Guns and Ammo

Is anyone else nostalgic for the days when Columbine was a freak occurrence? These days, not a month can go by without some psychotic asshole going on a killing spree, trying to one-up last month's psychotic asshole with the horror and body count of his rampage. Its getting absolutely ridiculous (not that there's anything rational about mass killing to begin with). However, the fact that these scenes are becoming more prevalent offers a definite boon to some. Let's take a look at who the winners are every time something like this happens:

The Media

The media may be the biggest winner of all when somebody goes bat-shit. After all, its a guaranteed ratings boost. The scene is familiar to all of us: a break in regular programming, aerial views of crime scenes with dozens of police cars, tearful eyewitness testimony, etc, etc. Every news network has a vested interest in horrible, horrible things happening, and yet they have so painstakingly and meticulously crafted which terrible crimes deserve our attention. Drug related shooting? Local news. Gang war? Probably not even reported. Mexican drug cartels leave 33 headless bodies on a road to mark their territory? Time Magazine page 52. White man goes crazy and shoots a bunch of people? Cue the fucking President.

Of course the media stations, like any profitable business, are just going with what works. Maybe inner-city poverty/drug-related shootings are just out of vogue right now, I don't know, but its pretty plain to see the hypocrisy, and perhaps even racism inherent in this kind of reporting. If the media was really interested in treating all gun violence equally, they would have absolutely no problem filling their 24 hour news cycle every single day by simply re-broadcasting the police blotters in the capital cities of every state in the nation. But in our society, its expected that inner-city poor people are going to shoot each other to death, while the mass-murderer stands out as the inexplicable exception; worthy of endless debate, discussion, and air time. For this, and many more reasons, urban crime just isn't profitable to the news corporations, and so they've spared no expense to create a very lucrative niche for themselves. We'll watch the events unfolding, then we'll watch the eyewitness interviews. Then (provided the psycho hasn't killed himself), we'll watch the trial, and see the endless stream of googly-eyed mugshots. Then, because trials take a while, we'll forget about it until the sentencing, and then we'll tune back in to see how that plays out. Its a cycle destined to repeat itself until it is no longer economically viable, and there's not much anyone can do about it.

Its would violate the freedom of the press to say, pass a law telling them to limit coverage of mass killings. However, would such a law cut down on copycat killings? Of course it would. You can't copy something you don't know about. Would it cut down on the paranoia in this country? Of course it would. Even though we still lead the civilized world in gun homicides, its thousands of times more likely that if you are going to die soon, it will be because you ate too many hamburgers and got heart disease, smoked yourself to death, or were texting while driving. But no, we can't tell the media to stop doing this and still consider ourselves a free country. We just have to a) hope that someone at each of the major news networks grows a soul, realizes the damage they're doing by creating icons out of these people and fights to bring it to an end, or b) (much more likely) people eventually get psycho-killer overload and stop tuning in for hours every time this happens.

Make no mistake, the media makes celebrities out of these pieces of shit on purpose, which brings us to our next winners:

Fucking Psychopaths and Their Stupid Fucking Wanna-Be Psychopath Fanboys


There is now a clear path to victory for psycho assholes. Its not reaching out to family or society for psychiatric help, because lets face it, self-reflection and improvement takes effort, and who wants to do all that? Its much easier to buy an automatic weapon, walk into a public place and try to kill as many people as you can before offing yourself. You're guaranteed to be a superstar, and even though you won't be around to enjoy it, you won't have to face any of the consequences either, because you're dead.

But just like there are legions of fans out there for serial killers (you know, the fucking losers who write to them in prison about how they "love their work"), you can be damn sure that the next dick to shoot up a college or a mall was at home, glued to the TV set when the last one happened. Its a win-win situation for these idiots; they have nothing left to live for, psychiatrists are practically unaffordable, and there's really no more spectacular way to go out. Or at least that's what we as a society have shown them.

And finally, our third winner:

Weapons Manufacturers...?

FREE PUBLICITY

Any press is good press, right? 

Actually, while was in the middle of writing this, I saw that the company that manufactures the above weapon, which was used in last week's shooting, is going under or being absorbed or something. I was set to go on about how the widespread coverage of the weapons used acts as free press for arms manufacturers, but apparently I stand corrected in this regard. I suppose in some extreme cases, like a school massacre, or an oil spill that ruins half an ocean, there can be serious consequences that actually affect a corporation's bottom line. So if your company's weapons are used to kill children in some other country, you're in the clear. Just make sure you're not on American soil.

Well, I guess that weapons manufacturers aren't always winners in these cases. But one thing that is certain is the media/social civil war of words that erupts over gun control every single fucking time this happens. And just like everything else in our culture of rapidly diminishing literacy, the same stupid circular arguments keep happening. So now I'm going to lay out my position.

Prone Position

I believe that Americans have the right to own guns. However, I also believe that this right is entirely symbolic in nature as opposed to functional. Yes, guns can be used for sporting, like target shooting or putting holes in the windshield of your uncle's old car. These things are fun, and we should have a right to do them. Guns can be used for hunting. Personally, I think hunting is bullshit, but if it makes you feel like a big man to kill something from 100 feet away with vastly superior technology for lulz, then I guess I begrudgingly accept your right to do that too.

The only other use that a gun has (besides maybe sitting on a mantlepiece to look impressive), is to kill or maim human beings. Whether it be in self defense or plotting a massacre, the fact remains that this is one of the 3 (3.5 if you count the mantlepiece) uses of a firearm. Scout leaders tell their troops that a gun is a tool, not a weapon, and yet it has no constructive purpose. Animal, man, or paper target, its purpose is to destroy. However, I maintain that we have a right as Americans to own them.

This does not mean we get a blank check. I also believe that every person who wants to own one should have to be initially certified and periodically re-certified in the safety, usage, and maintenance of firearms. After all, don't I have the right not to be accidentally shot in the face because Tommy Triggerjamm never bothered to learn where the safety was? Or because Supermale Familyprotectorman  left his .9mm in a Boscov's box at the bottom of the closet for his five year old kid to take to kindergarden? We're not a nation of plantation farmers anymore where you'd have to walk five miles to get to your third accidental shooting victim. Your actions/negligence have real world consequences for the people around you. This concept seems pretty basic to me. I've never heard anybody bitch that their God-given rights were being infringed on because they were required to pass a driving test to get a license. Its the same concept. You have control of a potentially deadly machine, you should legally need some fucking clue how to use it.

I hope to have established here that I definitely believe there is room for intelligent discourse about the gun control issue. However, the following arguments, which I see posted over and over and over and over and over again make me actually want to shoot myself:


"Banning guns won't do anything. The bad guys will get them anyway because they don't care about laws."

Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of stupid, bullshit argument is this? If making laws to keep certain weapons out of the hands of civilians "didn't do anything", how come there haven't been any attacks with RPG's? When was the last domestic massacre that was carried out with an Apache helicopter, or an unmanned fighter drone? Why aren't these psycho killers using briefcase nukes, or neutron bombs? Because they can't fucking get them. Banning weapons from civilian use makes them much more difficult to obtain, and cost prohibitive. See, that's the real key. If something is banned, the cost increases exponentially. Would people still be able to get assault weapons if they were banned? Yes. Some would. But it would be much more difficult.

I understand that crimes would still happen, I'm not a fucking idiot. But doesn't it just make some semblance of logical sense that we, as a society, should make it just a tiny bit more difficult for a guy to go to his mom's and borrow a weapon that shoots 30 rounds a second when he feels like going crazy on a whim like the Sandy Hook shooter did? Then people say "you're only punishing the law abiding citizens!" Oh really? Well keep this in mind: This fuckin guy was a "law abiding citizen" until the second he pulled the trigger. You can be a law abiding citizen and purchase an automatic, military grade rifle. You can be a law-abiding citizen as you drive into a school zone with that weapon in the trunk of your law-abiding car. In some states, you can freely brandish that weapon near said school and still be a law abiding citizen. Then, once you pull the trigger, and only then, you cease to be a law abiding citizen, but guess what... its already too late to punish you because you've already killed a dozen people, and you're just going to kill yourself anyway.

