Gluemeat

Haven’t done one of these in a couple of weeks. Admire and adore its return!

To start off, an Irate Red Robot for this “Canada’s New Government” nonsense. When the Conservatives were elected last January and wanted to let all Canadians know that they put an end to a dozen-or-so years of Liberal rule, they came up with this catchy little slogan. But really, when does “new” stop being “new?” Especially when things are starting to feel tired real, real fast.

There has been a lot of fuss about stores beginning to take pre-orders for the upcoming Nintendo Wii console. Yeah, the reports have started bubbling up about people lining up in front of places like Gamestop or EB Games to get their name high enough on the list just to be sure that Nintendo doesn’t pull an Xbox 360 and they end up spending their holiday season wondering about what could have been. Myself, despite awating the Wii with deep excitement, I have been taking all this manic behaviour in stride. You see, gentle reader, I have my Wii pre-ordered since June. That’s right: I left a 50$ deposit almost five months ago, which placed me number twelve on the list of people who are going to recieve some Nintendo goodness the day the Wii lauches. So I spent “pre-order” day sleeping in, nice and comfy under my sheets, far away from the cold, brisk morning, being handed pre-order slips while being asked to stay outside, and the aggrivation of those who couldn’t score it. Thank you, Toys R Us. A nice Glass of Warm Milk for you.

An Irate Red Robot needs to go stomp all over those overreacting twits over at Disney for making such a stink out of the video of Eurodisney staff who were simulating sex with each other while dressed in their oversized mascot costumes. Let me tell you, I’m involved in these kinds of environments all the time, have been for years; nothing of what I’ve seen here shocks me, as it goes on all the time. Folks do this kind of stuff amongst each other the minute they’re away from public eyesight. There’s nothing wrong or degrating about it; it’s just basking in the adbsurdity of having to wear these costumes for hours on end and being peppy and nice the whole way. Breaking character in the most extreme fashion possible just helps balance everything out. In fact, if anyone should be pissed, it’s the employees who were letting off a little steam in private. They should punch the dork with the camcorder who went and put this on the web and got them into this mess. Video’s here if you’re up for it.

And finally, a great, big, comforting Glass of Warm Milk to Colin Moon over at Never News for directing me to this. It could quite possibly be one of the greatest things ever.

It’s time for another look back at stuff which got me going last week, as I hand out Robots and Milk to lucky, lucky recepients, no matter how conceptual they may be.

A very Irate Red Robot to the Canadian media’s handling of the “breaking events” of
the Dawson College shooting. Everyone was so busy trying to out-scoop each other, they muddled an already chaotic situation by passing off rumours and hearsay as “latest developments.” Seriously, how do you go from having four gunmen (one captured, two shot dead, one committed suicide) to a single one at the end of the day? How about reporting on four dead students to end up with one? I can only imagine the stress the parents were under as they listened to this garbage, waiting for their kids to call.

Which leads me to my next Irate Red Robot, which will pay a visit to Bell and Telus, whose cellular services shut down due to “overload” when word got out of the shooting. The Telus spokesperson said it was normal for this to happen in times of crisis, like on 9/11 in 2001. Not to downplay the tragedy, but aren’t the stakes in these two cases light years different? There were probably a lot less people on the phone last Monday than there were when the World Trade Center collapsed. Bell and Telus need to beef up their infrastructure so that they can handle more than a few hundred “extra” calls at once. It’s not quite comforting to know how fast our mobile phone service will die on us in a time of need.

There’s a nice Glass of Warm Milk waiting for the developers of the Night of Bush Capturing video game. It’s a Quake-like first person shooter where you, a jihadi, go on a glorious rampage, taking down all sorts of infidel Western scum to finally go toe-to-toe with ol’ Dubya himself in the final level. You might want to take a shot or two at Tony Blair or those Hezbollah pricks along the way, too. Knowing this, you may ask “why the Glass of Warm Milk?” Well, I know when I’m feeling pissed, a couple of rounds of Metroid Prime always helps get the bad out instead of taking it out on someone. And God Allah Caesar’s Ghost knows that if a bunch of folks are in dire need of a good old fashioned venting session, it’s terrorists!

Another Glass of Warm Milk to the programming folks at Teletoon who have finally got their acts together and bought the rights to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim shows. Even better, their daily Detour programming (after 9pm) includes stuff like Family Guy and Futurama, then serves a generous helping of Adult Swim staples like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, The Venture Bros., Squidbillies, Tom Goes To The Mayor, 12 oz. Mouse, The Boondocks, Stroker and Hoop… it’s Adult Swim every night of the week! If it weren’t for that terrible, terrible Tripping the Rift series, it would be virtually flawless.

