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It’s An Old House. Who Gives a Shit?

What is the deal with society and its ridiculous sentimentality when it comes to old buildings?  I can understand why a building might be designated as a historical location if someone who actually mattered and accomplished something had lived there at some point, like an Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, but a lot of historical buildings are held onto merely for the fact that they’re a century old.  One hundred years is really an insignificant amount of time in the grand scheme of things.  A one hundred year old car is neat and historically relevant; a physical artifact of technological advancement through the ages.  A one hundred year old house is just musty-smelling wood that could catch fire at any moment, killing a family of four and their household pets.

I’ve lived in buildings that were 70 or 80 years old, and I’ve never thought to myself “Man I hope they never tear this building down.  This one sure is a keeper.”  If anything, while I’ve lived in older houses, I’ve spent the entire time wishing I lived in a house that wasn’t drafty and musty all the time.  A house that didn’t make me constantly smell like I’m somebody’s great-grandmother.  A house that didn’t get obnoxiously hot in the summer and uncomfortably cold during the winter.  A house that was closer to being from the same century that all my belonging inside the house were from.

That old house is sitting on top of rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old.  Nobody gives a shit about all those old-ass rocks though.  Jesus Christ or King Tut might have picked up one of those rocks and given it a little smooch.  Dinosaurs might have played a friendly game of kick-the- rock using those very stones.  What has more value historically: a rock that Jesus lovingly held in his possession or a house that a few generations of complete nobodies sat around in doing nothing of any relevance.  Lumber doesn’t pick up much in the way of intrinsic value the older it gets unless it’s from an endangered species of tree.  Old, peeling lead-based paint isn’t much of a hot commodity on the buyers market either I would assume.

So why does society care enough about old-ass buildings as to spend serious money to preserve or move them?  After months of tireless research though professionally-bound tomes on the subject, and countless interviews, I’ve managed to find a definitive answer to this question.  That answer being: because society are a bunch of stupid dummies.  They like to hold onto old garbagey things, due to their love of rare, antique things.  It’s an extension of their love of other worthless old things, like vinyl records, vintage clothing and their grandparents.  They’d just assume cling to their dial-up connections and baud rates, rather than get with the times and cop that speedy Comcast broadband for downloading all those booby pictures lickety-split.

So in conclusion, old houses are dumb.  If you live in an old house you are dumb.  I live in an old house, therefore I’m dumb, but I’ve come to accept that.  Cassette tapes are dumb.  Penny loafers are dumb.  Crab grass is fairly dumb.  Argyle is a dumb pattern, unless it’s on socks, in which case stop being in a ska band please.  Toast is a dumb form for bread to be in.  Stop being crispy… nobody likes you  Casseroles are dumb.  Quiche is dumb, but everyone knows that, obviously.  The color chartreuse is so dumb, I’m not even going to explain.  Toothpicks are dumb.  Butterknives are dumb.  Cinder blocks are so dumb, it’s making me quite angry to be frank with you.  Cauliflower is dumb, as are cork boards.  Don’t even get me started on how dumb beehives are, and this article is so dumb that it just about infuriates me to the point where I want to start breaking things.

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Silver Linings Playbook Is a Chick Flick.

I try to keep things fairly topical in my writings on this site.  As such, I will be doing a review of the critically acclaimed Hollywood film Silver Linings Playbook from the year 2012.  Next week I’ll be doing a review of the iPhone 3.  Be sure to keep an eye out for that.

I made it a point to finally watch this movie merely because of the rave reviews it was getting and all the press that what’s-her-name who co-stars in the movie was getting.  I knew nothing about the movie other than that it starred Bradley Cooper and what’s-her-name and that it obviously had something to do with football.

After watching it, I realized that this movie is basically a chick flick with a football subplot thrown in to cater to the men.  This movie was written to be the type of chick flick that a woman could drag her boyfriend to under the pretense that it wouldn’t be a chick flick.  The problem is that it is very much indeed a chick flick.  Let me explain with a paragraph containing more than 3 sentences for once in this post.

The basic gist of the movie is that a hunky dreamboat of a guy (Bradley Cooper), with a troubled, violent past, is in the process of getting his life together and becoming a better person.  Chick flick count = 1.  He meets a self-centered, unreasonable, childish, emotionally unstable gal (what’s-her-name), who is single because her boyfriend died as opposed to leaving her, which would have been more realistic.  Chick flick count = 2.  The dude agrees to practice dancing with the girl for a contest she wants to enter, in exchange for her helping him with something largely inconsequential involving his ex-wife.  Chick flick count = 9.  They attend the dance contest and get a high enough score to win some bet that ties the movie up nicely into a happy ending with a bow on top.  Chick flick count  = 37.  The gal storms off emotionally when the guy talks to his ex-wife after the contest instead of making her the center of attention.  Chick flick count = 7,815.  The guy rushes to catch the girl and proclaim his undying love for her before she completely pouts away from the scene.  Chick flick count = 9.18e23.  The End.

