Things Suck
Finding it increasingly difficult to finish (ok, let’s be honest, start) writing anything worthwhile to post, I’m decided to the take the time-honored shortcut of relying on other people’s content instead. In short, I’m going to become the billionth website to post short-sighted, biased, egotistic reviews.Sticking to the pejorative nature which comes to easily to me, after much mulling, I’ve come up with a rating system to use in these reviews. Breaking with the five star tradition, I’ll be working under the assumption that most every book, movie, band, TV show, etc., is actually abhorrent, atrocious, awful, base, beastly, contemptible, deplorable, despicable, detestable, disgusting, execrable, foul, grim, hateful, heinous, hellish, horrible, loathsome, lousy, nauseating, obnoxious, odious, offensive, repellent, reprehensible, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, rotten, sleazeball, terrible, very bad, vile, and wretched. Mainly, everything sucks. As such, I’m not going to try to determine how good something is but rather, how much it sucks:
Everybody involved in this project and both their immediate and extended families should be summarily executed lest they breed further.(This rating should be rather rare, as I will typically avoid movies directed by Uwe Boll)
This work must have at least one vaguely redeeming quality such as gratuitous violence, full frontal nudity, or a guest appearance by Chuck Norris.
This is the usual shit that corporate America manufactures in bulk. Most of its failings are probably due to over eager market research or an executive producer’s insistence on including giant mechanical spiders. It sucks. It’ll make you sick, but it won’t kill you.
At the very least, somebody attempted to infuse an ounce of decent content into this project. Rarely, it does work, but only long enough to make you angry. Don’t go out of your way to find it.
Somebody did something right. Then they stuck their head up their ass and it was downhill from there. Despite the fact that this still sucks, it isn’t anywhere near atrocious. This rating, sadly, actually amounts to a recommendation.
There has been a terrible mistake and somebody gave the go ahead on something that barely sucks. These are the projects that win awards, simply because they suck less that year than everything else. This is a glowing recommendation.
There are three more, rare ratings. These reach into the plus side of things. Not only do they not suck at all, you might even consider them art. I’m always on the look out for these. Run, don’t walk, to experience these.
Doesn't suck at all.
Are you kidding me? Better than sliced bread.
Holy Jesus, The Beatles are back.
With all that being said, I’d like to clarify. I don’t go out looking for things that suck. They just pervade our culture. I’m always shuffling through the world’s card catalog for something new to experience, but it rarely proves to be worth the effort. I do my best to find the good stuff, but I err a substantially large amount of the time. And now, I’ll write about it.
Another idea I had was to add dependency graphs to each review, something I’ve always wanted to see. Those familiar with *nix operating systems are probably familiar with dependencies: one program relies on another, which relies on another, which relies on this and that library, which relies on… You get the idea. It’s the expected result of open-sourced code; programmers build on previous work instead of reinventing the wheel.The truth is that pretty much any work of art relies on a incredible amount of previous art."Good artists copy. Great artists steal."-Pablo Picasso (attributed)So, when something I review has some obvious dependencies, I’ll include them. I’ll include some not so obvious one’s too, when I find them. And, thanks to the wonderful magic of the internet, sometimes I can link directly to some hopefully enlightening info.(I view the world as a series of interdependent layers. You can learn everything from a single point of reference… anyways)For example, a dependence graph for this post:
Will post the first reviews later today or tomorrow.Ja.