If this doesn’t take away whatever may be left of your faith in humanity, nothing will.

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday after an “out of control” throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains broke down the doors at a suburban store and knocked him to the ground, police said.

At least four other people, including a woman eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

…

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help the man were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said. Witnesses said that even as the worker lay on the ground, shoppers streamed into the store, stepping over him.

One person bumping into another…that happens.

One of said people taking a tumble…that also happens.

The person who fell getting trampled to death by a savage horde of materialism zombies eager to spend spend spendspendSPEND!!!!…no.  No fracking way.  Not in any civilization that I want to be part of.  Unfortunately I don’t see any way to vote with my feet on this one, since America, while importing everything else so that our trade deficit kind of looks like our national deficit, has managed to balance things up nicely if you figure in consumerism and materialism as exports.  So, as we’ve gone, the rest of the world will be following shortly.

If you read the full article, it says the guy was a temp–probably picking up some extra work to buy Fluffy McRufflepants the Flying Dinosaur or Suzie the Doll that Poos Real Poo or whatever the stupid overpriced toy of the year is for his spawn, or else expensive jewelry for his lady friend.  Or I’m wrong and he was using the opportunity to get a few bucks to make rent in the economic clusterfrack created by the real estate market being unable to support that many not-even-interest home loans.  Either way, materialism at its finest has given this worker’s family a funeral for Christmas.

Scrooge was onto something, referring to the festivities of Christmas as “humbug,” which, loosely translated, means “BS.”  I would say that for people to trample someone to death in order to go shopping, to put a human life’s value below that of stuff, qualifies as BS.  So, bah humbug to all, and to all a good right.

If you have a problem with the political leanings of the site I’m linking to here, just watch the videos.

Obama is talking about a “civilian national security force” (second video, halfway down the page), whatever that is.  Best case scenario is he’s talking about putting more into our police, firefighters, etc.  Worst case scenario will give WWII vets flashbacks.  Comparitively speaking, this is old news.

More recently, Obama’s chief of staff has said in an interview that everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 would have to spend three months in “joint, similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service” (first video, same page as above link).  I say…’scuse me?  I wasn’t aware of the federal government going into the summer camp business.  I don’t see how this isn’t either slavery or wrongful imprisonment if someone doesn’t want to go to it.  I don’t see how either slavery or wrongful imprisonment would teach me what it means to be an American.  And I don’t see how dropping a frackload of money into it is going to help our economy out.

So, my two questions:

1. How is this legal?
2. Who’s going to pay for that?

Now that the WGA strike is over, shows other than reality TV are going back into production. We won’t be doomed to an eternity of Are You Smarter than the Girl who Wants to Marry a Bajillionaire? crap. YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!! Among a laundry list of shows that I don’t care about (I just don’t get into most stuff any more…in fact, I don’t even bother to watch most stuff any more), House is coming back on April 21 at 9 PM. Note the timeslot change–it’s on Mondays now, contrary to House’s line in a recent episode to the effect that broadcast TV would be good enough to watch on Tuesdays. At least it’s not a Friday Timeslot of DOOOOOOOOM.

While I’m on the subject*, what’s up with TV these days? I mean I get that TV networks would go broke if they planned their entire lineups to appeal to the IQ range that my friends and I inhabit, but on the flip side, all this crappy reality TV exists for two reasons: it’s cheap to make and it’s freaking insanely popular with The Masses. So, it would be nice if they would at least use those cheap profits to pay for the production of something of value…although really it would be more of an investment than a subsidy, since over time smart programming will earn more than Reality crap. Do the math…a Survivor season (whatevertheheck it’s called) can run each episode maybe 2-3 times, and then the tapes are worth their weight in film. Shows that can stand up to repeated viewings and that last a few seasons so that enough episodes are made can keep making money forever. A constant trickle over a long enough time can add up to more than even a huge single burst. I could say it in statistics notation with an inequality, which would be cool because any geekery involving Greek symbols cannot possibly be less than amazing, but I’d need another Wordpress plugin for that.

