Festivus '06 Airing of Grievances

[Signe]

When you forget a bill and they send you a late fee and raise the interest, call them.  I did it twice when we moved and both times the company reimbursed the fee, fixed any interest change (actually, it was a promotional interest and they gave it back) and none of it affected my rating. 

You're the only thing in my scrap book now.  Well, it's not actually a book... it's really just the start of a heap on the floor.  I guess I'm really scrap heaping.  I expect this hobby to last me hours.

[Yegolev]

My usual tactic is to cancel the card.  They will offer me some ridiculous deal in order to avoid that.  Now my wife has taken over the bill-paying, so despite the wanton destruction I feel like I came out a winner.  Sort of.

If regular scrapbooking gets boring, you can switch to digital scrapbooking.  It somehow manages to cost just as much, but there are fewer piles of shit.

[Cheddar]

All you fuckers who keep pm'ing me about getting into x game but neglect to TELL ME YOUR E-MAIL address.

I am not that upset, but I cannot do anything without some sorta electronic mail.

[tazelbain]

Sting Rays.

[Ironwood]

On the Lay-Z tip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=V7e5QsEjhks

Yup.  That's exactly what I'm talking about.

[Rasix]

The Festivus Airing of Grievances is not about hate, it's about telling the people in your life how much they disappoint you and logging your complaints.  You people get this wrong every year and it bugs the snot out of me.

I could copy paste last years since most are still relevant, but it's healthier to type this out as I go.  Priorities change.

Enough blatant trolling.  STOP IT.  Quit making posts saying it's the norm around here. That doesn't help anything.

No more Den-me-please song lyrics.  You aren't the boss of me, Talking Heads.

Religion board wars. Cut that out. Some people need to grow thicker skin, and some need to stop being pricks.

Beef.  Yes, beef, I have issues with you.  Stop being prominent in menus and stop looking so goddamn tasty.  The last burger I ate had me in the bathroom for an entire night.

Tucson drivers. It is not acceptable to drive 10mph under the speed limit.  It's not even tollerable to drive 5 under.  Go 5-10 over, damnit or I'm going to go buy an El Camino and tailgate you bastards dangerously close.  Another thing, if you're senile, perhaps you shouldn't be driving.  I don't like being hit by someone while at a complete stop at a light waiting to turn.

This is to some of you in particular.  Drop the hangups and quit being so predictable.

EB Games, stop trying to sell me the fucking strategy guide.  I know these things exist, if I want one, I'LL ASK.

Rap music, stop sucking.  You bastards are making me pine for the days of NWA.

Fox, you're just permanently on the list.  Damn you bastards for killing shows I like.   

Posting of hobbit, boy wizard, fur, or otherwise stomach turning porn.  This needs to stop.

Myself, for not contributing enough  to the site.  I should have done at least 1 more review and a general article.  Laziness.

The AGC contingent on night 1.  Why did you let me drink that much?  The contents of my stomach that night were something out of a Lovecraftian tale.

Schild, for not letting people borrow console games.  Your PS2 library makes me weep.

Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan.  Die.  Preferribly not slowly.  I want you gone with all haste.

</faux angry Rasix> That's all for now.  Really, this has been a good year.

Back to the holiday spirit.  I love this time of year, except that it might be too cold tonight for tennis.  It looks like it's going to dip below freezing. That reminds me.. weather.. ohhh, I got issues with you.

[Signe]

Sometimes if you cancel credit cards it goes on your credit report as if the company had cancelled you.  It can lower your score.  Be careful doing that.  Merging cards (like Bank of America with all the crap they've bought lately) doesn't affect it as it has a specific value attached to it. 

Also - you got some of this grievance airing wrong, too, Rasix.  Cranky old tosser!   

[Rasix]

Sometimes if you cancel credit cards it goes on your credit report as if the company had cancelled you.  It can lower your score.  Be careful doing that.  Merging cards (like Bank of America with all the crap they've bought lately) doesn't affect it as it has a specific value attached to it. 

Also - you got some of this grievance airing wrong, too, Rasix.  Cranky old tosser!   

I did?  ><  I'm not cranky, just getting into the festivus spirit. 

I had my credit card number stolen once, it wasn't fun. Luckily all they got away with charging a couple hundred bucks to a florist in Peru.

