Jammer's Blog

You’ve got to be kidding me on this. One of my neighbors has put a Halloween-themed doormat outside his door. It has ghosts and bats and jack-o-lanterns and orange and black. It screams “Halloween” — nearly as much as it screams “stupid.” (Read more…)

This past weekend — channeling around aimlessly and landing on MTV by mistake — made me a witness to what might be the worst television I’ve ever seen. It was some cringe-inducing, awful-awful-awful, can’t-believe-they-made-this, useless, contemptible garbage. I would’ve changed the channel, but I was not in control of the remote at the moment. Someone else decided they would see if the show was maybe funny. (It wasn’t.) So, right up front, I’m absolving myself for having been a viewer. (Read more…)

Working in a building where there are still plenty of people who are behind on the whole web/technological curve, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say “backslash” when they really mean “slash.” (Read more…)

I’ve heard enough about the iPhone. This must be the most overly hyped thing since Paris Hilton getting out of jail. (Good thing there’s something we can over-hype just about every single day.) Speaking of Paris Hilton, if you watched her interview on CNN last night, shame on you, because you have given in to the pandering of this nation’s mass media and their decision to prioritize the utterly irrelevant. (Read more…)

I can’t stand the Bob & Tom radio show. If my radio happens to be on in the morning to a station that’s airing Bob & Tom, I am forced after about 30 seconds to change the station. (Read more…)

Hilton appeared to be in handcuffs when she was placed into a black-and-white patrol car, which sped away from her Hollywood Hills home with lights flashing. Paparazzi sprinted in pursuit and news helicopters pursued overhead, broadcasting live TV coverage.

— Associated Press

It’s a goddamn tabloid orgasm. And it makes me want to puke. (Oh, in case you forgot: Anna Nicole Smith is STILL DEAD.) (Read more…)

All right. Enough is enough. HDTVs are coming down in price, SDTVs are turning into dinosaurs that are barely advertised in the Best Buy and Circuit City flyers, and content providers (that is, your cable or satellite service and your DVD player) offer the content you need to take advantage of the newer screen formats. Very soon the HDTV format will become the standard format. It’s time to get with the program and stop being lame: If you own a 16:9 television, you need to get yourself some 16:9 content before I’m forced to drive over there and kick your ass. (Read more…)

Is everyone so wrapped up in their personal crusades that they can’t see anything from the standpoint of basic logic? (Read more…)

Check this shit out. (Fig. 1) Nancy friggin’ Grace.

I can’t stand Nancy Grace.

That she has a program and can stay on the air suggests to me that this country doesn’t believe in due process; it believes in snap judgments and stringing people up. Either that, or there are a lot of people who tune in because they either find Extreme Umbrage compelling to watch, or want to feel it themselves in watching this annoying harridan squawk. (Read more…)

Check this shit out (fig. 1), boys and girls: Smoking is dangerous. You know, like guns.

Can we all just agree that the anti-smoking organization Truth is a smug, self-important group that isn’t necessary to anybody? It seems to me they’re more interested in patting themselves on the back for their brilliantly conceived and executed messages of irony than anything else.

Who knows — maybe I’m wrong and they’re respected, expert lobbyists who do great, groundbreaking work in Washington to lead the effort to crack down on Big Tobacco. But if their lobbying effort is anything like their television campaigns, most of Washington probably views them as the annoying college freshman who has spent a semester on campus and comes back home for semester break to inform the rest of the family of all the worldly things they’ve learned and how wrong Mom and Dad are about everything. (Read more…)