PTSOTL

Science: Men and Women Different; Conservatives, Racists Stupid

2012-01-31T10:44:00.000-05:00

PTSOTL's resident libertarian MINT E. FRESH sent me this story from The Daily Mail a couple weeks ago. "Surprise! Men and women really ARE different: Sexes share just 10 per cent of their personality traits."

He asked, "Equality versus science. Who you got?"

Men and women really are different, according to a study – and while the differences between them may not come as a shock, the scale of them might...

The fairer sex, for example, tend to display higher levels of sensitivity and warmth, while men are generally more emotionally stable and dominant...

The researchers concluded that there were ‘extremely large’ personality differences between the sexes which could have implications in the workplace.

OK, fine, I said. Maybe that sort of thing can be proved. But my real question is, why do you get such a boner for this type thing? Why would someone have a dog in this race?

He answered at length.

"Because the entire premise of contemporary American society is false. And because, again, it is an example of liberal hypocrisy. Liberals poo-poo creationists and other anti-science types, but like with everything else, leftists heed science only when it is convenient. A liberal will read this study and accept that the findings are true, and then still pour scorn on someone for having an opinion that is consistent with that science."

Our email exchange goes on from there. TLDR, bro, but that's the basic jist. There's a big twist at the end though that may be worth sticking around for, or just skipping ahead to more likely. I find this sort of conversation fascinating myself, however, so maybe you will too. I think its important to think about why it is we think the things we do, and to have someone challenge you on them from time to time. I'll show you where to come back in if you're easily bored by two boners who think they're smart trying to win with their words.

FRESH went on:

"The idea that men and women are 'equal' intellectually and emotionally is literally false, they are different and have different and complementary strengths. I don't get a boner when I see that blindingly obvious fact reflected in science, because it always has been and always will be."

"But if people didn't point to these studies, to the mountains and mountains of scientific evidence demonstrating egalitarianism to be as scientifically valid as Flat Earthism, when would liberals ever entertain the notion that their assumptions might be incorrect? Here we have mighty Science, before which all the old myths had to fall. And here we have a mythology that contradicts science. That is the sort of thing liberals love to explore, usually. But not in this case. Like scholarship on race and IQ, these are avenues that lead to politically incorrect conclusions, and so to even bring up the subject is 'in bad taste,' but to contemplate adjusting one's worldview to science and truth and the real world is literally inconceivable."

Ok, let's assume what you say is true, I said. There's a very practical reason for liberals to be invested in the scientific disproof of creationism, which any thinking person in the world will agree with, and that is that our government and its lawmakers should have nothing to do with the folktales and ancient mythologies of Christianity (save for the places they coincidentally overlap: don't kill; don't steal etc).

That serves a larger good, a society of reason, not superstition.

On the other hand, what purpose do scientific studies about gender, race IQ etc actually serve? They have the opposite effect of the anti-religion bias, in that they bring us backward, toward more tribal and animalistic ways of thinking. Man strong. Woman soft.

If you can point to studies that say xyz about race and gender, to what ends will those be used? Are people going to say "Oh, see, I told you we were different. OK, let's carry on living together as we do now all the same anyway." Or will they more likely use that information to further drive us apart?

There is literally no practical beneficial application of studies like these. And there is nothing to be lost by equating races and gender save for an academic point. So, even assuming that those differences may theoretically be indentifiable, there is no reason to identify them, unless you have a vested interest inregressing toward a time when woman=weak, black = etc etc.

I'm not saying you have to be racist to promote these type of studies, and I know FRESH isn't literally a sexist and racist IRL, but I can't help but notice how weird it is that people who are always talking about these Bell Curve type things also happen to racist and sexist. Someone should do a scientific study on the correlation there.

Furthermore, the entire premise he's putting forth isn't even sound. Someone who adheres to one of the most widely believed tenets of science, ie that the world is not a few thousand years old, does not therefor handcuff themselves to the results of every study that comes down the pike, just because it falls under the heading Science. I may like the genre of Science rap but that doesn't mean I need to buy every track from every emcee that ever gets dropped, in other words.

--

He responded:

"You write that 'the scientific disproof of creationism,' is something 'any thinking person in the world will agree with,' but that is a wild untruth. It is simply false, but the fact that it is false will not effect the way you think. Thinking people disagree with your idea right now, and at one point the opposite was true, nearly all thinking people in the world disagreed with the idea that religion should play no part in public life. Even today, most of the peoples of the world still worship the religions of their fathers, and most governments are not entirely secular. The Middle East in its entirety would reject this idea -- read any poll of any Muslim country. Thus, by your standards, all Muslims are 'unthinking.' By your own standards that makes you a racist. One logically follows from the other."

"You make these arguments on your blog all the time that rely on these subjective value judgments that are based on nothing more than the cultural biases of a white, middle-class American liberal. Do you not know that most of the world doesn't want the way of life you want to force on them? Do you not know that most peoples in the world prefer their own ways of life to one in which men and women are interchangeable, which has been stripped of mystery and the supernatural and sacred, which is anti-religious and anti-tradition, in which 'marriage' does not describe an institution involving a man and at least one wife, and in which the violation of their traditional morality must always be tolerated? Berber tribesman and Mongol herdsmen and Turks and Zulu and Ghanaian and Ukranian peasants, they don't take it for granted that the atheist sex-soaked MTV pop-culture capitalistic PC egalitarian world you want to force on them is an improvement. How is it that you know how they should live?"

"Your line of thinking seems to be that A) all peoples are equal to the extent that they are equally interchangeable, and so therefore B) one way of life can be right for all peoples, and C) you are part of the enlightened world elite (keep in mind that Europeans make up I think nine percent of the world, and only part of that number are liberal anti-traditionalist egalitarians) that has privileged knowledge of that way of life, the way that is the right way of life for the entire world, unlike the ways Zulus and Berbers and Mongols and Texans currently live (and wish to continue to live), who like their old ways and gender roles and gods."

"It is of course merely a coincidence that the right way of life for everyone in the world is the way of life professed the 'right way' by the people in the region in which you happen to live, at the time you happen to live in. Which is to say that the One True Way Of Life just happens to be the one you arbitrarily inherited by virtue of having been born in New England in the age of mass communication.'

"My belief, on the other hand, is that A) human populations have differing cultural and hereditary strengths and weaknesses and biases, and so B) all peoples should be allowed a place to develop those strengths and correct those weaknesses in peace via self government. I do not propose any one way of life is the right way for everyone for all time and proclaim that anyone who disagrees doesn't 'think.' And I point to studies like these because they scientifically demonstrate that the idea upon which PC egalitarianism rests -- that all peoples and men and women are equal to the extent that they are interchangeable, is false. And if it's false, then all of the ideas opinions and recommendations and laws that spring from those false assumptions are entirely baseless."

"Do you believe all the peoples of the world are interchangeable? Because frankly they are not, but recognizing that fact means you are an evil Nazi who is filled with a mysterious substance known as "hate" (to society at large, I mean)."

"Liberals do not argue that studies in group IQ differences demonstrate that everyone has equal intelligence -- you will never see that. A liberal will explain away the results as racism or some such, but the results are there. Group IQ differences exist and persist, whatever we do, regardless of whether the country is majority white or black. If we get a school district's grades to rise, they rise, but the gaps persist: Asians outscore Euros, Euros outscore Africans. When that happens in a school district, liberals start hunting racists. But a racist-hunt isn't going to change that reality. It may be that, things being what they are and the problems in African-America being what they are, blacks may require more money set aside for education. They may need longer school days with a more rigid curriculum and moral instruction, or with more strong male leaders, or a boarding-school type of atmosphere where they can have access to and inspiration from male leaders that so many lack at home. Bottom line is if you're pretending the problem is racism, rather than inherent group differences, any attempt to fix the problem cannot work."

--

The leap in logic there he made from equal to interchangeable is a big problem I have with engaging in academic exercises like this. He then proceeded to argue from a point I didn't make because of a twist in semantics he created. Everything that followed was tainted by that. Equal can often mean interchangeable, but it doesn't always. One chooses the definition of the word that suits the argument. I appreciate my car. I appreciate my computer, (or any other object I own, just examples). They are of equal value to me. They are not the same thing. I cannot drive my computer to work. I can't look at porn in my car all day.

How one gets from my saying that there's no benefit to scientifically proving differences between races to saying I want the entire world to shop at Walmart and watch reality TV or what have you, I have no idea. That's another example of what I mean by these types of things usually being logic games. "You don't think people should govern by religion, therefore you must obviously believe the polar opposite, ie this strawman world I just created to make your point seem extremely illogical." That's what people do when they are trying to win arguments, not when they are expressing ideas they actually believe and conversing with someone who has a differing opinion. It's politician bullshit.

"Thinking people" may not be the right way for me to have put it. But I am fine saying that if you think your specific government should be run according to magic heroes and folk tales and so on, then there is something wrong with you. Believe what you want in private life, have your ceremonies, do whatever makes you happy, I have no problem with religion, or believing whatever you want to get you through this shitty life, just don't ever construct a society in which others are compelled to believe those things under penalty of force.

In regards to "all peoples should be allowed a place to develop those strenghts and correct those weaknesses in peace via self government." Yes, of course. Unless that rises to a level of monstrous bad behavior. I dont know where that line is. If people in these radically diverse cultural examples want to live as they live, then I will never advocate doing anything about that through official US government action (again, except in case of genocide etc.). That doesn't mean I can't criticize them for being what I consider backwards though. It's like I often say, just because I support your right to be religious, that doesn't absolve you of my judgment that your decision is ridiculous.

--

"Do you not see that it's not that only racists and sexists talk about group intelligence, it's that everyone who talks about it is branded a racist, and because of that, most decent people are afraid to talk about such. Andrew Sullivan caught a ration of shit about it recently, and he's a famous and well-established journalist with PC bona-fides."

"Serious question: what does 'racist' mean? What is 'racism'? An old definition was that racism is the belief that race can account for differences in character and/or ability. But that cannot be the definition to which you subscribe, because when you use the word it is clearly meant to imply a moral component or failing, and there is no moral component to the belief that different human populations have differences in character and/or ability."

"Much of what you think of as logical 'games' are really just explorations or exploitations of these overused and under-defined terms. Like 'bigot' or 'white supremacist.' If I openly recognize that studies in group intelligence demonstrate that European Jews have higher average intelligence than European whites, or that negroid Africans are in certain areas physically superior to whites, or that east Asians are better at math than whites, I will be inexplicably be called a 'white supremacist.'"

--

I can't help but come back to what I said earlier about what we'll potentially do with those types of findings, assuming that the means we've used to determined them aren't in themselves racist, or biased, or manipulated to conform to a desired result.

Writing on this very topic in regards to the Sullivan controversy mentioned above, Rod Dreher made the point I was trying to get across pretty well:

Sullivan understands that just because the Nazis made bad use of this stuff doesn’t make it untrue, or unimportant. I get that. But I keep coming back to a point that seems to be the one TNC is making: of what use is this field of study, anyway? Where do we propose to go with it? Andrew’s view is that it’s worth knowing for the reason all truth is worth knowing, and pursuing. In an abstract world, that makes sense. But we don’t live in a world of pure disinterestedness. If I were a geneticist, I doubt I would want to work in this field, only because the experience of the 20th century, especially the Holocaust, makes me deeply mistrustful of what human beings will do with the scientific knowledge that this race is intellectually inferior to that race, and we can prove it genetically.

Like Dreher, I simply see no benefit coming from anything like this. Perhaps that's misguided of me. I think the central controversy here is one that not only shouldn't exist, but doesn't even exist.

--

"How can you not see how profoundly important the subject is? Rather, how can a liberal not see how important the subject of human equality is? More importantly, how can a liberal - of all people - not see how significant it is that science (may) debunk the idea at the heart of PC egalitarianism? You argue for open borders because all peoples are equal to the extent that they are interchangeable, and so it doesn't matter if we invite a million east Asians or a million African pygmies (literal pygmies I mean) or a million Europeans - BUT IT DOES MATTER. You see that more than fifty percent of all captains of industry are men and cry 'sexism!' - BUT IT'S NOT THE RESULT OF ANY ISM. If Sullivan is correct, all liberal solutions are solutions to problems that do not exist, or are not the problem at hand.

"If your position was that the law should not keep women or minorities out of positions that they can rightfully earn, that's great. That's the Old Liberal position, and I agree with it. But, because you are ideologically compelled to pretend all peoples and genders are equal to the extent that they are equally interchangeable - you are compelled to expect that all peoples will be equally represented in all positions and roles. And when inherent group differences prevent that from happening, then you demand that government force the real world - in which all people are NOT equally interchangeable - to conform to your ideology, instead of doing away with the ideology because it does not resemble the real world."

"The good it would do is obvious, andself-evident: You cannot argue that the causes of inequality in the United States are vital and important issues and then ask what good can come of scientific inquiryinto the nature of inequality in the United States. If onehonestly is concerned about the causes of inequality in the United States(rather than concerned with simply remaining PC) then one simply must supportscientific inquiry into the nature of that inequality. Seriously – thinkabout that. Doesn’t it seem silly when you think about it, todeclare that inequality must be combated, and then wish to cease scientificinquiry into inequality? You’re asking – it seems, at least –aren’t you? – really 'What good is scientific inquiry into asubject of profound importance, if the conclusions drawn are inconsistent withmy ideology?'"

IT'S SAFE TO COME BACK NOW.

"I mean, if science confirmed hereditary group differences to the extent that it now confirms evolution -- if you delved into the subject and found that to be the case -- would that effect your worldview and/or politics?"

Maybe it would effect my world view. In fact, beginning today, I am going to start giving more credence to 'scientific reports.' Like this one I just read, for example, which proves that racists are stupid.

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

That sounds like something FRESH would agree with. It's important that we look into these things, because to do otherwise would fly in the face of everything that grounds us as rational, liberal-thinking people.

A few more details from the story:

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

And there you have it people, the world explained. There are in fact differences between races, but anyone who thinks so is stupid.

