Store Wars

I'm having a jam-packed week. I spent Saturday night over at the house of some family friends in Bodega Bay with my parents, and it was amazing. They have season five of Breaking Bad. I was in heaven. We also had long and thoughtful conversations, but... BREAKING BAD. It's the best friggin's show of all time. We have to cook, Jesse.

Anyway, then on Sunday I assembled the people in my group for the final battle of the Food Project for my school. We made apple scones, apple pies, apple salads, apple-stuffed pork loins, apple soup, and a quasi-apple fritter dish that resembled apples crammed into a really thick pancake. Some foods were more successful than others. As you remember, we invited our science teacher to come to dinner. He's an interesting guy, and goes only by the name 'Doc'. The party don't start until Doc shows up.

So now I'm getting into editing the video for the Food Project, and it's pretty funny. There's a good hour of footage of the four of us dicking around in Safeway, wearing Thrift Shop clothes and riding on carts. Then of course there's the actual food preparation, which features Calvin's insightful apple fact, "Apples are red. Except when they're not." It's good shit.

I'm pretty bemused by the news right now (HA, bemused by the news... it rhymes...), seeing as the 100 Best Memes of 2012 have just been released, with Gangnam Style taking #1, and other great memes like Socially Awkward Penguin, Binders Full of Women, and Bad Luck Brian coming in close. But I think a new meme is out. I don't know how the people of the internet will spin this one, but it's pretty friggin' funny.

You see, the G8 summit is being held in Ireland this year, but after the economic collapse of 2008, Ireland has been like Europe's Detroit. In other words, holding a big economic conference in a city filled with condemned buildings, decrepit factories, and run-down pubs isn't really sending the strongest message. So in order to bring back some of that old Ireland-y spirit, they've started plastering up pictures of bustling storefronts over brick walls. It's part of my new series...


IRELAND: Seriously, are you f**king kidding me?

I'm essentially the ultimate European, with lineage tracing back to France, England, Iceland, Poland, Austria, NOT GERMANY, and (you guessed it) Ireland. So I have absolutely no problem with saying the following. Ireland, this is pathetic. However, this is also one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I've always said that the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland need to stop killing each other and start putting a little more effort into their country's aesthetic design.

In other news, Michelle Bachmann is bowing out of Congress next year, so there's a job opening in Minnesota for a psychotic woman with dead eyeballs who likes blaming mental retardation on preventative vaccines. Bachmann was, of course, one of the most extreme, anti-liberal, homophobic politicians in recent memory. The people of Minnesota have been so appalled by her disgusting rhetoric that they've re-elected her to Congress four times.

Bye!

Game of Drones: Episode II: Attack of the Drones

I performed my skit today for my class, and it was pretty damn good. I yelled in a German accent as my stage persona (Dr. Heinz Vanhousin) and was forced to sing a spoof of Bohemian Rhapsody about monoculture farms and apple GMOs. You can only imagine the witty one-liners we coined with this. Things like "An apple a day keeps the DOCTOR AWAAY!!!" and "I vill be ze invincible apple baron of ze WORLD!" Shakespearian, I know.

Also, I have more cause to celebrate, because G-Force just passed 16,000 hits, now averaging 500 hits a month. For a blog with no ad content, no funding, no employees, no reporting, no investigative journalism, no aesthetic design, and probably plagiarized images that could lead to copyright infringement lawsuits, that's pretty damn good. Did I mention that this is also written by a 15-year old?

That's all gonna change, though. I'm outsourcing the writing of these blog posts to a guy in Mumbai who will read all my former blog posts, then write his best guess at the insightful commentary that I would make and that you've all grown accustomed to. Big time saver for me, I know.

Speaking of insightful commentary, here's a news story just BEGGING to be made fun of. For the first time since the beginning of the drone program, the government has taken full responsibility for accidentally killing someone. The catch? The people killed were four Americans.

      

Yeah, I didn't make that graphic. In retrospect, it was stupid of me to assume that no one else would think of this pun.

Anyway, Eric Holder announced today that the government was taking responsibility for the strikes, and Obama himself declared that drone strikes would be 'limited' now. Well, s**t. After countless civilians in Afghanistan are mercilessly bombed with hellfire and brimstone from the sky, the thing that makes the government do an about face on the issue is the deaths of four AMERICANS? HA! It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

And what exactly do they mean by 'limit'? This drone program was the first blatantly militaristic army ego-trip that I could really GET BEHIND, and now they're 'limiting' it? I mean, say what you will about drones and their accuracy, but normally no more civilians are killed in a drone strike than in a typical foot soldier attack. The only difference is that one situation doesn't put Americans in the line of fire.

