Trending now

For the most part, trends are things I generally view with a mixture of suspicion and outright loathing.  But I am fond of the "Annoying Things" lists that are popping up online, probably because they sound like stuff I would write.  So, I went ahead and did just that.  After each entry, you will notice I have inserted a small icon to indicate my level of annoyance.

Facepalm
Your behavior is just plain embarrassing, and I shouldn't have to explain why.  While you aren't really hurting me, society is worse for your existence.

Fuck Off
You are being more than irritating, and you know it.  Stop it.  I can feel my blood-pressure actively rising. 

Bitch Slap
This is your reality-check.  Everyone gets a free one.

Punch
You were warned.  Now comes the pain.

Wearing chinos with white athletic shoes

You think it says, Classy yet casual, classic and versatile.  Unfortunately, what it really says is, No definable sense of fashion outside of what your overprotective, domineering mother tells you to wear.

Nothing excuses this, not even blindness.

No one, bar none, can make this look work.  Every poly-cotton fiber of it screams "loser" at full volume.  It is the defining combo for the "hip" youth pastor in superficially-accepting non-denominational megachurches, and the uncloseted uber-dork who, for whatever reason, won't wear swords & sorcery t-shirts or Domu beanie-caps.

Acting as if there is a world of difference between American light lagers

Beer was the last alcoholic beverage I came around to, and only Guinness, sampled for the first time in my third year of college, convinced me I would ever be able to down more than a pint of the stuff.  So maybe I was a born beer-snob.  Since then, I have tried many a brew, from the cheapest fizzy swill to dollar-per-ounce session beers.  You know what?  I can drink them all.  As a result, I want nothing more than to smack smug idiots who champion one American diet lager above all others, whatever their preference may be.  It doesn't matter.  Can you tell the difference between them?  Yes.  Do any of them taste much like anything, let alone good?  No.

"Ah, this remotely golden, frothy, borderline bitter corn-yeast runoff is distinctly better than that vaguely yellow, tasteless, almost odorless, slightly carbonated water byproduct."

Shut the fuck up and drink it, frat-boy.  When you can wax intellectual about IBUs and lacing on the glass, we'll talk about your "tastes."

Wearing sandals and/or shorts in December

It's not summer, and you're not a hobbit.  Trust me, I know, I am as close to being one of them as possible: short, curly-haired, bad with technology, but surprisingly tough when push comes to shove.

Pictured: not you.

So stop pretending you're "just more comfortable" with your toes exposed to testicle-retracting temperatures, which you should be well aware of, given the open vent to your crotch provided by those drafty jorts.  I don't know what you are trying to prove, but you fail.

Pet love

Your animal companion holds a special place in your heart, I get it.  I've had lots of different pets, and every one was special.  Where that affection crosses over into weird, borderline psychosis is somewhere between slapping a "I Love My [Specific Dog Breed]" sticker on your bumper and purchasing these:

Seek help.  Please.

Because, really, you are starting to creep people out.  Knock it off, or I'm calling the vice squad, Bestiality division.

"i"Crap

These are products that adopt a minimalist, white color scheme and add a lower-case "i" to the front of their name to cash in on the success of a certain faddish company.

*NOTE: If this actually was one of "their" products, they'd put the sharpening aperture in the bottom of the device, just to be different.

It says, "Hey, man, screw proper capitalization and punctuation, we're a savvy, new wave, hipster trend that all the squares still using the world's most common operating system secretly wish they had."  (1) You are not Mac, so stop stealing their shit.  (2) Don't ever try to be Mac.  Seriously.

Pop Evil

This is an up-and-coming band half of you have probably never heard of (lucky you), but I think could best be described as a heavier Nickelback.

"VRRROOOM, I'm an airplane!"

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I failed to punch the lead douche-tool in the face when I had the opportunity almost four years ago.  If I had only known the levels of bland, quasi-hardcore mediocrity they would hover at, I would have acted . . .

"Where is (insert name here)?" news

This is probably the most sickening form of exploitative, sensationalistic "news" coverage in existence.  The bottom-feeding, soulless puppy-rapists who run stations like HLN (the result of a shameful one-night stand between CNN and Fox News, aborted one trimester too late) literally scour the daily stories from across the country to find any hint of (1) a missing white child, (2) a missing, pretty white girl, or (3) some twisted combination of the two.

Your face sticks this way when your soul is sucked out via your anus by Belial, Lord of Lies.

Then, once these opportunistic parasites have attached themselves to a tragedy, the orphanage-bombing executives and hack "reporters" of these tabloid networks spin the story into absurd proportions, promote it like a summer blockbuster, and open the bidding for advertisement time-slots.

Not turning on your headlights just because it's technically day

I don't know where you live (or do I? *wink*), but my state of residence gets real winters.  That means overcast skies, some form of shitty, insidious precipitation in the air, and slick roadways more often than not.  In other words, not so much a Winter Wonderland as a Frigid, Slippery, Grayish Twilight-Land.  And you want to drive your slush-splattered silver 1996 Chrysler Seabring with the bald tires and diaper-thin break-pads at 4:30 in the evening sans headlights?  You may as well turn on the cloaking device as well, because your car is effectively invisible.

