(Why) Won't It Blend?!

Did you know you can spend $500 on a blender? A fucking blender. Here is a kitchen appliance that does ONE THING, blend - it should anyway, having such a short job description. Even if you spent that $500, I would be surprised if even the Vitamix could do its job properly. By proper I mean that it should bust it out - 30 seconds or less. By proper I mean if you make a smoothie it makes it smooth. No chunks. They don't call it a fucking chunkie for a reason, okay? A blender should blend. Proper blending. Is that too much to ask?

Incredibly, I have purchased three blenders in the past year. With the first two, I ended up with the same model blender, the $25 Oster 6694 (similar model). The first one I had to bequeath to my ex-roommate when we went our separate ways. When this particular blender made a smoothie, though, it came out smooth. Smooth! Granted, you had to have the perfect ingredient consistency, or else the thicker part of the mixture would get stuck above a small reservoir of liquid below, and the blades would just go and go - doing nothing whatsoever. I attributed this problem to the tapered shape of the pitcher, but a little shake (with the blender off, of course) seemed to do the trick. The design of the blades - however subtle compared to other blenders - quite simply pulverized ice and frozen fruit. Add to that the all-metal drive train and a glass pitcher, and you've got a damn good unit for the money.

But the motor was some cheap Chinese replica of a motor that would actually get the job done, were it not built as cheaply as possible by child labor. I found this out the hard way when I bought the second one to replace the first. The motor was a pathetic wimpy piece of shit right out of the box. It had a ghost high-low transmission that would vibrate, strain and stutter under even the easiest workload. To get the speeds to work at the proper speed I had to start at full power and then come down in power, which destroyed the delicacy of some recipes. Finally, one day, the excess vibration rattled the thing off the counter and the glass jar smashed on the ground. It made an unbelievable mess, and I vowed to not get suckered into Oster's veritable Russian roulette of quality again.

My third and current blender is the $35 Black and Decker Cyclone. This thing is a real POS. The Oster is just a replica piece of shit, this is the real deal! The motor is the only thing worth shit on the Cyclone, and even that isn't all that great. Best thing about it is it doesn't explode when I'm running the thing for 5 fucking minutes straight trying to get all the fruit chunks blended. You see, the shape of the pitcher creates pockets of liquid underneath suspended half-blended muck. Every. Fucking. Time. The blade shape doesn't do a good job blending any food ingredient known to mankind. I mean, this thing can't blend fucking ICE CREAM into a smoothie to save it's life. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse, run for a minute, pulse, pulse, pulse. Repeat until contemplating suicide. Repeat again. Pour out the half-mixture into a glass, pour back in and start all over again. Run for several minutes, or just give in to the fact that your drink will not be blended no matter what you do. Get ready to chew your chunkie. Were it not for the fact that I DO NOT want to buy another blender in the near future, this thing would have been put out of my misery immediately after purchase: with a trip to my private rifle range.

Another thing about blenders, the names of the different speeds, for the most part, are just ridiculous. Rare is the blender that has a logical speed indicator system, such as, I don't know, NUMBERS?? Instead they have to come up with 14 synonyms for blend. Jesus fucking Christ. A convenient example can be read right off of my Cyclone blender. In order the exact speeds are: Stir, Aerate, Puree, Chop, Blend, Clean, Grate, Grind, Liquify, and Smoothie. Are you fucking kidding me? GRIND!? What about crush, shred, mince, beat, whip and cream? What about masticate? Pulverize?! Pulpify!!! Good Lord. Numbers would be just fine. Am I supposed to believe you simply cannot grate something on the grind setting? Fucking ridiculous. Who ever heard of a blender beating, grinding, grating, mincing or shredding anyway? Blenders can't do any of that, let alone blend.

If I can get the Cyclone POS to break (God please if only that fucking motor would die!) then I'll have to buy another blender. I'm a big fan of multiple speeds and glass jars. As far as I know, even the Blendtec - star of the Will It Blend meme - has only Lexan (polycarbonate) pitchers. Which is a shame because Lexan scratches and harbors bacteria, and also is suspected of leeching PBA's. Gross! Waring Pro has a one speed blender that reportedly kicks ass, but the pitcher is small and is stainless - cool, but not see through. And the one speed is a deal-killer for me, so the glass models are out. There are mid-priced blenders like the Cuisinart, but these are usually just sheep in wolves clothing: you pay double for the name and get a stylized version of a piece of shit.

