Jolt Country

Holy shit, that thing people do where they say that The Simpsons was only good x number of years ago IS REAL and STILL HAPPENS. Let me explain this page:

http://twitter.com/#!/caltrops

At the moment I am telling some dumbfuck how terrible his ballot was for the AL MVP. Some homer piece of shit that follows the Texas Rangers managed to get himself a BBWAA vote. This guy goes and puts Michael Young #1 on his ballot (whatever) and Jose Bautista (who had the best season in the AL) 7th. Seventh!

But let's forget about that for a second. After logging into the @caltrops account tonight, I see that the guy who plays Dennis Reynolds on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" retweeted something I wrote a few weeks ago. Let me explain.

I hate television, but this current season of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" is the absolute greatest comedy season ever, and probably the single-best television season ever. (Sorry, Misser White.) So after watching the episode where they all play a made-up board game, I told Glenn Howerton (the guy who plays the aforementioned Mr. Reynolds) how great a job he is doing. OK, I told him it was the best season of anything in the history of TV. He retweeted it, and this is the sort of shit a bunch of nobodies wrote after seeing it:

jonwill02 jonathan williams

@Glenn_Howerton @caltrops ok- it's good, but not like the first couple seasons

jmooneyhan jason mooneyhan

@Glenn_Howerton @caltrops hell no!!! All my friends agree, the first and the last one are the only good ones. Worst season yet

Real_EP The Real E.P.

@Glenn_Howerton @caltrops Wow, hyperbole much? Way to suck up for a retweet.

Anyway, long story short, I became the man who inspired the most jealousy in television a few weeks ago and didn't know about it till last night. God, the posts from 2002 on Jolt Country were so much better than this shit.

Your insistence that this show is the greatest show ever devalues every opinion you've ever had about television, and brings shame to both of us.

"Area man states that show he doesn't watch can't possibly be any good."

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Holy shit, that thing people do where they say that The Simpsons was only good x number of years ago IS REAL and STILL HAPPENS. Let me explain this page:

http://twitter.com/#!/caltrops

Jonsey, the software here chops the URL form at the hashtag, the exclamation part is chopped off. You should use the bracket URL form:

http://twitter.com/#!/caltrops

Huh, the system here doesn't like that, either. If I chop the above URL at the # it will convert it to a link, but leaving the ! in causes PHPBB to reject it as an invalid link.

I don't even know if that's right, it doesn't sound like a valid URL form, but I never use twitter so I don't know. I stay away from places like TwitBook or BookMyFace because I already have enough brain damage, don't need to acquire more, and I have much more fun ways to waste my time than fritter it away on social media sites.

I'll give an example of my obsession with Google Sketchup in a separate message.

ICJ wrote:"Area man states that show he doesn't watch can't possibly be any good."

I've watched "a handful" of episodes. If you watch "a handful" of episodes of a comedy show and laugh a grand total of zero times? NOT THAT GREAT A COMEDY.

You're fucking broken inside if you've never laughed at that show. I had four episodes picked out to send to you that I felt were awesome, and then my hard disk died.

Tdarcos wrote:Jonsey, the software here chops the URL form at the hashtag, the exclamation part is chopped off. You should use the bracket URL form:

I've decided that you are actually a pretty wise person, Paul. I'm going to take your advice for once and listen to you. And adapt. I'd like that url to appear correctly.

http://twitter.com/#!/caltrops

Huh, the system here doesn't like that, either.

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I think Twitter and Facebook and social media in general has turned people into assholes. And I don't think it's "us" -- and by "us" I mean "people who experienced being online before the Internet (or maybe just MySpace)" -- but I think it's the people that either used to make fun of "us", or at a minimum didn't know "us" existed.

It's the cheerleaders, the in-laws, your parents' friends and your friends' parents. It's your Uncle Charlie who you used to sit around at every birthday party and secretly chant to yourself, "please don't let Uncle Charlie say the N-word in front of my friends," over and over.

It's one thing to be mean and funny or mean for a purpose, but to just throw jabs out at anonymous people ... I dunno, man. People need a life.

It's sort of like everyone has suddenly turned into mind readers. That is, because suddenly everyone can randomly throw their passing thoughts out to everyone else. From what I've seen (and that is hardly anything, I don't subscribe to any feeds) a lot of people send tweets out before they engage their built in social filters.



THE
THINK TWICE
POST ONCE
AARDVARK

I tend to limit what I say depending on present company. I wouldn't tell dead baby jokes in front of an abortion clinic, and I wouldn't dress up as a suicide bomber if my Muslim friend (for whatever reason) threw a Halloween party.

For some reason, sending text through your phone or posting it on Facebook seems to lower those inhibitions. Most of the people who have called me a dick on the Internet would not say the same thing to my face -- not because I'm a bad ass or anything, but because they're not one either.

I know some of you don't agree with me on this, but I never understood the rationale that you can be a jerk on the Internet because "it's not real". It's real communication between two (or more) people, and it's certainly no LESS real than talking to someone via telephone, or writing them a letter, or recording a video of yourself and texting it to someone.

"Why did you call me an ugly ho?"

"Just kidding grandma, it was over the phone. It's not even me, these are just 1's and 0's that you are interpreting as my voice! Eat a fat dick, gramma!"

Flack wrote:I tend to limit what I say depending on present company. I wouldn't tell dead baby jokes in front of an abortion clinic,

I would. I considered the idea of sending a picketer to an abortion clinic, who has "Keep Abortion Safe and Legal" on one side of their sign, while the other side says, "Stop the murder of innocent babies" on the other.

When someone asks, point out you're a paid protester, and neither the anti-abortion side nor the pro-abortion side could pay your whole fee, but each could come up with half, so you picket 50% for abortions and 50% against them.

Hmm, I think I'll use that in my "Tales of Zenith" webcomic when I restart it.

Flack wrote:It's one thing to be mean and funny or mean for a purpose, but to just throw jabs out at anonymous people ... I dunno, man. People need a life.

I told the one guy who replied to me that his dog (who was his avatar picture on Twitter) was ugly. So I'm not sure if you're talking about me here or not, but that was a seriously fucking ugly dog.

Tdarcos wrote:

Flack wrote:I tend to limit what I say depending on present company. I wouldn't tell dead baby jokes in front of an abortion clinic,

I would.

To suggest that you and I have different social norms is not exactly groundbreaking news ...