I get a lot of questions from people about WordPress. Whether about themes or my plugins or even more esoteric queries they continue to roll in. Unfortunately, my answer rate has somewhat dropped. Either the question has already been asked and answered, the question is asked in such a way — or in a place — that I don’t understand it, or the question is, frankly, nuts. As such it occurred to me that what might be most helpful is to help people help themselves. Trite and clichéd as it may be, it’s still a worthwhile endeavor if for no other reason than to assuage my guilt at not responding to questions.

This will start off rather basic, as some people seem to need it. If you are not that person, skip on down.

Click on the link to continue to the whole story. No, I’m not doing this for pageviews but rather because this will be loooong and I don’t want my front page taken up with it.

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From the mouths of babes gems do come. That is proven to me time and again on a near daily basis by Julia who, at 3 and a half, has answers to all of life’s complex questions.

• Potty training proceeds apace. At this point it feels like this is a process that started at my own birth, though I suppose it’s really only been a few months. We’ve reached a happy place wherein the majority of elimination tasks are performed whilst hovering over the appropriate portal, AKA the shitter. Hosannas! She has taken to crafting the solid variety of waste in the mornings, popping out of bed at around 7 in the morning, turning on the light in the bathroom and making preparations. Usually I’m awake by this time, but sometimes I sleep through the preparations and am dragged awake only when I have a mostly naked girl at the door looking at me beseechingly. This morning I walked back with her to the site of the triumph and we sat while I performed the necessary cleaning operations. Julia looks down into the soiled water at her creation and says “Papa, is that a spring roll?”
• We’re having breakfast this week at the kitchen table with its Halloween-themed tablecloth. Grandpapa tests Julia’s arcane knowledge of occult practices by pointing his finger at a jack-o-lantern and asking her what this is. “Is it a pumpkin?” he inquires menacingly? She tilts her head in her classic “who are you trying to shit?” pose and responds “no Grandpapa, that’s your finger.”

Can’t get anything by that girl.

Mid-term election time, what a joy. A time when the general populace can choose from two equally misguided factions of people trying to run the country into the ground. Bitterness, thy name is ColdForged!

But seriously, what’s a fellow to do? The Republicans have draped themselves with the habit of the pious, courting the religious right and building their platform on, of all things, a marriage protection amendment. It provides no end of entertainment reading the platforms of these candidates who, when asked what the top priorities they want to address in their term, name the protection of the sanctity of marriage. Fuck education and inordinate spending, that whole terror thing is sooooo early 21st century, and the continuing divergence between the right and left means naught… we have to take a stand against these insidious queers! They’ve also seemingly forgotten that “conservative” not only applies to gay bashing but was traditionally representative of a fiscal policy that called for lower spending. Whew, fiscally responsible they ain’t. The Democrats are no better, doing nothing much more than pointing at the White House and saying “everything that guy says is bullshit.”

With a tangent in religious hypocrisy

Republicans have to be shaking their heads at the happenings recently. Their numbers in the shitter due to the low approval rating of their Commander In Chief — I heard a precious commentary on NPR on how limited Bush’s campaigning has been with everyone scurrying to distance themselves from him — and various scandals involving either congressmen or prominent evangelicals are taking up headline space. What a treat!

Few things are as enjoyable than witnessing the sanctimonious fall from grace. First we have Congressman Mark Foley, courting male teenage pages online. From sponsoring child pornography bills to asking young boys whether their dicks are hard as a rock. That’s a curious mixture. Here’s an elected representative making happy noises about protecting children from the evils of sexual predation who jerks off while chatting with those under his influence. Think about this kid who wanted a cool job, some kind of stepping stone and who now has a powerful member of congress asking the size of his penis. What do you do?

Now, of course, we have the titillating “outing” of Ted Haggard, a man leading the battle against those horrible homosexuals and their reckless demands for marriage and a man who — allegedly — pays for gay sex and crystal meth. How deliciously hypocritical. He denied it, of course. I never understood that tactic. Did you ever call the guy? Is it possible you left some kind of evidence? If so, it will come out. Don’t deny it, you end up looking worse. In a wondrous bit of borrowing — Republicans can’t even make original scandals — Haggard’s “sure, I bought crystal meth but I never actually used it” surely smacks of Clinton’s ridiculous “inhale” comment. Come on, nobody bought it then, they’re not buying it now.

Well of course the Republicans will come out firing! Pointing the finger at everyone in recorded history because a scandal isn’t a scandal if someone else does it. Here’s a difference: as far as I recollect Clinton wasn’t trying to pass legislation banning blowjobs.

In which the Democrats look like imbeciles

So, here come the mid-term elections. The Democrats look like they literally can’t lose. Then Kerry walks out on stage and — regardless what you choose to believe was his true intent — says something very much like “our soldiers are illiterate bumpkins.” Yeah John! Way to alienate the entire constituency! I don’t think he’s quite that dumb. Here’s a veteran who knows that calling soldiers stupid would be political suicide, he’s not going to do it on purpose. But what a way to boof a line! He was never a great candidate, though likely better than Gore, but now he’s anathema. I theorize that Kerry isn’t actually Kerry any more… I think he was body-snatched by the Republican party and a stooge a-la Dave is now in place just waiting for this opportunity to absolutely torpedo the Democratic party hopes.