I suppose that, like with the A-Bomb before them, the drones have rendered the whole "Sending your army to fight another army to see whose is better" thing kind of quaint. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. And think about the number of combat-ready soldiers we have already! I can't wait to see the army admissions forms in a few years!

• HAVE YOU PLAYED CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE?

YES___   NO___

• HAVE YOU PLAYED BATTLEFIELD 4?

YES___   NO___

• HAVE YOU PLAYED CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2?

YES___   NO___

If you answered yes to any of the questions, congratulations! Here's your assignment number and joystick. You start tomorrow.

Bye!

OKLAHOMA!

I have a skit to perform tomorrow in front of my entire 108-person class (divided into four houses, of course), so I'm not in a fantastic mood. I once again play a mad German scientist, so yes, I'm being typecast in the 9th grade. However, my friend Calvin plays a mentally deficient apple-human-fish hybrid with a speech impediment. It's the role he was born to play.

But there's some big f**kin' news right now. And it's turning the world upside-down. Cats are chasing dogs. My Isuzu Trooper is getting good gas milage. People are remembering their PIN numbers without looking them up. Rush Limbaugh is making intelligent arguments. CONGRESS IS GETTING THINGS DONE!!! And it's all because this week... and I can't believe the words are coming out of my mouth... SOMETHING HAPPENED IN OKLAHOMA.

You see, for nearly 100 years, the sleepy little state has been a very model of boredom. In 1982, a tumbleweed rolled through the town of Tulsa, prompting locals to exit their saloons, stop their cattle roundups, and postpone their daily gunfights in order to stare at the miraculous occurrence. This is what passes for news in Oklahoma.

But this week, the pointless and dreary state was struck by a series of tornadoes, destroying homes and laying waste to fields. It took Oklahomans a whole 24 hours to notice the difference. Anyway, this means that Oklahoma has now put an end to its 77-year run of having absolutely nothing happen. So instead of focus on the chaos and misery that is Oklahoma today, I will devote this blog to the chaos and misery that was Oklahoma for the past 200 years.

In the 1800s, settlers drove Native Americans from their ancestral homes and confined them to a fate worse than death: LIVING IN OKLAHOMA. There, they lived for decades in peace until the US finally said "Actually, we want the whole thing" and took Oklahoma over as well. This was regarded one of the most massive blunders the US has ever perpetrated.



^^ The lush and varied landscape of Oklahoma.

Since then, the state has lived through the three D's of Oklahoma: Droughts, Dustbowls, and Depressions. By 1935, every resident of the battered state had either died of starvation or moved to California. To cover up this fact, the government tried to let the state proceed normally despite not having a single person living in it. In 1936, Oklahoma was represented in Congress by a broken stool and a rusty tractor frame. 1938 saw the unanimous election of Governor Clothesline.

Fortunately, the government was able to slowly rehabilitate Oklahoma by forcing even more unfortunate people to live in it. Although the state remains one of the driest in the union, idealistic young Oklahomans dream of one day constructing the state's first puddle, and then... who knows? A whole lake? The sky's the limit.

But all kidding aside (okay, maybe not ALL kidding), I sometimes wonder why people choose to live in places that actively try to kill them. How could you live in a place when you know that at any minute, an enormous whirlwind might suck up everything you've ever held dear? It's probably just my ignorant Californian attitude, seeing as I live in a place where an earthquake could kill you at any minute.

I suppose that the only way to keep these things from happening is to live in giant metal hamster balls that just roll around during a natural disaster. Woah... that's actually a great idea. All I have to do is build the prototype. Also, if I want to sell any in America, it had better have WiFi.

Bye!

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Aaaah... I am content. I just saw Star Trek: Into Darkness an hour ago, and the world is good. I've been wary of the 2013 movie season after the abysmal A Good Day to Die Hard, but now... things are looking up.

In fact, if it weren't for the aforementioned travesty, 2013 could be shaping up to be the year of spectacular sequels. Iron Man 3 was great, and there are several more sequels coming out later in the summer (The Hangover Part III, anyone?), but today was a day that will live forever. Because the new Star Trek movie is easily one of the best that the franchise has ever produced.

Paying epic homage to the best Trek film of all time (1982's The Wrath of Khan), Darkness introduces a new villain-- who is later revealed to be the younger version of Ricarado Montalban's Khan from the Original Series. In this film, Khan is once again trying to save the lives of his crew, who have remained frozen in capsules after the Eugenics War. Khan, of course, is a superman who has been genetically engineered to possess enhanced intelligence, strength, stamina, and healing powers.