Will even the $350 - $500 "professional" blenders give hope for a good blend? The only experience I have with these is at Keva Juice, where they use Vitamix brand blenders. I have noticed that if the bananas are green, it throws off the consistency/ratio, and even the top of the line industrial Vitamix has to be run through two cycles to get a good blend.

At this point, considering the five minutes until not blended performance I'm getting now, the $500 two short cycles of the Vitamix sounds pretty fucking tempting.

There is no price you can put on the frustration of a whole year of using shitbox blenders.

Stupid Things You Always Hear

Why do cashiers say, "did you find everything OK?" It's such an exceptionally stupid question. It isn't even entirely clear what they are asking. Do they mean did you find everything you were looking for OK? Or do they mean was everything you found OK? Either way, the fact is they don't fucking CARE if you found anything at all, OK or not. They're a fucking cashier. Since it's such a dumb question, I like to use my superior intellect and make fun of them: "Yes, everything I found seemed to be OK." Best part is they never get the joke.

Just for fun, to prove my theory to myself that this is a worthless question asked without the slightest tinge of sincerity, sometimes I will say, "no." Take for example, today. I was at K-Mart and couldn't find black socks in the brand I like. They had white all over the place, and even in the boys section they had black and white in that brand but only white for the men (moron alert: shit-for-brains in purchasing!). So when I checked out, naturally the cashier posited her superficial question of pretending to give a shit. I explained the situation, and she goes, "huh that's weird," and just continued to check out my things.

OPEN QUESTION TO ALL CASHIERS: Why do you waste everyone's time asking a question that we all know - including you - that you aren't going to do shit about no matter what the answer is? WHY?!?!

I'm so fucking sick of that question, I feel like going postal next time someone asks it. Fucking pain in the ass mother fuckers.

Untold Music Sharing Success Stories

The music industry with all their petty DRM bullshit... they are so shortsighted. They think every time someone adds music to their library without paying for it, they lose a sale. What they don't see is the sales they gain from having that music out there.

Between web radio, satellite radio, Amazon and iTunes - the amount of music commercially available is staggering. And the competition between artists is fierce on labels both big and small. How is anyone to sample all that music and find what really suits them best before buying? They rip a copy from their friends, that's how. Then through a process of immersion they discover which are worth buying, and many actually do end up buying. Some even buy other releases from the same artist. This equals sales for the commercial outfits that complain about illegal downloads. SALES.

The blockheads at the record companies should be delighted they get free marketing from illegal downloads. People and all their friends are doing the record companies a huge favor. Can they reasonably expect us to BUY every bit of music we are the slight bit interested in? Do they realize how much MONEY that would take us? Of course they do, buy what they fail to realize is that WE ARE SPENDING AS MUCH AS WE CAN on music legally now ALREADY. It's not like huge sectors are holding out on the record companies IF ONLY they were forced to pay for all this music they have.

Fucking idiots.

When I worked in retail, employees got to play their CD's on the store stereo to help the day go by. Believe it or not, this is illegal. Stores are supposed to pay for the right to play that music commercially. Yes. Yet at the store I worked at, we witnessed a different phenomenon. Rather than have corporate-feed DRM radio on all day playing easy listening morphine-drip elevator music, we would instead have customers say, "my God, what is this music that is playing? I love it, it fits my mood exactly, who is it?" and the retail clerk might say, "John Cockburn" or whatever, and - I shit you not - an hour later the person would come back in the store after having gone to Borders and BUYING THE CD. They'd say, "thank you so much. I had no idea this [artist/band/singer] existed, now I have a whole new world of music open to me."

This scenario happened to me with many, many CD's that I had burned off my iMac G3 from shared music. Yet there is no way to record or verify this type of interaction that led to sales, therefore the music industry is blind to it. It's no wonder they think music sharing is so bad. Morons.