Validating social media bullshit

I remember when I first started vetting colleges.  Back then, you looked up their rankings in prestigious publications, visited the campus, talked with advisers both in- and outside the school, and perused their catalog for courses related to your interests.  Nowadays:

I kind of want to scream.

To say that I bemoan the modern state of education is like saying people were miffed when the Hindenburg went down in a fiery blaze.  For those who went to a school where the collegiate ranking was determined by their volume of web-traffic, here's what my metaphor refers to.  By this criteria, I'm practically an institution of higher learning in my own right, while several of my more-popular friends should be considered Ivy League.

The term "shorty/shawty/shaurty/sha-tee"

Justin Bieber regularly uses it, for Christ's sake.  I am declaring it dead.

KP, out.

Ho, ho, ho-hum

What to write about today?  It's been over a week since my last post, which is like a year-long sabbatical in the blogsphere.  Nothing is particularly inspiring/enraging me right now, at least nothing I can make sound funny.  Let's see . . . oh, wait.

It's Christmastime.

Why not take a shot at that?  I mean, everyone else on the Internet is.  It's practically required that you do some manner of "Holiday Special" in December, and it relieves me of the need to come up with a topic on my own.  So, my take on Christmas.  I'll give you two guesses how I feel about the holidays, and the correct answer rhymes with 'pisenchantment.'  Can you figure it out?  Yeah, I'm pretty much over Thanksmaskwanzakkahyear's and have been for a long time now.  For this and other revelations, read on.

"Here's another shocker: I like BEER."

The one thing everyone, no matter how cheery and Prozac-powered, is allowed to express a degree of cynicism about is something I, a professed and ordained cynic, also do not care for.  And it's not because they've "taken the Christ out of Christmas."  Historically speaking, Jesus has always had pretty stiff competition for the holiday, and it can be argued that, in fact, someone originally "put the Christ in Paganmas," so this is shit just coming full circle.  Nor is it the opposite - I'm not hating on the Anointed One, either.  The proverbial reason for the season, whatever that means to you, is sort of irrelevant to me.

Maybe it's a gut reaction to the saccharine, dewy-eyed sentiment associated with the season.  Maybe it's the bittersweet memories of my long-gone childhood, which time has slowly robbed of its magic.  Maybe it's because Christmas has lost the bulk of its significance for me as I shed religion, tradition, and materialism, the central tenets of the holiday.  Maybe it's the rampant supersaturation of the year's closing months with "Holiday culture," like twinkling lights going up before the first snowflake falls, morons wearing sweaters with bulbs woven into them, and every business looping the same 23 songs that were tired cliches during the Nixon administration.  Maybe it's the fact that otherwise normal people kick off the season by stealing, trampling, macing, and even killing each other for material things.

"Peace on Earth and goodwill toward- GIVE ME THAT FUCKING XBOX, TWAT!"

I'll stick with Flag Day and Carson the Aardvark, thanks.

Actually, yes, I can say with some certainty it is in fact all of those things.  I am not claiming any originality here; I am one of those Scrooge/Grinch types who just can't get into the spirit anymore.  I don't necessarily hate it, I just don't really care one way or the other.  Aside from the occasional peptic ulcer that develops after hearing the 76th repetition of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," the holidays do not elicit a strong reaction from me.  Sue me.

As opposed to Katy Perry, who gets a surprise orgasm from them.  Apparently.

But, hey, just because I'm not down with Yuletide joy and shit, doesn't mean I am disqualified from spreading a little knowledge, right?  So, without further ado, here is my list of Things You Should Already Know About Christmas.

1) We Got the Day Wrong

You ever notice how the Nativity Story never mentions the bitter cold of winter, unlike that pretty-yet-insipid Christmas carol, "In the Bleak Midwinter"?  And the shepherds who receive the Annunciation (think of it as a divine memo) via angelic choirs are out in the pastures with the flocks, which is kind of weird, given that December isn't exactly prime grazing-season.  There's also no allusion to any Roman holiday occurring, even though a little festival called Saturnalia would have been going on at the time under the Roman government - a festival so wildly popular amongst the citizenry that they rioted whenever an emperor attempted to curtail it.   Just to give you an idea how popular Saturnalia was, the people dared the wrath of Caligula - more or less acknowledged even in his own day as Supreme Bugfuck Crazy Batshit of the Roman dynasts - to preserve the hallowed tradition.  The commoners, who had every reason to expect their insane potentate would douse a city block in honey and release imported rabid badgers and call it social welfare, had the guts to tell ol' Caligula to fuck off if he thought he was going to cut Saturnalia short.

Pictured: urban renewal, Roman-style.

