Moving in Stereo

Thoughts on a Pop Song
Pink – "Please Don’t Leave Me"

“How did I become so obnoxious?”

Interesting that Pink asks that question, as from where I’m standing, it’s her defining trait. She may well ask how she became bipedal; I’ve always thought Pink was obnoxious from the first moment I heard her, back when she was making terrible r&b at the turn of the millennium, rather than the marginally better pop-rock she makes now. And although I do find her obnoxious (in fact, I have difficulty finding other words to describe her), I find her marriage with X-Games athlete Carey Hart kind of perversely fascinating. The first single from her new album, “So What,” was about how glad she was to be rid of him, but they were still on good enough terms that he appeared in the video, and they’re apparently reconciling now. The whole thing gives off the impression of a horrible, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”-esque situation where they’re inextricably attached emotionally but deeply mutually despise each other.

So, after “So What” (maybe the worst song she’s ever recorded), we get the opposite, Pink straightforwardly admitting that she’s a total bitch and abjectly pleading for forgiveness. But it still says a lot that she can’t turn it off entirely; even when she’s begging desperately, she writes lines which sound like passive-aggressive slams (“I am capable of nearly anything/When my heart is/Broken.”) While I have to believe that anyone who would willingly marry Pink could give as good as he got, she undercuts the point of the song a little by spreading the blame around. The video for “Please Don’t Tell Me,” for the record, gutlessly steps around any actual honest feeling by letting Pink depict herself as a Jack Nicholson ax-crazy psycho who ties up her boyfriend and actually fucking winks at the camera, because it’s easier to play a physically abusive lunatic than the emotionally abusive hellbeast that she apparently is.

Part of my response to this song comes from the fact that right before I first heard it, I betrayed my better judgment by watching that video of Chris Brown apologizing for beating the shit out of his career girlfriend. I couldn’t make it through more than a few seconds, but my predominant thought afterward was that apologies aren’t the same as atonement, and that while I’m sure that he is the most regretful person on the planet, that doesn’t mean he won’t do it again. Before Rihanna’s handlers presumably stepped in, Rihanna stayed with Chris Brown for a couple of months after the beating because I’m sure they still felt very passionately about each other; that’s why people stay in abusive relationships. What makes “Please Don’t Leave Me” so frustrating is that (unlike the Chris Brown video, which was clearly a prepared statement written by his PR people) it’s so very convincing and sincere. I feel like I’m the one who’s in an abusive relationship with Pink; I hate her so much but I’m such a sucker for her apologies. (Those delicate la-da-da-das are a nice touch.) The Chris Brown video scares me because he’s so clearly reading from a script and so clearly doesn’t mean it; “Please Don’t Leave Me” is scary because she does mean it. I really do like this song, but its pointed subtext is an endless cycle of misery followed by apologies followed by a short burst of happiness followed by more misery, with no progress being possible. When Pink calls her husband her “perfect little punching bag,” she hits a raw nerve that I’m not sure was intended, but it’s even worse when she sings, “Baby I don’t mean it/I mean it/I promise.” That gives me chills down the spine, and not necessarily in a good way.

Still, I like it when songs have suppressed ugly emotions leak out. Another good example is the Walker Brothers’ “Make It Easy on Yourself,” a breakup song which tries to take the high road but ends up sounding pissy. I don’t like the opposite, when an ugly song projects earnestness, the prime example being “How Do Ya Like Me Now?!” “Please Don’t Leave Me” isn’t the equal of “Who Knew” (which is implicitly also an apology for the kind of person she is), but I’m still surprised at how good it is. Pink’s never been afraid of thrashing herself in song, of course, but I think the reason “Who Knew” and “Please Don’t Leave Me” work is that Pink tempers her angst-laden hatred of herself and others by genuinely expressing affection, whereas “Sober” and “Don’t Let Me Get Me” remind me of Livejournal-y self-obsession only. I predict she’s going to release a few more of those and remind me why I dislike her so much before she sucks me back in with another disarmingly sweet ballad. Fucking bitch.

