YKS The Mag Issue #4

“Fuck i dont want to write this shit! Fuck!” - Unknown

That is ok, my friend. I will write it. I was actually going to write it yesterday but I got caught up in the bullshit and then today I went into Space Out Mode and didn’t get anything done. I am not on the board at all. I’m putting up a goose egg right now. I need to get off the schneid. To get my juices moving, I will share with you a creative writing piece I’ve been working on about my cat.

Speckles is a spunky little guy with a big personality. He likes to be right by my side every minute of the day, even when I’m trying to get work done! One time, he kept stepping his cute furry paws on my laptop keyboard. While my back was turned, he ordered a copy of ​“Infinite Jes​t” from Amazon using my credit card. How did he memorize my card number? Have any of your cats ever stolen money from you and used it to buy a David Foster Wallace novel? When I adopted him, I knew that he might pee on the couch—it’s just odd that no one warned me about this!

Just kidding. I wouldn’t put that in here. But The New Yorker did! Kind of makes you wonder about the stuff they put in that magazine or newspaper or whatever it is. I don’t know, I’ve never read the fucking physical product. It sounds like it’s probably for rich guys, and I guess what they get out of it is really bland Humour Essays? And then they flip over to the Stocks section and read about what the stocks are doing today, make a few phone calls, then maybe they look at the stocks again. And that’s the whole day. Kind of cool, but no time for gaming there. 

Anyway, people can write whatever boring crap they want. No skin off my nose. You can keep whirring around in your little universe of “Cats are funny”, and I’ll be over here saying computers are stupid plus give me depression. Roughly the same amount of people will enjoy each thing, and we can wake up in the morning and look at the stocks that we don’t own any of, and go “Ah.” Pretty good. 

QuOffensive: Combatting telemarketing fraud realtime

I think, based on my conversation with DB (co-host of the show, notorious troll, father) that what happened this week with the newsletter is that we both intended to write it but didn’t want to, and didn’t communicate with each other either, so we both just sat around and waited for it to materialize. When it did not do that for some reason, we were forced to act. 

Also I think he started reading about quantum computing so that he could more eloquently describe exactly why this idea is a dumb piece of shit, whereas I’m comfortable saying that it is complete bunk without necessarily understanding the superposition of integers or whatever other type of crap you’re supposed to know so that computers make sense. 

It is true that scams and confidence men and grifts, etc. are not all that great to have happen to you, especially if you’re 125 years old and don’t know what the hell is going on, and you’re just sliding your credit card onto the phone screen whenever it lights up because you think it’s your grandson calling you from the Space Living Room. I agree with that. I guess what I don’t agree with is that there is a big cylinder you can dump this information into and have it produce the result, which are desired, of “arrested criminal”, and “safe money”. That’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at after about 2 seconds of dedicated thought and 8 minutes of remembering that old video game Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, which seemed, at the time of its release, to contain within its codebase such realistic Titty Physics that a not-insignificant percentage of the gaming public might actually release their “Chaos Nutt” and die on the spot. 

Anyway the guy canceled his campaign, leaving seniors everywhere exposed to strangers who would prey on their lack of technological sophistication and trumped-up fear of the unknown to sell them a product which does not actually exist in any real sense. Ah!

Touch Free Ring

I think when we talked about this non-product Etsy craft project we should have noted that it originates from Australia. I don’t say that to imply we shouldn’t have said that it’s just a button and a piece of string, and it’s really very small, and the only uses indicated in the campaign are for touching things around your own house, and it costs $6. But Australia is different, and has tripped us up before with their weird little jokes that don’t really seem like jokes but if you don’t say “maybe this is a joke” people will get really mad at you even if you’re trying your best and actually it’s hard to do this! 

Cards Christians Like 

Cards Against Humanity was in the news this week, for being a fucked up nasty place full of weirdos, and like the Chris D’elia stuff, I kind of feel vindicated about it. At the same time, I also know it’s not good to feel that way because actual people are involved, and it’s doubly bad to act like you did something smart by not liking something in advance because it makes you look like a prick. So, kind of a wash there. 

