2 Inches Of Fury

If you don’t read the American news or cracked, you are missing a story which is quite amazing because without the second part of this story, it sounds like some guy complaining how the fire brigade let his house burn down to the ground. But the second part gives you vital information which goes to show there is more than one side to every story.

On Sept. 29, 2010, Gene Cranick’s rural house in Obion County, Tenn., caught on fire. Without wasting a second, Gene called the nearest fire department, located in South Fulton, and begged them to hurry and save his home. The FD refused, and the building, together with all the family’s possessions — including four pets — burned to the ground. Why? He hadn’t paid his fire protection money.
That is, he forgot to pay the annual $75 fee that nearby South Fulton demands for emergency services coverage.
Because Obion County doesn’t have its own fire department, most of its residents rely on South Fulton services, which we’ll assume are advertised with the slogan, “That’s a nice house you’ve got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.”
When Gene heard that the firemen were not coming, he even offered to pay up-front on the spot. But the department responded that, if people were allowed to pay up-front, then everyone would withhold payment until their houses were on fire. Basically, the South Fulton Fire Department made an example of him, stopping just short of coming after his knees with a baseball bat.
The kicker on this whole ordeal is that the firefighters actually did show up, but only when the fire spread to the home of Cranick’s neighbors, who had paid the fee. We imagine they also employed giant fans to blow the water away from Cranick’s burning house, because allowing the firemen to inadvertently put out the fire would be irresponsible.
Even then, when Cranick’s son got pissed off and attacked the fire chief for watching his home burn, the South Fulton PD sent out officers to arrest him for aggravated assault. Because apparently, you can still get emergency services out there if you annoy the local government.

What makes this story so good is there is more to this story than the original article says. And you will find this has been ripped from the very first comment from the same article which is rare that I rip ANY comment from anywhere as there is very few (if any) websites that have decent comments section. Here is the rest of the story:

He lives in an unincorporated area that doesn’t have fire service. In order to get service, the homeowners must pay the fire department of the closest city. The homeowners have repeatedly voted *against* a tax to pay for fire service, so the only other option was a $75 annual fee paid by the individual homeowner. If you did not pay the fee, you did not get fire service. Every year, the fire department calls all of the homeowners to explain the fee and remind them to pay or they will not get service.
This man already “forgot” to pay his fee once before and the fire department gave him a freebie when his house caught fire that time and let him pay on the spot. Obviously this encouraged him to “forget” again.

His home and his safety were not worth $75 to him. Its pretty simple. I’ll bet he’s learned his lesson now.

Awesome story.
Just thought I would like to share.

You can find the original article here.

I know it just boils down to taste, opinion and heresay but what the fuck is up with kids and first person shooters? I mean, you had Wolf3D (the game that started it all), Doom 1 & 2 (were so great, it made you forget about any other game of the era), Duke Nukem 3D (had attitude that no other game could get away with for the time).
I have found a website which has a list of 21 prime first person shooters but I still don’t see what the big deal is after Quake. I remember Quake blowing people’s minds. And even then I didn’t see what all the fuss was about apart from better looking blood. Is that what the kids get excited about? Better graphics? Better gameplay? You want to play the most realistic first person shooter? The Army is signing kids up to go to Iran and anyone wearing a burqa. You will not get better graphics than real life. I promise.
In that same list is Rainbow Six and Counterstrike. Whole years have disappeared for some friends because they were so involved in Counterstrike. They started playing circa 1999 and I am saw them for the first time a few weeks ago.

Where this all spawned from is the latest first person shooter - Call of Duty: Black Ops. Kids are just losing their shit over it and it looks like every other military first person shooter ever made. And they make them by the fucking boat load. And with each new shoot ‘em up, the kids just jump on the bandwagon. Why? It was the highest grossing game for the first week of sales. It is also the most sold game on Playstation 3 (4.3 million copies sold). Still miles away from the highest selling NES game ever (Super Mario Bros - 40.2 million) or the highest selling Wii game ever (Wii Sports - 67 Million). And yet, the online support and general online gaming experience for the Wii was not its biggest selling point. Not to mention the obvious crap graphics (compared to the 9 cores of graphics processing in a PS3). And it doesn’t seem to matter too much as it has still out-sold all other consoles by phenomenal numbers. Now all the other companies are wanting a piece of the action and perfecting what Wii has started.

