WTF? Wednesdays – Muslims on notice: Thanksgiving is OUR holiday.

I find it insultingly hilarious that this makes the news:

A scanned version of the Best Buy Black Friday ad on BestBuy.com wishes Muslims a happy Eid al-Adha, which falls on the extended Thanksgiving weekend.Since the ad was posted, a message board on BestBuy.com has filled up with plenty of responses. Tuesday morning, a discussion of the ad on BestBuy.com had more than 100 responses. Some of those comments were supportive of the greeting and some called for a boycott of the retailer, including boldly racist remarks.

Let’s put aside our political differences for a second here and just think about this for a second. What is Best Buy trying to achieve here? Political Correctness? Probably. Slight pandering to a minority group during a Holiday Season typically focused on Americans becoming gluttons for a day? At face value also a strong possibility. Is this worthy of bombarding their website with racial slurs and threats to boycott (good luck with that one, btw)? Yea, sorry but I don’t think so.

Best Buy – bless them – is not overacting to this “bad press” and instead responded with – GASP – simply stated intelligence:

We do use the word “holiday” in some of our advertising because it is meant to be inclusive to everyone. However, just as we have in the past, we will also reference specific holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in our weekly ads, store signage and other advertising vehicles.

Also, last I checked we’re still in the Thanksgiving Holiday season. Failing to say “Merry Christmas” on a store advertisement isn’t exactly an oversight or SUPREME PANDERING TO THE MINORITIES OF AMERICA!!! Also, for some educational fun, let’s just stop and compare the two holidays:

• Thanksgiving: Americans celebrate God’s helping the Pilgrims survive the brutal winter via the kindness of the local Native Americans. It has since become a festival of food, a celebration of abundance, and a rare chance to participate in a traditional family meal in an increasingly non-family-centric society
• Eid al-Adha: The Feast of Sacrifice, based on Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son to display his obedience to God. According to the Koran, a voice from heaven stopped Ibrahim, allowing him to sacrifice a ram instead. In the spirit of sacrifice, families observing Eid al-Adha eat about a third of their meal, sharing the rest with family and friends and donating some to the poor.

What. The. Fuck. THEY’RE STEALING OUR BIBLICAL STORIES, AND MAKING US LOOK BAD FOR BLATANT OVEREATING!?!! How DARE Best Buy wish people a Happy Eid al-Adha Weekend! Where are my endless ads for celebrating Jesus’ birth by buying my kid that toy he so desperately wants and will only enjoy for 2 weeks? I’m OUTRAGED. Honestly, I love how Christian America expects the all of United States to operate on a christian calendar but cannot grant simple concessions like A FUCKING WELL WISHING ADVERTISEMENT to a minority group.

And before anyone starts screaming “They just moved that holiday over ours to feel like they’re included in our fun,” please do yourself a favor and go research why it is we celebrate Christmas and Easter when we do. Additionally…

I’ve Love You Digital Girfriend! Will You Marry Me? No Seriously, There’s This Awesome Church in Tokyo…

A man who calls himself SAL9000 is set to marry his virtual girlfriend from a video game called Love Plus this weekend.

The above is stolen straight from a Dallas headline. Apparently our love-struck gamer decided to take his love – the in game avatar Nene Anegasaki – on a honeymoon to Guam. Now, sadly, ‘Love Plus’ does not actually have a Guam in game. Thus, SAL9000 did the next logical thing and took his Nintendo DS with him to Guam, where he undoubtedly held hands with her through his stylus and attempted to advance the sex life of the relationship by getting the DS up the cartridge slot.

The man now plans to hold a public wedding reception in Tokyo this weekend which will also be livecast on Nico Nico Douga.

Ah, yes. Japan. The one country in the world that will embrace this match made in digital heaven. I will not be surprised if the company that produced ‘Love Plus’ uses this as a positive press moment and attempts to capitalize by actually programming the game to allow such a ceremony on this grand scale.

But all will not be love and roses in this relationship. In fact, it can  actually be quite short lived. Unfortunately for SAL9000, mistreating his so-to-be bride will cause her to leave him within the next 100 days!

