WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO EVERYONE
What the hell happened to, well, everyone? It’s as if the whole planet has lost it’s damn mind.
Oprah announced she’s quitting her talk show. Tyra Banks is quitting her talk show. More shocking than that announcement is that she was ever allowed to have a show in the first place. Someone keeps letting Alicia Keys release new music. Megan Mullally, who’s impressive resume includes a Broadway role in the 1994 revival of Grease as well as her memorable stint as the lovable, pill popping drunk Karen Walker on the NBC sitcom Will and Grace, is pushing I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Seriously, she is selling butter to the tune of a reworded version of Gloria Estefan’s Turn the Beat Around.
“Turn the tub around” she croons out, prompting consumers to turn the tub around to “come see what we’ve found, it’s what you’ve been wishin’! Big transition, fresh butter taste yes that’s here, no hydrogenated oils so there’s no trans fats here!”
Is this really what it’s come to Megan? Hawking butter for a couple grand?
Tiger Woods, a nerdy golf freak, has tuned out to be a billionaire man-whore who has fucked anything with a hole. Seriously, I don’t even remember it happening but, the DNA from the rape kit shows at some point he snuck into my apartment and screwed me. He’s probably had sex with you too, assuming your white.
Despite losing over 11,000 jobs last month alone, economist concoct obscure formulas to continue to proclaiming the recession is over. Twelve people in the country still own their own homes, everyone else is loading U-Hauls and moving under expressway overpasses.
Some moron on a “no fly list” easily steps aboard a plane loaded with explosives in, of all places, his underwear band. Instead of pointing the finger of blame at the multiple intelligence organizations who all failed to notice this we are now banned from using pillows or covering up with blankets during flights. We are banned from accessing carry on luggage and nobody is allowed to use the facilities within an hour of landing. We’re going to step up the use of racial profiling, implement mandatory frisking of travelers departing from a list of seven countries determined to be hotbeds for terrorism and start using full body scanners to see through traveler’s clothing.
“What if known extremists on ‘no-fly-lists’ are simply are banned from flying?” One might ask.
“You damn fool!” Clearly that is to simply and much to inexpensive. Theatrics and over the top paranoia are deemed most effective.
I’m not against enhanced security. I support it. Anything to make flying safer. The only way I want to die on a plane is when one of the wings falls off or the pilot is to drunk to land on the runway.
Further proof the whole planet has lost it’s damn mind is the fact that we are even talking about someone trying to blow up a plane over Detroit. Perhaps terrorist haven’t been keeping up on current events but, Detroit isn’t really the economic / social hub it once was in the 60’s. I’ve flown over Detroit before and it looks like it has already been bombed. One would think a terrorist with a window seat might lean over to his partner and conclude an earlier shift had already raged a jihad on the area.
The climate crisis convention in Copenhagen was a welcome relief in all the madness. Until that meeting of the world’s great minds I wasn’t sure we had talked about global warming enough. Copenhagen got world leader’s together to talk the shit out of global warming. They talked it into the ground. Nothing got accomplished of course, “Drill Baby Drill” is still the nations mantra, but thank goodness we discussed the fact that there seems to be a problem. A problem without ample discussion and lackluster action simply isn’t a problem.
I am relieved that the twenty-plus year ban on HIV-Positive individuals traveling into the United States has finally been lifted, thus allowing the World Aids Conference to be held in the U.S. We haven’t been talking about Aids enough as of late and I wasn’t sure it was still a problem. Perhaps we can resolve to have the 2011 model Hummers come equipped with used syringes that way we can just finish ourselves off quicker.
I’m not claiming to know everything, but I do know this: humans haven’t solved a single problem since we started walking upright and waxing excess hair from our genitals. We haven’t solved a single problem without replacing it with something equal to or greater than the problem we eliminated. The horse drawn carriage to the horseless carriage gets people across town in half the time. We can leave Detroit and be in Toledo in less than two hours but my god it sure is starting to get freaking hot in here, isn’t it? We have treatments for cancer that if implemented promptly can almost guarantee to save a life. It’s just so damn expensive nobody can afford it unless you’re insured or happen to have a home you can remortgage. We have antibiotics that cure illness but also create antibiotic resistant strains of the same illness that are increasingly harder to treat.
