Busybody time

Yep I've been inactive on this for a while, but that doesn't mean I am outta here.  There is a bunch of stuff that is the happenings.


Stuff that has to do with me:
LSATS;  I scored slightly higher than the national average on the LSATs in June.  I might have done better if I had remembered I was signed up to take them... or was sober (I drank 2 bottles of wine before realizing I had to go to the thing, but at least I got in, I can't tell you how many test takers were crying on the sides or in the hallway because they brought their cellphone with them or didn't have a #2 pencil... The were all Asian looking actually...they were, what do you want me do to about it? Lie?) .  But it's good enough to get me to where I wanna go.  This means that in a while I'll be able to win internet arguments by saying "fuck you, I'm a lawyer" and it won't be a lie.  That is not the only reason I am going to law school, but it is the most fun one.

 

Suck my habeas corpus bitches!

Speaking of legal things, I am also currently suing the crap out of a certain City Agency for sucking at their job.  After that, I will then be suing the private company that was involved.  If that works out I will not have to worry about law-school tuition now that I think about it.  Although I am still gonna go get a bottle of Jonnie Walker Blue Label.

I have been taking on new clients so I am actually a bit busy.  But we will try to bring you plenty more of this nonsense.

Go Fuck Yourself Awards:
Apparently Hulu has decided they hate their customers and no longer wants to be in business, because that new interface/menu they came up with is complete garbage.  I was lucky in that I used the PSN to access it, and they didn't get around to ruining that until September of 2017.  Much as I love some of their original programming and the fact that I could rely on HD quality of programs I wanted to watch (no, Time Warner, I am never signing up for cable TV ever ever again), that menu is just so atrocious that the reverse value ratio it creates is just way too high and I'll just go back to pirating the shows I want to see.   Seriously, was this designed by the nephew of the CEO or something?  Because that shit pile seems exactly like the crap you get when nepotism and cronyism is involved (remember that Obamacare website disaster that happened because they no-bid farmed it out to one of their friends?  Yeah, this is that).  Dear Hulu, fuck you so much for doing that.

Guys that only works when Apple does it.

 
Also the target of many a "fuck you" from their users in recent memory is Photobucket.  Yes the photo hosting service with the unsustainable business model has decided to change their game in the most Martin Shkreli-esque way they possibly can and charge exorbitant fees to anyone who wants their photos back.  Now this should tell you something about Photobucket; the company (formerly owned by Fox News, so you know the kind of people there are just going to be absolute gems... oh no wait, germs) has absolutely no plans to exist past 2018.  They're outta here.  They know they're outta here, and they are gonna loot as much out of whatever they can before it happens.  The MBA types (I already have one of those so ha), are doing some down and dirty ratios and have figured out that there is a significant percentage of users who will pay that fee. Either they have businesses that absolutely need to have images hosted and can't function of they go down even for one day, or they have more money than smarts and who gives a fuck.  They are going to get as much money as they can, and then fold, because someone there is not gonna have this end without a golden parachute.

But if you didn't have locally stored copies of your photos and only had them on Photobucket then you're an idiot. 


Boxing the office
So box office revenues are down and this year has apparently been abysmal.  As for reasons, I tend to subscribe to the perfect storm scenario. The ingredients for this perfect storm are three main ones I think; 
#1; stagnant wages.  Let's face it, the generation that is supposed to be going to these movies has been screwed hard and nothing is going to get better.  years ago, someone with a minimum wage job would only have to work 2 hours to afford to go to the movies (to say nothing about the baby boomers who didn't even need to work more than one to afford a movie ticket).  Today, that is a laughable fantasy.  When a movie ticket costs close to your entire shift at your shit-job, you are not going to purchase one lightly.  Jacking up prices and charging extortion rates for flavored wax and carbonated sugar water is going to really bite into the whole willingness to pay part of consumer behavior.
#2; There is something better out there now.  If you are already paying for Netflix, you are going to maybe say "fuck going to that 5th reeboot of whatever the crap it is" and just binge-watch Stranger Things or get caught up on episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Dragon Maid or something.  Online content, streaming whatever, that youtube show you like, all that stuff is the "something better to do" part of the decision to not go to the movies. 
#3; No one wants your shit.  Seriously, blaming Rotten Tomatoes for falling movie revenue is like Hillary blaming Bernie Sanders for losing the election to Trump.  Not only does everyone realize that is complete horse shit, but you come off looking like a out of touch artard who simply thinks so highly of themselves, they can't accept reality.  No one is going, because the movies are crap, mostly made that way in a transparent cash-grab attempt at the Chinese market.  Adding fuel to that fire, is the fact that marketing movies seems to be the only industry where it is permissible for the advertising to straight-out lie to consumers about the product.  We have all seen trailers which basically show a completely different idea of what the final film is about, or even use scenes that are not delivered in the film itself.  No other industry is allowed to lie to consumers with such impunity like that.  So it has fostered a heavy skepticism regarding making the decision about whether it's worth spending money on.

