Get Off My Lawn

by Jamie Rumbelow

[Ed. Note: Yesterday, I wrote a piece on people who don't use business cards. True to form Mr. Rumbelow has decided to give his counterpoint. Direct all correspondence to him. :)]

I’ve got a drawer – where, incidentally, I used to keep my underwear – that I have lovingly named my “conference crap” drawer. It is full to the brim of lanyards, conference passes, free pencils, flyers, bags, annoying keyrings, glossy programmes and yes, you guessed it, business cards.

When you meet somebody new at a conference, your conversation could go one of two ways:

• The Right Way “Hello, I’m Jamie”, “Hi, I’m Steve Jobs”, “Good to meet you Steve. Are you on Twitter?”, “Yes, I’m @stevejobsrules”, *Jamie gets out iPhone* “Great! I’m following you”, *Steve gets out iPhone* “Are you @jamierumbelow?”, “I am indeed!”, “I’m following you back”, “Fantastic”
• The Wrong Way “Hello, I’m Jamie”, “Hi, I’m Steve Jobs”, “Good to meet you Steve. Do you have an annoying sized and shaped piece of paper with your name, telephone number and some unfunny quip about your business or home life?”, “I do indeed. Here it is”, *Jamie fumbles for wallet, tries to find space for Mr. Jobs’ card. Eventually:* “Ahh, here we go.” *Receives card and fumbles more for his own card, by which point he has forgotten this mystery Moo.com-touting man’s name or purpose*

Business cards are easily lost, forgotten, left or burnt. Business cards take up space in my wallet, which, frankly, is filled to the brim with the money I’ve saved on not buying business cards.

Besides, by the time I get your business card, I’m likely to have forgotten you, your job, or what you look like. If it’s a decent conference (in a decent country, but I’ll save that for another time), I’ll be drinking anyway so my memory will be even more fuzzy. They all end up in my conference crap drawer, so they lose context and meaning.

If I am following you on Twitter, a week later when I get back home I’ll be able to see a plethora of new people I’ve met. They’ll usually be tweeting about things specific to the conference I met them at, so they’re in context. They’ll have a picture so I can remember them. They’ll have a link to their website, so I’ll be able to find out their email or other social network details.

And for the love of Jehova, I can contact them. Anything at all I need to know I can contact them with. We have a rapport, having met face to face and having bought each other a pint.

So damnit Myer, stop using business cards and deal with the fact that we are in the 21st fucking century. Hell yeah.

by myerman

Okay, so I’ve been recovering from both SxSW and the post-SxSW crud, and I’ve planned a whole bunch of new GOML goodness for next week…..but this one couldn’t wait.

You people who don’t use business cards….what are you, broke ass? I don’t mean people (like myself, naturally) who might occasionally forget their business cards or run out of business cards, I mean you folks who run around without any business cards at all…..say what?

I understand that smart phones might allow you to follow me on twitter or friend me on facebook or even capture something about me on a QR code (dammit, I forgot to wear my t-shirt with that QR code again) but honestly, nothing beats that simple little piece of paper.

Yes, yes, I’m the slayer of fucking rain forests without limit, et cetera, a useless, helpless backward hick who don’t understand nothin’ about yer high-falutin’ technology….but honestly if you don’t have business cards you’re conveying a range of unappetizing options:

1) I’m unemployed and didn’t have the forethought to even print out those serrated numbers off my desktop laser printer.

2) I’m running a startup that only has $23.00 in the main checking account, God knows how I’m gonna get my ass home from this event.

3) I really don’t want to have any future discussions with you unless of course it’s only on Twitter or Hashable and besides, I can bug you later for your phone number or email when it’s convenient for me, right?

It’s not the year 2258 when we can telepathically beam information to each other’s cloud profiles via retinal implants. We still use paper to try to help our little simian brains process the act of meeting for the first time in a business context.