An evil Starfleet captain finds Khan's pods, and revives only him, in order to orchestrate a war with the Klingons (who no longer look like the heavily makeup-clad humans of old) in order to try out some new fancy weapons. Khan, being the badass he is, had his own plans, and smuggled his crew away using the torpedoes that the captain had him build. Here's where Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest of the peeps come in: After several terrorist attacks are staged, they chase Khan to the Klingon homeworld, violating the Neutral Zone (and thereby laying the grounds for war). Unknowingly, Kirk captures Khan, and the two are forced to team up to defeat the evil captain.

As is with any science fiction movie, the visuals often run the risk of overshadowing the plot and characters, a little more so here than in 2009's Star Trek. I think there are about five climactic battles. But fortunately, the witty banter that has made this franchise endure is still there. Uhura and Spock have a few spats, which is fun to watch, seeing as he can't really get pissed off. Scotty resigns his post, but returns to save the day in spectacular fashion. And Kirk gets to live through the EXACT SAME sequence from The Wrath of Khan, but this time it's him behind the glass. I won't get into it, as it would spoil the entire film... but this is really required viewing.



Also, there's an epic tribble cameo in the film, just to appease the die-hard fanboys who would get all butthurt if it didn't make little nods of the head to the Original Series.

Of course, Benedict Cumerbatch isn't quite able to live up to the big shoes left behind by the original Khan, but that's to be expected. The rest of the cast performs admirably, but the finest moments of the movie are when the characters are experiencing their own little interpersonal crises, not battling atop flying forklifts or running around active volcanoes. And yes, there's a healthy amount of lens flare, as always.

So, where does Darkness rank in the Trek filmography? Well, nothing will ever topple Khan from its sacred position as the height of the saga, and it's certainly not as good as Star Trek, the fantastic reboot that, although featuring the same characters as Darkness, was a lot fresher and more exciting. But I would put Darkness in third place easily, perhaps tied with The Voyage Home. F**k The Next Generation, Jean-Luc Picard is a pain in the ass.

And the final score for Into Darkness? 9/10 stars. Sure, I could bitch and moan about how much it screwed with the timeline of the Original Series by killing of not one, not two, but THREE characters who were integral to the storyline. I won't spoil it. Just go see this movie now, before we're bogged down in the inevitable slog of unintelligent shoot-em-up summer blockbusters.

Bye!

Here Comes the Gun

Whoo! I'm still winding down off my high horse after my epic rant about Baby Boomers last post. But I'm calm now. I'm calm-- GOD DAMN ASSHOLES CALLING US NARCISSISTIC?!?!?!? Okay, NOW I'm calm.

I'd like to take the chance now to talk about something a little less inflammatory: GUN LAWS! Yaaay! As you may recall, a few years ago a revolutionary new device called the 3-D printer was built by some geniuses in Silicone Valley. Once completed, the machine was able to take blueprints of any 3-D object off the internet, and place hundreds of layers of plastic on top of each other until it created the actual 3-dimensional object itself. Seeing how much I despise 3-D movies, I went into this with much skepticism. But when my 7th-grade math teacher demonstrated his to our class, I knew it was pretty legit.

But, as with all new technologies, someone has found a way to kill people with it. A conservative action group recently posted blueprints for a make-your-own 3-D gun on their website, so now anyone with a 3-D printer can download the specs, print off the pieces, and assemble their own DIY gun in the comfort of their own home. This Old House must be so proud.

Now, there is a law against all-plastic guns in the US, seeing as they are impossible to detect with metal detectors and can therefore be brought onto planes and into government buildings quite easily. But the creators of the gun, codenamed 'The Liberator', have skirted this law (but just barely) by including one piece that has to be purchased at a hardware store: A metal pin for the gun's hammer. Of course, you could just print off your own plastic pin to your own specifications, and no one would be the wiser. You would then be in possession of an all-plastic, undetectable, unregistered firearm with no way of being tracked or located. Bravo!



Yes, it looks stupid, but The Liberator fires actual bullets. So... should all the sane people in the land start panicking? I say no. Sure, The Liberator can be smuggled through any standard checkpoint, but it's virtually useless (unless you use it to beat someone to death) without the metal bullets that will set off any up-to-snuff metal detector. Also, it's still far easier in this gun-crazed nation to just buy your own gun-- even illegally and with no serial number.

You see, 3-D printers are still in the prototype stage, meaning the average one costs roughly $5,000. Besides that conspicuous price tag (which is noticeably far above the cost of a handgun), they also take a good amount of manual-reading and time to learn how to operate correctly. So don't worry-- if someone wants to get an untraceable gun, they don't have to print it off online; they can just buy one from Vinnie, that guy who sells unregistered revolvers.

