Joe is Bookstores

I heard in the news that Borders is going bankrupt.

Good.

Borders and Barnes & Noble (is there a difference?) are the Starbucks of bookstores. You go in there because it's the only place to

get decent coffee, but you can't wait to leave. You're surrounded by unwashed hipsters, in their flannel shirts and faux fedoras, just waiting to jump out at you and pose, begging you to notice their ironic t-shirts and therefore validate their entire miserable existence.

And since 90% of their visible stock is calendars of kittens and diet books by failed celebrities, you're forced to interact with one of their zombie-like employees to

verify that they don't indeed have the book you came in for. Oh yes, the employees. Take a m

oment to bask in their putrid hatred at your invasion of their gossip time. When and if you do manage to annoy them into grudgingly paying attention to you, enjoy industry knowledge that makes make Radio Shack start looking like a temple of intellectualism.

As you beat your hurried retreat, stumble over the brand-new pre-grunged fixed-gear bicycles the hipsters have left strewn about in the entrance. Take a moment to mourn the classics slowly mildewing in the tupperware bargain bin.

Then go home and get the book you want off the internet, for a buck fifty. Or find your local struggling used bookstore. You know, the old guy who is working a second job to keep his bookstore open because he loves his books too much to sell them? Who doesn't have one single kitten calender?

Fuck off and die, Borders. You won't be missed.

Slow is the New Speeding

Who else misses the good old days? You know, the ones where some rich asshole would roar up behind you in a sportscar, weave all around, trying to find a minuscule gap in traffic to pass you, and flip you off as they went by. Or, later, those grand old days when some rich asshole would come roaring up behind you in an a huge SUV, get about six inches from your bumper, and x-ray your brain with their bright-blue highbeams. They'd never pass, of course, because they can't accelerate without completely draining the 80-gallon fuel tank and emitting enough carbon monoxide to choke a whole boatfull of greenpeace anti-whaling protesters.

Not any more. Now slow is the new speeding. Now those very same rich assholes are hiding their hummers at home, disguised as drive-through coffee kiosks or drive-in movie theaters. Now those very same rich assholes have all decided, in their collective hive mind, that slow is the new speeding. Now they pull out in front of you, on the freeway, going thirty-three miles per hour and cause you, who are driving modestly in the right lane, to slam on your brakes and spill your tepid McDonalds coffee (it's all you can afford, there's a recession on, don't you know?) all over your slacks. Now why, you might ask, are they driving thirty-three miles per hour on the freeway? There are, I think, three reasons:

a) They're driving while trying to associate their now-mandatory bluetooth hands-free headset to their iPhone and/or Blackberry, a process that takes a somewhat higher IQ than a tick, which pretty-much leaves them right out - they did, after all, purchase, and are now driving, on purpose, a diarrhea-green Prius.

b) They haven't driven anything weighing less than 3 tons in 10 years, and the shuddering of their diarrhea-green Prius at 33 MPH makes them believe they are actually driving 90 already.

c) That's all the faster their pathetic little hybrid rollerskate can go, anyway. Besides, without the momentum of their seven-thousand, one-hundred-and-fifty-four pound curb-weight (seriously, I looked it up) hummer keeping them more or less in a straight line, it turns out they don't actually have the driving skill to STAY BETWEEN THE LINES, causing you, who have just had to execute an emergency maneuver to avoid rear-ending their stupid ass, to dump the rest of your tepid coffee on the floor, when that very same diarrhea-green Prius comes over the line at you as you pass it. Son of a -bitch.-

Slow is the new speeding.

Joe is Video Blogging

What is Video Blogging?

It's like being at the movies with your friend, only, your friend had to go to his girlfriend's place, because she was sick, and locked herself out of her house, so he made you babysit Joe, his retarded cousin, but, his retarded cousin isn't allowed in the movie theater any more, not after what he did last time, so you had to stay home and watch cable, only, cable's broke, so you had to watch broadcast channels, and the only thing you get is public access, so, instead of watching Batman, which is awesome, you have to watch an overweight, middle-aged man, in KISS makeup, doing an acoustic cover of "I was made for lovin' you", while Joe, your friend's retarded cousin, at the top of his lungs, recites a poem he made up, about his penis.

Joe is iPod

Seriously, people.

Joe is NASA

NASA is going to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery, again, on July 1st. Despite the fact that pieces of it keep falling off. Despite the fact that pieces falling off was what exploded Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Good thinking.

