iApprove: The Internet./DoNotWant: Herpes Simplex.

This might seem like a “duh” one. Everyone knows that the Internet is awesome and that anyone with half a brain in their head will use it if given the opportunity. Heck, without the Internet I wouldn’t be able to write blog entries (or procrastinate them half as effectively).

But I think it’s about time that I give the Internet dues for a little more than the basics.

See, I learned a few “medical” basics from my mother.  Don’t eat raw meat, stay away from rust, don’t kiss anyone while you have a cold sore; the usual.  Most of it is pretty basic, and most of it is pretty sound.

But a lot of it was shrouded in good, old-fashioned, down-home country hogwash.

Raw meat?  Perfectly safe (if prepared properly).  Rust?  Not a magical “spawning point” for tetanus.  Cold sores?

Hoo… cold sores.

Otherwise known as oral herpes (and there’s a reason for that, folks), cold sores are a lip-based invasion of the herpes simplex virus.  And, like Mom said, they’re especially contagious when you have a blister.  What Mom didn’t say is that they’re also contagious when you don’t have a blister.

Nor did she tell me that the repeated cold sores I suffer are manifestations of the same viral infection. Or that a bit of adventurous lovemaking could give my hypothetical partner a nasty case of lower blisters – or, as they call them in the medical industry, genital herpes.

Yup.  Thanks to some overzealous relative who thought it was an absolute must to kiss the cute little kid, I have a proper STI.  Cool, huh?  In other words, I have to take care – even when I don’t have a huge, painful blister on my lip – not to transmit the bugger to any sexual partners.

I don’t think I can adequately describe how mad I am right now.   I feel on some level that I was being taken advantage of.  I was three years old – barely old enough to understand what a cold sore was, never mind that I could catch it from a seeming innocuous kiss or that the infection would last me the rest of my life.  The darling relative to whom I owe the infection obviously had no clue either, or she wouldn’t have gone around kissing little kids.

I know I certainly don’t feel like kissing anyone right now.

Am I overreacting?  Probably.  It’s not a big deal to prevent infection (in the genital area, anyway) – basic protection should cover it.  And an oral infection, while annoying, is hardly a lifebreaker.  But I’m mad.  One of my family members, whom I trusted implicitly, gave me a virus that I will never be rid of and will impact me for the rest of my life.  Darn right I’m peeved.

(Edit: Mom says that I may eventually get over it.  She’s probably right.  But I’m still irked.)

DoNotWant: Monsters vs. Aliens.

Ah, Dreamworks, how ye have fallen.

I remember, way back in the day, when you used to be a respectable movie-making company.  Back in the days before you discovered CGI, remember?  Back when you were still making films like The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado.

Those movies… they were classics.  Funny (El Dorado), inspiring (Egypt), mostly-timeless incredible pieces of cinematography (both).  No, they weren’t the most “hip” things ever.  And they certainly weren’t up to Disney’s level, but not for want of quality.  You guys made some fine movies.

Then came Shrek.

The great thing about Shrek was that it was different.  It took a classic fantasy world, turned it on its head, then blended it with the modern world to create a unique, entertaining and seamlessly brilliant piece of work.  It was an instant hit, and with good reason – it was complete genius.  No movie could ever have been its equal.

Especially not the shameless rip-offs you guys have been producing ever since.

Yeah, I’m not blind to what you’ve been doing.  In your greed for cash, you’ve decided that the only solution is to reproduce everything that you thought we loved about Shrek, then wrap it in a new package and cram it down our throats.  Shark Tale? Shrek underwater.  Madagascar? Shrek on a deserted island.  Shrek 2 & 3? I think they speak for themselves.