Dear PTSOTL: U MAD BRO?

2012-01-30T14:51:00.001-05:00

Emma Mae (via YIIIIIKKKESSS)

I've been meaning to pull together a post about some of my favorite comments and emails I've gotten in the past month or two, but then again I've been meaning to do a lot of things for a long time, like not do that thing I just said, so you can see my predicament. Ah, fuck it, some of these are too good to go un-shared.

This anonymous fellow, (obviously a dude, because only dudes care enough about the quality of music to sound this angry), writing about LMFAO are better than Gaga and Madonna combined wants to teach us a lesson about quality or good taste, or something. His stance against Katy Perry and Lady Gaga is, frankly, very brave, and must have taken a lot of courage to muster up the words to express it. No fucking way I'm listening to that blues-hammer link he included, so someone tell me if it's any good.

lmfao fucking sucks. so does lady gaga. so does katy perry. it is institutionalized, corporate music. made solely to make money, with no other purpose, nothing benevolent in the minds of the creators. it is an apparition of everything which has gone terribly wrong within our society. the amount of AMAZING fucking music being recorded these days is dizzying, and somehow the shit on the top of the charts is the scum that got scooped from the bottom of the barrel. the way i see it, anyone oozing over lmfao like you did, while you are entirely entitled to your opinion, you are irreconcilably depraved by delusions forced upon you by society, you are a slave, you are inundated, but most importantly YOU SHOULD NOT BE BLOGGING ABOUT MUSIC.
this one's for you, mate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBY-lTlrcNE

A lot of people were MAD about the How to talk to people about their tattoos piece, and the earlier accompanying plugs/life choices bit Scene for life. Literally. | Sick ear gauges, bro.

Modied Zombie wins the prize for BUTT HURT OF THE YEAR COMMENT:

Why wouldn't you trust someone who has big plugs in their ears, handling your prescription at their job? You think because someone has a passion for body modification that they're strung out or what? That's a bullshit stereotype and you need to pull your head out of your fucking ass. And I think it's ridiculous to judge someone for a job, based on their piercings or tattoos. They're here to work like everyone else and not hurting anyone. And it's not mutilation, unless certain people make it out to be that way or choose to make it a bloody massacre. Also, they're called plugs and tunnels. Not gauges, you uneducated fucktard. Different? Yes. Extreme? Sure. Art? Definitely. Just because someone looks different and has a different viewpoint, you shouldn't judge them. They know what they've done to their bodies and I'm sure they know they'll have to live with that and accept that, graciously. So they don't need dicks like you bashing them or trying to brainwash them into this uptight, normal looking citizen of this piece of shit planets society. And you know why? Because some asshole said so and got followers, so on and so forth. And you're one of them, so please go die in a fire. ^^

His homeboy Fader comes in a close second, however:

I agree completely with Modified Zombie.
To Luke, the person who posted this: YOU are a fine example of how intelligence is a dying art these days. You are an intolerant, ignorant bastard. These people that you have ridiculed and posted are doing what makes them happy. I, myself, am a passionate member of the body modification community, and I have stretched ears, and I can tell you firsthand that these peoples decisions about how they choose to change their appearance have NO EFFECT whatsoever on the content of their character. They are, without questions, more respectable members of society than you will ever be, because you're blind to seeing the beauty in everyone. Narrow minded people like you need to open their eyes. People with body modifications make conscious decisions about modifying their bodies, just like you make a conscious decisions to cut your hair, etc. Seriously, if you can't even use the proper terms, why are you even sharing your worthless, ignorant opinion. Stretched lobes, plugs, and tunnels are all proper terms for this modification. Maybe if you educated yourself even a little bit, you'd be less narrow minded and judgmental. Judging someone by how they look is wrong. I thought we all learned this during the Civil Rights Movement, but I guess there is still idiocy everywhere on this planet. You have never even met these people, and you are judging them solely because of how you look. What if that was your child, your mother, your brother or sister? Would you hate them? Would you disown them? No. Because they are still the same wonderful person on the inside, no matter how they look on the outside.

Anon here is feeling the butthurt flow as well:

Give me a fucking break, everybody!!! Go live your lives and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing!!! Tattoos are beautiful, I have six myself and I am getting my right arm sleeved out this year, they don't have to mean anything at all, they just have to represent whatever it is that your into or that you love. If you're going to get a visible tattoo, people are going to be curious and ask about it so suck it up and just be nice to whoever asked you. For the guy who said that tattoos are a bad idea, it was obviously a bad choice for you but most of the world's population loves tattoos and has them, so don't put them down or the women who have them. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, so let them have thier fun. We all know what tattoos are going to look like when we are 60 so quit telling us already!!! Tattoos and beautiful, fun and sexy in my opinion, that's why I have choosen to put them on my body and if someone is going to ask me to let them look my tattoos, I always proudly let them do so. The world would be such a better place if people worried more about themselves and their families and less about strangers that their never going to see again inking up their bodies.

Bob Farley said:

A-bloo-bloo-bloo. Your tattoos are purely for yourself just as much as pair of fake tits. They are there to make you look different to other people, and thus make you feel better.

Your problem is that everyone can see them, including the people you don't want a reaction from. Now if this was a haircut or a shirt, hey, whatever. You just wear it to the club/bar/etc. where you want to be noticed and take it off later.

Except you can't, because you infused it into your skin. And now the only thing you can do is bitch on your blog about the reaction your stupid tattoo gets at bars.

Not everyone was mad bro. This Anon old timer thinks tattoos are stupid, because of his life I guess? I dunno, dude, that panther fighting with a snake piece sounds kind of fresh actually.

Tattoos are a bad idea for anyone! I got one on each arm in 1984, when I was in my 20's and at that time I thought I was a Bad-Ass Headbanger, playing my Kramer guitar and marshall half-stack in a bunch of garage bands that didn't go anywhere. I got a big flying dragon on one arm and a panther fighting with a snake with a jungle background on the other arm. Now it is 2012 and I am 47 years old, and I don't do heavy metal anymore, and I am stuck with these two stupid ink drawings on my human flesh, and there's nothing I can do about it! I have had a rotator cuff surgery a couple of years ago and they cut through the beautiful expensive dragon tattoo and ruined it. All of you young people out there who want these disgusting things, please DON'T DO it! Three Reasons! 1. You cannot get colored tattoos lasered off, the technology does not exist yet. 2.You'll be old and wrinkled before you know it, and you're tattoos will look like a big blob of colored cancer on your 60 yerar old body, cause' the designs will become faded and blurred and stretched. 3. If you ever have to have surgery somewhere on yourself, the tattoo will be cut up and ruined. There are also lots of disgusting chemicals in tattoo ink such as mercury, zinc, iron and coal that can later on in life give you cancers and skin conditions. And you can never get in a public swimming pool without being stared at! And ladies, keep your skin natural and beautiful, you don't need these disgusting things to enhance your beauty, a woman's skin is sacred! Marylyn Monroe had no stupid tattoos! And besides they'll make you look like a cheap biker tramp! Tattoos are not fashion, they are cheap body destroying trash! Take care everybody!

Some liked the tattoo piece so much they fell in love with me, which is a problem I'm accustomed to dealing with every time I leave the house. One reader, a Mr. Joshua, wrote:

Hi just read your tattoo article for some reason. what was it? oh yeah because you had that chick with boob tattoos. wow. i mean where did you find her? jesus.

also that article was so great. it went on for a long time and maintained a fairly cogent state while being a humorous rant that you've clearly thought about far too long in your life.

also you aren't a girl so you dont have to worry about me having a crush on you which is probably something that would happen if you were a woman writing an awesome article.

Thanks for the reassurance. Dollface doesn't like tattoos, but she looks cute in her picture she commented from, so she gets a free pass.

honestly i think tattoos are dumb and i'm never going to have one but have you ever seen miami/LA/london/'insert city here' ink? every fucker that walks in the shop has some lofty reason for getting a tattoo..
i'm getting this huge fish tattoo cause it means strength and my dad is a strong guy and his best friend's sister has cancer so i'm getting this fish.
idk why people feel they have to justify them at all really..
it's like someone asking me why i have my ears pierced
obviously so i can hang shiny jewels from them!
why did he get a huge picture of a fish?
idk. probably wanted nothing more than to be able to look at a fish all day long

someone i know has a tattoo of me.. it's dumb but it makes me feel famuzzz

Some people reached really far back into the PTSOTL deep cuts archive to find things to get mad about, like this ancient post I don't even remember Sylvester Stallone Using Big Words To Prove How Intelligent He Is. Monstermaster13 is a big Sly fan, I'm guessing. U WEIRD BRO? (Yes.)

Screw you man, Sly doesn't deserve to be picked on like this.

And again you are overlooking him, he only plays big and tough in the movies he's been in but in real life he is really smart and is not only an actor, but also a director, writer and painter.

He's also one of the most gentle fathers in the entertainment industry.

Other people are simply confused. I guess this was probably in reference to some restaurant or bar piece I wrote somewhere else, but then again, people are really stupid, so you never know. Quoth DLH:

You are very wrong. You have no Mexican cuisine listed. You totally ignore Swedish cuisine and, Norwegian cuisine you have probably never heard of. That is my family’s ethnicities, all three of them ane we have been totally left out like you have got something against us.

As far as “drink more and think less” I agree with that but it is not your idea. That was in and English movie that I saw recently at an arts theater.

So where are you in all of this? I know where I am. I am in California where there are lots of Mexican Restaurants and people out of work. Did you know that liquor in moderation is better than a shrink! Probably not or you would have written about it.

I can see you are based in New England so it all figures. Now I have to finish cleaning my bathrooms and plan the rest of my day.

I think that last sentence is a metaphor. Don't we all dude. Don't we all.

Forever Lazy: The Gross Adult Onesie

2012-01-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

Here's another slice of finely tuned hate snatched from the bro-jaws of our blog bro -- bro-nan I guess you'd say -- Bronan the Barbarian. (TRIGGER WARNING FOR BODY SNARKING AND FATISM YOU BIG SENSITIVE PUSSIES).

I’ve often debated that the future of the human race consists of a combination of Idiocracy and Wall-E. Now you too can have the best of both dystopian futures with a brand-new product – Forever Lazy! Take a gander at this advertising gem ABOVE. Forever Lazy fulfills every adult’s innermost desire, which is to horribly embarrass the shit out of friends and family by wearing fuzzy toddler’s clothing in public venues.

Forever Lazy comes in three convenient sizes.

Green Bay Packers Fan (M)

Arby’s Assistant Manager (L)

GUNT (XL)

Can Forever Lazy get any better? You bet your ass it can! Forever Lazy comes complete with a zip-down crotch flap so you can take a drunken shit in your neighbor’s bushes without actually removing your clothing.

Wow. As an American citizen, I’ve seen some god-awful clothing. However, this item takes the grand prize for the All-Time-What-The-Fuck Fashion Abomination. Forever Lazy? More like “forever alone,” because there’s no way in hell you’re scoring any action while covered in Doritos dust and cocooned inside one of these ugly bastards.

--BRONAN THE BARBARIAN

Cat vs. Alligator WHO YA GOT?

2012-01-29T14:12:00.000-05:00

I know that we're all legally obligated now to film our children and pets in embarrassing situations and post it to YouTube for the lulz, but I didn't realize that same statute applied to life-threatening scenarios as well. Like in this video, which according to some miracle of happenstance isn't actually titled LOL MY CAT GOT ATE UP BY A ALLIGATERZ. (io9 via the DailyWhat) and is the most tense internet standoff I've seen take place outside a fast food restaurant in months.

More like alli-gay-tor here though, rite? Who's the actual pussy in this old fashioned chicken meat standoff? I know cats are evil and everything, and they secrete black magic with their fur and are good at shitting in a box in your kitchen, but alligators are science-fictional space dinosaurs from the moon, seems like they would have the upper hand here. Turns out this isn't even the first time a cat has stared down an omnivorous man-eating mutant lizard to the uproarious delight of onlookers (For real, what's so funny about this shit? No one laughs when people fall into the polar bear pit).

Here's another cat teaching nature who the king bitch in the swamp is:

Meanwhile, this cat here somehow barely manages to fend off a couple chickens, in a disagreement that many of us will recognize as the source of many of nature's most fervert inter-species and inter-religion conflicts, sweet, sweet pork.

Here's another video wherein a chicken kicks the shit out of a cat. And another where they literally box to a split decision. So if we use the transitive property of bad-assery here, which is one of my favorite properties, we can take all of this to mean a chicken can intimidate an alligator. NOTHING I KNOW ABOUT NATURE MAKES SENSE ANYMORE. Unless, of course, the chicken is already chopped up into meat and placed in front of the beasts' mouth. Especially if that beast is me.

The most important painting the country has ever known has arrived to wake a confused citizenry from a hazy slumber

2012-01-28T13:17:00.000-05:00

The Forgotten Man

You ever wonder what it's like to be a paranoid conservative? Perpetually braced for the oncoming Constitutional apocalypse brought about by the horrifying direction the country is headed in that has been about to happen any day now, every day, for however many decades? That bureaucratic apocalyptic mindset has got to be downright exhausting -- like a bunch of Chicken Littles trying to rub a perfunctory load out of a wilted ideological coke boner while caught in the middle of a ever-impending but never-arriving hypothetical sneeze.

You know how they say the world slows down in the midst of a car crash? Is that what it feels like when you're in the middle of a country-sized pile up that's definitely coming really soon? Here it comes. Brace yourselves you guys.

Woh, does that mean conservatives can see the world on a slower, molecule time-bending level that the rest of us can (via that Japanese nerd on Heroes)? That would explain a lot. Can your average conservative see the fucking future? Because if so, I may need to reconsider my whole political approach. Also I'd love to hear about what kinds of fancy space-age science racism we've got going on 100 years from now.

