I want a free laptop!


It appears as if Microsoft is giving away free laptops to folks who "blog" up "the blogosphere" with their "blogolacious" "bloggoranglings." To summarize, "boring people nobody pays attention to get free computers."

Now anybody who has ever read anything I've written knows I'm a boring person. I write about my pets. I write about my wife and baby. More importantly, these days, I don't even write at all. I'm so busy trying to figure out why Google AdSense has determined that you guys are so obsessed with Pulp Fiction wallets and calculating the square root of your soulmate, that I never even have time to write. I just sit in a giant money bin and swim through piles of gold coins ala Scrooge McDuck, only with significantly more neck and spinal injuries. Have you ever tried swimming through gold coins? It's like trying to pass a cueball covered in camel hair through your small intestines.

Regardless, I enjoy material possessions. I'm surrounded by them. When I die, I'm convinced Our Lord and Saviour Jesus "JC" Christ will count up all the things I own, much like the end of each "Smash TV" level. Oh look at that, Saint Peter! I've racked up $2.3 million in toasters! Don't even bother looking at my total for VCRs, it will BLOW YOUR MIND.

So why isn't anybody sending me free garbage? Hell, I'd love a laptop loaded with Windows Vista. Right now I just own a laptop loaded with Windows Slow and Unstable, so this would definitely be a step in the right direction. Why doesn't Microsoft send me free things to "review," instead of these no-name "bloggers" who spend half their day reporting on events reported on other blogs reported by Slashdot linked to Digg via de.lic.i.o.u...s. DOT COM.

To be fair and let major companies know my policy up front, I will create a sliding scale of how I will review whatever you send me. This way, you'll know in advance what kind of score I'll give it.

$5000 and higher... 14,000 star rating.
$3000-$4999... 952 star rating.
$1000-$2999... 374 star rating.
$500-$999... 133 star rating.
$100-$499... 61 star rating.
$10-$99... 12 star rating.
$1-$9... 4 star rating.
under $1... I invent a method of traveling back in time to kill the person who invented the "star," thereby granting you no stars.

What you street-smart marketing gurus have to keep in mind is the question of journalistic integrity. Particularly the issue that I have absolutely none of it, nor ever want any. This fresh, hip, in-your-face honesty will assure you that this whole "return the free laptop because if you don't then your readers will doubt you blog in the best interests of the blogosphere's blogoriffic blogination" crap which faceless Internet bozos somehow believe makes a difference in this boring, boring world of theirs. The more expensive something is, obviously the better it is! It's a fact! and if you don't believe me, just look at my little chart up there, the one with all the dots and dollar signs in it. Feel free to digg my youtube on the Internet 2.0 with AJAX pushing Ruby on Rails to my content aggregator network.

This has gotta stop


Big news from the shocking world of science: This has gotta stop. Let's jump into the nitty gritty of the situation here:

There are warnings from science that the current state of affairs cannot continue. It's not sustainable.

So if you considered living your life in the current state of affairs, you might want to reconsider. Perhaps look into a new state of affairs? Or maybe a slightly modified state of affairs. Like the current state of affairs but it's wearing a fancy purple hat with a bow on it. That would qualify. But if your current state of affairs has a fancy purple hat WITHOUT a bow, then that won't cut it. It's too close to the current state of affairs, I'm afraid.

Additionally, things are not sustainable. They will not be sustained. You can try your hardest to sustain things, but there will be a point where some guy will approach you and say, "sorry, you tried your hardest, but things are not sustaining. We're gonna have to let you go." Then you'll realize the current state of affairs cannot continue. The AAAS warned us all about this, specifically regarding the topics of "energy, climate change, HIV, over-exploitation of resources, and poverty." I know they're spot on regarding HIV. I'm tired of HIV! Every time I see some guy with HIV (I take blood samples of every "suspicious" person I encounter), I tell him, "you know something? Your current state of affairs cannot continue. It's not sustainable." Then he'll look me in the eye, and calmly reply, "this has gotta stop." That's just how we roll here in the LS (Lee's Summit).

So, in summary:

1. The current state of affairs cannot continue.
2. It's not sustainable.
3. This has gotta stop.

Please update your Microsoft Outlook calendars accordingly.

NEWSFLASH: Nobody is buying the PS3!!!


