Bigger doesn't always mean better, so smaller shouldn't either.

With OS X, the early iPods, and-new look Powerbooks and iMacs, Apple took the aesthetic edge in the electronics market.  They realized their customers were willing to pay an extra few hundred to avoid band-aid colored products. 

Apple's pitfall was the iPod mini.  For a 75% cut in storage space and a 10% cut in cost, you and your spoiled friends could make rainbows of mp3 players.  This is when Apple learned that their customers didnt just have a malleable concept of value, they had no concept of value whatsoever.  For every $10,000 machine sold to graphic designers, web developers, film editors, etc., was a handful of trust fund babies, gifted with a Volkswagen's worth of hardware to run Safari and iChat simultaneously.  To their credit, some of these wunderkinds did grow prolific in GarageBand and iMovie:

Now with graphic abortions like the iPod touch and Macbook air, Apple, Inc. is treading into unforgivable territory.  Today at WWDLDC, Steve Jobbs and his marriage to nanotechnology have become fully integrated into the latest version of Mr. Dean's list.  

Steve Jobbs can stick the iPod nano straight up his ass.  I'm seriously:

"It's so small, oh my god!"

I'm also impressed- Apple has engineered a product that I can lose in my pocket.  The first iPod was great because it was about the size of a deck of cards, or a pack of cigarettes.  It's harder to misplace things like your gun or wallet because you know where they are at all times, and notice immediately when they're missing.  I don't want a cracker sized $500 sitting in my pocket.  Some people say arguments like mine stem from overcompensation.  Well regrettably, I've seen the countless naked men with Levi's jeans painted on their legs, nodding to their earbuds and smoking cigarettes, and no one's making Mark Whalberg jealous.    

Steve Jobbs' bite-size fantasy is emasculating our generation.  Today's Apple fanatic couldn't fit a firstgen iPod into their pants pockets without tearing several seams.  Apple products, along with their owners, have become obnoxiously thin, lightweight, and delicate.  They dress themselves up so much they're afraid to get dirty; they're pussies.  In the same way that not everyone wants Kate Moss, I like some weight behind my iPod.  And if you throw on some sweatpants and really breathe,  you might realize that the tightest seam in your designer jeans is sewn of Steve Jobbs' firm grip.    

Enhance electronics.

What kind of dumbass are my kids going to think I am when I tell them to save every penny that isn't actually a penny?

Historically, coins hold a great deal of significance. Take the likes of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Julius Caeser: arguably their greatest achievement was earning a spot on the face of a coin. Those coins reflected the might of their facesakes; I'd much rather get hit with a bag of Benjamins than a sacque of Caesers. 

Americans are tired of change.  A friend drove me to lunch a few weeks back, and after paying the meter she dumped the few pennies she had on the sidewalk.  I thought holy crap, she just threw away good American money!  Then I thought holy shit, I'd have done the same thing!

The government is systematically eradicating the penny from use.   They began their inquisition by barring pennies from parking meters, and started a social revolution that spread like wildfire.  The message is clear: get the brown coin out.  

 This afternoon I'd like to distinguish the US penny by adding it to Mr. Dean's list, for putting up with all the silver coins' shit.  

It's become standard to refuse pennies.  Arcades don't take them, turning their backs on their previous lives as "penny arcades" like 50 Cent on his Connecticut upbringing.  And good luck at the vending machines.  With a pocketful of pennies I lose any hope of being the temporary-tatted up beefcake in the McDonalds pay 'n piss bathroom.  The funniest joke I ever told was asking my bank teller for a roll of pennies.  With that roll I wouldn't even be able to go fuck myself- my asshole has stopped accepting pennies.  

I know what you're thinking... that day to day this doesn't affect you much.  Even if parking meters did take the petty penny, it'd take 25 for a 15 minute spot.  Who's really going to carry around three pounds of loose change in case they wanna Fanta?  Well you've all seen one of these before:

Examples aren't abundant, but the one place that stands out as ideal for penny use also happens to be the Mississippi of penny policy- the laundromat.  You're already lugging 20 pounds of crap over there, so why not collect and carry enough pennies for a load?  Because the typically white machines want none of it.  Don't forget that laundromats are one of few places that still encourage separating whites from colors.  Why don't the bigwigs crack down on this blatant violation of civil rights?  They're still pissed at Lincoln.

There's little we can do to stop these prejudice wheels from turning.  So before they become obsolete, spend some time with your pennies.  But don't save them.  Coin collectors are suckers.  

  

   

Have you not seen Final Destination 4?

