Unhelpful

Help! I’m a prisoner of The Corporation, Alexandria bureau. This is near the end of Day Two. Their demands are simple: they’re holding me prisoner until I agree to seek employment with Glitchless.

Fight the power!

This isn’t “news” by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought enough of our readers might have on opinion on Gamespot’s Question of the Week, which this week is “What game convention would you like to see changed in 2001?”. Better yet, they might actually want to discuss the issue…

…but if not, you can vote against breasts. Take that as you will.

Discuss: Comments? [dead link]

I’ve worked in three spheres of the economy: military, the finance industry, and the tech industry.

One of the key differences is who gives you free clothes:

In the military, you get a few full outfits early on, but after that, the free stuff peters out quick.

In the finance industry, the free clothes angle is very light. Some might not see any at all, and you’d probably best consider yourself lucky if you get a polo t-shirt with your company’s logo on it.

The key to getting clothing and not paying for it is to get into the tech industry. There are companies who will not only clothe you to purchase their products, they’ll clothe you just to read their boxed advertising materials.

There’s a tacit gentlemanly agreement that a casual clothing work environment engenders: I will wear your stuff.

That’s it, frankly. I will wear your stuff, providing I don’t actually loathe your product or your company. I merely prefer another product? I’ll wear you. I tried your product once, and honestly didn’t care for it? I’ll wear you. I’ve never heard of you? I’ll wear you.

One of the advantages (aside from the obvious) is finding out that some company has, out of the kindness of their hearts, decided to push back your laundry day by one day. The only disadvantage to this gravy train of free clothes in the tech industry is that it’s almost completely limited to t-shirts. I know the obvious followup here: “it’s the one thing we can send in extra large and not look ridiculous if it’s too big”

Honestly, I don’t mean to sound like an ingrateful bastard, but this bears re-stating in a more direct manner:

Imagine: you’re in the theater, watching a movie you paid $8 to see.

A hush falls over the crowd. Maybe it’s a horror movie and the director is getting ready to scare the living hell out of you - or maybe it’s the old “it was just the cat” cliché.  Perhaps it’s a tearjerker, and the couple are embracing for the last time. A sci-fi film or historical fiction piece pauses the musical score as the view pans over a breathlessly intense panoramic shot. Or an action film, the hero walking into what he knows is to be an ambush, betting his life on a bluff.

Well forget it, you can kiss that all goodbye.

People are far too goddamn stupid to let that happen. It’s not just the two people in front of you who feel the need to read the text on the screen aloud every time a location or date is shown. And it’s not just them and the people far over to your right who don’t seem to comprehend the fact that their asses arenot on their living room couch and seem oblivious to the fact that, no, you don’t want a running commentary on the damn film.

Oh no. That would be too simple.

Now, peppered throughout the audience, you have people with pagers and cell phones. Furthermore, now that so many people do have them, most new cell phones come with “cute” song rings, featuring inane little ditties so that you won’t mistake your ring from someone else’s.

Enter the vibrator. They make phones with vibrators for rings.

If you are so damned important that your office, your family, or your worthless friends (trust me, they’re talking about you right now, and it would make your ears turn red) can’t possibly cope with the idea that you might actually have a two hour block of time that you are off the leash, so to speak, quit your job and abandon everyone you know before you go over the edge and kill someone. Or at least before you wind up dead in a dark theater.

Barring that, get a phone with a vibrator.

Of course, that in itself isn’t good enough if you don’t set it.

Here’s a checklist for going to the movies:

1) Do you have your cell phone or pager? Why? If the answer to the second question takes more than two seconds to think about, leave it in the car. Trust me, you’re less likely to be staring at movie credits with a big fat knot on the top of your head if you do.

2) Is your cell phone or pager on or off? If it is on, ask yourself: Why? Same followup question as with 1.

3) If you must leave your toy on because the safety of millions singlehandedly rests on the ability of your best friend to ask you if you’re still going out tomorrow night, turn the ringer to “vibrate”. Then stick it in your ass.

4) If - failing all my expert advice, and pissing it into the wind as if I merely do this important work for my own entertainment - you have somehow utterly failed to accomplish steps 1-3, and your leash rings audibly in a movie theater, immediately turn it off. Then leave. In that order. And don’t come back. Consider it your punishment for being too fucking stupid to see movies in public.

To keep you on your toes (because I know what a forgetful ingrate you are), I propose a mandatory message placed in the movie, right after the previews and theater blurb and immediately before the movie.

It will read as follows, depending on rating:

G: (Animation of a courteous moviegoer deactivating a cell phone, followed by an animation of an idiot’s phone ringing during a movie and him getting escorted out by three very burly - but smiling - men.)

PG: Message - Turn off your cell phones and pagers or you will be asked to leave if they activate.

R, NR: Audio - TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING CELL PHONE AND PAGER OR YOUR ASS THROWN OUT AS SOON AS THEY GO OFF, ASSHOLE!

PG-13: Message - Turn off your cell phones and pagers or you will be asked to leave if they activate, a**hole.

When you get that warning, abide by it. Don’t act surprised. Whatever you do, do not act surprised if it goes off when it damn well shouldn’t, as if someone snuck a phone into your pocket and you’re just as shocked as anyone else that it went off. I’m not buying it.

Otherwise, when the guy behind you gets his day in court for aggrivated homicide, I’ll be on the jury, andregardless of what happens in the courtroom, I’ll give him a mistrial by being the one person who will not support the guilty verdict. He’ll walk out of that court without a conviction.

But you won’t catch the verdict, because your idiot brother called you and you’ll find your cell phone ringing. And you’ll act surprised. But there will be one key difference.

I won’t be out $8.