Thoughts on a Pop Song
T.I. f/Justin Timberlake – Dead and Gone

If I needed a concrete reason why I don’t like this song, I got it when “Dead and Gone” started sharing airtime with Eminem’s “Beautiful.” There it is, I thought, there’s the song that exposes all of “Dead and Gone”’s faults all at once. Of course, because T.I. is a prime superstar and Eminem is a has-been, “Beautiful” quickly dropped like a rock and I’m still hearing “Dead and Gone” on the radio for the better part of a year.

That’s not the only reason “Beautiful” had a short shelf-life on the radio. “Beautiful” is a genuinely dark song, with Eminem the lonely superstar locked in a prison of joyless fame and creative arthritis, and soulful Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers singing the hook. There’s not really a market for that kind of thing. No one, apparently, wanted to hear a rap song whose first lines are “I’m just so fucking depressed.”

When T.I., on the other hand, wanted to record a deep emotional single, he used a more martial beat, he recruited Reigning King of Pop I Guess Justin Timberlake, and he went to a much more comfortable topic, the dangers of the thug life. Thug life, thug life… Look, Tupac’s been dead for a decade and a half, and I am fucking tired of thug life. Let’s say that I don’t find it particularly a revelation that people in the ghetto get shot, or that violence begets violence. “Being a has-been is depressing” isn’t a revelation either, but Eminem doesn’t say that, he says “I’m so fucking depressed.” There’s an emotional distance to “Dead and Gone,” in its beat and its lyrics and especially in its hook, that prevents it from overcoming its played-out subject matter.

There’s some mention of a friend of T.I.’s who, I’ve discovered, was killed in gang violence, and T.I. wonders if the fights he himself started were an indirect cause. But T.I.’s rapid delivery glosses over that as quickly as possible, enough that it doesn’t really register, and for the most part, T.I. deals with generalities and hypotheticals. He’s not brutally portraying his own failures; he’s lecturing you. The closing tag “I turn my head to the east” etc. really hurts the attempt at confessional honesty: It sounds like a dance track. T.I. and Justin Timberlake sound like they sat down to write a gritty confessional rap song in the same way they sit down to write club bangers, and this kind of song is cliché enough that I believe that’s exactly the way it happened.

T.I. hides from the potentially deep thought that he inadvertently killed his friend by feigning wisdom – “The old me’s dead and gone.” Okay, one, the journey’s more interesting than the destination, and a T.I. struggling with maturity is more interesting than one claiming to have reached it, which is a doubly a problem when, two, I don’t believe him. I was shocked to find out that T.I. is, in fact, not in a great place right now. In fact, he’s in jail right now, serving a 12-month sentence after getting caught with four illegal machine guns, not the worst thing I’ve ever heard a rapper doing but definitely one of the stupidest. What did he think he was going to use them for? I once heard Busta Rhymes justify his possession of an illegal handgun by pointing out that he lived in New York and was sick of being mugged. But four machine guns? Was he planning a bank heist? Anyway, this is shocking to me not because of T.I.’s claims to have moved past the ghetto life, but because T.I. sounds so comfortable in his life as a rap superstar. In fact, he sounds more genuinely conflicted in the upbeat, celebratory “Live Your Life” than he does here. T.I. is honestly not that interesting to me, I mean, I like him more than Lil Wayne, but if you asked me to explain what made him better than the next rapper, I really would not have much of an answer for you.

And let’s talk about Justin Timberlake for a second. Is he really the first person you’d want as a collaborator for your thoughtful ghetto anthem? I love the guy, I really do, but he’s spent so long as king of the world that people seem to have forgotten that he’s not a gangsta, he’s a squeaky-voiced white boy who got his start in an Orlando boy band. Disregarding his time with ‘N Sync (who are still shit and were always shit, so let’s stop the historical revisionism that they were anything but shit), J.T. has never really attempted anything but pimp swagger (and occasionally, vengeful bitterness) in his music. That’s what he and T.I. have in common, and it’s what makes both of them exactly the kind of people that can’t make a song like this. The shouts of “Hey” in the chorus by themselves ruin what this song is trying to accomplish. T.I.’s ego won’t let him be not on top of the world.