And do you know what?  It worked.  Occupy Rome, in an era when it was legal to crucify people for fun, achieved its goal.  In fact, the festival was so popular that it would probably have been hard to nix even if, say, the religion it was based on fell out of favor.  Even if the official faith of the state were changed.  Kind of like Emperor Theodosius decided to do in 380 AD, making the Roman Empire a formally Christian state.  Isn't it a tad strange that, given the absence of biblical evidence for a December Nativity, the celebration of Jesus's birthday started being observed in the latter half of that month, coinciding with the older festival of Saturnalia? Which was tied in with the winter solstice, an astronomical event hallowed by most of the provincial pagan tribes the newly-Christianized Roman missionaries were attempting to convert/placate/conquer?  Pretty zany coincidence, huh?

But as long as we're on the subject . . .

2) We Got the Story Wrong

This probably comes as a surprise to you if you haven't brushed up on your New Testament trivia, but the Nativity (that's the birth of Jesus Christ, last of the prophets, savior of mankind, God incarnate) is only mentioned in two out of the four Gospels.  That's 50% of them.  Mark, usually deemed the most historically-accurate Book, makes zero mention of it.  That's sort of a monumental omission on the part of a chronicler.  Unlike, say, George Lucas initially skipping all the backstory of Star Wars so he could jump ahead to "the good parts" and rock socks with the Vader revelation, the Apostles would presumably have felt the need to detail minutia like, you know, a virgin birth, a brand-new star moving across the sky, and the heavens parting to reveal a host of freakin' angels who told a bunch of yokels that God had just beamed down.

"Sorry, Mark, this opening is good, really riveting stuff, but it makes the story too damn long and slow for the audience.  It's gotta go."

If you're a historian, especially one with a proselytizing agenda, you would not fail to mention in your magnum opus that the dude you are writing about, your personal friend and a man you believe to be the messiah, had this complex, intriguing, fucking magical origin story.  Unless you'd never heard that.  Here's the thing: most biblical scholars, including the ones who graduated seminary and are standing at your pulpit, agree the tale of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and angels, wise men (never numbered in the Bible, by the by), talking animals and drummer boys, is 99% made up.  No historical basis.  And yet we still center the religious holiday of the year around it.  Below is a chart I did not make, because I'm not that smart, showing to what degree the Gospels (not counting John, who was the Hunter S. Thompson of the Disciples) are actually telling the same story.

Not much.

Curiously, most Bibles don't include this reference chart.  Many Christians these days will argue it's the essence rather than the literal truth of the Bible that matters most, but you have to admit that's a pretty big dose of "literary license" to take.

But I've bagged on JC enough.  How about his main adversary, his biggest rival, the greatest threat to the "true" meaning of Christmas?

3) Santa Claus - Dissociative Identity Disorder Sufferer

Whether you were raised in a religious or secular household (mine being mixed), you had some kind of exposure to the Santa Clause legend.  To be fair, he benefits from being a *SPOILER ALERT* fictional character, as opposed to a worshiped figure.  So it's acceptable for his history to be bit dodgy, drawing from different sources.  But it's when you actually delve into those sources that shit gets downright weird.  It's old hat at this point to say that Santa is essentially God for children, but considering that fact, it is surprising how little people know about his fabricated story, aside from general associations of elves, the North Pole, reindeer, and trespassing.  The main influence on the character most Americans know is Sinterklaas, the Dutch folkloric hero.  I know what you're thinking: "Isn't Van Helsing the Dutch's traditional, go-to cultural hero?"

"Johnny Appleseed was a bitch.  I got your 'Choir of the Bells' right here."

Well, before Hugh Jackman donned leather and tight pants in an ill-conceived homage to Bram Stoker's Gothic masterpiece, there was a guy called Sinterklaas.  He gave gifts to children in December, he wore a lot of red. He also arrived in the Netherlands, dressed as a Catholic bishop, annually via steamboat from Spain.  You know, just like Santa Claus.  Due to a really complicated series of documented events involving the Bishop of Myra (in Turkey), international grave-robbing, and medieval blackface, the Dutch created their wintertime holiday icon, Sinterklaas.  And this was in the days of post-Christianized Europe, when people were starting to realize you needed that niggling detail of proof to claim something was true.

Their fictitious character was allegedly based on the historic Greek Saint Nicholas, an epithet still hilariously applied to the bullshit caricature that is Santa Claus.  And his hagiography (word of the day, non-Catholic bitches!) is chock-full of Christmas cheer: he resurrected three murdered children (or possibly clerks) whose cured remains were going to be sold off as pork by a demented butcher, and secretly supplied marriage dowries for three impoverished young women destined to become prostitutes, because that was the only career opportunity at the time for poor girls.  Just like in the carols, right?

Oh, and let's not forget the pagan influences.  Gift-giving around the winter solstice was associated in the Germanic region of pre-Christian Europe with the Norse deity Odin, an old, one-eyed, bearded death god who liked to ride his eight-legged horse Sleipnir through the Viking villages, rewarding those children who fed his mutant equine straw or carrots, left in their boots hearth-side, with candy and novelties.  Sound familiar?  That's because Odin was a key inspiration behind a major Hollywood film.