So, I have a list of first person shooters. And while it is pretty long, I can bet my left nut that is not all of them. While I was at it, I also found a list of free first person shooters. You’re welcome.

Shame, really. Could have belonged to a guy who she wasn’t related to. On the upside, if her Daddy doesn’t want her, Uncle Ray Ray (also known as Uncle Bad Touch), her brother Billy Joe or first Cousin Bobby Sue will. Nice tits though, amirite?
Have you seen the other songs on this fucking album? Holy sweet Jesus:
* He Forgot his rubbers (must be still talking about Daddy, right?)
* Tony Has Hot Nuts (I am guessing Tony is also an uncle, brother or close relation?)

The only person who will appreciate this are the people I work with. I sent an email to my bosses Boss and CC’ed all my collegues told him I found a picture of him when he was young. And back then he went by the name of Ken. I thought it was funny. All the guys thought it was funny. I found out that day that Bossman only has a sense of humor when it involves other people who are not him. He was also doing a salary review. No wonder that review looked a little slim. I guess he got the last laugh.
His name is Ken Schnyder and he sings Christian songs. He is also aware of his Internet noteriety and is a good enough sport to have a laugh about himself. Unlike my boss.

Just look at this guy! It’s a guy. Surprised me too. This guy is for real. He is a (popular) German folk singer. And the best bit? He sings in barritone. The guy looks like a fucking albino (he’s not) and he has an incredibly deep voice. Oh, and he looks like a freak. Unless you come from Germany. In which case, you probably fit in.

Turns out this guy is a child Prodigy and according Allmusic, he has done a tonne of great albums accordingly in the 50s and 60s. There is two versions of this album. You will find the other cover art here. Oh, and did you notice those tits? Awesome, right? How do you think that woman got that gig?

Martin: “Hey Janice, I need you for the front cover of my latest album.”
Woman: “Ok. What does it involve?”
Martin: “I will be cuddling you.”
Woman: “That sounds sensual.”
Martin: “Topless.”
Woman: “Wait. Sorry?”
Martin: “We will be cuddling. But you will be topless. And you have to look at the camera with this fucked look on your face. You can’t look like your enjoying the hug. In fact, you need to look about 30% pissed off. And your eyes need to say ‘Help Me!’ or ‘I’m doing this for the money’.”
Woman: “Ok?”

I initially thought, it would be alright if that woman was his sister or mother. I had a rethink. Wait, that is fucked. The best we can hope for is casual sexual encounter at the time. Either that or we now know what Martin’s wife’s tits are like. Could be a cousin. That too is messed up.

It doesn’t apply to the whole Jackson family but when you Michael who is into all sorts of alleged shit, Janet and then you have this? Doesn’t add up well. I am not sure what she was thinking when she came up with this idea as the cover. Clearly not a well thought out one. She does look like she is in a lot of pain so maybe it could have been one of those shits that are so big, they feel like they are coming out sideways.

This guy is the life of the party.
Acquaintance: “Oh hey, Freddie. Long time no speak. What have you been up to?”
Freddie: “Friends are dead. Wife left me. Dog also dead. Hate my life. Wanna die.”
Acquaintance: “Yeah…right. Now I know why we don’t talk.”

I thought John had given her five across the chops originally. But upon closer inspection, turns out that is just a red stripe down the sleeve and not a red mark on her face.
“YOU WANT A BIRTHDAY PARTY?!? *SLAP* THERE’S YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY!! Now, sit down at a table. I have a guy who is gunna take a photo of us at this table.”
Even if she didn’t get 5 across the face, then why so sad? I bet the only thing she got for her 16th birthday was a notice from the doctor: You have VD.
And she got it from our buddy here, ol’ John.

These images were pulled from: http://www.stevecart … .com/albumcovers.htm

This is quite a good web game. All you have to do is get Pinchin to the top. That is it. Easy? Well, yes but you could totally blow this simple concept into a full game. It even has achievements to give you a little more out of it. I mean, I beat the entire game in about an hour. But I’ve played Wii games much worse than this and I have lost interest well before the hour mark. I am pretty picky when it comes to games (web games especially), but this is one of the better ones out there: Reachin’ Pichin.

