@Randem

All the pseudo-trendy cable channels and magazines are doing a retrospect of the things that mattered this year. I’m going to try to be a little bit different. Here’s my look back and rant at the things that really don’t matter.

TiVo
I just don’t understand it. While TiVo has been around a little longer than just this year, the TiVo fad happened in 2005. Everyone who’s anyone got on the TiVo bandwagon. My question is: who cares? It’s just a different spin on VCRplus, isn’t it? You pick a show and a time and your digital recorder saves it for you to watch. Except that with a VCR, you can watch the show again and again, whereas once you fill up your TiVo (the ad says “up to 300 hours”) you can’t record anything else. Sure, digital recording must be better than those big reel-to-reel tapes, and you don’t have to buy a head cleaner, but in the end you’re just using a digital VCR.

More insulting, however, is the fact that everyone insinuates that TiVo allows you to have a life instead of being stuck to the television’s schedule. If it’s nothing more than a digital VCR, can’t we agree that it doesn’t give us anything we haven’t already had for 25 years? And if you’ve still got to eventually watch the show you’ve recorded, then you’re still, ultimately, sitting in front of the television for the same number of hours each week. Give me an iPod.

The Undefeated Colts
People care way too much for Peyton Manning. I’ve said it over and over, and it might as well be here in text: Peyton Manning will be another Marino — he’ll retire with every record in the book, but he’ll never wear a ring. And likewise, no Tony Dungy-coached team will ever be a Super Bowl team. I know, it’s bad timing for talk about Tony Dungy — he’s as fine a man as anyone could ever meet — but as a coach he lacks the killer instinct to win in January. Sorry, Colts fans, but as much as I respect Dungy and Manning, I just don’t see either of them ever winning a championship. Did everyone forget about the Patriots? We’ll see next month.

Fuel Economy
Remember all the talk about bio-diesel? What about the month of Katrina when Prius sales went through the roof? Where did all that concern for fuel economy go? After only a few months, gas prices dropped back to last year’s level and everyone has forgotten about hybrids. It’s a shame, because I actually had hope for a moment that people might wake up and care about renewable energy sources, but it looks like fuel economy was another meaningless fad for 2005.

Coldplay
Someone, please, explain to me why people keep talking about this band? I listen to the radio all the time, and I can’t even be sure that I’ve heard a song from them, which leaves me wondering how they got to be the biggest band of 2005. I’ve never even seen them on tv or in a magazine. Whatever, Coldplay. Give me Green Day’s American Idiot any day.

Jesus Christ
The religious right thought that this was to be their year after George Bush defeated John Kerry. But along the way this year, they’ve lost on Terry Schiavo, Stem Cells, and Intelligent Design, and finished the year in a meaningless battle to keep the “Christ” in “Christmas”. The Christian population continues to stagnate while Islam grows and I don’t think it helped when the Pope died only to be replace by a former Nazi.

PSP Movies
When every computer and home media center has a DVD player built into it, why would Sony bother to introduce a new format for movies? Here’s a hint: it’s not because UMD is better. Sony happens to own a large portion of the movie industry, and when their PSP handheld was released there were no games available for it. The movies were only there to fill the gap until game companies caught up. I pity the fools buying the UMD movies… they will never play on a regular tv and in a year or two when the PSP is obsolete, they’ll be nothing more than novelties at the flea market.

Rockafeller Center

I couldn’t have had a better vacation. It was an easy, low-traffic drive to New Jersey for the Christmas Eve party. That was followed by a party Christmas day in Staten Island. We left Staten Island for Manhattan and got there just in time to see the tree in Rockafeller Center before they shut it off until next year.

As if everything hadn’t already been nearly perfect, a fog dropped over NYC Christmas night, making for some of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever taken. The photos can’t compare to real life, though… NYC in the fog is breathtaking.

From NYC (America’s first capitol) we headed for Philadelphia (the second capitol) in hopes of seeing some American history, and we got to see some, but Philadelphia is a serious fucking slum and we decided to haul ass.

From one slum to another, we headed for Washington DC after a short stay overnight in Delaware. Our nation’s third capitol is certainly beautiful — that is, if you’re downtown… in the day time… and standing in the right place. Everything that’s not downtown is more slum. But all the landmarks are nice to look at. And from there, it was a relatively pleasant drive home.

“If I were the Catholic church, I’d be buying up small African countries right now.” -Blake Jenkins, coworker

In the American Chronicle, Keith Lockitch Writes:

The insistence of “intelligent design” advocates that they are “agnostic regarding the source of design” is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a “designer” who is susceptible of scientific study–in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Their scientifically accessible “designer” is nothing more than a gateway god–metaphysical marijuana intended to draw students away from natural, scientific explanations and get them hooked on the supernatural.

BWAAHAAAHAHAA! A Gateway God? HAH HAAHAA AHHAHA!!

But since the opinion of real scientists — such as the Ph.D fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, who I quoted above — hasn’t been widely accepted by the dogmatic religious zealots who brought you Intelligent Design, it is encouraging to read that a federal judge (appointed by Bush!) recently handed down a ruling that Intelligent Design is “nothing less than the progeny of creationism” and should not be taught in public schools. This is a victory for Common Sense, which seems to have been the underdog in our country for the past few years.

Rockafeller Center

The photographic value of water can not be overstated. Photography is all about light, and moisture (rain, fog, puddles, etc) affects light in endless interesting ways.

This is a flash animation I made up to display on the Sunstar web site for the 2004 Holiday season. Santa, the sleigh, and the reindeer were converted to Flash vector art from the frames of an animated GIF found on a clip art web site. The Batwing was traced as a vector image from a JPG found on Google. Everything else is hand drawn… with a mouse. Oh, if only I could have worked on this from home, where I have my Wacom tablet!

View the Batman holiday flash animation.

“Perfection of design is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.”