The latest piece of crap you throw at us is Monsters vs. Aliens, a.k.a. Shrek with a Female Lead. And you’ve fallen into the exact same pitfalls.  Good story?  Check.  Star-studded cast?  Check.  Decent acting?  Strong script?  Houston, we have a problem…

Monsters vs. Aliens could have been so much better than it was.  It starts out with a good premise.  It carries it with an awesome cast.  But that is as far as it gets.  The script – which would have made a great first draft – is shaky and weak, and soon collapses under the weight of its own pop-culture references.  The characters, with the exception of Susan, feel flat and unrealistic.  Dr. Cockroach is supposedly a human scientist who mutated himself in an accident many years ago – except that he acts like he’s been a roach-man his entire life, and that life seems to have started maybe two weeks ago (during which time he learned modern dance moves and the expression “OMG”).  Link is even worse, with no obvious motivation even to live – he gets a passing reference to a fitness obsession, but this is treated like a throwaway gag.  At least Bob and Insectosaur, being inherently mindless characters, have a good reason – but none of the characters manage to feel like anything more than wall decoration.

And then there’s the acting.  Oooohhhhh, the acting. As I said before, the movie has a decent story – the tale of a young woman whose (personal) world is effectively destroyed on her wedding day, and who must learn to cope.  Unfortunately, she also lives in an alternate reality where all humans are obnoxious, overacting Pixar ripoffs – a common flaw in Dreamworks’ CGI films.  The characters speak as though they’re under a time limit – presumably because every character feels the need to supply a witty line in EVERY scene – and Susan’s voice is almost unbearably shrill.  The film, whose success seems to ride largely on its incredible cast, manages to distort every actor into a mangled, barely-recognizable caricature of themselves – to say nothing of the visual designs.

I know you guys can do better than this.  You did Sinbad – a silly but largely entertaining piece of work – and you did Kung Fu Panda, for goodness’ sake.  Admittedly, the latter falls into many of the same pitfalls as MvA, but you pulled it off.  Probably because it was set in a fantasy world where realism would have required the characters to speak Chinese.

Here, you were dealing with our world, our time period, and our people.  And, in your overzealous efforts to make the film accessable to the Blu-Ray generation, you blew it.  You took an incredible story and turned it into a shallow, largely pointless waste of an hour and a half.

Congratulations.

DoNotWant: Spam Comments.

It’s not that I get a lot, really.  But they do make up about 75-90% of the comments I get.  Of those, most of them have been gibberish or fake pingbacks – nothing too difficult or obnoxious.

It’s the remaining few that I really find irritating.

I, like many other people, like praise.  A lot.  And while mindless praise isn’t necessarily at the top of my list, I do get a warm, fuzzy feeling from seeing messages pop up like “This blog’s great!  Thanks. “  It kind of makes me feel like I’m not completely worthless as a human beeing.

Then I find out that it’s attached to a URL for some crapsite I never heard of and they’re just spamming me, taking advantage of my desire for praise to get their nasty little messages into my blog.  Maybe I’m just naïve, but I feel a bit cheated.

DoNotWant: “Over the Rainbow”.

Don’t get me wrong.  Connie Talbot is an adorable little girl with a wonderful singing voice, and I’m all for making an album of her.  But what’s with these song choices?  “You Raise Me Up”?  “Imagine”?  I honestly wonder if this little girl even understands what she’s singing about.

Srsly, Mr. Cowell.  Next time Connie does an album, choose some kid-appropriate songs.

DoNotWant: Westboro Baptist Church.

I was kind of fishing for a blog entry today.  It tends to happen whenever I spend most of my time writing/reading blogs…

But this poster really made my blood boil.

It’s from Westboro Baptist Church.  These are the guys who protest the death of every gay individual in existence and proudly cite Leviticus while saying nothing about beard-trimming or Christmas trees (ironic, huh?)  In the past, they have claimed that God (or a God, anyway) hates homosexuals, Jews (whut?), Muslims, Democrats, atheists (well, obviously), soldiers, Catholics, America, 98% of Christians, and sports fans (double whut?)

So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that they decided that God hated China.  But it does, because I’m an optimist that way.  I keep hoping that some facet of humanity will have escaped Fred Phelps’ insane, self-deifying teachings.

Apparently not, as the evidence shows: http://friendlyatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/godhateschina.JPG

DoNotWant: Greenpeace.

It has come to my attention that there are a lot of… shall we say, pseudo-Americans – lurking under our collective American roof.  They march under a wide variety of colors – socialists, humanists, Democrats… atheists. These people presume to call themselves American when they clearly march against the basic principles on which our country was founded.

I would like to add another group of unpatriots to that list: Greenpeace members.