Sounds like a chick flick right?  But what about all that football stuff the movie led you to believe would actually play a role in it somehow.  “Playbook” is in the title, and there are football play diagrams on the DVD cover and promotional posters after all.  Well see… here’s the thing.  That was just a ploy to get dudes into the theater to see a chick flick.  The main character and his dad are merely fans of the Eagles, whom the dad bets on throughout the movie.  The main character even attends an Eagles game at one point in the movie as a plot point to reinforce the violent, irresponsible character traits he is supposed to have after he gets into a fight at the event.

The problem here is that the sports angle could have been completely replaced with something else and the movie would have played out the same.  The father and son could have bonded over a love of hunting or watching reruns of Charles in Charge.  It’s just like The Big Lebowski in that regard.  That movie was about a rug and mistaken identity, and had almost nothing to do with bowling, despite largely being marketed as a bowling comedy.  I can write another article about how overrated that movie is some other time, but back to Silver Lining Chick Flick for the time being.

The point is that the plot of this movie can be summed up in 4 or 5 sentences (see paragraph 4), due to the fact that it’s a fairly simple formulaic chick flick.  Matthew McConaughey could have starred in this movie, it could have been written by Jane Austen and it wouldn’t have been any more of a chick flick than it already is.  The inconsequential football side plots do nothing to change this fact.  Silver Linings Playbook is a color-by-numbers chick flick that somehow earned 8 Academy Award nominations, 4 Oscar nods, and 4 Golden Globe nominations.  Seriously.  It didn’t even have terrible British accents and colonial people wardrobe.

So… uh… I guess I’d rate this movie an 8 out of a possible -2.

 

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10 Words That Are Sexist

I have to get something off my chesticles.  And while it’s true that I could just write all this down in my diary, where it more than likely belongs, I’m going to be brave and choose instead to post in on an internet blog for 14 people to read.  Sometimes in life you have to be a maverick and really put it all on the line to bring about change.  I wake up every morning in a cloudy bed of sunshine rays, only to have my day turned to a dismal swamp brought on by the oppressive patriarchal society I was born into.  You have no idea what it’s like to live in a world where I make less for the work I do [citation needed], a world where I am oppressed sexually [citation needed], a world where my voice isn’t heard [citation needed].  Well thanks to the power of blogger™, my voice can be heard loud and clear.

In this post, I am going to complain enlighten you about a handful of words in the English language that are totally sexist.  Men probably invented them all, so what do you expect.  It’s common knowledge that the ones who come up with the language tip it in their favor through all sorts of subtle misogyny [citation needed].  So read on and perhaps I can educate you as to the grave injustice in the following words so that I can feed my ego the world will become a better, more enlightened place.

 

Sunglasses – Excuse me…  Hello?  When that large glowing ball of light is blinding me, what is it I have to grab and put on my face?  Sunglasses?  Are you for serious?  Or course something a male invented would have a manword in the title.  From now on, when the sun is in my eyes, I’m going to put on a pair of daughterglasses.  While we’re at at, from now on the Sun shall be known as the Daughter.  All in the name of equality.  Praise me!

Hysterectomy –  Where do I even begin?  This word is a medical procedure that only women can have, yet it has “his” right there at the front.  This is so typical of the oppressive male dominated medical field.  Could anything possibly be more sexist and oppressive?  For shame.  From this point forward, the word shall be “hersterectomy” instead.  You’re welcome world, for all my hard work and sacrifice.

Hymen –  Seriously…  Men don’t even have a hymen, and yet “men” is right there in the word.  Maybe it’s there because men are in control of women’s genitals and productive rights.  Well no more I say!  From this point forth, the hymen shall be known as the hywomen.  Every doctor from this point forth shall make the necessary changes to their medical books or I’ll write an exposé on Salon.com.  Praise my humanitarianism!

Hispanic – *sigh*  You Latin American-y types have some explaining to do.  Last time I checked, half of the population was female, yet your designated ethnonym has “His” in it.  That is muy sexista and you should feel muy avergonzado. (that means “ashamed” in Spanish.  Come on people, lets try to be a little more respectful of other people’s cultures and learn some other languages.)  I propose that in the name of equality, Hispanics from this point forward be called Herspanics.  De nada!