Thoughts on a Pop Song
Miley Cyrus - The Climb

Miley Cyrus plays Miley Stewart, a young teenager who is also secretly the pop star Hannah Montana, and Cyrus’s real life father Billy Ray Cyrus plays her father Robby Stewart, a former country singer who retired to family life after the death of his wife. When Miley Stewart embarks on a singing career, she does so under the guise of Hannah Montana so that no one can connect the real girl to the famous stage figure; Robby, now working behind the scenes as a songwriter, composes many of Hannah’s hits.

That’s about all I know about Hannah Montana the fictional character, but for some reason, despite my better judgment, I’m honestly really interested in actually watching her movie or her show. I like to imagine a very heartfelt backstory where Robby only signs off on his daughter’s recording contract if she will do so under an assumed name, because he’s seen the pitfalls of fame and wants to let her experience the joys and triumphs of stardom while preventing her from becoming a paparazzi target or enjoying the diva excesses that could damage a young girl irreparably. Perhaps during his brief career as a country star he fucked many of the groupies he saw on tour, and the guilt he felt after God took his sainted wife led him to abandon the glitz and glamour of celebritydom. Perhaps he’s still conflicted about his decision to let his little girl into the dangerous waters of worldwide exposure, but can’t take it back for fear of arousing public suspicion in a suddenly disappeared superstar, or of cutting off his daughter’s promising future. Or maybe he can’t for the much less respectable reason that he’s fulfilling the stage-parent dream of living vicariously through his offspring, or because he doesn’t want to deprive himself of a singer who has no choice but to record his songs and validate his work through her success–he might even recognize his own mercenary interests in Hannah Montana’s career and feel deep shame that he can’t conquer. Meanwhile, Miley might resent her father even more because of not just the pressures of fame but also of leading a double life, about having to live an average shmuck’s life while being the biggest star in the world and not being able to unburden herself of the difficulties of being a touring musician to anyone but a select few. The actions that Robby took to protect his young child only drives them apart, leading to an uncomfortable, fractured relationship and a confused young woman unable to reconcile the split between her reality and her public persona.

Somehow, I get the feeling that if I were to actually watch any Hannah Montana, it would not live up to my version of it.

As interesting as I find the weird reality-bending aspects of the Hannah Montana phenomenon, the fact is that her music really is that bad. The previous Miley/Hannah songs I heard were all overprocessed Disney bullshit, cutesy dreck that I was born too old to enjoy. “The Climb” is different in that it’s the first to have some actual crossover appeal to people who aren’t wearing training bras, and one that actually gets played on the adult alternative stations and even the country stations. It’s the first hit of hers not to have the sugary stink of Radio Disney on it.

Unfortunately, it has only exchanged that for the flavorless, odorless, garden-variety-bad nothingness of an American Idol ballad. The American Idol machine goes through thousands of hopeful singers every year in the hopes of finding just one good enough to redeem their limp, dead-boring singles, and some seasons they don’t even succeed. Had Miley Cyrus tried out for American Idol, she likely would not have even gotten far enough to audition in front of the judges. People like to say that record producers can make anyone sound good through computer trickery, and in the future, I’m going to rebut them by pointing to Miley Cyrus. “The Climb” exposes what Miley Cyrus actually sounds like without the figurative Hannah Montana wig, and it ain’t pretty.

Matter of fact, what is with so many of the today’s pop starlets of the new decade not having actual singing voices? I mean, they can hold pitch, but compare that to Debbie Gibson or Tiffany or even Britney Spears, singers with some tone to their voices, unlike Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, Taylor Swift, Vanessa Carlton, Ashlee Simpson, Hilary Duff, etc.

And you know what, while I rag on American Idol, even the leadoff ballads they hand to their unfortunate winners can be interesting in how haphazard and incompetent they are. Songs like “Inside Your Heaven” and “This Is My Now” feel like collaborations between Diane Warren and a raving schizophrenic, which makes them at least have more texture than “The Climb” and its useless message about how life is a journey, not a destination – yeah, thanks for the newsflash, Hannah. Believe in yourself, don’t give up, stay in school, God is great, don’t do drugs, racism is bad, drink your milk, blah blah fuckety blah. Minus the metatextual aspects of her stage persona, Miley Cyrus isn’t interesting even as jailbait.