One of those psychic paranoids is our man McNaughton Fine Art, who'll you remember from this masterpiece painting last year, which I wrote about in Jesus Wrote the Declaration of Independence.

u jew lawyers and sluts mad?

His new work, The Forgotten Man, sets its sights on our country's most endangered species, emo-looking white guys in yellow hoodies. McNaughton explains his motivation thusly:

Why did I paint this? Like many Americans I feel shock at the direction this country is heading. There is a great polarizing effect taking place in America today. There are many who swoon ove Obama's policies of redistribution of wealth. What will the government give me? If you believe this is the proper role of government you will certainly see great CHANGE in your lifetime. I wanted to paint a picture that portrays the plight of common man. Perhaps the FM is already experiencing this now or will in the future. My hope is that he will "wake up" before it is too late.

There's lots to unpack in this treasure trove of weighted import, and thankfully, like with all great works of art, he's included a description of what every single detail means, because people who are susceptible to this type of work have no fucking clue how symbolism or metaphor work.

A couple of my favorite parts: James Madison getting ready to take the shot gun snap before quarterbacking this country back into victory. Well known founding father Ronald Regan chilling out with his peers Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. Chester A. Arthur's mustache. Franklin Roosevelt's invisible wheel chair. George Bush looking like he's holding in a really painful turd. And perhaps best of all, the note he includes to explain what the stormy skies in the distance foretell.

To his credit, McNaughton gives as good to the Republicans here as he does to the Democrats, but what he's giving is an insanely myopic, personal responsibility-based boot strap philosophy that revers the Constitution, or, rather "THE CONSTITUTION" over, you know, the actual people it's supposed to work for. Either that, or a subtle as a box of tits reminder that we're all going to fucking die. Because Obama.

Oh great, another music post: Cults, Avicii, Hot Pink Delorean &c

2012-01-28T11:28:00.000-05:00

“I grew up experimenting with a lot of different religions, almost glorifying the idea of living an alternative lifestyle,” says Cults’ Brian Oblivion, who name, in case you missed it, is Brian Oblivion.

Oh my god nothing is funny this week. Still, one has to shovel shit onto the content furnace, so you see my dilemma. Here's some words I made about musics this past week that weren't exceptionally embarrassing about Cults, Avicii, Elements drum and bass, Hot Pink Delorean and lots of other shit that is pleasurable and/or 'meaningful' to listen to.

I interviewed the :)+:( dreamy noir-pop NYC indie group Cults in the Boston Phoenix. Hanging in a crush-gaze balance with Cults.

What do you think has been the most buzzed-about indie style over the past few years? Electro-house? Dubstep? 9tz grunge?

All worthy guesses, but look to the music of New York City duo Cults for a better answer. Their reverb-laden '60s Girl-Group-pop is one part sunny sheen of a hipstamatic California beach party, one part big-city crime noir. It sounds like roller skating down the boardwalk and tripping over a murdered wannabe Hollywood starlet, then falling in love with her anyway. Of course, the same can be said of everyone from Lykke Li to Best Coast to Vivian Girls to La Sera to Dum Dum Girls and every other indie bird with fierce bangs and a shoulder-sleeve tattoo making music now in a reactionary magical manic-pixie antithesis ideal.

Of that whole crush-gaze sorority — to coin a ridiculous sounding term that might just be dumb enough to gain some bloggy traction — it's Cults who make the sunny parts sunniest, and the dark parts darkest; and who, most importantly, have the best tunes on their 2011 homonymous full-length debut off Columbia imprint In The Name Of. "Go Outside" was possibly the song of the year in 2010 when it came out as a single, and then again the next year when it blew up. The twinkling schoolroom glockenspiel and the hypnotic echoing multi-tracked vocals created a dreamy, crushed-out, teddy-bear-spooning after-school vibe, but underpinned with enough dirt and cynicism to smudge the veneer. The Jim Jones audio clip at the beginning doesn't hurt the malevolence quotient either. read the rest

Tim Bergling, best known as Avicii, was recently nominated for a Grammy. “I would never have assumed it would get this far,’’ the 22-year-old says. photo by Dan Reid

In today's Boston Globe I spoke with the swedish SUPERSTAR DJ Avicii about what it's like to be an internationally famous, rich, and, to make things worse, charitable 22 year old. I think we can all agree that that guy can go take his awesome, philanthropy-minded party life and stick it up his Swedish bum-hole.

Restoring euphoria to the floor The DJ moves fans with music and aids hunger relief

...Being aware of his good fortune in that regard has inspired Bergling and Pournouri to pledge $1 million of their personal fees from the tour to Feeding America, a hunger relief charity.

“Ash came up with the idea of doing something for America, kind of our way of giving back to a country that’s given both of us so much. It made total sense since the fans here have supported me so much.’’

He says that coming from Sweden, the extent of the need for hunger relief charities was shocking. “We found out how big the hunger problem actually is here. It’s something I haven’t gotten to see when I’ve traveled there. I was baffled. It’s ‘the land of prosperity,’ I didn’t know how big the problem was.’’

A pledge of that amount wouldn’t be possible if not for the success of tracks like “Levels.’’ The song’s framework goes most of the way toward capturing Avicii’s signature style, which relies on arpeggiated piano chords, escalating trance-like synth stabs, insistent house beats, washes of ethereal static, and, on other hits like “Fade Into Darkness’’ and “Seek Bromance’’ (his breakthrough track, released under the name Tim Berg), big, crowd-pleasing, soulful vocals that satisfy contemporary dance music’s insatiable demand for pulsing euphoria. read the rest

DJ Lenore Fauliso plays at Phoenix Landing. Photo by KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

The drum and bass night Elements here in Cambridge had their 13th anniversary this past week. That's a lot of fucking drum and bass. What is drum and bass? That's a good question. I took a stab at explaining it in the Boston Globe.

Drum and bass alive and well at Elements

Considering the rate at which musical trends come and go, particularly within the hyper-evolving genre timeline of electronic dance music, you might expect a recurring party to squeeze out a year or two before interest flags. That makes the weekly Thursday night drum and bass party Elements at Phoenix Landing, celebrating its 13th anniversary this week, all the more exceptional. In fact, it’s the longest running drum and bass night in the country.

Drum and bass - a genre that spun off from rave culture and took nods from jungle and hardcore in the late 1980s and early 1990s UK club world - has splintered into dozens of subgenres over the years, but it can be typically characterized by densely layered percussion, drum samples from old funk and soul records looped into breakneck break-beats, fragments of reggae vocals and horn samples, dub-style dropouts and rewinds, distorted bass synths, and sub-bass rumbles. read the rest

Also in the Globe, I reviewed the new LP from Boston's hot shit house/techno/etc trio Hot Pink Delorean. They are fun.

Hot Pink Delorean, ‘The Revenge of Sisyphus’

One of the biggest success stories of the past few years in Boston EDM, the trio Hot Pink Delorean have amassed the type of resume that most young producers and DJs would kill for. Tours throughout Europe and Australia, and support from the likes of Tiesto, Benny Benassi, and Carl Cox, to name just a few, certainly didn’t hurt. The band’s success has come in large part from its ability to maintain a nimble, quickly morphing style of playing and writing that sidesteps from one genre to the next, mostly seamlessly. Its first LP packs all of that territory into 19 tracks, most of which maintain a high energy four--on-the-floor beat surging throughout. “Blew Steal’’ is a glitchy, chopped-up video game soundtrack, while upbeat, soulful tracks like “I Surrender’’ and “All You Ever Need’’ with their insistent disco-house vocal samples call to mind superstar acts like Nero. “Excite Music’’ and “Lead the Way’’ are dirtier club bangers, with angular bass drops and trancey keyboard leads. It’s all decidedly on the poppier, club-packing side of contemporary techno and house, but for an introduction to one of Boston’s most likely to succeed electronic class, it’s a fun trip. (Out now.)

Azealia Banks + Scissor Sisters

2012-01-27T13:57:00.002-05:00

Never got to the bottom of who won that super meaningful beef between Azealia Banks and Kreayshawn from a while back, but Azy is teaming up with Scissor Sisters now, and Kreyshawn isn't. Not sure if that factors in. Not just to the fight, but anything in the world. Let's listen and find out. (via RCRDLBL)

Dubstep-screamo-metal-core-power-ballad-pop is the next thing

2012-01-27T12:00:00.003-05:00

I loved The Used. There's just no getting around that fact, and we're all going to have to accept it if we want this thing between us to work out. I also like dubstep, even the shitty stuff. But this little infusion of a dubst3p b@ss w0bbly breakdown type dealie in the new The Used single "I Come Alive" is making me go :/. Granted, it is pretty subtle, so maybe it's not a big deal. More thoughts to come when my full review comes out in Alternative Press soon, but in the meantime check out the track. What do you think, siqq synergy or overly-produced try-hard? Maybe both!

What type of clothes should you wear to Walmart?

2012-01-27T11:14:00.000-05:00

Photos via People of Walmart

Should you wear pants when you go to Walmart? Bronan the Barbarian answers this very important question for us with this Simple Guide to Covering Your Fat Ass With Clothing.

Welcome to Bronan’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Fashion! This is the first in a series of articles wherein I helpfully impose my fashion sense upon the internet with an iron fist.

Many of my readers have questioned the acceptability of gracing Walmart and other public venues with their presence sans pants. I’ve created this handy flow chart outlining every possible scenario regarding whether or not your disgusting fupa should be hidden from public view.

Though the flow chart should be self-explanatory, I’ll go ahead and add a few more visual cues for my literacy-challenged following:

(Go read the rest and be horrified by some disgusting ass meat here.)

--BRONAN THE BARBARIAN

New music that isn't awful. Penguin Prison, Lana, Justice, We Have Band, Polyphnic Spree, other dudes

2012-01-25T13:41:00.002-05:00

Music will never stop being made. Every day ushers in the birth of some fresh new noise baby. People make sounds with their hands and throats and machines and next thing you know, math or whatever, and then here we are. Then those people hire people to let other people whose job it is to let the rest of the people know what those people did and then they do that and the next thing you know, the internet or whatever, and then here we are again. Here are all the times that scenario played out with me as the middle man and you as the giant mouth-like ears waiting at the end of the conveyor belt to consume the noise in the past hour before I got sick of copying embed codes and formatting this shit.

THE POLYPHONIC SPREE "YOU + ME" PHASE ONE from Good Records Recordings on Vimeo.

The Polyphonic Spree are still around. That's a news item. They're touring for the first time in five years. You'll remember them blowing everyone's minds a few years back when they wore white robes on stage. There were a lot of them. Still seem to be riding that angle, so good for them. Good for everyone. Here's my favorite part of the video, which looks a lot like what I imagine Heaven looks like for the puppers on Yo Gabba Gabba.

"The Polyphonic Spree have released a new single, "What Would You Do?" The new song is the third new release from the Spree on their own Good Records Recordings label in as many months, and can be heard in full in their "You + Me" tour video."

JUSTICE "ON'N'ON" RUINED BY RICK RUBIN by edbangerrecords

Justice have just released this Rick Rubin remix of their track "On'N'On." Rick Rubin invented music as we know it I guess, and he has a pretty siq beard. Justice are French. There is literally nothing else you need to know about this.

LANA BB has two new clips up of DEEP CUTS of her forthcoming platter. I like this one because it's about vaginas and taking way too long to get ready before leaving the house, unless I'm misinterpreting the lyrics. You can listen to the other clip for "National Anthem" here.

I can definitely vibe 2 this song, mostly because I'm a sucker for that one thing where a band sings a line a bunch of times, but then, out of nowhere at the end of the song, they sing it even harder. For real though, kind of digging the Janes Addiction chill bros who might be just a little mad thing going on here. U mad bros? Kind of. That's chill. We know.

"Middle Class Rut is touring in support of their debut album, No Name No Color,which spawned the smash radio hit "New Low" - reaching #5 at Alternative Radio. The anticipated new single "Are You On Your Way" will impact around the start of the tour. Having been named a "2011 Artist to Watch" by MTV and scoring a coveted spot in USA Today's "On the Verge" feature, Middle Class Rut are one of the most promising acts of the year."

The official video for this song won't premiere until next week, but in the meantime, if you have any super serious electronic music fan friends that you want to troll, just repeat any of the following information below to them and that should do the trick nicely.

"DAVID GUETTA’S GRAMMY® NOMINATED ‘NOTHING BUT THE BEAT’ CONTINUES TO SOAR IN 2012 AS “WITHOUT YOU” IS CERTIFIED DOUBLE PLATINUM AND NEW SINGLE “TURN ME ON” REACHES #1 ON THE SINGLES CHART AND ROCKETS TO #4 ON THE BILLBOARD HOT 100."

We Have Band - Where Are Your People? (Official Music Video) from We Have Band on Vimeo.

"We Have Band are back with their new LP Ternion, due for release on February 28th. Ternion, from the Latin for a group of three, sees We Have Band make a stylistic leap on from their debut ‘WHB’, which despite its critical acclaim the band were keen not to repeat."

I think that means they think they're better than you? React accordingly.

Don't Fuck With My Money (Krush Remix) by Penguin Prison

Penguin Prison is good, that is all. His tracks sound like what you think the night is going to turn out like when you've just taken that first dose of cheese. This is going to be the best night ever you guys. What could possibly go wrong?

"2012 has already proven to be a satisfying year for Penguin Prison. Having sold out his New Years Eve holiday show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, as well as on the West Coast this month, the band performed live on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic with Jason Bentley last week and announced further North American tour dates with label mates Miike Snow. Penguin Prison will also be headlining shows in South America and Mexico next month."

Someone go listen to whatever this is and tell me if it's any good, this description kind of bummed me out.

"Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist and nostalgia-loving raconteur Hanni El-Khatib is excited to announce "The Highway Man Tour" his Spring 2012 tour across North America. The gritty musician and skateboarding aficionado has developed a sound that has one foot firmly planted in America's musical past and another brazenly stomping into the realm of today and tomorrow's rock and roll."

