My stance.

I’m sitting in my desk chair at work for one of the last times.  I’m anywhere from 2 1/2 days to 1 day away from being done with this place forever.  As I look around me and get furious over and over again at the broken laws and prevailing lies that make up the two companies in this single office, and also grasp the reality that these guys WILL fight my unemployment claim and that there are some tough financial times ahead, it’s easy to feel helpless. 

Honestly, it’s very easily my faith that is getting me through this.  All of the pressure in my chest goes away when I remember that God is real and that his love for me is something that I really can’t fathom.  I don’t want to trail off on to some mutated prosperity gospel, but remembering that he called me to the Northwest, that he brought my wife to me, that he provided the things I have like my car, my apartment, etc., and that he gave me my passions for writing and music and family and everything else (however small they may seem in the big picture), gives me the reassurance that he is behind me in this decision to jump without a net.  Whether I have a job by the end of next week, working smack-dab in the middle of downtown like I want, or whether it takes me six months to find new work (pray it doesn’t, though), Jesus will have me where he wants me.  I’ve learned too many times how not listening doesn’t get me anywhere good (it’s arguable that not listening landed me this job, as a matter of fact), so I’ve jumped off this cliff and I’ll jump off any more he tells me to.  He is my single hope in all of this, and what a wonderful thing that I get to experience this to be reminded that he is my single hope in anything and everything.

 

Let’s put this to rest once and for all.

I was going to write up a whole blog on how I have said time and time again that a “sugar high” or a “sugar rush” is not at all true – meaning that you, nor anyone else, anywhere, ever, have gotten a surge of energy from eating an excess of sugar.  No, not even kids.  (This does not account for caffiene). I was going to search and search and search and provide references out the proverbial butt to support my case so that all you nay-sayers can see what I have on MY side so you know what  you need in order to prove YOUR side, and thus effectively knowing that what I know is RIGHT.  I was going to do that, but the first place I looked turned out to be all I needed.  It’s The Straight Dope article from February 15, 2008, where this reality was first introduced to me.  In it, Cecil Adams (self-dubbed as “The world’s smartest human”) cites many studies that have been done over the last 30-40 years which have all effectively failed to prove that sugar has any effect on people even closely resembling what is commonly believed.  In fact, what HAS been observed is that parents’ behavior around children, when the children have been given sugar and the parents know it, is what changes.  If you still refuse to believe me after reading this article, then there’s no hope for you.

So in your FACES! I love you all.

 

(Why) I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet . . .

This is a topic very dear to me.  Those who know me will certainly be able to attest to this.  I must choose my words very carefully, and be sure to support my grievances with plenty of examples, as people on the other side of this eternal debate seem to be filled with TNT as I spew my fire at them at close range.

The mainstream ruins good music. I hesitate to use such a tired term, but I will stand by my decision to do so.  By “mainstream” I mean not only commercial radio stations, Mtv etc., trend stores like Hot Topic, and end-caps in the Wal-Mart CD section, but also popular culture’s common knowledge (which is usually incorrect in its assumptions) and, overall, things teenagers these days think they understand, and by extension what adults think they therefore understand by watching today’s teenagers.

It is because this “mainstream” ruins good music that I find myself getting upset when (to name just a few examples),

1. My favorite bands sign to major labels or go on tour with crap groups like Blink 182 or Nickelback,
2. A song on one of those bands’ new albums (which I would have had for 3 months or more at that point) becomes some cell phone company’s new jingle for their commercials,
3. New bands spring up that only imitate that what has already been done and get more attention for it,
4. I see a store in a mall selling ready-made fashions that, years prior, I watched creative people design for themselves via thrift shops so as not to support stores in malls,
5. The songs and albums that defined the genre in question are belittled by those who think they understand music better because that OLD stuff was never on the radio, but the NEW stuff is.

There is a general understanding held by many people that good bands get famous, okay bands are one-hit or one-album wonders, and crappy bands are just generic little garage bands you never hear of and that’s okay because they’re no good anyway.  Furthermore, this general understanding also says that people who get mad when their music gets famous are just selfish and guided by some irrational, anti-establishment ideology and only listen to the music to perpetuate their image of independence from mass culture in the first place.  That understanding is disgustingly wrong.

I’ve had this blog on my mind for quite some time, and since starting to write it two days ago I’ve gone “J.R.R. Tolkien” on it about four times (kudos to those of you who get that analogy).  What I have concluded is the best way to state my case is to tell my music story, and then conclude with some insightful thoughts for all of you to take home.  It is my goal that those of you who may, to whatever degree, agree with that “general understanding” I mentioned, go away with a broader perspective on the world of music, and the eternal struggle of artistry and sound vs. image and money therein.

I got into punk rock starting in 1995 and developed an affinity for the more pop-punk sound (featuring vocal harmonies and simple chord progressions) by bands such as NOFX and Bad Religion. It wasn’t long after that when I started getting into ska by way of bands like The Toasters, Mustard Plug, and Slapstick, to name a few.  I dissected every album I had, learned all about the genres’ histories, and read other bands’ names in the special thanks sections and hunted down their works as well.

1997 was one cool year.