If “The Climb” is good for anything, it’s that it provides an escape route for Miley when she gets too old for this Hannah Montana crap, and it’s probably a good index on where she’ll be seven years from now, likely on country radio. That is, of course, is she makes it that far without flaming out Lohan-style. The girl performs both as herself AND Hannah Montana in concert; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she turns out really fucked up.

Haikus are lame.


Putting something in haiku form isn't clever or funny. It's lame.

Fuck haikus.

Yo, man, fuck 4:41 a.m.

I have great hair.

I found this in on an Internet messageboard in a thread talking about Alicia Silverstone's recent ad for PETA. The threads and messages on that board are quite transient and disappear into the ether very quickly, and I wanted to preserve this before it got erased from the Web forever. I don't know if this was stolen from a larger work or not, but it's really beautiful and I want to keep it around.

The reason meat is so tasty is because I know that it once held dreams and aspirations in its tiny brain, maybe had family who loved it, family that it loved. I know that as it was led, shivering and frightened through the cold steel doors into the morass of animal squeals, animal piss, animal shit, animal blood and animal angst, it was asking itself why....

Why me?




Why? Why you?

Because people want to eat you, little one: it's not fair, no. You don't deserve it. You are one of nature's miracles, a thing of beauty, a bundle of all that is pure and unaffected and free in this earthly garden....but you are my dinner, my sweet.
If I let you live, I will not eat, and I will die.

I. Don't. Want. To. Die.

My tiny, innocent love.....close your eyes now. It is quick, I promise.

Close them.









*THUNK*

(Carving and buzzing noises for several seconds, gradually fading to silence: then...)

Sizzle.....chomp chomp chomp (clatter of cutlery hitting an empty plate)

Belch......

MisterBadIdea: i am filled with busy
MisterBadIdea: i'm about to be promoted
ink it green: ooooh
ink it green: whatre you going to do?
MisterBadIdea: i'm going to be managing editor
MisterBadIdea: my strong work ethic of only showing up to work hung over once a week has paid off!
ink it green: hahaha
ink it green: i love you, kenny
ink it green: when you make more money you can think about me...and sending me some
MisterBadIdea: oh yes
MisterBadIdea: i can taste that 40-cent raise already
ink it green: omg
ink it green: are you serious
MisterBadIdea: well, that's the rumor
MisterBadIdea: it's probably more than that
MisterBadIdea: but the promotion is more in title than anything
ink it green: gross
ink it green: titles are cool
MisterBadIdea: looks good on the resume
ink it green: but what's good about having a girlfriend if the sex isnt good?
MisterBadIdea: well, see, here's the thing
MisterBadIdea: the sex was not good with my first girlfriend at all
MisterBadIdea: but it gave me the confidence i needed to seek out hotter girls
MisterBadIdea: and this works as an exact, direct metaphor for my job situation
ink it green: :)
ink it green: well
ink it green: i hope your next job puts out
ink it green: or at least gives great head

I broke a lightbulb in my hand. Contrary to rumor, it was entirely accidental and I did not break it over my head after a girl refused to sleep with me. Now I have this big cut across my thumb, and it stings and I have no Band-Aid for it. But bandages are for pussies anyway. Whatever. I'm gonna go play some Silent Hill. But I gotta start the whole thing over because hard mode turned out to be insanely difficult. Shut up.

Man, all of a sudden I'm craving some Aristocrat.

One of the most accepted old English adages is that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Now, what I've always understood that to mean is that something you have is equal to two somethings you don't. Translated into mathematics, that means that any x amount of my money is equal to 2x of yours. So if your money is twice mine, that means I should only have to pay half the fine of my speeding ticket, as it will be worth twice as much when you get it. Also, as a result of applying this aphorism, despite my bank statement saying I only have $691.60 in my account, it actually means that I am worth twice of what I'm actually worth. I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm pretty sure it means that someone owes me a lot of money -- probably you. So the next time I see you, give me some money.

I got my hair dyed blonde.

( Pics behind the cut )

Kenny's Random Pop Culture Memory of the Week

There was one episode of The Smurfs revolved around the first words of Baby Smurf, and the whole Smurf village was abuzz with anticipation about what they would be. After a short smurfy adventure where Gargamel probably tried to eat them or something, Baby Smurf finally opened his (her?) mouth to say his first words ever... "Gargamel." The Smurfs were shocked, but Papa Smurf called it appropriate, for all Smurfs must always be on the lookout for Gargamel.





