Shouting Grounds

What a bunch of fucking idiots.

I suppose I should mention that this is an internal Microsoft sales video.

In altering my workout routine, I haven’t been able to have my morning drip-coffee because I go directly from the gym to the car to work…so I’ve been buying coffee en route. Despite my better judgement, I’ve paid an exorbitant amount of money a few times for a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte from Starbucks. Last week I noticed Seattle’s finest changed their cup logos to something completely perverse. The usual green circle has gone brown (surprising since everyone and their mother are trying to project a ‘green’ image all the sudden), and the image of the mermaid has been pulled back to reveal her full glory…glory hole that is. The little tart is now completely spread eagle, pushing her goods on the whole world. And I mean all the goods, jugs too. She’s even holding her ankles for maximum obtusion! WHORE! Who’s ever seen a mermaid with a split tail anyway? Can she walk on land?

I thought that I would contribute to the historical record and shoot some fat, dead fish in a barrel with a new project. I always find it amusing to reminisce over the fuck-ups of the past, especially technology fuck ups.

I was browsing some of the now defunct video game systems on Wikipedia when I ran across a flop from the mid-nineties that I used to talk about and lust after when I was a kid. The 3DO looked promising on paper, until you read the price.

Looking at things now, jesus, what a piece of over-promised shit! And if that wasn’t enough, 3DO attempted to release another system, with even more hype than the first. This is a tech demo from a trade show, featuring the possible “next-gen” 3DO that never was released. It features a “Shooter” theme but it doesn’t represent a game, nor a realtime performance of the actual 3DO “M2″ hardware, but a fat, nutty wad of pre-rendered dogshit.

This is an other “tech demo” from the same show.

Who knows if it was running realtime or not. I guess they did need to back up their visuals with actual horsepower to sell their software back in the day like they do now. (snark)

All I remember being released for the original 3DO was demolition man, and though it looked sort of good (visually) compared to what was offered from Nintendo and Sega at the time, why the fuck would anyone pay for it? For $700 bucks at launch time they really could have served themselves better by putting a bullet in their heads. Instead, they suffer through a prolonged massacre at the hands of their competition, then decide to regroup for another ass fucking with the “M2″. By comparison, for expensive as the Neo Geo was, at least it had great games. It seems so clear now how fucked these guys were out of the gate. It’s a pity they got so far.

Next up on the chopping block….the Philips CD-I

In the early days of the Shouting Grounds, you may all recall JT and myself getting into a heated verbal dispute about console vs. pc gaming, specifically how I feel that PC gamers get the barb-studded shaft when it comes to sequels coming out exclusively for consoles when those games cut their teeth on the pc. Grand Theft Auto is my biggest let down…since I can vividly recall the first time I saw Dang playing GTA on his pc back in the day. Soon after GTA2 debuted on pc, it was ported to the PS2 and everything started to go pear-shaped. The third-person versions of GTA all debuted on consoles first, leaving loyal pc gamers to dangle. And now with the latest iteration of GTA, I still haven’t seen any indication that it will come to pc. But I digress…

This article is solely meant to point out the injustice that Battlefield has become. Again, I can very easily recall the first time I saw JT playing Battlefield: 1942 on his pc at a LAN at Redscape’s old apartment. We quickly became enamored by not only 1942, but the Desert Combat mod and played the holy hell out of it for many years. Battlefield: 1942 was only available for the pc, if I remember correctly. Battlefield: Vietnam was next, not as great but fun for as a break from DC for a little while…still pc only. Then in 2005, Battlefield 2 debuted across consoles and pc. Not well received by our gang…as it was built completely for online play with little LAN or single-player customization. Since then, EA’s changed the game via updates to allow it to be more like BF/DC, but at this point we’re slightly poisoned to it.

So now it’s 2008, and this summer Battlefield: Bad Company will be released. While it looks simply like an update to BF2, it does have completely deformable environments, which is sure to make battle all the more awesome. However…Bad Company is only going to be available for 360 and PS3. Once again, the PC is getting the bend-over-and-say-hail-mary. At this point, what difference does it make…right? Why the fuck should I care, since the game will probably blow in some major capacity.