[Signe]

Yes, weather isn't a person in your life!  Mostly.  AND I did notice the hobbit pr0n thingy which, I'm sure, you directed at me.  If you don't show the weiners, it's not really pr0n.

I'm right, right?

(I'm being pedantic because I'm embarrassed to have disappointed you)

[Rasix]

Beef isn't a person either, but I suppose it was alive at some point.  Fox has people working for it.. I should have added some wiggle room to my opening statement.  Expand it to enclude all entities.

Don't feel embarrassed, you're one of my favorite posters.  Most things I dislike that people do here, you do the exact opposite. But yah.. I don't need to see Frodo and Sam make out any more.  Or Harry and Draco.  /shiver

Ok, back to the airing.

[geldonyetich]

I had an edit button, once.

[Paelos]

Wow Devs, stop giving and taking away. Nobody bitches nearly as much if you make a statement and actually follow through, catasses be damned.

Schild, just block the politics forum from my access. I don't want to know it's there.

Larry Fitzgerald, you should be shot like an injured horse. Second round draft pick and you finished 27th in receivers for total points. Marty Booker in Miami had more points than you. Do you know who Marty Booker is? BECAUSE I SURE AS HELL DON'T!

LOST producers, don't ever put out six new episodes and then cut us off for 3 months again. That's bullshit. You're on very thin ice with your viewers as it is since there are glaciers moving faster than your plot developments. One more idiotic decision like that, and I'm gone.

NCAA top brass, 32 bowls? Are you kidding me? If you're going to force us to deal with that many money-grubbing-whorefests, at least stop taking away the real names of the bowls. It is NOT the Capital One bowl you douchebags, it's the Citrus bowl. Call it the Capital One Citrus Bowl if you have to, but naming bowls specifically after corporations is beyond ridiculous. The MPC Computers bowl? Fuck you very much. Oh and playoff, bitches.

Georgia CPA board, you suck for changing the educational requirements the year after I left college. Now if I ever want a decent 9 to 5 job, I have to head back to school in my late-20s just to finish something that was totally unnecessary and never promoted when I graduated. My wallet hates you. Five years in college isn't necessary to learn how to crunch numbers, change it back.

To publishers, how about reading one page of someone's work before totally dismissing it. I'm sure there is a ton of crap out there, but you'll never know the good ones if you never even look. I hate your processes.

[HaemishM]

I hate 2006. No year has disappointed me quite as much as this one.

I hate liars. Bald-faced, tell you what you want to hear, talk shit about themselves to the heavens all while producing not one actual iota of what they claim liars. You know who you fuckers are.

I hate people who disappear for no reason.

I hate MMOG's. Not just the developers, but the whole fucking thing. You are quite literally UNLIMITED in genre, lore, gameplay and design, and the best you can fucking produce is GODDAMNED WORLD OF WARCRAFT? A cartoony refinement of Everquest? Are you fucking high? Do you just masturbate to pr0n 99% of the day and spend the other 1% pontificating in interviews about abstract shit no one could give a rat's testicles about while completely ignoring all the other styles of game play and genres there are available to use? Do you intentionally hire the most lazy, braindead mongrel munchkin-raping coders on the planet? Can you not conceive of a world that doesn't contain fucking elves, medieval overtones or fucking magic? Is Romans in Space and licensed worlds the best you can fucking do?

I hate corporations that think Christmas bonuses, pensions, and actual health benefits to be wastes of money. I hate that you filthy, cocksucking pedophiles in executive positions think your ideas are what produced that best-selling widget as if it appeared magically from the foam of your mind's ejaculate. I hate that you make up words to keep people from realizing you are truly full of shit. I hate that stock price has become your measure of success instead of actual fucking profit. I hate that you award yourselves all the benefits you think are too good for you employees. I hate that you can sleep at night with multi-million dollar bonuses, severance packages and the like for doing a shit shit shitty job. Ho ho bitches.

I hate Christmas shopping, especially with the vomit-inducing mobs of ignorant, shambling retards shopping at the same time.

I hate that the week before Christmas is when all my fucking assheaded clients have decided is the time to actually move on all those projects they have been letting lie fallow for the last two months. Try milking your prostate less and paying attention to the fucking emails we've sent you, cuntburger.

I hate Stalin for turning a potentially successful political system in socialism and forever equated it with brutal authoritarian oppression. Thanks, Stalin!