...and no one ever used the word "swag" again

2012-01-25T12:44:00.000-05:00

I think this is a couple months old, but being way too late on a trend and seeming really corny in the process kind of fits perfectly thematically, so let's call it even. I think it's safe to say we're all done with this word now, right? Then again, toiletries are pretty swag. Tissues and shit. Toilet paper, son. SWAG. Potato chip sales like a motherfucker.

And just so you can't say I never gave you anything, here's a completely unrelated video called "Walgreens swag!" wherein a young woman walks around Walgreens and explains to us how much various items cost.

"Razors are $5.99, right? There's no reason why some bitches walk around with mustaches." Solid point. "Socks $5.49. I see some people walk around with no socks on. That's unacceptable. What, they sell some wife beaters? I didn't know they sell wife beaters... Lotion is $1.99. Who can not afford that? Walk around ashy. No."

Glad we had this talk. And then no one ever used the word "swag" again.

Tim Thomas is a true patriot, and that's coming from a liberal

2012-01-24T11:13:00.004-05:00

It took me a few hours to get around to paying attention to this really important sports controversy from yesterday because I kept seeing the word "hockey" and passing out from boredom. But I'm sure glad I did, because it combines a few of my favorite things, sports, politics, and Tea Party buffoons embarrassing themselves in front of the entire country. Maybe. Maybe it did that last one. I haven't decided yet.

As NESN reported, when Stanley Cup winners the Boston Bruins traveled to the White House to visit with President Obama on Monday, Vezina Trophy (best goalie of the year) and Conn Smythe (MVP) winner Tim Thomas, one of the leaders of the team, and a hero throughout New England, said "fuuuck that anti-American socialist" (paraphrasing there), and declined to join his team for the nice little photo op.

As you might expect, people on all sides of the issue, liberals who think hockey is awful, conservatives who think hockey is awful, and the other groups, whoever those crazy people are, lost their collective shit. One common opinion seemed to hold that Thomas' decision to abstain from playing grab ass with a man whose politics he abhors (Thomas is an avowed Glenn Beck fan who wears the words "Don't Tread On Me" on his helmet), was simply evidence of a firm, principled stance. Others felt it was disrespectful to the office of the Presidency, for whom citizens are supposed to put aside political differences when invited over to chill in the most powerful man cave on the planet. Even more took issue with Thomas' turning his back on his team, the rest of whom attended, and most of which are presumably not all George Soros-funded billionaire capitalist communists.

Thomas released a statement later in the day explaining his decision.

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

See, defenders said, there's nothing political about that, he's just exercising his rights as an American (wait, is he American? brb gotta check), yes, as an American, to go where he damn well pleases. Nothing political except for the fact that it's all pretty thinly veiled coded language, if not outright Tea Party boilerplate.

Quick question for Thomas, who presumably shares his hero Beck's stances on a lot of issues, how can he support all of these immigrants from bordering countries flooding into America, the real America, to take our jobs?

I'm talking about Canadian hockey players of course, who make up the vast majority of the Bruins roster. Is that OK because they work harder than everyone else and deserve it? It is ok because they're white? Are Canadians actually really white if you think about it? All good questions.

Bleacher Report asks another one:

If Tim Thomas views Barack Obama the way Glenn Beck views Barack Obama (it's fair to assume he does), then surely he should eschew any socialistic inclinations. Why then is he a member of a labor union? Can he not opt out? Will he try?

I think not.

Let's be real. This is not Muhammad Ali going to jail to protest the Vietnam War. This a petty move by a selfish athlete who wants what should be a highlight in the storied history of the Bruins franchise to be all about him.

Is that what it is? I'm not so sure I agree that what Thomas did was all that wrong, and that's coming, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, from an insane communist-wannabe pussy.

Never mind the fact that hockey has a labor union, it's already the single most Canadian sport, probably most Canadian thing, in existence, which therefore means it's French, and socialist, and anti-American by it's very nature. There's not much room to stake out any comfortable right wing breathing room there buddy. (Surrendered in WWII, baguettes, crème brûlée, b.o., other awesome and surprising French jokes).

This isn't the first time Obammer's gotten the gas face from a champion, by the way. The Chicago Bears fan in Chief invited the 1986 team to the White House last year (their visit after the actual win was postponed because of the space shuttle Challenger explosion), and Hall of Famer, and world class foot-in-mouth douchebag Dan Hampton refused to take part. The Pittsburgh Steelers' James Harrisson, literally my least favorite football player in the world, tried to give metaphoric concussions to both Bush and Obama, much like he does to players on the field all the time the piece of shit cheap hit artist, after his team won the Super Bowl in 2006 and 2009.

All of that aside, here's how I know that I am unqualified to pick a beef with what Thomas did: if it were George Bush and he'd done the same thing, would I be applauding his "morals" and "convictions"? I suspect that I would. It can't work both ways. I don't remember much about Denver Nuggets player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who caused a fair bit of controversy in the nineties when he refused to stand for the National Anthem during NBA games, but I am pretty sure that if he'd been doing it post 9/11, when I had become more politicized in my wacky liberal beliefs, I would have thought it was a brave move. Understanding that, I am sort of forced to respect Thomas' beliefs, no matter how backwards and ridiculous I might think they are.

Kirk Minihane, writing on Boston sports site WEEI today, explained that it is Thomas' duty as an American to respect the President.

Look, this isn't Rosa Parks, I get it. And if I were Thomas, would I have skipped the ceremony? Nope. Again, there's plenty of stuff about the Obama administration that drives me nuts, but I would respect the office if not the man currently holding the title. Put on a tie, smile, shake hands, laugh at lousy jokes, take some pictures and leave. Suck it up, in other words. This is an opportunity that will probably present itself exactly zero more times in a lifetime.

Tell that to this guy.

Perhaps not, but how many chances will Thomas get to have the country's attention to illustrate his probably sincere opposition to the direction it's going in? Not many. Since when are we supposed to kneel before the king for appearances? Isn't it more patriotic to decline the invitation into his throne room in the first place?

Never mind how Canadian hockey is, what's more American than telling your leader "fuck you"? And keep in mind, just because you call someone a patriot doesn't mean you don't also think that they're a big asshole. In fact the two are pretty frequently synonymous. That's how it should be.

...and no child was ever molested or raped ever again

2012-01-22T10:36:00.003-05:00

I hate to besmirch the recently dead, but then again, most recently dead dudes didn't systematically cover up and/or look the other way from a decade plus of child rape going on under his nose by his buddy. Allegedly. Good night sweet prince. Prince of fucking darkness.

Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State coach who won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity, died Sunday. He was 85. AP

The statement from his family reads, in part "It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Paterno passed away earlier today. His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled."

"He died as he lived," covering up child abuse so his football business didn't get closed up." He fought hard until the end, stayed positive," except when he remembered that he was a serial child rape enabler, "thought only of others," except that whole thing with the raped kids, "and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been," unlike those kids. "His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community," but, and we probably can't stress this enough, not those kids, the ones that got raped that he knew about all those years.

Maybe online gambling isn't such a great idea. A libertine reconsiders his moralizing state's slide into vice

2012-01-20T11:26:00.001-05:00

For as long as I can remember Massachusetts has been steeped in outdated Puritanical blue laws meant to hinder our beastly vices. As things are getting more and more relaxed, a total scumbag pauses to consider whether that's a good thing or not.

Myhome state of Massachusetts is well known for doing a few things verywell, most of which any proud Masshole can and will list off at theslightest provocation whether or not they personally have anything todo with them (they don't). Not only did we basically invent Americahere, we've got the best universities and hospitals in the country,an august and profound tradition of literary greatness, thewinningest professional sports franchises of the past decade, and anexceptional track record for churning out taste-making music. In short, fuck you.

We'realso superlative drinkers; one recent studyin the Daily Beast called us the drunkest state in the country.As I've said before, Boston and Massachusetts' national rep is basedon our boozed-up bona fides. Ask people from other states what firstcomes to mind when they think about us, and they'll probably answer,in this order, pricks, drunk pricks, the Red Sox, drunk Red Sox fans,Sam Adams beer, “Cheers”,and Ben Affleck and Aerosmith doing Irish car bombs on St. Patrick'sDay with Paul Revere.

Butthere's another truth about Massachusetts that confounds thestereotype of a state of whiskey-fueled Irish hooligans putting their(non-booze-holding) fists into eachother's necks at the slightestprovocation, not to mention our status as Republicanpresidential candidates' code word for anarcho-socialists, andthat's our restrictive laws regarding alcohol consumption and "vice"in general. I touched on thisin a piece about how convoluted our drinking laws are a whileback.

"It'sfunny: nationally, Massachusetts has a reputation of being the bluestof "blue states," thanks to our progressive politics. Butnot a single local has grown up here without encountering "bluelaws," antiquated regulations (often related to alcohol) thatare anything but liberal -- more like straight out of ourbuttoned-up, buckle-shoed Puritan past. The origin of the colorfulterm is subject to speculation: it's a reference to either an olddefinition of "blue" (which meant "rigidly moral"during Colonial times), the color of the paper that legal documentswere once printed on, or the color of everyone's balls at the time,since these folks were definitely as repressed in the bedroom as theywere at the bar.

Suchlaws are hardly ancient history, as anyone who has tried to buy boozebefore noon on Sunday (you know, the day when God pays attention),attempted to restock during a Memorial Day barbecue, or run out ofwine during Thanksgiving dinner can attest."

Thatseems to be changing fast in recent years, and even more so thesepast few months. As any overly strict religious parent can attest,when little baby gets their first taste of sweet, sweet boozeyfreedom once they leave the nest, they dive in head first.Massachusetts is going through its own statewide version of theCatholic school girl at her first frat party/ Rumspringa orgy at oncewith newly proposed laws that would loosen our officialstate-sanctioned scumbag self determination policies and complete ourtransformation into a combination of Las Vegas, Pottersville, andthat one scary island where the kids from Pinocchio got turned intodonkeys.

Restrictionsabout when and where citizens can purchase alcohol have been scaledback in the past few years, which is good news for people who don'tthink Jesus has an opinion on what day on the calendar you can pickup a sixer (especially since he's been so busy worrying aboutimportant things, like determining the outcome of football games). Acouple months back GovernorDeval Patrick signed a bill into law that would legalize fullscale casinos in the state. Coupled with that came the discussionabout reintroducing the practice of happy hour at bars, somethingthat's been illegal here since 1984. Bars and restaurants arecurrently prohibited from giving out free alcohol to customers, acommon practice at casinos.

Thatpossibility seems uncertain at the moment, asthe discussion has been put on hold pending further study. "If the drinks are free, the chances are, they'll be drinkingmore," said prominent critic Ron Bersani, an advocate for stricterdrinking laws whose granddaughter was killed by a drunk driver.

Despitemy official status as a sort of vice-happy libertine, and everythingI've written about drinking laws needing to be relaxed in my capacityas a bar and spirits reporter, I'm not sure I actually disagree withBersani and the legion of finger-wagging moralists here. That's a newreaction for me, although it may be colored by another recentproposal to push this statewide sin party over the edge into acomplete rager. The state lottery commission announced this week thatit's considering the possibility of selling lottery tickets over theinternet. A recent federal opinion from the Justice Departmentappears to have made this new-fangled means of vacuuming dollars outof the wallets of poor people in the name of raising taxes legal, asthe Boston Globe reported. Also being considered is whether ornot consumers can purchase lottery tickets with debit cards. Onequestion that would need to be addresses is how legalizing gamblingthrough the state online would effect the prohibition against onlinesports books. Will new opportunities to indulge like this turn us allinto morally bereft gambling addicts in the same way that allowinghappy hour will make the streets run red with blood from constant carcrashes?

Surprisingly,I think they could. As someone who happens to thoroughly enjoygambling, which is to say, I hate it in precisely the same way thatanyone else who's spent enough time at the black jack table, orcursed at the television watching a football team come from behindwith a back door cover on the spread, and has partaken in more thanhis fair share of illegal substances of one kind or another, Iappreciate the barrier to entry for vice. Although to be honest, thatmight actually be part of the appeal. Being a person who is able tomake something sketchy happen, or knows a guy who can, is sometimespart of the ritual that recovered addicts will talk about missing.

Askanyone with an addictive personality how they've managed to lessentheir habits, or to turn from them all together, and they'll probablysay putting a few extra steps between themselves and their addictionof choice is a great boon. Consider friends who live upstairs from abar, (Or in a distillery I guess. Can people live there because that sounds awesome?) or who've ever had the misfortune/awesome luck of living with adrug dealer. How much more did they indulge when the stuff was soreadily available?

Forme, the process of having to call a guy, wait for him to get back tome, go meet somewhere, and jump through any other number of hoops,whether it's for placing a bet, or calling in a unmanned-drone strike on my brain village, can oftenbe just enough of hassle to make me reconsider. Sometimes that extrasecond of consideration buys you enough time to bail. I'veoccasionally had access to a sports betting site where I can enter myown wagers at will. During those times the frequency with which Iwould bet, the outrageous nature of the bets, and the reactionarybets -- ones I would make to get back the money I'd just lost on aprior bet -- were exponentially greater. Nowadays I'll make one ortwo texts and be content to lose my $50 or $100 for the weekend likea normal person.

Ican't say for certain what making the lottery available to peoplesitting at home will do, whether or not obviating the trip down tothe corner bodega to run their numbers will make them more likely tobet more and more often, but from my experience and that of my vastnetwork of friendly losers, I'd say it's likely. In fact I'd call ita lock. Now if only there were a site I could go to to put my moneywhere my mouth is, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Does anyone know a guy?