Well now the ‘new faithful’, namely the consolers who are supposed to eat this bowl of puke that EA’s gonna charge $50-60 for, are getting their asses buttered and stuffed as well. EA has announced that Bad Company will ‘feature’ downloadable content (nothing new for console games) in the form of weapons n such. Again, BF2 featured ‘unlockable’ weapons once your character progressed in stature. The difference now is you have to FUCKING PAY FOR WEAPONS THAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THE EXORBITANT PRICE OF THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE! If I remember correctly, you’ll start with somewhere around 5-10 weapons, and beyond that you’ll have to fork over real-world money to get new ones. And you can be sure that there are plenty of silver-spooners that will simply buyout the weapons cache with daddy’s platinum, and proceed to annihilate the gamers that can’t afford to pay for more than just the game in a box.

What a complete ass-fuck. I can only hope that if you’ve read this far that your logic is solid enough to hate this shit as much as I do…if not then Knock-Knock-go-fuck-yourselves.

Bonus: Saw this video offa Digg this morning…inspired this article.

So we’re less than a week past our five year anniversary of the current Iraq war and the death toll of U.S. troops and personnel has officially hit 4,000. At least those are the numbers the government is fronting us. Yeah I say fronting because at this point does anyone seriously trust anything that our countries representatives tell us anymore?

In any event, the article I linked above also cites the number the Iraqi deaths as anywhere between 80,000 to hundreds of thousands. Okay WTF!!?? We invaded the country right? I assume that means we have people in most major cities and outlying areas. Even in the areas of conflict we obviously have a presence actively hunting insurgents. Now my question is when an Iraqi dies, does it not count? It seems so because I find it hard to believe that after 5 years over there we can’t come up with a more concrete number than “80,000 to hundreds of thousands”.

Our government likes to bombard us with information right? Everyday we hear about how they infiltrated this insurgency or took out that terrorist cell or how things are getting better in Iraq, yet we don’t yet have the capability to count dead people? Was there some sort of system in place that accounted for dead people before we arrived? Possibly not since I’m sure Saddam didn’t want his actions in that arena cataloged in too much detail. Yet and still I can’t help but think how re-goddamn-diculous it is that we can’t track how many Iraqi’s have died over there.

Also I’d like draw your attention to the following statement from the article:

“This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer.”

Now this is coming from an Iraqi politician yet I find myself wondering exactly who he means by “they”. See, I think of “they” as these two guys. The two gay lords who got us into this whole fucking mess. They’re the ones who “chose” Iraq to be a battlefield. Anyway, as usual, I find myself digressing.

Let’s just figure out a way to get a better count on these bodies guys. I suppose, of course, that would require the will to want to do so.

 

Remember that guy that flew around the world a few times in goofy high-efficiency airplanes and balloons?  Steve Fossett was his name.  And I say was because I guess the guy died…but not really.  According to Wikipedia, he was pronounced “legally dead” in November 2007 by his wife.  Allegedly during a flight across a Nevada desert, he managed to get lost.  Come on!

The state of Nevada has a surface area of 104,576 square miles (estimated through Google Earth).   Earth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles (from Web search).  Now how come this asshole could fly around the world, which is about 1,900 times larger than Nevada, yet he manages to go MIA when flying within the United States?  I smell a scandal.

His wife declares he dead.  He’s a multi-millionaire.  No trace of him or his aircraft in the desert.  Go ahead and put the pieces together.  Most likely, him and his wife are sippin’ coconut drinks on some island right now, laughing all the way to the bank, not having to deal with the current bullshit this country is placing on our shoulders.

Steve Fossett, you’re my hero.  Anyone who can become lost without a single trace deserves to be placed on Shouting Grounds.

Huffington Post Article

After a prostitution ring is busted, current Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer resigns apologizes, having linked himself to the ring via cellphone records, and perhaps via his prick. This fucking cockhole is giving Democrats a bad name, but at least these are adult females with business heads on their shoulders.

Remember that last bit when all the fat-pubs are shitting all holy hell about this over the next several years. I can hear it now. Bellowing morality while striking everyone with their bible-balls. Nice job, Elliot. You fucked up.

I guess this is what happens when you get your dick caught in the cookie jar….or something like that.

Thank God the Sharper Image has filed Chapter 11 on that ass.  The world now has less over-priced garbage to purchase for bosses, desks, and offices.  Who the fuck liked the Sharper Image anyway?  Sharper Image cut their own fat hog in the ass.  Fuck you, Sharper Image!