Until now, however, replacing a problem with another problem wasn’t really…a problem. Innovations have always created unintended obstacle but we glared into the eyes of those obstacles and had the resolve to fix them. It seems as of late though we have a docket of problems piling up that we really have no desire to fix. We’ve become very ho-hum about things. We could power cars with renewable energy but, it’s just to much work to implement a new energy infrastructure. If we had electric cars where would people charge them? Do you know how much work it would be to not only locate property to build charging stations on but to build the actual charging station? We could fix our healthcare system but crossing one’s fingers and hoping to make it 70+ years without illness seems a better solution to the problem. Plus, it’s much cheaper.
I’m not sure how to end this as I have no idea what to do about, well, anything. Perhaps, though, what we can try to do is stop pointing fingers at everyone else who isn’t responsible for our problems and take charge of them ourselves. I have spent the last twenty-some years blaming so many people for so many of my problems when I have the power within myself to fix them; all I need to do is get off my ass and do it. So, for 2010, I plan to get off my the aforementioned ass of mine and doing something these problems. Nobody else charged my credit cards up and over the limit so nobody else can pay them down. Nobody else dropped me out of school so nobody else can reenroll me. I think 2010 is going to be about personal responsibility for myself, I just hope the rest of the country, perhaps the world, gets a hankering for the same thing.
Peace, and much love -
Michael
IT’S EXPENSIVE TO BE THIS THIN
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? A while since we last chatted and exchanged witty banter about life and such together? I miss it. I’m sure you do as well.
So after all this time, almost a year has past, where do we begin? What shall we talk about? Where shall we start?
It’s 6 a.m. Wednesday morning. I’m sick with worry my good friends. So sick from worry that I am not able to do the only thing I love: sleep away the anguish my waking hours have become filled with. What worries me you ask?
Adulthood.
What the hell is this! Responsibility? This is not what I was promised.
I am expected to pay my own bills, and pay them on time. For the average person this might not amount to such a momentous challenge. It is this challenge that has caused me hours of sleepless nights.
It’s December 2nd. Rent is due December 1st. Yet, amidst a pile of junk mail on the counter lies my rent check, undelivered. Some asshole forgot to drop that in the mailbox yesterday. Turns out that asshole is me.
I am a wonder of financial mismanagement. Today I wrote a bad check….to myself. Of all the people to write a bad check to, myself. It seemed logical at the time. My bank account had again drifted into the negative though a series of what I like to call “no fault of my own events” (It’s easier to blame everyone else). So to cover the negative amount I wrote a small check to myself to put me back into the positive. I never thought far enough ahead into the future to ponder what might happen when the bad check I wrote myself cleared.
Or did I?
I decided if I wrote myself a bad check to make my account positive all I needed to do was be at the bank the next day with another bad check to cover the original bad check before it cleared. I figured I would continue on with this method of covering bad checks with bad checks until payday when I would let the final check clear. By that time I would have a cash balance available and avoid a bounced check fee.
Spoiler alert: flash forward two days into the future, this was an ignorant idea that, inevitably, was unsuccessful.
I have spent the majority of my life trying to figure out how to beat the banking system rather than working with it. By this point, if I was refunded every overdraft fee from 16 years of age to present time I could probably buy a small island somewhere off the coast of Cuba.
Yet, now 6:30 a.m., here I sit. I sit pondering what outfit I will wear into the bank tomorrow when I ask to speak with my good friend Gina (we’re on a first name basis now, we see each other at least once a week) and ask her “dearest Gina, can we see what might be done about removing some of those overdraft fees from my account?”
Gina has seen every one of my emotions and will be the first to tell you if anyone deserves an award for acting, it’s me. I’ve cried, I’ve yelled, I’ve told her refusing a refund will take food out of my mouth and by the weeks end I will have starved to death.
“Can you sleep tonight with that on your conscience, Gina?” I ask. “Can you sleep, belly full, knowing I’m lying in bed slowly dying because you refused to give me back that money!”
Gina looks back at the screen and does a few more clicks of the mouse. I can read her face and I know what she’s thinking: I may be ungodly thin, but it’s not from lack of food. The pendulum of emotions I just displayed convinced her I need that money back to go buy some more dope, or perhaps a few rocks. And so what if I do? It’s not Gina’s job to judge what I do with my personal time. As a customer care specialist it’s simply her job to listen to my sob story and agree with me, then do what I tell her.