Fuck you, ABC for cancelling Day Break. Eat a fat bag of cocks.

I hate you, Dallas Cowboys, for signing Terrell Owens and treating us to yet one more fucking year of Mongoloid Circus Hour.

I hate you, Chicago Cubs, for not hiring Joe Girardi. Have fun spending millions on the next 4 years of Lou Piniella mediocrity.

Fuck you, Christians, for taking a perfectly good winter festival and turning it into you personal crusade to honor Jesus. I'm sure he loves that you all grow ulcers trying to shop for the right gift while hating the rest of humanity for getting the last kung-fu grip GI Joe before you. I'm sure he's tickled pink that you cunts have connected sheer, naked greed with the celebration of his birth. I got a War on Christmas in my pants, Bill O'Reilly, and it's got deer antlers on it.

Fuck you, Wal-Mart for being so cheap I have no choice but shop there and for driving businesses out of business all across America. I hope a zombie Sam Walton comes back to life to assrape every one of you executives in a Wal-Mart Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Christmas Cock Past, Present and Future, then leaves your empty carcasses on the front lawn for all to see as a reminder that some things come with too high a price.

Fuck you, Neocons. You know why.

Fuck you, pacemakers, for existing to give Dick Cheney the last 5 years. If you didn't also keep my wife's grandmother kicking for the same amount of time, you'd be completely dead to me.

Fuck you, Powerpoint. You continue to take the opportunity to be a kickass presentation package for the working man and turn it into tinkertoys for MBA's.

Fuck you, High-Definition Television, for being pretty, but not pretty enough for what you charge.

Fuck you, cellphones.

I'm sure there'll be more. 2006 has it coming.

[Yegolev]

I had an edit button, once.

This goes in the other thread.

[Ironwood]

Beef ?


I don't get it.

[Yegolev]

[Daeven]

I don't seem to have any grievances.  Well, except maybe my crappy memory and how I can't seem to figure out what to do with two pointy sticks and a ball of fuzzy string.   

Crass commercial plug for my wife's little sideline:  www.knitfoundry.com

My bitch: I'd really like to see a snowplow soon. What is this, freaking Buffalo? It's Denver. We don't get snow like this! One snowplow? Please? Maybe a little John Deer lawn tractor?

*goes back to hibernating until the new year, since I sure as hell can't go anywhere*

[Strazos]

You meant to put that in Green, right?

[Daeven]

This thing has to many buttons. How the fuck do you set the clock anyway? Time to drink some more danmit.

What? Are you kidding? It very rarely snows like this Denver (as in, there has only been one storm even remotely like this in the 10 years I've lived here). The idea that Denver is some arctic wonderland is a myth promoted by the ski industry.

Oh hell. Um..

I probably won't be posting again for a while because I believe that is the Colorado Internal Secret Department of Tourism at the door....

[Zephyr]

Yeah I am in the process of moving to Colorado and thats all I hear from people.  OMG teh snowz!  It's a very dry state without being hot as hell, which is a major reason for the move.  I am tired of soupy summers and wet winters in NJ and IL. 

[Lantyssa]

I probably won't be posting again for a while because I believe that is the Colorado Internal Secret Department of Tourism at the door....

It's just the wind.  The CISDoT is snowed in, too.  Don't you hate when your mind plays tricks on you?

[Bunk]

This thing has to many buttons. How the fuck do you set the clock anyway? Time to drink some more danmit.

What? Are you kidding? It very rarely snows like this Denver (as in, there has only been one storm even remotely like this in the 10 years I've lived here). The idea that Denver is some arctic wonderland is a myth promoted by the ski industry.

Oh hell. Um..

I probably won't be posting again for a while because I believe that is the Colorado Internal Secret Department of Tourism at the door....

Good buddy of mine and his grilfriend headed down to Seattle yesterday to catch a flight to Denver to visit her dad for the hollidays. I just got off the phone with him - he's driving back home on the I5 from Seattle. They might be able to catch a flight on the 23rd if they are lucky.

On a related note, it's been a weird year for snow here as well - we had a good foot of it in November. Vancouver usually gets a couple inches a year, and usually never before late January.