“…The Sharper Image announced late last month that it was suspending the acceptance of gift cards, at least temporarily. It urged shoppers to check the company Web site later this month for an update. That is typical of businesses that reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which treats gift cards as a loan to the company, not as cash…”

Good riddance!  Seriously, the Sharper Image has always pissed me off to a degree that cannot be measured.  To put it in perspective, my opinion on Illinois jobs ranks right up there with the Sharper Image.

Last night, NBC (NoBallsCommunications) debuted their 2008 continuation of my favorite tv show when I was but a wee bastard, Knight Rider. Allow me to first recant my feelings for the old show before I delve into dismantling and recycling the new one (Shouting Grounds is an eco-friendly website, chall).

I loved Knight Rider, dude. Michael Knight was the shit, and all I wanted was a black Trans Am with the little red lamp in the hood to tear around the country in, solving crime and shit. When I was little, everything except for immensely non-complicated storylines made sense to me…a super fast talking Firebird that could leap through concrete and defy the laws of physics and common sense at will. What’s not to believe?!

Years later, like three years ago…I finally got my hands on a copy of Season 1 of my beloved childhood show, and I couldn’t wait to relive the good old times. Sadly, after you’ve discovered logic and science, this classic doesn’t hold up quite like it used to. Sure, the car still rocks, Bonnie was still hot and Michael still cool…but the show turned from sharp cheddar to swiss awfully quick. Anyone over the age of 14 knows that “Turbo Boost” doesn’t equal “rampless jump”. However, the nostalgia is still there.

Okay, so last night. Tuned into channel 5 to watch what NBC thought about my new show. I even took real time notes for chall, which I’ll paste below. My expectations were low, since A) NBC has no budget for good computer effects on pilot shows, if you saw Bionic Woman you know what I mean, B) Since they had sunk my T/A and replaced it with the NEW SHELBY FORD MUSTANG GT500 KR NO WAY DOOD!!!, I knew there would be plenty of commercials lauding Ford as the savior of the automobile in America. That being said, I was ready to give it a chance. My notes:

• CGI red lights instead of actual lights in the hoodscoop = GAY…if we could do it in the 80′s why not now?
• Acting terrible, the bad guys are always snarling and scowling…guess the screenwriters are fresh outta fifth grade?
• So this old guy (Graiman) was building KITT by hand, but then he had a heart attack from just being accosted? (Note: explained later on as a double)
• the original KITT didn’t have ANY pontiac branding…this KITT says SVT, Mustang and Ford all over…at least try to suspend disbelief here
• Val Kilmer is KITT? Guess NBC doesn’t have much faith for this show beyond tonight.
• And who wouldn’t have guessed that the codeword was ‘Knight’?
• NBC’s KNIGHT RIDER is brought to you by the star of the show, the FORD MUSTANG…FUCK!
• How many times do we need to see the bullet-dent effect on KITT? Why not just use the ‘molecularly bonded shell’ from old?
• The bullet effect on the glass was lame as balls.
• The mouse-shaped mechanic is gonna work on KITT in the end, right?
• Does the bad-guy nerd have to be so obvious?
• Number of obvious Ford product placements: incalculable
• SOMETHING GOOD: Cliffhanger commercial leadin during first chase
• VW commercial with Lev Andropov during Knight Rider, funny irony
• The shapeshifting body effect would have been cooler if it had just been the paint. The physical shape of the grill, hood and spoiler changed, making it less believable. This opens it up to allow the car to reshape any body panel Terminator style. If you want to do something like that, explain it a little bit so it doesn’t look so out of place.
• Prometheus = Skynet; more than obvious, and I had just switched over from Terminator 2 on AMC when Knight Rider came on
• Christ, they made this show awesome 20 years ago, why is it so fuckin hard to do now?
• 627mi in 3.28 hours = 191.16mph max speed; an @ least believable ‘super pursuit’ speed
• KITT: “That does suck”…does he or does he not understand human behavior? The level of his AI humanity is inconsistant
• The CGI is terrible, obvious and awkward
• How many times do we need to see the Cobra logo? This car is supposed to fight crime, not the American people’s faith in foreign auto manufacturers
• KITT had a mac keyboard in his glovebox…FUCK FUCK FUCK WHY? At what point do you have to activate a terminal windows to interface with KITT?
• Sarah Graiman: “It’s not a thing, it’s a car” Car = Thing, whore!
• 2 commercials in 10 minutes from 8:40 to 8:50, then 9:03, 9:13…this is ridiculous…9:23. Commercials that last 4 minutes, meaning there’s 1.5 minutes of show for every 1 of commercial. That’s fucking terrible. If you don’t have 2 hours of content don’t fill it with double the commercials…another @ 9:33. From 8:30 to 9:30, there was 36 minutes of show and 24 minutes of commercials (rough estimate)…GOD AWFUL!
• Blackriver = Blackwater? LOL, that’s some comedy there. Way to rage against the machine, NoBalls.
• “Somebody removed all the hard drives”, referring to the workstations. NBC can’t help but breed stupidity!!!! STOP CALLING PC’S HARD DRIVES, ASSRAMS!
• Michael’s whore: “KITT’s not another Trans-Am is it?” BITCH!
• KITT: “Are you a homosexual?” LOL
• Bad guys had no idea where to look in the desert between California and Vegas, yet were only 12 miles away when they found out where Charles was. They were more likely to stumble upon the last known home of the Manson family.
• Nerd Bad Guy can hack KITT? Please, an AI system should be immeasurably ahead of a human trying to hack it in speed and adaptability. And if Doogie had the encryption codes, then why did he have to ‘hack the firewalls’? And who the fuck leaves some wireless interface open on this super car death machine so that any obvious-malcontent can h4XX0r th3 f00k1n c4r?
• The part where KITT got Tboned and annihilated the other car was fucking great, even though they showed it in an earlier commercial cut, so you knew it was coming. NBC couldn’t just keep that one for the end.
• The limo scene @ the end would have been the perfect time for Charles to interject the “One man can make a difference” line that Wilton Knight told Michael in the first show. But they assfucked that pooch.
• Who didn’t see it coming that Michael would be at the funeral at the end? Honestly?
• Scratch the “One man…” post above, it was better when Michael said it. Thank christ they made sure he cameo’d…at least that made me happy
• The 4-part commercial series with KITT and Mike was fucking terrible. But don’t think that I didn’t enter to win the sweepstakes, cuz who doesn’t want a GT-500 KR?
• They’ve replaced the good old FLAG semi with a C-130? Make a whee more sense from a logistical/interior space perspective, since the old lab would never have fit in the semi. However, the horrible CG wouldn’t convince anyone that you could fly a Herc 2″ above the ground. NBC’s CGI is pre-Roger Rabbit.