I have started a new category to try and find these a little easier since I got a Wii and will be doing more of these and since they aren’t together in a nice single area, you can now just click on the category and find every single game I’ve had the privilage to play. Ya know, if anyone gives a shit.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Kirby went from being cute to being EXTREMELY FUCKING CUTE. Amp the cutesy metre up to 11. The first thing I saw when I got to the title screen was cute he was but when I showed the game to my friends, they seemed highly uninterested at first. When I showed them the game and you start to play, it sets the scene and really sucks you in. I am sure some extreme gamer somewhere knows how many Kirby games we’re up to now but this is definately one of his best. They have been very imaginitive and have gone a completely different route than before. Everything is made up of strings of yarn. And Kirby lassoo’s his enemies and unties them. It is really different and really amazing to see the new graphics. It is both intuitive and interactive where you can actually grab onto the background, lassoo and it will reveal a new and different outcome. The controls are spot on and in fact, this does seem like a variation on New Super Mario Bros as far as the feel is concerned but the difference in the graphics and the interaction is enough to keep your busy. The story line isn’t too bad but the cut scenes inbetween stitching all the worlds back up is both funny and really enjoyable for all ages. Even though it is aimed at kids, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. It has 2 player co-op in the exact same way New Super Mario Bros does where you share the same screen and can ride each other. What stops this from being a perfect game is the fact that it is relatively easy (as your character never dies in the game) and its duration. Even when you go through all the worlds again and gain the extra levels you didn’t get the first time, you should be able to knock it over pretty quickly so the replayability is shortened. Regardless, it is still one of the best games on the console. Although, with the list of other games I have lined up for me to play, I dare say I will be eating my words.

Mini Desktop Racing
Meh. Just meh. The thing is, games like this one are based on games like Micro Machines Racing we had on the PC (or SNES maybe?) which were quite good games to play. Unfortunately, there are very few redeeming features about this game. If you can get past the shitty controls (B to accelerate and then twist your Wiimote like you would a key in a lock to turn), this might then be a 3 star game and be lifted to average. There are no mini games apart from the main racing game. The AI for your opponents is unchallenging. The tracks are narrow which would normally be fine. In fact, that would be something you would want in a game like this. But after the shitty controls I just found out I couldn’t change, those narrow parts of the track are now just extremely annoying bits of facefuck. It would be like paying $20 for a blowjob and finding out the whore is drugfucked and vomits on your dick. Which appeals for a very limited amount of people. Sure, they are out there. But I am not one of those. Really.

GTI Club
It plays tight with the controls responding quite quickly with the feel of a Mini and has several different modes to change things up a little. You have time trials, driving with the traffic, gift mode (where you have to hold the gift on your car for the longest time), soccer game (which I found awkward to control) and one or two other modes. There are lots of flashy sprites on the screen to really give this an arcade feel to it and the controls only re-enforce that. You only really get two viewing modes which is a little restrictive but the default one should be enough for most players. The actual racing portion of this game is quite short (which involved courses all around the world: Japan, France, UK…etc) where I could actually finish and win all the courses in about a week of playing (a couple of hours every night). There are plenty of cars in game to earn and unlock (16 in total) which can give you something to aim for the during the game. In a multi player setting, I found that it was more or less the same as single player except with split screen without anything new or interesting added to the mix. This does not mean that it is boring as there is plenty of competition and interaction to keep you playing. Without these additional modes though, this game would have terrible replayability and might not have scored so highly.