I was sure I was on the cutting edge of the new wave of popular music because mere months after friends introduced me to these two genres, they became more and more popular.  However, I quickly learned a distaste for this as some of my classmates, who were Rage and Bush fans the week before, were writing “New Found Glory” and “Mighty Mighty Bosstones” in white-out on their backpacks, Mtv (as it existed in that day and age) was having a hay-day with “Sell-Out,” and other people were asking questions like, “What’s this new form of music called ’ska?’” and when I’d inform them that ska is actually older than reggae, I was ridiculed for being so ill-informed.

Crappier

Crappy

There were guys that I knew as Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam junkies who actually convinced me that The Urge were a good band so I regrettably bought their second album.  There were popular kids in the cafeteria singing the new ska-punk hit, “Walking on the Sun.”  My gut twisted as I even saw a few of my favorite bands, such as Buck-O-Nine (see albums Barfly and Twenty-Eight Teeth) change their style in hopes of landing an Mtv hit (see album Libido).  My heart broke as the popular kids that owned Turn Off the Radio and Dude Ranch, as I did, would roll their eyes at albums such as Life on a Plate and Lookit! (which, in my opinion then and now, are WAY better).  I wanted it to stop.  I wanted them to say away because, for some reason, I knew that since they weren’t genuine, the consequences could not be good.

Then ska disappeared like any other flavor of the week.  From around 2000 or 2001 forward, there have only been a small handful of such bands, playing shows and releasing albums for those who were really ska fans all along.  If you don’t believe me, check out groups like Mu330, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and Streetlight Manifesto.  I think the Toasters might still be together, too, but I could be wrong.

Next came emo.  Emo was harder to define than punk or ska.  The bands were all so different, though they still carried a certain, common je ne sais quoi between them.  There were straight-forward rock bands like Braid, Alkaline Trio, or Moneen.  There were synth-rock bands such as Sig Transit Gloria, The Anniversary, or latter-day Get Up Kids.  There was the hard-edged dissonance of At The Drive-In, the melodic screaming of Thursday, while also the artistic concept albums from Appleseed Cast.  

 Early on the label of “emo” was already viewed as negative by some because some pure-blood punk rockers saw emo as the next stage of evolution from pop-punk (and they were probably right), and those guys hated pop-punk.  Also, many of the groups were interested in just being bands, rather than a kind of band, so they did all they could to distance themselves from the label.  Usually they failed, and I’ve tried to maintain a much more loose and positive assigning of the word to acknowledge that to some degree. However, I always feel it necessary to remind everyone that what you may THINK or have BEEN TOLD is emo (Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte) is NOT what emo is.  Or was.  However you want to put that.

Honestly, would 20-somethings in 1997 have bought into this?

When I started listening to emo, I was a late-comer, as many emo bands of the time were gone or entering their last days by 1999.  These groups were Tuesday, Braid, Jawbreaker, among others.  Other bands coming onto or who would be on the scene for a while longer were The Get Up Kids, Hey Mercedes, Appleseed Cast, Alkaline Trio, etc.  I had known of emo for several years at that point, and had hated it and avoided it like the plague.  I began liking it when I realized 1) I was maturing with my musical tastes and needed new things, and 2) hating an entire genre as I saw it based on a tape an old friend had made me three years prior was just silly.

Emo, to me, circa 2000

The downfall of what was emo came with Dashboard Confessional[1].  Others may say otherwise, but trust me on this one; it was Dashboard.  And Jimmy Eat World. I’ll get to that. . . . The lustful eye of the mainstream was noticing the commotion in the “underground” scene and was taking an interest already, so when Chris Carraba burst onto the scene with his second album, The Places We Have Come to Fear the Most, with his rugged-but-pretty-boy looks, soothing voice, and ringing, slide-tuned acoustic guitar, the teenie girls went nuts.  Almost overnight, what was emo before (maturing punk-rockers with more complex song structure and at least an attempt at insightful lyrics) was re-defined as crying 14-year-old girls, singing along as Dashboard waxed sappy over lost loves.

Not much longer after that, Mesa, Arizona band Jimmy Eat World released the follow-up to their sophomore masterpiece, Clarity, and called it Bleed American (in case you didn’t know, it was re-titled Jimmy Eat World after 9/11, which was around a month later, and making it Jimmy Eat World’s third self-titled release).  The title track was a good hard-rock anthem about who-knows-what, but there were a few songs on there that reeked of radio-pop-hits. I remember the first time I heard “The Middle.”  I don’t think I made it through the whole song.  Where Clarity screamed at me with the beauty of life through sound, and elevated the standards I held for what a good album should be, this song “The Middle” made me think of puppies and pastels and matching white suits and musical guest appearances on Regis and Kathy Lee. “Well Jimmy Eat World just isn’t emo, anymore,” I thought.  But pretty soon, the song hit the airwaves and everyone was talking about this new kind of music, “Emo!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” us emo fans shouted.

A tug-of-war ensued between those of us who didn’t want a repeat of what happened to ska and those who suddenly thought they knew how to define one of the most eclectic genres in rock music.  But we were destined to lose.  So sad.  Those on my side either abandoned the whole “emo” thing altogether (remember that many didn’t like the label to begin with) or just hung out on the side-lines and threw punches when someone got near (like I did).  Emo, as I knew it, flailed about like a fish on concrete over the next year or two in its attempts to somehow not end up in its inevitable fate of being a lame excuse for gutless teens to hide in corners and be laughed at by everyone.  I was embarrassed when someone asked me what kind of band The Get-Up Kids were and I would respond, “emo.”  I tried to defend myself, explaining that what they had been told was wrong, but no one cared.