So there you are, my thoughts poured out John Doe-style. In case you can’t read my contempt between the lines, this show was barely watchable. If I hadn’t been obsessed with it when I was a lad, I would have turned it back over to AMC to finish Terminator 2. Even though I expected the Ford bullshit throughout, I wasn’t prepared to have it tattooed onto the back of my eyeballs. Logic would suggest that with so much Fordvertising, NBC should have a pile of cash to put into making the show a little more believable, better acted and have way better computer effects WHEN NEEDED. There were plenty of CG shots that didn’t need to be there, and could easily have been achieved with traditional shots. Instead, this money quite obviously went into the Butt-Grooming fund for the NBC Board of Dick-rectors.

However, I hope that NBC combs the shit out of their asshairs and puts it on tv for an hour a week. With the following changes:

• Spend a week with Ronald Moore and the boys at BSG (a Sci-Fi show, which is owned by NBC…go figure) and talk to them about making your computer effects semi-believable
• Spend more than an hour throwing together your script
• Find some people that have acted successfully in the past to be your bad guys…I’m not talking Sean Connery here, but better than Days of our Lives castoffs
• Can some of the tertiary good guys. Charles Graimen and the FBI broad can hit the road face first. Keep Androginethnic Mouse and the hot daughter to work on KITT
• Figure out a better way to deploy KITT. The FLAG truck, while not-so-believable inside was relatively non-descript in town. A spectre gunship orbiting any town/city/state is going to raise some eyebrows and could endanger Mike’s undercover status
• Either explain better or lose the ‘nanotechnology’ skin on KITT. I’ll buy it if you sell it better, knowwhaddamean?
• Strip some of the over-the-top body features of KITT while in normal cruise mode. The old KITT stood out only because it was a black coupe in mostly hillbilly towns. This KITT stands out because it’s an obviously impossible custom worth easily over $100,000, and that’s without the vacu-formed computer in the backseat. Honestly all it would take is a quick flick of that nanotech armor, right? Shit.