Chance are, I won’t remember who you are even if you hand me a business card, but at least with it I have half a chance of recognizing you at the next event.

by OhioKerry

When my 6th-grader said, nonchalantly on a Monday night, “I have to bring in 24 millet cakes for reading class Thursday,” I tried to rally my inner nice-mommy cheerleader. “Millet cakes, you say? Okey-dokey! No clue what those are, but sure!”

My cookbooks and favorite recipe website yielded only a little basic info like the fact that millet is a grain that cooks sort of like rice and looks sort of like couscous, and a version with its indigestable hull remaining on is common in pre-packaged birdseed. Sounds yummy. Google finally had several sources of seemingly the only single millet cake recipe in existance.

The next day the sick baby, the 4-yr-old and I scoured the shelves of 2 grocery stores–including the health food section with its various odd seeds, grains and $12 flours–no millet. I told my son, and he whined then said he’d pick another project from the list. “Wait,” I said, “there’s a list?” Why did I spend 2 hrs searching for damn birdseed when he had a list?

So Wednesday he told his teacher and lo and behold a classmate–whose mother went to the only other store in our small town–had indeed procured millet and brought a bag to class and divied it up into baggies like a weed dealer, sending my son home with his own millet dime bag.

The teacher had instructed the class that they were to do this project THEMSELVES. My kid who CRIES if I tell him he’ll have to make his own PB&J because I’m IN THE SHOWER is supposed to mince onion and garlic and fry with hot oil? Right. He measured some parmesan, grated a carrot, said, “call me when it’s time to stir something,” and left the kitchen.

All told there was 10 min of prep, 40min of cooking, 30min of cooling, 20min of shaping the resultant glop into patties, 20min of chilling, then 40 min of frying–individual millet grains inexplicably bursting, airborne, like popcorn, splattering the stovetop my shirt and my arms with searing-hot oily schrapnel. The first batch stuck to the pan, so I scraped the hot gunk out, re-shaped it, switched to a non-stick pan (that’s 3 dirtied pans now, if you’re counting), and continued frying in batches.

Meanwhile my husband called from 1000 miles away to have me look-up a computer document for our home business, then berated me for not finding it. The 4-yr old shredded several sheets of paper all over the counter and floor. The baby crawled, whining, at my feet, dragged the contents of the lowest pantry shelf and the utensil drawer all over the kitchen, and shit in her diaper.

But I made them–my nice-Mommy-ness all nestled golden-brown in Tupperware.  Then my son came in, said, “Oh, they’re done. What’s for dinner?” And the kicker was that the shit tasted GOOD!  Like I would totally make those damn millet cakes for dinner some night if my millet dealer’d hook me up and if I didn’t fear the smell of them would trigger PTSD.  It sticks in the teeth a little, but nothing a little Jack can’t wash down.

So thanks, teacher, for assigning me greasy, ridiculous homework.  Thanks for putting my college degree to use.  Thanks for teaching your class to waste time and money and ingredients on food when you know damn well they’re going to take one nibble, declare them “wierd,” and fling them in the trash. Teacher, take your freakin millet cakes and “get off my lawn!”

by LJ

While working the front door security of a department store, I saw a couple walk up with their 6 year old daughter in a stroller. The couple asked me where the Starbucks was because their daughter needed her coffee.

Now this child looked like she was being groomed for a beauty pageant; her mother looked like she only wanted the best for herself. So after informing them we had no Starbucks inside the store but had a generic coffee cart out front, they soon returned and the child had a coffee in hand.

The mother immediately handed the stroller to the father while she rushed to the jewelry counter,like she could fit anymore gold on her body.While waiting for Mommy, Dad looked bored and daughter proceeded to get her lipstick (yes lipstick!) from her little purse to primp.

She soon became bored and started yelling at Dad. When he asked her very nicely to please quiet down she hauled off and smacked the hell out of him right across the face–and he just shut up and left her alone! Now what I saw was parents who are grooming a child to be hugely let down by the world when she discovers the Earth doesn’t really revolve around her.