And furthermore, if you're going to use the argument that bad people will just do bad things anyway, why would we have any laws at all? You can't stop people from getting raped, so why is rape illegal? Rapists are just going to rape anyway, so why make it illegal? You can't stop kidnappers from kidnapping people or robbers from robbing, so lets just abolish all laws and the bad people will do bad things and the good people will just have to live with it. I'm sure all you "libertarians (read: anarchists) out there are cheering at this point, but for everyone else, this is where that train of logic leads. News flash: There's not many "good" people out there. That's why we built "society". It sets up consequences for people who decide they should be able to do whatever they want at the expense of others.

"Look at prohibition. That worked really well."

Shut the fuck up. I'm sure there are myriad causes why prohibition was revoked, but one big factor was the fact that you can make hooch in your fucking bathtub. If you know anybody who can build a .223 Bushmaster rifle in their garage, they're probably already employed in something much more lucrative, so good luck with that.



"We need weapons to protect us from the Government."

 Look, I'm no fan of tyranny. I know that around the world, people are terribly oppressed by cruel dictatorships. Fortunately for us, that's not here, not yet. Plenty of people love to dispute this, but let's look at the reality of the world. We have freedom of speech and the press, unlike China. Our president isn't shelling cities of civilians like in Syria.

But that doesn't mean it could never happen, and I wish that having access to high powered rifles could actually give us the security that we were forever safe from tyranny. But it doesn't, because for all your wishes, you still can't shoot down F-14 Tomcats with an M-16. You can't penetrate the armor of a tank. The fact is that our military has helicopters, airplanes, warships, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, the CIA, the FBI, JSOC, the NSA, and the dreaded Osprey.

Behold its wackiness, and tremble!

It spends more on defense each year than the next 26 countries combined. I'm sorry, but a loose affiliation of ex-moonshiners with automatic rifles isn't going to stop the US Military. The only way to defeat it would be if a large portion of the armed forces were to defect to a resistance movement, or if any such resistance were to be supplied by another superpower like China or Russia. The Mujahadeen were only able to kick out the Soviets out of Afghanistan because we provided them with $1,000,000,000 in advanced weaponry. They weren't taking out fighter jets from the back of trucks with AK-47s.


So in closing, there has to be a middle ground. We have the right to own weapons, but we should also have the ability to determine what is essential to our freedom, and what is fucking dangerous to the populace. There is always a fine line between freedom and safety, but when we can see the havoc that gun violence wreaks on this country on a monthly basis, something needs to be done.

Guns don't kill people, people do.
People with guns kill more people than people with no guns.
People with automatic rifles kill more people per minute than people with handguns, shotguns, or hunting rifles.

Its a simple question of numbers.

The Problem With Everything (Election Eve Edition)

Well here we are, on the eve of Election Day. For all the ubiquitous noise we've been bombarded with for what seems like fucking forever, less people will probably vote in this election than did for the last American Idol winner. But no matter who wins, nothing is going to change that drastically. I honestly don't know who falls for campaign speeches that are so obviously full of distortions, lies and vagaries on both sides.

Romney, if he wins, isn't going to fix the economy any faster than Obama has tried to. The office of the President of the United States of America isn't some kind of kingship where our leader issues commands and suddenly there's a million more jobs and gas is 88 cents a gallon. Don't these idiots who clap and cheer whenever some politician promises them everything they want realize that if it were possible, every President since the dawn of the republic would have done it, if for no other reason than to get re-elected? No one person is to blame for the Great Recession, no one person is able to fix it. If you think the problem lies solely in the fact that there's not enough regulation in place on Wall Street, keep in mind that half of the corporations responsible for the collapse were breaking the regulations that there were anyway, and have yet to be held accountable in any meaningful way.

Romney also isn't going abolish Roe Vs. Wade as people are screaming about either. This is an hysterical impossibility fanned by the flames of the media. Even if he had any principles (at all) and wanted to make abortion illegal more than anything in the world, remember that congress is still deadlocked, and will probably remain in roughly the same condition after the election.

In short, no matter who wins, neither candidate will do half of the things they've promised while campaigning, and they'll do four times too much we won't know about til the files become declassified in seventy-some years.

But for those fearing the apocalypse if their guy doesn't win, keep in mind, no matter who wins, the following things will still happen:

- We will continue to spend more on our military budget than the next 26 countries combined. Spending will increase each year regardless of wartime or peacetime. An enormous portion of our tax dollars will go to for-profit military contractors to build weapons that will likely sit in silos and bunkers for the rest of time.

- We will continue, overtly or covertly, the War on Terror. We will continue accepting the death of innocents as collateral damage in a war that has no ending and no borders. We will continue sending machines to assassinate people with no trial or due process.

- We will continue to condemn (mostly black) people to a life in and out of our prison system for crimes no greater than local marijuana distribution, while in the meantime allowing alcohol and cigarette companies to target teenagers with sexy advertisements.

- We will continue to allow lobbyists and corporations to control our lawmaking and leadership selection process. After all, money is speech now, and the richest people are the loudest.

And since that's what will happen, let's also not forget what has happened.

- 6 billion dollars has been spent on the 2012 presidential campaigns, shattering by a landslide all previous records. That's 6 billion dollars that has been spent so that not a day would go by without you hearing someone telling you for whom to vote, whether it be via radio, TV, billboard, or asshole with a clipboard. That may not be that large a figure in context with our entire economy, but how many cops, firefighters, and teachers would 6 billion dollars have hired? How much more of a difference could we have made in this country if we'd bought schools instead of ad space?

- Barack Obama, our sitting President, Commander-In-Chief, and "most powerful man in the world", has just spent the last 6 months doing nothing but trying to keep his job. For half a year, the President's job has been to keep his position by going around in a tour bus to give empty promises to suckers in middle America. Fuck, we might as well elect Motley Crue. And we wonder why nothing gets done in this country. Is that really the best use of anyone's time?

So, enjoy casting your entirely symbolic expression of freedom and democracy tomorrow. Let's just get it over with so we can all go back to caring about reality TV shows while business returns to usual.

Amanda Palmer - Everyone's Mad At Some Chick I Never Heard Of

This One.

Before looking at Facebook today I'd never heard of Amanda Palmer before, but this current pop culture spat highlights some of the points I brought up in yesterday's post.  Apparently she is a musician who raised a whopping $1.2 million on Kickstarter to record a new album. She used that money up, and now is asking if fans want to play with her (unpaid) during shows at various tour stops because she can't afford to hire any more professional musicians. I mean, it seems a little ghetto, but apparently the audacity of this has been getting her crucified by fans, musician's unions, and industry veterans like Nirvana collaborator-in-some-capacity Steve "Made His Career When Music Stores Still Existed" Albini.

The full article is here: New York Times , and Steve Albini's response is outlined here: Albini!

First thing's first: the unions. I suppose I can understand their outrage at something like this. Neither I, nor any of my friends I have or ever have had in bands have ever been members of a musician's union of which I'm aware. I can only assume therefore, doing no research on the matter, that these unions do not consist of a tight-knit affiliation of garage bands writing rock music, but more likely studio musicians, orchestra members, and freelance day jobbers. I get it. They're coming from a world where they're always compensated for playing because they're always playing with/for people who have money. Because they're used to this kind of treatment, they get pissed at people who play for free because they feel it devalues (both monetarily and otherwise) musicians in general. Like I said, I understand the sentiment. However, these people need to understand that they do not live in the same universe as the people Palmer is most likely reaching out to. They're probably not fans of the music, so they obviously would have no incentive to accept the job in the first place. Why then would they get incensed by an offer than in no way applies to them? The article states that Palmer can't afford the $35,000 it would take to hire the three more musicians for the tour, so they're basically complaining that nobody is being paid for a position that wouldn't even exist if nobody volunteered for it.

Think about it in other entertainment related terms: if a magician asks a member of the audience to come up and help him with a card trick, does anyone complain that the volunteer isn't being fairly compensated? After all, they're technically performing a portion of the labor that is necessary for the show to continue. However, that would be a pretty stupid thing to complain about because the volunteer is fully aware that they're not getting any money out of the deal, they're just doing it for the spirit of the event and to be a part of the show. The case is very similar here.

Moving on, its Albini's stance on this matter that really gets to me:

If your position is that you aren’t able to figure out how to do that, that you are forced by your ignorance into pleading for donations and charity work, you are then publicly admitting you are an idiot, and demonstrably not as good at your profession as Jandek, Moondog, GG Allin, every band ever to go on tour without a slush fund or the kids who play on buckets downtown.