She finishes pretending to click on this and that then rolls her chair, the wheels squeaking and begging for mercy, back in my direction. Gina is a rather large lady. She eyeballs me and I can tell she’s envious I only have to pay for one seat when flying cross continental. She becomes so internally enraged by my gaunt appearance that she flings the computer monitor into the other direction so I can no longer see the screen.
“I’m SORRY sir, like I said, there is NOTHING I can do for you at this TIME!” She pronounces, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down her face as she jiggles in the chair. “Nothing!”
I thank her for her time as I ready my things to exit the bank. As I walk towards the door, bones clanking together, I think, “My god, it sure is expensive to be this thin…”
I Look To You
Whitney Houston, silent for almost a decade, is back. It is perhaps the most anticipated musical comeback of the decade. Well, I take that back: Michael Jackson’s London concert series “This Is It” was undoubtably the most anticipated musical comeback of the decade. But, I digress, a vile of Propofol and a penchant for sedatives put the kabosh on that. So here we are, left looking to the now middle aged Queen who holds the answer to the one question Michael can no longer answer: is a musical comeback of such anticipated proportions possible? Or is ‘the voice’, much like vinyl records and Member’s Only Jackets, part of our past that will only inspire nostalgia for a bygone era?
I have spent much of my evening, for I have a nearly nonexistent social life, listening to tracks from the singer’s upcoming album, “I Look to You.” It’s hard to put into words how I feel about what I heard, but I’m a master of vernacular so I’m sure I can come up with something. I suppose I feel like this:
If this is what drugs can do to the voice of a generation, to a national treasure, then I don’t even want a Tylenol for the migraine it gave me. Drugs. Are. Bad. The opening track, “Million Dollar Bill”, while catchy as hell, is rather week. It is very Rihanna-esque, taking lesson from Miss Jackson, in it’s ability to mask the singer’s inability to um, sing. It’s not fair to compare the Whitney Houston of today with the Whitney of the past in the same way it would be unfair to compare new Michael Jackson with Thriller era Jackson. While she can still belt it out, there is one noticeable difference between old and new Whitney: this Whitney seems much more forced. She isn’t easily singing along, commanding the track, but instead working to keep up with the heavily pop-laden beats featured on this CD.
Still, ballads such as the title track “I Look to You”, feature small remnants of a voice that is still far greater than most played on today’s top 40 radio stations. While the Whitney who belted out “Queen of the Night” and “I Will Always Love You” may be gone forever, she isn’t going out without a fight.
It isn’t as easy as it used to be for Whitney. She has to work twice as hard to sound half as good in her latest attempt at a comeback. Perhaps her voice is just a mere parallel to the American Dream; A dream in which we all have to work twice as hard to get half as far. If your waiting for classic Whitney to blow your speakers, your probably still waiting for national healthcare and gay marriage: it’s not going to happen on this disk. But if your looking for a set of well crafted songs showcasing what is left of this American icon, a voice that inspired generations, “I Look to You” is where you’ll find it.
But that’s just my opinion.
- Michael
IF YOU SEEK AMY
Um, I have an issue. Well, I have multiple, but we are going to focus on one at a time today. My most current and pressing issue is with the song “If You Seek Amy” by Britney Spears.
Everyone has been muttering about the genius lyrics of the song because you have all clearly been huffing ReddiWhip cans. Rumor has it that when one says, “If you seek Amy” that it sounds very similar to saying, “if you fuck me.”
I understand a great deal many things, so I know it has to be all of you that are cognitively impaired because this one eludes me. I’ve listened to the song about four hundred and twenty-two times and you know what it sounds like to me? “If you seek Amy…” That’s what it sounds like, it sounds exactly like the words she’s saying.
So I googled it seeing if someone could help clarify my confusion, because we all know the internet is filled with brilliance. I found a message board where someone was saying anyone who didn’t understand this is clearly retarded. I’d like to meet this person face to face because I’d be willing to bet you diamonds for dirt they are missing teeth and sport a mullet. This person laid out the lyrics, as seen below, and I assume the upper case words are what one is supposed to emphasize.
Let’s all try together: “all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you SEEK AMY.” It ended with, “and if that doesn’t make sense, your a moron.”
Oh good sir, am I really? Am I really a moron? To me it would make a lot more sense if the word “seek” was replaced with “fuck” and “amy” with “me.” Yes, I think that is how it would make the most sense.