I was on the T (Boston mass transit) last week listening to a real balloon of a bitch braying into her blackberry about her problems at work.  Actually, I was listening to NWA on my ipod byt the loud cow easily overpowered my apple earbuds.  To be fair to Steve, people outside the train were within earshot.  however, readers, my hearing was hardly the only sense being offended; this ho had a glow.  She was like the sun- when I shut my eyes I could see her through my eyelids.  Imagine Ralphie May stuffed with 10,000 kW of halloween lights: 

Ralphette was bitching to one of her trough buddies about a "client" at her employer, "Darque Tan", a tanning salon near my university.  While the nature of the blog is to be open to everyone, the following is addressed specifically to the chin strapped bastard asshole who founded and moronically named this place.

Dear Guido,
Fuck you.
-Mr. Dean

There is something gravely wrong with our culture. I made a rare appearance in class the other day, and I was really oggling one particular sorority girl (I'm not generalizing, she had the sweatshirt on).  I could not focus. This wasn't your typical in-class fantasizing. I wouldn't have hired the girl to blow me in pesos. It was a unique allure, even prompting the Nick Cage face of quizzical confidence:



Then it hit me. My female classmate looked like the ass of a 100lb firefly. She had such a glow I could almost hear it. With great pleasure I introduce the first addition to Mr. Dean's list: the hundreds of metros and whores countrywide that frequent tanning salons.

You were not tanning. What you meant when you said you were "tanning" is one of two things:
1. You just spent 10-30 minutes in a UV casket.
2. You just got buck naked and blasted with hi-liter ink.

Either option leads directly into a third conclusion-
3. You are an ugly jackass

Now you might think that no one really notices your polka dotted arms, or that it will fade into something resembling a tan in the near future, but you're wrong. Not soon enough. The good thing about real tanning is that idiots get burnt by the sun. It's natures way of telling you that you've done something wrong. Luckily for darque tanners, there's Mr. Dean's list to similarly read you the writing on the wall, until you pull your heads out of your radioactive asses and can read for yourselves.

I wish I knew how to tell you to shut up in that language...

Sometimes it's hard to categorize a group of people without ignorantly stereotyping.  Most of the time it doesn't really matter.  So without further ado...

Bienvenidos, Willkommen, Benvenuto to my list, chatty foreigners.  

It's awkward to have phone conversations in front of other people.  There are folks who have no problem mouthing off at their "special somebodies" in more places than Sarah Silverman fucked Matt Damon (ziiiiing!), and we sometimes call them friends, but for this they're socially inept and obnoxious.  Unless you're in the privacy of your own sound barriers, phone conversations should be strictly informative: "I'll meet you in five minutes";  "Yea, I called him about an hour ago, but he didn't answer so you should try your other guy";  "No I don't fucking want chicken for dinner again!". It's generally accepted that no one wants or needs to overhear the intimacies of your life.  The best it's going to do is land your ass a spot on the list.

Bilinguals seem to have pulled out the stops on this problem.  The logic- if I speak in another language, I can talk as loud as I want for as long as I want!  The problem- it's not always the content of your conversation, it's the context.  To break this wordplay down for you TOEFLers, it's not just your stupid conversation that's bothering me, it's your loud fucking mouth.  When speaking in a different language, not only do "bi" people drudge on for longer, but at a louder volume. This is known as the "Madden Complex". 

A thousand words:

Stranger- I've never seen you before in my life.  This would make it highly unlikely that you're talking about me, so the fact that I'm staring you down with one hand on the sack and the other flipping you the bird has nothing to do with what you're saying.  It's how loud you're saying it.  I took a Fung Wah bus from New York to Boston and sat next to a Japanese lady who was on her cell phone for as long as I could suffer sitting there.  At the earliest opportunity, I got off the bus and hitch hiked the rest of the way to Boston.  I was raped and left for dead in a field somewhere around Sturbridge, and all I could think about was what a nice, quiet evening it was.  

I like to be as much a part of the solution as the next guy.  While there isn't a lot of room for creativity here, I've managed to turn two simple and realistic options from this scenario: turn your shit down and shut up,  or turn your shit down by shutting up. 

Orientation

Welcome to Mr. Dean's list.  

If you are a college student or went to a pretentious high school, you are probably familiar with the dean's list.  According to wikipedia, the dean's list is reserved for students "who achieve high grades during their stay in an academic term or academic year".  

Well I didn't want to waste my time studying in high school and I'm failing out of college, so I've asexually conceived Mr. Dean's list.  Following the footsteps of one of history's greatest entrepreneurs, Santa Claus, both the good and the bad will make the overall list.  Although there will be no short term reward for the good, the idea behind the site is that Mr. Dean's list will become a widely sought out resource for opinion, similar to the bible or metacritic, and that people will raise their children or illegally download music according to my maxims.  

So in the short term, thanks for reading, although  it will one day inevitably be you thanking me for posting .