But, hey, maybe the problem is fixed. The problem? Heat shielding is falling off. NASA's solution? Take the heat shielding off. Yeah.

"Reuters news agency, citing officials, said Nasa's top safety official and lead engineer both opposed the flight."

"I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree," said NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who approved the flight. "We do not believe we are risking the crew."

Good going, Mike. Way to be thinking outside the box. Upper management everywhere should take a lesson. Don't listen to your experts, especially when people's lives are on the line.

Now, probably nothing bad will happen. God, I hope it doesn't. It's quite possible that Mr. Griffin is just stupid enough to get lucky. On the other hand, the astronauts on the Discovery probably aren't. Brave, though. You've gotta hand it to 'em.

So what happens to the space program when Discovery crashes? NASA gets more money from the government? I think not. People in America get more excited about the moon base? I think not. Companies out there like LiftPort that are trying to get private funding together to make some real progress will get more investment dollars? Try again.

So you've gotta start asking? Does NASA (Joe) really want to go to space? Or are they trying to talk us out of it?

Joe is iPod

It's a music player. We've had those since the 1800s. Frickin' get over it.

Joe is Network Neutrality

Network Neutrality is the latest big media buzzword. In case you don't know what is meant by "network neutrality," consider yourself obliviously happy and skip this article. It will only depress you. Or, if you hate yourself and want to die, click here to read Wikipedia's article on it.

Here's the deal: Your evil Joe-controlled cellphone company wants to bill certain high-traffic sites like Google (not evil) or MySpace (evil,) to let you access these sites on your cell phone. Of course, you, as an educated consumer, get all miffed about this. You whine and make noises, but that's all you can do. Because, since to get your latest-model-tiny-ringtoney-flippy-cameraphoney-mp3-playing-so-you-can-annoy-me-in-the-theater-device, you had to mortgage your house, sell a kidney, and timeshare your soul out to the devil, and you're locked in a contract which says the cell phone company gets to burn down your house if you try to switch providers.

But the cell-phone companies realize that a lot of educated consumers, like yourself, will do pretty much anything to be able to access MySpace while you're sitting right behind me in the theater, so you can listen to your jail-bait girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's garage bands mp3s on your speakerphone. Anything. And they are kinda afraid of that. So they don't really wanna piss you off, but they DO wanna charge you more.

So these evil cell phone companies use some of Joe's favorite reverse psychology tactics. Using secret minions in Congress, they start a campaign to pass bills legislating the Internet. Making it all free and neutral and stuff. Seems harmless, right? Yeah, free Internet, that's gotta be good.

But what's really happening is this -- and this the part where I use my intimate knowledge of Joe to help you out (really, you should pay me) -- see, with great legislation comes great loopholes. So you make a seemingly harmless laws like these:

"The goals of process-based neutrality are achieved when networks forward packets without regard to their size, purpose or content, except as these characteristics relate to network management imperatives."

"The resource-based approach takes into account the requirements of the generating and consuming applications in order to maximize the number of network usages with satisfactory outcomes and fairly distribute finite resources across the widest range of uses."

So let's break this down:

1) "Networks forward packets without regard ..., except as these characteristics relate to network management imperatives."

Oh wow! What an idea. Yeah, we'll be forwarding the packets, except when we don't feel like it. Great idea.

2) "takes into account the requirements ... in order to maximize the number of network usages with satisfactory outcomes and fairly distribute finite resources across the widest range of uses."

Good one. "Woops! Google's making our network slow. Seems like if they don't pay us to improve our network, we won't be able to give our customers 'satisfactory outcomes!' Bummer."

See what I mean? Devious, isn't it. See, the evil cell phone companies learned how to manipulate people from Joe. They know that the first step in taking away peoples' freedoms is to make laws protecting them. Build them laws nice and good, with built in loop holes, so we can do what we want, anyway. And you can't do anything about it, cuz its the law! (And all the competition is doing it too, so why bother switching providers? And hey! Your cameraphone has more pixels now! Now you can take pictures of your oversize penis (more pixels - more bigger) and upload it to MySpace on your cellphone. Of course, MySpace doesn't pay us quite enough for all that bandwidth, so there will be a small surcharge on your bill this month. Woops! You went over your limit, so your surcharge gets a higher multiplier."

So before you pick up your cellphone to call your congressman and tell him you changed you mind about that whole net neutrally thing, consider this: go get a hammer, and hit your cellphone with it.

Maybe more than once. Joe is in your cellphone.