Beverly Hills Cop 3.

Looking at this bizarre amalgam of history, half-truths, and bad acid trips, American marketers of the 19th century said to themselves Yeah, that's a children's icon!  Let's use that image to sell shit!  Because Easter traditions weren't confusing enough.  And so was born the jolly old elf, despite never being labeled an elf before.

Which is how he got so many fangirls.

So I hope you found this breakdown fun and informative, if a bit illusion-shattering, and may your Nonspecific, Religiously-Neutral Midwinter Holiday of Material Consumption be a happy one, full of warm, fuzzy feelings.  Or, barring that, a consistent peppermint schnapps buzz.

KP, out.

Advertise This

From a smattering of oblique comments peppered throughout my many posts, a few sly references, and subtle jibes at certain targets (not to mention the entire body of my last article), you may have gathered that I have a certain . . . disdain for technology, particularly computers and the Internet.  On second thought, "disdain" may not be quite the right word; instead, let's say, "illogical, messianic loathing."  Funny, isn't it?  I need the Internet to air my grievances about the Internet.  The irony is not lost on me, and it's a bitter pill to swallow, depending on the very thing I rail against.  Which does not make me a hypocrite, by the way, it makes me postmodern.  It's like superstar rappers penning one verse after another about how they despise fame in an unending string of hit songs.

What?  That's a completely apt analogy.  Heavy is the crown and all that.

That being said, I actually spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Web, and not just looking at porn, which my therapist assures me is healthy.  Aside from checking my beloved/detested Facebook profile every ten minutes like a needy girlfriend and trying to edit Wikipedia articles faster than the administrators can "correct" them (I'm right, damn it), I log a significant amount of my life on Thatguywiththeglasses.com.  It's funny stuff you should feel morally-obligated to check out.  Now.  But one thing that may give you an involuntary eye-twitch when watching their videos is the advertisements.  And that brings me full-circle to the real topic of this tirade, online marketing, which I said I would be covering in a series of articles back in the summer.  Nice segue, huh?

What's that?  You don't remember when I made that promise?  Better go back to May 21, 2011, kids.  Sorry I got a little sidetracked these past six months.  Anyway . . .

Internet advertising is a huge market of limitless potential, which I have yet to cash in on, for reasons unknown.  I read somewhere (on the Internet) that revenues from online ads are up umpteen-bajillion percent this year and expected to eclipse the combined wealth of Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and God by 2013.  It seemed like a reputable site.  But I think the advertising brain-trust has become a little too savvy to their market, a diverse demographic that eats up TMZ, "Hide your kids, hide your wife" guy, Angry Birds, and, um, this:

Oh, I get it!  It's funny because you're all retarded!  Seriously, this video has over half a billion hits on YouTube. Half-a-motherfucking-billion.  That means, if everyone in the world had a computer and only viewed this moment of genius once, 5% of the global population would have seen it.  What.  The.  Hell?  And, since only a small fraction of humanity has computer-access, the horrifying truth becomes apparent - a lot of people are watching this America's Funniest Home Videos reject numerous times.  Unfortunately, the aforementioned advertisers have twigged just how vapid the average consumer is, and adjusted their strategies appropriately.  As a result, when I see ads on the Web, not only is my intelligence being severely sodomized, but half the time I am left wondering if there truly was any semblance of reasoning behind the ad, or if the marketers just threw shit up onscreen.  "Hey, people love babies, right?  They like big, bold words, don't they?  And boobs?  That's our auto insurance ad right there!"

And it's not just the content I am talking about.  Even the formatting is starting to baffle me at times.  The marketing on Thatguywiththeglasses is a perfect example, so let's do a quick analysis, shall we?  I actually remember a time when you could just click on a video link and - no, really, get this - go straight to that video.  No lie.  You clicked, video played.  You know, right after it finished buffering and loading for ten minutes.  Maybe insufferable, seizure-inducing banners crowded out the media-player, or you had to play whack-a-mole with the pop-ups, but the video itself was virginal, pure.

Because if there's one thing we hate, it's adulterated celebrity sex tapes.

Then bandwidth increased, connection-speeds left light in the dust, and websites hosting popular videos realized they could force you to sit through a brief commercial, as long as they dangled the carroty promise of the video you actually wanted to see after it.  Fine.  But then the weird shit started happening.  A bottom-banner would pop up inside the media-window, during the commercial.  An ad for the product you were already watching an ad for would interrupt that ad, as if to say, "Hey!  Hey!  Just in case you forgot, you're watching a commercial for this product!  Don't forget!"  Thanks.  Deciding even that wasn't insistent enough, marketers have recently begun inserting a second pop-up box in the corner of the screen.  Really?  Essentially, this is a tacit acknowledgement that their target audience has a fruit fly's attention-span and the cerebral capacity of a blender.

Must . . . resist . . . urge to . . . click.