Sleep well tonight. Bye!

The WAH, WAH, WAH Generation: Baby Boomers Are Lazy, Apathetic Narcissists Who Would Rather Blame Their Kids for Their Problems than Solve Them. Why They're a Giant Pain in my Ass

I had the incredible good fortune of taking a history test on Friday, and I aced it. Why, you ask? Because half of the test was on naming countries in Europe. Technically, we were only supposed to fill out the map with a minimum of 25 countries, but I did all 50 on the map and their capitals. So yes, it was a good day. I know how to map. Seriously, ask me any capital. Samoa? Apia. Slovenia? Ljbljana. Uzbekistan? Tashkent. Hmm. These are far less impressive in print format.

Yet not everybody of my age group seems to be as enlightened as myself-- case in point: TIME magazine just released their latest issue-- and it casts some pretty wide generalizations on us millennials. Take a look.



I hope that TIME realizes the massive opportunity they missed out on here. We're really more of the meme generation.

Anyway, if you can't read it, the caption reads "Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents." Two things: Firstly, yeah, some of us live with our parents. Us slack-off 15-year olds who do nothing but mooch off of mom and dad instead of renting our own apartments and getting a f**king job. God. So selfish.

And secondarily, WHAT THE FRIGGIN' SHIT, TIME? I'm sorry, but I'm pissed. Do they know what they sound like? "Oh, you kids today with your shorts and your t-shirts! Back in my day, we worked 10 hours a day tilling the backyard to grow SQUASH!" News flash, old people: Every generation looks on the next with disdain. And they're never right. I'm sure my grandparents thought my parents were 'undisciplined youths' for listening to The Beatles and opposing the war in Vietnam. And I'm sure THEIR parent's generation looked on THEM, wondering what the big deal with... Frank Sinatra was. I don't know what was popular back in the 40s.

But you call US lazy and selfish? Hey, baby boomers-- maybe instead of calling us names just because you had to ask your kids to set your phone up for you, you should try to solve some of the mind-blowing problems you've left us with. I don't know, like... global warming, unemployment, inflated college admission prices, a couple of wars, national debt, a growing nuclear crisis across the world, and the death of Futurama. I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

And yeah, some of us are lazy assholes who listen to Justin Bieber and fiddle with our iPods every second of every day, but why single them out? Are you guys just so appalled by the breadth of your own shortcomings that you decide to take it out on a whole generation before they even have a chance to prove themselves? It boggles the mind.

Sorry if this seemed confrontational, but I get up in arms whenever somebody tries to unfairly blame a kid for something just because we're conveniently lacking in power/lobbying capacity in this country. Maybe that should be our next civil rights movement-- letting kids vote. Actually, forget that: I'm forming a MILLENIAL LOBBYING ORGANIZATION!!! So that whenever a young person in this country is persecuted and maligned, we can seek out and sue the offending party. Remember that kid who was arrested for wearing an NRA t-shirt to school? We got his back. That kid in Virginia who was expelled for mixing two non-potent chemicals in science class? Her lawsuit is our lawsuit.

Now it's sounding less like the Millenial Lobbying Organization and more like the Millenial Justice League of America. Still, totally awesome.

Bye!

The Conspirafication of the American Punditscape

I am in dire need of finding a good laptop. Summer is coming up, and I need a bigger screen to watch movies on all night instead of my iPod. Just think: I'll reach over to my library of DVDs (including but not limited to: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard, The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Kill Bill, Lawrence of Arabia, The Hangover, LA Confidential, and The Terminator), pop one into the disc drive, and... aaaah... two hours of total bliss.

Of course, I don't want to get into a hassle like last time. You may remember from back in November, when I bought an $80 laptop, which promptly broke two weeks later. Good call, Graham. Way to not spring for the warranty. But that's what you get when you buy fourth-hand electronics from the random stoner at your school.

But my problems seem a little inconsequential compared to what the IRS has been going through this week. So let me walk you through the more important points of the scandal that has been rocking the government: Back in 2010, there was this thing called the "Tea Party." You probably don't remember it, no one really wants to. Anyway, it has recently come out that the Internal Revenue Service made specific efforts to target Tea Party and other right-wing groups for audits and extended background checks.