How to Have the Hardcore Style

2012-01-19T12:03:00.000-05:00

Ed Hardy 'Death Before Dishonor' bikinis are an actual thing. Hard core as fuck

It's been a while since we decided to change scene affiliations on a whim here, ever since that whole experiment with How to Dress Punk For Girls went awry. Thankfully I just stumbled across an informative posting on WikiHow "the how to manual that you can edit" (which is a great idea because I always thought normal how to manuals that had instructions you actually needed to follow were a little fascist and stifling to my individuality), called "How to Have the Hardcore Style." I like that passive phrasing particularly, because it doesn't say how to "get" the hardcore style, it makes it seem like after reading the article you will have it, because you always had it already. Most of this scene shit is self-fulfilling prophecy, right? If we're being honest though, it should probably be how to "front" the hardcore style, because another way of saying 'self-fulfilling scene prophesy' is 'being a big fucking phony,' a concept which describes roughly 100 percent of us anyway. So let's take a look at a few PRO TIPS on how to be hard core 4lyfe, none of which, sadly, will ever make you as hardcore as this eight year old girl.

(SEE ALSO: How to be Fat one of the major rules of which is Start a hardcore band)

via bandanas are legit. Also being a giant scary bro

Wear the accessories. Bandannas are most common. You can put them around your face, in your back pocket, around your head, and so on. You can also wear baseball caps, usually a MLB baseball team's line from New Era. Plugs are also very common. Try not to look like a specific style. Remember, being hardcore is about individuality. Just be yourself. Chances are if you're reading this, you shouldn't be a 'hardcore kid'. Just be yourself.

Yes, put a bandana around your face that way no one will be able to identify you as someone who set out to be hardcore. Also wear a baseball cap, that one style move that is super unique to this particular musical based sub genre clothing affiliation motive. Plugs are great because then you get to have your skin be hardcore for eternity, many long decades after the rest of your brain stopped giving a shit. "Remember, being hardcore is about individuality," except, you know, if you want to follow these PRO TIPS. "Chances are if you're reading this, you shouldn't be a 'hardcore kid'." is actually pretty good advice. Seems like the article should stop there. It really, really doesn't.

Is this hard core? No one fucking knows.

Wear the clothing. Some common themes in shirts, concert shirts, flannel, etc. For pants or shorts, basket ball shorts, or tight cut-offs or pants. Tight does not necessarily mean "girl" pants—just pants with a tight fit. As for shoes, you can wear skater shoes, but Nike dunks and 6.0 shoes are the most popular. However, while skater shoes are part of the style, make sure they fit well for moshing and hxc dancing. Some great moshing shoes are the Vans slip-ons. Also, keep your keys on a carabiner on a belt-loop.

This is different from the accessories, I guess, because a hat and a bandana is like a scene appetizer, and the shirt and pants are the main course? " Tight does not necessarily mean "girl" pants." LOL at the defensive bro who edited this part in.

Wear your hair in any fashion that you like. It could be short, long, very short, very long, bald, or punk. If you have large gauges you should shave your head.

If you have gauges you should shave your head right off with a samurai sword is what I think they meant to type here. BRB going to edit that part.

Develop your taste in music. It's best to ask your friends or other hardcore people about what music they like and for you to make your own judgment after listening to it. Developing your taste of music by appreciating a list is often subjective and difficult. When exploring hardcore music, always have an open mind. appreciate the music for what it is.

What it is is a chance to get effing real with your 'best friends for life' who are the only ones that 'really get you', albeit who you just met last week at your first youth center all ages gig a few days after you read this handy list.

via Looks like a whole effort thing here. Just get the clothes and call it even

Go to shows. Most of the hardcore scene can be found there. Despite a shameless emo effort of "re-writing history", true hardcore kids were, are and will always BE MOSHING. If you're starting out, go to a show and watch for people, don't just jump in because you will most likely look stupid or get hurt. Some of these shows can pretty sick, and you could possibly go home with a broken arm depending on the band. This being said, know when you gotta back off. If you know there's a chance that you might be annihilated, only then do you wanna chill. however, this is no excuse to not get in the pit and throw down.

I dunno, this one seems like kind of a lot of work, driving all the way over there, standing in line, paying a cover charge, and what's worse, actually listening to what passes for hard core music in your particular local scene. Is there anyway I can reap the rewards of attention of identifying as hardcore without actually doing anything active about it? Oh right, all the costume tips throughout the rest of this post. The lazy types won't want to read this next one:

Do something hardcore. Being hardcore is not just about music and style. It's about doing something hardcore. There is a fine line between crazy and hardcore. Example: Crazy is base jumping off the Grand canyon. Hardcore is base jumping with a bike and no parachute. Hardcore things are like building homemade fireworks, taking risk, and headbanging at all shows. Live the hardcore life

Anything hardcore. Just do it (via sneaker companies). Yes, please, anyone reading this article sincerely, take this one to heart. Live the hardcore life, jump off a cliff on your bike with no parachute. But, remember, living the hardcore style isn't just about a look. Just in case you don't believe me, here is a super specific list of the appropriate type of things you can wear to fit in.

SHIRTS Solid colour long t-shirts, commonly black or white, are good for looking hardcore but conservative. The hardcore thug look is without doubt the "toughest" or "hardest" look. Bands of this genre include Madball, Skarhead, and E-Town Concrete. This look can be attained by crossing over the hardcore look (which we will explain shortly) with the hip-hop gangster look as popularized by the homies you went to/go to school with. A good example of how you could sport this look would be a Madball shirt one size too large, with a long white tee (find one at Champs or your local athletic store where the homeboys shop) underneath. Pair it up with a pair of baggy jeans, and some Nike Cortez's (Chuck Taylors, or any number of basketball shoes are an option, as are the solid black low-top Vans) along with a fitted New Era cap (keep the sticker on). Band shirts work as well, but only for local indie or underground bands. Shirts for the hardcore look, other than band shirts, are often simple. V-necks are coming into style. Layered camis, or tank tops are popular. Some of the classic zebra and cheeta prints are acceptable, but limited because those are more trendy for the scene style. Shirts with words are okay, but only select phrases. (Stay Brutal shirts are becoming popular within the deathcore scene, but if you want to be taken seriously beyond the Hot Topic crowd, avoid this like the plague.) Hello kitty is okay in very very small amounts. This trend was over done by the scene kids, and is now a poser symbol. But small things, such as a shirt or a necklace are okay. Stay away from skulls and such things.

Shirts with words are okay. That's one of the best sentences I've read in a long time.

Ramallah is hard core legitsies.

What follows next is about a thousand more words on how to interact with people, what type of drugs you are allowed to do, what type of bands you are allowed to be in, and who you should be friending on social media. You know, "down-ass" hardcore 4lyfe shit. Go check out the rest and see if this subculture is the relevant choice for your developing personal brand, and keep this parting bit of advice in mind while you do:

As with all subcultures, hardcore is about individuality and expression. You defeat the purpose of being hardcore by making too much of an effort to follow other people. The words "be yourself" go a long way.

Hardcore is like hockey and baseball, where it has many unwritten rules. Follow them and you will have a blast in your scene. Break them, and...well just watch the Gangland FSU episode and find out.

Bruins fan fights hockey mascot, the most Bostonest thing I've seen all week

2012-01-19T11:02:00.000-05:00

This video of a Boston Bruins fan tackling the Tampa Bar Lightning mascot, *shuffles papers, puts on reading glasses* one Mr. Thunderbug, after he takes a load of silly string to the grill, is the most Bostonest thing I've seen all week. (Deadspin via CBS Sports). Although the indeterminate racial status of the bro in question is kind of stymieing things a little. The XXXXXXL t shirt, however, is spot on.

If SOPA were passed 'Cooking with Skrillex' could never exist

2012-01-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

Just so we're clear, when you hear everyone talking about how SOPA will stifle creativity and artistic expression on the internet, this is the type of thing they're talking about. And me, a guy who had nothing to do with creating it, posting the fruit of that expression here on my own blog. That's not meant as a value judgment, I'm just reporting the facts. Couple more after the jump. More Cooking with Skrillex here.

Just because SOPA/PIPA are overreactions that doesn't get you off the hook for piracy

2012-01-18T10:35:00.001-05:00

I wonder who took this photo and paid for it to be published? Maybe it was me and I forgot

As you've undoubtedly heard, a few of the internet's most popular websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and others, are blacking themselves out today in opposition to the the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) currently being considered in the US House and Senate respectively. The attempts to curtail online piracy through heavy-handed legislation, pushed in large part by the Motion Picture Association of America (now headed by former Senator/world class schmuch Chris Dodd) are without a doubt over-reaching, and could set a dangerous precedent for the exchange of information over the internet.

Perhaps most horrifying to everyone, this site itself would essentially cease to exist. The law would make it so that every time I post a photo, or a video, or quote at length from another copyrighted work that I do not own, which I do frequently, much like every other blogger in existence, I would make not only myself -- and here's where the change comes in -- but also the company that hosts this website (Blogger via Google), responsible for the copyright violation.

We already have rules in place meant to deal with this, namely the Digital Communications Millennium Act. If a copyright violation occurs, the owner of the copyright can have the material taken down. Under the new laws, the perceived sins of one user on a particular platform like Blogger, (or Facebook, or Buzfeed etc etc) can be extrapolated upwards to the larger entitity. In effect every social media outlet would need to begin monitoring every interaction of every one of its users.

Obviously this type of thing would be unfeasible, and many smaller sites (although LOL if you think Google and Facebook are getting taken down by anyone, including the government), would have to close up shop.

Most people who use the internet, so, you know, no one in Congress, argue that this is an overreaction to the problem, if they even allow that there is a problem in the first place. They say it's akin to, for example, bombing an entire residential building in Iraq because you suspect there's a terrorist inside, something that we would never allow to go on in our name as Americans. Even more important than the lives of people we'll never meet, however, is our god-given right to share Rihanna videos on our Facebook page. That's the type of thing that really matters.

The analogy to SOPA and PIPA being a baseball bat when you need a fly swatter is a good one I think, and I hope this legislation doesn't pass. It would be like shutting down an entire bar because there are underage kids found drinking there, which, woops, we also do that too. OK, how about this: it would be like shutting down a concert venue just because you found a couple losers doing coke in the bathroom. Surely that's an overreaction.

The problem is, illegal drugs are still illegal, as much as we may not want them to be, as is online piracy of movies and music. The tactics being employed to stamp them out, however ham-fisted and disagreeable, do not change the fact there are millions and millions of copyright violations being enacted every minute of every day online. Whether or not you think that's something even worth considering will vary, but it's not something that should be ignored outright.

I wrote about this previously, but I am pretty sure I hold the copyright to it (I think?) so I will quote from it at length here again.

Stealing Shit Online

"No, it's cool, cause if I download a movie online and I like it, I'll buy the DVD. Plus music and movies are too expensive, and most of them are crap anyway. "

Hey, here's an idea. Go into a restaurant, eat your meal, then if you like it, pay for it. Otherwise just peace out and kick the chef in the nuts on the way out the door. Same thing.

You know what I do when I can't afford something I kind of want? I don't get it. Woh. I know, pretty weird, right? Call me crazy, but I'm old school like that.

Whether it's a mortgage on a house, a brand new car, season three of Friday Night Lights or that thirteenth beer, if I don't have the money, I somehow pull my act together and move on empty handed. Why? Because I'm not an infantile On Demand omnivore incapable of satiating my demand for instant gratification. (Plus I need to save my money for gambling debts.)

No one cares about your half ass futuristic Robin Hood with a Mac book routine pal. We saw Fight Club too, yet somehow we managed to resist rolling that horseshit into a life of self-satisfied petty theft. You're not some freedom fighter standing up to the corporate overlords every time you search for Family Guy episodes on bit torrent, you're just an a-hole who's too cheap to shell out a few bucks for the things he wants, and too greedy to not steal shit you will never, ever possibly look at twice. Homer Simpson with his hand stuck in the internet candy machine over here.

You know who else has a story about why the dirt they did wasn't really illegal too? Every dude down at the courthouse.

SOPA/PIPA are worth protesting, and they will certainly make "freedom of expression" and "creativity" online a lot more difficult, but what sort of artistic process is it we're actually defending here? The ability to post someone else's work on our own blog/Facebook wall, and say "I like this." Is that adding value to the work? Is that creativity?

That was the crux of my argument against what Tumblr culture is doing to our ability to express ourselves here in Why Tumblr is making us all stupid ))<>((. We're not curators, and we're not artists, we're consumers. And what's the value of a consumer when you're not actually consuming anything?

Everything worth hating today. Crowdsourcing the ire

2012-01-17T16:01:00.001-05:00

I couldn't trick anyone into writing anything else for extremely minor internet notoriety today, and the seratonin levels are dangerously low in my flaccid hate boner, so I asked my network of heathens and ne'er-do-wells to inspire me with what they're h8ing on today. Most of it was boring. But then I realized maybe the trick had worked after all! And that I could simply post what they said and that would be like a whole thing on its own! You've done it again, O'Neil, you shifty bastard. So here goes, nerds. Eat your medicine.

Fair warning, this is so long and boring even I didn't read it, and I wrote the thing.

Aaron wrote: "People who feel they have the right of way because they have a bigger umbrella when it's raining."

Very true. We already covered that a long time back on here, in this old gem Preemptive and Incorrect Umbrella Useage. "You know who else can manage to walk down the street without bumping into people every five seconds? Blind people."

Shaighla wrote: "You can write a hateful post about the girl with the furry boots that I just put up."

I would totally love to, but I can't even begin to understand why this is a bad thing, on account of having a penis.

Stephanie wrote: "dwarf tossing seems to be inciting a lot of ire today."

It has been indeed, and for good reason, ever since our man Peter Dinklage, aka The Dink, aka Tyrion Lannister from HBO's Game of Thrones gave a shout out to one Martin Henderson on the Golden Globes on Sunday night.

Martin Henderson is a 37-year-old aspiring actor who was thrown to the ground by an assailant outside a bar in England, according to the Daily Telegraph. The assault, allegedly inspired by a “dwarf tossing” competition, left Henderson with a fractured arm and issues with standing, he told the Telegraph. He may be permanently confined to a wheelchair. WP

I like jokes about dwarves because there's nothing funnier than when one person is taller or shorter than another person. That rarely happens in the world, so be on the lookout for any opportunity you get to make sure everyone knows you're aware of how size works. That shit is on the List's original charter I think. (SEE ALSO: Some people are tall, while other people are short)

Colleen wrote: "You could write about rich people ruining the lives of the common man in Ireland. The grass may be greener, but ya still lose your house thanks to Sean Quinn."