Take some goth, add some pink, you get emo. . . . I guess.

And what followed was pretty weird.  The scene’s look mutated.  It mutated into some gross emo-goth conglom.  I honestly don’t know how the goth look even came into the picture in this story, but it did.  Maybe it’s because both were associated with Hot Topic, but I don’t really know.  I’m still perplexed to this day.  “Emo-Kids” before 2002 or 2003 looked like your normal college rockers, but since then they look like Apoptygma Berzerk rejects like that douche to the left.  Keep in mind, I knew self-defined goth rockers at the time.  I’ve gone to industrial rock shows.  I know what “goth” fans look like, and it’s being called “emo” by the mainstream to this day.

Well, it’s been several years now, and rising in popularity (and in the mainstream’s peripheral), we have what is called “indie music.”  Where emo was a difficult-to-define genre of rock, indie music (that’s “indie” for “independent”) isn’t really a genre at all, and certainly isn’t always rock; it’s more of a broad category (kind of how “metal” isn’t just one type of sound anymore, except broader).  These days we have bizarre, hard-to-classify groups like Polyphonic Spree, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Broken Social Scene.  There are also catchy soft-rock bands like Stars and Fleet Foxes; artsy, folksy singers like Sufjan Stevens; quirky line-ups like Mates of State; and even groups with heavy other-genre influence but providing new twists in the sound, like Black Kids, Miracle Fortress, or Vampire Weekend. The list would be infinite with this kind of music because no one (finally) is asking “does this band fit the genre?”  There is no genre.  It’s called indie because it is truly independent.  They make their own genres, either for themselves alone, or one for each album or song.  Bands make the music they want to make without pandering to a scene, and the scene that is there wants to see what they come up with.  I’ve loved going to the few shows I have lately with absolutely no pre-conceived notions as to what the bands will sound like.  The more originality, the better.  The more clear influences and classic nods, the better.  The more anything, the better.

Bands have more than one person, idiots.

But it’s happening again.  It’s becoming fodder for comedians.  The mainstream is catching on and putting these bands on talk shows and Caribbean cruise and cell phone commercials. I’ve already heard reports of radio stations spinning the new hit single from the band Feist!

I’d like to just shrug this one off, since the very nature of indie music is to let it be what it is – but I’ve seen it too much.  I’m serious.  I’m tired of my favorite bands becoming trends and then becoming teen-movie fodder for money, and my subsequent furry causing me to be lumped into a category of people whom everyone assumes just doesn’t like to share and only cares about image.

It’s not about sharing!  It also certainly isn’t about image!  I’m almost 30 and work in an office!  I have no image these days, and I’m not trying for one.

I have stood by helplessly three times as the music I enjoy is destroyed. This “mainstream” gobbled up ska and pop-punk and emo like a Maury Povich fat kid on a pre-rehab ice cream kick.  But he’s not eating Haagen-Dazs. He’s eating out of the plastic tub you find on the floor of your grocer’s freezer. As he’s shoveling it into his face-hole, he does not know how to, nor does he think to, enjoy the treat for the delightful confection it’s intended to be.  Instead he acts purely on instinct and finishes two gallons before sane people could finish a half-pint.  Then he throws up and is so disgusted by the memory of the gluttony that led to the cold-and-warm mass on the floor that he never eats ice cream again – nor does anyone else in the room. But he is not cured – no, his lusts are not quenched or swayed.  He will find a new snack to devour with the fervor of a starved and rabid wolf.

Certainly, I am not so naïve to think that such a blog as this will forever change someone who defines the success of a musical artist by whether they perform at the Grammys or not; but please understand — I want success for my favorite bands.  I want to be able to share the music I find and am introduced to by other friends with even more people.  What I do not want is some guy at the head of a major corporation, whose main goal is to make money, to package and sell and overexpose the masses, and not only ruin perfectly good bands, but attract more to the arena that WANT to be used and overexposed, because as far as they know that is what music is supposed to be about. They come along and play the game by the numbers, crap out some quick hits that hit our ears like cotton candy to the mouth, until we all stop and wonder what was so appealing about any of this in the first place.

I want to conclude on a positive note by stating that regardless of what happens from here forward, understand that true music fans will always be one step ahead.  Ska, punk, and emo are not the only genres to be devoured by the mainstream, and they will not be the last.  But those of us who like good music and appreciate the artists that make it will always be doing something new and something different, and it is the mainstream that must catch up and exploit in order to survive.

---

[1] I want to point out that there’s nothing inherently wrong with Dashboard Confessional.  I like Dashboard.  I’m listening to him as I write this, because brining him up earlier made me realize it’s been a while since I listened to Places (though my iTunes has already moved on to the incredible So Impossible EP).  Had the whole mainstream thing never happened, he would have been one branch on what was a beautiful tree of a variety of sounds.

 

Another story from the red bow tie.

Whoops. My bad.

I honestly don’t remember exactly when this happened. I do know that it had to be at least a year and a half into my time at Steak n’ Shake, making it at least the summer of 2004. This new girl had started. Some pe0ple seemed to know her, so I think she’d been around before – or maybe she worked in the Marion store for a while, which was 15 miles east of us. Honestly I’m not sure which.

