Pinkerton's Weblog

This Title Brought To You By Starsky & Hutch (Buy on DVD TODAY!)

There were glory days once, before the internet bubble burst, where webmasters could put a single unobtrusive ad on their page and still make enough money to justify their existence. It was a simpler time; a time when anything seemed possible; when every day brought a new start-up company selling some useless, intangible idea; when, most pertinently, advertisers were much, much stupider.

How much things have changed. Nowadays, the only websites seeing profit from the internet feature scandalously bare-breasted college girls shaking their doctorates at nearby webcams. For the rest of us, the answer to generating ad revenue has sadly become sheer, shameless volume.

First it was stationary ads: positioned to the right of articles, on top of articles, underneath articles, in the middle of articles. I could deal with this. I never clicked on them; but then, the sort of person who clicks on an ad with a picture of Tom Cruise and the words "TAKE OUR GENIUS IQ TEST! THIS IS A PICTURE OF [ ] TOM CRUISE [ ] RON BRUISE" probably isn't eating too many bowls of Special K without swallowing the spoon anyway. Ultimately, if the last avenue available to you in proving your intellectual dexterity is answering trivia where the reward is you get to buy things, chances are—get this—you're an idiot.

Luckily, it's exactly these sorts of people who keep the internet running. We might scoff at the person who actually tries the internet ad shooting game in the hopes of winning big cash prizes. But the truth is, if no one was clicking on them, the internet'd be out of business. The next time someone forwards you a letter instructing you to forward it along to five friends for extra-lucky soul-karma, be sure to thank them for picking up enough consumer slack that your favorite sites don't get shut down.

After the stationary ads came the flashing strobe light ads, mainly because it's scientifically proven that people only buy things when a company makes them very angry. After the strobe light ads came the pop-up ads, which were incredibly successful in giving thousands of people lightning-quick window-shutting reflexes. Then the full page ads you had to watch before getting redirected to the link you'd actually clicked on.

Just when I thought I'd gotten used to the worst of it, along comes a foul piece of villainy straight from the red-hot anus of Satan. I just experience my first roll-over ad over at ign.com. I was trying to read an interview with Jonathan Frakes, hoping for details of hair-pulling on-set catfights between Geordi LaForge and Data or Dianna Troi popping unexpectedly out of her one-piece costume (sadly, Frakes keeps these details close to his chest).

I say "trying to read" because every time my cursor came within a half-foot of the giant Starsky & Hutch ad in the middle of the screen, three full-media pop-up windows immediately sprang to life with offers of DVDs, special offers and a fully functioning flash Starsky & Hutch pinball game taking up the entire screen; and all of this at once, every time you accidentally wave your mouse near the ad. It was a lot like trying to read something while a Warner Brothers executive shrieks the words "Ben Stiller!" over and over while peeing directly in your face.

Now, I can live with commercials, because they help pay for the products I like to see and read. But when the commercials actually make reading the product impossible, I can't help but get the vague suspicion that the internet's passed from the necessary evil of site-sustaining ad revenue to the dark side of preposterous supervillainy.

The worst part of this is: I've already seen Starsky & fucking Hutch. I gave at the office, you assholes. I paid $13 and saw it, and I didn't much like it. I don't want your DVD, and even if I did, I'm not a Luddite. I enter video stores and talk to people about movies. I hear ads on the radio and see them in magazines and have to look at building-sized posters of Vin Deisel outside my window. I wouldn't be able to escape knowing about your blockbusters if I tried, because you already do everything short of crawling up my ass and putting up small billboards to entice my blood cells to see it. I'm covered, okay?

I didn't see Hulk when it came out last year, but it wasn't because I wasn't aware of it. As it is I can tell you that it was directed by Ang Lee and stars Eric Bana as a scientist having family problems with his military father Nick Nolte, all while romancing the deliciously perfect-breasted Jennifer Connelly. You fuckheads saturation bombed me to the point where I could give alien visitors a reliable explanation of the plot, stars, director and production costs, and I didn't even see the movie. Your problem isn't that you're not reaching me. Your problem is that you've become so aggravating I'm going out of my way to not buy your products.

"There's no such thing as bad publicity." I would love to prove that wrong. Imagine if the next time you got a piece of penis enlargement spam mail, everyone in North America simultaneously agreed to purchase every company's penis enlarger but that one's. How long do you honestly think spam would continue if that trend took place? I'd say about five seconds.

Take back the night, netizens. Only buy Acme brand penis enlargment pills... for FREEDOM!

The Elusive Mark Millar

Someone recently sent me an email sending me a link to the message board of the immensely talented comic book writer Mark Millar, of whom I’m a fan.

Turns out Mark started up a thread gushing some praise for my silly Spider-Man comics about a month ago. Finding out a popular and talented writer you read all the time thought something you did was cool, and even took the time to let his fanbase know where to find your stuff, is so far above and beyond the call of duty I immediately wanted -- no, needed -- to tell him: “Holy shit, dude – thanks.”