It's just redundant and overkill, which I can only explain as a profound but well-earned disrespect for the people watching it.  You want to diagnose yourself ADD, this is what you get, America.  Oh, and the stupid things periodically return during the course of the video, just to remind you their products still exist, like a flashback in a movie that recalls an incident five minutes past.  But I suppose it's better than when they would actually interrupt the 15-minute video to show a commercial, which half the time would result in what I assume to be a glitch: the video wouldn't resume once the ad was over.  Cue my aneurysm.

Then there's my old favorite, the cornucopia of online matchmaking services.  I fondly recall an age when such things were few, laughable, and generally regarded as one step above phone-sex lines.  But, like the HMS Titanic, the lowest common denominator has sunk to abysmal depths, a grim testament to humanity's hubris.  Thus, a secret society of failed 90s dot-commers are churning out dating services as if it's going out of style, which I want to believe, given our goldfish-like level of focus, but I know sheer stupidity always outweighs other deficiencies.  Below is one of their adverts, reproduced perfectly by yours truly.

Let's Date Tonight!
Make it the best night of your
life by finding a beautiful
single women [sic] on
GirlsDateForFree!
Click here to connect for free! 

Yeah . . . anyone remember that Enrique Iglesias song from earlier this year, "Tonight I'm Fucking You"?  Well, I can't blame you if you don't remember it, but it gives off the same kind of creepy vibe as this ad.  I mean, I realize this is an online dating service, the shallow, disposable sort barely subtler than the sidebars on porn sites, and only because Facebook doesn't allow its ads to blatantly say, Get Your Dick Wet Now, but it may as well just come right out and admit it.  It's implied anyway, so why not?  This is the kind of website where I have to imagine the average conversation opens with, "Girl, I'm gonna date you so hard, I'm gonna date your brains out."  Mind you, I do not for an instant believe the bullshit promises made by online purveyors of scintillating flesh, but if they're going to lie to me anyway, they may as well go all in with the bluff.

Like this one:

Be A Music Producer

I mean, you have to admire the testicular fortitude of anyone who dares to put this up in seriousness.  I actually have never clicked this ad, so I'm not sure whether it is for a school of some sort or a tattoo parlor.  Either way, the message is obvious: music producers, all of them, must have detailed ink of unspooled cassette tapes somewhere on their bodies.  It's how you can tell they are music producers, sort of like gang tats or Jews wearing the Star of David on their clothes.  One thing's for sure, I want to learn the art of music production from an institute that clearly recognizes the intelligence of its prospective students.  For once, I could set the grading curve.  Then and only then will I feel I have truly earned my congratulatory identifying brand.

And how about Snorg, Threadless, and Busted Tees, those fine online haberdasheries whose sidebars appear on literally every website targeted toward primates under the age of 40?

Mmm, tee-shirts.

Because nothing sells nerd/pop culture/meme novelty wear like a stacked hottie taking it off.  This just seems to be a case of classic marketing gone wrong, because it confuses its demographic.  Yes, sex sells.  Yes, the probable consumers of these hilariously-relevant shirts are sexually-frustrated males.  However, the garments are really advertisements for themselves; we buy them because they are funny, not because their pithy phrases are stretched to the breaking point across a rack two cup-sizes too large for the shirt in question.  I think I speak for the majority of geekdom when I say we know wearing these clever tees will in no way improve our odds with women like those modeling the goods (double entendre!).  Sure, we secretly want to look like superheroes, but not Wonder Woman.

And so the race to the bottom continues, but the real question remains: is there a bottom?  As we boldly explore the ever-expanding horizons of the digital frontier, will we ever find a level of insipidity that cannot be surpassed?  Will our collective intelligence ever be underestimated, or will the mere act of constant web-surfing gradually erode our neurons so that we are always on par with the expectations of the shadowy forces that control our self-imposed Matrix?  Rest assured, the marketers of the Internet will always be there to push the limits, just as watchdogs like me will be there to ridicule the outcome.

KP, out.

P.S. - Serious bonus points to anyone who can explain this advertisement.  Be sure to state your reasoning and cite examples from the reading.  Points will be awarded for eloquence, creativity, and references to Satanic powers.

Express your individuality (in 1 of 6 preset ways)!

*NOTE: Sorry, folks, I promise I am working on another full-fledged article for later this week, but I feel the need to vent in an old-school rant before cranking out another finished, polished product.

If you haven't noticed, I am doing a little bit of redecorating around ThisIsMyBar.  With a growing readership, it's important to stay fresh and challenging.  More importantly, the nature of my ongoing social commentary is such that anonymity is essential.  In short, my livelihood would be in serious jeopardy if my customers ever stumbled on this blog and put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Plenty of you already know who I am, and that's why you read, but as more and more strangers check in, I have to take steps to protect my identity.