Every grey hair and wrinkle they get from this child is exactly what they deserve. Unfortunately, now we’ll have to deal with her as well.

by noahvail

An overdressed, handsome dad with movie-star hair plays with his two-year-old son. But he doesn’t just play. It’s like he’s competing on a reality show in which the most “engaged” father wins a million bucks. He’s hiding behind bushes and then leaping out and growling like a tiger. He’s climbing trees—while holding his kid. He’s generally making an ass of himself—which I’m fine with, generally—except he’s acting like he and his child are completely alone at the playground, and yet he so clearly wants attention from all the inferior dads around him. He wants us all to bow down and marvel at his sense of childlike wonder; his sustained high energy; his devotion to parenthood. Meanwhile, his young wife follows 10 paces behind, a practiced grin affixed to her pretty face, like, “I do this every day, asshole.”

I got news for you, dude. You gotta pace yourself. Play with your kid, but also give him room to explore and meet other kids. Hang back with the other moms and dads—we don’t bite—and see what your kid can do on his own. If you keep trying so hard you’re gonna burn out—I already see the strain on your wife’s face. My guess is, when no one’s looking, you’re not nearly so “engaged.” After parachuting in for 25 minutes of high-impact daddy-time, you probably retreat to your man-cave where your wife brings you beer and no kids are allowed. (Nice going! Uh, I mean, that’s wrong!) This is not a recipe for long-term success. I give it three years, max, before you leave your family, move to Dallas or Phoenix or L.A., and start the process over with a new, even younger trophy wife. So chill, dude. Show your kid how to do laundry or wash the car or operate your BlackBerry (I just know you’re a BlackBerry person). It’s the steady trickle of small moments that matters most. Not the “I Am the King of Awesome Dads” show, which airs only a few Saturdays a year.

by noahvail

It’s fun to complain about today’s overprotective parents and the generation of helpless, entitled morons they are raising. But the fact is there are many more parents who just don’t give a shit. I’m talking about parents who do the bare minimum to keep their kids out of protective services. Parents who, while not overtly abusive, are neglectful as hell.

For example:

Scene: A crowded public pool. I’m at the kiddie pool with my daughter on a hot summer day. It’s elbow-to-elbow. The big kids are splashing and being rowdy so I’m holding my young daughter close. I hear commotion behind me and turn to see a bunch of kids pointing at a toddler boy in a Spider-Man life jacket a couple yards away. He walked out too deep. The jacket keeps him afloat, barely, with his mouth and nose just above the surface of the water. He’s too scared to move; he’s making sputtering noises while his eyes roll wildly. I’m the closest adult, so I lurch over and scoop him up with my free arm and carry him to the edge of the pool. His mother, wearing street clothes and completely dry, lifts him by one arm and throws him back in the pool. “The boy needs to learn,” she mutters.

Scene: One of those indoor places with inflatable castles and slides where kids can burn energy on rainy days. A little boy around 2 or 3 years old falls off a slide and begins sobbing uncontrollably. I ask him where his parents are and he just keeps crying. I look around for an adult who might claim ownership and no one does. I ask the boy again where his parents are and he just keeps crying. I ask if he needs a hug and he runs over and soaks my sleeve with snot and tears. I tell him everything will be okay while looking around for his parents. Then another dad tells me he thinks the boy’s parents are sitting at a table behind me. I turn around and see the boy’s extended family—mom, dad, uncle, aunt, brothers, sisters—pointing and laughing. They think the whole scene is hilarious. I ask the boy if that’s his family; he nods and runs over and they give him some Cheet-ohs while continuing to laugh at his expense.

Look, I know parenting sucks much of the time. I know it cramps your style. But once you have that kid, you have an obligation to grow up a little. You have an obligation to not be an asshole to your kid.  You don’t have to go overboard. You don’t have to follow your kid 24/7 with a spritzer of hand-sanitizer and give ‘em soy cupcakes for every goddamn little thing. But be there for the important stuff. Like, you know, drowning.

by Spiny Lizard

OK film studios, it’s like this. If I enjoy your film, I want to see it in my own home, so I buy it on DVD (or Blu-ray, these days).