You remember Greenpeace, right?  That weird little organization that stole two years of your kid’s life so she could go build pop-bottle huts in Guatemala?  Yeah, those guys.  I’ve been taking a look at what they do, and it’s apalling.  I mean, George Washington is turning in his grave over this.

But what exactly are they doing?  I hear you ask.

Besides being environmentalists (the first sign of unAmericanism), I’ve also discovered a disgusting level of generosity – raw, unadulterated charity – lurking within their ranks.  I am referring to their outreach programs.  These people go into suffering countries, and what do they do?  They give them help.  Not sell them help.  Not loan them help.  They just give them help.

Whatever happened to “ask not what you can do for other countries, but what other countries can do for your country?”  What happened to plain, old-fashioned corporatocracy?  These people are violating the great commercialist principles on which this country was founded, and it has to stop.  We cannot allow these people to keep giving resources to countries in need when there are still countries that do not owe us money.

It is up to us, as American citizens, to make a stand and make sure that money gets back where it belongs – in the pockets of our government officials and gasoline tycoons.

DoNotWant: Constipation. (Warning: Graphic.)

Urgh.

Just… urgh.

No post yesterday; I spent all weekend helping the family to cut up beef for the freezer, and spent yesterday recovering in front of the computer with some nice, mind-numbing webcomics.  And completely forgot to do a post.

So let me fill you in on mah constipation.

I really don’t know what’s causing it.  This is the third time it’s happened in the past few years; second time in a few months.  It always seems to happen right before TOM, but it doesn’t always happen.  It also always seems to happen after I’ve spent a day or two eating differently from usual – even if, like last time, I practically lived on bread, meat, and nuts.

It’s a real pain in the… well.  Yeah.

The first time wasn’t so bad, relatively speaking.  I was plugged up all day, but had no trouble going that evening, and bam!  No more problems for months.  The last time, right before last Christmas (yep, great timing), it was much worse.  Poo was roughly the consistency of rocks and was not moving through the anus.  It’d just get to a certain point and stick there.  I ended up straining so hard that something started bleeding, and my butt has been slightly sore ever since.  (I kid you not.)

Fortunately, I’ve developed a method of overcoming constipation that made my evening today much more pleasant.  It’s a bit unorthodox, but if you’ve made it this far it can’t be that disturbing.

I actually wound up resorting to this method the last time (butt bleeding and all that) when the pain got to be too much to bear.  I took a few sheets of toilet paper, used them to cover my finger, inserted said finger into the butthole (this took some practice, I daresay) and pulled out the offending turds.

It’s not easy.  They tend to break or get mushy and stick to the walls or other cantankerous things.  But last December, once I’d gotten out the few persnickety little turds everything was much easier.  Less so for this time.  I had to pull out what felt like my colon’s entire contents with my fingers, one globular bit at a time.

It wasn’t too painful, but boy, was it a workout.  It was worth it in the end, though.  Anything is better than going around with a sore colon.  (Still remembering December here.)

So, yeah.  That’s it.  Just had to vent.

DoNotWant: Nancy Drew.

I remember Nancy Drew quite fondly from my childhood.  A series of gripping tales following a brilliant young detective as she pursued intriguing and frequently dangerous cases.  Invariably she would end up getting kidnapped, and would surreptitiously contact either the police or her dear ol’ dad (or, after the debut of Ned Nickerson, dear ol’ boyfriend) who would show up and save the day, after which the mystery would be lain out neatly and the perpetrators (usually a duo or trio of angry men) would be brought to justice.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was my favorite series for a large portion of my childhood.  With that in mind, I went into this movie in the hopes that it would at least live up to the standards of the book series.

Nope.

It ceased to look promising almost from the start.  Nancy Drew, famous young adult detective, has been mysteriously de-aged to 15.  Okay, no big deal; maybe she was doing work before the start of the series.  She puts  herself into mortal peril alternately chasing and running from a couple of thugs.  When she finally catches them, she… bribes them with a pastry.

Seriously.  Whenever Nancy can’t get something she wants, she bribes someone with one of Hannah Gruen’s absolutely FANTASTIC homemade pastries and gets whatever she needs.  The implication here is that Hannah is the only modern source of old-fashioned pastry, and like all the other old-fashioned things Nancy loves (clothes, phones, birthday invitations), it is FAR superior to any modern thing.  Yuh-huh.  Moving on.