Christ almighty, that's depressing. I'm going to make a post-apocalyptic horror movie someday where a baby's first word is "zombie."

Responding to my post two days ago about bullshit songs on the radio, Lord McCrowell demanded, "Kenny! How could you leave out Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls'?"

Why, I'm glad you asked, Josh. The short answer? Because it is a pure delight every time I hear it. I didn't know what I was missing before I heard it, but now I know what it is: a doowop-inflected, upbeat, vaguely misogynist bubblegum pop song sung by a chubby Jamiacan teenager. In fact, with its roots in early '60s pre-Motown soul, its Caribbean influences, and its disdain for attractive women, it's pretty clearly the spiritual descendent of Jimmy Soul's 1963 novelty hit "If You Wanna Be Happy," and I can't imagine giving it a higher compliment than that.

The more I think about this song, the more fucked up it is, all the more so because it's not trying to be insane like a Frank Zappa song or a chapter of "Trapped in the Closet." (As a side note, I haven't seen the new chapters of "Trapped in the Closet" and I'm not that interested. It's trying too hard now; once R. Kelly revealed that we were laughing with him and not at him, I stopped laughing.)

Hell, I'm not sure "Beautiful Girls" is even really a novelty song. It doesn't sound all that different from everything else on the charts. Sean Kingston even has another song that's already picking up airplay (the hook of which is sampled from, of all things, Led Zeppelin; apparently he's also got one called "I Can Feel It" that samples Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight").

But the WTF-ness of this song just keeps creeping in. WTF No. 1 is the bright happy tone Kingston brings to a song whose main hook is "They'll have you suicidal, suicidal." No. 2 is the fact that he samples Ben E. King's timeless "Stand By Me," the ultimate song of devotion and friendship, for a song about how women only want to cheat on you and treat you like shit. No. 3 and 4 are the line "it was back in '99, watching movies all the time, oh and I went away for doing my first crime." Sean Kingston was nine in '99, pretty damn young to have a girlfriend, let alone lose one for going to jail. No. 5 is how the song ends; it just cuts off and dies in the middle of the word "suicidal," which I guess implies that he killed himself.

Above all else, this song is stupid in a distinctly adolescent way. I realize "Beautiful Girls" was probably written by a committee of songwriter slaves owned by Epic Records, but it sure seems like a teenager wrote it. Mom moves Sean Kingston away, and then he's shocked when his girlfriend starts dating other people. How the hell do you make a long distance relationship work when you're not old enough to drive? This shouldn't have been a surprise, but of course, teenagers are dumb. So of course, after the breakup, Kingston adopts a stance of faux-jaded cynicism, saying that the pretty ones will only break you heart, even though there's no indication that he's ever dated any more than one girl. The use of the word "suicidal" is also over-the-top melodramatic like a 15-year-old; yeah, sure, kid, you're suicidal. The weird thing is that he doesn't even sound sad; he's even smiling like a 'tard all the way through the music video. Certainly this all seems like it should qualify "Beautiful Girls" as a Bullshit Song, but I can't bring myself to dislike it. I'm not going to pretend that its stupidity isn't a problem, but Sean Kingston is so eager to please, like a puppy. If the same flaws were present in a song by some teenage mall-punk band who sincerely believed in the message, this would go straight onto my shitlist, but as it is, it's too goofy for me not give it a thumbs-up.

My computer broke on Thursday. I drove home this weekend so my dad could get his shop to fix it. I got it back and it was working fine again.

Yesterday it broke again. I need to kick something. Hard. Also, all my fortune cookie told me today was that, "It is a nice day." That's almost worse than the one that told me my problem was getting bigger. Now I feel like it's just avoiding the topic.

BULLSHIT SONGS ON THE RADIO

So, the antenna busted off my car a couple months ago. I've been meaning to get it fixed, but I worry that that $100 it would cost to fix it is money best saved for emergencies; my car has been fucking up more and more frequently lately, and you never know when you're going to come down with a deadly disease that your HMO doesn't cover. So I've been living without it, which means I'm vastly limited to the number of stations I can listen to. Basically, what I get is the classic rock station and the top 40 station. Of the two, I prefer the top 40 station; it has a tiny playlist but at least that playlist eventually changes, whereas I've heard every song on the classic rock station 6,000 times in the month of January alone.