An Irate Red Robot goes to breasts being at the center of blogger drama. Apparently, looks do make a blogger’s credibility. Next: pics of Warren Kinsella’s ripped, comforting pecs.

I’ll give a nice Glass of Warm Milk to anyone who can suggest to me a really good online RSS reader. I’ve tried Rojo but it’s a little buggy with some feeds and Google Reader is fine but lacks some punch.

And a final Glass of Warm Milk to what I got in the mail this week:

Time to hand out some Irate Red Robots and Warm Glasses of Milk to the people and things I both disliked and liked last week.

A Glass of Warm Milk to everybody’s favourite guerilla artist Banksy who, after spraying the Israeli Wall of Justice™ with images of a better world, has decided to stick it to Paris Hilton by smuggling 500 of his own “Paris Hilton” CDs into London record shops which have been unknowingly sold as the real deal. Accompanied by a booklet which features re-touched images of everyone’s favourite socialite (like one picture of her exiting a luxury car now includes a group of homeless people), the track titles on the back of the CD have been changed to things like “Why am I famous?”, “What have I done?” and “What am I for?” Colin has pics.

An Irate Red Robot is about to tear into Disneyworld, as it appears that Disney wants our biometric data. I kid you not: the Mouse plans on fingerprinting people seeking admission into the park to “to ensure that the person using a ticket is the person who bought it.” No, not a credit card, not a valid photo ID; your fingerprint. Apparently, one can object and simply show appropriate credentials instead, but it’s a fallback which isn’t advertised anywhere. Imagine the thousands who are going to be suckered into this one.

A Warm Glass of Milk to R Stevens’ Diesel Sweeties being picked up by United Features Syndicate, thus living the webcartoonist dream to the max.

A great big fat Irate Red Robot to when I think Steve Irwin died painfully. And how goddamned unlucky he was.

And a final Glass of Warm Milk to my compatriot Tim for this little gem of instant messaging from a few nights ago…

Me: I like blaster sounds
Tim: do you like making them while you’re playing with your limited edition [Star Wars] action figures?
Tim: *pwwww *pwwww!
Me: no, because they’re all MINT IN THE BOX
Me: MITB
Me: BABY
Me: RIGHTN OW!!
Tim: you can still play with them
Tim: in their boxes
Mike: it’s not as involving
Tim: you could make paper craft versions of them and play with those
Tim: I’m sure there are about 400 links about that on boingboing right now

BOOM! If you’ve never read BoingBoing, you have no idea how funny this is.

And now it’s time to hand out some Irate Red Robots and Warm Glasses of Milk to the people and things I both disliked and liked this week.

Gotta give the Liberals a big old Glass of Warm Milk for finally growing a set and deciding to join the NDP in voting against Steve Harper’s softwood lumber agreement once Parliament resumes. Which is a good thing, because the plan was nothing less than a Republican slush fund. The Grits and the Dippers will be passing the vote as a no-confidence motion, so unless the Bloc Québécois votes for the proposition, we could be staring down elections. Works for me.

In the same vein, another Glass of Warm Milk to Jack Layton for finally drawing a line in the sand on the Afghanistan issue: Let’s get the fuck out. By February.

A Glass of Warm Milk to Cracked for compiling the top five most absurd moments in MTV Video Music Awards history. It gave me a jostle to remember how the bassist to Rage Against The Machine tried to kill himself after Limp Bizkit makes “Band of the Year.” They obviously left out Howard Stern’s Fartman moment. Also, turns out Madonna’s kiss to Britney was the kiss of (career) death.

I have to send an Irate Red Robot at the Chinese for having found what seems to be a 3,000 year-old pyramid in its Jiilin province, as my girlfriend was told by her parents to not go into archaeology because there was nothing left to find. Couple that with the recent pre-Quebec City settlement which was rediscovered last week, let me tell ya, she’s right pissed, now.

I’m going to give the Glass of Milk, but maybe it won’t be all that warm, to What Its Like Being Alone, the stop motion animation series about a bunch of parent-less mutant children tucked away in an orphanage in the middle of nowhere. It’s an incredibly daring step for Canadian television, one which I hope will be encouraged to continue. Which is why I watch the show. Even though I wish I could be more passionate about it; I really want to like it more. But the writing often fails it, even though it has heart. And Princess Lucy.

Another Irate Red Robot to Blogger users who only allow comments from people who have a Blogger account. I don’t have a Blogger account and I don’t want a Blogger account and I don’t need to post comments on your article so bad as to go and open up a Blogger account. Something tells me I’m not alone in thinking that.

Oh, and I’ll be sending a Glass of Warm Milk to my local IGA grocer for re-stocking on Stewart’s Root Beer. Root Beer.