Monopoly
Before I tell you anyting, how much do you love Monopoly? This review comes from someone who loves the game. But let’s be honest, we all know a game of monopoly ends: FUCK THIS SHIT, FUCK YOU ALL. I’M GOING HOME. I AM NO LONGER RELATED TO ANY OF YOU!! MAYFAIR?!? MAYFAIR?!? HERE IS YOUR FUCKING MAYFAIR UP YOU ARSEHOLE YOU PRICK. Followed by taking the board, flipping upside down and someone storming off perhaps to never hear from them again.
The controls are fine although it asks you to roll THEN press A which seems a little counter-intuitive because you want to press A to get rid of the message on screen and then roll. There are two main modes of play: the classic Monopoly mode, where the game is exactly like the popular board game, or the new richest mode. The Monopoly mode is just as expected; you can play with up to 4 players, with the computer making up the full quota of players if you don’t have enough friends. You can customise the rules to your liking, including the amount of cash you start the game with and the amount you must pay to bail yourself out of jail. You also have an assortment of boards (which admittedly I haven’t unlocked all of them yet) which adds some nice extra dimensions. The Richest mode of play is very different, there is no cash to worry about in this game, and it’s even more reliant on luck! The game is played in rounds. You can select 6, 9 or 12 rounds of play depending on how long you want the game to last. The AI is frustring as fuck to play against as it will land on NONE of your properties and you will somehow just by “chance” land on their property with hotels on it. FUCK YOU OLD KENT ROAD! HERE!! HAVE MY LAST $5. IT’S ALL I GOT!! My only other quarrel with it is the inability to skip the animation section. You can’t make this a fast game. Every roll takes a minute or two so when you play, you have to be dedicated for the next couple of hours into playing it. Mr Monopoly is irratating after awhile as he says the same things over and over. JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME LOSE ALREADY. OK, I get it you’re trying to add your part in so you feel like you are an integral part but please do it quietly over there in the corner. We’ll call you when we need it. Before I started writing this review, I was going to give it 4-4.5 stars. But the more I thought about, the more angry I became. Now Monopoly is lucky it gets 3 stars. See? Take Pall Mall with a hotel and stick it far up your arse, you selfish, unfair AI fuck. Hmph, showed you.

Metal Slug Anthology
To be perfectly honest with you, as long as they port the game(s) exactly how they are into the Wii and make the controls nice and accurate in the classic mode, I am happy as shit. And that is exactly what they did. Can’t possibly get this wrong. There’s a good half-dozen different controller configurations to choose from and the default works perfectly fine for me. The only other additional noteworthy aspect to this game is mid-game saving which only adds to the game. Everything else is exactly how you remember it.

Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
People are going fucking mental over the new Donkey Kong and how it is going to be like DK Country was in SNES, etc. But truth be told, this isn’t half bad either. The story has never been a strong spot for the Donkey Kong games. All you need to know is some fucked shit is going down. You and your boy have gotta go out there and right some wrongs. The controllers always seem to wreck havoc on any good game and although there is some learning, I didn’t throw my controller down in a fit of blinding fucking rage and find a new game to play. The difficulty is just about spot on. They eased you into it without fucking you in the arsehole and assuming you are DK king because you may have played previous DK games (which is a dangerous assumption). The downside is that there is nothing new here apart from a few new maneuvers. For instance to steal the bananas at the end of the level, you do punching moves at the screen. I have mixed feelings of feeling lame and something different which was cool. Couple that with a seemingly lack of personality that previous DK games seemed to be brimming with (apart from filling the screen with bananas) and an edge that previous DK games made classic that this one doesn’t so it didn’t hold my attention for long enough before I felt the need to go back to DK Country and the like on virtual console. The thing is the game itself is enjoyable. On its own, it is definately one of the best platformers for the Wii when you see what else is out there. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t many good Wii games as this is still pretty good. But when you compare to it to any other previous DK release, this is just not up to the same blow-your-fucking-mind level of awesomeness previous DK versions. But if you compare it to the long slew of shitty other games. I just think that there is room for improvement which is why it didn’t get any more stars than what it did.

EA Grand Slam Tennis
FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. Just be fucking glad this didn’t get 1 star. My first annoyance is the controls, AGAIN. My biggest common complaint. When Wii gets the controls right, it usually turns out to be a highly enjoyable game. But it is a major hindrance in far too many games. Once you get past the controls (which you never really do), you have the added “feature” of the annoying commentary. Shitty catch phrases and mindless monosyllabic sentences, trying to catch the essence of the game but in a single player setting only making me more annoyed. They take all the fun out of it by your first opponent.
So you get past those two annoying items. What next? FUCK! I had to face that fucker like 20 times before I figured out how to beat him. There was no real trick to it or pattern to it - just perseverance. Talk about steep learning curve. This might be an alright game in 2 player mode so if you both suck, it might add another dimension. But ultimately, go play the tennis portion of Wii Sports instead. It’s more fun and you have more court to play in (as for some reason the court seems really narrow and gives you a very limited area to play shots). They stay true to the game (alley is out) which would normally be a good thing but with a combination of problems has made this game shit. Even dedicated gamers might find the controllers a bit too shit to try and even play.