This gets us to one of the potentially unforeseen effects of using Kickstarter I was talking about yesterday: apparently to some people, there's a huge fucking stigma attached to it. If you use Kickstarter, you're a pathetic, stupid, deadbeat musician pandering for change, and you need to get out there and be poor like all those obscure people he mentions at the end so that your band can be name-dropped by some asshole for street cred after you die in poverty. In fairness, Albini's Wiki page shows him to be a decidedly non-greedy studio engineer, but come on, would he be where he is today if he hadn't been getting paid with sweet sweet major label dollars while he was working with Nirvana, The Breeders, Helmet, Chevelle, Robert Plant, Fred Schneider, The Stooges, Mogwai, The Jesus Lizard, the Pixies, and PJ Harvey? It must have been nice to come up in the heyday of Tower Records when the Buzz Bin was overflowing and that rock star money was raining in, but things are different now. For a lot of musicians, the money isn't coming from the top down, it's coming from the ground up. Who the fuck is he to call somebody an idiot for cutting major label money out of the equation? God damn it, is this still rock and roll we're talking about?

This is another point I touched on in the other post. The Kickstarter money is raised and the album is recorded, but what about when it runs out before the tour? There's no company to borrow more money from, that's all there is. Don't get me wrong, $1.2 mil is a shitload of money, but its not like she put it in her pocket, she recorded a fucking album. First off, Kickstarter and Amazon take 10%, leaving about $900 grand. Out of that money you can be God damn well sure that plenty of studio musicians got their union-approved rates for the duration of recording. I haven't heard the album, or any of Palmer's music for that matter, but I'm pretty sure she didn't pull a bunch of jug-blowing hobos out of the rail yard and have them play backing tracks for nothing more than a hot meal, so let's get real. People got theirs.

So I can understand why spoiled musician's union members would get all self-righteous about this because they've never had to play for only beer before (as so very many of us have, so very often), and I can see why a guy who's spent his career on the receiving end of a ceaseless tide of big label cash would disapprove of someone getting money directly from the fans (you know, the ones who would have just had to spend money to buy the album anyway), but what I don't get is the reaction from the fans.

Why the FUCK would fans be pissed? Speaking as a fan myself, if Iron Maiden came up to me tomorrow and said, "Oy, mate! We've run outta pounds for our US tour. We need YOU to come up to a show and sit in on the drums for a few numbers. We can't pay you, but you'll get free merchandise, and you can get bloody well pissed with us all night! I mean really knickered!", I would rob a gas station and throw my great grandmother down an open sewer grate to get to that show. Are you fucking kidding me? How could a true fan be anything but honored to share the stage with their idols? Sure, its not as an equal, but let's face it, you're not an equal. You just volunteered, so what can you expect?

And really, that's my point. Amanda Palmer isn't riding into town with a paramilitary junta and taking slaves to play sax for her. She's not (to my knowledge) fucking over the contracts for musicians that are already in place. She simply ran out of money after meeting expenses, and tried to come up with a solution so that the show could go on. She's asking people to play. It's voluntary. If you're too good for that shit, go back to your first chair in the Sioux City Philharmonic or whatever and shut the fuck up. Nobody has a gun to your head. None of you rock pundits out there seem to remember the fact that there are millions of musicians out there at all levels who will never make money or be famous, and many of them may not even want to. But maybe they do want the thrill of playing to a large crowd for once in their lives and sharing the stage with touring musicians, so who the fuck are you to tell them they should be insulted for being asked?

And another thing: Weezer did this exact same thing a few years ago! They had a contest and put a bus full of kids onstage to play Beverly Hills or whatever that stupid song was. I don't remember any media storm about how Weezer was exploiting child labor on their tour. They even have a tour video in Japan where they do the same thing. Why was everyone cool with it then, but now its an outrage? I really don't understand.



Play it right, slaves, or you'll be sorry!



 

So all in all, even though I've never heard a single note of music from Amanda Palmer, I find the level of criticism going on here absurd. How these critics can sit in their ivory towers and pass judgement like this is ridiculous. If you're a union musician, you don't fucking know what it means to take on risk and self-produce a project. You probably just show up at the venue that pays you, play your parts, go home, and cash your paycheck (because you get a paycheck instead of wrinkled $5's based on the number of friends you brought to the show). So shut the fuck up. If you're an iconic big wig like Albini, granted, you may be a patron fixture of the rock scene, but you also are who you are because bands paid you with corporate money. Money that came from companies that have ruined brilliant musicians financially, and that to this day fight with armies of lawyers to keep song rights away from the very people who created them. How does that give you any moral leverage to call someone an idiot for cutting a few corners while you reference these obscure underground bands who "made it the hard way" from the comfort of your top end studio? So shut the fuck up.

And the fans... how dare you? Who the fuck do you people think you are? This band is on the road to entertain you! They're doing whatever they can to make sure they can play the songs accurately at the show, cause you can be damn sure your ass would be booing if they sounded like shit. They try to make ends meet in a way that's already been done before (Weezer!) but this time its a scandal. How dare they run out of money and ask for help! It makes you wonder why people would bother to dedicate their lives to entertain a bunch of ungrateful pieces of shit who bash you at the first sign that you're not some uber-rich rock star, but just a person making some tough choices to try to keep doing what you love. I'd like to see your asses out there on a 36-date national tour.

News flash: unless your favorite music is auto-tuned pop-country performed by minors, your favorite musicians are getting poorer and poorer. The time of the rock star is over. The time of super groups selling out stadiums is going to be finished within 10 years. You better get used to bands "pleading for donations and charity work" on Kickstarter. Get used to fans on stage, because without them there might not be anyone on stage at all. Trust me, when the "artists" from the Billboard Top 20 are the only ones left with the resources to make music that you'll actually hear about, you might be yearning for the days when Bill the fuckin salesman was up there jamming with Amanda Palmer.

So please, shut the fuck up.

Kickstarter - Maybe Not As Good As We Think?

I've been thinking about Kickstarter for a while now. More specifically, what it means for artists, for fans, and what its impact will be on society as a whole. Make no mistake, the advent of Kickstarter and similar model websites is huge, but time will tell who benefits the most. I'm banking on big corporations, but hey, you know me.

I first heard about Kickstarter about a year ago. Somebody was telling me about this website that allows artists to raise money for their projects. Of course, I was skeptical at first. "Oh, right,"  I thought,  "A website where everyone just gives you free money to achieve your dreams. Sounds legit." However, I researched it a bit more and found that as long as people kept their fundraising goals reasonable, many projects were actually being fully backed. So then, when it came time for my band to record a new CD (having no money as we'd been minus a guitarist for a while and unable to play shows), I thought, what the hell? Let's give it a shot.

So, we got a few friends together, spent about $60, and made an hilariously awesome video: High Council Kickstarter Video . A good time was had by all, but also, it worked! Family, friends, acquaintances, and some guy from France all pledged to the project, and we were able to raise enough money to get it off the ground. I even went on to donate to a friend's band's recording. I thought that this was really going to revolutionize the way that musicians make money, and that it was a very positive thing. I've even heard that Kickstarter projects raised more money last year than the National Endowment for the Arts (but I haven't researched the validity of this).

However, by virtue of the fact that I work at a comic store, I started hearing about companies that already exist running Kickstarter projects, like this one: Reaper Miniatures . The first thing to note about this project is that out of a $30,000 goal, the project raised $3,400,000. This company already has brand name recognition, and by offering an insane rewards package (if you're into the model thing), they secured what I'm willing to bet is the biggest one-time influx of cash that they've ever received in the history of their company. Sounds pretty good, right? I'm not so sure. For the moment, lets overlook the fact that this shit is for nerds. What this company has done in order to fund a new product line is to effectively pre-sell their merchandise directly to customers at pennies on the dollar. Furthermore, because of the sheer quantity of rewards they gave out at such low prices, its highly unlikely that these customers will a) need/want more of it any time soon, or b) ever be willing to pay full retail price at any point in the future when such a glut has been produced (hello Ebay!).

Now, whether intentional or not, this project has most likely cut retail stores like mine out of the equation for the foreseeable future. Why would anyone want to carry this product line when anyone who could possibly have wanted to buy it will already have more than they could ever use upon the moment of its release? Perhaps now this company has unwittingly transformed into an online, direct-to-customers outlet. Or, perhaps they've priced themselves out of their own market, and what really seems like a 3.4 million dollar blessing has burned all of their bridges in the retail world and led the company to die a slow death. Its hard to say, and time will tell.

