Making Billions!

My New Superhero Idea:  Data Dude!  Taking A Byte Out Of Cyber Crime

This is what happens when you're allowed to be creative.  For what it's worth, Jeremy's already gotten two messages today telling him what a terrible joke this is.

Today's Sametime Status comes as a result of a conversation I had not long ago with coworker and loyal reader, "Z."  

So this is what happens when you're allowed to talk to people.  Easier solution, I guess...

It was the result of a lack of punctuation on a sentence describing an experiment we're running.  We're being all sciencey and stuff.  The desired sentence was "Free data, dude!" when describing an unintended split condition we had developed which would not convolute the data of the original designed experiment.  The actual sentence was "Free data dude!" which can really only mean two things, both revolving around a new character "Data Dude."  Either he is imprisoned, and a plotline needs to develop in which he is freed, or else Data Dude action figures are being given away as a promotional item.  

Either way, Data Dude needed to be developed.  

No, he absolutely did not.

When I picture Data Dude, if I'm being honest, I can't picture anything too far removed from Duffman.  I mean, really...who doesn't think of Duffman when pondering new superheroes?  Of course, instead of "Duff" written across his chest, he will have his own logo, which practically draws itself:

It's obvious, really.  

Then, he needed a catch phrase and a crime-fighting niche.  Since nobody I know is able to take James vad der Beek seriously as a cyber cop, and he's not even playing a superhero anyway, the arena of cyber vigilante crime fighting is pretty open, as far as I know.  Enter Data Dude, who is here to take a byte out of cyber crime!  It's brilliant!  

And by "brilliant," I mean pretty awful. 

Batman Hates This Song

It’s 2013, and I finally realized that “pompatus” isn’t a real word

Good job, Jeremy.  Just don't ask us to start calling you Maurice.

I'm an amateur writer.  I write stupid crap on a blag every now and again, and I've written short stories, and everyone knows I should be a sitcom writer, but at present, it's a hobby.  I'm not a professional writer.  I'm not sure I could be a professional writer, since I'm not sure what all that would entail, and I'm also not sure how to get paid enough to do it without putting in more time than I usually have available.  So I'm pretty much at a crossroads there.  Regardless, being a writer, I have at least a working knowledge of words and the English language.  This, despite the internet's best efforts to destroy my brain cells through Failblog posts, Craigslist advertisements, and Youtube comments.  The world is a dangerous place for those who are cursed with linguistic intelligence.  

That said, every now and again, I come across a word in my travels that I don't know.  Often, I can figure out the general idea of the word through context, but not always.  On those other occasions, I resort to either looking up the word, pretending I do actually know what it means, despite not having a clue, or simply ignoring it and hoping it goes away.  I guess for the last however long it's been since I first heard the song, I used one of the latter two methods there during the song "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band.  

During the first verse of the song, the singer proclaims to "speak of the pompatus of love."  I don't know what pompatus means, but rather than have people think less of me by admitting I don't know what pompatus means, I didn't make a big deal of it.  I just let people believe I was aware of the word and moved on.  After all....it's just a song, and it will go away in (on average) 4 minutes and 2 seconds.  So not long ago, I decided to confront this minor hole in my knowledge base and look up the word Pompatus.  Turns out, it's not a word.  What the crap, Steve Miller!?  Turns out everybody else was doing the same thing I was, and pretending to know what that word meant and secretly wondering if everyone else was smarter than them.  Well, no more! 

Thought Of This While Eating Cheese

Robin in Geneva: “Holey cheese, Batman!”

I hate you.

See...it's funny, because Geneva is in Switzerland.

Yeah.  Nothing funnier than a joke autopsy.

So there you have it! 

Call Me Kal-El

With great power comes great responsibility.  With regular power comes Internet

Ladies and Gentlemen, Jeremy has returned from his little Sandy-related hiatus.  The Internets are a better place.

Thank you.  It's good to be back!  So as you're aware, unless you live in a cave somewhere other than the eastern seaboard, there was a bit of a hurricane that came through the Greater Jeremy Area, which knocked out my power for about 23 hours.  I would whine about it, but I've been camping so a lack of power is no big deal, and there are people who got much worse hands dealt to them by Sandy, so all in all, things went well.  I decided to get back to what I do best...or like...third or fourth best, maybe...making jokes!  

Today's joke deals with Spiderman, and works on many, many levels.  See, you have the play on a famous catch phrase, the storytelling of my lack of electricity, the juxtaposition of two different denotations of the word "power," the fact that I got to use the word "juxtaposition," and the antithesis between "Responsibility" and "Internet." 

Yes, the Internet is a place of a lack of responsibility.  People hide behind apparent anonymity to do all sorts of untold things.  There's your basic Trolling, there's comments on Youtube, 4chan, piracy, and Twitter.  Nobody thinks of any sort of responsibility for things they do online...unless you're a mildly popular Blogger who posts his Sametime Statuses on a webpage.