This proved more difficult than I’d thought. I got a membership to MillarWorld and posted onto the Spider-Man thread, thanking Mark and all the other people who’d posted kind words. As it turns out though, MillarWorld is hugely popular, with hundreds of people filtering through the site on an hourly basis. Soon after posting my little thank you, I was disappointed to see it veritably fly down to the bottom of the page, guaranteed to be seen by no one but lonely men in dark rooms with too much time on their hands.

Not throwing in the towel yet, I decided to PM one of the moderators asking if they’d be kind enough to pass along a message to Mr. Millar for me. I don’t know if it was simply because I was a new member, or if I just wasn’t comfortable with the interface or what, but the PM feature was unavailable to me. Strike two.

Plan C: I google “Mark Millar email” and discover precisely why hugely popular writers don’t give out their email addresses to the general public. Of the hundreds of hits returned, most are from people posting in message boards, asking things like: “Dose anyone noe how I can get mark millar email adress?! Ive got the coolest script for an Ultimate X-Men/Thor/Howard the Duck crossover serees and I noe he can help!!!1”

I could fit the number of people who read my stuff in my frigging living room and still have enough space left over to lay out cardboard for breakdancing – and even I get regularly sent articles and essays. I can’t imagine what an actual popular author’s inbox must look like; though I suspect it'd be a lot like walking through the subway and getting asked for change every ten seconds. “Can you help?”; “I’ve got this script…”; “My ideas are so awesome but Marvels got there heds up there asses dude”; “I drewe a picture of you on my chest with staples” and so on.

So anyway, fuck it. If anybody reading this knows how the holy hell the MillarWorld message boards work, or better yet knows Mark Millar, or better yet is Mark Millar’s mom: please just tell him the Spider-Man comic guy says “thanks.”

Thanks.

The Complete News Skim Comics

News Skim Comics #1: "Slip of the Tongue" It's not easy running an evil shadow government at the best of times, and it certainly can't help when your puppet candidates are two foul-mouthed potatoheads cursing the homeless on live television. As with most matters of American political direction, all heads turn to a top-tier Batman villain for a rational solution. CLICK HERE TO READ

News Skim Comics #2: "Enter...The Green Party" With the Redemopublicratican presidential candidate running unopposed, it's up to the Green Party to once again try to save the world, then fail to do so in humiliating fashion. Presidential hopeful Ralph Nader argues international policy with a rampaging monster, while Evil Consortium spies lurk in the shadows purchasing nachos. CLICK HERE TO READ

News Skim Comics #3: "Throwdown (Part I)" Oh, it's on. The political climate heats up as both candidates have a fair and reasonable discussion of ethics, with Green Party candidate Godzilla beating the absolute stuffing out of Morgan Freeman on the steps of an impressive-looking government building I can't remember the name of. Mayhem, she ensues. Get ready to have cliffhangers rebound off your face with every page, each more cliffhanging than the last. CLICK HERE TO READ

News Skim Comics #4: "Throwdown (Part II)" Photoshop battle royale continues: Godzilla and Morgan take their grudge match on a tour of Washington, D.C., leaving a path of meat-hewing destruction through the funeral procession of our actor-est former President ever. Meanwhile, Cheney nurses his wounds and swears revenge on his lackeys; and if you're willing to take his claims at face value, Donald Rumsfeld's pecs are apparently totally awesome. CLICK HERE TO READ

News Skim Comics #5: "Throwdown (Part III)" The complicated mess this comic calls a plot rolls to a flailing halt in this shocking conclusion, with Godzilla and Morgan Freeman settling their differences the only way they know how: hovering in the sky, with flashbacks. The reader is also given some disturbing glimpses into the home lives of several characters that they probably could have done without. Bonus feature: this comic actually manages to offend every single person in Europe. And their pets. CLICK HERE TO READ

Office of the Damned

Having been at my new job for about a month now, one thing I’ve slowly gotten used to is the sight of a thin, nine-foot-tall old man who roams the hallways in my office. He’s kind of odd-looking, in that way you'd get if you took a pile of old coat hangers and dressed it in a shirt and pair of dress pants. He has almost freakishly long arms that hang down to his knees and don’t swing when he walks; and the walk itself is a frightening stumbling affair. It looks like he’s constantly falling forward and catching himself from a faceplant at the last second.

I’ve never seen him talk; though if you nod at him he smiles an enormous smile before pounding his heavy feet down the hallway out of view. As far as I can tell he doesn’t seem to have a cubicle or, for that matter, any official responsibilities. Since I’ve never seen him do anything else, I can only assume lumbering down hallways is the sum total of his duties here.

I don’t know what’s worse: that my company apparently hired a scary Frankenstein monster; or that nobody seems to mind. At least this explains the flaming torch and pitchfork I received as part of my benefits package.

I’d complain to my boss, VP of Sales Dracula, but every time I enter his office I just hear a centuries-old voice coming from inside his enormous casket-like desk, asking me to make an appointment. Then I always just get distracted by his three under-sexed gown-wearing secretaries.