Which leads me to some shit that really irks me, and by "irk" I mean "makes me want to shoot bitches."  I'll be the first to admit my technological knowledge expired in roughly 2001.  Since then, I have made a conscious effort to ignore as much of the digital revolution as I could without retreating to a cave to write my angry manifesto and mail out nail-bombs to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and . . . whoever their equivalents in Japan are (I'm sure they are the ones behind it all).  During middle and high school, I learned enough of the basics about computers and their bastard offspring that I assumed, especially with the constant updates and ever-growing "user-friendly" wave, I would be able to make technology serve my ends when needed.

And I assumed these would go away.

Then, about three months ago, I tried to add the introduction to my blog you currently see displayed under the masthead.  Do you have any idea how difficult it was to add that?  Do you know how close I was to leaving Blogger entirely to peddle my cynicism elsewhere?  Here is the text I started writing at that time to convey my anger:

Hey, kids, did you notice the new intro to the blog?  Right up there at the top of the page, just below the masthead?  You didn't?  Oh, yeah, that's because it isn't fucking there.  Know why?  Google.  Yes, Google, one triumvir of the Holy Technology Trinity (along with Apple and Facebook), who can do no wrong, is currently screwing me like a Black & Decker.  No matter how many times I click "save," no matter how many times I reload the page, Blogger (one tentacle of the Google-beast) refuses to acknowledge a single change I have made.  No error message.  No obvious glitch.  It just doesn't do anything.  Bearing in mind I am using Google Chrome, a browser made by the same company as the blogging program. 

How to resolve this issue?  Why, contact Blogger, of course, and ask them in the politest way possible what the fuck is going on.  Ha.  I repeat, ha.  Now that we're all more connected than ever before, good luck getting a hold of anyone.  Technical support?  Customer service?  Bitch, please.  That's why we gave you the Internet: to get you off our backs.  By providing you with the illusion of endless information, we supplied you with the tools to solve all your own problems.  So leave us alone.  The sickest part?  These buck-passing bastards have the gall, the bile-boiling temerity, to still list Contact Us on their site.  Click that lie, and you'll see your options are either (a) posting your problem on the Forum of Lost Souls, or (b) choosing one of roughly six pre-selected help tutorials.  The only concerns Google is accepting e-mails on?  Trademark infringement and criminal misuse; in other words, shit that hits them in their ginormous pocketbook.  Well, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourselves, you useless, arrogant, monkey-humping, shit-spewing pieces of-

So, yeah, I was a little miffed.  I would have been slightly less pissed if I hadn't already posted a prior problem, the fact that my hit-counter randomly vanishes, on the help forums and received precisely dick in the way of assistance.  I knew it was pointless.  And if there is one thing technology is supposed to do, if there is one selling-point every tech company touts as Gospel, it's that technology is meant to empower you.  Right up the moment it doesn't work like it should.  Then, lo and behold, you are technology's helpless bitch, frustrated and forsaken in the digital wasteland.  The only thing that stopped me from leaving Blogger in high dudgeon, just to stick it to these callous assholes, was the deeper knowledge that, in fact, it would have no effect whatsoever.  Even this small satisfaction, a petty revenge, was denied me, because my opponent was Goliath, while I was the proverbial amoeba on Daniel's ass.  That was probably the most galling to me.  So, I figured shit out for myself, as per usual, and moved on.

Until this recent remodel.

All I wanted to do was change the color of my title text.  That's it.  Simple, right?  Especially given the retard-proof templates Google/Blogger have provided, which I admittedly use to avoid complex design issues.  Well, guess what?  When I selected a different color from the swatch on the template . . . it did nothing.  Surprise-fucking-surprise.  At this point, my expectations are lower than those of a female Bombay slum-orphan.  I was actually forced to go into the goddamn HTML and change the hex-code through trial-and-error.  I have literally not edited code of any kind in a decade.  Britney Spears was not only pop-culturally relevant, but still pretending to be a virgin the last time I fucked around with code.

No, even in those idyllic days of naivete, we weren't buying it, trust me.

So, if things look a little screwy around here, bear with me as I exorcise the gremlins.

But that led me to something that, while not technically an error, infuriates me far more.  On Facebook, I decided to remove any mention of my specific place of employment and replace it on my profile with the simple phrase, "An undisclosed restaurant."  Back when Facebook membership wasn't required by law, you could put shit like this up all the time.  Virtually every field and category on your profile was freeform, allowing users to make up bullshit like Universal Muppetarianism as their religion and pimp-slapping dyslexic reindeer as an activity.  You know, actually showing some kind of originality.

Well, grab your ankles and spread it wide for Zuckerberg's compensatory digital penis, America.

These days, you cannot add anything to your profile unless it already has a page on Facebook.  That's right, unless someone has gone to the trouble of establishing a page for whatever, you are not allowed to post that shit on your profile.  Work for a local company that doesn't need to social-network to stay afloat?  Too bad, dick-cheese, get a real job.  You like a band that has committed the unholiest of holies and not put up a Facebook page?  Forget about adding them to your "Music" field.  Trust me, I tried, just as a test.

Once again, why is this not an option?