The player can increase their abilities by studying, working out and solving problems of their virtual girlfriend, but if they fail to make their girlfriend happy, the game will restart after 100 days.

This is a great time to instead invest in World of Warcraft. There, your digital half-elf paladin bombshell will even do a dancing striptease for you.

WTF? Wednesdays: Crane Judo-Chops House

Imagine if you will that you hired a crew to come and take out an old oak tree from your backyard. Then imagine that you get a call from said crew a few hours later. That call went something like this “Yea hi, we had a little hiccup removing the tree. It’s actually kind of funny really; you’ll laugh when I tell you. See our crane became a little unbalanced and well, smashed through your house”

Now personally I would flip shit, I can only assume the McCarthy’s did the same. Oh and should I mention that Mrs. McCarthy was just in a car accident earlier that week? Luckily no one was hurt in this little mishap. If you’re friends with these people though you should probably stay away for a while, as they’ve either been jinxed or Mr. McCarthy is channeling Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor.

Looking at it in hindsight, did that tree really need to come out? And what the fuck did they need a giant crane for anyway? Why didn’t they just keep cutting the thing until the pieces were manageable? The pictures show guys back there and nice little pieces. Perhaps this company also moonlights as a lumber provider and needed some 20 foot long 2×4s.

One thing is sure though. These are lumberjacks, and they’re not okay.

The Peanut Gallery’s Top Ten Terrible Movies You Can’t Help But Watch

Some movies are born great. Some movies achieve greatness over time. And some movies are such trainwrecks of unintentional comedy, flimsy set design, and terrible CGI that you become mesmerized by your television – lost in a cavalcade of overacting, porn stars trying to go mainstream, the word ‘fuck’ being used in all its grammatical applications, and non sequitors starring Steven Seagal – and awaken two hours later feeling oddly entertained enough that you mistakenly watch the film AGAIN whenever it’s on.

The following list is a tribute to those films that are so bad they’re good. Each of these cinematic tragedies are reminders that Hollywood truly is the epicenter of all drug induced ideas. To make the list, the film must’ve been mainstream, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of trash out there that doesn’t see worldwide releases. These are the best of the best…films that somehow made it past their studios Quality Control division and onto the silver screen in your neighborhood, only to be critically flame-broiled and yet somehow beloved…classics?

This list is brought you by ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ and Sand – It’s everywhere, get used to it:

10. Batman and Robin (1997)

Joel Schumacher should be congratulated. He managed to make Batman more homoerotic than dear Dr. Fredric Wertham: The nippled Batsuit received an upgrade featuring  pre-wedgied, assless-chaps-looking armor. Combine this with Uma Thurman’s idea of acting (remember, she’d just made ‘The Avengers’ that same year, another honorary member of this list) and a ‘Batman on Ice’ segment and you’ve got a lethal cocktail of suckage. Never fear, folks! The Governator is here to turn this movie into campy one-liner glory! Just when you’re reaching for that remote to save your eyes from over-exposure to inexplicable amounts of fuchsia lights, Arnold swoops in – sporting enough chrome to make Jay-Z’s Cadillac jealous – to drop another gleefully awful ice-themed punchline.

Also, why does the freeze gun have a lock and load noise?

9. Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Hollywood Steps to Guaranteed Film Success: 1) Hire Samuel L. Jackson. 2) Give Samuel L. Jackson a gun. 3) Let Samuel L. Jackson add to his collection of priceless film quotes by yelling about things more incoherently than the Ultimate Warrior:

8. Lake Placid (1999)

A completely forgettable film having something to do with a rather large Croco-Gator hiding in some idealistic lake, ‘Lake Placid’ is saved from movie hell by Betty White. Yes, the ‘kooky’ Golden Girl is your savior by doing what she does best: play the innocent old lady who’s actually Nucking Futs (“patent pending) crazy. In this instance, Ms. White can be seen feeding cows to our Gator hero while whimsically discussing the weather with the sheriff.