I want to settle down with a beer and watch the movie. I do NOT want to be forced to wade through 25 minutes of frigging trailers!

Blessed are the discs which confine their trailers to an option on the menu. You can see what’s in there, look at what interests you, and never have to worry about them again. This is the civilized, and unfortunately all-too-rare method.

Some discs will go into the trailers, and at least allow you to press the menu button to skip them all. Again, this is all too uncommon.

So we are left with the discs that start with the trailers, disallow the menu button and force you to hit the ‘skip’ button on Every. Single. One. before you can get to the damn movie.

Did I mention that I bought the disc? That by the time I have seen the movie five times, chances are that the trailers will be for films that have been out for some time? I probably have them if I want them, and if I don’t want them, leave me the smeg alone! And if it’s ten years later, those films are probably consigned to the $4.99 bin at Blockbuster anyway, if they’re still available at all?

And God help us when the studio puts trailers on the disc for the FILM YOU ARE ABOUT TO WATCH. Disney, I am looking at you.

At least in the days of video cassettes, they only put trailers on the rental versions. I wish that were still the case, but I suppose few enough people rent these days that the studios are just going to subject us all to this for ever more. *sigh*

Get those trailers off my lawn!

by matula

Situation #1:
I was at a 4-way stop, with a truck on my right which stopped at least a second before I did.

Even if we had arrived at the intersection at the same time, the guy in the truck had the right-of-way, since you yield to the person on the right. See, I just recently completed a Defensive Driving course and I’ve become “johnny-on-the-spot” about driving rules and regulations. I KNOW my shit about right-of-ways.

So at the intersection, I wait. He’s supposed to go. He’s actually got DOUBLE the right-of-way. But he just sits there, looking at me. In my mind, he’s waiting for me to go so he can “gun” it and sideswipe me… since I was clearly not following traffic regulations, and he needs a new truck. So I creep up a little and wait. He waits. Finally, after about 3 hours of this (I may be exaggerating), he starts waving at me to go. What?! No! That’s not how this is supposed to work! YOU have the right-of-way! Just fucking go!

Situation #2:
I was getting on the freeway, as I sometimes do. About halfway up the entrance ramp, I notice an SUV on the freeway going about the same speed. Naturally, I decide to slow down a little, since Defensive Driving teaches us: Whoever has the speed, has the right-of-way. And then… she starts slowing down. Trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, and thinking maybe she’s thinking I’m going to be an asshole and outrun her, I slow down even further. Then SHE slows down. And I slow down. And she slows down. Eventually, we’re both going about 20mph on Hwy 71, and I just floor it. Now I’m driving angry and pissed at the world just because she was trying to be nice.

Look, I understand the desire to be nice to others. Sometimes even I will be nice- like giving a dollar to a homeless person, or letting someone with only 2 items go ahead of me in the grocery store (who will inevitably be paying by check. A check? Seriously? In 2011? Anyway…). When we’ve agreed as a society on the way certain things should work, we should uphold those values. Don’t subvert our social contract for YOUR misplaced altruistic needs. Because, now, you’ve put all that effort into being “nice”, and you actually come off as an asshole.

So stop being so goddamn nice or GET OFF MY FREEWAYS!

by Cliff Farmer

Okay, so I finally watched the new Karate Kid movie. It was bad. It was really bad. I want to tell people how bad it was, but now I’m having to watch it AGAIN to make sure I get it right. TWICE I’ve had to watch this thing, all so you don’t have to. I don’t mean to call myself a martyr…after you read this, you can decide for yourself. Spoiler alert, here comes the whole movie, point by inferior-in-every-way point.