So what that means is I've been getting a steady intake of plastic fantastic and I'm increasingly enjoying it. A critic I respect wrote once that when you only listen to shallow music, you become a shallow person. I hope that's not true, because it makes me worry: My playlist at home not only includes Rihanna and Justin Timberlake, it also includes Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.

So I'm writing this list of bullshit songs I hear on the pop station, partly to prove that I haven't completely lost my critical faculties. These are not just songs that I don't like listening to; these are songs that actively offend me through their stupidity, hypocrisy or sheer incompetence. It helps if you've heard these songs before, so if you have the time, search for them on Youtube to understand where I'm coming from.

Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats

I'm not sure whether to call this a shallow song or merely a shallow performance, but shallow is definitely the word. It's basically a revenge song about a guy who's cheating on Carrie Underwood, but doesn't realize that Carrie fucked up his car with a baseball bat in order to spite him. It's not the content I object to as much as the tone: Carrie's all happy and shit: That'll teach him to cheat! Solves that little problem! Well, I admit I bring some outside baggage to this, as I have damaged someone's car out of revenge. And with the knowledge that that has provided me, I can sum up my thoughts like so: If your emotional pain can be sated by breaking someone's car, you didn't care that much to begin with. And if you didn't really care, then you're a crazy psycho bitch for fucking up that car. Cheating vs. breaking someone's car? The two things aren't even remotely equivalent, smashing the car doesn't even begin to address the issue. Revenge is a dish best served cold -- not bright, not cheery, and not sung by an American Idol winner. Add to that the weird subtext that the cheating is all in Carrie's head and you've got one fucking awful song.

Pink - U + Ur Hand

Pink is angry because she and her friends went for a girl's night out and she got hit on by some drunk guys. Apparently she's too classy to be debased in such a manner -- so she tells them to go jerk off. That'll show them how improper they are for treating her so. Hey, Pink: Don't like being hit on? Don't like drunk guys? Don't go to a fucking bar.

Jon McLaughlin - Beautiful Disaster

Jon McLaughlin is one of those super-sincere, utterly phony singer-songwriter types like Howie Day or Gavin DeGraw (i.e. not even as authentic as John Mayer). This, his first big single, is a portrait song about a lonely girl who has low self-esteem. "She would change everything for happy ever after." "She just needs someone to take her home." "She's just the way she is, but no one's told her that's okay." Well... is that okay? There's no answer to that question. Jon's trying to be sympathetic, but if you read the lyrics, it doesn't give you any reason at all that she should like herself just the way she is. Maybe she's got good reasons not to like herself the way she is. She just needs someone to take her home? I don't see you taking her home, Jon McLaughlin!

So is she pretty? Funny? Smart? What? Compare this to Train's "Meet Virginia," which was filled with all sorts of details about Virginia and the lead singer was pretty clearly in love with her. The only thing I know about the subject of this song is in the first line, which is, "She loves her mama's lemonade/And hates the sound that goodbyes make." Jesus Christ. She loves her mom's lemonade. Because her mom picks lemons from the tree in the backyard, squeezes them herself and adds just the right amount of water, sugar and honey from her special family recipe. Bullshit, she buys Country Time powdered mix from the grocery store same as everyone else. Even assuming there are people who make special lemonade, I still hate the faux-Americana B.S. of it all. She loves her mama's lemonade, she wears a shin-length skirt when she rides her bike to the schoolhouse before coming home to help on the farm. On Youtube I'm seeing comments from people who are like "OMG this song is about me!" No shit? You mean this vague description of a girl aged 15-24 with body issues describes you? Who'd've guessed?

Nickelback - Rockstar

This is actually one of Nickelback's best songs, by far, and I'm going to admit that I genuinely like a lot about it. Of Nickelback's big hits, this is one of the few whose lyrics go beyond Chad Kroeger's romantic angst, which helps add flesh to Nickelback's particular brand of unlistenable buttrock. It's mostly a satirical song where Kroeger plays a luckless schlub who wants all kinds of rock & roll excess like drugs and bimbos. The point is to make it sound as unappealing as possible: Getting wasted, wasting money, being an asshole, getting pale and sick, and I was kind of floored that they had the balls to say that rockers' songs were ghostwritten and lipsynched. It's a good twist on the standard rock and roll party song, particularly prevalent in hair metal.