Well she had been around for a couple days when she finally introduced herself to me. I don’t remember her name. I barely remember what she looked like. . . . no, I don’t remember that either. Well, she asked me how long I had been working there, and I decided to do what I call “enjoying myself,” and other people call, “lying.”

“About eight years,” I said.

“Oh, really?” she responded with much excitement. “Did you work with Tom Harrison*?”

“Yeah, I remember Tom*,” I said, continuing with my fun/ruse. “He was a jerk.”

The excitement left her face REALLY quick, and she was suddenly very sad. “What?”

“Yeah, I really didn’t like him.”

She was devastated. Recognizing the pain this was causing her, I decided to come clean, “Okay, I don’t know who that is. I’ve only been hear for a year and a half.”

I guess I was expecting her to do something to the effect of rolling her eyes, or even laugh, and give me a light punch on the shoulder. “You kidder,” she would say. Imagine my surprise when she got even more mad and said, “Well I hope you know you just disrespected a DEAD MAN!” and stormed off.

She didn’t say anything to me for the rest of the night, and if I worked with her one more time after that, it was the last time. She quit and moved on very quickly.

I can only hope that my uninformed joke may have played part in leading her to bigger and better things.

A few days after this event, I went to one of my co-workers who had been there a good 5 years at that point. I told him what happened, and he told me, “Yeah, I remember that guy. He fell down a staircase and died.”

Well. I hope she’s forgotten our encounter, then.

________________________
*I don’t actually remember this guy’s name, so we’ll call him Tom Harrison.

 

Seriously, who has time for this?

Ever since six months ago, after an extremely fruitful trip to Kohl’s, I’ve had a craving for really good button-up shirts. In early July I had a very frustrating weekend of shopping in which I learned that most shirts which have my neck size will also double as a parachute in the event of an air emergency. Therefore, I have since been on the look-out for shirts that more closely match what I bought in February.

Last weekend I swung into Macy’s at Northgate Mall before heading over to my friend’s driveway to be all awesome at fixing my car. I was actually looking for shorts, but shirts were on my mind, too. Well, Macy’s was having a killer sale and I found two really nice dress shirts that were originally $60 and were reduced to $15 each. Score. $120 of shirt for $30.

I bought them, took them home later that day (remember, I was being manly with wrenches and grease for the hours that immediately followed the purchase), and washed them as I do all new clothes. I was thrilled to be able to put on my I-look-like-I-waste-money-on-things-that-I-can-buy-cheaper-somewhere-else-but-actually-I-got-them-cheap-so-in-your-face shirts the next morning and look stylish for the other corporate slaves, whose minds are deteriorating like mine. Imagine my shock when I took them fresh out of the dryer and the sleeves were bunched-up long-ways like a twisted-up, wet paper towel, the collar was creased in about 20 wrong places, and the row of buttons and the opposite places-for-buttons were folded in half, right where they shouldn’t be. I had crappy shirts I’d “borrowed” from people I knew that did that, but never had I seen a new shirt do this. It’s extremely frustrating considering where I bought them. And this is obviously not something that a bachelor’s best friend, the dryer, can fix, because they came out of the dryer that way!

A series of odd events that week which I will not bother explaining led me to realize the solution that a 29-year-0ld man would have known full-well 30 years ago – ironing. Most of my shirts are either half-polyester or wrinkle-free, so to me, ironing is something you do when someone in authority over you says that your pants, which have been lying in a ball on the floor since you took them out of the dryer a week ago, will not do.

Well, I went and bought some starch and set out to get my new shirts back into crisp, flat condition. And now, after a total of probably 45 minutes of ironing, those TWO shirts are ready for the week. TWO SHIRTS! FORTY-FIVE MINUTES! That’s a one-and-a-half episodes of Duck Tales! Make no mistake – this was not like quickly ironing a pair of pants or even flattening out a crinkled dress-shirt. I had to meticulously pull things flat as I ironed to make sure the desired shape of the shirt was restored and not permanently setting in the post-dryer creases. I’m also using starch, so I’m continuously having to brush away white starch clumps that build up on the shirt.

Honestly, I’ve never faced something like this before. Clearly, these shirts will do this every time they are washed. Clearly, they are nice shirts that fit well, so I will want to wear them. But I’m a 21st-century man! I have things to do! Places to go! The world didn’t move slower in the 50’s because they didn’t have satelite or iPhones – it moved slower because everyone had to iron their shirts!

I’m happy that at this moment in my life, the worst I can find to whine about is ironing dress shirts.

 

Do yourself a favor and stay out of the housing industry.

I just read some of my old blogs. They were clever and well-thought out, and I was writing them while at work, in a panic while hoping to not get caught by my manager. Perhaps I’m praising myself too much, but I can state with complete confidence that had I not written the bumper sticker rant, I would have marked it as a favorite.

Working for a mortgage company for the last three years has done a number on my brain. There’s a million jokes that can be made about this, but really I’m wanting to mention only briefly how the sad state of language comprehension is most apparent in the emails of those in the mortgage business.

People who use smileys as punctuation

People who, think that a comma, is to emphasize the pauses in their brain.

People who not can’t structure for syntax.

Should I also mention people who don’t seem to forget question marks, but rather don’t appear to know they exist.