Follow my quick and easy steps, and you might just have a winner. Think about this, the WB is into their fifth season of Smallville I think, and that show is ghastly. NBC would just have to tweak Knight Rider and they might have a success instead of a one-shot novelty.

Bottom line: craft a better fucking show, fuckheads.

CNN featured an article today titled Suit: Airport searches of laptops, other devices intrusive part of which told the plight of Pakistani-born U.S. citizen Amir Khan, and the various difficulties he’s gone through at the hands of custom officials while crossing the border into the U.S.. In fact according to Khan some customs officials have even gone so far as forcing him to reveal password protected and confidential information from both his bank as well as the company he works for.

Embedded ever so snuggly into the succulent meat of the article is the following quote made by one Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country. This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”

STOP!! REWIND!! PLAY AGAIN!!

“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country. This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”

Okay anyone not catch that? You want to come to America? Fine, all you have to do is give up your right to privacy! Done and done!

What disturbs me the most is not so much the absurdity of the statement (Neocon’s have been spouting horseshit like that for years) but the fact he claims all Americans expect this and thereby embrace it!

What’s even more appalling is when you consider that statement in the context of Amir Khans situation. Amir Khan is a U.S. citizen. Born in Pakistan yes, but a citizen of America none the less.

So what’s the moral Mr. Knocke wants us to learn children? Now repaeat after me:

When crossing the border back into the country of his/her citizenship, said citizen is expected to not only surrender his/her right to privacy but on top of that should fully embrace such a surrender.

According to Mr. Knocke it’s the American thing to do!

!!!BULL FUCKING SHIT!!!

Discuss.

Magic John Stone here, with a PSA for all you negatives out there. I’ve long been a big hater of everything, and I’m proud to still be…but personally I’ve been relatively positive over the course of the first 1/12 of 2008…at least…positive about myself. Fuck Apple, still…

I’ve overhauled my lifestyle pretty significantly, from the inside – out, and am also focusing on bettering certain things outside of myself as well. The key for me has been looking at things as a sculptor would a slab of fresh marble. You know that the end result is in that damned chunk of rock, you’re job is to chip away until you find it. This is pretty simple and I can even hear you saying, “Hey, Magic John Stone, this is elementary…anyone that can form a thought knows this.” True enough, but having the wherewithal to apply it toward your everyday problems takes a bit of discipline, which is most easily obtained through motivation. Know you need to lose weight or face life-long obesity/heart problems/diabetes/heckling/need to buy giant pants? That’s some fuckin motivation. Apply that and see your big ass as a ripe hulk of marble that you need to chisel down to a normal goddamned human size. I’ve been a fat, angry bastard my whole life, but since the arrival of 2008, my goal has been to become simply an angry bastard. When I finally have a child, I want to be able to play with the little shit, and not be inclined to eat him. So, as a goal, I’ve committed to running in this year’s Shamrock Shuffle here in the world’s greatest city on March 30th…and goddamnit if it were today I’d certainly have a coronary. So I’ve made comprehensive a plan to chip away at my own self and make this happen. It’s not easy by any stretch…just today I ran for 18 minutes straight on a treadmill, but I will say that only 3 weeks ago I wouldn’t have been able to pull something like that off. It’s that little bit of progress that sustains my motivation.

But the plan is simple enough: realize your goal, logic out the path to it, and then put one fuckin foot in front of the other fuckin foot until you’re standing there ready to put ball to wall. Stop using the fact that you aren’t able to do something right now as an excuse why you’ll never be able to do it. That’s fuckin bullshit. Chart a course and set sail, goddamnit.

The Shouting Grounds is in no way responsible for the utterings of Magic John Stone, take his shit with a grain of salt as he’s usually trying to bash someone or something’s balls in.

I’ve always had a problem with people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who in my opinion use the stigma of racial stereotypes to simply put themselves in the news.

While Sharpton is just a pile of dogshit, Jesse Jackson surprised me today when I heard about this story on sports radio. Apparently in response to the NBA having crooks for refs, the MLB hired a third party to do background checks on their umps. While investigating umpires from Kentucky and St Louis, the cock knockers thought it’d be sweet to ask the umpires’ neighbors if they new if the ump in question was ever affiliated with the KKK. Nice tact, fuckrags.

The Rev Jesse caught wind of this, and actually publicly chastised MLB and the investigators for profiling southern whites as possible Grand Wizards.