Boycott –  Of course!  Yet another word that men invented to empower men.  I think that we need to boycott this word by changing it to “girlcott”.  Or perhaps we should “girlcott” this word by changing it to “girlcott”.  Wait.  I’m confused now.  Let’s just consider me a Saint and move on to the next word.

Sonogram –  Here we go again.  This is so wrong I can’t even…  Only women get sonograms, and once again “son” is prominently at the beginning of this word.  Men don’t even have children (don’t even get me started) and yet here we have another sexist word.  Let’s say a woman gets a sonogram and is blessed to find out she is going to have a daughter and not a son (blech!).  Wouldn’t that logically be a daughtergram?  So let’s change that word and better the world.  You’re welcome.

Sheep –  Oh no you didn’t!  The term sheep usually refers to mindless people who follow along without question.  So why does this offensive word have “she” in it.  Shouldn’t we drop that “s” and turn it into heep?  Society not changing this word implies that women are mindless followers and that isn’t right.  Stop being heeple and drop that “s” in the name of equality.

Herpes –  Come on!  Really?  Scientists (male no doubt) were allowed to name a sexually transmitted disease, and half the word is a pronoun for a woman?  Could you be any more obvious?  Because women are the cause of all STDs or something?  Well I have the cure for this disease.  Rename it Hispes, take a little equality, and don’t call me in the morning.

Manhole –  Typical. Of course a man is going to name something after his own orifices.  I’m surprised flagpoles aren’t called manpoles or something like that.  Well luckily for the world I have a solution to this manproblem.  We’ll just call them womanholes.  Woman holes are the life-giving holes after all.  Man holes are just worthless and stupid anyway.  Problem solved.  I’m great.

Man – The most sexist word of them all.  OF COURSE a man would refer to himself as a man.  All the words in the English language you could choose to call yourself and you go and pick the most misogynistic one.  Fortunately, I have a simple solution to this grave injustice.  All you have to do it call yourselves women from now on.  Then we can all be equal.  Yay me!

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Ten Tips To a Successful Country Career

If you’re currently reading this shoddily-written article, that can only mean one thing.  You are an aspiring contemporary country musician who’s been scouring the internet looking for advice on how to “make it”, “break out”, and “become successful” amongst other things oft-seen between quotation marks.  Well good news there, future country music superstar, because you came to the right place.  Consider the following to be the holy grail of foolproof advice on the topic of achieving multi-platinum status in the cutthroat genre of country music.

 

1)  Wear a cowboy hat at all times.  No exceptions.  Don’t work on a farm or wrangle cattle in any capacity?  It doesn’t matter.  Don’t live in or around any of the dusty southern sunny states?  It doesn’t matter.  Even if you’re a country artist from Providence, Rhode Island who works in data entry for a living, slap on that cowboy hat and look the part.  The fans won’t know the difference.  Write a few songs about trucks or beer and your background won’t even come into question.

2)  Always drive a truck.  Always drive an American made truck.  Either be behind the wheel of a Ford or a Chevy, or don’t be behind the wheel of anything at all.  Your career would be better off if you walked everywhere instead of driving one of those foreigner devil-mobiles.  If possible, try to drive a truck that’s twice as large as anything you’d ever realistically need.  Functionally is of no concern here.  Even though you’re an upwardly mobile Nashvillian, you need to project that working-class vibe, or they’ll see right through the ruse.

3)  Never get caught drinking a micro brew of any sort.  It doesn’t matter if that craft IPA tastes better than shitty mass-produced piss-water, it’s bad P.R. if you’re seen holding it.  Always stick to the uncultured, bland classics.  After all, Budweiser or Miller will most likely be sponsoring something you do during the course of your career.  You don’t wanna bite the hand that feeds you.

4)  Always go out of your way to show support for the troops.  Don’t know anything about the current situation wherever it is we’re fighting this week?  It doesn’t even matter.  Don’t even know whether or not we’re currently engaged in a war with some third-world country with a GDP less than South Dakota.  Guess what?  It doesn’t matter.  Always support the troops even if you don’t know what’s going on, which being a contemporary country artist, you more than likely won’t.  Always play it safe.  You can’t spell country without “safe”.

5)  Always project blue-collar.  Even if you work in a cubicle and have never done a day of manual labor your entire life.  Even if you sell 10 million albums and buy a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, still continue to project working-class in your lyrics and lifestyle.  Even though modern country music is about as far from working class as you can possibly get, tell everyone your daddy worked in a coal mine and that your grandma was a truck driver.  The fans will get behind things they can relate to, even if that relation is a fabricated construct.

