Watch This: Heartbroken Little Asian Boy

This little pimp sweetheart just wanted to give a flower to all the little girls at this piano recital, but watch what happens when he gets rejected.

For the record, at the end he’s screaming the Japanese equivalent of “WHY?!?!?!?!,” or “WRYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!”

Edit: The above passage is funnier if you imagine it being narrated by Bob Saget on ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.‘

Read This: Step Aside Virtual Reality

This post is eventually about poke’mon, so read it to the very end. Ready? Virtual reality sure does have it’s benefits [flight simulators, and medical procedure training], but when it comes to the public consumers it hasn’t been a big deal since Nintendo’s Virtual Boy was released and had people literally seeing red. [Even then it wasn't a big deal.] What am I getting at? Augmented Reality. I’m going to make this as easy as possible to understand. Imagine this scenario: You’re lost in the city, but luckily you have your phone with you, so you take a picture of the nearest building and upload it to Google Maps. Google then matches that picture with it’s database and triangulates your position, then proceeds to guide you to your destination. Sound far fetched? It shouldn’t. That technology exists right now, and then some. Here, check it out [the first 30 seconds is sufficient]:

Neat, eh? So where are we heading with this? Well in the tech world everything is getting smaller [Desktops > Laptop > Netbooks] so in the near future when a small spy-like set of computer-infused glasses are available, or even better yet, computers can be surgically placed inside the human body, this technology will really flourish. So hypothetically in this not-too-outlandish future you can stroll around and look at a store, and without going inside, your computer feeds you the latest sales ad and estimated wait time at the register. Really the big point I’m trying to make here is that this technology that already exists becomes a standard part of everyday life. Talking to a friend and he uses a word you don’t understand? Google it in real-time.

Brendan, you said you were gonna talk about Pokemon, what gives? Take a chill-pill Charlie, you’ll get your Golden Ticket.

This took too long to make....

I’m not exactly a gamer, but I can see the uses this technology brings. Here’s the scenario:

You’re taking a stroll through Central Park on a chilly winter night. You catch a glimpse of someone walking past and a moment later *blip blip*, you didn’t recognize that face but your computer did. It read his radio-frequency identification [RFID] tag and checked it against an online database and guess what; He also has a computer, and he also happens to play the same game you do, Poke’mon Reality, and he wants to battle. You turn around and he’s facing you, arms crossed, and suddenly out of nowhere, a cartoon-ish looking bird instantly appears in front of him. It didn’t really happen, but you saw it – He did too. You look down, and in front of you is a small sphere, sharing the same cartoon-like design as the icy-blue bird, staring you down. At the very bottom of your eye sight is a loading bar. It’s gathering information – where you are, what temperature it is, and any benches, rocks, or trees around you that might change the battle that’s about to take place. It’s time to make a decision; You can either initiate a battle by selecting one of your own personally-trained pocket monsters or walk away….

I’m not that into Pokemon, I swear, but with my audience’s age group this is the most readily recognizable…. example I could make. Well, that was a mouthful, but if you made it this far tell me what you think. Websites have comments for a reason and I wanna hear from you.

Buy This: Threadless Week #18

One week ago. Seven days ago. One hundred and sixty-eight hours ago. I was right here laying on my floor, typing away about my usual Monday topic, Threadless. So here I am again, and not much has happened in the span of four-dimensional space that is my previous week [hey, I learned something from metaphysics afterall]. I’ll drop the pretentious, and possibly inaccurate, act. Here’s to another week of shirts. I still check teemagnet everyday, but nothing beats waking up to a fresh set of community designed tees, even if everything above the price of free-fifty is out of my price range. To be honest, I’ve only seen one design worth being on a t-shirt lately, and it’s NOT on a t-shirt. This design has it all, and I don’t even know who created it. I found it on a tiny-blonde-haired friend’s tumblr site. I’m unusually chatty today, so consider this picture my personal foot-in-mouth.

There's no way this guy is sea-worthy. He looks like he has scurvy!

This week’s shirt, “Long Journey,” was designed by Enkel Dika. It reminds me of a shirt I already featured [and bought], but maybe I just can’t get enough boats. This shirt even has tentacles! I like texture of the colors and I’m out of things to say. Seeya.

Read This: Family Members on Facebook

Edit: I’ve decided I don’t really like this post. It’s rushed and jumbled.

I didn’t know what to make of it at first. Adults, relative, employers hopping on the social networking bandwagon. My mom actually had the insight to not add me on Facebook right off the bat which is another reason why I love her. I did think about it for awhile, but inevitably I ended up adding her and all my other relatives and I hope you’ll listen to why, as that is the meat of this post and it actually almost runs alongside one of my favorite posts, ‘Individualism Pt.1.’

First of all, my parents are divorced, and my relationship with my dad isn’t the greatest. We don’t hate each other or anything, but we just… we’re both so busy. I’m a college student, and he has a household of three growing kids and a demanding job so we talk on the phone every couple of months. Facebook is the perfect way to keep tabs on what he’s up to. He uploads family pictures and he’s even getting into status updates, which can be quite hilarious.

Way to stay young at heart.

I never really thought much about ‘hiding incriminating photos’ like most kids in my predicament. I have an open relationship with my mom [not a facebook 'Open Relationship' you pervs] and honestly I don’t do anything she isn’t aware of, so it’s really not a huge deal to me. As far as profane language, I think most adults at least partially expect some rash behavior from us teens.

All-in-all, I think social networking, although sometimes abused, is a great tool for maintaining relationships when you’re busy making a future for yourself. Embrace it and just be happy your parents know how to use a computer.