7. Flash Gordon (1980)

IMDb’s Plot Summary: “A football player and his friends travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyrant, Ming the Merciless, to save Earth.” What could POSSIBLY make this film any better? Well, George Lucas wanted to direct this film, but sadly missed the opportunity and had to instead make some silly films featuring singing teddy bears, walking carpets, and trashcans on wheels. Dennis Hopper, YOUR OVERACTING VILLIAN OF THE CENTURY, sadly turned down the chance to play Dr. Zarkov…but all is well, because 80’s rock sensation QUEEN did the soundtrack!

6. Waterworld (1995)

SPEAKING of Dennis Hopper, I present to you Kevin Costner’s global warming disaster flick (as opposed to his equally bad nuclear holocaust film). At it’s time, this was the most expensive film ever made. I can definitely see where all the money went to, such as welding all that expensive trash can metal onto black matte painted jet skis. This movie is THREE HOURS LONG, and yet you can’t turn away from it. Why? Because Kevin Costner drinks his own piss three minutes in, and it’s all downhill from there:

5. Judge Dredd (1995)

No words need to describe this film aside from I AM THE LAW:

4. Street Fighter (1994)

A movie about a game…BAD…?!?!?! Is this even possible?! What about all those great Uwe Bowe films like ‘House of the Dead’, ‘Bloodrayne’, and ‘In the Name of the King’? And who can forget the Super Mario Brothers…It’s true: Video game based films are notoriously well known for being absolutely eye-gouging, jaw-droppingly bad, and ‘Street Fighter’ is no different. The tragedy that is the film is only further enhanced by the realization that it is Raul Julia’s – the lovable Mr. Addams – final film before he passed away. Though Julia does his best to save this movie, the true hero of our film is Jean Claude Van Damm and his string of flexing monologues scattered throughout.

3. Mannequin (1987)

It’s a movie starring Kim Cattrall as a mannequin that comes to life for the lonely artist that lovingly built her who falls in love with her and saves a department store owned by Estelle Getty by designing hip window displays with his flamboyantly gay best friend. Not crazy enough for you yet? Did I mention that Cattrall is actually an Egyptian princess? Let’s kick it up a notch!

2.Howard the Duck (1986)

God Bless George Lucas for this one. He had HUNDREDS of comic book characters to select from – any of which Marvel, DC, et al would’ve gladly allowed the god of all things Science Fiction to direct – and he chose to slam a bunch of midgets into a oversized rubber duck costume and attempt to save the world. If there was EVER a film that needed a rerelease with enhanced special effects, it’s this one. Please, George, stop destroying the land of the Jedi and bring back this Duck in full CG glory!

1. Starship Troopers (1997)

This is, hands down, the greatest bad movie of all time. Casper Van Dien’s chin deserved an Oscar for carrying Casper Van Dien’s dead weight through this 90 minute romp. Michael Ironside plays Michael Ironside with a gun. Gary Busey’s son is only mildly aggrevating, and hey, any film with NPH automatically is a classic. I have one question for you citizen: Are you doing your part?

WTF Wednesday: Hollywood is filled with idiots

VS  

You are currently connected to the internet, this is fact considering you are reading this article. I would put money down that at some point you committed some act of piracy. You may download music, games, movies, whatever. Or just watch something on YouTube that is copyrighted. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with that and the morality of pirating is certainly not the focus of this article.

Instead it is the fact that Hollywood (and the music industry, but that’s another show) just straight up refuses to embrace the incredible marketing tool that is BitTorrent. Let me compare for you the cases of two new movies. In the Hollywood corner, weighing in at a budget of $24 million: Zombieland; and in the indie corner, weighing in at a budget of $250,000: Ink. Both movies have been pirated all over the web and have made it to TorrentFreak’s top 10 pirated movie lists for various weeks.

Zombieland was downloaded over one million times, Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times. No matter how you slice it that is a shit-ton of people who have seen those movies. The important thing here is how the two camps responded to this incredible popularity.

