Why won't they Get It?

People Who Just Don't Get It; Volume 4: 24-Hour "News" Outlets who quote people's Twitter feeds and call it news.


The advent of 24-Hour news outlets has come along with the advent of figuring out how to stretch 30 minutes of news into 24 hours of crap. Some ways to do that are through making news out of non-news (ie: A bear gets loose in a neighborhood near the woods), hyperbole (ie: The WORST STORM EVER!), and through opinion/editorializing (ie: Twitter).


One of the long-held tenets of journalism is accuracy, which can be accomplished through fact-checking and multiple sources. Well, when you decide that this sort of thing isn't important, you can just give credit to your single source, regardless of the veracity of that source. Here's a great example: ""Jeremy Is In The Office is the best website in the world," reports Jeremy of Jeremy Is In The Office., an online repository of Instant Messenger Status Messages."

While it's clearly presented as an opinion, it's written in the news, and since it has a citation showing that it came from somebody other than the author of the story, it's obviously a correct statement, and you base your opinion on that statement. Forget the fact that you have no idea who "Jeremy" is, or the fact that he may be biased toward Jeremy Is In The Office, but you saw it on the news, and therefore, it's right!

This silly little example (while misguided, since you all know Jeremy and believe that this is the best website in the world, but we'll ignore that for now) may seem a little far-fetched, but pick any article on CNN or Foxnews or any of your favorite 24-hour news outlets. You have an 83% chance of seeing a reference to somebody's Twitter feed in that article, based on a study where I thought about numbers and thought that 83 was about right. It may not be 83, but it's higher than it should be. Also, every last one of these articles and sites now has a "User Comments" section where people are free to spread their own opinions and hyperbole about the article, or about the other opinions. Now you have opinions of opinions being interpreted as facts...and that just makes things worse.

And just how does this all manifest itself in News? Is it simply harmless misinformation, or can it actually be used for ratings-based fear-mongering? See for yourself with this headline from Foxnews.com:

Or perhaps this one from ABCNews.com:

Then there's CNN.com:

Based on these editorialized headlines, you may be inclined to think that a second-coming of Chernobyl is about to happen, or else, a huge nuclear-weapon scale explosion is imminent which will cause untold devastation to not only Japan, but the rest of the world.

Simply put, this is not the case.

For an actual explanation of what's going on with the reactors, you should probably spend about 10 minutes reading THIS WEBSITE instead, which provides an actual scientifically-accurate description of what's happening without the editorializing and fear-mongering which will bring readers back to websites. The differences between this actually informative article, and the opinion-based ratings-grab that is the article on any of the other "News" sites make it pretty clear who is out to report news, and who is desperately out to fill 24 hours with content, without regard to accuracy or relevance.

It's Maddening!

Pick Jeremy’s 12-5 Upset! East, Southeast, Southwest or West. Vote Now!!!


It's March Madness time...and you know what that means!


Jeremy uses up his allotment of watched basketball games for the year in one day?


Well, that too...


The weather is finally starting to get better?


Not really...have you looked outside?


Cheerleaders in HD?


I guess that's important...not what I was going for...


In that case, I'm spent.


It means it's time for the annual NCAA Tournament Bracket pools!


You can't do those until next week. You don't know who the teams are.


That's the beauty of it. Every year, I fill out those silly brackets having absolutely no clue who any of the teams are, who any of the players are (Though I'm often reminded that there's this guy "Jimmer" who plays for BYU who's supposed to be good), what conferences any given team plays for, or what teams are actually...you know...good.

The extent of my NCAA basketball pool knowledge consists of two facts. First, a #16 seed has never beaten a #1 seed, and second...the 5 vs 12 match-up is a statistical outlier when it comes to upsets.

Since the entirety of my wisdom comes in numerical form, I decided this year to bypass the silly "teams" concept and rely simply on seedings to decide my bracket. I've downloaded and printed out a blank bracket and will be filling it out tomorrow for use in whatever pools I end up playing in. This seemed, at first, to conflict with my annual tradition of letting the Sametime Status Loyal Readers vote on my 12-5 upset pick, but I realized that I can do that in advance, too. So all you have to do is let me know which region will see a 12 seed take down a 5 seed. Your choices are: East, Southeast, Southwest or West. Clearly biased against the North for some reason, but there you are. VOTE NOW!!!