What this project and others like it further tell us is that Kickstarter seems to have no qualms about letting pre-existing companies create projects. Is developing a new miniature model line an artistic project? Uuuhhh... I guess. I mean, you do need an artist to make that kind of thing. But where is the line drawn? How long will it be before Pepsi runs a Kickstarter to fund a new logo for their 20 oz bottles? That's technically artwork, and it will make Kickstarter an enormous dump-ton of money, so I can see no reason why they wouldn't allow it. Pepsi could then just reward donors with unending gallons of slightly discounted Pepsi, effectively just giving a new venue to just sell the same old stuff. On that line of reasoning, what's stopping political candidates from starting a project to design a new campaign banner, or record a self-congratulatory campaign song? Surely we'll all be rewarded with plenty of bumper stickers, pamphlets, buttons, lawn signs, and all manner of propaganda decorated with the new logo we donated to create. How long will it be before the front page of Kickstarter.com is simply loaded with pet projects from the advertising branch of every major corporation in the world?

New mascot for McDonalds? Funded! Thanks for the Big Mac coupons. New logo for Shell Oil? Funded! Thanks for the mesh-backed baseball cap. Mitt Romney's Autobiography? Funded! Thanks for the autographed copy that someone else signed. New fuckin raincoat for the Long John Silver's guy? Funded! Thanks for the six piece fish n' chips meal. Isn't art wonderful?

Let's get back to music for a minute before I bring this home, as this is the aspect I care about most. It may seem like I'm kicking a gift horse in face by examining all the negative potentialities of the website that's been very good to me, but its important to understand here that I don't matter. As a musician, I never have and probably never will make any money. I'm looking at the big picture here, the real American dollars. Back in the day, it worked like this:

1. Record label signs you.
2. Record label lends you enough money to record an album.
3. Record gets released and they promote it. You hope it sells enough copies to pay them back with some money left over for yourself.
4. You go tour to promote the album to help it sell enough copies to pay back the record label, and hopefully make some money for yourself.

That was how rock stars were made. The ones that made the company money were the ones who lived the life. These days, with the advent of Kickstarter, it might look something like this:

1. You make a Kickstarter to fund your album.
2. You hit your goal and get the money. Hooray!
3. You use all the money to record the album and create/ship all your rewards to the donors.
4. There's no record company to pay back. From here on out, it's all profit, baby!

Or is it? Even if you are a recognized musician or band, chances are that your Kickstarter goal didn't include funding for a national scale promotion campaign. Are you ever really going to be able to reach as many people as you could have with the record labels? In addition, what's the post-Kickstarter incentive for people to buy your album? If you're a real fan, you probably already donated and received the album plus some kind of bonus track, live recording, T-Shirt, etc, etc that the band offered as a reward. At this point, the only people left are probably the ones who are just going to pirate the album anyway. Its true that you're not in debt to anyone, and don't get me wrong, that's great, but the opportunities for you to actually make a living off of that album might be greatly reduced. Musicians might have to start adding personal compensation to the total dollar amount of the goals they set on Kickstarter, and that could make some of the goals unreachable.

In any case, Kickstarter is still very young, and its too early to gauge the long term effects it will have on music and the economy in general. However, once it gets big enough to show up on Corporate America's radar, you can be sure that things will change. I believe this site was started with good intentions, and in practice it has raised a lot of money for legitimate artistic projects. It has also produced a lot of shocking, million-dollar grand slams that can't help but raise the eyebrows of those who are keenly aware of how to profitably exploit such things. Yes, Kickstarter may have hatched as an indie, artist friendly hub to fuel our imaginations, but by the time its fully grown we could be looking at a website full of commercials that's just another place to do our online shopping.

So... Should I Just Not Vote?

Yea, so that's the question. If being semi-addicted to political news has taught me anything, its that by the time the election for the president of the United States of America comes around this November, I will have grown so fucking sick of the circus that is our commercially sponsored facade of democracy that I probably won't give enough of a shit to vote. Now, everyone knows, or should at least realize, most people in this country don't vote at all. I get the feeling that the minority that actually does feels that what it is doing is really important. I used to feel that way too, but now I don't think I do anymore. I told myself that voting was one of the few methods in which we citizens are allowed to exercise our freedoms. This is true: we do have the freedom to vote. However, that doesn't mean it makes any difference whatsoever. And I'm not speaking from the "I'm just one person. What difference can I make?" perspective. I'm saying that literally, in practice and function, our presidential votes do not matter. I don't mean to sound pedantic, and I'm sure most of you already know this, but just to clarify:

United States Electoral College

Read up on that, if you're so inclined. If not, I'll skip to the important part.

Irrelevancy of national popular vote

The elections of 1876,^[77] 1888,^[77] and 2000^[77] produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the plurality of the nationwide popular vote. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so the true national popular vote is uncertain. When no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter three elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors.^[78]

Opponents of the Electoral College claim that such outcomes do not logically follow the normative concept of how a democratic system should function. One view is that the Electoral College violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.^[77]

A result of the present functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual significance on determining the outcome of the election. Since the national popular vote is irrelevant, both voters and candidates are assumed to base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by capturing coveted swing states, not to maximize national popular vote totals.

Of course, however, we do directly elect our congresspeople, but even fewer people actually vote for them. Those that do are just taking it on good faith that their representative will see how their district voted in the Presidential race and put in a good word for them. That might be an oversimplification, but its probably not. If they don't vote likewise (the congresspeople that is), they might not get reelected for their next term.

Oh no! Poor congresspeople! They'll somehow have to scrape by on their $300k+/yr "consulting job" that they got after voting whichever way their lobbyist wanted all those times.

So, after taking a step back from all the manufactured excitement and outrage about what Obama said or what Romney said or Biden or Ryan or whoever-the-fuck, and reminding myself that I already know that voting doesn't actually matter, I just have to question why I should even participate. Besides some nagging sense of white guilt that I'm not taking advantage of a freedom that I know full well that people in other countries are dying for, is there any legitimate, concrete rationale for doing this?  Am I supposed to take this symbolic bone that our country is throwing us and be happy with it? I don't know, but I am sincerely doubting that I could even symbolically throw my support behind either one of the candidates currently running for president.

I mean, Romney is just out of the question. There is no man alive who more perfectly embodies a spirit of having no fucking clue not only of the struggles of poor Americans, but of people who just aren't sickeningly rich. Now I don't like to choose a candidate based solely on personality, but comments he's made like how he's not worried about the poor because "there's a safety net in place for them" show so clearly that not only is he completely devoid of any compassion, but he's unaware that there is even a need for such an emotion to begin with. Whenever any reporter dares to call him out on some pesky facts or tries to circumvent his talking points, he becomes frustrated at their insolence and makes an exasperated face like he just watched them jerk off in his throne room. There is no more adequate analogous figure for this man than Thurston Howell III of Giligan's Island. He's trapped in a land he doesn't understand with people who aren't all infatuated with how much money he has, and he has no useful skills except for throwing his wealth around in order to get what he wants, which is more money. I have no idea why this person is even in politics, except maybe to make his rich friends even richer, but let's face it, you don't have to be president to do that. And besides, at least Thurston Howell sometimes had a sense of humor.

Then there's Obama. Despite the fact that he has thrown the middle class a couple of corporate, watered-down life rafts like healthcare and signed on to gay civil rights issues that everyone besides old people, zealots, and racists have been on board with for years, his administration is still responsible for continued and repeated actions that are morally reprehensible. Sure, he's ended combat operations in Iraq (leaving behind thousands of other troops and military contractors), but the fact is that he authorizes drone strikes in sovereign nations on innocent people every day. He is responsible for targeted assassinations without trial or due process, claiming the executive branch saying so is all the authorization one needs. Is this as bad as the illegal wars and wholesale slaughter of civilians under Bush? No, its not. And obviously, he gets a pass for Bin Laden, but still, how can I bring myself to vote for someone whom I know is guilty of continuing the worst of this country's imperialist policies? In addition, he continually supports nightmare legislation like the NDAA and has yet to actually close Guantanamo like he promised. If Romney is Thurston Howell, Obama is Tony Soprano. You really want to like the guy because he legitimately cares about those close to him and tries to make sure they're taken care of, but when he leaves his home to go to work he does terrible things.