Okay, right out of the gate, we see Jaden Smith as Dre, the inferior replacement for Daniel. He’s a little kid. The Karate Kid was a coming of age story. This kid’s nowhere near ready to come of any sort of age. It’s almost like when there’s a movie about adults (like Superman) and make them about teens (Smallville). This is like that, but one step further down. Think Karate Kid meets Muppet Babies. Expectations lowered? Good, here we go.

Dre and his mom are moving to China. Okay, two problems here. First, the original did have “fish out of water” elements, but both Daniel AND Mr. Miyagi were from elsewhere, so they were both somewhat out of place. In this iteration, Dre goes to the home of Mr. Han, the inferior replacement for Miyagi. Not only does this reduce the character’s depth, but that’s also the plot of Karate Kid 2, so it just feels like they’re rushing ahead before the story even starts.

Second problem about going to China (and this is a big one – maybe the biggest problem of the movie): Karate is from Japan, Kung Fu is from China. You can’t call it Karate Kid if there’s no Karate involved. Mr. Han teaches him Kung Fu. They even call it Kung Fu in the movie. THE MOVIE IS CALLED KARATE KID! IDIOTS!

So anyway, there they are in China, and a few plot points later they introduce the bully and his buddies, the love interest, and he gets to meet Mr. Han. I could go into how they took out the class structure differences from the original between the kid and the love interest, but lack of depth is something you’re just going to have to get used to in order to get through this.

Anyway, same ol’, same ol’ for a bit. Just when you think things might be smoothing out, we reach the inevitable point where Dre goes to find a dojo. And yes, it’s just the Chinese version of the “No Mercy” Cobra Kai dojo of the original. And yes, the bully is in the class.

But, here’s where we fall apart again. In the original, various fights with mom and other adolescent outbursts at the local bullies ultimately ended in a fucked up bike. Mr. Miyagi finds the bike and fixes it, earning Daniel’s trust. He has to, since he is to become Daniel’s father figure. In the new version, no bicycle. Oh, there’s bikes, and the bullies are messing with the bikes, but not Dre’s bike. Dre doesn’t even have a bike. It’s almost like the writers are rubbing it in your face that they’re leaving that part out. The result: glossed over character development and elimination of back story. I’m getting used to that part by now, but here’s where it gets weird.

Jackie Chan (Mr. Han) beats up a bunch of little boys. Remember I said this was Muppet Babies meets Karate Kid? Well, we’re now at the part where Han saves Dre from a bully beat-down. Jackie’s pretty old, too. So, that’s a little uncomfortable to watch. Plus, instead of the hand-heat-palm trick to fix up Daniel that Miyagi had, Mr. Han uses some CGI fire, so that just super sucks. I wish I had a phrase better than “super sucks,” and I thought for quite a while about it, but it just describes it perfectly.

Okay, so in both movies, now the mentor takes the kid to the evil dojo, and after a stare-down between sensei and sensei, the kid gets roped into a tournament and the mentor decides to teach the kid martial arts. Pretty on par again, but alas, this is short lived. Now comes the training, and it’s time for some more suck.

If you don’t know “Wax On, Wax Off,” you’re missing an important part of American history. Not only did Mr. Miyagi teach Daniel Karate, he taught him important trade skills. I mean, this was a blue-collar kid, he was way more interested in girls and kicking ass than he was his school work. Beating the shit out of high school bullies won’t get you that far, especially after you turn 18. The boy is going to need a trade. By the time he could kick ass, Daniel could paint, wash and wax cars, sand, and by the sequel, even do general carpentry! For this magical retelling – Dre learns to pick up his jacket. That’s it. Just the jacket thing. No skills he can take with him, no lesson on the rewards of hard work, just an over-handed lesson in manners, and an incredibly repetitive one at that.