I am fucking old.
I mean, not in years. But kids these days have it so good and none of them know how far things have come. Kids, when I was in high school, we couldn’t just download an entire discography from a major artist who has been doing the rounds for years in a single convenient torrent in 15 minutes before taking another 2-3 minutes to copy it all to my iPod before I make the decision that I am only going to keep the 5 songs of his which were singles as all of his other songs are shit.
A CD burner was rare. And in order for this to even get a copy, we needed to know people who had money to own CDs. We knew a guy who had a burner and even though you didn’t like him all too much you still spent whole days there trying to burn your CDs in 1x (approx an hour to burn a whole CD!) and even then there was no guarantee that it would work as you don’t have buffer underrun protection like you do these days. I eventually got my own burner in year 11. It was a 4x SCSI burner that cost me $400 (came with a SCSI card) and was reliable. I had a guy who hooked me up with all sorts of music and I saw him once every couple of months and got my fill of music and then I’d have to live on that until I saw him next.
But let’s go back before that. I had tapes and the songs were usually recorded from radio or another tape which was taped from another tape. I don’t really remembering the tapes I used to have being that great quality-wise. The thing is, the reliance on radio for music was pretty big back then and even though you can download shit now with ease and convenience, the radio still seems to go strong.
I used to carry “portable” CD players and tape players to school. These things were massive. Portable is a loosely used term here as these things were bricks. They ran on AA batteries (anywhere up to 4 at a time) and had a lifespan of about 2 hours each set of batteries. I would carry in my school bag like 10 batteries on a potentially boring day just to keep me in the game. Oh, and not to mention when you are listening to a CD and you accidently knock them or you go to move it, you had to be careful as fuck. If you were too quick to move them around, they would stop playing and try to find where you were at. On the more dodgy CDs that I burnt, it would just come up with ERROR so you would have to stop it and play the song again. I tried to find on Google old portable CD players and something freaky happened. In the first three rows of results displayed some of the CD players I owned during my high school years. And others aren’t even that fucking old comparitively.

This was even before Napster.
And when it did turn up, we were all on 56k modems (if you’re lucky unless you are like one of those cock suckers who likes to boast about how they were on Telstra or Optus Cable before they capped all shit out of it making it go from one of the best services ever to one of the shittiest servcies you wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot clown pole - sorry these parentheses are so long) so it took 5-10 minutes to download one song depending on the quality of file (as variable bit rate was not even an option, I don’t think) and the length of the song which made the file bigger or smaller. That eventually died when Napster were sued by Metallica. It just goes to show you, regardless on how big you are, you can get away with just about anything and still gain more fans in the process. The irony is, that more people download Metallica mp3s now than they did back then.
Then:
* Kazaa (Napster’s Gay Cousin)
* Limewire
* AudioGalaxy all took its place. They all died at some point. And the rest is history.

I am all for safe computer usage. I frequently wrap my computer in a giant condom and just fuck it until I am done. Usually 1…or 2 whole minutes. Microsoft have the same sort of deal except instead of fucking the computer, it fucks its clients/users on a daily basis. It is promoting safe computer usage to teens…in the most unflattering and uninteresting method possible. Which teen in their right mind is gunna download those PDFs and read them? The only one that I could think of is a teen that would be the one that visits the site and confuses the PDFs for online references to their current assignment by accident.
If you are an adult who takes responsibilty for your children instead of blaming the Government for not putting an Internet filter on it for everyone (which would block out porn to Australia causing more accidental births and related mass riots), then Microsoft have another solution for you: Windows Live Family Safety 2011.
You could make your kids read boring PDFs with NO youtube videos in them (making them REALLY boring, right Kids?) they will either not absorb or absorb it and do the wrong thing anyway. OR you could install a program that keeps an eye on them. You can see your son going to the nastiest websites on the planet. So nasty, you get VD just by looking at this shit. God knows how your computer is getting fucked in the background. Oh well, at least you know he is straight.