It's like, "Hey, you kids OK with your healthcare? Good. Now daddy's gotta go order some assassinations without congressional oversight." So forget about that.

I knew it was dark times indeed when I had to seriously consider if I would vote for Ron Paul were he to get the nomination. I agree with about half of his ideas, such as "stop spending all our money on wars" and "protect our civil liberties", but the other half of his agenda is to systematically dismantle everything the working class has fought to earn for the last 100 years. Obviously I don't think that Medicare and Social Security are flawless programs that don't need any fixing, but Ron Paul wants to revert the country to an entitlement-free time when "folks just helped each other out" from the good of their hearts, I guess. That's mostly the system that the entirety of human civilization had been operating under for all of history, and yet strangely there was no such thing as a middle class until America in the 1950's. So let's just ask all of human history for the last 10,000 years how well voluntary systems of public welfare work out.

Spoiler alert: it doesn't. Without minimum wage, worker protections, and regulations on the power of business, there is no middle class. This isn't conjecture, its history. Quote Ayn Rand all you want, but a society with no funds for the public good doesn't equal some kind of heroic capitalist utopia, it equals feudalism. Sorry, but I've got the history of every nation on earth to back me up on this. Anyway, this is besides the point since Ron Paul isn't in the running anyway.

So what am I supposed to do? Choose between the self serving capitalist tyrant or the promise-breaking centrist war hawk? Is there even a lesser of two evils to choose from? Maybe the entire system is evil. In that case, wouldn't I be evil for participating? Maybe I should just sit this one out.

It's Not The Zombie Apocalypse, You're Just A Jerk

Well, here it goes, the post that makes all my friends and the Internet at large hate me forever. Nonetheless, it has to be written. I have to speak my mind, even if it means offending some people who I think are awesome. Sometimes you just have to stand up against things that everyone thinks are OK, because once you take a step back from them, you realize that they really aren't.

I'm talking about the face eating guy from the news. Sorry, I'm not going to link one of the articles on here because I don't have a direct URL and I really don't want to know what happens when I type "man eats face" into Google. Besides, if you haven't heard about this story by now than I'm surprised that you've made it this far into the Internet. In a nutshell, a crazy guy got whacked out of his mind on drugs and was shot by police while nakedly chewing off another guy's face in the middle of traffic. The pop culture response to this grisly crime was to sport a universal boner and excitedly announce that this of course marks the beginning of the long awaited Zombie Apocalypse, the coming of which seems to be the sole motivation in many more peoples' lives than seems logical. Since then I've been beset with people digging up and posting every gut-wrenching crime-related article that inductively supports this fictional calamity. Its just been so exciting to hear about all these violent drug fiends and schizophrenics who mutilate themselves and kill their own children because it means we're all going to be characters in Left For Dead 2 soon! Can't wait.

Here's the real news flash: Fucked up shit like that happens every single day. Cannibals, psycho-killers, and reality-altering drugs actually exist in the real world and do horrible things to people on a daily basis. The difference is that now the Internet fanboy culture has such a zomboner for these absurd doomsday scenarios that what should be a horrifying news story is taken and ironically re-purposed to be some "awesome" indicator that these wet geek-dreams are upon us. At least, though I say that, I hope that its ironic. Its entirely possible that some people are mired so deeply in this dogma of the dead that they've forgotten the fact that its all bullshit, that it is a fantasy based on movies, TV, comics, and video games. This is what happens when people trivialize tragedies down into the category of "craziest thing on Reddit today!" In fact, the word trivialize might not even be accurate, because what I've seen is more like celebration. Some people are legitimately excited that a man was shot to death while eating someone. Like, that guy's face was mauled. He's going to be a hideous freak for the rest of his life, if he even survived. I'm not sure. That fucking sucks. As far as I'm concerned, a reaction like this is a stone's throw away from those assholes who "really appreciate Dahmer's work". Hell, if the face eater hadn't been killed he'd be getting fan mail right now.

Look, I love crime movies. Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Way of the Gun, Reservoir Dogs, Mystic River, The Departed... I think they're fuckin' awesome. But I don't actually get excited when I read news about people being gunned down in drug violence because it makes life like the movies. I don't fucking post online about bodies being dredged out of rivers and execution-style mob hits because it makes me happy. I even suspect most people would agree with that sentiment, but throw the word 'Zombie' in there and suddenly its funny and OK for everyone to do exactly that.


Am I overreacting? I don't know, maybe. If I am its probably because I'm already sick to death of zombie shit. When I was a kid you couldn't pay anybody to be a zombie for Halloween, it was boring and lame. Now we have zombie parades, zombie 5K's, zombie training camps, zombie survival guides, and probably zombie sex fetishes for all I know. Not to mention, while some is admittedly entertaining, a complete over saturation of zombie media of every conceivable kind. Not to mention the perennial Easter jokes about how Jesus was a zombie. OMG that's so fucking funny and original! I can't wait to hear it again next year! I don't even find it offensive except in how not funny it is. Its worse than when late night stand-up comedians default to midget jokes in order to get a guaranteed cheap laugh. Holy shit, midgets are short?? LOLLOLOLOL! Real cutting-edge stuff there, we've only been milking that one since what, the 12th century? What's next, "Yo mama so fat"? Anyway, I digress.

"Well just tell grandma I have 'other commitments' on Easter!"

 I just don't understand the complete and total obsession with it. I mean, I recognize that mankind has always been somewhat preoccupied with its inevitable extinction. Whether it be the Antichrist leading an army of probably Muslims now (you racists) or Skynet correctly realizing that humanity is an incredibly destructive force and nuking us into oblivion, we've always been fascinated with the End Times. Maybe it is an inevitable part of human nature, especially in modern times, to yearn for a post-apocalyptic world in which there aren't so many fucking people around and our daily responsibilities are simplified to "not dying horribly". The zombie ending could merely be the latest iteration of this. After all, its got all the familiar post-apocalyptic elements: scavenging for food, empty cities, useless technology, and people forming small bands in order to survive. Maybe there's a part of everyone that desires this regression to a simpler lifestyle.

Or, more likely, maybe people just want to shoot something that looks like a human but without the guilt (read: consequences) of murdering the people around them. Wouldn't it just be great if every wiener with a bone to pick could prove what a big man he is by pumping endless rounds into the walking dead instead of just simulating it on his PC? Finally, your chance to be a winner! And all it took was the complete and total extinction of anyone who could have possibly appreciated it. Isn't that wonderful? Yea, except it isn't going to happen, which brings me to my next point:  

You wouldn't survive the Zombie Apocalypse anyway.

 See, that's the thing about apocalypse scenarios: 95% of people die. That means you, Jack. It means me too. Unless you're one of the few people reading this with a working knowledge of how to fire and maintain weapons, hunt and prepare game, treat wounds and diseases, and survive for extended periods of time without plumbing, heat, or electricity, you're going to fucking die. Assuming you're in shape enough to escape the zombies in the first place, which you're not because you spend most of your time watching horror movies and playing Left For Dead, you're just going to break your leg or get an infection or something and die in pain on the pharmacy counter of an abandoned Walgreens surrounded by a maddening mess of unidentifiable white pills. See, there's a reason this planet had a fraction of its current population 100 years ago. Staying alive is pretty fucking hard without doctors and hospitals even without the ever-present threat of undead hordes. Why do geeks always think they're ready for the end of the world when it would be a miracle if most of them could pass a 7th grade Presidential Fitness Exam? Sure, it doesn't take an Olympic athlete to shoot man-sized, slowly moving targets, but at some point you might have to climb over something or run two miles without stopping. Unfortunately, these days that is a severe challenge for many people.

Good luck, man.

You think you're a survivor because you got a backpack with a first aid kit, a bottle of water, and some duct tape? Congratulations! You're as fully equipped as a retired plumber. You're going to be eating duct tape soup when the canned food runs out, assuming you can build a fire, which you probably can't because its a lot fucking harder than it looks. You're all ready to chop off some zombie heads with the dull replica katana you bought at the Berlin Mart? You'd be lucky if you could decapitate a head of lettuce. Hear me well, its not the geek who would inherit the earth in the Zombie Apocalypse, it would be the people who can fight and do useful things, and the only people who know how to fight/do useful things are the people who fight/do useful things now. That's not me, and I'm 95% sure its not you.