Read This: ‘Pale Blue Dot’

Carl Sagan’s awe-inspiring passage, “Pale Blue Dot,” about the famous picture taken from space, of Earth. [It was originally a commencement address, thank you Wikipedia.]

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Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

-CARL SAGAN,

11th of may, 1996

I really, really hope that makes you feel something. Wake up America.

What’s really interesting to me, which is completely unrelated to the above 9 or so inches of screen-space above, is a partnered blog with shared posting privileges between me and my Pen-Pal Paige [<3]. About some of the classiest and cleverest things found on the internet, such as this commercial for a trojan condom. There’s plenty more. We’re combing the internet.

Read This: Individualism Pt.1

An idea has been brewing in the back of my head for some time now. Mostly just my own commentary on the developing social shift from real-life interpersonal relationships to what the internet is becoming infamous for, porn social-networking. This could become a long rant, so I’m going to cut it into parts. I don’t want it to get boring, so that works for that too, hopefully.

Let’s try to set some background. If you’re reading this site, you’re most likely between the ages of 18 and 24. Do you remember the internet 9 years ago? Let me paint a picture. I had a hotmail account with 50 Mb of online storage and a rudimentary spam blocker. For fun I would visit albinoblacksheep, dribbleglass, and ilovebacon and if I wanted to meet people I would search yahoo for a topic I enjoy, and join the first forum that pops up. I would wait over 5 minutes for my confirmation e-mail, and then I would slowly get to know these other face-less strangers that share a geeky hobby or interest of mine. AIM was young, IRC was strong, and streaming online videos were unheard of.

The general tone of this post in picture form. Emote accordingly.

Here’s what the internet was to people even before I had discovered it. [The internet is older than me, hopefully you knew that.] The internet was….. a safe-haven. It was the place where the under-appreciated, the picked on, and the people that were just too smart to be entertained by the teaching done at school would spend their time. These angst-y underlings sought refuge online and quickly realized they weren’t alone. They tied up their dial-up lines all night. On the internet it didn’t matter who was the strongest, biggest, or hippest with the ladies; The only rank among them was intellect and vision. A secret club that only the socially defunct could gain proper access to. These guys grew up and helped the internet grow alongside them with valiant goals: Free information for the people! Electronic mail! Making money doing the things they LOVE to do! [and lots of it.] Porn!

Fast forward to today. What are the most popular sites on the internet? Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Blogger, etc. The list goes on. Social Networking. New ones are popping up all the time hoping to jump on the money train. Myspace and Xanga cleared a path for social networking. Facebook is now the fourth most popular website in the world, beaten only by Google, Yahoo, and Youtube.

What am I getting at? Stay tuned for Pt.2. Comments please.

Read This: TeeMagnet

All your shirt goodness on one page.

There are several one-a-day sites for t-shirts and this site puts them all together on one page and updates accordingly. There is also a coupon codes section that has some great savings from 10% all the way up to 55% off some great shirt sites.

TeeMagnet.com

Read This: Remove Facebook Quizzes

You’re excited. I can feel it. Facebook was your escape from Myspace, and now the stupid shit that bothered you about Myspace is flocking en masse to Facebook. Even more obtrusive than myspace bulletins, quizzes are an eyesore on my news feed and I found the perfect remedy for removing these unsightly scabs. I almost tried to make a herpes joke there, but figured it wasn’t worth the effort. So this is a pretty quick fix as long as you’re using everyone’s favorite browser, Firefox. If you’re not, I’d like to know why the hell not. If you happen to be using Google’s new browser Chrome, there’s a fix for you too, so stay tuned.

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1. Install Greasemonkey: Greasemonkey is an addon for Firefox that allows for all kinds of user created scripts for enhancing sites. Install it here. Restart Firefox.

2. Install ‘Purity’: Purity is the user script that returns Facebook to it’s relatively unblemished former self. This script can be installed by clicking here and clicking install.

Yup. That’s it. For you Chrome users, read up on this post to enable user scripts.

Buy This: Threadless Week #17

Hey, looks like I picked up on my posting this week. Sorry about my last one. I’ve learned my lesson on writing while deliriously tired. This past weekend was good though. I went and saw He Is Legend again [Time the third]. This was the best show yet, and I’m pretty sure the frontman, Schuylar Croom, was mad hammered comfortable. He was like a mix between himself and Mitch Hedburg. At the show, I did realize the quality of their shirts were pretty slack which leads me to the subject of my mondays and my ultimate demise, t-shirts. I was pretty happy with the selection on Threadless today. I had a small internal debate between today’s winner and this shirt, but decided that although the latter is a great design, it just looks awkward centered on the tee. Here’s the winner.

Excellent design, placement, and reference.

This shirt, ‘Dead Sucker‘ by Kristy Anne Ligones, is a reference to a damn good video game called Bioshock. This still isn’t a shirt I would wear, but I really do dig the style and placement, and the fact that it’s nerdy without directly stating it’s nerdiness. If I were into getting tattoos on a whim, this would be somewhere near my crotch. That doesn’t sound too pedophilic does it? Damn. Now I keep thinking about this as a nice tattoo on the inside of my bicep.

Read This: OMNGHFS, Wow

Usually my other hand is on my penis...???

Are you kidding me? In the current day and age I can actually talk to a random stranger on the internet and not be repulsed, but now I’m going to update my twitter via pc or phone while I’m waiting to respawn. THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!! REPEAT AFTER ME, THATS NOT HAPPENING!! Keep reading. Don’t scroll away just yet! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Seriously. I hate dialing ‘40404′ and sending a message ['242-242' is a different story though.], but the friends good enough to actually pretend to enjoy your mundane daily rituals but also play an online game together shouldn’t have to cater to this bullshit too!

Oh, it’s been a wonderful life week.