The Bards Blog

A Multitude of Views on a Multitude of Issues

I Get Strange Offers

May 18

Posted by Mark D in Random Stories | No Comments

This was the 3rd one (from a supposedly different company) in the last month or two:

Hello,

I was hoping you could help me out – who can I speak with regarding business development/partnerships. I work for blah blah blah, an Inc500 company, and we have been partnering with sites similar to yours. We would like to discuss ideas on monetizing your website without the clutter of advertisements or giving up editorial control. We work with sites that focus on all types of subjects – career, baby boomers, moms, military, and more.  Below are some solutions we specialize in:

·       Content Creation – producing high quality content is time consuming.  We have in-house writers specializing in article creation that would complement your current content. This service

·       Registration Path Solutions – Present targeted offers to your new or returning visitors via your sign-up registration, returning user login, and other high traffic areas of your site. We can serve relevant offers in the form of co-registration opt-ins (get paid if a user checks a box), interstitials, as well as pages with multiple offers.

·       Custom Widgets – Place widgets on high traffic pages, which can be customized for any audience or topic. We can compensate on an aggressive cost per lead, cost per click, or even a flat rate depending on your sites traffic.

·       Call Center Services – Fulfilling leads, sales, and warm transfers for a variety of industries.

·       Email Marketing Programs – We offer 2 kinds of email marketing programs. We can monetize your subscriber base by emailing them targeted offers. Or we can email our subscribers your offer, driving sales and/or leads.

Please let me know who I can speak with regarding these solutions. Any of the solutions that create revenue for your site are paid for within 30 days, via check, wire, or PayPal.

I don’t know why these people message me. I barely get any hits and don’t make any money off this website. If I could write for this blog when no one came around, pretty sure I can handle creating content when people actually read it occasionally.  Plus the whole point of buying content from someone really runs counter-intutitive to everything I’m doing here. I mean I know I’ve had some guest writers but really, most of this blog is my insane ramblings or whatever I find interesting.

Yes, I realize I haven’t been posting a lot lately. That and this is my 2nd straight post which is just me yelling at something I got via email. I’m going to be posting real content soon and explaining exactly where the hell I have been. On the bright side it’s not as if I have regular readers who are upset they haven’t seen the insanity in my mind recently.

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No, Ryan Kaldari, You Can’t Fondle Me

Apr 28

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

But thanks for the laughs. You really shouldn’t bother getting a blog post removed which has gotten almost no attention. I had to double check the stats, but it has a total of 251 views in a year, of which 190 of them were in December when your banner on Wikipedia was in rotation. But hey, what do I know about the internet. Well at least tonight is going to be an easy night for new material, as here’s the fun letter that was in my inbox tonight:

From:
Ryan Kaldari
kaldari@gmail.com

Message:
I’ve been working at the Wikimedia Foundation for 2 years as a
software developer. Last year, they recruited me (and several other
community members and employees) to appear on a fundraising banner so
they could stop barraging people with Jimmy. After they put me on a
banner, I was then exposed to the full measure of human hate. No less
than 3 parody Facebook profiles were created, and numerous blogs and
discussion boards decided that I was the best thing to make fun of for
a couple weeks. All because I was encouraging people to donate to a
non-profit website. Most of these profiles and posts eventually
dropped off of Google, but your blog post is still on the first page
of Google matches for my name, as it has been for almost a year now. I
wouldn’t care so much, accept that it basically says I’m a liar, right
there in the headline for any potential employer or future girlfriend
to read when they google my name. I appreciate that the Wikimedia
Foundation has strong critics and I think such criticism is useful.
However, you should know that your criticism isn’t hurting the
Foundation, it’s only hurting me personally. I don’t want you to
remove your blog post, but I was wondering if there’s any chance you
could remove my name from the headline. The headline is still just as
effective without it. Looking through your website, it looks like we
have a lot in common and I hope you’ll read my email as a request from
another human being and not just from a representative of the
Wikimedia Foundation, which just happens to be my current employer.
Regarding the Foundation, you may want to look at their current
Charity Navigator profile as they are now one of the top ranked
charities in the country on both the Financial score and the
Accountability & Transparency score. I know this probably won’t change
your opinion of the Foundation, but I wanted to mention it, as the
Charity Navigator scores were one of the main criticisms in your blog
post. Anyway, thanks for listening. Peace.