6)  Don’t be a gay person.  There are no gay people in country music.  Just like how there are no gay people in Iran or the Russian city of Sochi.  Nobody wants to hear a gay person singing about pickup trucks and jukeboxes.  Everybody knows that gay people are into Broadway musicals, bondage gear, and women’s golf.  None of those topics make for good country songs.  You can be a butch tomboy or an alarmingly metrosexual dude, but never be gay.  At very least, stay in the closet like the countless country stars who currently are.

7)  Never be too pro-foreigner.  Never mind the fact that pretty much everyone in the United States comes from a lineage of foreigners anyway.  You have to feed into the ignorance of blind nationalism if you really want to hit your target demographic.  Always hold yourself up as superior to the weak French, the commie Russians, or the illegal Mexicans.  It doesn’t matter if 15% of your demographic is functionally illiterate and can’t point to these countries on a map.  Keep the intolerance train a-rollin’.  It’s not your job to be an educator or to lead by example.

8)  Always adopt a drawl.  You cannot be country and sound like Little Tony from Brooklyn or Jimmy James from Boston.  Larry The Cable Guy speaks with a fake accent and made it to the top without being questioned, and you can too.

9)  Make sure you big-up Jesus.  A good deal of your target audience resides in the God-fearing communities, and once again, you have a demographic you need to reach.  You don’t need to actually go to church or to have read any of the bible for this one.  Simply allude to God or a creator when discussing your talents or rise to success, and make sure to name-drop the big guy in your liner notes.  Mission accomplished.

10)  Ignore all of the above information, because thanks to Taylor Swift, you can be a teenybopper from Pennsylvania who writes tepid predictable radio pop songs and still somehow manage be successful on the country charts.

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Official Ferguson Social Justice Meme

The events that transpired in Ferguson Missouri were obviously quite tragic, but instead of writing yet another opinion piece on the subject to add to the sea of blogger articles already out there, I’ll instead post a meme.  This meme is a visual representation of precisely 70% of all facebook posts on the subject as of late.  Enjoy.

Liberal Guy

 

original image © Sam Guerrero

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Even Google Hates On Syfy

I recently did a google search for “terrible syfy movies”, and this is the result I got:

Syfy Terrible

Google corrected me.  Evidently I meant to search for “horrible syfy movies”. Even Google thinks your movies are complete shite, Syfy Channel.  You should feel bad now, and maybe try to do a better job in the future so that Google stops punking you on the internet for everybody to see.

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Monkeys Are Just Really Lazy People.

Growing up, I always thought monkeys were cool.  They’re animals, but they’re also kind of like little crazy hairy people too.  They have super-strong ‘tard strength, and get to throw their poop at everything without ever getting into any trouble for doing so.  How cool is that?  I always wanted be a monkey so I could flip over cars and hurl my poopie logs at people’s domes.  That sounds like the best life ever.

Now that I’m a fully-fledged adult however, I’ve come to the realization that monkeys are just extremely worthless lazy people.  Think about it.  Humans and modern monkeys evolved from a common ancestor at some period in the past.  Yet look where we are and look where they are.  We invented hamburgers, microchips, and Playstation 4.  What have monkeys invented?  Since throwing poop doesn’t count as an invention, their tally stands at zero.  Monkeys haven’t invented a damn thing.  Millions of years and they haven’t done shit in all that time.  No monkey iPhones or monkey dubstep music.  NOTHING.

In a few million years time, humans have become geniuses who have harnessed the powers of the cosmos to create energy, and even leave the Earth to visit other celestial destinations.  In the same amount of time, monkeys have gotten better at flinging doodoo and getting humans to dress them in overalls and give them free food.  That is literally all they have accomplished.  Over a million years have passed and they haven’t even harnessed fire or invented the wheel yet.  Think about how long of a time span a million years is.  We went from using the horse and buggie to creating vehicles that can achieve speeds greater than mach one in a little over one hundred years time.  We’ve gone from using horses to deliver messages taking upwards of two weeks, to being able to text someone instantly via phone in less than 150 years.  In a million years, monkeys have gotten 4% better at throwing their shit at things.  Attention everybody *clink clink* Can we get a round of applause for the monkeys?

Serious though… If any monkeys are reading this, or if anyone who’s reading this has friends who are monkeys, it’s time to step it up guys.  You’ve spent more than enough time sitting around, pooping on yourselves, eating bananas and not doing much else.  It’s time to start evolving and getting some work done out there.  Invent some stuff already.  It doesn’t even need to be anything that involves electronics or complex metal alloys.  Figure that whole fire thing out and invent some neat collapsible pots or something.  Come up with anything.  We’ve got spaceships.  You found a stick you use to poke into the ground and get ants.  Unacceptable.  IT’S BEEN OVER A MILLION YEARS!  You can do so much better.  So step your game up and start contributing to society for once.  Catch you on the flip side.

Dunston