Those three things all at once are a perfect mix of factors that are going to keep people from buying movie tickets. And like any industry dominated by head-up-ass CEOs, Hollywood will absolutely not figure it out until more studios go the way of Blockbuster Video.


The New York Post; Still stupid as hell.
In a September 8th article the NY Post proved that once again the lights are on but nobody's home, by using a photo of the helmet from Skyrim in a story about an actual Viking era burial site.

Come by next week when images from The Fast and the Furious will be used in a story about the New York Department of Transportation.

Whoop Whoop that's the sound of a cash-cow:
Long-running manga and excellent anime series Kochi-Kame (full name; Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo) which ended its 40 year run last year will be back as a manga again.  In terms of animation there are no plans announced so far as I know.  While based on police officers, they're Japanese police which are not as horrible as our American badged thugs so it makes it easier to like.  Plus the cast of the anime is superb.

This is a fun one and one of those perennial titles that are more popular in Japan than the rest of the world.  However if you are learning Japanese, it is a good one to read to improve your abilities and/or stay sharp.  Lots of every-day type conversations in there but with some decent jokes as well.  There is also some frequent nudity.  Because butts are funny.


That's it for now.  See you in the funny papers.
TAO

Viacom Viacan't: Regressive corporate strategies in entertainment media

This just in, Viacom invents time-machine, gets stuck in 2005. 

Viacom CEO Bob Bakish has announced that some Viacom programming, most notably so far The Daily Show and @Midnight, along with The Colbert Report and Tosh.suck, will no longer be available on streaming services such as Hulu.  Now, to someone who reached the zenith of their professional career in 1998, this kind of strategy makes sense because they never bothered to learn how cord cutters worked or what kind of market they will inevitably create.  The reason is that there was no such thing as a cord-cutter in 1998, and people still had subscriptions to AOL dialup internet service.  If 1998 were a person, they'd be old enough to drink in most countries, and could have voted in the last election.  It seems obvious that  applying the same corporate strategy from that era, or even from something like 2005 is a bad idea since they would be woefully outdated, but that doesn't usually occur to the entity that is the CEO (they're not people).  Enter the long suffering baby boomer executive who knows exactly how to market and design pull-strategies for other baby boomers sitting on folding chairs in Boca Raton just waiting around for their prostates to swell up to the size of a soccer ball and complain about how the waitress at Applebee's (who is working her way through medical school) is part of a super self-centered generation that "fails to adapt" while making their grand-kids check their email on their phone for them because they're "too old" to learn that new-fangled technology ...technology that's been around since 1971   Yet for some reason this same baby boomer executive is somehow surprised that the same strategies that work on boomers, somehow don't work on this product of society they've invented which they call "Millennials."

No, old TV guy, I am not going to go sign up at Time Warner or Comcast (two companies that have about the same approval rate as the Nazi Party, or worse, Electronic Arts), just so I can watch one show or another which I could easily pirate, and mostly pirate out of spite at this point.  Not only is this another confirmation of the downright uselessness of "The CEO" as a concept, but how they are now a downright malignancy to otherwise healthy and sustainable companies, dragging them down like the world's most expensive boat anchor.

Makes decisions based on emotions and a 4th grade understanding of how technology works.But looks damn good doing it in a suit that cost more than you'll make in 6 months.

Some could argue that the only function of a CEO is to make sure investors stay comfortable paying the corporation's allowance, which would only be a salient argument if their ability to run the place into the ground through complete ignoramical idiocy wasn't so palpable. When police make some little kid with cancer a member of the SWAT team for the day, it makes for great PR, but even they are smart enough to know he's just a mascot and shouldn't be given an AR-15. CEOs surround them with environments they feel comfortable in.  In modern America, your environment is a commodity to be purchased.  Don't have a lot of money?  Enjoy the one that comes with life in a trailer-park and a job that probably involved a blue vest, khaki pants, a time-clock, and the need to look at your odometer to see if your car needs an oil change, or make a decision between paying your phone bill and getting a haircut.  Have a shitload of money?  Congratulations, you will never ever have to know what it's like to wash your own dishes or wait for something to go on sale before you can buy it.  But if you are a CEO there is definitely one specific type of environment you are going to buy.  One where you will never be exposed to the word "no."  You'll love it in there.  Surrounded by people getting paid barely enough to make their rent who are going to be so terrified of putting you in a negative emotional state, that they'd skip their own funeral to make sure you have enough of that stationary you like.  Wearing even the most luxurious blinders still means you have every chance of getting t-boned when your confidence is a product of an echo chamber.  Don't believe me?  Do you think Jar Jar Binks would exist at all if The Phantom Menace was George Lucas's first or second movie?  Yeah, someone would have told him "no George, that's not a good idea," but now he bought himself an ecosystem where that will never ever happen.

