Nihilism for Dummies!

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27 November 2003

Ah, the holidays. Happy holidays.

It's Thanksgiving. And, boy, am I thankful. I'm thankful I live in a Democracy, where there is honest and intelligent discussion about serious issues like war, health care, and society. I am thankful to have an Elected Leader, who is thoughtful, sincere, and full of integrity. I am glad I live in a country where everyone has a clear idea of their culture and their history. I am glad that I do not live in a country where there is religious oppression. I am thankful that my government trusts me to be a rational human being, capable of living my own life. I am thankful that our political discourse makes sense and does not rely on lowest common denominator analogy. I am also thankful that I have not developed a nasty, razor sharp cynicism.
Amen.

17 November 2003

Memories of the American Music Awards....

Perhaps the single worst thing about being a self-proclaimed "social satirist" or "social critic" is, assuming you are somewhat serious and legit about the whole thing, you sometimes have to watch this shit. You can only get away with, "Well I don't have to see/read/hear it to know it sucks," for so long. Otherwise, you stop being a critic and you become a curmudgeon. Now, since nobody likes either one it doesn't usually matter, but I digress.

I suppose the main reason I tuned in was to see what kind of amusement Jimmy Kimmel might provide. Despite being one of the people behind The Man Show on Comedy Central, Kimmel has of late proven that he's got a smidgen more brains and talent than his friend Adam Corolla. Either that, or he's simply a lot better at cuddling up nice and snug with the suits at ABC. And he's going to need to cuddle up after his opening comments. Kimmel tore into a music industry cliche so heinous that it has drawn the ire of The Onion by asking the award recipients not to "thank God...God doesn't watch TV, and even if he did he certainly wouldn't be watching this show." It might have worked, too, as only a handful of performers did - indeed - thank god.

One of those was the incredibly shaggy looking Toby Keith, who was presented his award by The Smothers Brothers. This was the sort of evil planning evident throughout the show. Take two guys who were thrown off the air at CBS in 1969 for opposing the vietnam war, give them two minutes to namecheck The Dixie Chicks and Michael Moore, and then let them present an award to a man who wrote a song about the Taliban and whose website is so awash in red, white and blue that you might think he was running for office. There was tension in the air but, sadly, they kept it professional.

Now, the awards were themselves pretty predictable - so there's no need to go into detail. It's more interesting to focus on the live performances, since that's where the real comedy lies. I only caught enough of Britney's show opener to know that I'm getting someone I know a pair of very high boots this holiday season. Britney's a real performer, but it's entirely unclear if that ugly microphone she wears is live or if she's Memorex. Two performers who were live were Pink and Ms. Hilary Duff. They were both surprisingly strong live, and it's clear that Hilary - at age 16 - wants no part of the cute image that started off Britney and Christina. There she was, flailing around while her (loud) band proceeded to make 3 Doors Down sound more like 3 Beers Short.

Speaking of 3 Doors Down, who the hell decided it'd be smart to introduce them as one of the most rocking bands in the business? They played with a string section, for fuck's sake. They make Creed look dangerous.

But, I digress. Also in the stong category were Outkast and Evanescence, still my guilty pleasure (despite the fact that replacing any second person "you's" in their lyrics with "Jesus" would leave the songs intact). But we don't care about the good performers, 'cause that is no fun either. Let's get back to the suck.

Memo to Fleetwood Mac: you are old. Very, very old. Jimmy Kimmel made refernce to this and so will I. Go away. Rod Stewart at least has the common sense to know that he's too old to rock anymore. However, that revelation came to him ten years too late and he still does strange things onstage. That, and we all know that he's just gone nuts. We've already covered 3 Doors Down. They suck for more reasons than we can go into. Sheryl Crow, no one likes your new image. Furthermore, no woman in the history of rock has pulled off the guitar with skirt thing (except, maybe, Kat Bjelland). Memo to Kid Rock: The only thing worse than a bunch of teetering, tottering, thirty year rock veterans performing live is a thiry-year old rock wannabe performing a song that's only four years younger than you. On top of that, it's a fucking Bad Company song. Stop with the 70's retro shit. And that goes double for you, Kravitz - and anyone else out there who thinks that shit is cool. It isn't. Button up your damn shirts and join us in this century, please. Which brings us to Metallica. Guys. Please. Stop. You weren't good even when you weren't corporate. You are not good now. Just stop. Bands have been doing that fast part to slow part transition for ages now, and mostly better than you. Just stop. James, you cannot sing. Stop. Your lyrics still sound like notes from the back of the Dungeon Master's Handbook. Stop. The reason people download your music is that they do not want to pay for it. It's crap. Stop. Go back to California and live off the royalties. If you are genuinely concerned for your "art," then stop fucking selling it to us. Okay? Got it? Stop.

16 November 2003

In the shameless commerce department, I have decided to start selling t-shirts. If you want to buy one, feel free to head over to the t-shirt section and order to your heart's content. Seriously.

10 November 2003

Why I'm done with Google.

I've decided that I've just about had it with Google. It's not their fault, though. At least, I don't think that it is. There really isn't anyone to blame, aside from just the natural flow of how things work.

You see, in the beginning, there's The Site. It's new and it's fresh and it's virtually unknown. Slowly, a trickle of folks come in and there's suddenly a cognoscenti - an elite - a core. This group tend to care deeply for the site, they come to love it, it is their own. Time moves on. They tell people, who tell people, who tell people.

And it doesn't hurt if your site is good at something. Google is good at searches. No one denies that. But, as things get more popular there are inevitable downsides. The law of averages, or statistics - or something, I don't quite know the word for it, pretty much states that the more of something (let's say people) you have somewhere, the better the chances that a number will have Quality X (let's say stupidity or greed).