I could go on. The end point is that this is all seeping in to how I write. I’ve began getting lax. I’ve noticed myself not caring about correcting capitalization errors. I’ve stopped fixing “adn.” I’ve began letting myself leave prepositions at the ends of sentences again.

Today, I was trying to annoy a co-worker by typing the lyrics of the Alkaline Trio song to her in IM (a song which she had no doubt never heard). The actually lyric is “and all though it’s all my fault, blaming myself had to come to an end.” But that’s not what I typed. And I didn’t notice it until I read it back to myself. I wrote “and all though only it’s my not all fault, blaming . . .”

Lord, I implore you. Rescue me.

 

Is it Just Me?

Since getting married I’ve began to experience again an odd reality – not everyone has the same sense of humor as me. My dad used to tell me all the time that the stuff I like “just isn’t funny,” but I figured that was because he was old. Nope.

But that’s okay. I have come to embrace the things that make me laugh and make others cringe or scoff. It’s part of that spicey lifey stuff . . . what was it? Oh, “Variety.” That’s it. Here are five things I recall thinking were drop-dead hilarious that others really didn’t find amusing:

Rosanne Barr singing the National Anthem. I looked up the date. On July 25, 1990, Rosanne sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Padres game. She was loud, rude, off-key, and ended with mooning the audience. It pissed a lot of people off, caused a huge uproar in the media, and then-President Bush called it “a disgrace.”

And I thought it was hilarious. Granted, I had just turned 10, so what wouldn’t a 10-year-old find amusing of an overweight woman screaming a song I’d been forced to sing in music class for 5 years at a baseball game, and ending it with showing her butt? But I will hold that this was not an issue of age! One of my most vivid memories of my whole childhood is visiting my Grandma that summer, sitting behind the driver’s seat in her huge van at that one park with the amphitheater in Murphysboro, and hanging out with my cousins. One cousin, Steven (he’s 3 days younger than me, so we were and are the same age), was appalled at her performance and was appalled that I could find it amusing. “That’s our national anthem,” he told me. So, again, I don’t think it was an age issue. It’s that I really thought it was funny. And I still do.

(Also, who organizes a list for guest singers to sing the most revered song in America, watches Rosanne on ABC and says, “THAT’S her! She’s the one. Book her!”? Okay, okay. Maybe she made the request. But who okays it? Seriously. But I digress . . .)

When someone cut the head off the spartan statue at my high school. This one didn’t make national news, of course. One weekday morning during my junior year (this would be early 1997) I went upstairs to read the comics in the paper before school. I saw on the front page that someone had cut the head of the fiberglass spartan statue off, and no one knew where it was. This had been attempted a year before, but was unsuccessful. School groundskeepers (none of them named “Willie,” I don’t think) noticed a cut in the back of the spartan’s neck then. But this time, everyone noticed on their own that it appeared our school mascot had faced the wrath of the Queen of Hearts. Somehow, they knew that it was a student at our school and not a rival school. I guess it had something to do with the previous year’s attempt (for the record, I personally knew all the guys who were responsible for both events (they were not connected), but didn’t know that until later).

I was so excited to get off the bus that morning and gawk at the decapitated greek. It was obvious I didn’t have much company. Most people rolled their eyes, deeming the act “so immature” (as if 16- and 17-year-olds honestly have a grasp on “maturity”). Others were disgusted that someone could deface their own mascot. I just laughed. I don’t know why people took high school so seriously, but the movies I watched in the 80’s and early 90’s taught me that things like this were what high school was all about.

Within a day or two, they found the head in a nearby corn field and it was repaired. They had to remove the torso from the waste to reattach the head, so we just had a pair of spartan legs for about a month or two greeting the classes of 1997-2001 as they arrived each morning. They did not include a photo of it in that year’s yearbook, either – the closest being a picture of Betsy Gladish from the waist up imposed over the legs, and if you didn’t know what had happened, you wouldn’t know that the rest of the Spartan wasn’t behind her.

Dramatic Prairiedog. Also known as the “Dramatic Chipmunk,” but I’m with the latter-day crowd that noticed that it is not a chipmunk, and actually looks nothing like a chipmunk, save that it is brown and furry.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about . . . take 5 of the funniest seconds of your life to enjoy this -

If you watched that and had to watch it again . . . at least 10 times . . . and you’re still laughing . . . we can be friends.

If you watched it and immediately scrunched your face in confusion or rolled your eyes, and you are not enticed by the perfect camera zoom, the excellent choice of music, or the looooong stare . . . then you fully understand why I’m writing about it here.

When George W. Bush was re-elected as President in 2004. There are lots of people who annoy me. Some of those people are far-left narcissists who insist that their alarmism and profiling is different than the alarmism and profiling that the far-right does. Kind of like the guy two years ago who sat in the waiting room at a auto repair shop with me and my (then-very-future) wife. He started a light-hearted conversation with us about how he’d just gotten back from a trip to the Mid-West. He went on about how dumb Mid-Westerners are and how they’re all conservative hicks that worship Bush and watch Nascar, all the while assuming that Dona and I were just like him – smart, in-touch, Seattle liberals.

When people annoy me, I like to see them squirm over something that upsets them that I could care less about. The morning of November 3, 2004, was a great day for that. Ol’ Dubya beat that block of wood John Kerry, when all those annoying leftists were comparing the man to Satan himself. And this time it was not a question of popular vote – George’s victory was undeniable.

