The Gimcrack Miscellany

In case you didn’t get that, I’m asking where in the heck the English language went. Everything is said in acronym format now. idky, but even my bffs r doing it. It’s not like I’m just now realizing it. I’ve been emailing, texting, and talking this way for quite a while, especially amongst my geek friends. I do it so much that I sometimes throw the old leet speak in when I’m conversing with non-leet people like my wife.

Before I go any further, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with being non-leet since truly leet people are usually non-cool. Think about it, would you tell a girl at the club that you “roflpwned a n00b in Halo last night, called him leeroy jenkins, and told him he needs to either L2P or get haxorz, lawl”. No, you would not. If you would, I believe they employ large men at the door that are stationed thusly to “clean up” messes like yourself.

Back to the real world. I was recently disgusted by a Verizon Wireless commercial which contains more acronym jibberish than actual leet speak. It was at this point that I realized what my wife was getting at when she called me a “no good, ego-maniacal, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerf-herder, GEEK.” She probably didn’t actually use the Star Wars reference, but that’s how it plays back in my head. The point is, it’s true, I’m a geek.

These texting short cuts exist for a good reason, but only if you’re texting or chatting. For instance, I would rather type “bc” instead of “because”, “brb” instead of “be right back”, and “mtrhftsittyl” instead of “my thumbs really hurt from texting so i’ll talk to you later”. It’s when people start throwing these half-leet, half-acronym phrases into face-to-face interactions, as seen in the aforementioned cell phone commercial, that I really get annoyed.

I know people don’t really say “Tee Ess In Eff” for “That’s So Not Fair”. But I have heard “Bee Tee Double-u” when someone is attempting to throw in an aside via “By The Way”. Let’s take a look at this one. Saying “By The Way” requires less effort than saying “BTW” due to the fact that the former is only three syllables, as opposed to the four syllables required for the latter. What kind of sense does this make?

The worst part about this whole mess is, I caught myself saying it the other day. I wonder how long I’ve been using this phrase in regular speech, or equally annoying derivatives thereof? It’s scary to think about.

The moral of the story: don’t use the word “n00b” in a night club. Save it for that late night session of Counter-Strike when you finally surf to pro on rebel_resistance_final3 and you want to gloat about it.

Yes, I have used every single phrase represented on this 1337 keyboard at one point or another, except the ASCII bull.

So I was watching the MTV Video Music Awards last night… wait, let me stop myself right there. Why was I watching this train wreck of TV programming? Simple, because it’s just that: a train wreck. It’s so terrible you can’t look away. That, and I had been watching football since 1:00 pm and after 8 straight hours my wife had had enough.

Anyway, I did learn one juicy little nugget of information when Shia Lebeouf came on stage to introduce the award for best female craptastic artist. He told us, apparently against the wishes of Spielberg and Lucas, what the title of the new Indiana Jones movie will be. Ready for it? See if you can piece it together from the following images.

and the

of the

Yes, you heard it here first (unless you were watching the VMAs last night). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should hit theaters in May of 2008. Sorry if the “kingdom” image threw you off, but I just love the illustration of Camelot by Alan Lee.

So, just what is the significance of a crystal skull? I have traced it to the lost city of Atlantis, which I’m betting will be the centerpiece of the new film. The most famous crystal skull discovery as far as I could find was the Mitchell-Hedges skull. Discovered in Belize in 1926, it was supposedly carved in Atlantis over a period of 300 years using sand, and was carried by the Knights Templar during the crusades. Ooooh, my blood is tingling just thinking about it!

Harrison Ford is older in this movie than Sean Connery was when he played his father in the last film. I don’t think that will stop him from delivering a great performance. I predict Indiana Jones 4 will be a bigger opening than Transformers, Star Wars Episode I, and just about any other movie you can throw at it.

Nike usually makes awesome commercials. This one is awesomest. If you ever find yourself not hyped up for football, watch the following video and you will experience instant hyped-up-ed-ness.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: two priests and a rabbi walk into a bar, and my hard drive crashes and I lose my entire music library.

That means I lost not only the purchased music for which I do not own physical backups (e.g. iTunes downloads, CDs I’ve lost, CDs I’ve illegally borrowed and ripped - whoops, scratch that last one), but I’ve lost the countless hours it took to rip my entire music collection into Windows Media Player and then convert into my iTunes library. It’s like recording yourself knocking down an amazing array of dominoes and forgetting to turn the video camera on, twice.

Don’t cry for me blogosphina, because I keep my music library on my work PC as well, which means all I had to do was purchase a mobile hard drive to tote my songs home with me. For our current purposes, let’s assume you do not have a redundant music library or $130 to spend on this stylish red flask hard drive. Mmmm, whisky sectors.

So, here’s where you stand: you have 5 gazillion [legal] songs on your hard drive and you want them to be safe, like mine. That’s where MP3tunes.com comes in. It is a free, unlimited storage locker for your songs. After you create your account you can download a handy application that syncs your local library with your online library. What this means is you can upload all of your songs at work (took me about a day and a half to upload 4300 tracks), listen to them online from any computer, and then download them when you get home. Presto! Now you have identical music libraries on all of your workstations.

The software is smart enough to do it all automatically, so you don’t have to worry about uploading/downloading anything manually - although you have that option. During syncs it hogs your system resources, but you can just pause it if you need a boost. You can also run it over night or during the weekend if you don’t want to deal with it.

I’m no longer afraid to buy that next computer, because I know I won’t have to spend 2 weeks of my life re-ripping all those live Pearl Jam albums. Did you ever notice they have more live albums than regular albums? It’s ridiculous.

You can’t say “I don’t know” in Megion, a town in Russia that produces more oil than the rest of Russia combined. I’m serious, you can’t say it. Even if you really don’t know. You also can’t say any of the following phrases:

• “What can we do?”
• “It’s not my job”
• “It’s impossible”
• “I’m having lunch”
• “There is no money”
• “I was away/sick/on vacation”

I’ve deduced two reasons for imposing such a ban. Either this town is full of rich, anorexic, uber-humans who are immune to sickness, or Russia is preparing to take over the world. You clearly can’t get sick or ever leave the office for any reason. You are expected to be able to accomplish any task, since nothing is allowed to be impossible. And you surely aren’t allowed to take a lunch and eat food.

The first phrase in the list really disturbs me. I realize the phrase “What can we do?” can be said to get out of some sort of responsibility. For instance “Hey, you should change the world today” might merit the response, “That’s impossible, what can we do? We’re insignificant peons incapable of what you ask.” However, it can also be used as a way of accepting responsibility. For instance, “Hey, you should change the world today” might conversely merit the response, “That’s great! What can we do? I know, let’s start by changing ourselves.”

Too bad sucker, they banned that. Pwned.

So, I submit that it’s because of the latter of my two possible reasons that Russia has imposed this ban. They’re preparing to take over the world, similar to Stalinist Russia and Hitlerist Germany and Kim Jong-ilist North Korea, by breeding a bunch of mindless workers who can’t think for themselves and aren’t allowed to question authority.

I mean, come on - “There is no money”… seriously, you can’t say that? What if there really is no money, do you want me to pretend there is a stack of benjamins sitting on the table in front of me. Um, ok… I guess I’ll play your game if you really want me to Mr. Kuzmin, major of Megion, Russia. I just have one question for you, are you trying to take over the world? Oh, Why do I ask? No reason, it just sort of sounds like you are. You can tell me, it’s ok. Don’t be embarrased, we all want to do it, but you’re actually living the dream. Good for you, brother - or should I say comrad?

Read the article here