But unfortunately, it's all ruined by the fact that Nickelback are unable to properly satirize this kind of music because they're crippingly unable to rock. If you're going to make a parody of hard rock, it should sound like hard rock, dammit. Instead, it sounds like they don't have a clue what they're making fun of. If you were to listen to this, you would assume that it's by 50-year-olds who know nothing about rock and whose idea of wildin' out is sitting on the couch with a Pabst watching football. See Don Henley's "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" or Eminem's "Drug Ballad" for people who understand their objects of derision.

Nickelback - If Everyone Cared

The one Nickelback song I think is worth a damn is "Figured You Out." That was the really hateful, misogynist one where he basically admitted to liking choking women during sex. It's just a forcefully ugly song, which makes it a perfect match for Nickelback's forcefully ugly sound, or for that matter, Nickelback's forcefully ugly members. On the extreme flipside, you get "If Everyone Cared," which is Nickelback's "Imagine," if you can wrap your head around that. In that one, Nickelback apparently thinks that "if everyone cared and nobody cried, if everyone loved and nobody lied, if everyone shared and swallowed their pride, then we'd see the day when nobody died." Yes, if we all just love each other and give everyone a great big group hug, people will stop dying. I want to say this is so stupid it's funny, but I'm not amused by it. I'm just angry because I'm well past the point of tolerating the idea of how, golly gosh, if everyone would just stop being meanies and start caring and sharing and holding hands and put down our guns and start carrying flowers instead we'd have a big fluffy world of unicorns and rainbows and big yellow suns with smiley faces in them and nothing bad would happen ever again. And I'm even less willing to tolerate that kind of thing from the drooling, shit-covered cretins of Nickelback.

Lifehouse - You & Me

This isn't a new song on the radio, it's just been pissing me off for years now. Not only is it a blatant rewrite of "I'll Be" by Edwin McCain (strike one), but I think it's actually Lifehouse's biggest hit single, all on the strength of this chorus:

'Cause it's you and me
And all of the people
And nothing to do, nothing to prove
'Cause it's you and me
And all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you

What the fuck?? That doesn't fucking mean anything! It's a random word salad made exclusively of the most banal phrases in the English language.

John Mayer - Waiting for the World to Change

I'm gonna end this with a song I genuinely like, just to finish on a semi-positive note. Yes, I genuinely like this song, and I'm not at all a fan of John Mayer, who's written quite a few bullshit classics. But I like the tune of this one, and I like the optimism too. Mayer's basic message is that his/our generation, which knows and understands things better than the older one, can't do anything right now because all the old people have the power, but soon they'll all be dead and we'll have the power to make things right. And to an extent that's true. For example, by the time someone from our generation is president, we're going to have gay marriage. That's just the way it's going to be; gayness is increasingly a non-issue with people our age. So Mayer has a point. But still, this song doesn't quite sit right with me. Mayer thinks we can't do anything now, so we should just bide our time until the world changes. Eh... Well, see, here's the thing: Everyone in our generation doesn't think the same way. So is it really safe to say that things will automatically get better in the future? The peace-and-love Baby Boomers are the ones who put Bush in office, remember. And if you want change, is it really smart to just sit around and assume it's going to happen? That doesn't sit right with me, either. Like I said, I like this song, I genuinely do, but I can't shake the feeling that both Mayer's optimism and his defeatism are misplaced.

I got a fortune cookie at lunch today. I opened it up and it said, "Your problem is getting bigger. Think, what have you done?


What the fucking fuck, man. I don't even think I have anything witty to say about that, I'm just upset and angry. I don't want to be told shit like that from my fortune cookie. I don't even know what problem they're talking about, 'cause fuck, I've got a bunch of them. Christ. That's a fucking downer.