Oh, did I mention Mr. Han had a car in his living room? Yeah, so he’s this weirdo who got drunk and killed his family in a car wreck, and now he keeps the car in his house and rebuilds it every year, only to destroy it on the anniversary of the accident. No shit, that’s his back story. Remember Mr. Miyagi was a war hero that lost his wife and child during childbirth? Well, screw that, we have a crazy drunk with a car in his house that likes to hang around and/or hit little boys. And the kid’s mom is obviously cool with that, right? She even hangs out with Mr. Han a bit, so it’s obviously okay to leave her kid for hours on end unsupervised with this guy, right? Plus, they show Han catching flies with his chopsticks and eating with the same sticks right after, like some gross old man. In the original, catching a fly with chopsticks was an exercise in patience. In the new one, it’s an exercise in controlling nausea. So, yeah, he’s pretty much a general weirdo.

Well, anyway, they finally get to the “let me show you what I’ve really been teaching you” part, so now we get to move on to the rite of passage. In the original, Daniel is training on the beach and sees Mr. Miyagi doing the Crane Technique. So, the master imparting a special secret signature move onto his student, like a father to a son – pretty easy symbolism right? Well, for Dre, he not only learns his secret move by seeing someone else do it (a lady at a mountain temple they visit), but instead of more training, he drinks Super Kung Fu Water. I’m not shitting you, special secret temple kung fu water. Screw emulating your father figure, let’s take the secret shortcut to success!

I guess even the crew needed a break after the kung fu water, so it goes back into a long version of the love interest story. Boy and girl are getting along, then there’s trouble, boy apologizes, they’re all good again, blah blah blah. The only difference is there’s no real past with the girl and the bully in the new version, but considering the age, I’m feeling a little creepy watching them as is, much less thinking of them even younger. So, after a montage or two with vastly inferior music, and a little more training (apparently the Kung Fu Water needed a little help), Dre takes his new found Kung Fu Power and heads off to kick some ass at the tournament.

Go ahead and get mad, but I’m saying it. Red Hot Chili Peppers makes shitty montage music. How do I know? That’s what’s in the new movie, and compared to the Joe Esposito classic “You’re The Best,” it is vastly inferior. Maybe not under normal listening circumstances, but for karate montages, there’s no doubt.

To add insult to injury, there’s this joke about Dre making a face when he punches. Karate revenge is not funny; Karate revenge is serious business. Just ask the kid who plays the Chinese Johnny Leg Sweep character – while his leg attack was superior, and although he also felt bad, he did not apologize like the original Johnny did. This makes his character inferior, as it is another moral lesson lost in the new translation: when you do something wrong, the least you can do is apologize!

To help close with the same hollow feeling that the movie left me with, I’ll get you through this last part as quickly as possible. As you can imply from above, Dre gets the leg sweep treatment and ends up in the locker room. After a little more magic fire from Mr. Han, he jumps back in the game and takes out the bully with the new signature move. No crane this time…it’s a cobra thing. I don’t think they caught the irony that the bad guys in the original were Cobra Kai. I don’t think they’re that smart. And the move…it sucks. It’s some sort of magic hypnotism thing, and it fucking works, and that’s just stupid and it sucks.

So, in summary, the original Karate Kid was a classic. It taught morality, discipline, the rewards of labor, and told the story of an important surrogate father figure for a young boy coming of age and dealing with a class struggle in a new town. The new Karate Kid was a trite piece of shit rip-off with worse acting, worse writing, worse soundtrack, worse setting, just about worse everything. I don’t want to even mention how creepy the symbolism of an old man teaching a young kid how to “ring a bell” is, either. Plus, no bicycle.

by Spiny Lizard

Ticket sellers these days really know how to rake in the money. And for what?

“Convenience charges.” I ask you. Convenient how, exactly, when many times there is no alternative option, no matter how ‘inconvenient’ it may be?

Click and print tickets. Great idea. I can understand paying for shipping charges if someone has to put the tickets in an envelope and put stamps on it and mail it, all of which costs a few cents each. Fine.

But when I am putting my own paper and my own ink together and printing my own tickets, why the hell should I pay as much, if not more, than for the standard shipping fee?!

You’re not doing jack for this money, Mr Ticket Agent!

Get right off my lawn. Before I charge you to print a photo of it.