 

When you sleep with the devil, you gotta pay your dues. Wikipedia is still duping people into donating when they have enough money to be solvent for the next 5-10 years at least. Except of course that they keep adding more and more staffers who are taking a bigger and bigger chunk out of the operating salary. And for what?

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Review of Revolution of the Mask 2

Apr 27

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

In my previous posts (here and here) I reviewed Issue 1 of Revolution of the Mask, a comic created by Linkara who is well known on the internet for his comic reviews. Basically he just bashes the hell out of comics that were good in their day but horrible in retrospect, or nitpicks everything. There’s a saying that those who can not do, teach. Well then, in Linkara’s case those who can not do and can not teach, review. The sad thing about RotM is that the idea is interesting, but everything else about it falls horribly flat. So let’s dive into Issue 2.

Page 2 and 3

Not much really going on here as the heroes and Gamma (our narrator) are flying through the air. Gamma is of course a little put off by this, considering he is hundreds of feet in the air and the only reason he isn’t falling is because he is in Rorschach’s arms. I’d be a tad paranoid too. He asks them who they are, and after a stupid line (we’re the lawmakers and lawbreakers?!?!?) Eighth Wonder says they are Superheros. We also get the subtitle (apparently) of this issue, Secret Wars. Why the cover doesn’t have this subtitle is beyond me, or why the previous issue didn’t have one either.

Page 4 and 5

So the heroes land in some ruined city, and they get Gamma’s name again. They mention that a Gamma designation working in a network information facility (I’m willing to bet now that we are never informed exactly what a network information facility actually is) is a janitor or a censor. He admits he was a censor and had heard about drug addicts and maniacs he believed they were. Rorschach mentions that Superheroes are masked crime fighters, wearing masks because they value their secret identity.

Page 6 and 7

Gamma is just as confused as the rest of us, and asks what is going on. 8th wonder tells dusk to go bring the newbie up to date. That pretty much sums up page 6, which is horrible because page 7 is even worse. We get to see another female superhero do a bunch of bouncing around pretending to attack something (oh and one panel of a gratuitous crotch shot). She informs another superhero that it’s her own martial art called “Joyous Buttkicking” and that she’s looking for Templar.

I know I don’t want to bash the art too much in this, but the woman doing the bouncing around has the most horrible logo. It’s a JJ, but it doesn’t match all the other ink in the scene. It looks as though someone used photoshop afterwards to put it in, and that it wasn’t originally there. It’s disconcerting to look at and really stands out. Somehow 8th Wonder’s logo is fine, but not the JJ. I don’t get it.

Page 8 and 9

Gamma is brought by Dusk to meet Templar, who is a hero in a suit of armor. He also appears to be the librarian in a rather large library. Despite the large collection of textbooks and rather large looking books, instead Gamma is given comic books to read. Because apparently “The All” banned comic books because they glorified individuality. But that Gamma has never even seen a comic before is odd. It wouldn’t be impossible to create comic books that are simple propaganda for The All. It’s a medium that The All could be using to take advantage of the people. Hell I think there’s Islamist Jihadists who actually use propaganda in comics.

Okay, so everything up to this point I wrote not too long after the original review. The problem is that the comic is so dam boring, there’s almost nothing to mock/parody in it. It’s really not even worth a review. If you were wondering why “Revolution of the Mask pt. 3″ never came out, it’s because it’s an awful comic. There is almost no action and a lot of talking.  Oh and Linkara’s idea of foreshadowing is smacking you over the head with a sledgehammer.

So we get a story about how the Superheros came to be, and it’s really dumb. They went into a city to collect resources for The All. They found comics but The All banned them. So they decide to escape back into the city, claim that they were dieing because bio-warfare had been used on the city and that they were going to blow up. A few explosions later and they laid low for a bit, before going back out into the world as Superheros.

Somehow The All never puts 2+2 together and realizes that these terrorists that are De-stabilizing it’s regime are the same people who disappeared into the ruins of the old city. Are there no airplanes or helicopters in this world? Why can’t someone do a flyover and just bomb the city into ruins? Or why hasn’t surveillance captured them flying in the direction of this city? Is The All only worried about the Superheros when they are causing trouble for it?

During all this we also find out what Linkara thinks is a superhero. Basically a good two shoes, because apparently he hates the idea of an Anti-Hero. Or more likely lacks the ability to write an Anti-Hero that doesn’t cross the line. I suspect his idea of an anti-hero is someone who rapes a lot of woman but is still a good guy.