First let’s tackle Ink. Who here has even heard of Ink? I hadn’t until I read about it today. It’s a movie with an interesting sounding story, and I am probably going to download it later. Now as an independent movie you would think that the creator of the film would probably be none too pleased to see all his hard work get him nothing as so many people see his movie for free. Completely on the contrary though he has chosen to embrace the piracy and at a request of the pirates put up a Donate link on his website. He has gotten unprecedented exposure and hundreds of thousands of unanticipated fans.

Now let’s look at Zombieland. A movie which I still need to see admittedly but pretty much looks like Left 4 Dead in movie format (which would be a very good thing). The movie took $24 million to make and has pulled in $84 million in box office revenue so far. Needless to say it’s a popular movie. So how does one of the co-writers respond to seeing his movie pirated one million times? Is he as happy as the Indie guys? Thrilled that so many people liked his movie? Not in the slightest.

Quoth the Twitter: “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2.”

Are you effing kidding me? You’ve made $60 million dollars on this film and one million frickin’ people want to see this movie. In Hollywood it seems to be pretty much guaranteed that if you sell even one ticket to a movie there will be a sequel so I don’t think incredible popularity is really going to cause too many problems.

The issue here is that his response perfectly represents Hollywood’s stance on piracy. They just can’t seem to realize that they have an insanely powerful tool for them to use for free! Now I’m no marketing guru here but I would think that someone would have looked into this and saw that box office revenues, DVD sales, merchandise sales have all gone up. Seriously Hollywood, WTF?

The Peanut Gallery Reviews: Earth Defense Force 2017

I’m sure a lot of you just read that title and went “Bwah?”, including I’d imagine the owner of this fine website. Well I’m here to tell you about this game that came out back in 2007 and is a helluva lot of fun.

Here’s the backstory to the game, aliens finally contacted Earth and have come to destroy us, go kill them. That’s it! There is no character development, no sassy sidekick, no love interest, no shady government agencies, no ‘roided up super space marines. It’s just about you, an infantryman in the planet-wide military, going around killing giant ants, spiders, robots, and Godzilla knockoffs.

Maybe it’s because I’m a simple creature, or because I really have some issues with insects (Fucking giant spiders gave me nightmares). But any time I can take a machine gun and just go to town on hordes and hordes of acid spitting ants and watch their body parts fly off in all different directions, I call that a good time.

Yup that’s right, the aliens, termed the oh so creative “Ravagers” have come in giant ships dropping enormous insects which nicely explode when hit with machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, whatever. The entire premise is to go around killing giant things for 50 or so levels. There are no sub missions, no “don’t hurt the civilian” clauses, no one to rescue, you’re practically encouraged to destroy every building (with a single rocket each mind you) you can see, there is nothing except you versus thousands and thousands of aliens.

The gameplay is simple, you have a squad of other infantrymen who vary between cannon fodder and mission savingly helpful, but you can kill them all at any point and no one is going to even give you a slap on the wrist for it. The aliens usually spawn from some place so you need to find those, be they mounds of dirt or dropships and take them out to finish each level. You pick up health, ammo, armor upgrades (increases HP), and new weapons that the aliens drop when they go splat. There are a ton of weapons but mainly you just get upgraded versions of the ones you had with a few unique things thrown in here and there. Also, avoid the vehicles, just trust me on this one; they handle like bricks steered by a cows.

You can chose to play through each level of the game on any of the five different difficulty settings, with the best weapons being found in the hardest setting. But in the end you just play through all the levels and tackle the huge Mothership and all the alien spawn that still kicking (alone, while on foot, yielding little more than a machine gun and rocket launcher remember).

Now the bad news, this is straight up a budget game. It is missing some things like stellar graphics and the ability to play on Xbox Live, but what it lacks in shininess it makes up for in senseless violence. Basically I have considered buying Xbox 360 just so I could pick up this game and play it again; I’m jonesing for some alien insect genocide.