A friend and I recently traded iTunes libraries. I gave him all of my non-DRM music and he gave me all of his. 14,000 songs. Most of the stuff he gave me sucks, in my opinion, and much of it got thrown in the trash. But there are a few good ones in there, and because of the nature of websites like Pirate Bay where he got them from, many of them were incomplete albums or have songs with poor quality, or worse, songs that cut off half way through. (Tangent Rant: don't the music execs know their enemy? Pirate Bay and Limewire have mostly shit quality - if anything that my friends' who rave about it gave me is any indication.)

But the best ones, the new discoveries for me, the artists forgotten or not yet explored - they got my attention. And I've bought several of them to complete the album, or improve the quality, or others in an artist's collection that I have wanted to buy. Sales from music sharing that would have never happened otherwise. Artists I never would have known existed without music sharing.

The music industry needs to wake up and smell the CD's burning.

MacBook Pro: Art Meets Technology

So far, I don't have anything critical to say about my new MacBook Pro. Coming from me, that is quite an endorsement. Very, very rarely am I not able to pinpoint design flaws, shortcomings, lazy engineering, or just general levels of SUCK in most things within the first two seconds I spend with them. Even the iPod is on my list of things that suck: crappy interface, Sound Check doesn't work for shit, the earbuds are supreme torture devices - designed neither for looks, nor comfort, nor function. Considering my contempt for the iPod, Apple's most successful product ever, one cannot write off my infatuation with my new computer to Apple lust.

I don't want to try to compete with the myriad reviews out there, because I'm basically agreeing with them. Consumer Reports ranked this computer right up there in the top. They hit the nail on the head.

The machine simply screams quality. The feel of they keys, the multiple function trackpad, the solid aluminum body, the fit tolerances and tapered shape, incredible battery life, more portability and less weight than my old PowerBook Pro... and on, and on, and on.

Worth every penny, and the best part? I don't have to use Windows, making for a purely enjoyable computing experience.

Beautiful!

New Computer Ordered: Will I Rant or Rave?

Last week I got so fed up with the slow performance of the internet on my computer, I went directly to amazon and ordered a new one. Even though I can't afford it (my credit card company thought it was fraud). Even though I just spent, in the last year: $150 for a new battery, $300 for new hard drive installation and data recovery off the old one, and $200 for an upgrade in RAM. Even after all that, the fucking computer still can't play an online video smoothly. It can't load and play at the same time whatsoever. If I want to watch a choppy video, I have to wait 3x as long for it to load as it does to watch. The only videos that play smoothly are the ones that are so compressed, you can't make anything out anyway. Now I ask you, what is the point of paying $70 a month for so-called high speed internet if your computer can't even play an animated GIF in anything but super-slow-mo?

Side notes: My current computer is 6.5 years old. The specs are 1.33 GHz, 2G RAM. I know that the battery and hard drive have nothing to do with internet. I know I spent a lot on upgrading an old computer, enough that I could have just gotten a new one. But for that amount all I could get is a PC, which in my opinion stands for Piece of Crap. Just know this, I would pay double, triple, ten times more for a non-windows computer. I hate Microsoft more than anything in the world, and I will go to great lengths to avoid using their products. But I digress...

The new computer arrives tomorrow. It is a MacBook Pro 15" and will replace my PowerBook G4 17" which has been too big for my tastes. The thing is downright ungainly, and I'm really looking forward to cutting back on bulk and weight. The new battery supposedly lasts up to 10 hours (I'll believe it when I see it) and it has the machined billet aluminum body. Fucking sweet!

I anticipate writing a review on my new laptop. Let's hope it is a Rave.

Down With Flash Ads!

Fucking Flash ads. Annoying, distracting, irritating, ubiquitous Flash ads. Mother fuckers. I wish it was possible to disable this experience-killing menace. If there is a way, PLEASE leave a comment and tell me how -- besides just removing Flash because it's good to have for the enjoyable aspects of the internet, few as there are left now after the bombardment of commercialization.