Finally there’s a conversation between wannabe Rorsach and another guy whose name is never mentioned. But it’s already obvious that the guy is going to be the one that betrays the rest of the superheros. Why is it so obvious? Cause he’s the ONLY person critical of “8th Wonder” plan for action now, and pointing out that rescuing 1 person from The All doesn’t exactly win the war for them.

The comic ends with a page dedicated to the HQ of the Aligarchy. In a scene lifted from V For Vendetta there’s also a little girl graffiting “Free For All” on a random wall. Another message that doesn’t make sense, shouldn’t it instead say “Free From All”? Finally it ends with Omega reading quite possibly the worst comic ever, “Abstract Man”.

Even though I only spent 60 something cents on this, I can’t recommend it. The only good parts of the last one were the scenes lifted from other sources. This one rarely has even that saving grace. Go read this story pretty much done better by either 1984 or V For Vendetta. Hell even Brave New World is a better read, and they didn’t lift anything from that. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that was due to Linkara never reading BNW (they haven’t made a comic of it).

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Why I Hate The Hunger Games

Apr 26

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

Sometimes I get informed of a really good foreign film before a lot of my friends or peers hear about it. I just have connections in odd places. One such film was Battle Royale. In short once a year a class is selected to go into a secluded area and for 3 days they fight it out. The winner is the final survivor. Given such a large cast, it’s rather easy to make connections with some of the children, and even those who don’t get much screen time it’s horrifying to see them die.

If you know where I’m going with this, then your already screaming that there’s a million differences between Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Fuck you and let me make my point. My point isn’t so much that the two films/books (BR started as a book) have surprisingly similar themes, but the general laziness it takes to basically steal something foreign and re-write it. When I saw Battle Royale my first thought wasn’t “This is a great movie, how can I get rich re-writing it?” but was instead to tell friends and people I know about it and how they were missing out.

I think that’s the biggest problem, is that too many people just want to cash in on someone else good idea. Now one of my favorite movies, The Departed, is a remake of a Japaneses film “Internal Affairs”. But at the very least they admit that it is a remake. Sure, maybe it was a cash-in on a popular movie in a way, but at least it was done with one of the best directors and best casts you could get. There aren’t too many directors in the world better then Scorsese at the very least.

The anger is just that any of us could have taken Battle Royale, turned it into a poorly written “young adult” book and we would be millionaires today. But a majority of us wouldn’t think like that. Most of us would look at Battle Royale, say “That was an excellent movie” and move on. People like Suzanne Collins are among the worst in the world. They find something old, slap a new coat of paint on it and cash in. The amazing thing is that this crap gets made, when there are so many other possible great movies/books to be made out there. Yet because these types of books are most likely to make a profit, they are made first.

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I’m a Vindictive Bastard

Apr 21

Posted by Mark D in Random Stories | No Comments

So there’s this rather large group of people I dislike. I got word that they were having a party, and decided to try to mess with them. I proceeded to schedule my own party for 2 hours before theirs, charge nothing (they were charging people) and offer videos to watch on my big screen TV.  I also announced this party before their announcement got into the public, just to get another leg to stand on over them.

I even managed to get my apartment cleaned and looking nice, which is a rarity. I also got my tax return the week of the party so I was able to buy a ton of food. It actually seemed somewhat professional. Even though I was going to be out a good chunk of change from everything, money doesn’t matter when your trying to get revenge.

Then the day of the party, with my gf over the apartment to help me take care of everything going on, something strange happened. No one showed. Not a single soul. Mostly because I forgot that 90% of the people who know me consider me a huge asshole. And plus I guess some people might have thought I was purposely holding the party to screw over the other people.

To make things even funnier, or worse, my girlfriend kind of realized I was a huge asshole that weekend too and broke up with me the following week.  So yea, not only was I out the money I had spent on the party, and the girlfriend, but I had gotten no revenge whatsoever on the people I was trying to screw over.

And yet in a continuing theme of my life, I probably would do it all over again if given a second chance.  Revenge is one of those things that are so delicious, even when it blows up in your face it’s worth taking a shot. Not enough people take chances in this world. It is better to flame out then slowly pass into the darkness. When the chance is there, you gotta grab it by the neck and run with it.