[HaemishM]

Fuck you, Humidity, for making my sinuses feel like a phlegm baby's diaper, and for making my entire body ache. Fuck you for making 40 degrees feel like 20 and 18 degrees feel like the goddamn Arctic.

Fuck you, The South, for being 20 degrees for two days and 60 degrees for a week straight before plunging down below freezing again.

Fuck you, Chelsea players for being whiny bitches every time the ref stops play. We get it, you're big shots. Shut the fuck up, you nancies.

[Merusk]

Screw you lack of anything to be overly-angsty about.

Oh, and fuck you too, apathy.

[stray]

I'd agree with Merusk, but that would make me not quite so apathetic, wouldn't it? 

[Cyrrex]

I hate that this thread is so much longer than the Goodwill thread.

I hate that our society (the Western one, that is) has become so greedy, so bloated, so ego-centric that we complain endlessly about things that are so trivial that it is offensive.  If you can even read this rant, it is because you are enormously privileged to live in a place where your biggest worry is the price of gasoline, or something equally irrelevant.  I imagine that, during the time it took me to write this, some little kid may have starved to death somewhere in the world.  Some little kid not unlike one of my own.  That is fucked up.  I hate that we are not doing more about that, that I am not doing more about that.

I hate that this Christmas season has, once again, been all about increasing the pile of toys under the tree and in the stockings for my two kids.  God knows I love them, but they have enough.  10 times more than enough.  Holy fuck, we sure missed the point somewhere.  Next year things are going to be different.

On the lighter side...

I hate that I cannot post in the Den.

I hate that Ironwood hasn't put a Santa hat on Zod.

I hate New Year's Eve.   We'll be 6 adults, and five small children (all under the age of five).  Fucking party time.  It'll be like running a daycare, only where all the adults are drunk and trying to ignore the kids.  I'm hoping to come down with a case of explosive diahrrea on the 31st.

[Ironwood]

I hate that I lack the ability to do that for myself from work and make it look in any way good.

 

[WindupAtheist]

So like, years ago I bought this game called Superpower.  It was basically a buggy piece of shit with terrible production values, but it was a modern-era turn-based strategy game that let you play any real-world country you wanted.  You wanted take on the world as fucking Togo, the game would let you.  And after four official patches, a mod, and some of my own tinkering via the built-in editor, the game sort of worked.  I played it on and off for quite some time.

Then I get back into it for some reason these last couple days, and the motherfucking thing must crash to desktop every fifteen minutes or less.  With no auto-save.  Keeping the game running and playable became this byzantine nightmareof tip-toeing around some bugs while exploiting others.

Never send another country you've conquered tanks and planes on the same turn, because when they arrive the game will think the planes carry tanks instead of missiles and the whole game will crash as soon as you try to delete them and put the missiles back, unless you save and exit then come back before trying, which you'll want to do since for some reason every save/load cycle boosts your GNP just enough to keep ahead of the equally mysterious expansion of your budget despite the fact that you're not doing anything to increase it!

So yeah, tonight I had an attack of sanity and uninstalled.  Then I broke the disc in half and threw it away for good measure.  I really wish someone would do this game over again, but do it professionally.  Turning Madagascar into an evil little maritime tinpot empire was fun when the game wasn't crashing.

[Endie]

I hate that I lack the ability to do that for myself from work and make it look in any way good.

 

Oh, wait a sec, you said "make it look good".  I imagine you already had Microsoft Paint available to you...

[Cyrrex]

I hate that I lack the ability to do that for myself from work and make it look in any way good.

 

Oh, wait a sec, you said "make it look good".  I imagine you already had Microsoft Paint available to you...

Nonsense, that is completely awesome.   It is made better by the fact that it is so crappy looking.

[Signe]

It is a lovely Santa Zod.

[Riggswolfe]

I hate Neocons
I hate Bush for being so stupid and ignorant
I hate extremists on any side of a debate, political or religious, unless you're against Bush, then I'm with you!
I hate that my company wants to pay back money into my flexible spending account because I don't have a receipt for a doctor bill I paid over the phone. A bill which shows up as <doctor's name> MD on the invoice. I hate that I'm expected to pay back an account that was created by taking money out of my own fucking paycheck!
I hate that because we're understaffed at my company, I am expected to handle things well outside of my job responsibility, and if anything goes wrong my boss gives me the evil eye.
I hate that I have good ideas and thoughts but can't often express them well on these forums and have to hope one of you translates my gibberish into a coherent posting.
I hate that I sometimes get emotional in my posting and let loose with a flameblast that I usually regret later.