Speaking of downers, I also ran into some vintage Garfield comics from 1989 that I had repressed from my memory. Here's a couple from the week-long story:





These are completely real. I ran into them on the interbutt before I came to work this morning. There's loads that can be said about them, but mostly what I'm stuck on is how they started off the day on a horribly foreboding note, and then of course I got that fortune in my goddamn cookie. God, I think those alone ruined my day. I feel like I'm waiting for some bad news.


/edit Four hours later, just like predicted, my day turned into a great big stinking pile of shit coleslaw. Fuck it all, man. Just fuck it.

Well, new apartment. Moved this week, pay cheaper rent on it. Good stuff. It's largely the same apartment, it's in the same complex, but with some new improvements:

Ceiling fan
More freezer space
Faucets that all turn in the same direction
Firehose-strength power shower for those tough-to-clean areas of the body
Clean walls free of mysterious stains
Less empty space to remind me of the empty void of human existence
Inconviently placed lightswitch which turns off the TV
No place to drop mail, 'cause why would I need to mail anything?
Some kind of cable repairman repellent that keeps them from showing up to fix my Internet after they installed it wrong the first time
Semi-weird old people neighbors that do nothing but sit outside their front doors and stare at the world

Yep, an improvement all around.

What's been kind of a lousy month is picking up. I'm working on this really big story for work -- it's going to be huge, it's going to blow the lid off this little town and expose all the nasty, seedy corruption. Lives will be ruined. I'm shooting for a Pulitzer on this one. If I turn up dead within the next week, I've left clues scattered around my apartment and office that I'm going to need one of you to decipher and find out what I've been working on. Oh man, I can't wait.

who poop last??!

The big issue in Hopewell right now is a big vacant lot downtown where they're thinking about building an ethanol plant. They've never been able to do anything with this property, so having something there would be nice, but a lot of people are concerned about public safety. The big safety issue, naturally, is that ethanol is very flammable and there's a chance it could explode.

Personally, I hope they build the plant, and I hope it fucking explodes. Let a hellstorm crumble this city, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

I don't see what everyone's worried about danger anyway. This place is filled with disgusting chemical plants that are just as dangerous if not more. Just for my own curiosity, after living a year in Hopewell I decided to find out what those giant plants in this city actually make.

There's the Dominion Power plant, I already know what that thing does, it takes in a fuckton of coal and belches coal smoke in the air constantly so that I can leave my air conditioner blasting all day and night.

The really big centerpiece of town, the defining point of the city, the thing which practically is Hopewell, the thing you see immediately when pulling into the area is the Honeywell plant. Here's a picture of it that one of my fellow reporters put on Hopewell's Wikipedia page. That's a pretty gross picture of it, but it doesn't have any of the weird multicolor clouds that it usually stains the sky with, looking for all the world like gaseous diarrhea. At night, it's the prettiest thing in town.

Apparently, what the Honeywell plant does is produce something called "caprolactam." Caprolactam is a chemical made from other chemicals, and they send it to other plants so they can make yet other chemicals and synthetic products from it. If some careless company, oh, spilled it everywhere, then blasted it with water even though you're not supposed to do that because they're idiots who don't know what the fuck they're doing, then what you get is a giant red cloud that covers the sky and burns the skin and eyes of some of my coworkers taking pictures from several hundred yards away.

The second factory, Smurfit-Stone, makes cardboard boxes. Fun.


Class, instead of going to the box factory today, we'll be going to the...box factory.

The third, Hercules, apparently makes "cellulose derivative." I don't know what that is, but they put in paint, cement, caulk, and of course, soup. Your Campbell's Cream of Chicken is made from paint ingredients. Mmm mmm good, I feel healthier already.

When I'm done with this job, I'm going to live in a secluded cabin in Oregon. I'm going to drink water from streams and eat only what I can kill. Maybe I can find a nice cave to sleep in too.

I heard an ad on the radio today. It was playing "Rock This Town" by the Stray Cats, and then the announcer said, "We're going to rock your town... with SAVINGS!"

You know what, fine. Rock this town with savings. Go ahead. This town probably could be rocked by something that mundane. "Rock this town." Right. Fuck this town. I'm going to Lynchburg this weekend, I've decided. Right now, I decided it. If you're reading this, you heard it here first. I don't care if no one's around when I show up. I'll hang out alone if I have to. Beats this place.