Being Penn Jillette (for 60 seconds)

    Not since the days of combing the personals section of an alt-weekly, especially the adult section, have I found myself laughing so hard at human nature.  At least the personals section folks were fascinating for their creativity.  The guy looking for someone with a German Shepherd and a tennis racket to have a little kinky fun still holds a special place in my memory file under, "What the hell?'.

    What sparked my laughing-till-I-cried episode recently is a iPhone app called Tipulator—the fun tip calculator.  It sells for 99 cents on iTunes.

Now hear my voice shift to Penn Jillette's Bullshit rant voice (on Showtime)

File this under:

{'What the fuck?'}

 

Tipulator was released on August 10th and has sold nearly 3,200 downloads to eager iPhone users.  This has to be an experiment to see just how gullible people are; that marketing really does work; to prove if you build it they will come. 

The developers tell prospective buyers that Tipulator makes tipping fun and easy.

Halle-fucking-luyah, I was ready to blow my brains out and afraid to go into restaurants, all because of the painful, arduous task of tipping the server.

Image shot for Tipulator from iTunes, my highlights added.

    "Normally boring task of calculating tips"?  Damn, it's not like we're asking you to vote.  How about we arrange for the guy with the German Shepherd and tennis racket to pay you a visit next time you have to calculate a fucking tip.

    Holy fucking shit, really, are people so math-challenged that they can't figure simple percents and divide 3-digit totals by single-digit numbers?  How the fuck can they afford iPhones?

    38 buyers have posted reviews.  They call it "simple to use, elegant, intuitive"...  It's a calculator performing multiplication and division dammit, not a fucking NASA project!

    Okay, ranting is done.  Whew.  Damn, I don't know which was more fun, pretending to be Penn Jillette for a minute or running across the cast for the sequel to Idiocracy.

    Look for my new app on iTunes called Tip-you-later.  It's a cloaking device to help you skip out on a check at just about any restaurant.  But hey, at least for 99 cents it will actually save you some money.  And it is kind of a NASA project if you want it to be.

Comments

[Dana Woodman]

So fucking true my man! Just goes to show you that Apple's business model is working.

If you look even deeper into the App Store you'll see even more retarded application like iBeer, for a scant $2.99 you can brew and drink you're own beer on the iPhone!

"What the fuck?"

Now if it wasn't just digital beer but the real deal, then you'd have an application worth being in the App Store!

Cheers