Like the old-school "Choose-your-own-adventure" books, you can only pick from three options.  How the hell are we supposed to jumpstart new memes with this kind of authoritarian control?  What, am I stuck in the Jedi Archives being told Kamino doesn't exist just because there is no data-file on it?  (Points if you caught that reference.)  All joking aside, the more insidious side of this is the none-too-subtle message Facebook is sending: if it's not here, it's not real.  Existence as determined by Mark "the Messiah" Zuckerberg.  Plug in or fuck off.  Scary.  Where the hell is my red pill?  If you want to reduce me to a series of 1s and 0s, just another unit in the machine to be quantified, tabulated, and appropriately stored, well . . .

"A website once tried to digitize me.  I ate its server with some Doritos and a pale ale."

Back in my day . . .

. . . Jesus, I'm doing it.  I actually sound like a snarky geriatric already.  Times have changed enough, the sociopolitical tectonics have shifted, and my worldview, the paradigm I took for reality as a child, is now outdated, even antiquated.  Well, fine.  I can deal with that.  Do you know why?  Because, goddamn, I am right (as usual).

The recession is not over.  We still have limited economic growth in this country, especially compared to the 90s, and millions remain jobless.  College education as a sound investment is being questioned by talking heads and even a few people who may have some idea what they're talking about.  Across this great nation, in dozens of cities, thousands are unintelligibly voicing their dissatisfaction with . . . stuff.  Quite a few of them are getting maced, bludgeoned, and/or imprisoned for it, so they must be striking a nerve with someone, which means it's not totally off-base.  As a country, we are still figuring out how to disentangle ourselves from several international conflicts, while dancing around others we would just be itching to get into 15 years ago.  We're trying to figure out how to reinvent the USA for an era without superpowers in the traditional sense.

So what are the legislators in my state busy doing?  What bold measures are they taking to address these issues?  How are my tax dollars being spent to improve my life and those of my fellows?  Passing laws against bullying.  Yes, bullying, truly the greatest threat to our union since the Civil War.

Pretty much the modern Hitler.

As much of an obedient drone as I am, even I have to question just what this legislation's practical upshot will be.  What are we going to do, fine 12-year-olds?  Send them to jail?  The worst part is that I seem to be one of very few people who realize how ludicrous this measure is, how anyone who genuinely supported it 20 years ago would have been laughed off stage (right after their milk money was taken).  It's a testament to how stupid and sensationalistic our society has become that lawmakers feel obliged to intervene.  I think it started when we freaked out at even the merest suggestion of childhood violence.  I recall a case in which, I shit you not, a little boy was suspended from school for taking a discarded chicken-bone in hand, pointing it at another student, and exclaiming, "Bang!"  Up went the Paranoid Post-Columbine Massacre Flag, and the kid was booted.

Whoa, watch where you're pointing those things, asshole!

Do you know how many times I would have been expelled as a kid?  My primary form of playground entertainment was staging reenactments of fight scenes from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  In fact, the majority of boys' games consisted of mostly-feigned violence, which wasn't even prohibited at my school until the umpteenth kindergartener got his teeth loosened playing Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.  Even so, I never heard a mediagasm about the epidemic of traumatic injuries and shell-shock resulting from these destructive episodes.  No, the press hadn't yet perfected the bullshit spin-machine of hysterical pseudo-news.

But no longer.  Now, I can't go two weeks without reading some entirely serious commentary on the "bullying crisis" or the nuanced psychology of adolescent harassment, unless it is superseded by some tragic story of a teenager or even preteen killing themselves over it.  Don't get me wrong, it is sick and sad, but really?  Your existence is so unbearably miserable, your self-worth so degraded, that you no longer want to live?  Because Cheyenne keeps telling you you're ugly, because Derek always pushes you into the lockers, you feel compelled to put an end to the miracle of your own life?  Yeah, sounds logical.  Most inmates of Nazi concentration camps didn't do that, but what did they know about suffering?

The media has even coined the term cyberbullying, for Steve Jobs' sake. Cyberbullying.  Oh, the agony of having to read mean-spirited texts!  How do these kids cope?  Had my childhood transpired during this golden age of technological intercession, I would have been impervious.  Dickish post on my Facebook wall?  Instant messages telling me to eat shit and die?  Sticks and stones, motherfucker.  Meet me under the monkey bars.

No, please, just make it stop . . . oh, wait, I can close the browser.

Shit, I laughed off taunts to my face, once I'd gotten used to them.  Badass, huh?  If you are such a passive-aggressive pansy that you can't even insult or threaten me without using a digital mediator, bring it on.  I like my odds.  The only thing that could make someone a bigger coward?

Actually being intimidated by this tactic.

Seriously, how weak and fragile have we made this up-and-coming generation's collective psyche?  For the most part, the younger set nowadays are the offspring of late Generation Xers and the early . . . whatever my generation is called.  The two generations that produced the video game Bully.  For those who don't remember, Bully was a game in which you assumed the titular role at a private academy, distributing noogies, wedgies, trash talk, and the occasional kneecapping until you ascended to the top of the schoolyard food chain.  Or something.