You’d swear both parties are searching for ways to lose. Can’t there be a good alternative?

It’s not even really supposed to be out yet. You go and look around at the various sites, Emergence Day — or the grand release date extravaganza for Epic’s Gears Of War for the Xbox 360 — is on the 12th. But the game is actually being shipped out to retailers today. Some enterprising retailers have it in stock today, having gone to extraordinary lengths to please their customers (like driving to the airport to pick up a shipment).

I’d love to report to you that I have it in my hands but I do not. My retailer, a den of such slavering, slack-jawed malcontents as there ever was, did not go the extra mile. They will not be delivering this much-anticipated game into my hands today. I will, like many others, be forced to bide my time watching people in my Friends List enjoying the damned game. I live in the city within which this game was made, where Epic has their studios, where CliffyB swills beer and flips people off while thinking up wholesome mechanics like the curb stomp and I can’t get the damned game today.

I shouldn’t be that bothered. Anticipation is a very peculiar phenomenon. I’ve been waiting for this title for a rather long time, what’s 24 hours? IT’S 24 GODDAMNED HOURS IS WHAT IT IS!

(This was forwarded to suggestions@gamestop.com, for all the good it will do.)

Dear Sirs:

Your malignant preorder policy will eventually, in a just world, find you in a fire sale trying to derive cents on the dollar to pay off your poor, misguided creditors while your executives are roasted over a large pit fashioned solely for the purpose. I applaud the temerity with which you extort your customers for the privilege of preordering games, constructing an artificial “shortage” mindset that causes everyone to quiver in vexation as they wonder whether they’ll actually be able to acquire that game that has become the apple of their eye without preordering and basically screw the entire process all to hell.

They certainly won’t be able to purchase the game from one of your “retail” establishments without a preorder. Heavens no, you’ve effectively made one of the hardest parts of retail life trivial: deciding how much of an item to purchase. Actual retailers have to utilize complex equations to calculate probable demand given demographics, time of year, and population density. You people have a simple query that says “how many preorders do we have? 7? Great, ship us 7.” God forbid a self-professed retail establishment actually carry any stock of the things they are trying to sell.

In which the term “retailer” is explored

At this point, quite honestly, you can’t consider yourself a retailer anymore. If anything, you’ve perfected an online sales and distribution model, just without the actual “online” part. If I buy something from Amazon, at some point thereafter they pack a box with the item I bought and ship it directly to me. That’s convenient for me, it shows up at my house. I don’t get to walk out from a store with the item immediately, but I get it eventually. You guys are smarter than Amazon, though. You have the same model: people “purchase” things from you but they don’t get to walk out with it either… it’s a “preorder.” But people actually drive to your store and do this. They expend their energy to do it. At some future point, you perform your complex calculation to determine how many units of said item gets sent to a store and you send one package to that store. Already you’re ahead of Amazon since you don’t have to send 7 packages to 7 customers. Then your customers, who paid you for the privilege of providing you with what is typically complex logistical information — namely, that they want to buy something from you — expend their energy again to drive to your store and pick up their merchandise. Brilliant, I applaud.

You have no value add. Your prices aren’t better, you don’t provide a better buying experience, and, frankly, you don’t even beat other retailers in getting the damned games. For all your fear speech about how you’re our only hope for getting a game as soon as possible, you fail even at that. Allow me to provide a relevant example!

In which illustrative experience is depicted

I preordered a hot, hot new game of which you may have heard called Gears Of War for the Xbox 360. Your employee kindly helped me to secure my copy with a deposit, the generous fucker. Fast forward to the unofficial release date. Friends in other areas, whose retailers realized they could provide a value add, were able to walk out of their respective retail establishments with game in hand on November 7th. Fantastic! I could watch them show up online, enjoying their game. In the meantime, my own Gamestop, when queried, told me — in between punching a child in the trachea and tripping an elderly, incontinent leper — the game would be available November 8th. Fine, you hate life and good but I’ll wait until tomorrow while my friends cheerfully curb stomp each other in the game. So glad to have secured my copy early!

So I show up to my Gamestop on the requisite day — they had helpfully called the previous night to tell me to die in flames and I can pick it up the next day — to discover that you mangy fuckwits didn’t get the game in. Blame your shipper, blame the weather, blame Almighty Jesus… I don’t care. The simple fact is you, the “retailer” I selected to provide me with an item, can’t. Even after I paid early. I preordered and you can’t get your logistics straight to actually deliver a game into my hands even a day after others have it. How deliciously incompetent!

In which you are shown to be the lying fearmongers we know you to be

I got my money back, of course. There were other displeased people in there. The harried employee, looking as though he’d love to mainline strychnine at this point, is mystified as to why we’d RISK OUR VERY LIVES by canceling our preorder. “It’s not like you can get it elsewhere!” he exhorts us.

So I drove 5 minutes, walked into Best Buy and walked out with a copy of Gears Of War. And the movie Cars, with the fancy “while supplies last” poster.

Eat it, GameStop/EB Games. Eat it hard.