*note: this means “Avrila’s been waiting to rant about this for a long, long, LONG time”

So, I say to…well, everybody, though mostly the TV studios…think long term. Long term wins in the long run, and the nature of time will put us all into the long run eventually.

Crime rate’s up, crime rate’s down, property crime and violent crime are going in the same directions/different directions/sideways (which would be a pretty good trick), whatever. It’s all numbers. I like numbers, but they don’t tell the whole story…maybe she had a good reason for punching him, maybe he robbed that bank to pay his kid’s hospital bill…not really possible to say, from numbers alone, how human decency is doing these days.

But then there’s a story like this one that blows the numbers, whatever they might be, out of the water: a fast food manager got shot by a customer who wanted more freaking chili sauce. Fortunately the shots didn’t turn out to be life-threatening. Unfortunately, we live in the kind of society where people shoot each other over condiments.

You know someone at NASA had fun coming up with this mission. And writing this article. I still think telling bad jokes is a Trekkie trait…for proof, see me, my dad, and half the people I know online…

Full version of article; excerpt not covered under Geek97361.com Creative Commons license.

Video on this page doesn’t load up right for me, but whatever…the important part is in text anyway. The teenager from this story is being referred to as a “drug overdose victim.” Yay for referring to people who make crappy choices (like getting on drugs in the first place…not getting into rehab…etc.) as helpless victims. Yay for turning them into front-page news with a nice glamorous picture; how about a picture of her in the hospital with tubes coming out of all kinds of places? Maybe that would put a few people off of taking that first hit of meth or ecstasy or crack or whatever exactly it was.

Just a thought.

According to PC World, the 20 most annoying tech products of all time (apparently defined as ones that “have one or two traits that make you want to wrap them in 200 pounds of steel cable and toss them off the side of a boat”) are as follows:

1. AOL CDs
2. Windows Me
3. Apple iTunes, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Zune, Napster (specifically, incompatible rights management systems)
4. McAfee Internet Security, Norton Internet Security
5. RealPlayer
6. Bonzi Buddy
7. MySpace
8. Windows Vista
9. Windows Update (specifically, its near-forced delivery of Windows Genuine Advantage)
10. QuickTime
11. Office 97
12. Adobe (Macromedia) Flash
13. AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger
14. PlayStation 3
15. eBay
16. Apple Pro Mouse
17. Plaxo
18. Outlook 2003
19. Apple Poser Mac G4 Cube
20. Harmonium
21. Quicken 2005
22. Logitech Harmony 550

Notable notes: They apparently have a little problem with the concept that “22 != 20″; 3 of their 22 “products” are actually more than one product; and, as a user comment at the end of the article says, “As soon as I clicked the link to read a list on “the most annoying products,” what should I see? A pop-up ad wanting me to subscribe to PC World. Physician, heal thyself….”

Full article at http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130638-page,1/article.html

Legal notice: Some material in this post consists of direct quotes for purpose of critical review. No infringement intended. Quoted material is not available for license under my site’s Creative Commons license, as PC World’s copyright still applies to such material.

Why do people get the order wrong? (linkage to news story…of course people reading this close to today will know what I’m talking about)

If violent psychotic sociopaths want to off themselves, I really don’t give a crap. I mean, I guess it sucks for people who might have to watch or something. Or someone might miss them…somehow… But what I’m getting at is, why must they try to take down 20-30 innocents with them?

They’ve got the order wrong, I guess. So, for any violent psychotic sociopaths out there, if you’re going to go on a killing spree, start with yourself instead of finishing with yourself, then if you still feel angry after you kill yourself, do what you want.

As the ancient Greeks proved, people will sign for anything: accidental home delivery of human head and liver.

They actually got that free wi-fi thing going in Portland. To the people who’re complaining about it being slow or anything like that: SHUT UP!!!! It’s free internet access! Either throw money at it or deal with what you can get for free.