Faux Gras

Fitting that Fat Tuesday coincided with Bagel Day at the gym


Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! Today's your last day to do everything you're giving up for Lent, so make it count!


The gym has a little thing they do to entice people to go there, and to encourage hypocrisy. Every month, they devote one morning to giving away free bagels, and one evening a month, they give out free pizza...all you have to do is walk in the door. There's no "20 minutes on a treadmill" rule for jacking pizza or anything, it's a free meal. Therefore, what ends up happening on these days is the number of people in the gym goes though the roof, which is remarkably annoying.

Anyway, it actually seemed appropriate today to have Bagel Day, because it's Fat Tuesday. This fact amused me more than it probably should have, so I decided to share it with you.

Schlock at its finest

"I hear a mountain lion! I gotta get back to my house" – Birdemic: Shock and Terror


Grab your popcorn box and your barf bag...just be careful not to confuse the two...Jeremy's got you a front-row seat to the Film Event of yesterday. A Film you won't forget seeing, but will regret seeing for the rest of your life.


So, I don't discriminate when it comes to movies. Sure, if it involves Nicolas Cage, it's automatically trash (BTW: Take THIS QUIZ when you get a spare couple of minutes), but I don't automatically discount films because they don't fit into the stereotypical cultural standard of "Good." I own a copy of "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and I've seen "Battlefield Earth" at least 4 times. I readily admit these facts because I love these movies not in spite of how bad they are, but BECAUSE of how bad they are.

Into the pantheon of stupefyingly bad movies comes a new entry I was made aware of not long ago. Through the magic of "Internet Flickershows," I was able to get my hands on the DVD and share it with some of my friends, who no longer answer my emails, IM's, texts, or phone calls for some reason. I delighted everyone with a screening of "Director" James Nyguen's 2008 masterpiece, "Birdemic: Shock and Horror". Since I don't have all day, I can't list everything that was wrong with this movie...but I'll give you just a fleeting glance of it:

• CGI = Clipart
  
• The guy drives a Mustang (said to be a plug-in hybrid version which has never existed), but never seems to be able to get the thing above 5MPH.
  
• "Fashion Model" goes from taking pictures in a strip-mall grocery store to a Victoria's Secret cover in one phone call.
  
• The guy walks like he's duct-taped to a pole.
  
• Worst Sound Editing ever. The sound cuts in and out, doesn't match the action, changes levels in every scene, and a scene filmed on a beach is unintelligible due to wind noise that makes it seem like the scene was shot in a hurricane.
  
• Worst Dialog Ever.
  
• Old guy is guarding a bridge that nobody would ever walk across...because there's nothing on the other side.
  
• A Lawless Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland would have less traffic.
  
• About the third time you stop your car to help people and one of your party died, you'd quit stopping...unless...
  
• Where exactly were they driving? It's never really revealed what their grand plan was, except to drive somewhere in a POS van despite the fact that everyone that they stopped to help who ended up dead drove better cars.
  
• Birds can either splatter on a windshield, spew toxic yellow sludge on people, or explode violently (seriously...we're talking smoke and fire and everything) with no explanation how they developed these talents.
  
• Coat Hangars make great weapons against a bird attack. So much so that you can Buy Your Own!
  
• At least it's good to know that Lawless Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands still accept credit cards.
  
• Nobody anywhere knows why the birds stopped attacking. Seriously...this isn't a spoiler...nobody gets it!

I'm guessing the reason that nobody knows why the birds stopped attacking is because (and I really wish I were making this up) the director was setting up for the sequel: Birdemic II: The Resurrection 3D!!! Coming this summer to...uhm...hopefully a theatre as far away from you as possible.
This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre

This just goes to show how good I am

I made it all week without making a Charlie Sheen joke! Woohoo!


Congratulations, Jeremy. You've held out the longest of all the recurring Sametime Status Message Blags you read on the Internetz...and just about every other media outlet, for that matter.


