Hey. Be careful, folks. If you just grab what you think is the DVD to "Everybody Loves Babies" because of the stacked multi-colored horizontal stripes on the cover, you may get more than you bargained for. Like a movie with four interlocking stories all connected by a single gun that converge at the end and reveal a complex and tragic story of the lives of humanity around the world and how we truly aren't that different. Or about two pot growers who face off against the Mexican drug cartel who kidnapped their shared girlfriend.
Of course, if you're nearsighted to begin with, you might not be able to tell the difference.
Wassup fellas. How's it going. It's me, the Gulf of Mexico.
Listen, you already have thousands of fans who tell you you're the best and all that, but I think you need to hear this from the ninth largest body of water in the world for it to really sink in:
You guys fucking suck.
No, wait. Before you dismiss me as simply a "hater" or that I'm "jealous of your success" or that over half of my basin is comprised of "shallow intertidal waters," just hear me out.
You came out with "Drops of Jupiter" in 2000 with that song "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)," and that was a musical suckerpunch to the eardrums. Your lead singer (I'm not Googling it, dammit) has a voice so piercing and annoying that it caused my tides to recede from Florida for a whole month that the song was in rotation. But I guess the Grammy you won that year for Best Rock Song just encouraged you.
Not content being a one hit wonder, in 2003 you came out with "Calling All Angels," which I can't remember was attached to some shitty Kate Hudson movie or not, but it might as well have been.
Well, it's 2010, and you've raped our ears with another one. Fuckin' "Hey Soul Sister," which I have to say has the most annoying opening vocals I've ever heard. And this time, the song is inescapable: if it's not playing on the radio, it's in some horrible commercial for Samsung TVs.
That shit makes me wish for a tsunami near wherever you guys are playing.
I know what you're thinking: why am I bothering with you guys when I obviously have way bigger problems of my own, like maybe THE WORST OIL SPILL IN U.S. HISTORY. That goddamned BP pipe is spilling over 210,000 barrels a day into my waters. The oil spill could severely damage my fragile ecosystems for years, possibly decades. My beaches will be very difficult to clean up, and just as shorebirds are nesting and sea turtles are coming ashore to lay their eggs this season. And I'm concerning myself with some shitty has-been 00's pop band?
Well, I gotta do something while I'm waiting for BP to drill the two relief wells to contain the leak. I know, it's try #7, but what the fuck else am I going to do but listen to the radio?
Okay, I'm through yelling at you fuckers. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some letters to write to Lifehouse and Switchfoot.
The New York subway system offers plenty of opportunities to both urinate and read. Religious-types know this latter fact well and use the new-fangled practice of "printing" to urge random strangers to change their personal religious beliefs to match their own. Here are two that we recently came across:
1) Mrs. Taylor's Big Bag of Hybrid Voodoo/Jesus Crotchcrockery
(Click to enlarge and read)
"Mrs. Taylor and she says..." begins this flyer. Apparently we've walked in on someone in the middle of the sentence. How rude of us.
Mrs. Taylor has somehow mixed in greed, religiosity and belief in the occult to a cheesy flyer for her psychic services. So I guess this doesn't really qualify as a religious tract, per se.
2) The Anti-UPC Scanner Urgency Manifesto
(Click to enlarge and read)
As many conspiracy theories go, this flyer goes on and on. Basically, it warns you to resist barcodes of any kind, because the number 666 will be on a bar code, and Satan will come get you, etc. etc.
The fact is, Satan WILL get you. But why single out barcode technology as the gateway to his dark reign? Because it's new and scary? Well, the fact is barcodes have been in common use since the 1960s.
No, the reason why this flyer says it's evil is because it's so universal. "Today, leading-edge biometric technologies include fingerprint readers, hand-geometry machines, retinal readers, voice recognition systems, signature dynamics, and a myriad of others." Universal systems of identification are inherently EVIL because their existence sort of kind of matches up with a Bible verse:
"And he causeth all, both great and small, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads...Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred three-score and six." (Revelations 13:16-18)
So, anything universal that helps organize or catalog people, like say a ZIP code, or social security number is laying the groundwork for the Devil's hoary kingdom. And any system that marks your head or right hand is also suspect. So another reason to avoid dance clubs than just the ridiculous cover.
tl;dr: You should NOT get a barcode on your right hand or forehead. Because you will go to Hell. So don't.
Let's just cut you off right there, Pewter Bear. Nobody who reads this blog gives a shit about Black Friday. And they certainly don't want to hear tips on how to survive it from you. You see, nobody who writes for this blog or reads this blog cares two shits about you, Pewter Bear. You're an amazingly unwelcome intrusion on this website, and most everyone who comes into contact with you wants to murder your fat pewter ass on the spot.
You pudgy, worthless cretin of a whiff of a pewter fart. Go away forever and die in a burning dumpster full of biomedical waste and raw sewage. Shove a snow shovel up your ass and jump into a vat of Ajax. Tie a heavy rock and glass shards around your waste and roll down the "Exorcist steps" in Georgetown, Washington D.C. Have a picnic near the intake of a DC-10 engine.
During the heyday of the regular DVD, Disney saw fit to brand their DVDs as "Disney DVDs," as if theirs were somehow more special. And titles like Little Mermaid or Pocahontas be available for a limited time then would "go back in the Disney vault," thereby depriving a couple of younger siblings the joy of watching a universally loved classic. Faced!
But I guess they cut that shit out once the Blu Ray/HD DVD wars flared up. Maybe some "Imagineeer" was too lazy to comp up Disney Blu Ray and Disney HD DVD logos? And even after the dust settled, and Blu Ray prevailed, Disney's new format releases no longer display an obnoxious proprietary logo. The company is still up to their "Disney vault" marketing hijinks, so parents will have to shell out $75 on eBay if they want their youngest to enjoy Beauty and the Beast.
"Expect nothing and accept everything and you will never be disappointed."
-Lawrence Overmire
The day is almost upon us. It's almost tangible. Just within reach of triumph. Or disappointment. Like, what if Jerald doesn't show? What if all our hopes and dreams are shattered in the last-minute cancellation? What if Loreley gets condemned by the Health Department the day before? So much potential for disaster.
But we mustn't let the endless possibilities for disappointment overshadow our hope, our singleminded, shining desire for happiness. Who knows what comes in the morrow? It is not for us to ask. It is only in our power to accept whatever does befall us and turn that into joy. That, my friends, is a bunch of bullshit I made up on the spot.
In response to Tom's bristling remark from the previous entry, Andrew admitted that taking a Jerald tribute photo was indeed more difficult to pull off. He mentioned that last weekend, he had actually attempted to take one but broke a glass candle holder in the process: "Yep. Sat my camera on it to try to take a timer photo."
Tom's response: "It's karma. The universe will not allow Jerald's image to be duplicated haphazardly."
In related Jerald Johnson news, since posting my tribute photo on my WAYN profile page, three people have viewed it!
Tragically, none of them were Jerald himself.
Stay tuned for more news on this extremely important, infinitely fresh subject.