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There’s 81 Communists in the House

Apr 12

Posted by Mark D in Politics | No Comments

Well that comes as shocking news for me, the democrats are finally fighting back? The sad thing is that saying something this ridiculous normally would have cost you your seat. No one would have ever taken this seriously, he would have been laughed out. But now, it’s believed as much as if he would have said that Barack Obama is secretly importing Muslims over the border in order to make the USA an Islamic state.

Stupidity and ignorance are gaining steam like ever before. If you ever say something that the right doesn’t agree with, your automatically considered brainwashed by the “Liberal Media”. The same “Liberal Media” which is almost completely in the pocket of our corporate overlords. Look, if anyone is waging class warfare, it’s the rich. The amazing thing about it is that as more services get cut and a lot of those cuts come from Education, the larger part of the population which becomes blissfully ignorant.

The answers to all their problems will always be the simple ones. It’s the illegal immigrants that take their job. It’s evil progressive programs that lead to them being taxed. Everyone hates America because of it’s freedom. Minorities are ruining the country. It’s the Second Age of the Know Nothings, but even more abrasive and nowhere near ashamed of their stance.

Hopefully in time things will change, and people will start moving forward again. They will look back in embarrassment as the Neo-Cons try to turn back a century of forward thinking. Let’s go back to the time before the scopes monkey trial. Let’s get rid of everything that is in the slightest bit socialist slanted. Good bye Child Labor Laws, 40 hour work weeks,  unemployment benefits.

We are talking about stuff that we gained through tough Union fighting during the great depression. Republicans have endlessly campaigned to destroy the New Deal. For what gain? Everytime another section of the new deal is destroyed, it is everyone at the bottom of the pyramid that is hurt. The amazing thing is that the people on the bottom don’t even realize they are the ones getting screwed.

I still can’t believe that this guy is going to get a bunch of press, but no one is going to bring up that he is obviously insane and should be tossed out on his ass. Yes I realize that this post in uninspired.

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Andre The Giant Gets Some Revenge

Apr 10

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

Just a tad bit of background here, Andre The Giant was one of my favorite wrestlers when I was little. So this was something that interested me back in the day. I remember a friend telling me to watch WCW for “The Giant” because at the time WCW was promoting him as being Andre’s son without saying as much. But I was able to check online and find out in a few seconds that he wasn’t really related to Andre at all. Other then being a freakishly sized human being.

So in the late 90s WCW Vs The World came out, and me and my buddies grabbed it like all Wrestling games and played the hell out of it. I ended up playing it enough to unlock all the secret wrestlers, including one who was named “The Giant”. Of course he didn’t look anything like WCW’s The Giant unless he had grown a magical Afro at some point. Originally the game was released in Japan (without WCW wrestlers) and the wrestler was Andre The Giant. When it was imported they just called him The Giant and renamed a bunch of other Japaneses wrestlers due to copyright.

Now WCW made a mistake and switched game developers, getting picked up by EA. So the people who made WCW Vs The World were picked up by the WWF to start working on their video games. Which was pretty much a god send for the WWF games, considering Acclaim who were doing the WWF games continued to release the same game with minimal changes for the next 5 or 6 games. Have fun trying to pull off a Stone Cold Stunner when it requires you to hit 7 different buttons in a precise order. Mortal Kombat styled wrestling games were a brilliant idea.

So 2 or 3 games in, and they are working on the great No Mercy for the N64. Probably one of my all time favorite N64 games.  Well just about when the game was done with development, word came from the WWF that Big Show (aka The Giant in WCW) was demoted to the OVW roster. So they had to remove him from the game. Since it was so late in development, they just decided to turn Big Show into Andre The Giant. Thus the Andre/Big Show replacement came full circle. I don’t know why this amuses me, but it does.

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Failure Experiment – Why the 2012 Kids Choice Awards Sucked

Apr 2

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

Actually a parody of Angry Joe’s rant about the 2009 VGA show:

http://angryjoeshow.com/2009/12/why-spikes-video-game-awards-suck-balls/

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Have You Been To Beautiful Transfatylvania?

Apr 2

Posted by Mark D in Entertainment | No Comments

So what happens when you take Looney Toons, A Soviet Dictatorship, Talented Puppetry and Artistry, today’s offensive humor and mix it in a blender? Transfatylvania Films is probably the closest answer I can think of. An insane collection of puppetry, animation and live action scenes, I’m rather surprised that they haven’t gotten more attention. They (I’m not sure if they are a group or all just one person) have a rather impressive resume of videos uploaded to youtube.