By now, you can see where I'm headed here, right? As Google grew in its ability to churn out results from those three billion crawled pages, people saw possibilty. There are ways to cheat Google. There are even people who say Google itself cheats. Google is not infallible. It is not their fault, I guess, that they became to big to serve up search results.

By the way, here's what brought all this up. I'm trying to get technical specs on video resolution. So, I google up a search for "s-video resolution" and I get a top hit of "more about svideo resolution." Great, right? No. That link is an automatic redirect to webtrafficmedia. Guess what kind of crap they do. The worst part? None of the crap on the page that is linked has a damn thing to do with s-video. Sigh. This is why the internet sucks ass.

8 November 2003

I had one of the biggest letdowns in recent memory last night. A band some of you may have heard of, Guided by Voices played here in town. But, they were playing in Asheville's only big "club," The Orange Peel. Before I go any farther, I can only say that the band was great. I've seen them three times before and they always manage to Rock in ways that all other bands only wish they could.

The problem is that I shouldn't have gone to see them at the Orange Peel, and probably not in Asheville period. Big note to Asheville scenesters...you don't have one. Your biggest claim to fame is a band that sucks and your next biggest is one that you don't even know about. Sigh. Silly, pretentious, and more-and-more-yuppie-each-day Asheville. Thanks for fucking up a great show. Now, as for The Orange Peel, fuck you too. No smoking, no fun. Shitty house mix, no fun. Nowhere to sit, no fun. Your "Social Aid and Pleasure Club" is a cheap and sterile whorehouse catering to boring types who think that Dave Matthews is challenging music and John Mayer rocks. Nothing more than a bunch of white liberals using the namesake of a piece of Black Asheville's history to make money. Shame. But you've got none. Charging $2.50 for a PBR? Yea, it's draft, but damn.

Then again, that's just par for the course for where the once fair city of Asheville is headed. Soon there will be a Super Wal-Mart right across the street from the Mall. Good plan. Kill the mall the way the mall killed downtown. Hey, does that mean that the street kids can infest what's left of the mall? Hmm, an idea....

I digress. Asheville's cleaning up and it's sad. I liked my dirty little city, even though I didn't get to be in it as much as I'd have liked to. But now, it's unbearable. Stuffy old people everywhere. Lavish yuppie parties in the two or three "special party clubs" every weekend. Asheville's main draw - its diverse mix of people in a small, Southern town - has become its downfall. Like Aspen twenty years ago, we're doomed to watch the city torn down, people run out in the night and then, like a plague, new highrises and condos and Wealth Moving In.

Last night was just a sign that I can't have any fun in my adopted home anymore.

3 November 2003

It must suck to be deaf. I've been watching the news on mute this morning, and I've noticed that the closed captioning just sucks. It's slow on the news end and it is almost non-existent in the commercials. Here is a bit from a Sears Commercial that just ran:

"...On sl tweek, Linenswetershalf off. Men'women styles fall colrs chsehug selection. Searsgdlifegrtprices."

That makes me wanna run right out to the nearest Sears and say, "Whassup? Sell me some linensweat!"

Seriously, though, have you ever watched closed captions on TV? You would think that with all the so-called "technology" that we humans have someone could manage to get closed captioning done correctly. Riiiiiiiiight.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's move on. It's November, and that means two things: One, it's about to get cold. Two, it's about to become unbearable to be in public. Why? The holidays, of course. To be honest, the holiday season starts in very early October these days. I figure that in won't be too many more years before Halloween is added into the Holy Triumvirate that is Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's. Which would put all four of my least favorite holidays in perfect sync. While we're at it, just toss in Valentine's and let me sleep for six solid months while the rest of the country runs around to card shops, buying sentiment and sincerity.

So, the holiday season also means it's time to play "who's going to feel slighted this year?" After all, you can't go see all your family and you can't go hang with all your friends. And, GOD FORBID, you would ask everyone to come and see you. Selfish bastard, how dare you. To top it all off, holidays aren't even holidays anymore. The Global Corporate Economy of Oppression has already decreed that people should work 365 days a year and that doesn't leave much room to have any fun, now does it? While some people do get vacation time from their jobs, most do not - and as much as I despise Christmas, I've always felt sorry for the poor bastards that have to work on that date, mostly because I realize that 99 percent of the people around me are perfectly happy to celebrate Christmas, even though they might not like it all that much. Which means that I have to follow suit and celebrate a stupid holiday that I don't much believe in (mostly 'cause I think that no one knows enough about it to justify its continuance in modern society) and I'll probably sell out one day and teach my kids about Santa and Jesus and all that crap, too. Sigh. This is why there's no progress - 2000 years of culture backed up by millions and millions of people with no questions.

1 November 2003

"...why not everyday, why are you so afraid
of halloween?"

That may not be the line, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Fuck it. Halloween annoys me, and I'm glad it's over. Why does it annoy me? Because it's one holiday where all the most annoying people on the planet seem to just become that more annoying. From the Fundie Christians crying "pagan" to the Fundy Pagans crying "discrimination," Halloween is chock-full-'o-scmucks. Locally, the Wiccans decided, for the second year in a row, to engage in some public Wiccan shit and the local Christian types decided to show up and "proselytize," which is apparently short-hand for "act like a total redneck in absolute defiance of several of Christ's teachings."

Yawn. Please, people, for the love of something other than your Deity of Choice, this is the Twenty-First Century (if you count it that way) and you really need to drop the whole religion kick.

Nihilism for Dummies is not about nihilism. It is not for dummies. It is not a weblog. It is not all it is cracked up to be.