Compare it to your favorite B movie, be it The House of the Dead, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, or Army of Darkness. Why were those movies so good? Because they were so over the top trying to be something great that they fell right off and we laughed as they tumbled down. This is the same thing. There are various glitches and it completely lacked a story but that’s part of the beauty. It’s a fun game to pick up and play for a while and then put it down wondering how you just spent three hours killing giant murderous ants.

I’m sure by now I’ve convinced you all to go spend $20 and pick up this game. But I found that the video review by GameTrailers pretty much shows you exactly why you want to get the game (complete with in game footage). So I thought I’d throw it in here just to hammer home my point.

Final verdict: 7 out of 10 peanuts

Facebook Friends: Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

I recently cracked the 500 friend plateau on Facebook. That’s right, I am a Facebook Tool. 500 ‘friends’? Is that even possible?

These are friends numbers 157 and 369

500 acquaintances? Sure. 500 people I’m amicable with? Certainly. Friends? Uhh…yea, I don’t think so. While Facebook has certainly proven to be a useful weapon against friendship deterioration due to distance and/or lost time, it’s also developed into this bizarre web-based society that creates social links purely through passing handshakes or shared benches at the airport. If you have over 200 ‘friends’ on Facebook, you are guilty of this. I don’t care how much of a socialite you consider yourself.

Alas, a tragedy struck me sometime today: I dropped back down to 499 amigos. How did I react? The only natural way a 20-something raised in the age of information would…I frantically began searching through my friends list trying to figure out who the hell was missing. I even went as far as clicking on my closer friends’ lists and trying to make a comparison of possible missing faces.

At some point I stopped and realized this is fucking retarded. Firstly, if I can’t realize they are missing, it probably means they won’t be missed. Secondly, IT’S A GODDAMN WEBSITE ADVERTISING A PERSON’S ABILITY TO STALK THE PEOPLE THEY’VE MET AND SHITTY INTERNET GAMES FEATURING UZIS AND COWS (and this wonderful website which you should totally endorse by becoming a fan!) There is really only one logical reason why we all seem to fall victim to this nonsensical waste of time, and I’ve discovered what’s to blame.

Pokemon.

Holy. Shit. What happened to the good ole' days of just 151 of the lil bastards?

That’s right, Pocket Monsters, that insanely popular franchise with increasing numbers of elementally aligned pets who’s sole purpose is to be caught and made to war with each other (it’s Mike Vick’s favorite game!). Somehow, watching that little number above your friends list gradually climb upward fills that little gap in your life leftover from hours chasing Mewtwo through that damn cave. All we need to make this shit complete is a fucking lightning bolt to erupt from my best friend’s head.

It could happen.

‘Blog’ and ‘Tweet’ – Language of Origin..?

A word, if I may, on the words “Tweet” and “Blog”…

Spoken and Written Language are incredibly potent forms of communication that can be quite artistic when used by the right people. Poets, Politicians, Professors, Novelists, and Song Writers have all proven that – when used creatively and correctly – man can create beauty through words, speaking to our inner emotions, fears, and desires through simple sounds and lines on a page.

And then the internet dweebs started pulling words like ‘Tweet’ and ‘Blog’ out their asses.

Are there any less pleasant sounding words currently in common use today that aren’t a part of George Carlin’s ‘Seven Words’? I mean, I realize my mind does go to weird and unholy places sometimes, but am I the only one who immediately relates Blog to Blumpkin and Tweet to Skeet-Skeet-Skeet? I guess that latter comparison makes at least partial sense. After all, ‘Tweeting’ is essentially verbally ejaculating all over the internet’s face for a googly-eyed audience just waiting to gobble up the nonsense Twitter users are shooting out. I’m sure those Twitter users feel a sense of euphoria post-’Tweeting’ because they’ve just shared with the world some mindless emotional tid bit from their life, and web-surfers have become the whores wanting to be shared with again, and again, and again.