[Righ]

Having spent a week in NJ, I agree with strazos. Watch the fucking road, people! While we're at it, to VA, raise the speed limits, I feel like I've got training wheels on my car when I came back tonight.

I live in VA, and I completely concur.  It is a fucking trap meant to sucker people into paying money to the "common wealth."  Besides the fact that NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION TO THE SPEED LIMITS ANYHOW.  Except around Emporia and any other border city!  Then its 2 miles under (until you are 10 miles outta the city limits).

I miss NJ driving. Even though DE and VA driving is a step up. PA drivers are the worst. Not bad like an overcrowded city in Europe full of exuberant youths - that's just unnerving. Blind as a fucking bat, driving on self-entitlement on your side of the fucking road, get out of my way you motherfucking road rash, this is my sacred highway bad. People in PA are complete and utter cunts when they get in cars, and all cars here should involve car fires.

I'm also pretty pissed off that you lot haven't all gone out and bought an album by Porcupine Tree. There's phenomenal music out there and you fuckers are still complaining about Jay-Z or something.

[Yoru]

So like, years ago I bought this game called Superpower.  It was basically a buggy piece of shit with terrible production values, but it was a modern-era turn-based strategy game that let you play any real-world country you wanted.  You wanted take on the world as fucking Togo, the game would let you.  And after four official patches, a mod, and some of my own tinkering via the built-in editor, the game sort of worked.  I played it on and off for quite some time.

Then I get back into it for some reason these last couple days, and the motherfucking thing must crash to desktop every fifteen minutes or less.  With no auto-save.  Keeping the game running and playable became this byzantine nightmareof tip-toeing around some bugs while exploiting others.

Never send another country you've conquered tanks and planes on the same turn, because when they arrive the game will think the planes carry tanks instead of missiles and the whole game will crash as soon as you try to delete them and put the missiles back, unless you save and exit then come back before trying, which you'll want to do since for some reason every save/load cycle boosts your GNP just enough to keep ahead of the equally mysterious expansion of your budget despite the fact that you're not doing anything to increase it!

So yeah, tonight I had an attack of sanity and uninstalled.  Then I broke the disc in half and threw it away for good measure.  I really wish someone would do this game over again, but do it professionally.  Turning Madagascar into an evil little maritime tinpot empire was fun when the game wasn't crashing.

I remember that game. I liked starting as the US or Russia and targeting every single nuke I had at random places on the map. Took over half an hour. Then pressing The Button and watching the world go to hell in an instant.

It was like ghetto-Defcon, but it sucked way way more and wasn't as fun after the first half-dozen times or so.

[WindupAtheist]

SP was a lot deeper and more ambitious than Defcon, but at least Defcon worked.  For example, in SP you could design/upgrade every model of ship and airplane and missile in your entire military.  (There was something fun about taking a WW2-era Sherman tank from the inventory of some Third World country, boosting it's tech ratings up to a ludicrously high level, and then building it by the thousands.)  But the thing is, you really didn't need to.

Aircraft were, for some inane reason, perfectly capable of capturing territory and could only be hit by other aircraft, AA artillery, AA missiles, and warships.  If there was nothing left that could hit them, then auto-resolve would give them an instant win.  So if a city held by a thousand high-tech tanks and a million uber infantry were attacked with one shitty airplane, the airplane would get a "Defender Could Not Hit" victory and capture the city.  There was literally zero reason for your military to consist of anything but hordes of high-level attack helicopters armed with a couple of torpedoes for catching the occasional submarine.

And the game just had no idea how to handle multiple alliances.  Like to simulate NATO, every country in it has a Strategic Alliance treaty with every other country.  So what you do is attack French Guiana with a Covert Strike, and when you capture it, give it to some other NATO power.  Let's say Spain, for example.  On the very next turn, Spain would start attacking France for some reason, and within a few turns all of North America and Western Europe would turn into a general melee with everyone fighting everyone else.  Then go do a Covert Strike on some Chinese city and give it to Russia.  Bam, 90% of the world's military capacity is burned up in a pointless war while you sit back and laugh.

If all the fighting didn't make the game crash.  Which it usually did.