“all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to you if you fuck me.”
“Oh, yes, I get it now!”
The other problem I have with it is that even if it DOES mean “fuck me,” from a grammatical viewpoint, it makes little sense at best. All of the boys and girls are begging to…what? Begging to do what if you fuck her? They aren’t begging to fuck her, they are begging to do something else after they’ve fucked her, but what? (“all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to BLANK if you fuck me.”) Apparently in the mind of Britney we simply do not need to know. I thought perhaps they were begging to see Amy, since other verses of the song seem to allude to this character of Amy. But if Amy is Britney’s vah-jay and they just fucked it…then they already met Amy as their penis was just in it!
This song ticks me off more than “Everytime.” I loathed that song for such a long time because it bothered me that they put every and time together. Every and time do not go together. That is not a word. It’s every space time. Dammit.
I guess in this world of trying to make sense of things, one has to pick their battles lest they should lose their damn mind. I’m going to let this one go for a while, but if anyone can explain it to me it would be much appreciated. Maybe I have the volume up to loud, or perhaps to quiet? Regardless, I feel like someone that has been left out of an inside joke, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.
- Michael
SAD STATE
The financial aid office, aka the one place where the Nazi regime still has a stronghold on administrative policy, is where I spent two hours of my life. Two hours that I will regrettably never be able get back.
I have to imagine the application for employment in that particular department consists of two questions:
1.) Are you a complete bitch?
2.) Do you get off destroying the hopes and dreams of this nation’s youth by ripping the financial rug right out from underneath them?
I think this because every person that words in that office is an asshole. You walk in and the receptionist is a gigantic puckering sphincter, winking at you asking, “What the fuck do you want?” Because you’re clearly interrupting everyone with your pathetic, mindless concerns about paying for your degree.
Then they make you fill out a thirty-seven page form regarding the nature of your visit to the financial aid office, which they promptly throw away when you turn it back in. They must, they must throw it away because when you finally do make it to one of the advisors they ask you the same exact questions. It’s a very Nazi thing to do; it’s the clerical version of a forced labor camp.
After waiting several hours, they finally send an obese woman who is the poster child for “don’t give a fucking shit,” wearing an expression that implies she couldn’t really care less if you dropped dead. That’s when the ungodly mental abuse begins.
They sit you in a cubicle and answer your questions with questions.
“I’m a little curious, why did they decide to take back my financial aid?”
“Well, do you know why they took back your financial aid?”
“No, ma’am, I do not. That’s why I am here.” This is when they take a tone with you and act as if you are asking a question you should already know the answer to.
“If you would have read form 124.87B, section 22.3, paragraphs 89-2,300 you would see the policy and procedure that is in place for revoking financial aid.”
“I have no idea what form 124.87B, section 22.4, paragraphs 89-2,300, is.”
“Sir, this is not that complicated to understand.”
“Well, clearly it is that complicated otherwise they wouldn’t have dedicated 6,000 square feet of office space specifically for the sole purpose of explaining it. If it wasn’t that complicated this area would be a cafeteria, but alas, it is an office designed for explaining financial aid, so it must be that complicated.”
Today while my advisor was rambling on about some whatchamafuck form, all I could think was how both myself and the bolts in the chair she was sitting on are both under a great deal of stress; sooner or later, one of us is going to snap. Oh, but you can’t say that out loud, not on a college campus. Not with all the decapitating of fellow classmates and such that is going on these days. No, they would rather drive you silently to the brink of insanity, keep it to yourself, go home and down a bottle of pills and end your suffering in a quiet, dignified manner. It’s the proper way to do things. I’m sure there’s a form that explains all of it, but I haven’t been able to find that one either.
Her advice to me was that I could put the tuition payment on a credit card. That’s the same thing the woman at Macy’s told me. And Guess. And Gap. And H&M. Now Visa owns not only my mortal body but my soul in the afterlife. I have started selling off parts of my brain to help patients with brain damage to make minimum payments. It’s cool though, I clearly have more than enough brain to go around since her suggestion was one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard in my life. Yes, let me charge this semester to my credit card with 300% interest, you dumb asshole. Maybe if I’m lucky that will earn me enough Reward Zone points to get a $5.00 Starbucks gift card so I can sip a macchiato and mull over the sad state of my financial affairs. I think that is exactly what I need.