Aside from the fact (or opinion) that Flash is an antiquated, performance-sucking piece of shit for a codec... But what do I know? I'm only the one that has to wait for what seems like forever for all the Flash ads to load the page before the content shows... Then once it finally does, there's all this stupid shit going on: flash flash, flick flick, some dumb bitch dancing, some actual COMMERCIAL FROM TV, or some ridiculous sound effect, and the worst offender of all... "Congratulations, YOU WON!" Like I truly believe I am the millionth visitor so just *click here* and I win a laptop. My ass. Even if it was true I still wouldn't click because that means some transaction, however small, is going on somewhere and it contributes to the scourge as a whole. I simply refuse to participate.

Then the Flash ads are all loaded up, and you're frantically searching for that one that has a prticularily annoying video playing, in hopes that there is a pause button, but by the time you've found it the ad is done playing and you've ruined the sanctity of the Dark Side of The Moon that you were listening to, which now you have to start the CD all over again because some Flash ad disrupted the intro to Run. My point? You can't always just hit mute to stave off the onslaught of Flash ubiquity.

No Sympathy From Nazi Cop

Today I ran out of gas. Pathetically, yes. It was ultimately my fault, but several events conspired to make it a reality. And it happened. I had even been to two gas stations just before I ran out! Broken card reader at the first one, and a line at the second. I was on my way to the third gas station-- kaput.

I was glad I had just gotten Platinum Triple A, and called them posthaste. They wanted a street, I gave them the street. They wanted the cross street, I gave them the cross street. They put me on hold and called a "service provider" who got on the line asking for an exact address.

You see, the way my town is built, there are some sections of street that have no development, and therefore no address. I was stopped at such a place and told them so. The service provider said no address, no service. So I said fine and fuck you, got out and just walked to the nearest gas station. It was less than a mile, and they happened to have a gas can. So I bought that, filled it and started back to my truck.

About 500 yards before I got there, a cop pulled up behind my truck and put the lights on. Once I got to about 50 yards away, she (yes, it was a ladycop and she was still a dick) saw me walking up with the gas can, got out of her cruiser and yelled, "THIS YOUR TRUCK?" I waved and said yes. And she goes, "COULD YOU HURRY IT UP PLEASE?!" -- and I just fucking laughed. Here I am walking up in a damn suit and tie with a gas can -- and Officer Fuckhead wants me to, what, RUN?! You've got to be kidding me.

Then she goes, "You could have pushed it off the road."

To which I pointed out, "It's uphill, officer."

Dick.

Limited Broadband Options Leads to Near Insanity

I live somewhere in the Western mountain states, and we've got SHIT for internet options here. Not that there isn't a lot to choose from, but more that they all suck. Dial up sucks. Qwest sucks. Comcast sucks. Wild Blue Sucks. Hughesnet sucks. They all suck!

None of them deliver the speeds they advertise. None of them has the customer service they claim. None of the prices they quote end up being what you pay - most notably qwest because you've got to pay for the phone line too. Oh - and not one of them gives a shit.

I just called qwest customer service and asked them how to get the 1.5 megs that I'm paying for because I've never seen it. That's when the unintelligible fellow from Calcutta informed me that 20% less than advertised is normal. So I had him put me through to the billing department, and when he did I asked for 20% off my bill. After some flummoxed bullshit, the customer service representative did the only thing he could do: terminate the call.

I must be going crazy.

Opera Browser Review

I gave it several months, and despite some really cool features, I have concluded that the Opera web browser is a piece of shit. I just uninstalled every trace of it on my machine. Why? Because more than half the time I used it, all hyperlinks were disabled. You'd hover the mouse over the link and click but nothing would happen. Click click click click click... nothing. To get to a link you'd have to right click and select from the menu to get it to open. Ridiculous.

No solutions or even a mention from a Google search, either. Apparently Opera is waiting for me to do free beta testing on their product, because no one else out there appears to have run across this problem. I find that hard to believe. The only explanation is that everyone else got so fed up with how much Opera sucks ass, that they just threw it out rather than try to get the company to do a decent job at developing a product. Ah, the Microsoft business model: release half-assed shitbox products, let the consumers mire through the problems, and then don't do shit about it.

To be fair, Opera has two very cool features that make it suck only a tiny bit less, and they are worth mentioning here:

Speed Dial feature opens all new tabs with hyperlinks to 9 websites of your choosing. Fucking way cool.