I became so sick and tired of hearing people whine insescently about the man (and, ironically, had to listen to four more years of it). I did not hear the voice of young America demanding to be heard in a corrupt administration. No. I heard a bunch of spoiled children whining about things they didn’t understand, thinking that the sky is falling and “knowing” but not understanding that they are not the first, nor will they be the last, generation to live through a war – just or unjust.

So, on that Wednesday morning I woke up to my radio announcing that George Bush was sticking around. And I laughed.

I saw the local university newspaper sport photos of young, first-time voters crying at rallies for Kerry, one person saying, “I’m just, so, like, MAD at America right now . . .” And I laughed.

I saw liberal leaders trip over their words as they tried to fathom that not everyone in the country sees things the same way they do. And I laughed.

I laughed not because I supported Bush, or even really cared for him. (Okay, yes, I voted for him, but who was I going to vote for? Kerry? The guy’s entire campaign message can be summed up in three words – “I’m not him”). I laughed because people got a reality check and it was fun to watch.

Okay. This blog’s long enough.

 

A clean rant

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that Axe Body Spray and Body Wash commercials annoy the crap out of me. Is this product of such low quality that they have to try to convince guys that women will not be able to resist carnal assault at the very wiff of Shock, Kilo, or Snake-Peel? What’s worse is that they’re coming out with scents for chocolate and leather and who-knows-what-else-is-on-its-way. I mean, what woman can control herself at the scent of a man who smells like a stale Hershey’s bar or the shoe department in Wal-Mart?

Honestly, though, I’d be afraid of a woman that actually found that attractive. My mind produces an image of a way-too-small tube top and an aluminum bottle of Bud Light sitting behind a trailer on an otherwise-vacant 16-acre lot. Perhaps I’m being mean, but regardless I’ve found yet another reason that I’m glad I’m married to who I’m married to.

I’d still be bar-and-wash-cloth if I didn’t determine years ago that such a method was the reason I itched constantly. However, since I did, I’ve switched to the body wash method. It’s often quite a challenge to find neutral-colored washy thingies, but I get by. I’ve bought Axe before, though it was years ago, when the stuff was new, the ads weren’t as prevelant, and it was really cheap. I think it’s still pretty cheap, but in addition to a personal boycott on the stuff, I’d be a little embarassed to buy it. “Hi, I’m buying this because it’s soap, not because I expect women to make out with my drain after I take a shower. No, seriously.”

Currently I’m using that Nivea for Men stuff. Why? Well, Dove was too expensive, nothing else was on sale, and I was getting tired of Old Spice. But besides those reasons, they had a very effective ad run for a while. It had all these annoying teenagers going on about how important their body wash was for attracting women, etc. etc., and this Nivea stuff doesn’t fit the bill. Then they cut to Mr. Biz-Caz, wearing his suit with no tie and the top button unbuttoned, murse over his shoulder, getting into a cab in the big city. He looks the bottle over, smells it, says, “doesn’t reek, won’t dry my skin . . . works for me.” That’s right, my fellow corporate slave, it does work. So does the ad. Kudos to the advertising department that came up with that one. It’s not so much that I’ve been convinced that “this is the body wash for those of us who are smarter than those who buy and perhaps buy into Axe,” but more the fact that I can clearly see that someone else out there sees an Axe commercial and feels a small part of them die inside.

Well, my bottle of Nivea is running low, my unnamed brethren. Keep it up and I might get another.

 

DMV Syndrome

I spend a lot of time talking about problems I see in other people. One thing that might surprise you is that I’m actually very hard on myself when it comes to comparable issues. It’s one of the things that makes me so awesome.

<waits for polite laughter>

I’ve always struggled with what I’m going to call “DMV Syndrome.” Now, of course, I got that name from the stereotypes of the ladies at DMV offices. You know, the ones who chew their gum and roll their eyes at you because somehow DIDN’T know that you’re supposed to fill out the yellow form and not the light-yellow form, or that you (amazingly) were unaware that you needed two pieces of OFFICIAL mail, not just mail, and then on your return trip didn’t realize that this cell phone bill doesn’t count as OFFICIAL. How on earth could you think that ANY bill is official, and not government mail only? Yutz. I’m going on lunch. Again.

When I worked at McDonald’s (waaaaay back in 1998-1999 – can you believe it’s been a decade?) I would often work the drive-through. It drove me batty when someone would ask to “up-size” their value meal. Seriously? Up-Size? You’re at McDonald’s, the fast food chain that not only invented fast food chains, but invented the value meal and the concept of the “super-size,” and you’re asking for an “up-size”? When I repeated back the order I’d often be sure to emphasize the word “SUPER” to make sure they learn to respect the arches. FACE!

Don’t even talk to me about coupons. No, way, lady. I don’t care if you go to my church of 60 people and are in my Sunday School class and your 3-year-old son adores me. That coupon does NOT discount value meals. Even though the computer will let me do it, it’s the principle of the matter – and that principle is that I like to be in control and I like to say, “No.”