That sounds like a whole thing looking up who that guy actually is. Ok, fine, I'll look. Apparently he was Ireland's richest person at one point, and now he's bankrupt. This Huffington Post article, which there is no way I'm going to actually read, probably explains why that's a thing. This is good because rich people are all, 100%, without exception, evil motherfuckers. Not even trying to be funny saying that, which is a slight change of pace from everything else I've ever written on here that wasn't funny simply out of poor execution.

Jeff wrote: Yes! Put Ireland on the List!

Ireland is the official country of the List. Well, Irish America more accurately. (SEE ALSO: HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY: I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON YOUR OWN GREEN VOMIT)

Pete wrote: "everything will seem lackluster after that Olive Garden business"

Sad but true I guess. Someone write a really shitty article for me to read so I can feel better/worse about my career as a hack. Thanks in advance. (SEE ALSO: Olive Garden arrives! Simultaneously the saddest and lulziest news story I've ever read)

Barry wrote: "there's a band called Crazy Crazy Awesome Awesome. You should listen to them if you utterly loathe yourself."

I do! Oh. Oh, now we're getting close to the sweet spot. This is genuinely awful. Bands like this "somehow manage to givecrunkcore a bad name, something that's not very easy to do becausethat's already the worst genre in history of genres." (SEE ALSO: Five musical genres you don't know but already hate; Brokencyde: Music is over ; The shittiest piece of shit songs of the shitty year 2011)

Jenny wrote: "Here, hate the shit out of this article "What is it like to be asexual?" I used it in German as a debate point for my students today. They hated all fucking over this bitch."

Oh wow, look at this important new trend of people who don't really feel like having sex. Sounds like our wives, right fellas!? [FART HORN]. This is pretty hateable stuff actually, we may have a winner here.

Twenty-one-year-old Jenni Goodchild does not experience sexual attraction, but in an increasingly sexualised society what is it like to be asexual?...

"[Romantic asexuals] don't experience sexual attraction, but they do experience romantic attraction. So they will look at someone and they won't respond sexually to them, but they might want to get closer to them, to find out more about them, to share things with them."

This is true of Jenni who is heteroromantic, and although having no interest in sex, is still attracted to people, and is in a relationship with 22-year-old Tim. Tim, however, is not asexual.

So the BBC basically just wrote a 1,000 word article about a guy with blue balls. The News.

Marc wrote: "Since we're on the topic of boners, why don't you write about Boners BBQ i Atlanta?"

Been planning on doing something bigger on this story Boners BBQ Cries ‘Yelp!’ After Feeling Heat For Bad Review of Customer, maybe for a place where I actually earn money for thinking about something for more than the ten seconds that passes for planning around here. (Always a sucker for a goofy headline pun too, so good work on that one ABC News).

Here's the deal, a place called Boners BBQ in Atlanta (no shit? Atlanta?) called out a bitchy customer after she wrote a whiny Yelp review, therefor making themselves the heroes of restauranteurs everywhere for about a day until they realized they were siding with a place that sounds like it polishes the silverwear with a combination of buffalo saunce and man juice. (SEE ALSO: How to be a bad restaurant customer ; Cool Yelp story, bro. No one cares ; PTSOTL: Yelp)

Robert wrote: "the captain schettino / italian coast guard exchange reads like some top shelf Bulgakov dialogue....missing only the latter's insistence that schettino stop playing the fool, etc.

This seems like it would be a good opportunity for me to write something about Bulgakov, to remind everyone that I have read a lot of Russian literature and am therefor more soulful, sad, and intellectual than the rest of you, but on the other hand: trying. Also I've been avoiding that whole cruise ship disaster thing because I don't want it to taint my memories of the best cruise ship voyage ever: Electronic music world takes over a cruise ship, parties the eff out. (SEE ALSO: Russia: still fucking insane | abortion rock, children's nightclubs; Real life Russian Barbie Doll is a metaphor; The most Russian thing I've ever seen)

Ilya suggested this video:

I've been pretty annoyed with the whole Lana Del Ray post-SNL backlash. "Glad we all finally have a chance to teach the music biz a lesson by piling on Lana Del Ray, the first person to ever adopt a persona," I wrote on Twitter. But then I was like "Yesterday I was so annoyed at all the hating on Lana Del Ray. Today it almost seems like it's an unimportant thing to worry about." So now I don't know what to think.

thats what im sayin, check out the hook on that song

I think I will. OK, it's not too terrible and not too good. I have heard worse songs. Good day.

Craig wrote: "Paula Deen diabetes?"

This story sounds like it has all the stuff I usually go for, like making fun of fat people, and southern people, and southern fat people, but I haven't really read up on it because it seemed like there were already going to be a thousand jokes about poetic justice for all the millions of people she's probably given the dia-beat-us too, and I am nothing if not a stickler for fresh, brand new jokes you've never heard before. Same thing for this one:

Erik wrote: Dude, how about the "Shit ______s say" movement. That shit needs to end.

I bounced back and forth on that one for a while the past couple days, because I do love it when a new meme comes around. It's like you take one thing, then change the thing that was the main thing of it into another similar thing and now you have yourself a whole new thing! But then everyone else got mad at it, and I was like :/ This seems like it's in good hands elsewhere.

Nicole wrote: "Keith had a good one today....he hates hipsters"

Still? That sounds exhausting. I wrote about this once way back in 2009 in Hating Hipsters. Still

OK, first of all: hating things. Second of all: no you don't.

I think what you're doing here is replacing the part for the whole. It's a common practice poets (Poets.) call metaphor and perverts who can't jerk off without sniffing vinegary sock pubes call a fetish (Fetishes.).

You don't hate hipsters, what you hate are assholes. You don't hate someone because of their haircut, you hate them because of the smug, shit eating grin floating underneath it. Or because you don't like the way that they hate things different than you hate things. You know, tangible, important shit...

Jeff wrote: "Spider monkeys. They fucking suck."

I guess so?

"And fwiw... this all sounds like its time for the book deal before your wasted years go wasted

Very true. Someone call me with some money. Email me actually, I don't feel like talking to anyone.

Nate wrote: "You used to be so funny."

Prove it.

Nick wrote: "Obama is going to speak from the magic kingdom in disneyworld on thursday, on main st usa...theres something there but I dont know what"

How about every single part of it?

Michael wrote: "Bed, Bath & Beyond had to recall radioactive tissue dispensers"

So they did. I'm probably not going to ever know anything more about that story though, but feel free to go read it everyone. It's your life.

Aaron wrote: "another installment in your ongoing dubstep series?"

I literally have nothing left to say about dubstep. (SEE ALSO: Americans are homophobic, therefore Skrillex)

Ashley wrote: "This guy. And check out all of his other videos. he is undoubtedly going to be famous for being a moron."

I already wrote about that guy, if by "writing about him" you mean "being him" the other night, which is how we got ourselves into this shitty lack of motivation mood in the first place. Oh wait, this guy. This guy. He even gets to the part where he starts singing Cindi Lauper songs. Are we sure this isn't actually me?

And speaking of famous for being a moron, here are some tweets from the other day that you ingrates slept on:

@lukeoneil47

LOL@ these sauna squatters 'working out.' If sweating in a small, hot box were exercise, chicken wings would have 6packs. So would my dick.

lukeoneil47

Wait, the new The Great Gatsby film is in 3D? Can't wait to see the 3D boats against the 3D current borne back ceaslessly into the 3D past.

lukeoneil47

Is it racist that watching my old lady cook chili and chicken wings for the boys coming over to watch football gives me a boner?

lukeoneil47

@ArvSux @thebenword shit your pants like you're a guy with an extra pair of pants in his bag so it's 'no biggie.'

lukeoneil47

Tweet like no one is following.

lukeoneil47

All I ever wanted was to be moderately well known for doing something of minimal importance exceptionally well.

I never learned the value of money

2012-01-17T10:12:00.002-05:00

Patrick Kay, whose work you may remember from Street Carnage, never learned the value of money. Which is surprising, because unlike most people of his generation, it sounds like his parents didn't spoil the shit out of him, the little brat. He explains why in the piece below.

How do we learn the value of money? I’ll tell you how I learned. Through soul-crushing disappointment.

1987. My aunt had given me four pounds. I was five years old. Sterling pounds are uniquely satisfying coins – thick, weighty, compact, and a snazzy shade of greenish-gold. We went into the town centre (why do people go shopping when they visit other countries? How boring is that?) and passed a busker. Dumbly copying people I’d seen on telly I threw a pound into his guitar case. In the toy department of John Lewis I picked up a small box of three Lego spacemen. I wasn’t some stupid kid who liked playing with Lego; Lego was more like a part-time job. I didn’t fuck about – I built hotels, rows of terraced houses and post offices. I scorned Lego medieval with its insultingly pre-fabricated castle walls. I liked building things brick-by-brick. I needed those spacemen. I had three pounds. There was a 3 on the price tag. The whole thing said ₤3.99. I was good to go.

“You don’t have enough money,” my mum said. I wordlessly extended my palm containing the three discs, showing her I was an enfranchised member of our society. Power and status were in my hand.

“That’s the same as a pound, honey,” she said, pointing at the nonsensical “.99”. I suddenly realised I had thrown away – literally – a pound. The busker. He was probably rich and lived in a castle. A Lego medieval castle which he had built very quickly. Without skill. I started to cry.“I’ll give him a pound” my aunt said.

“He needs to learn,” my father said.

July 1992. The SNES had been out for a month in the UK. Still playing our ancient NES, my brother and I burned with frustration at the sheer shitty unfairness of our lives. Our only topic of conversation was the SNES, or more specifically our lack of one. Everyone at school had one. No-one in recorded human history had ever suffered as much, for as long consecutively, as the Kennedy brothers had. My brother’s birthday was in July but he had been categorically told that a SNES would not be forthcoming. Too expensive.

Pain turned to happiness on his birthday. It was a glorious Sunday. Danny was given a promisingly rectangular present. Excitement turned to delirious joy for both of us as he unwrapped a SNES alongside F-Zero and Super Tennis. I literally kicked the NES aside in our haste to plug it in. How could one block of grey plastic bring so much joy?There had been one small fly in the ointment.

Mother. She had issued a chilling proviso, a horrifying caveat: “This is for both of you. This is Patrick’s birthday present too.”

I heard the words and dismissed them. My birthday was over two months away. I wasn’t worried - she’d made the decision unilaterally. It was doubtless illegal to do that; she hadn’t asked me if I was prepared to enter into such a bargain. You couldn’t just decide what birthday present you were going to get someone without consulting them. She was out of her fucking mind if she thought she wasn’t getting me a present. I would get the police involved if necessary. Anyway, she’d forget. Like I said, my birthday was two months away.

Two months? In two months I’d have a mortgage and kids.

September 1992. I woke up on my birthday – also a Sunday. A dark, gloomy Sunday. The weather was matched by the uneasy shadow across my heart. Mum had told me several times that I would not be receiving a present. Just like she’d said all that time ago. She seemed pretty resolute, but nonetheless in the preceding weeks I had provided her with the titles of the Fighting Fantasy game books I wanted. A Transformers Sky Hammer Ultra Pretender figure would hit the spot nicely, too. I didn’t for one minute believe that the woman who had given birth to me would do anything so cruel as leave me hanging on my birthday.

Oscillating wildly between fear and desperate hope I woke my parents up. They wished me a happy birthday and started to make breakfast.

I should have learned from Legogate. There was nothing.

Nothing.

My brother – an unemployed seven year old bum, a loser – had of course not got a present for me either. I didn’t cry; I wandered through the day in a cold, dark void of lovelessness, wondering why I had been singled out for such an unusually cruel fate. I actually wished I was dead. There was my favourite chocolate cake for dinner. It turned to ashes in my mouth.

July 2001. I’d finished my A levels and was looking forward to a lads’ holiday in Spanish puke-point HQ Magaluf. I’d never been away without my family before and couldn’t wait. By this point my father was dead – years of silent fury, of choking down acrid bile into his gullet as he fumed at everything in creation, had finally resulted in death from astonishingly aggressive pancreatic cancer a few years previously. I imagine I’ll die in a similar grimly apt way; perhaps a brain hemorrhage as my cerebrum finally explodes, burnt out by a lifetime of obsessive self-absorption and disgusted narcissism. I’d paid for the holiday and also saved the princely sum of ₤300 by working in a university cafeteria. Few people on the face of the earth had ever worked as hard as I had, driving my body through punishing five hour shifts three and sometimes four times a week. I was Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged. I was Alexey Stakhanov. I was John Henry. Two days before I was due to leave my mother asked me to drive her to the gym.

“Walk,” I said. “I thought you were trying to get fit?”

“Drive me,” she said. Unfairly she escalated the confrontation indecently by using her “do not fuck with me” voice straight away. (You had to pay for parking.) Fine. Buckled with impotent rage I slipped into the driving seat and reversed the car out of the garage.Straight into the van of a workman painting our neighbour’s house.

The grinding crunch of impact spelt one thing and one thing only: money. I had been doing about 4mph. There was one small ding in the van. The painter came out, circumspect, a man of the world. Around ₤800, he reckoned, to have it fixed. The excess was ₤280. She made me pay before I left, refusing absolutely to shoulder any moral or fiscal responsibility. I still went to Magaluf. While my friends partied until daybreak I sat in the hotel room and ate tinned tuna. There wasn’t even a television. I came back from holiday paler than when I left.

“He needs to learn,” my father had said all those years ago. Oh, I’d learned. Learned that my parents were dicks.