I guess the eternal underdog Sony has found themselves at the bottom of the pile this holiday season, unable to convince enough people to purchase Playstation 3s. Their previous sales pitch of "you retarded cretins don't DESERVE a Playstation 3" didn't resonate with the American public, half of which objected to the term "cretin" because they thought a cretin was a type of seahorse. When questioned about the $599 price tag, Sony executives spit on the faces of their mothers and threatened to create a new proprietary storage format, one operated by slide whistles and loaded with so much DRM software that there's less than 20k for storage (on the 12-terabyte unit).

This is good news because I personally dislike Sony for their idiotic Mini Disc, Memory Stick, and Blu-Ray formats, which are doing nothing except failing on a grand scale. That's MY job, Sony. Combine this with the lackluster PS3 launch titles (oh crap, they've got a Madden game?! SIGN ME UP, BOYS!!!), then combine that with the outrageous price tag, then combine all those things with the fact that the Sony PR deparment is run by cokeheads who think we should have to pass a Bar exam and pony up $10,000 to buy a PS3 (not including the controller), and you've got the formula for... well... something.

What I'm trying to say here is that, unlike the PS2, I have no desire to pick up a PS3 anytime for the next year or so. There aren't any games that really grab my interest. Sure "Resistance" looks neat, but honestly, the only possible way anybody could get me to shoot more aliens is by flying me to Texas and giving away free howitzers. I'm more than content with my Xbox 360 (which is never really functioning correctly, but rather "temporarily not broken") and my Nintendo Wii (which doesn't really have a wide assortment of fun games yet, but I assume it will once Nintendo gets into shape and starts ejaculating countless Mario titles all over the Earth).

PS3? More like PSGAY. Oh that's right, I totally went there.

What's with the ads on Something Awful, anyway?


It's funny, when SA had no ads on it, nobody ever emailed me and said, "dear Rich 'Lowtax' Kyanka, thank you for not having ads on your site." Then I started putting ads up and suddenly emails came trickling in, reading, "dear Rich 'Lowtax' Kyanka, thank you for having ads on your site, because now it has given me a real reason to want you dead."

It's always refreshing to know that folks who read SA and enjoy free content are more than excited to let me know how it's against Internet Law to actually want to profit by running ads on your own site. I mean, crap, all I want to do is make more money so I can pay people to update the site with more content. I like the prospect of earning more income so we can expand SA and offer additional services and features. But nooooo, that's out of the question, because it involves making people IGNORE ADS. See that 90-pixel tall block of text towards the top of the page? That thing makes you sterile if you see it. That ad will murder your family and rape you with their corpses in the middle of the night. That ad will prevent you from getting that coveted job at Phantom Entertainment. THAT AD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PUTTING GEORGE "GWBHWSB" BUSH IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

If you hate the idea of supporting a site offering free entertainment, then please, don't read SA anymore. The ad revenue coming in doesn't even cover half of our bandwidth costs, but don't let that stop you from fighting the good fight against capitalism, in between updating your RSS feeds and looking for the perfect open source platform to develop custom Fleshlight hacks ("I want to toggle between Naruto and my mother").

I'm not gonna feel guilty for trying to earn ad revenue so I can expand the services of SA and offer more content to people. I'm not gonna bow down to folks who think I should go broke before running ads, because it's my god-given destiny to avoid profiting from my own business. If you don't like my decisions, if you don't like SA, please feel free to not visit it again. If you want to take this one step further, you can write smarmy IMs to your friends about it. Here are some good starters:

"That Something Awful site... it sure is... SOMETHING AWFUL!"
"Oh Something Awful? I used to visit it before that idiot Lowtax sold out. You know, sold out TO THE MAN."
"Something Awful? More like SOMETHING SOLD OUT ADS EVERYWHERE LOWTAX IS A STUPID RETARD dot com!"
"That Something Awful site hasn't been funny since 2002! I should know; I read it every day and I'm disappointed by it every day! I will continue to check it every day, and if it doesn't start getting funny by around 2012 or so, I'm seriously considering sending them a very strongly worded email regarding their failure."

If ya don't like it, don't read it! There's plenty of sites I do not like, which causes me to not read them. For example, Pantsfish's "Pregame Wrapup." It's a pretty simple relationship, and if you need any pointers explaining it in further detail, let me know. I probably won't respond, but that's just because I'm too busy retarding around in my gold coin vault.

- Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)

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