The end result is that people in these outdated power positions end up having an outdated idea of how things work, and do not stay current with changes that effect their own industry.  This problem sustains itself because they live in a world where absolutely no one is going to make them address those shortcomings either.  They just stop knowing how stuff works because said "stuff" has significantly changed.  Stuff like TV viewing.  TV doesn't work the way it used to, even as recently as 5-10 years ago.  I don't need Animal Planet, the Home Shopping Network, or a whole bunch of other channels that air too much fake reality house hunting shows or make me watch even one second of any Guy Fieri or Rachel Ray (yuck).  If History Channel is going to make a show about alligator murder then I really don't need to pay for that, because it's not a product I really want to buy (although alligator tastes good by the way, if you want some I got a guy.  You want alligator meat I can get you alligator meat by 3oclock). 

Om nom nom

This isn't going to cost Viacom much money at all.  Remember this is the company that invented the concept of deliberately not paying freelancers being counted as a viable revenue stream.  On paper, from an accounting perspective, pulling programming is mostly innocuous.  Entertainment media isn't really a tangible commodity, so limiting it's availability isn't really going to drive the price up, that only works with Game of Thrones and Disney movies (come on home where your video's waiting).  But those same intangible assets are what are going to take the hit.  Goodwill (let's be clear, Viacom has no goodwill and doesn't need it, but the shows themselves, as individual brands have tons and more importantly their success depends on having it).  Properties like that are going to take a straight kick in the nards once people who pay for streaming services all of a sudden can't get what they previously could get.  It's not that something just isn't coming to streaming services, it's that something is being taken away (huge difference).  That kind of thing makes people angry, and angry people won't give a shit if pirating something hurts Summer Redstone's ability to buy another yacht to get to his bigger yacht on his private island which is made of even bigger yachts all tied together.

I couldn't find an image of a yacht going to an island made of bigger yachts tied together so...

There's a light, over at the Amazon place.
Thankfully Amazon seems to be doing the opposite of this.  Bolstered by the popularity of the New Top Gear I mean The Grand Tour, they have announced they really want to be the big fish when it comes to entertainment media streaming.  And you know what?  That's fine, that's great, you go for it.  I remember in the days of VHS you paid money to rent the things, so paying a small amount to watch something you want to watch (but now you don't even have to leave the house) isn't such a weird concept.  Jeez I have a premium Crunchyroll subscription and I'm only following 3 shows.  Don't be a friggin idiot you people, Crunchyroll Premium is a great value.  ...Hey Crunchyroll, open an NYC office and hire me, I'll make your dreams come true.  I filmed you guys for a!Pon in Tokyo and you don't owe me anything but, BUT, you can pretend that you do.  See how easy that was?  Yeah.  Just re-imagine that in the Rick Sanchez voice and it sounds way better.

Anyway, Amazon's streaming service is mostly cool.  But the downsidessesseses be that they rarely have things that Netflix doesn't have (High Man in the Castle isn't really that great) and their user interface could use a lot of work.  But those two things are fixable.  There's nothing that's fundamentally wrong in the DNA of Amazon's streaming that would make it impossible to like for the majority of consumers. If they have done anything it's that it has proven that perseverance and sticking to your guns can still be a viable business strategy even if every finance major from here to Bangalore is only capable of thinking a maximum of 5 quarters into the future.  Oh, and they use wage-slaves.  Lots and lots of wage-slaves.  But, that's not gonna stop you from logging in and ordering the next time you need new underpants or whatever Danganronpa figure you happen to really really like.

My new waifu!

Did... did I have a point?  Oh yea, cord-cutters are not going to jump ship and sign up for Direct TV or Satan-Serve or whatever  just because any show or even every show is no longer available on streaming services.  No Optimum, I don't care if I can still remember every word from your TV ads from 10 years ago, it's not gonna happen).  Things like Network Decay/Channel Drift have become so prevalent and intense in their ability to devalue content providers, that the required willingness to pay among media consumers has withered and become a most fragile thing.

I mentioned it really recently that cord-cutters are heavy on certain demographic metrics, more-so than telecom/cable/satellite customers as a whole.  Than which means that certain types of properties are going to be more of a draw than others, certain advertisers are going to have more success, and they are mostly what old people would call "tech-savvy," you know, like your Aunt when she found out you knew enough html to change the font on your eBay listings and then thought you could repair her printer.  That means that finding the show online is going to happen one way or another, and you, Mr. Entertainment Company Executive gotta deal with it.  Mimeograph manufacturers got fucked by Xerox, that pesky horseless carriage put farriers out of business, and RCA isn't making many record players anymore, so if you want to succeed, put your ego in check, realize that the massive amounts of knowledge you've built is going to lose its value at the same rate as bananas go bad, and get your shit together and keep up with "the now" as they used to say. 

Of course not.

I think that much like Verizon lately realizing that not offering "unlimited" data is a bad idea, Viacom is going to look around in a few months and be all like "oops" and then you will be able to see The Daily Show on Hulu again.