In celebration, I'm going to share with you a joke I would have made if I weren't so ridiculously busy on Wednesday. The Sametime Status that day was "If you have a NASCAR license plate, I shouldn’t have to follow you going 30MPH down the highway" because I had to follow some loser going a full 25MPH below the speed limit on my way to work that morning, and I take out my frustrations on people like this in passive-aggressive Sametime Status form.

Anyway, since I was making fun of NASCAR, I was going to point out that my Sametime Status that day was Racist.

Okay...that's enough for one week. See everyone on monday!

That's all you need

Manliness through loopholes!


As much as Jeremy NEVER has his manliness questioned, he feels obligated to defend it often and repeatedly.


I do not own a hair dryer. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.*


* - This line stolen directly and shamelessly from Charles Dickens.
Also, nothing "wonderful" is going to come from this story regardless.


I've never really owned a hair dryer, and I basically never have need for one. I consider it a minor point of pride, akin to pointing out that I've never performed Karaoke in this hemisphere. Among my possessions is a refrigerator with an ice maker. It comes in very handy, and I've even learned to better tolerate having ice in my beverages. (I never used to like it, but now I don't actively hate it.) Well, not long ago the water line feeding the ice maker froze, so I no longer have the ability to make ice. I've located service manuals and whatnot for the ice maker, and could probably take it apart and defrost it manually myself if I really wanted to, but I came across a number of internetz forums that tell me precisely how to resolve the problem easily...by using a hair dryer.

So, my inevitable conundrum. Do I go out and buy a hair dryer I'll never use for its intended purpose just to fix my fridge, thus ending my streak of not owning a hair dryer? Do I take apart the fridge, asserting my manliness, but risking breaking stuff? I pondered.

On a separate quest, I found myself in a store noted for selling items for the Bedroom, Bathroom, and Other-Farther-Reaching-Places. I decided to look at the hair dryers and see how cheaply I could get one. Turns out, the lowest price I could get out with was $19. I found this to be unacceptably high for a one-time freezer job. My next stop on this trip was a new hardware store in the area that for strictly Blag purposes, let's call "Port Payload Tools." On my way into the store, I grabbed a flyer. Lo and Behold, they were having a grand opening sale. One of the items on sale, a 1500-Watt Heat Gun for $13.

I'm the proud owner of a brand new "heat gun" which is a manly name for a hair dryer, and I paid $6 less for it. I WIN!

Jeremy's Wild Kingdom

It's Deer vs Turkeys vs The Neighbors' Cat for Ultimate Backyard Supremacy!


Let's get ready to not pay Michael Buffer any royaltieeeeeeeeeeees!


Not long ago, there was a remarkably entertaining spectacle. It featured a Battle Royale for majority control of my back yard. No, I was not involved...for some reason, I got left out. The players were a flock of 12 wild turkeys, 3 deer, and the neighbors' cat.


Tale of the tape:
White-Tailed Deer - Length 70", weight 200lbs
Wild Turkey - Length 30", weight 11lbs
Orange Tabby Cat - Length 18", weight 9lbs


I don't know who threw down first, but I imagine the cat was offended that all these foreigners were encroaching on his (or her...I actually don't know) turf. Either that, or the cat just wanted to hunt birds, and the Turkeys seemed tasty. So, the cat started chasing the turkeys around, and they didn't really want to have anything to do with him. Of course, the Deer, being significantly larger than the cat, were offended by the cat's presence, and started chasing after him and stamping their hooves.

After a while, the deer decided the cat wasn't a threat to anyone and moseyed back into the woods, but kept an eye on the proceedings. So the cat was now free to pounce around at the turkeys...which is actually pretty hilarious to watch. There were 12 turkeys, and each of them was bigger than the cat, and yet, every time the cat would move, the turkeys would scamper away. I guess even Wild Turkeys know their place on the Thanksgiving table. So, the cat was having a blast chasing the turkeys around the yard, never actually coming within 3 feet of any of them.

Once the cat was sufficiently satisfied that the turkeys were no longer on "his" property (which, BTW...I like to believe that it's mine, but try telling THAT to a cat) he lost interest in the turkeys and went off to take a dump in my raspberry bushes. Thanks for that.