Strangely, your avatar looked like a cross between King of the Hill's Bobby Hill and Vincent Crabbe, Harry Potter's portliest perennial tormentor at school.

While this is something of a sick role-reversal/revenge fantasy for dorks (think Inglourious BastNerds), it is also evidence that most of us rarely took bullying all that seriously, certainly not in retrospect.  Sure, it sucked like Nickelback, but it was part of growing up for the majority of us, at one point or another.  I didn't emerge emotionally-scarred (much), let alone depressive or suicidal.  And you know what?  Neither did anyone I knew.  If back in 1995ish, one of my classmates had killed himself because he was tired of his ridiculed life, I believe the primary reaction, aside from obvious abhorrence, would be What the flying fuck?  And I think the media would have had a similar - if less-colorful and more judiciously-worded - response to the event, because that shit just did not happen back then.  I refuse to believe the blackboard jungle has changed this drastically in a decade or two (damn, I am old).  It has gotten to the nadir that Googling images of 'bully' brings up this:

And that's just the hall-monitor.

I mean, really?  This is what is considered an accurate representation of the phenomenon these days?  A Tarantino-esque curb-stomping?  Get real.  Yes, the above picture was obviously staged for shock value, but it says something about the state of our society when anyone would realistically consider using such an exaggerated depiction, for any effect other than parody.  This looks like a scene from Schindler's Hall Pass.

My point?  Not to flog the bloody, rotting remains of a long-deceased horse, but our culture fosters hyperbolic victimization.  In our quest to protect children from everything, we prepare them for nothing.  We pad, censor, and sanitize their world to spare their delicate little minds and bodies, reassure them that everyone is a winner no matter what, refuse to discipline them properly for fear of inflicting irreparable damage, and medicate the hell out of them at the first sign of a parental challenge.  Then reality kicks in, and they freak out.  Cue the violins, the 60 Minutes special report, and every other conceivable form of sympathetic validation to reinforce helpless victimhood.  Ad infinitum.

It's a sad day when this is one of the better outcomes you can hope for as a parent.

I did not have this problem, and I'll wager few in my age-set did.  Maybe by the time I was fifteen, I was nearing Ferris Bueller levels of popular immunity, but for my entire life I have been short, underweight, quiet, smart, and curly-haired.  In other words, as obvious a target as a paraplegic albino deer.  Seriously, God painted a bull's-eye on my back.  I won't claim I was incessantly picked on or thrashed daily in the name of sport, but I was always on my guard, and with good reason.  A year or two down the road, my school tried to teach us all a brilliant psychobabble program called "conflict resolution," which stressed using specific steps and clear language to express your hurt feelings and desire for a peaceful end to hostilities with your antagonist.  Which was, of course, the surest way possible to get a royal asskicking, and we all knew it.

"But I said 'Please stop beating me, it hurts my self-esteem'!"

Back then, I feel like kids just had an innate sense for dealing with this stuff on their own.  Indeed, the few times throughout my life that I involved higher authorities only served to reaffirm my suspicion that they were really powerless to do shit for me.  My parents never taught me a thing about fighting, and I truthfully can't recall them telling me anything about standing up for myself; I just knew to do it.  In all their endless obsessing over this "new" hot-button topic, I rarely see any media outlet suggesting, let alone advocating, the most patent and simplest answer: don't back down.  Fight back.  Bullies are never going to go away, so you'd better prepare your kid for them.  It irks me that the sole recent example of this mentality I can cite is Captain America: The First Avenger, in which the wimpy, pre-superpowered Captain, Steve Rogers, says of bullies, "Once you start running, they'll never let you stop."

He knew even chiseled cheekbones wouldn't spare you a beat-down.

And it's true.  So I never ran.  Nor did I often end up in all-out fisticuffs, and that's the point: if you showed no fear, a willingness to get your ass handed to you, most bullies wouldn't follow through.  If they did, well, what was the worst that could happen?  Surely a split lip and some bruises are preferable to suicide.  The fact that I feel compelled to point this out shows just how deluded the discussion has become in this milieu of drama-based media coverage, which glorifies the victims and only encourages more youths to see themselves as similar martyrs.  And, because it's anathema to condone any type of violence, even self-defense, in children (let alone crack down on the mentally-anguished bullies) the harassed kids see little alternative.  Yet the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes, people don't need therapy; they need to get some blood on their knees.

As for verbal abuse, I quickly learned the basic truth that assholes aren't bright.  As such, I could pretty easily outspar them, humiliating them right back.  My tongue only got sharper for the practice, my wit quicker and my eye more critical.  Which has led, bizarrely enough, to this very blog.  So you can thank my adolescent tormentors for that.

*NOTE: I didn't mean to put so many World War II references in this article, it just sort of turned out that way.  Also, sorry if you didn't find this particularly funny, but I feel pretty strongly about the subject.