. The ONLY two stores that carry shirts for regular, non hipster, guys who can grow facial hair. Now I have no where to buy a decent t-shirt. This is a serious problem! Honestly, what would Marlon Brando say?

Well said, good sir! Well said indeed!

Supermarket Books - The Return

In the past I've been known to talk about a serious concern in the world today... The Supermarket book. Today I let my inner kindness get the best of me as I finally decided I have to read the last one I was given.

The book is Wicked Prey by John Sandford, and you will be thrilled to see on the cover that it's presented for the "FIRST TIME IN PAPER BACK".

If you are wondering why I am writing yet another post about this subject, it's because it's easy. Hell, this book is writing it for me. I haven't even started reading it yet but how could it be bad?

The St. Louis Dispatch calls it, "A...wham-bam tale" and Publishers Weekly exclaims that the book is "Amped up, Ultra-Violent... [and] slam-bang." Honestly, let's see Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro get a review like that!

Don't believe this book is gonna be great still? Well how about I tell you what else the author has written?

Oh wow, he wrote Phantom Prey and Invisible Prey! Those were great! Other classics include Broken Prey, Hidden Prey, Naked Prey, Mortal Prey, Chosen Prey, Easy Prey, Certain Prey, Secret Prey, Winter Prey, Shadow Prey and The Man Who Thought He Owned The World. Ok I made one of those up, can you guess which?

On the back cover it says John Sandford is a pseudonym for Pulitzer Prize winner John Camp. Weird, why does he use a pseudonym for the books he's putting out so quickly?

I'm sure you've already stopped reading this due to the impulse to order this on amazon immediately but for those of you still here, I present my review below.

Bliz-O-Vision says "This is one helluva snog-flog thriller!!"

The Welfare of a Nation.

There are many who live their comfortable lives with no grasp of the problems that are still actually out there. For example, I have lived my entire life living in a relatively small city that always seemed clean, quiet and safe. I had no idea that there were so many mentally unstable and homeless in the downtown area until recently. The system is set up in a way to keep them there. They aren't given any incentive to try to make changes for themselves and depressingly enough, a lot of them are using their monthly welfare cheques, paid for by our tax dollars to buy drugs. In that respect the government is funding addiction and homelessness with our tax dollars. Wouldn't that money be better spent on some sort of home care service to try and put these people back on track? I know this could be done as it's a similar idea to how our system helps the disabled. I would even go as far as to argue that many of these people are disabled people who fell through the cracks.

My real issue here is not with the people who can't help themselves, as they really need something in place to keep them on the straight and narrow, so much as the people who don't want to help themselves. I personally know a few people who are more or less living off the system as a free ride. They sleep in shelters for only a small portion of their welfare cheque and try to convince others to buy them drugs and other things when they are low on funds.

This is why I feel to clean up the streets we need some form of social care system to help those who want to be helped, as I know they exist, and let those who don't want to be helped sleep in the bed they've made. I can't justify giving 30% of my paycheck to a government who helps people buy drugs and Listerine. We are taxed hard here in Canada and we smile and brag about our badass healthcare system, but maybe it's time to reexamine how that money is being spent. I'm cool with being taxed if it's in the name of making this beautiful country a better place.

I need to clarify though, obviously we can't just leave those who don't want to be helped out in the cold, as much as I believe in a certain degree of tough love. I just feel, that if you want free money, maybe you should be showing that you actually want to do well with it.

This system does not and is never gonna work as long as the policy makers have their heads up in the clouds. Unfortunately, I'm just some naive lower mid-class person who doesn't like what he sees, and maybe I'm bitter because I haven't given up and won a prize as so many do.

I'm frustrated, and maybe it's time for something new. I bet I get some hate for this one, but I'm standing by it.