You know what, though? All of this is a moot point, because


Zombies are fucking fake!

None of this is going to happen. The face-eater from the news wasn't a zombie because zombies are the risen dead, an archetype in the same category as vampires, mummies, and draco-liches, which by the way are all also fictitious. How stupid would it be if people trolled news articles looking for proof that the Mummy Apocalypse was upon us? Its the same fucking thing, and exactly as likely. People who prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse would be far better served practicing 1950's style air raid drills, because it is a thousand times more realistic that a flimsy wooden table will save you from a nuclear explosion than that a single dead person will ever rise up in an all consuming quest to eat live brains. In fact, from Terminator to The Stand to Waterworld, pretty much any apocalypse scenario is far more likely to happen. After all, we are creating AI, experimenting with biological weapons, and melting the ice caps.

Also more likely.

Its sad that so many people are more prepared for this zombie garbage than for a house fire or a medical emergency. Moreso than prepared, in fact, people are champing at the bit for it to happen so exuberantly that we'll probably see a more aggressive movement in the near future. People want to kill zombies so badly I wouldn't be surprised if they started settling for the homeless and mentally disabled. Its all I fucking need to be gunned down by a Jeep full of losers fresh off of a 2000's zombie movie remake marathon while I'm stumbling to work hung over and groaning in pain. "But I swear, officer, he was saying 'braaaaains!'" Fuck you, you gangly nerd, I'm dead now! Arg!


We have created a wide multitude of ways to waste time in our society, but preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse has got to be the absolute worst. Besides being useless and sad, it also further desensitizes people to tragedies that give them the sparkle of hope that its actually going to come true. And if there's one thing we don't need in this culture, its to be desensitized any more than we already are.


So please, enough with this already. The dead can't come back to life, but I'm sure if they could, they would find something better to do with their time.

Angry Viral Videos Are Not The Way

So today somebody on Facebook posted a link to a video that is (or hopes to soon be) viral, at least locally. The video was the parent of an autistic child who was claiming that his son was verbally bullied by the teacher and staff of the special needs classroom in the school that he attends. To back this up, the man sent his son into school with a hidden recording device. This entire story kind of freaked me out on multiple levels, not the least of which was the fact that I used to work at that school and with that same student. Now this is my personal opinion on what a situation like this says in general, so I'm not going to be giving any names or places. If you're familiar with any of them, please don't mention it anywhere, as the last thing I want is for any of this to come back and bite me in the ass. Bullshit like this is the reason I quit that line of work in the first place.

However, as it turns out, the father was right. Some of the audio that was caught on tape ranged from inappropriate (such as the teacher talking about getting drunk the previous night) to verbally abusive. According to the dad's self-edited video transcript, at one point the aide says "you're such a bastard" to the child. Behavior like this is of course inexcusable and should not be tolerated. Any school employee who engages in institutional abuse like name calling is beyond wrong and should not be allowed around students. When I was there, I worked under a very good teacher, and for the most part, a very good group of classroom aides. There was one who would say inappropriate things in front of students sometimes, and I believe she got transferred out of that room after I left.

In any case, I am of course a strong opponent of any type of bullying; institutional, peer to peer, or otherwise. I, like probably a majority of people, have been through it in some ways myself, and it sucks. I really approve of the action that has been taken in the past several years to try to recognize and address this problem.

But with that said, I want to look at the dangerous precedent that occurs when any parent that feels like it has the ability to open up Windows Movie Maker and spread viral videos around the Internet. Now, as I said, in this case the father was right that his son was being mistreated by the staff. In the video it mentions that the aide responsible for these comments was in fact fired, and the teacher and other aides were all reassigned to different schools. It would appear to me that even though the pain of the experience cannot be undone, a measure of justice was served. However, in the video, the father rails against the teacher union rules that allow the names of those involved to be kept secret, and demands a public apology from everyone involved. He mentions he's not going to sue (which is pretty admirable considering that many parents of special needs students love nothing more than big cash settlements from underfunded public schools when they're already rich), but its clear that the woman losing her situation and the rest of the staff being reprimanded over this matter is not sufficient. There has to be a viral video that incites rage, and a big production needs to be made. Its not enough that the school district took action, but everyone in the world needs to know about it as well, and every member of the classroom, guilty or innocent, and the school system as well, needs to have its reputation tarnished.

The biggest reason that crusader parents making viral videos is dangerous is because for one, they're completely one sided. There's no editor, there's no fact checker, there's no due process. The video is just the parent saying his side of the story as angrily as possible with well-placed editing to make it appear exactly the way he wants it. I know for a fact that he, like most parents of disabled kids (or maybe just parents in general), completely downplays the extent of his child's disabilities. He mentions that his son flipping out and having breakdowns in class was a new phenomenon related to the bullying, and that normally he never acted out anymore than "quietly mumbling to himself" and so forth. I had personally seen this kid launch into unprovoked tantrums years ago when I worked there. No, they were not common, but they did happen, and on one or two occasions, they could be somewhat violent. Even though this fact does not have too much bearing on the events that occurred, it is nonetheless a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts on the part of the father in order to further his case. Most people watching the video would probably not even think to question such a minor statement of the video, but because I was familiar with the student, I caught it instantly.


Another reason these videos are dangerous is because sometimes they achieve their goal: to incite rage. One of the comments I saw after this video was posted read, and I'm paraphrasing here, something about "taking those cunts and slamming their heads into a wall." Right, because the best way to deal with verbal abuse is more verbal abuse, and to crush women's heads. Some people really don't think about what the fuck they're saying, because this is the Internet and let's all kill everybody for everything! Now while I'm sure the father of the student wouldn't condone the brutal murder of a room full of teachers, that doesn't mean that by releasing an inflammatory video of a matter that should (and for the most part has been) handled through the proper channels, he hasn't started down a path that could lead to threats of violence or worse. He does not reveal the last names of the staff in question (seeming to indicate that if they don't come forward for an apology, he will), but that doesn't matter. He's already revealed their first names, where they work, and what position they hold. Since the names and salaries of all public employees in New Jersey are a matter of public record, and there's also this thing called the Internet, it shouldn't be too hard for anyone who wants to email someone a death threat to track them down. At the very least, you run the risk of turning entire public sentiment against a school full of mostly good and honest, non-abusive teachers and staff who are working their asses off every day to try and teach your god damn kids how to read and write.

And one more thing. In this case, the evidence was clear and the sentiment was as least justified. But what if the next angry parent with a bone to pick on YouTube is not? When I worked at that school I was kicked, punched, stabbed with pencils, and hit with thrown chairs on a daily basis by a different student with whom I worked. Some days I seriously considered bashing my head on a piece of furniture so that I could go to the hospital instead of to work. For my trouble, when we had to use state approved restraint techniques to keep the student from hurting others in one of his tantrums, his parents called for investigations of abuse from both the state and from Dyphus. Thanks to the due process of both of these entities, they found that the accusations were baseless, and nothing came of it. But maybe if the parents had thought that a viral video would have been a more effective means to deal with the imagined situation and had decided to fire up the webcam and publicly call me a child-beating monster until there was such a media firestorm that there was no choice for the school but to fire me, my good name would be fucked forever. Or hell, maybe they could have just sent the kid to class with a wire on every day until they had enough audio they could take out of context to doctor up and be able to "prove" whatever they wanted. By the time anyone figured it out, the damage would have been done and no one would have cared anymore, because that's how viral videos work.

Like I said, the woman who was responsible for saying these things was wrong, and deserved to lose her job several times over. The motive behind making this video is just, even though I strongly disagree with the method. We, as an information age society, need to be very cautious as to what we give credence. Many of the parents in that school district already have a staggering success rate at suing the district for, quite frankly, bullshit reasons. Some people are just out to rightfully protect their kids. Other people are looking for any excuse to lawyer up and prey on an already overburdened public school special education system and the underpaid employees who can't afford legal counsel. While advanced education programs and regular classroom aides are being cut due to the budget, special education classes are fully stocked with a personal aide for each child, and there's still not enough resources to train everyone sufficiently. If making viral videos becomes an effective way for vindictive parents to get people fired, there won't be one god damn teacher left in that school.