It’s definitely easy in food service. At Steak n’ Shake, your burger would not come with fries. You had to order them separate or ask for a “platter.” (And with the platter, which is your choice of two sides, remember that one of them can be fries, not that it’s two sides AND fries.) In a society that has become used to the words “includes fries,” and would expect that it does since the burger is pictured with fries in the menu, many people do not feel it necessary to mention wanting them (I should mention that the fine print DID say “does not include fries“). Well, I can only handle asking, “do you want fries or any other sides?” and subsequently can only handle answering the question, “you mean it doesn’t come with fries?” so many times in a 10-minute time-frame. So I’ll take the order as you asked for it, and then roll my eyes at you when you’re shocked that  your $4 burger the size of what you’d get in a Happy Meal doesn’t have little fried potato sticks next to it. Hey, that’s GRADE A STEAK in that paper-thin burger, buddy. That stuff doesn’t come cheap. I don’t even get free soda at this joint, and I work here.

In retail it takes different forms, and is the same idea, but this is where we (ever so slightly) approach the realm of “you really, seriously should have known that, dude.” I’ve spoken before of the man who looked like he wanted to murder me and all in my bloodline because I ran his “debit” card as a “credit” card, so “now Visa is going to send me a bill.” Well, many other people misunderstood that same thing, but were quieter with their frustrations, and their eyes did not have a reflection of my bloody corpse in them, so I was able to mock them after they left the store with much greater ease. Also, there’s the ladies who would barge into the bathroom, despite the “bathroom closed” sign that’s been up for 10 minutes, and say, “I cannot wait any longer. I am going. I don’t care if you’re here.” And let us not forget the people that seem to follow you through the tables of shirts and unfold every shirt you’ve just re-folded, and then wad it up in a I’m-almost-trying-to-pretend-like-I’m-helping manner.

Now we cross into that realm . . . that realm where either I just haven’t yet figured out that I should have been better at my job, or those people were seriously lacking in brain capacity.

I worked at Rent-A-Center for a while, and in case you’re thinking of trying out their stuff — don’t. We had some people that would pick out a stereo, a computer, a couch and table set, take it all home, and then not pay for a month (payments were due every week). When we’d demand our money or our stuff, they’d scoff at us and say, “why do you care when you get the money? I said I’ll give it to you and I will. It’ll just be a while.” Or when I went on a service call to fix a guy’s computer. He said the keyboard and mouse didn’t work. Well, I took along extras, but didn’t take them in since I had a suspicion, and was right, that he had plugged them in backwards. For some reason he was very mad at me when I pointed out the mistake. I think his speakers were plugged into the microphone jack, too. He seriously didn’t bother with any trial-and-error. He basically tossed it into a pile and screamed because it didn’t work.

Oh! Oh! Or my FAVORITE one! This family had a HUGE stereo system and they called, complaining that the speakers were popping and the sound wasn’t working right. I went to figure out the problem and saw that they had their surround system hooked up very wrong. Please refer to the below demonstration of my mad skills with Microsoft Paint:

To further explain this debacle: they had the speaker wire coming out of the left front speaker output on the receiver to what should have been the left rear surround, and the wire twisted together to the next wire that led to what should have been the left front speaker, and the wire twisted again to the next wire, leading to what should have been the left front speaker, wires twisted together again, going to what should have been the right rear surround, and the wire twisted to the last wire going into the right front speaker output on the receiver. The surround outputs were unused. Again, the customers were mad at me for telling them their setup was wrong and threw a fit that when I fixed it they “had too many wires” running through their living room,” (one wire to each speaker coming out of the receiver).

To their credit, they got positive and negative correct.

In the “defense” of all those who rent from such places as Rent-A-Center, one has to have a certain lack of intelligence to even buy into such a ploy, so who can really be surprised when their dryer won’t dry because they haven’t emptied the lint tray in 6 months? (Yeah, that really happened. More than once). If you rent from one of these places, I want you to try something. Take that TV back to them, so instead of spending the $40 a week on it, you put that money to the side, and give it about 4 months and see what you can actually OWN.

Nowadays I’m struggling with another manifestation of the DMV Syndrome. I debate daily if I’m justified for scoffing at loan officers and processors who “read” our documents we provide to tell them who to ask certain questions, and then ask the same person everything. Or THOSE . . . . WHO TYPE . . . . . . . . LIK THIS . . . . . . IN ALL THERE EMAILS . . . . . WONDERIN IF . . . . . . . . . . WE CAN TEL THEM . . . . WITCH LENDR CAN DO FL 203K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THNX.

I don’t know if it’s me or them when I tell a branch manager to send identification and resumes with his new hires’ applications three times in a row, and number four comes in with, yet again, no identification or resumes. Or those who are told to re-disclose the terms of the loan they’re working on to the borrower, so they sign all the forms themselves and are shocked that we would say that to do such a thing is against the law. I don’t know if I’m the right one or the wrong one when we ask for 3 forms and they send one and it’s not even complete, and then complain that it’s taking too long to get things done.

Okay, I’m sure who’s right. Me. I was just trying to take an approach of “maybe I’m overreacting, maybe I’m ‘going DMV’ in this situation, to coin a new phrase,” but these guys typically make $50,000+ easy every year and they can’t spell or read instructions.