So…good for you Jesse J, thanks for finally playing the other side of the race card for once.

And fuck you, Al Sharpton.

Ok guys, enough’s enough, for Christ’s sake! Stop releasing your software so that when you mount the disk image the finder window, that presents your application, is in simple mode!!! It is especially annoying when you don’t place a complementary link to the local Applications folder.

LOOK!

That is a stupid way of doing things! The finder is so rich and useful now, why the fuck do we need to keep living the < OS 9 days?! Simple-ass windows.

Each time you download an application that behaves like this. You have to click on the button in the top right corner to see the following Finder window, then drag the application to your Application folder:

I know what you’re thinking, no big deal, and you’re right. Although, when you multiply that “no big deal” by 10123123 times you get a pissed off user. A lot of applications are designed to be updated by downloading the whole application over again. Once you have the updated application file, you drag it to the Application folder and overwrite the original. Easy. All you preferences are saved, registration info, etc. The problem is when you have to add a extra step into that process it gets old, quick.

So to all you OS X developers out there, listen up! You are so close to app-install nirvana you are suffering an Icarusarian fall from grace. Keep the Finder alone, ok? I don’t like simple-mode and I never did. Cut that shit out.

Update – 2/1/2008

To clear up any confusion over what I’m actually bitching about. I had unknowingly used the term “simple finder” to describe a finder window with the hidden toolbar option enabled, for lack of a better phrase. So my real beef is with developers who prefer this “hidden toolbar” finder setting, and tend to us this view setting when packaging their application disk images.

Based on this reuters story apparently 1 Million Iraqis have perished as a direct result of the war in Iraq.

What’s wrong with this picture? So they are saying, based on the information we have from how many households there were in 1997, 20% of house hold surveyed now have lost at least 1 member. Am I not correct in remembering that many Iraqi’s left the country prior, during, and after “major combat operations”? So how can that be accurate. If 4 million Iraqi’s have left the country, how can the 1997 estimate for the number of households in the country be used in the equation for casualties? That’s like saying that I gained 97% of my body weight since yesterday because you used my original birth weight of 9 pounds (instead of how much I weighed yesterday) in your equation.

Let me say now that I believe the war to be a mistake and find the lives lost to it to be unacceptable, but we don’t need phony-ass statistics to prove that is the case. All this does is give the morons who agree with the president something easy to refute and cast doubt upon.

When will we learn?!

Well, if there’s one thing signaling me to move on and finally close the doors of EfexTek, it’s eBay’s recent news of “reduced fees.”

Wait, did you say reduced fees? Yep, I sure did…at least that’s what eBay initially stated in a message sitting in my eBay inbox. According to the new fee table, insertion fees will be reduced by $0.05 and gallery fees are free (normally $0.35). That’s all fine and dandy and it put a smile on my face. Then I read further. The final closing percentage has increased from 5.25% for the first $25 to a HUGE value of 8.75%. Eight point fucking seven five percent! Seriously, what the fuck?

This shit pisses me off so fuckin’ bad. People on eBay are up in arms about this bullshit. Check the forums. This new percentage cuts so deeply into people’s pockets that making a neglible profit on small stuff isn’t even worth it anymore. Anything selling for $25 and under is raped up and down with fees. I’m an avid eBay’er, both as a seller and a buyer, and this shit strikes a sour note on my piano.

“So Socrates Points, why don’t you just sell the stuff on your website and shut the fuck up?”

Let’s get one thing straight. My website doesn’t sell products, eBay does…and barely. They provide a good service, I will admit, but 8.75%? Jesus fucking Christ! This new increase basically forces out the small time operators, which basically started eGay. Only PowerSellers and massive online retailers will benefit because they receive special discounts. In addition to these increases, their search function will change, giving more recognition and ratings for PowerSellers. Stupid as fuck. With that in mind, it’s only a matter of time before PayPal ups their fees for receiving payments as well. I’m sure some stupid fuck working for eBay making all the bad decisions is thinking, “if people leave eBay and open up their own storefronts and websites, we’ll just super-inflate the PayPal fees so the people using the FREE shopping cart function will get fist-fucked.”

Not to mention, if you’re looking on eBay for deals, that’s probably going to end soon as well. Naturally, sellers that remain on eBay will up their prices and/or add increased shipping to make up for the difference. So get your shit while the shittin’s good, before it’s too late.

In a close, I would just like to say again…FUCK EBAY.