So, if you want to make an online video instead of going through the proper legal channels, you'd better have a good fucking reason, because you only have to destroy a person's career once. As for me, I left all that behind. Now, I no longer worry about being sued, investigated, or apparently wiretapped. Some people might say that its a shame, because I was good at that job, but in the end I just couldn't deal with the parents' bullshit.

Oh well, their loss.

You Might Be A Racist If...

There have been a lot of racially charged stories in the news lately, and with them comes the type of indignant comments made by people who are really upset that it is becoming less and less socially acceptable to be a fucking racist. More or less, I always hear shit like this (Please use your most indignant, butt-hurt, exaggeratory voice when reading the italicized words):

"Oh well if a white person said/did that, everyone would be all mad, but because a black/Mexican person did, we're not allowed to say anything."

I'm sure you hear garbage like this all the time. Maybe you even say it. Hell, maybe you even believe it. This statement is the kind of pushback you get when you back a racist into a corner, a kind of emotionally vomitous expellant inanely spewed by people who honestly believe that they, and I'm talking about white males age 18-35 here, are themselves discriminated against in our society. That somehow their ability to criticize things that are legitimately unjust is so beset on all sides by a hypersensitive, over reactive populace that they are powerless to point out the myriad evils to which the rest of us compulsively turn a blind eye. Well, frankly, that's bullshit, and to prove it, I don't have to go back more than 48 hours into the news cycle.

You see, at one time, the object of the news networks may well have been to report the news. I can't really confirm or deny this, as it certainly hasn't been the case for as long as I have personally been able to understand what the fake-looking people on the TV have been saying. With increasing gall, the uniform goal, the all-encompassing singularity to which all news network now aspire is none other than complete dominance of the ratings. The programs are engineered to whip the viewer into a frenzy, to incite rather than to inform. "Everyone look! Ridiculous sideshow presidential candidate #1 is about to say something! Now he is saying it! He just said it! Now let's bring a panel of 27 commentators to endlessly rehash and reinterpret the fairly simple and straightforward message that the average sixth grader should be able to understand." I myself am a victim of this, drawn into stories that I know with all my heart that I should not give one fuck about. But it's got everything: the anticipation of something important about to happen, the good guys (left or right), the bad guys (left or right), the legitimization of even the most insane cabin-in-the-woods apocalypse fearing fringe group's agenda, birthers, death panels, war on women, war on religion (while the effects of the real war are hidden), election races that last years, all attempting to elicit as much raw emotion as possible from as many people as possible. I used to think it demonstrated some kind of culture or intelligence to be informed as to what was going on in the country, but now I think it may be driving us to collective madness. The reason is that less than half of what we think is happening is actually happening, and we're not even seeing half of the real stuff. Now, there's no laws being debated, there's only threats to our way of life, or wars on whatever group of people. The President is somehow a dictator, a fascist, a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, and an illegal immigrant all at the same time. The media legitimizes every ridiculous claim simply by covering them, while real abuses of power go undiscussed or fade quickly from the public conversation. And the media fuels it all in the name of ratings.

The point of this tangent being, then, that one would have to have a very particular and predisposed worldview to possibly conceive the fact that the media and society in general specifically target only controversial remarks made by white men. To the contrary, they dredge up and pull to the forefront any sensational comments regardless of the source as long as they can be offered up to the golden idol of ratings. After all, when there's blood in the water, its always the same color. The example I alluded to earlier to counter this absurdity happened earlier this week, when the manager of the Marlins, a Venezuelan, was suspended for five games for saying on the record that he admires Fidel Castro. His comments, which in my opinion are hardly worth a controversy considering that Che Guevarra shirts are a popular fad in this country and that political opinions should have no bearing on a game of baseball, have garnered national attention and have infuriated baseball fans, Cuban immigrants, and residents of Florida. Now the point here is that the Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen, is decidedly not white, yet people are calling for him to be fired over these remarks that in all honesty don't even reach the "Hitler had some good ideas" level of political incorrectness. They want him to lose his career for saying he admires Castro, a comment so tame it wouldn't even get you a detention in high school. Believe me, I know.

So when these people say that only white people get in trouble for making racist/controversial remarks, where the fuck are they getting their news? Oh that's right, nowhere. Forget about the fact that the Reverend Wright (black guy) thing was a huge media frenzy that caused a giant controversy. Forget about the fact that Herman Cain (black guy) got in a shitload of trouble for harassing women. Forget about the fact that Ozzie Guillen (Venezuelan) can't manage a baseball team because he likes Castro. They forget about all these facts, and just rehash the same phobic cliches with other racists about how white people aren't allowed to criticize a minority anymore, and other dipshit statements like, "Pretty soon we won't even be allowed to speak English!" That's another gem. Half the fucking countries in the world speak English, how paranoid are you?

White males are the statistically most financially successful demographic in the country, so stop bitching. If the culture is a little more diverse, or understanding, or politically correct than it was in your idealized pre-Civil rights (or Civil War for that matter) American fantasy-land, deal with it. It doesn't even mean you're not free to be a racist anymore, it just means that a larger percentage of people these days will think you're an asshole.

And they're right.

Teenage Mutant Bastard Franchise Alien Turtle Whores

With people dying all over the world and evil running amok, pop culture seems like the least worthy thing to be railing against right now, but let's face it, there's a million things a day that make me hilariously and unhealthily furious. The following article is simply the straw that broke the camel's back (the camel here being a metaphor for my apathy while sitting on the couch and not writing this blog).

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/721877/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-arealiens/?cmpid=sn-120221-twitter-na-twitterfantrack

So if you haven't heard already, Michael Bay and some other crap-ass director of bad movies are working together to bastardize all of our fond childhood memories of the Ninja Turtles into some sure-to-be-unwatchable new film that will inexplicably gross $300,000,000 in 2013. From the soulless voids of flashing lights and loud noises that make up what should be the creative centers of their brains, they've made the decision to make the Turtles actually aliens.

That's right. Aliens.

I'm going to try to touch only briefly on why this is stupid from a creative perspective before I move onto my main point, as I'm sure the internets at large will be abuzz with the collective outrage of a generation, but lets see how it goes.

First of all, the turtles are four things: Teenage, Mutants, Ninjas, and Turtles. Everything they are is already in their name. If they were actually aliens, or had ever been meant to be aliens, I feel like that would be a pretty fuckin important thing to leave out of a title that's already absurdly long and descriptive. Secondly, turtles are pretty Earth-specific. If they were from another planet, they wouldn't really be turtles, would they? They'd be turtle-like aliens, and the likelihood of all four of them also being genetic mutations of their proper, extraterrestrial turtlesque species seems infantesmal at best. At that point, you'd have to call them something like "Teenage Alien Turtle-Like Ninjas". I mean, that is if you were in any way trying to actually give a proper title to an idea and not just using name recognition to guarantee your profitability while eye-fucking the audience with hours of predictable fight scenes, explosions, and one-liners.

But fanboy bitching aside, seriously, you had us already. Its the Ninja Turtles. They had to do absolutely nothing except to tell the same story over again twenty years later and everyone would have been happy. Let's face it, by the time I was watching the Turtles, they had already long since been wholly corporatized by the franchise goons. The pizza-loving dudebros of the cartoon show who went around chopping up a somehow affordable army of human-shaped robots were a far cry from the comparatively brutal crimefighters of the comic books who drank beer and killed gangbangers. I'm not even asking for some kind of artistic purity here, I'm just asking why you would mess with a guaranteed formlua. In the years between when the cartoon show aired and when everyone decided to save $7 by not seeing the third movie, the Turtles sold us comics, action figures, movie tickets, video tapes, school supplies, halloween costumes, video games, t-shirts, pajamas, novels, backpacks, shoes, party supplies, sleeping bags, and Vanilla Ice and KRS-1 singles. They made us want to eat pizza, join Karate, and skateboard. Every stick that fell on the ground was a bo staff until you broke it into a sword, and then finally, a sai. Then, if you had a rubber band, it became nunchucks. The mere fact that I feel a palpable sense of betrayal at the idea of someone turning the Turtles into aliens speaks to the incredible success with which they have ingrained me with brand loyalty.