The general idea behind Transfatylvania Films is that it is a former Soviet Republic ruled by Premier Grunt Von Veizatun, a reptilian dictator in the Joseph Stalin mold. Something that adds to the humor is that no attempt is made to try and hide that most of the filming is done in a suburban house in the middle of god knows where. While there are plenty of breaking the 4th wall moments (especially in the live action skits) it’s the small moments that amuse me. Mostly when someone is walking around in the background oblivious that anyone is even filming.

While the live action Grunt videos are some of my favorites, due to the costume. I mean who doesn’t love a hammer and sickle which replaces the hammer with a forked sausage. For that matter the attention to detail to Grunts costume is another small joy. But it’s obvious that the person is also a rather good artist/animator, puppeteer and even a pretty decent music writer even if the songs are parodies.

I’ve been told I have an odd sense of humor, and that’s true. But I find most of these videos hilarious. At least the ones I’ve watched. With 200+ videos as of this post it’s probably a bit more of a mixed bag then I’m letting on. But beautiful Transfatylvania deserves at least 10-15 minutes of your time, I mean what else are you doing today?

Oh and most of their stuff tends to be NSFW, or they can surprise you and say something really offensive that you won’t notice right away. I don’t find it offensive because it’s a comedy people. But in case you do, or in case your at work, I probably wouldn’t watch any of these.

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Autism in America At a High

Mar 30

Posted by Mark D in Random Stories | No Comments

So I was reading this story and I think it’s rather easy to see what’s going on. Quite simply doctors have made the umbrella or the catch all classifications far far too wide. It seems like today you run into more and more kids who have to be on medication for ADD, or claim that their social interactions are bad because of autism or aspergers. While there are some people who truly do suffer, it seems like there are plenty who just need a push in the right direction.

For example, when I was in Public School they continually tried to force my mom to put me on medication. It was mostly because I was a handful to deal with. For that matter I was a handful to deal with my whole time in school, so that isn’t too surprising. It actually got to the point that during 3rd grade they wanted to switch me over to Special Ed. My mom had gotten tired of dealing with them and made the decision to switch me over to the Catholic School. Of course while I was still there I took a literacy test and scored on a nearly adult level in 3rd grade. Since it actually made the school look good, they ended up begging my mom to keep me in the school. She laughed.

One girl I used to date, her brother supposedly had really, really bad ADD. But amazingly the kid could sit down and play video games for every waking second he was out of school. But the second you’d try to tear him away from playing a game to do some homework, he would freak. If he was just doing whatever he wanted, he would normally be fine. But the second you tried to force him to do something he would freak out. By saying he was doing what he wanted, it was normally just playing video games.

Another girl I knew took the cake though. She was the perfect example of Munchhausen syndrome by proxy. You see she had a daughter with a maniac from West Virginia while she was in college. So for the first year of the girls life she was basically locked in a playpen. When she finally moved back home, she almost immediately got the kid diagnosed with autism. All of the suddenly she had the huge autism awareness bow on her car, she wore the autism awareness bracelet everywhere. Whenever the kid was out of control it was always because of autism and not bad parenting.

Of course what she more then likely failed to ever tell any doctor is how the kid basically had no development at all for at least the first year of her life. Meanwhile whenever I dealt with the kid she was fine, and nothing that she did seemed so far out of the realm of possibility for a kid that was 4-5 years old by then. For example, what kid growing up didn’t get in trouble for biting (or supposedly biting) another kid? It’s a bit worse if your 12 as compared to 5 when it happened.

I realize that these are just my experiences, and some kids really do suffer. But even the experts are willing to admit that autism in all it’s different forms have been over-diagnosed because it’s easier. It’s a lot tougher to help a kid out when he’s suffering from anxiety, poor development, or any of a number of issues that might truly be the root cause of the problem. Especially with schools pushing for any and all trouble makers to be immediately diagnosed with ADD and put on Ritalin.

It’s almost as if someone read “Brave New World” and decided that it was a good guide on how to cure most of the problems in a school. Drugging kids who might not even be suffering from what you’ve diagnosed them with is one of the things that worries me most in this society. It’s always a run to the quick fix and the drugs, instead of actually trying to fix things. I really hope as mentioned at the end of the story that they start tightening up and changing some of the diagnoses. Maybe then we’ll see a drop in the number of internet users claiming that they have Aspergers.

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