Who should show up next but… Ned Nickerson!  That’s right; the guy that Nancy meets for the first time in Book #7 is now her teenage crush.  I can let this one side; I mean, for all I know the continuity of Nancy Drew is about as stable as that of most comic books.  I haven’t read past the original series, so I’m not really qualified to say.

Anyway, in the books their romance was pretty straight forward.  “I think you’re cute, you think I’m cute, let’s date!”  No such luck in the movie.  They obviously have crushes on each other, but it takes the intervention of a presumptious twelve-year-old to get them to notice.

Speaking of which: high point in the movie there.  Corky was basically the only enjoyable character, being the only character who broke the mold.  He’s a pudgy, flirtatious doofus who managed to get himself transferred to high school because there “wasn’t any action in junior high”.

And speaking of characters, rumor has it that Bess and George appear somewhere in this movie.  That would have been awesome, because these two are undoubtedly my favorite characters from the books.  Bess is a fun-loving, somewhat overweight, plucky young lass who is frequently seen fretting about her figure – not a message they wanted to send to the audience?  George, by contrast, is an athletic character who more than once has pwned the bad guys with her judo skillz.  She was the “Strong Female Character” before the archetype was cool.

But we don’t get these characters.  Instead, we get a couple of shallow, uber-conformist teenagers whom I’ve never even heard of and who are continually trying to get Nancy to “act normal” (and quit hanging out with Corky, with no success whatsoever).  Speaking of “normal”, the word is used and overused throughout the movie, much like a large anvil: Nancy’s father doesn’t approve of her sleuthing, so he wants her to be a “normal teenager”.  Everyone at the school Nancy goes to is “normal”.  The entire movie is about Nancy trying, and failing, to be “normal” – but of course it’s better that way.

Don’t get me wrong; I love spreading the message that weird people are cool, too.  The problem is that Nancy only barely fits the definition of “weird”.  She still wears makeup and uber-popular hairstyles.  The only things that set her apart are her love of detective work and her passion for old-fashioned things – and since the movie is set during the height of the old-fashion popularity revolution, the attempt to pass that off as “weird” just looks stupid.

Now let me take a moment to talk about CPR.

You do NOT use CPR on someone when they are choking.  You do NOT perform CPR on someone’s stomach.  CPR is to be used ONLY to restart a stopped heart.  For choking, you perform the Heimlich maneuver.  Shame on you, Nancy.  You should know better.

Anyway, this movie was epic failure from beginning to end (with, as I mentioned, the small exception of Corky).  Do Not Want.

DoNotWant: Borked Internetz!

Unfortunately, that’s what I’ve got.  The Internet on the computer I’ve been using has gone kaput, preventing me from making my daily blog posts.  I’ve gotten ahold of another computer just to let everybody know that (1) I’m not dead and (2) I haven’t abandoned iApprove.

DoNotWant: Extreme Grass Loss in Animal Crossing.

Houston, we have a problem.

It comes in the form of grass.  Specifically, the grass that covers the ground of our towns in Animal Crossing: City Folk — or rather, fails to cover.

City Folk was designed with an interesting feature: the grass is destructible.  Any time you walk over a patch of grass, then save and quit the game, a certain amount of damage is recorded to that patch of grass.  The idea behind this was that over time, grass would wear down, creating natural pathways wherever you walked.  Avoid walking in those places, and the grass will regenerate, so you don’t have to worry about your town going bald.

At least, not if you’re a single player playing only once a day.

For the rest of us, who can’t do all our playing all at once and/or actually SHARE the game with other people, our towns are losing their grass in a matter of weeks.  And not just the path grass.  Our entire towns are going bald, as certain features of the game require us to run over the entire thing to take advantage of them.

Great, huh?

The players of Animal Crossing aren’t taking this lying down.  (Well, some of them are, but we call them “weenies”.)  They have a complaint thread on the Club Nintendo message board and a petition to get the problem fixed.  If those don’t work, we’ll be sending in our game copies for full refunds.  Because seriously, I’m not taking this rubbish.