So, before I run off on THAT tangent, let me bring us back to the subject at hand. DMV-ism. What I find amusing now is that I make efforts to not allow fast food workers or retail cashiers, etc., to get snobby with me. I honestly am not sure if I’m doing as a gesture of “I know where you are – I’ve been there,” or if I’m afraid they’ll spit in my burger. But all the same, I don’t excuse a whole lot – like if I ask for my hot mustard sauce and they forget it. How the heck am I supposed to eat 12 nuggets without any hot mustard sauce?! It’s not that hard to get it right, but somehow it’s my fault for not holding up the lunch line in the drive-through to check to make sure it’s there (which, by the way, I always do now). I’ve allowed myself to troll around some forums before and gotten into debates with people who are obviously me 10 years ago, working at Dairy Queen or Target, as they defend their attitudes and blame us, the customers, for all their issues. I don’t see much of an excuse for it anymore. I look at myself then and want to tell me, “get over it, chump.” Maybe I’ll do that when I’m not in the mortgage business anymore, too. Yeah . . . or maybe not.

For the record, I never spit in anyone’s burger.

 

Is it taboo?

When I was a junior in high school, on one particular day, I was browsing through my history book during class rather than paying attention. (Yes, that actually happened more than just once, but we’re only concerned with this specific instance.) That particular day, I came across a photo of one of the Apollo 11 astronauts standing on the moon. It was on page 888. This photo sparked the thought in me that something wasn’t right. You see, the photo was obviously a fake. You could CLEARLY see that a backdrop was being used on a sound stage, made obvious by the straight, horizontal line across the bottom of the distant lunar “hills” and the abrupt color and texture change on either side of it. It mortified me, and it gave way to the thought that maybe the moon landing wasn’t as genuine as I had been told to believe. (For the record, I never completely surrendered to that conspiracy theory, I just refused to put it away for a long time.) Now, try as I might, I’ve never been able to locate that photo anywhere else. I’ve even looked up specific articles on photographic fakery theories for moon landing photos, and not ONCE since 1997 have I seen that picture.

I have since completely turned away from my “consideration” that the moon landing 40 years ago might have been staged all together, because most (if not all) of the things that conspiracy theorists say proves it didn’t happen, actually in fact prove that it did.

(And while I have the thought – you ever wonder what happens to old history books? Like the one you had in 1991 that was 4 years old and showed Presidents in the back, and it came to “Ronald Regan – 1981-Present.” Sure, most of them are trashed or recycled; but somewhere, someone has a collection of out-dated history books. They would be interesting to read, to see how differently things were interpreted in different times (like, for example, the Manifest Destiny).)

Okay – the point. I was Wikipedia surfing the other day and came across the cheery article of the holocaust. I wasn’t really reading much, just doing like I was that day in high school and browsing over the pictures, and reading a sentence here and there. Well, I came across a section of the article that dealt with the experiments that Nazi “scientists” performed on Jewish people. In this section, there was a photograph from the Dachau concentration camp of a Nazi professor and a Nazi doctor presiding over a man floating in an iced water tank, wearing a breathing apparatus. On the right frame of the photo was another man, taking notes.

For some reason I enlarged the picture to take a closer look – and I was shocked to see that it appeared extremely fake. It was so obvious! First, the hands of the two Nazi men were clearly not natural and drawn in post-development. Second, there are clear cut-out lines around the two Nazi men and the note-taker (note the curves on the body and hair). Third, the ice appears drawn into the photograph. Fourth, the light appears to be coming from the right of the frame, but the light is shining from the left on the note-taker. Yet the biggest kicker is that the man sitting on the edge of the tub has clearly been cropped in because THERE IS NO SHADOW UNDERNEATH HIM! (And just in case you’re thinking it, these light problems are not due to a flash because there are no shadows on the back wall.)

I searched high and low on the internet and NO ONE has discussed to the slightest degree that this photo is, at best, doctored. If you look up “cold water immersion,” this photo will come up 100 times, but every time it’s simply someone discussing the inhumane experiments done on Jews – not once do they bother saying anything to the degree of, “well, obviously this photo is fake, but there is documentation of these experiments being performed blah blah blah . . .” Has no one noticed? Is the topic of the Holocaust such that anything handed to us about it must never be questioned, so we look the other way? Please be sure that I am in no way suggesting that anything about these experiments or the Holocaust as a whole isn’t true. I’m not even taking my moon-landing-point-of-view and leaving the possibility open. But I think that someone wanted to show, in the flesh, that these two men (named Professor Ernst Holzlohner and Dr. Sigmund Rascher, left and right, respectively) were  performing these experiments, and put something together to provide that. And now, it appears that everyone just accepts that it’s authentic, which I find humorous because I checked Failblog every day for months, and every day someone would try to point out how some photo on that site was faked somehow. Sometimes I would notice one myself and go check the comments to make sure someone else did, too. Maybe this one just isn’t in the internet-surfer’s eyes enough. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, considering the subject material.

I’ve shown this to a few people. One agreed it didn’t look right, one couldn’t care less, and one proposed that the photo had been poorly edited, rather than created from scratch all together. I don’t know. But I do know that this couldn’t be more obviously fake if the guy in the tank was Ronald McDonald. In color. If it’s simply a poorly-edited-but-real photograph, I want to see the the original. I won’t believe otherwise until I do.

Now, before I conclude, if you want to toss out the opposition that, “Oh, those old photographs – they’re hard to tell what’s what,” let me knock that out of your head by suggesting you 1) study basic physics of light, 2) study the structure of the human hand, and 3) go look up some photos from the 1940’s and tell me if THEY look like they came right out of Photoshop.