Ah, Monday!

I'm back,  bitches.  This seemed like a long weekend, even though I stayed pretty busy for most of it.  Usually, when I'm running around doing things, the days tend to zip by pretty quickly, but I feel like I haven't written anything here for a lot longer than 2 days right now.  I had a pretty good weekend, too.  Got some boring responsible stuff done around the house and whatnot and also went out and had some fun with friends.  Ran some errands, checked some things off the to-do list and still found time to be lazy and, most of all, watch the season 2 premier of The Walking Dead.  I really like that show and it came along just in time to ease my withdrawals from Breaking Bad ending for the year.  Thank Xenu for AMC, or else my week would just be one long stretch between episodes of The X Factor, punctuated with little snippets of The Daily Show and Tosh.0... oh, and South Park is back, but still, I like having shows that I look forward to making time to watch live, rather than just catching on dvr when I have free time.  I like getting excited about a show so that I can't wait to watch it and I actually choose to sit through the commercials to see it live.

So, I'm just sort of sitting here and I don't really have a preconceived idea for a blog topic today, so I'm randomly typing out whatever pops into my head.  Yes, this will almost certainly result in a creation that serves to take minutes from your life reading it that you can never get back, don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh, here's something that I've been thinking about for over a week now but I keep not putting it down in writing...  You know how the new iPhone 4S has this voice recognition feature where you can talk to your phone?  Basically, you can give it voice commands and it will respond to them.  This lets you do things like ask for directions verbally instead of typing them out, etc.  Well, one of the big uses for this voice technology is that you can speak the words you want to say to someone and your iPhone will type them out for you.  This way you can send text messages to people without having to actually type out the text.  Now, call me crazy, but isn't that what us old timers used to call making a phone call?  "Isn't this awesome?  I say what I want to text and my phone types it out and sends it, then my friend can download an app that will read my text out loud!  It's the future!!"  No, it's actually the very first thing a PHONE ever did, but hey, if you're willing to pay $500 for something that can literally be accomplished with 2 cans and a taut string, knock yourselves out.  See, this is why education is so important.  Honestly though, what does this say about Apple customers?  They're honestly so addicted to buying anything new with an Apple logo on it that they're getting excited about carrying on traditional phone calls through a synthesized, 3rd party intermediary.  It's like when your friend is on the phone with another one of your friends and you keep telling your friend stuff to say for you, only your friend is charging you $500 for the privilege and gets every 4th word wrong.  I kind of feel like people have been pushing around the dirt with a rag over at Apple for a while now and pretending to look busy.  I mean, ok, the iPhone is pretty amazing and it did totally change the mobile phone industry, but what has Apple done since then that's been anywhere near as groundbreaking?  The iPad?  Come on, it's just a bigger version of the iPhone that can't make phone calls!  It's what should have come out 2 years before the iPhone.  And now the 4S?  It's an iPhone 4 that you can talk to... stop the presses!  Omg, I can't wait to ditch my perfectly good iPhone 4 to buy this slightly improved newer version... you know... because it's newer!  I'm personally stoked about the 4S, not because I can't wait to own it, but because I can't wait to buy an iPhone 4 for $100 now.  Yeah, 6 months ago when all my friends were plunking down $600 for one and literally raging because white was sold out, I was just kicking on back with my cheap-ass $40 Samsung and biding my time...

See, it just sort of proves my theory that maybe Steve Jobs really was the brains of the whole operation because once he started to get really sick, even before he stepped down, the innovation over there took a nosedive.  I've played around with an iPad and yeah, they're pretty cool, but they're not setting the computing world on fire.  It's almost been like a bet over there, like "How many retread ideas and old crap in new packaging can we put out there before people stop lining up 5 hours before the stores open to buy them?"  Apparently, the answer is "you'd be surprised!"  Someone really needs to pick up that torch before the next great Apple invention is... literally... a torch.  Think about it, it could be called the iBurn and it will instantly ignite any flammable object it comes in contact with.  Of course, it will require constant patching through iTunes and will cost $800, but you can't really put a price on a stick that catches stuff on fire with an Apple logo on it... plus, it's available in white!

I haven't watched much news this weekend, I tend to take the weekends off from thinking about serious things and getting all worked up over world events and politics and shit.  It's a big reason why I started doing casual Monday posts instead of just diving right into serious opining.  I just don't want to do a bunch of news homework first thing on a Monday morning.  In that respect, I'm not unlike most of the politicians in Washington right now.  In fact, given the amount of actual progress and production that has come out of congress in the last 3 years, I'd say by blogging about politics an average of 3 days a week, I'm putting almost 10 times the thought, effort and production in the area of politics that they are.

Instead of bogging myself down with news and knowledge, I focused instead on recreation.  As I mentioned at the top, I went out with some friends and watched my good friend D.M. Seale and his band, The Chasers, play at a bar near my hometown.  It was a fun night.  I drank enough to actually get up on stage and sing a horrible hybrid version of both the original NIN and Johnny Cash interpretations of the song "Hurt".  Basically it was like I started trying to sing it like Cash, realized I suck, then tried to sing it like Trent and realized... hey, I still suck!  Fortunately, I had more than enough alcohol in me to not give a shit and see it through to the bitter end.  There is something very cathartic about singing a song badly in front of a crowd of people and not even caring that you sound terrible.  It reminds me of the old days when I was still playing with Los Cochinos and we would do those same kind of bar gigs, the ones where you have to stretch about 2 hours worth of songs you actually know into 5 hours of music, so by the end of the night you're calling people up on stage and pulling songs right out of your ass.  Around that time, I would usually jump off the drums, grab a mic and start doing a medley of 90's rap songs.  I'm not a good rapper at all, but when someone is hollering out the lyrics to "Gin and Juice" to a room full of drunks, it's never not a party.  I think this is why I like karaoke so much, too.  I just enjoy the hell out of getting enough of a buzz to lose your fear and inhibition and then jumping on a mic and trying to kick the party into overdrive by reminding everyone how much better a song is when sung by the original artist.  I need to talk the crew into doing a karaoke night with me sometime soon...

Ok, that seems like a fair amount of typed paragraphs.  I feel like I've delivered enough content here to not feel like I completely wasted your time in reading this.  Your results may vary, but at least you didn't pay for this shit, am I right?  Don't worry, I'm going to make some lunch and watch Hardball and by this time tomorrow I'm sure I'll be all pissed off about something and motivated to write down words that seem intelligent to the casual observer.  In the meantime, keep upgrading your iPhones, because I'm trying to get a 4 on the cheap, son!