This really is a toss-up for me, because it pits two groups I hate against each other: Warmongering right-wingers and tax collectors. And given the songs 'Taxman' and 'Give Peace a Chance', The Beatles weren't big fans of them either. But I have to admit that the IRS did have probable cause here: If a group of people protests in the streets over taking back the government and staging a tax revolt, why wouldn't you be more inclined than usual to inspect their tax returns? And besides, I wouldn't trust these people to do fourth-grade multiplication problems, let alone calculate their tax returns. But now the great government conspiracy has come out, and all the teabaggers are up in arms, talking about being 'oppressed.' This is the part where nobody cares.

Or at least, it should be, but now all the right-wing conspiracy theories are being brought out into the limelight. The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi is STILL being discussed, and people are saying that it was a 'massive intelligence failure' or that the president knew about it, but didn't do anything because he's a socialist muslim Kenyan... whatever. I can't even remember the entire thing.

The funniest part of this is that the senators who are 'investigating' Benghazi are the same people who said that "George W. Bush kept us safe; there were no major terrorist attacks on US soil for almost all of his presidency!"

Right... except for that one time.

So instead of these two massively hyperbolic Republican fantasies getting the ostracization they deserve (and yes, I just coined the word ostracization), they are being broadcast 24/7 on all the major news networks. And so right now there's probably some racist southern hick guzzling Pabst Blue Ribbon, eating KFC, and waving a Confederate flag while watching CNN and yelling "AH KNEWED IT! AH KNEWED IT! ISSA CONSPIRACY! I HATES GUBMINT!!!"

Before this post delves into my 1,001 reasons why I hate the south, I'm cutting myself off. And yes, I could EASILY think of 1,001 reasons. Hey... that would make a great blog post. Anyway, in closing, I would love to deliver you some fantastic news: In the season finale of How I Met Your Mother, we friggin' meet the mother. Which is weird, seeing as I just called for this five days ago. Someone at CBS is reading my blog.

Bye!

The Buckeye State

Unlike the rest of the state... make that country... no, make that world... there aren't many fights here in San Anselmo, California. So when something DOES happen, everybody pays the utmost attention to it, just to have something to do. I left the school during lunch yesterday to go with some of the Peeps down to the strip mall, but on our way, we found out that two of the biggest morons in the school were going to fight something out over on the baseball field down at the park. Naturally, there were well over 40 people there watching, and now the two guys have gotten suspended (even though all they did was slap each other a little). It's a sad, sad state of affairs.

The stupidest part of this is how the administration found out-- some idiot was texting in class and the teacher took their phone away-- and proceeded to find out about it through the texts sent via the phone. So, the take-away from this? Apparently, the people in my school lack any form of self-control whatsoever. 

I could go on and on about stupid people at my high school (because God knows we have a lot of them), but there's been some pretty unbelievable s**t going on in the news this week. In Cleveland, a man has been arrested and held for eight million dollar bail after three captive women were found in his basement. And you thought your week was going bad.

This guy (who is a self-declared 'sexual predator', just thought I'd say that) has been keeping the women in the basement for a decade. I won't get into the specifics of what happened over those ten years, seeing as some of my readers are of a more delicate constitution, but it was some messed-up f**kin' s**t. If you want the details, just highlight the following blank space with your cursor:

HOLY CRAP. YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR THIS. Okay, fine. He raped all of the women repeatedly over the ten-year period, and whenever he got one pregnant, he would beat and starve her until she miscarried. He also got one of the other women pregnant, but for some reason didn't do it to her-- so she had to give birth in this little shop of horrors. You did ask. Don't put this on me if you can't sleep at night now. It's your own God damn fault for looking.

By the way, you may recall back when Ohio went for Obama in the 2012 election, and I bumped it 10 slots down on my Official List of S**ttiest States. But now I'm thinking... not so much. It's back to square one. And this was really a long time coming, seeing as Ohio is also the home of the Craigslist Killer, systematic removal of the Native Americans, and Ted f**king Mosby.

JUST MEET THE FRIGGIN' MOTHER ALREADY, YOU ASSHOLE! I HAVE PUT WAAAY TOO MUCH TIME INTO THIS BULLS**T!!!

However, Ohio also is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Black Keys... so I could really go either way. Wow... I really got off-track here a little. Anyway, the good news is that the women are back with their families, and can now go on to live an even worse fate: Living in Kentucky. And the guy who imprisoned them in the first place is being held on counts of unlawful confinement, rape, battery, assault, false imprisonment... you name it. Also, when he left the house that day, he left behind a suicide note detailing his prisoners and how sorry he was... so I'd love to see the lawyer he gets.

But in a situation like this, you don't need a criminal lawyer. You need a CRIMINAL lawyer. So, if you want to make more money... and keep the money that you make... 

Wow, that's two TV show jokes that nobody will get. Ah, well.

Bye!