--PATRICK KAY

Rent a Facebook girlfriend

2012-01-13T13:49:00.001-05:00

Just found a booger-stained wish list I drew up in crayon when I was in jr high that listed all of my hopes and dreams. I wanted to be able to see pictures of every girl I went to school with in her underwear whenever I wanted, to have every record in the world available to me at any time, to be able to get up to the minute messages about what my favorite actors and football players were having for lunch, and, most importantly, for everyone to know I had a real girlfriend. I mean, I had a girlfriend back then, you guys just didn't know her, she was from Canada.

All of those first few have been available for a while now, but suddenly the internet has made the last one feasible as well, as this Washington Post piece points out.

Those despairing over the lack of a Facebook girlfriend (which everyone knows is far more real than the real thing), despair no more.

Cathy’s ad (Fiverr) Fiverr.com, a Web site that allows people to hawk various services for just $5, has a new ad out that pretty much covers all of Facebook’s “in a relationship” bases. The ad, from seller cathy01:

“I'll be your girlfriend on Facebook for 10 days. I'm Cathy, a 23-year-old student and I live in New York city. There's a second option, by the way: If you want a few messages (3 max.) on your profile to make someone jealous that's also possible, just send me the message(s) and the facebook-link! byebye!x (I don't! do any promotional stuff!”

Long story short, you spoiled young turds have no idea how good you have it. Enjoy your magic science fiction life, assholes.

They hate us for our freedom. Marines piss on dead Taliban corpses

2012-01-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

A video has surfaced on YouTube today which appears to show US Marines pissing on the faces of dead Taliban soldiers. (h/t Metro Boston). Good thing they're only heathen savages whose lives don't count for shit, right gang?

I'm not naive enough to think this sort of thing hasn't gone on forever in the long history of killing people and pissing on someone's face being funny, but homeboys here have hung themselves with the single biggest defining behavior of this retarded generation. Here's a pro tip: when you do something criminal, shameful, unethical, downright horrifying, or something that might, you know, further fuel the fires of Anti-American hatred even hotter than they already are throughout the world, maybe don't video it.

Obviously what's going on here is the extreme results of dehumanaizing the enemy to the point that they're robbed of their personhood. The stream of piss is a metaphor, meant to exhibit distance between the target and the pisser. That's typical of any war, right? But you're gonna have to piss really long and hard to blast yourself up and away from this situation, marines.

video below.

Daggering vs. Flaming Daggers

2012-01-11T11:12:00.001-05:00

Evan Kenney brings us one step closer to answering one of life's eternal questions: whose music is more embarrassing, white dudes or black dudes? SPOILER: It's a tie.

When you got it, you got it, and Virgin Steele? They got it. They've got the look that the ladies go wild for. They wield a fiery sword that is dangerously close to burning up their wife's Beanie-Baby collection, they've got Al Bundy from The Matrix on guitar, and in this video, they are performing at some of the most picturesque video locations that Long Island has to offer. Can we say that these guys are the next Zeppelin? Without a doubt.

Oh man white people are awful, right? Haha, not so fast black dudes...

This may be the best advertisement for Avis Video Production that I have seen yet. Look at that DANCING MOUSE!

--EVAN KENNEY

AT THE DRIVE-IN vs. REFUSED WYG?

2012-01-11T09:57:00.000-05:00

Joe out of Leisure checks in with a scientific answer to this hugely important question.

Today I’ve been creeping into your house and logging onto your Facebook while you’ve been on the loo and that’s how I know your wall is covered with posts about Coachella, At the Drive-In, and Refused. How else could I know this? I must be breaking in through your bedroom window and hacking into your computer. It’s the only possible explanation. You really need to change your locks, also I like your bed covers. They’re cute.

Anyway, let’s ignore your dangerously lax security and overly frequent visits to the toilet, because what I’m trying to say is that everyone is losing their shit over a music festival in California. There’s three main reasons for this: 1) Seminal post-punk legends At the Drive-In have reformed and are playing and it’ll be amazing. 2) Seminal post-punk legends Refused have reformed and are playing and it’ll be amazing. 3) It’s nice to have something to look forward to during the January blues.

But, as with most things, what actually matters is deciding who’s the best? Which of these bands are most worth getting out of bed for (and then into a taxi and onto a plane and into another taxi, then maybe a bus and then probably walking for a while, I also imagine you’ll get lost at some point too so you’ll need to factor that in as well). Here are the numbers that matter to you, the reader, who’s cupboard I’m temporarily living in, maybe:

Overall winner of this highly credible, and in no way rushed or ill thought out competition: At The Drive-In!

I think it’s kind of a shame two great bands who probably share a lot of fans have both reformed at the same time for the same festival. It would have been nice to have spread the love a little. Maybe towards this country and for something a little more affordable. (£1-£8 price bracket would be ideal). It’s a bit like if 2Pac and Elvis both announced comebacks on the same weekend. Only this is way less of a big deal, much more likely and not nearly as supernatural. If you can’t wait till April, there’s always this forever and ever.

--JOE ILEY

Wes Welker somehow makes Maroon 5 song palatable

2012-01-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

Remember when that guy wrote a song about Tim Tebow the other day and we all had a moderate chuckle over it? That was fun. This song about Wes Welker, on the other hand, is just great. It simply puts its head down and gets the job done. Not flashy. Doesn't look for the glory.

It was International Subway Pervert Free Pass Day earlier this week

2012-01-10T18:09:00.000-05:00

(Getty Images / TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

It was International Subway Pervert Free Pass Day earlier this week, aka No Pants Subway Ride, sponsored by Improv Everywhere and FlashMob Mexico. It's the one day of the year where it's not only OK to check out people's asses on your commute, but it's encouraged. Required, almost. Something about cultural norms yadda yadda art. Some other people took photos of this really important event, then Buzzfeed rounded up 50 of the best ones, then I took the ones I wanted to write jokes about and posted them here. Long story short: the internet.

(Getty Images / TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

More like SPROING ST if you feel me here.

(Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

I like this one because it's what racists moms everywhere think is happening every time their little girl rides the subway in any city.

(Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

That awkward moment when you realize you accidentally color coordinated your scarf with some punk kid's bikini briefs.

(Getty Images / TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

No Pants Day? I thought they said it was Shit Your Pants Day. Fuck, this is embarrassing.

(Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

You know how sexist fat virgins trolling feminists "male gaze" articles and shit online are always like, if she didn't want me to stare at her body she shouldn't have worn that outfit? Not sure I can actually argue with them too much in this case.

(Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

Remember when you were young before internet porn existed, and just getting a glimpse of literally any naked woman, no matter how old or plump, would give you a raging pants axe for weeks? I miss those days sometimes. Simpler times.

Dude here has that same look you get when you see a fucking bear in the woods, and you're like, don't move and no one is going to get hurt. Don't even look.

(AP / Marco Ugarte)

Look at this pervert. There's a kid in the photo buddy. Fucking gross.

(Getty Images / RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

You know that no-pants day is like Halloween is for a slutty broads in leg-piece bro world here, right? Gets excited about showing off his goods for weeks in advance.

(Getty Images / TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

And this shit is any different than any other day on the NYC subway how?

(Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

That's pretty much how I feel whenever I see these damned wiener kids having any fun out in the world when I'm commuting myself. Just kidding I don't have a real job. But I would feel that way.

Tim Tebow's Fire, an anthem to unite us all

2012-01-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

Here's my joke about this: everything about this. Thank you, good day.

OK fine, a little more context. Tim Tebow, for those of you too cool to know or trying-hard enough to pretend not to know, is that one main football guy these days. (Not liking sports is on the List for hard btw). He is extremely popular. People were tweeting about him something like 9500 times a second the other night when he played in an American football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, "the most-watched game of season, the most-watched wild card game ever with 42.4 million viewers and the most-watched TV program since Super Bowl XLV," according to the NFL. In other words, he's a total thing. That's partly because he's objectively pretty bad at football, comparatively speaking, and for some reason people think he's an underdog, which he is in no way, shape or form, as Drew Magary pointed out in this great Deadspin piece.

The real reason people care is because he loves Jesus. More than you probably. More than your grandmother even, a problem which I addressed here in Tim Tebow and the war on Christianity. In short, he's driving the entire country fucking insane. Even people in countries that don't care about football, like British musician John Parr, who'll you remember but probably not from the eighties. He recently re-recorded his 1985 hit song “St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)." Lyrics, (via FOX Denver) below. On second thought I take back what I said about not liking football being on the list. I'm doubling down on my stance for hating music though.

Tim Tebow’s Fire (Lyrics)

by John Parr

Growin' up
Gotta keep your eye on the ball

Make it fly,

Give it everything, give your all

But maybe sometimes if you feel the pain
You'll find you're all alone
Everything has changed

Play the game
You know you can't quit until it's won
Soldier on
Only you can do what must be done

You know I’m out there

Down on one knee
a prisoner
And I’m tryin' to break free

CHORUS:

I can see a new horizon
Underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's
Flyin' higher and higher

Gonna be a man in motion

All I needs my Broncos team
Take me where my future's lyin'
Tim Tebows Fire

Oooh...

Burnin' up
Don't know just how far that I can go
(Just how far I go)
Soon be home
Only just 4 downs to go
I can make it
I know I can
You broke the boy in me
But you won't break the man

(CHORUS)

I can see a new horizon
blazin on the Mile High
I'll be where the eagle's
Flyin' higher and higher

Gonna be your man in motion

All I needs my Broncos team
Take me where my future's lyin'
Tim Tebows Fire

I can climb the highest mountain
These Broncos cant be beat
I can feel St Elmo’s Fire burnin' in me
Burnin' in me

Just once in his life
A man has his time
And my time is now
And I'm comin' alive

I can hear the music playin'
I can see the banners fly
Feel like a man again

I’ll hold my head high
Gonna be a man in motion
These broncos can’t be beat
Take me where my future's lyin'
Tim Tebow’s fire

(CHORUS)

I can climb the highest mountain
Cross the wildest sea
I can feel St. Elmo's Fire burnin' in me

Burnin'
Burnin' in me
I can feel it burnin'
Oooh, burnin' inside of me

Electronic music world takes over a cruise ship, parties the eff out

2012-01-10T13:27:00.002-05:00

via Spin

The Holy Ship!/ Hard electronic festival-related thing just pulled back into shore. The cruise to the Bahamas featured a who's who of today's EDM scene, like Skrillex, Steve Aoki, A-Trak, Rusko, Boys Noize, Laidback Luke and every other turd with a sideways haircut and a grindy Macbook in the world. The only thing it was missing was a submarine to torpedo the whole thing into oblivion, right dudes? /cuts off sleeves, practices karate, butt rocks the fuck out.

Will you look at all these losers? Partying day and night with a thousand of their peers in the gorgeous sun, getting to see a huge lineup of international talent all in one place, fingering mad stubbly pussies in the engine room or whatever (via Titanic). I'd much rather be home in a freezing Boston apartment making fun of people on my computer. :/ Which is what I will now do anyway, because your enjoyment of life is an affront.

Seriously though, this is the most exciting cruise ship related thing I have ever seen since the time I got diarrhea on the way to Pleasure Island with my parents in high school/ Kickball Katy got her tubs out on that indie rock cruise ship thing last spring.

Photos via the Holy Ship! Facebook page or Spin, where noted.

Shouldn't there be like some sort of bro-step royalty protocol like how the president and vice president and the one other main sentate dude can't be partying in the same place at once in case of a terrorist attack?

Worst bukkake scene ever.

via Spin

Does this Metallica t-shirt make my personal brand seem more authentic?

I've got a pink thing on my head here people. I dunno, I got nothing for this one leave me alone.

Young narcissists in love. <3

You can see her boob is why.

Yeah, that was pretty much the look on my face after seeing this picture myself.

I know exactly how you feel here bro.

Why is it called bro-step again?

via Spin

U MAD? (Yes, a little actually)

via Spin

From my forthcoming hit single-serving Tumblr UK Dubstep Hero or Florida Methhead That Snuck on the Ship.

Because it's like cunnilingus, you see.

The cover song fame dilemna ft. Neon Hitch, Karmin, and The Weeknd

2012-01-09T18:06:00.002-05:00

I've long felt an affinity for UK pop starlet in training Neon Hitch ever since way back five minutes ago when I got an email that reminded me that she existed and that I'd posted about her cover of Kreayshawn's "Gucci Gucci" over the summer. That might be because we both look a little old for our nose rings, and that we both have absolutely banging asses. Or is it simply how much she reminds me of my TV crush:

One more thing she and I have in common, neither of us are very good at writing songs either, as "Fuck U Betta", the first, Benny Blanco produced-single from her forthcoming debut album made me realize.

Neon Hitch - Fuck U Betta by NeonHitch

It doesn't make sense that I wouldn't immediately vibe 2 this track, since it's got all of the predictable slut-wave signifiers in place that I usually fall for. Maybe that's the problem. You can only imaginary-face-fuck a genre of music so many times before it gets shuffled to the back of the musical spank bank. Am I maturing out of the sexxxy-synth wave startlet phase that every reasonable adult male who sits at home in front of the computer all day trying to make music seem interesting goes through, or is this song just kind of :/ ?

I'd say it's the latter here. I still have a lot of questions though. Is that Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock sample a fresh call back to the old school, or is it a cynical ploy to trigger fond memories in our easily influenced consumer brains? Is that title itself trying too hard? Do you think she means it? What's so bad about the way this other girl in question allegedly fucks?

It's a shame, because in all of her covers of others acts' more compelling material (Kreay Kreay, Wiz Khalifa, Waka Flocka Flame and Mac Miller), Neon Hitch has shown a lot of star quality, infectious charisma, and a sort of unique vocal delivery/flow. Also, as I mentioned, DAT AZZ.

That's got to be the problem! Getting attention for your act by covering hit songs, (particularly if you're an effable white bird doing hip hop in a quirky indie-dork style, like Karmin with that Chris Brown song) sets expectations too high. When the first song you hear from a new act is a hit established by someone else, a listener is going to think that is representative of the quality of song the covering act will follow up with themselves. Just like Alien Ant Farm and Orgy did. Remember all that success they went on to have? Thought so.