All of which begs the question, why fuck with it? The groundwork is already laid. There's a legion of fans out here with a near-genetic loyalty to the Ninja Turtles franchise, just waiting to take themselves and now probably their kids to the movies, just to catch a familliar whiff of what was once so awesome. They could just do the same exact thing: Splinter, Shredder, April, ooze, and bam, it all pays off. Sure, Raphael can make a wisecrack about Jersey Shore or something, and Donatello can have a 4G Ipad instead of a collection of radio transistors, but just once, give the fans what they want. After all, its not like Michael Bay and his million dollar cronies have any artistic stake in the story. But of course, that's not what we'll get. Instead, prepare for a 3D, computer generated "action-packed thrill ride" that takes all of our childhood memories and bends them over a table in a metaphorical hillbilly rape-shack, just like GI Joe and the Transformers. I still haven't seen any of those movies, by the way. I can't bear the thought that I might get hit by a car and die knowing that the last movie I watched was Revenge of the Fallen.

There is hope, however. I recently heard that George Lucas was going to quit making movies because he was tired of all the "fanboy bitching". I'm assuming that term is washed-up, out-of-touch, lucky to have gotten unspeakably rich in the first place director-speak for "public opinion". But the point is, it seems to have worked. It may be too late to stop Michael Bay and his apprentice from turning the Ninja Turtles into some kind of nonsensical explosion aliens. In fact, they might not even know what the fuck a Ninja Turtle is in the first place. I assume that the first thing they do when the studio acquires new production rights is rev up the pyro trucks long before any scripts are written. However, it might be possible, with enough fanboy bitching, to make them quit making movies before they seek and destroy every fond memory we have, even though I think the only 80's cartoons that have managed to stay under the radar are the gay ones like the Snorks, David The Gnome, and Carebears.

To that end, sign this petiton that Jimmy Viola made: Turtles! It may be a small start, but lets get the ball rolling to send those assholes back to their mansions to sleep on piles of money with many beautiful women as the jokes of the movie industry!

Music History (As According To Stuff I Remember) Part I: The Band That Singlehandedly Destroyed Rock Music

Disclaimer: This article is based on stuff I remember and is not checked for factual accuracy. That said, everything is probably true anyway.

I believe the year was either 1995 or 96, putting me either in 8th or 9th grade. Back then, MTV still had programming that included these little four to five minute curiosities known as "music videos". The tide was beginning to turn away from these, but at the time I could still come home from school and bask in what was truly a unique and innovative era of rock music. I remember a regular rotation of Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Rage, and all the seminal bands of the day alongside the industry giants like Aerosmith and the Stones, coexisting peacefully in spite of reality shows that nobody I knew cared about, like "The Real World". Bands were cool, music was exciting, and all was well for my 14 year old self.

Then, one song, one song came along and irreversibly changed the face of rock music forever, bathing the channel that had made me and so many others love music in a sea of limp-dicked weenie ballads for the rest of the short-lived life of the music video. People always talk about how "Smells Like Teen Spirit" popped the Glam-Metal bubble, a concept that has been endlessly rehashed and remembered on VH1 for three times as long as Nirvana was actually recording music. But nobody talks about how a mere 4 years later, this band came along and destroyed everything novel and meaningful that was going on in music thanks to the Seattle and alternative bands. Who was this band, you ask?

What? Who the Hell are these guys? I'll tell you, God damnit! They're called The Verve Pipe, and I clearly remember the specific moment they destroyed rock. I was watching the Jenny McCarthy show for some reason. She always had a musical guest on at the end of the show while she rolled around in her pajamas on some corny retro 60's studio set. After twenty minutes of trying to be funny (immunizations make your kids autistic, Hut Hut!), she introduced the debut performance of the hot new band, The Verve Pipe, with their breakout hit "The Freshmen". I can clearly remember wondering for the next three minutes when the song was actually going to start. This boring, washy, clean guitar wusfest had to just be the intro, right? The weepy, uninspired lyrics just had to be a buildup to an actual song. I mean, these guys were on TV, where the hell was the rock?  As it turns out, nowhere. When the band stopped playing and the audience cheered (more out of excitement at being part of an audience rather than at anything they'd heard, I'm sure), I realized that that had been the whole song. Ha! Nice try at being relevant, Jenny. The Verve Pipe were a bunch of boring losers, their hit song was about as exciting as an afternoon nap, and that's the last I would have to hear about that.

Wrong again, Lou.

So the next day, while returning to my usual routine of watching music videos all day because I was in 8th grade, imagine my surprise when I saw the video for "The Freshmen" sandwiched in between two definitely superior songs. It had the same grainy, low lit texture as the alternative videos of the day, but, as with the live performance, it was ultimately boring and meaningless. "How the hell did this song get into the rotation?" I paraphrased to myself, "I thought I'd never have to hear this crap again! What gives?" Well, imagine my further surprise when this song absolutely exploded. MTV was playing the video all day long. I'm convinced that Y100 had the song on repeat at the station. I was sure it was a fluke. "The Freshmen" was garbage. I mean, I practically was a freshman and this song had absolutely no appeal to me. These guys were going to burn out, and rock could continue as normal.

Well, I was right on one count at least. The Verve Pipe did turn out to be a one hit wonder, but the absurd over saturation of that song opened the door for a seemingly unending stream of wiener bands who couldn't have found the overdrive channel on their amps if it was directly under a picture of the girlfriend they were always pining over. In the next couple of years I was bombarded with one bittersweet, toddler-friendly pop ballad after another. Next out of the gate were the bands that would become the leaders of the wus-rock movement: Matchbox 20, Fuel, and Third Eye Blind, with safe, radio-friendly bubblegum pop tunes like "3 AM", "Semi-Charmed Life", and whatever fuckin Fuel song everyone liked at the time. After all of these singles broke, the floodgates were open for forgettable bands with hummable choruses to absolutely dominate life on earth: Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars", Fastball's "The Way", Eagle Eye Cherry's "Stay Tonight", whoever sings "Closing Time", Smashmouth's "Walking on the Sun", Savage Garden, The New Radicals, and a host of other copycat bands who plugged in the guitar just long enough to have their albums filed in the "Rock" section in the record stores. In my mind, nothing could be farther from the spirit of rock and roll. There was no local scene that spawned this explosion. Nobody talks about the "Wisconsin Wus-Rock Movement" or anything like that. I believe that these bands were handpicked by labels to be a safe and consumer-friendly alternative to, well, Alternative.

To make matters worse, all the good bands were breaking up and dying. Kurt Cobain died, along with Layne Stanley. Soundgarden split up (conveniently the day before I wore my brand new Down On The Upside shirt to school, unknowingly), and the Smashing Pumpkins soon followed. No comparable bands were coming up, at least in the popular music sphere, to replace them. A few funny things happened too. For example, the proto-hipster Beck, who had been a small fry in the alternative market suddenly seemed like a genius in comparison the rest of the wus-rockers. His quirky, retro, boring songs became huge hits with their forced, too cool for school nonsense lyrics and funny noises going on in the background. Some bands that had potential to be cool, like Filter, suddenly jumped ship and pandered to the wussery of the new market, revealing themselves as the copycats they were. It seemed as if there was no end in sight. Day after day I would continue to come home and watch MTV only to find an ever increasing slew of reality shows encroaching on an ever worsening variety of music videos. The only respite from this and spark of originality came in the form of Marylin Manson, and let's face it, I really, really didn't want to become a Manson fan.

Popular music has never really recovered from this era of weepy not-rock. Once the labels realized that the public still loved music even though it was completely stripped of any originality, personality, or creativity, they knew they could pretty much sell us anything. For evidence of this, look no further than at the biggest rock band names of the past decade: Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Staind, and Nickleback. What they all have in common, besides not being able to spell the words in their own names, is that they've all sold a million billion records despite the fact that pretty much nobody I've ever met in my entire life would listen to any of them with a ten foot listening cone if you pointed a gun at their mothers. So how can this be??

Popular rock music has been on a steady decline for the past 15 or so years, and it was The Verve Pipe who pushed it down the hill. From the first time that they lazily feathered their guitar strings on The Jenny McCarthy show, their "we're just not trying that hard" attitude crept its way into the airwaves, letting every band thereafter know that it was ok to not push any boundaries, ok to not play any hard parts, and ok to have your press photo look like an IT staff meeting outside of a Starbucks. Perhaps that's not completely fair. Perhaps any one of those predictable singles I mentioned above could have lit the spark that fueled the entire inferno of boredom if "The Freshmen" had never been written. However, that's not how it went down, at least according to my memory. And if there's one thing I can trust myself to remember with nearly superhuman clarity, its being disappointed.