- Michael
LET’S DISCUSS
My Intro to Prose Fiction teacher is really rubbing me the wrong way. Let’s talk about it, shall we?
I have not in the last 5 semesters gotten anything lower than an A- on a single test. Today she handed back my exam on The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the word’s most bland book, and I saw an unfamiliar letter on the top. She gave me a B. A fucking B. She gave me a B because in one of my essay questions she said that part of my answer was irrelevant to what was asked.
Not relevant? Let’s talk about irrelevant. Let’s talk about how irrelevant that knock off Burberry scarf she had draped around her neck like a loon was to her outfit, see EXHIBIT A below:
What? Why, why was it there. What purpose was it serving. The room was quite toasty, and it clearly matching NOTHING. Irrelevant my ass, clearly she doesn’t understand the concept of relevancy.
And fuck yes I take pictures of people when they aren’t looking. Why not? What’s the purpose of a camera phone if you don’t use it to take embarrassing pictures of people? Technology is of no value to anyone if we don’t use it to it’s fullest potential!
- Michael
DAMN QUEERS
For what is believed to be the first time ever, Wheel of Fortune featured an openly gay couple on the show. I knew this is what would happen if the liberals stared taking over. This is exactly what starts to happen when people stop taking the Bible literally and realize it wasn’t the divine inspired word of god but a mistranslated, misunderstood book written by mortal men. They start letting fags in the army and on our game shows!
Watch Vanna White’s face. You can tell she’s thinking, “This is exactly the reason I voted ‘yes’ on proposition eight.”
MILEY CYRUS CAN GO TO HELL
Do I have issue with Miley Cyrus? Well, I think that’s a rather silly question to be asking. Of course I do. Of course I have issue with Miley Cyrus, that incestuous nymph (see photo below. That’s how my dad and I watch movies together, only I’m usually in just a thong).
I am not just filled with horror to be blogging about her most recent music video, but more so horrified that she was ever allowed to make a music video in the first place! We live in some dark times my friends, dark times indeed. I believe Nostradamus prophesied such evil in the end days of this planet.
This issue I take with the Fly On the Wall video is that it is a direct rip off of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The only difference is that the “Michael Jackson” character turns into a paparazzi, not a monster, after leaving the movie theater and chases Miley around town. Where Michael Jackson’s face turned into that of a horrifying monster in Thriller, the Fly On the Wall video features this boys slurpee cup morphing into a camera. I would like a small, round lead projectile submerged into my brain please. What an original idea. She’s on her what, third music video? and she already has to resort to recycling old ideas? That screams career longevity right there.
In Thriller we all recall the flawless choreographed dancing of Michael Jackson and all the hideous undead. In Miley’s video, however, there is a choreographed dance scene of paparazzi mimicking the Thriller dance (because why the hell not?). She of course stands off to the side and observes because, to reiterate, she has no talent and cannot dance. The only dance move she can do involves her spreading her arms and stumbling around, looking like a bird with down syndrome about to fly into a large glass window.
The video ends with her bitching about being followed around by the paparazzi, and hunny, I have to sympathize with you on that. I wish the paparazzi didn’t follow you around either. I would much rather they followed someone that is interesting. Someone that isn’t Disney Channel’s bitch.
If the video wasn’t reason enough to add Miley Cyrus to my thirty-three thousand page listing of people who I don’t much care for, the fact that Chris Crocker likes her is. All credibility of something, even if it only had a miniscule amount to begin with, is lost when someone who walks around saying, “It’s a hair flip” and “eat my corn hole” endorses it. True, Chris Crocker was all for Britney Spears, but that situation varied slightly because Miss Spears gives the impression she wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room with him. Miley Cyrus and Chris Crocker have pictures together. Evil.
I give this video negative eighty-seven million stars.
-Michael
The Video: Watch but be forewarned.
CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET
A supposed new Janet Jackson track has leaked called “Secret.” I have to wonder who they got to sing this track because I am starting to highly doubt it was actually Miss Jackson. Regardless, it is sort of catchy, whether it’s new or old it is sort of growing on me, yet, still leaves me longing for more. Copy/Paste the link below to listen….
- Michael
http://blogs.sohh.com/soul/2009/01/its_no_secretjanet_jackson_mak.html