Blogs are a different animal. Now, I realize that – by all technicalities -’The Peanut Gallery’ is a blog., but what the hell ever happened to calling such things “personal websites” or hell even “e-journals”? What oh-so-genius moron decided that ‘blog’ was shorthand for ‘personal site’? More importantly, why did ‘writing an article for my blog’ become ‘BLOGGING’??? “Blogging -  the smashing together of ‘Blumpkin’ and ‘Flogging’…that about sums it up.” Thus, in short, pouring your heart out on your e-journal is the physical equivalent to being flogged whilst receiving a blumpkin.

I’m sure my quasi-English Major sensibilities are being tweaked more than the average human being on this, but c’mon people!

 

WTF Wednesdays: Classic Internet Music Videos

So it’s that lovable time of week again where I try to deride or poke fun at some mundane factoid hidden in America’s headlines. Minor problem, the news hasn’t been all that funny lately.

How the high holy heck am I supposed to write a weekly moment of mocking glory if you, the people of this fine world, don’t do anything stupid and dub it newsworthy??? I mean seriously, someone could’ve at least stuck their pecker in a toaster because they were convinced it would get them charged up for happy sex times, but NOOOOOOOOOO, people had to be normal this week. Heavens forbid.

Thus, I’ve decided to look at WTFs of yesteryear…not really WTFs, but to hell with ya’ll. I do what I want. For shits and giggles, here’s 10 music videos I’ve discovered over the years while surfing the internets..ALL OF THEM. For reasons that may seem arbitrary to your feeble minds, I’ve gone ahead and listed them in and order that only makes sense to me, thus creating both a Top 10 AND a WTF? Wednesday. Cower in fear of my great mind…or in fear of what you’re about to see, as a few of these are actually music videos for very popular artists in other countries.

10. Read A Book

I think Lil Jon has missed his calling as a educational rapper. Also, BET is utterly insane for airing this.

9. Run Mr. Taliban

This video is insanely funnier if you just focus on the face they chose for W.

8. Night of Fire

I have nothing to say to that other than THEY’RE 14 YOU PERVERTS. Also, silly me for thinking that this “fat pro wrestler dancing with prepubescent asian girls” thing was a one hit wonder. They did it again, and this time he’s wearing a Donald Duck outfit.

7. Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

It’s my Theme Song!

6. Bang Bang Bang

Maybe if I took more of this approach, number 6 wouldn’t be my theme song…

5. Numa Numa Guy

Greatest lipsynch video EVER.

4. Papa Smurf Can I Lick Your Ass

They had me at ‘Smurfs Gone Wild’

3. Yatta

Japan, you are officially fucked in the head.

2. Star Wars Gangsta Rap

For more shenanigans featuring expletives, here’s the sequel.

Lastly, to be number one, you have to beat number one, and to this day no one has managed to top the rhythmic gyrations of the one, the only Daler Mehndi:

WTF Wednesdays: The CIA didn’t tell everything to Congress?!? GASP.

GRIPPING news from Our Nation’s Capitol today that is sure to crack the very foundations of our great government.

A senior intelligence official admitted the CIA failed to fully inform Congress about some of its activities during the Bush Administration.

DEER. GOD. What would George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt think?!?

'Duck and cover' or 'Kiss my ass'?

Democrats in Congress say there are at least 5 separate occasions where the CIA knowingly and deliberately withheld information from Congressional committees during the 8 years of terro – d’I mean presidential uhhh rule? – of George W Bush. Republicans argue that Democrats are simply trying to lay down a Chewbacca defense for Nancy Pelosi and her claims that the CIA lied to her…

Ladies and gentlemen…WHAT THE FUCK, OVER? It’s the C-FUCKING-I-FUCKING-A. Central Intelligence Agency. The elite group of American spooks. The fucking democratic version of the KGB. We’re talking about tactical espionage, folks. Key word? TACTICS!

Do you, the common American, trust our Congress with tactical secrets that can greatly affect the safety of this nation? Remember people, this is Congress, which is its own ‘Entertainment Tonight’ away from being a full blown reality tv sensation featuring gossip, backstabbing, and bad sex dramas. These people are LEGENDARY for ‘accidental’ leaks of information.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that these United States of America is in better shape when the CIA lies to Nancy Pelosi. The other option..?

Yea, I went there.