That's both the blessing and the curse of the trick. It works at first, but then you have to live up to it. (It's like every single thing you ever said to your girlfriend before you moved in together back when you were covering a sensitive man's greatest hits. Revert to your mean once the deal is done and she's like, "Meh, leaving to toilet seat up? I don't hear a single.")

Much better then to save the cover for your second or third internetty buzz release, that way we already have a sense of what you can do, like The Weeknd, who already rocked us off our tits with his effortlessly smooth, heart-breaking but maybe not tale of scumbaggery, "Wicked Games", before following it up with one of the siqqest MJ covers I've ever heard.

Screw your worthless unfamous baby, losers

2012-01-09T15:16:00.000-05:00

via

Congratulations on the birth of your new child. Truly, it's a miracle, and an occasion which you'll never forget. Do you happen to be internationally famous for yelling into a microphone? No. Oh. Then never mind. Your baby is a piece of shit.

That's the jist of the situation in the neonatal unit at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where the VIP section is popping off this week after the birth of Beyonce and Jay-Z's child Blue Ivy Carter. Baby bottles filled with Crystal and shit. Designer onesies. Incubator entourages. Never mind spitting flow, lil baby here is spitting-up, amirite? So it would seem according to this New York Post story Brooklyn Dad stopped from seeing premature twins by Beyonce's hospital 'takeover' which I'm trusting has been thoroughly vetted and lays out the situation in the evenhanded and sober manner we've come to expect.

To accommodate the influential couple’s demand for privacy for them and their new kid at Lenox Hill Hospital, other new and expecting parents said they have essentially been put on “lockdown” — and even booted out of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which was on the same floor as Beyonce’s delivery “suite” — so the pampered songstress and her party could come and go unencumbered.

Pampered, heh-heh. ICWYDT.

Let's see what else we have here... /phone rings, goes outside for a while, sends some work emails, comes back...

Eh, I'm not really mad at this story anymore I guess. Really no way to make any of this whole thing -- the Post, babies in general, average joes vs celebrities, hospitals, my bi-polar swings between crippling indifference/barely-contained rage issues -- all seem anymore ridiculous than they already are in and of themselves. Can't win em all. F-

At least we'll always have these closing paragraphs to chew on:

Beyonce had a steady stream of visitors yesterday. A makeup artist was spotted going up with several bags in tow, and lunch was special-delivered from a local burger joint and gourmet market.

Pals who didn’t make it to the hospital weighed in on Twitter -- including Diddy, Russell Simmons and LaToya Jackason.

“Welcome to the world Blue! We love you already,” wrote Beyonce best friend Gwyneth Paltrow, while Rihanna tweeted: “Welcome to the world princess Carter! Love Aunty Rih.”

I like how celebrities apparently think babies are on Twitter.

And let's not overlook this, which will now echo throughout the hollow crypts of my soul for the rest of eternity:

The baby is reportedly named for her dad’s album, “Blueprint” and her mom’s favorite number, 4 -- represented by the Roman numeral IV , or “Ivy.”

Reportedly.

Why Obama actually wants to legislate you into obesity

2012-01-09T13:22:00.002-05:00

Darden CEO Clarence Otis (seated) and Michelle Obama (obaminating)

There's usually thought-provoking stuff over at the site Gucci Little Piggy, even if it's generally way outside of my huge government-loving, Nanny State teat-suckling, radical, Cambridge leftist agenda. Chuck Rudd wrote recently on his experience inside the unholy alliance of big government and the corporate restaurant industry, which I'm sharing here below.

--

This could get me fired. Oh well, I need some strife in my life – a little bit of getting off the pot after years and years of doing Sudoku puzzles will do me some good.

Luke O’Neil’s piece at his blog PTSOTL criticizing an Iowa newspaper’s wide-eyed pecorino cheeseball profile of a new restaurant provided a bit of synchronocity that compels me to out myself and the company I work for. The second-tier Italian chain restaurant that I write about so often: Olive Garden of “here, pour all of this lettuce and sauce and soup and bread down your gullet” fame.

Here are the dots that I want to connect. I don’t think any of them are a smoking gun, but I do think there is some inconsistency in the company’s values and a bit too much coziness between a private company and the Executive branch of our government. The dots aren’t something that should provoke a major stand against the company, but they are something to keep an eye on.

The CEO of Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden’s parent company, is Clarence Otis. Otis has donated money to the Obama campaign. In and of itself, this isn’t a big deal.

Michelle Obama pushed her infamous diet-change initiative through Darden Restaurants and Olive Garden specifically. The company has altered its children’s menu – replacing french fries with grapes or broccoli and making 2% milk the default drink choice for kids – and plans to cut sodium and calories across its menu. Of course, actually cutting caloric-intake of OG customers will require someone (me!) to pry those stainless-steel salad pincers from the customers’ oversized mitts.

I’m not one to jump on the bandwagon against Mrs. Obama for her pet project; every first lady has grabbed an issue near and dear to their hearts, but the propaganda laid out by both Obama and Otis isn’t something that I can read with a straight face:

“This is a great opportunity for Darden to strengthen our relationships with our guests,” Otis said. “Our commitment recognizes that they deserve greater choice and variety, and by putting our guests’ desires first, we’re putting our best foot forward as a company.”

At the news conference, Obama said Darden’s efforts would let parents teach their children about healthful eating by example.

“If we’re going to solve the problem of childhood obesity, we have to show our kids what to do with our actions and habits that we want them to learn,” Obama said. “Darden is giving us all that opportunity. They’re not doing this just as CEOs concerned about the bottom line; they’re doing it as parents and grandparents who care about our kids and our country.”

She added that restaurant companies without Darden’s massive scale, and even independent operators, could join Darden in the move to cut calories and sodium. Small steps like offering water and skim milk as kids’ meal beverages and letting customers order baked versions of fried menu items “can really add up,” she said.
Obama also called on parents to keep demanding more healthful options for their kids from restaurants, and she stressed that parents ought to take advantage of those menu items.

There is a lot going on in there. Obama adopts a high-handed position that Darden’s action plan would “let” parents teach their children about health – which is a problem when these behemoths come into the restaurant chomping at the bit for “them breadsticks”. This is also the company that offers the “Never Ending Pasta Bowl” each fall season (or as we call it ‘hell month’). According to Obama, a company like Darden is somehow in a position to teach parents how to teach their children.

The thing is, one of the players here – Obama or Otis – have to admit something unsightly. Either Obama (who serves as an ambassador for Nanny State liberalism) admits that grown adults are too inept to raise their children, or Otis admits that his industry (convenient pre-prepared food slopped out in profit-maximizing trough-sized portions) and his company are culpable in helping to create the problem Obama and Co. is trying to fix.

The company has also begun a push an environmental initiative through water-saving and energy-saving measures. I took a snapshot of the poster hanging above the cash stand at work. It looks like a 1970s propaganda poster right down to the multi-colored, kumbaya-ist, social justice fists (used by Marxists, Black Panthers) which jut up from the ground like a crop of dildos, making me think that outspoken communist green guru and former Obama insider Van Jones is lurking somewhere behind all of this. He probably isn’t, but the Obama-Jones/Otis-Darden connection piques the interest of crackpots like me.

None of this is horrendous, but I’d prefer that companies implement their value-changing campaigns in the proper spirit of the cause; as in, if you want to do something good for the community or your customers “just do it”; don’t wait for a pat on the back or recognition. Nobody likes a glad-handing, ass-kissing, accolade-seeking opportunist.

But the inconsistency lies in another initiative which the company implemented last year. The company slashed the wages of bartenders and bussers in a very underhanded way. Big deal, you might say. I’m usually sympathetic to business decisions like this, but the change was such a shock to my co-workers that I couldn’t help but see red in their stead. Some workers’ wages were slashed by $4 or $5 an hour which is about a 30% (or $600-800 a month) pay cut for those working 40 hours a week. Worse, the company took these employees aside and tried to sell them on the idea that they wouldn’t be losing all that much money. And while they were being sold on this, there was really no explanation given for it. Our local management team acted like the thing was out of their hands and that they didn’t know the reason for the change (surely they did, but they weren’t going to tell everyone for fear of mutiny). As is always the case, mgmt was forced to highlight the upside and lowlight the downside in order to lull the impacted employees into a stupor even while the collective labor cost cuts are expected to save Darden $30-$40 million per year even though net profit grew by nearly 18% (before cuts were fully implemented) from 2010 to 2011.

After a week or so under the new payscale several bussers walked out on their shifts – a move that made me happy. A few bartenders sort of just moved away from bartending because the money wasn’t there which meant that management had to wrangle other employees into the positions. I was approached for a bartending position but declined partly on principle (yeah, hire me at the old wage you tight-fisted fucks; should have asked me when you weren’t paying dog turd wages. Also, give me a company car) but also because I enjoy the flexibility of a waiter’s schedule.

This all rubs me the wrong way. We have a company in cahoots with a regime that thinks it can compel society to live a certain way, and we have a company that plays up their social justice, public interest activism while slashing the wages of its employees to bolster their already alfredo sauce-inflated bottom (line).

--CHUCK RUDD

Americans are homophobic, therefore Skrillex

2012-01-07T14:14:00.000-05:00

U JELLIE?

Americans are homophobic, therefore Skrillex. I think that's the takeaway from this New York Magazine piece on the ascendency of Skrillex and his bro-stepping brethren to the forefront of the shitty teenagers getting shitty movement. "Keep in mind that Americans, and especially American males, have traditionally had some weird reservations about electronic dance music—at our worst, we’ve written the whole thing off as silly, trashy, soulless, effeminate, or 'gay.'" writes Nitsuh Abebe in this thoughtful piece which attempts to wrestle in the mud with the same conceptual bear in a neon pink tutu that many other music writers, myself included, have fuxed wit the past year or two in order to answer a pretty interesting question. That question is "how do I turn this popular, but highly controversial cultural movement into page views?" See my previous posts What the fuck is dubstep anyway?; The kids these days + Identity Festival; The day, the duuubstep died; Somehow people still don't know what dub step is; and WTF is dubstep part 50 featuring Nero for evidence.

The secondary question, of course, is a more direct, but complicated one: "Why? Just why?" It's something you've probably asked yourself about dubstep, only the latest example in a long line of rotted-out cultural meat stinking up the back corner of the taste fridge, and every other genre that's been popular amongst children and recently-non-children since you yourself were within shouting distance of your first boner and/or girl boner. Back then the answer was self evident: this is fun, and girls seems to like and/or I am a girl.

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As I said, this is all ground that's been well-covered everywhere this year, so no need to rehash the concept of why teenagers want to be in big sweaty crowds with their clothes off in an environment in which drug use flourishes, because that would like asking where babies come from. Let's do it anyway though since I was already having this argument with a couple of my fellow old music nerds and I hate to let a couple of half-assed turns of phrase go to waste on merely one or two people. What am I, a cave man?

Popular music, into which I include EDM and all non-purposefully reactionary, intentionally difficult sub-genres, has always been made with the consumption habits of young women in mind, and therefor the men who want to be around them when their inhibitions are lowered. There have been many notable exceptions of course, but they stand out all the more as such for not falling into the Young Pussy Paradigm, which should probably be a science themed teen POV series if it's not already.

The entire reason rock and roll exists in the first place, which isn't a very minority opinion I'm putting forth here I don't think, is the old in out in out. Specifically sex between young people. Gross, hot, gross young people. The entire reason all forms of culture exist, for that matter, is to get dem panties wetz. Maybe not butt rock or prog or huffing-your-own-farts-rock, but that stuff is reactionary to the sex motive. In that case being anti-sex still qualifies as being about sex. The ommission is indicative of its overarching permanence. Even highly "authentic" music, like Burial, for example, or all of the other acts your average TR000DUBSTEPP fan is mad about (many examples of which you can find in the NYM comments thread²) is just a process of narrowing the parameters for potential sex parters through exclusionary taste. (i.e. I like people who don't like x therefore let's makeout). Side note, haven't had sex/jerked off in a few days, so maybe that's clouding my thinking here.

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I do think, however, that the thesis in the NYM piece, that songs from the likes of Skrillex express this musical sex-motive in specifically hetero-friendly terms -- in other words, all of his songs basically come with a giant implied #nohomo affixed -- is an interesting one.

"It’s another species of that rare and lucrative beast: A form of electronic dance music that does not threaten anyone’s masculinity. Sort of like the last time electronic music threatened a sales boom in the U.S., when one of the top successes was the Prodigy, whose 1997 single 'Firestarter' felt as aggro as anything else on offer."

What do you think? Are Skrillex and Deadmau5 and company massive because they are the musical equivalent of conceptual date rape, or is it maybe that bro-step is big precisely because older people do not now, and refuse to ever, understand, or appreciate what it means? Is it the hippity hoppity rap, or the punk rocks of today? Is it basically saying U MAD MOM? every time a young person does that weird bass-drop hailing-a-cab-in-space dance up at the club on dubstep night? Maybe it's not "Americans are homophobic, therefore Skrillex," then maybe it's "Parents are confused, therefore Skrillex."

¹Go watch that video Abebe links to in the quote above if you didn't already. If that doesn't make you want to get in a time machine and go make out with a dude at a baseball game in the seventies wearing a suicide bomb jacket I don't know what will.

^2"Burial- a musical genius who grew up in South London, the epicenter of the dubstep scene, who painstakingly crafted 2 albums by himself in his bedroom before dubstep had even grown out of his neighborhood, which were then largely considered to be the genre's crowning artistic achievements, while hanging out at FWD>>, the most integral club to the scene with his friend Kode9, the head of Hyperdub, the most integral label to the genre's success... Skrillex- some emo kid in LA deciding he wants to make "dubstep" in 2009, 3 years after the fact, and his releases are a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a genre that was actually really cool once, but has now become a gross caricature of itself.If you don't understand the difference in authenticity between Burial and Skrillex, then I really don't know what to tell you. "