It also has convenient task buttons, most notably a sign-in button that works for all saved passwords. It's the button shown below with the key on it. Very convenient because no matter what site you go to login to, if it has the password info saved, your login is always in the same place, one click away. You don't even have to find the place on the page to sign in.



Oh, one other thing i just remembered about Opera, and it's probably the most blatant shortcoming. According to my online banking, Opera is not a 128 bit secure browser so they won't allow me to login while using it. I don't know a whole lot about online security, but this last tidbit put me over the top.

Bye bye Opera, go suck on someone your own size.

Irony Happened On The Way to the Tea Party

I was glad my alarm clock went off on time, being plugged in to power supplied by the government regulated monopoly that is the power company, delivered over power lines which remain intact because of government regulations. It’s a good thing the government maintains the official US time and broadcasts the correct time to the entire nation, otherwise my automatic clocks (good Lord we live in a convenient time) may have been incorrect this morning, and I might not have been able to get up in time to take my son to his government run public school.

On the way there, we drove on public roads, maintained by public works and paid for by public dollars. While waiting at one of the traffic lights, supplied and maintained by the government, we almost got clipped by a fire truck – purchased with tax payer money and operated by the local government – while speeding on its way to rescue some family (they better be citizens) from a house fire. Good thing they were following the government regulations regarding the use of sirens. Phew! Once the road was clear, and being pretty sure that no one else was going to blow through the light because of laws put in place by the government detailing the regulations for emergency vehicles driving through traffic lights, we proceeded into the intersection.

As we did, I noticed a manhole cover that concealed a network of sewer lines – built and maintained by the government – that carries away storm runoff and keeps the roads from flooding. Good thing, I thought, because the safety of my tires might come into question in standing water were it not for the government standards regarding passenger tires.

Next, we passed by a municipal park, beautifully maintained by government workers being paid with my taxes. Once we got close to the school, a flashing School Zone road sign – paid for and maintained by the government – informed us that we should slow down to 15 mph, a law passed by our insightful government representatives to ensure the collective safety of our children.

Once I dropped off the boy, I waved to the police officer employed by my local government – and paid by my taxes – to watch over the School Zone and help keep our children safe from harm. Boy it sure is good to live free in America, I thought as I got back in my government sharehold GM automobile.

On my way home, I noticed the tank was low, so I pulled into the gas station to buy subsidized gasoline at $2.89. Thank God we don’t have to pay the real market value for gas! If it weren’t for the government subsidies, I don’t think an honest, hard working American like myself could make it… come to think of it, at least I have a job! …unlike those welfare bums. In fact there was one begging at the door as I went in to the convenience store to pay for my gas! LOSER, I thought as I bought myself a corn dog – I certainly trust the meatpackers to not only follow government regulations, but also to roll the dog in corn supplied by a properly subsidized American farmer.

After a stop at the ATM to withdraw some cash from my government bailed-out bank, I finally got back home. It was time to get ready for the rally! So I went online – DSL connection using phone lines once regulated by the US government – to check the weather supplied by the NOAA governmental weather agency. So glad I can trust the competence of those meteorologists employed by my government, so much so that I am sure I can wear shorts and a T-shirt to the rally without fear of encountering a thunderstorm.

I took a quick shower with my government facilitated water supply, heated by gas lines that I know won’t blow up because of strict regulations put in place by my government. I can be confident that the water heater was installed properly by a government licensed contractor who followed proper safety regulations, keeping my family safe from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Now it’s time to write up a protest sign on poster board that is made out of paper from trees grown in our National Forests, run by the same government agency that issues the hunting tags that I get every year to legally harvest a deer from the same forests to help feed my family. In making my sign, I used a permanent marker that I can be sure doesn’t contain banned substances like lead or mercury, or any harmful contents that aren’t clearly marked as per government regulations. Thank God for government oversight making our everyday world safer!

At first I couldn’t figure out what to write, but I knew it would be about the damn overreaching government we’ve got in this country ever since that socialist Obama stole the Whitehouse. Then I thought, no that’s too obvious, go with something more subtle. So here’s what I came up with, I think it summed it up pretty well:

"GET A BRAIN! MORANS"



PS - My kid was pissed I didn't let him play hookie like other tea baggers.