One thing that’s striking to me, however, is that there is an office (apparently full of psychos) for Cards Against Humanity. A real place where they all go, to work on the game and...the business, which the games is! What the fuck! 

If you keep up with the Expanded CAHiverse, you know they dug a big hole to prove something about the border wall, bought an island and renamed it Hawaii 2, and probably donated a million dollars to charity if I had to guess. Maybe all that more-or-less good stuff is a result of the people in charge feeling bad for being little turds who put out a game with a bunch of racist goofs in it or maybe it’s incidental, but I admit that it does probably necessitate a more coordinated structure than 2 dumbasses forgetting to text each other about who is doing the newsletter this week. 

That being said -- and again this would be entirely separate from the abuse and cruelty and incompetence originating from, seemingly, the very top of the organization -- it’s so funny to imagine clocking in to work on a pee pee joke card game that came out a long fucking time ago. Do they have security tags (that say stuff like “I’m a booty doctor, let me in” on them)? Do they have HR (if so they don’t seem very good at it)? Do they have corporate retreats where they’re forced to play their own cringey ass game (would bet my life on this)? That is so unreal to me. And maybe that’s my failing! Maybe the show and the stream would be bigger and better if we ran them like a real business. I will start looking into WeWorks right now, and drawing up a plan to dock Mike’s pay if he doesn’t use lids on his cups. 

Christian version sucks too.

Swaggit: Imagine Sharing Without Limits

Anyway, after that incident, things started getting a bit better with Speckles. That is, until one day when I came home to find him and five other cats I didn’t recognize smoking American Spirit cigarettes in my living room. When I walked in, Speckles told me to “go mind my business,” and then he and all the other cats laughed at me.

Am I not playing with him enough? Is his litter box too dirty? Does he need more time outdoors? Seriously, cat lovers, I need some help here! I read that I’m supposed to tire him out before bed by playing with him, but he just keeps telling me that he doesn’t have time for my “little games,” and then demands that I buy him a Bowflex machine. Does Purina make those?

Just playin. 

RIP to the idea that you could get rewards points for posting on social media. RIP to the concept of telling a data company in advance what ads you want to see, then clicking on them on purpose, and using the resulting rewards to purchase additional ads for the products you’re selling. RIP To my Swaggbucks balance. RIP Swaggit.

Build self helping and self policing communities app

Wow this was a really gross one, huh? Hard to tell sometimes if the person doing this stuff is evil or just stupid, but imagine the steps you’d have to go through to hop on Kickstarter this week, ask for $500,000 to create Uber for Help, appropriate a George Floyd memorial mural for your campaign image, and start saying shit like “This support will mean a lot to me as I can then work on this project and be a part of building self policing and self helping communities around the world.“ Hey it’s ok if you can’t think of anything helpful, but in that case ya gotta just shut the fuck up!

Offensive Crayons: A Sexy New Edition

I hope they never stop cranking out these edgy projects for craft beer guys who are new-to-cussing, because if they do we’re going to have to get really mad about campaigns asking for $900 to produce limited-edition enamel pins of the characters from Adventure Zone or whatever it’s called. Let me see if I can get angry about that. Hang on.

JF: Listen up, what the hell. This crap sucks. It’s just a bunch of stupid….dye that goes in piece of metal! And where’s the metal from, Mike! Who gets it? What on Earth! I don’t get it!

DB: Yeah. Sucks.

JF: And another thing! You think you can just make these pins and people will wear ‘em? Uhh, excuse me, but the last time I went to the store, nobody was wearing pins! Last time I checked, my guy, nobody’s wearing pins! I don’t know, man. Says they want $50 but that’s just...what planet are they on, you know?

DB: [walking back to his chair from the bathroom] So yeah this next email comes to us from Brian. 

Perfect. We can make this work. Okay, that's the newsletter. Hope you liked it. My little cat Mr. Snuggles did! He's very cute and he loves Patreon! Meow ya later,