The Greatest Song Ever

Listen, you dimwits: I don't care one damn bit what you think the greatest song ever made is. For one, I don't care about your opinion on anything (all opinions other than my own register as utterly lacking merit in my mind), and for another thing, you're wrong. You are horribly, horribly wrong. That's NOT the greatest song ever. I can say this without even seeing your list, not because I'm psychic (if only), but because the kind of people who make "Greatest Song Ever" lists always pick one of the following as numero uno:

"Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley (Go listen to the original by Leonard Cohen and then try to tell me that Buckley's hack-job cover has any merit. You won't be able to.)
Anything by Pearl Jam (probably "Jeremy" 9 times out of 10)
"Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails (if you had said the Johnny Cash version you might have been on to something. Too bad, so sad.)
A Metallica Song (Metallica sucks, you idiots. Can't you see it?!)
mumblemumblemumble by Bob Dylan (you don't even know what he's saying, ADMIT IT.)

The kind of person who even listens to that shit is the kind of person who has no place critiquing music or claiming to know what the best of it is. That music is shit and the only people who like it have no taste and are likely 80 to 90 percent deaf. I'd have more respect for someone who said "You know what? The best song ever is "I Live by the Groove" by Paul Carrack." They'd be wrong (though it is a fine, catchy tune), but dammit it's so different and so, dare I say, bold to name a song that cheesy and obscure as the greatest ever that I would have to give some props to the person who said it just for having brass balls.

But instead I'm stuck with all these pussies who put the same crap atop their lists that everyone else does, for fear of being ridiculed or (God forbid) the fear of not having the same fucking opinion as their buddies on the internets. Wouldn't want to be all different, would we? Might shake things up and give us something to have a meaningful discussion about, like the merits of one type of music over another. Terrors!

So the next time you even consider making a "greatest songs ever" list, just remember: you're already a conformist douchebag, and your opinion is wrong. If you could remember this in any situation involving your opinion of anything and censor yourself as such we'd all be better off. Or at least I would be and that's all that really matters.

Happy New Year; "Juno"; Best movies of the Year

Isn't it weird that we celebrate the coming of the new year as much as we do? I mean, seriously, what's there to celebrate? This isn't like Christmas, when Santa brings gifts, or Thanksgiving, when Turkeys nobly sacrifice their lives to fulfill our bloodlust, or Ronald Reagan's birthday, when Liberals all gnash their teeth and cry. Those are days we celebrate because they give us those delightful reasons to celebrate them. There are no gifts or whatnot on New Year's Day. It's just another day. I mean, yeah, a new year has begun but it's not as though there's some radical change in our existences that comes with it. Life is just the same as it was the day before. We just have a new number to try to remember to write on our checks. We know we'll still put down "/o7" anyway because we're just used to it. In fact, most of us had just gotten used to it very recently, and now we have to start all over again. That's annoying as all fuck, ya know?

So fuck you very much for that, New Year.

Anywho...I saw that insanely popular movie "Juno". It was funny in that Wes Anderson "All the characters know it's a movie and mock that fact openly" sort of way, but I actually love Wes Anderson to pieces so that's a thumbs up comment. Also, it stars Ellen Page, who I adore to no end and who I swear will be the next Mrs. Dunbeck if I have my way, so that secures it a positive rating in my book no matter what.

And speaking of movies, I figure I'll get on the ol' bandwagon and concoct a list of my ten favorites from 2007. Gotta keep up with the Joneses, after all. Mind you there are many films I haven't had the chance to see yet (for example, "There Will Be Blood" isn't hitting my area for a few weeks yet. That makes me a sad panda).

1. "No Country for Old Men" - The only movie so great that I went to see it twice in the theater; The Coen Brothers finally got back into the "Fargo" mindset and turned out their first masterpiece since that great film a decade ago. Javier Bardem is unforgettable as a free-roaming serial murderer who takes on the task of retrieving a fortune from the man who found it at the scene of a drug sale gone wrong.

2. "Juno" - As it turns out, unplanned teenage pregnancy is a funny thing. Or at least in the wonderful world of screenwriter Diablo Cody.

3. "Sea Monsters" - a neat documentary from National Geographic that uses RealD 3D technology to bring prehistoric water-dwelling dinosaurs to life. It's a short film (40 minutes), but it was well worth the ticket price. The most "fun" movie of the year, and perhaps the best use of 3D in the movies.

4. "Mr. Brooks" - By God, Kevin Costner can act! An involving and surprisingly smart meditation on mental illness and serial murder that also features a great supporting performance from, of all people, Dane Cook, who needs to stick to drama and give up his futile quest to be a comedian.

5. "Grindhouse" - Two wildly different movies that just wouldn't be the same without each other and which, together with a collection of highly entertaining faux "coming attractions", celebrate the drive-in movie experience as they recreate it. Let us hope this idea can be continued with more films in the future.

6. "I Know Who Killed Me" - Lindsay Lohan's much-maligned turn for the adult is, to me, one of the most engrossing murder movies since "Silence of the Lambs". Accept it as a grim fairy tale and you may well find it brilliant; view it as an attempt at "realistic drama" and you're missing the whole idea. All the critics missed the idea.

7. "The Simpsons" - The show sucks now, but the the movie is as funny as the show was back in season 2. And man oh man is it something else to see Springfield in all the glory of 2.35:1 widescreen.

8. "300" - Beautiful to look at, as shallow as a puddle, and oh so wonderfully, mindlessly entertaining. Blood and guts have never looked better.

9. "The Kingdom" - Jamie Foxx is far more believable here as a military anti-terrorism officer than he was as Ray Charles (he won an Oscar for that?! Still baffles me). A well-written, thoughtful look at the Middle East conflict with nary a bad performance in sight. The abuse of "shaky cam" is distracting (and nauseating), but that's the only flaw in this film.

10. "Dead Silence" - The makers of the excellent "Saw" kick it old school in this throwback to the horror films of the thirties, the best treatment of a killer doll/puppet story since the first "Child's Play" film. And man is that Donnie Wahlberg a wizard with an electric shaver or what?

The Dangers of "Freshness"

Lots of things are dangerous. Knives are dangerous. Bears are dangerous. Women driving cars are dangerous. But I was fairly certain, until today, that freshness was fairly benign; a positive, even. Apparently I was wrong.

As I am wont to do, I went to the McDonald's Drive-Thru to get some chicken McNuggets (I love those things. They're like deep-fried crack) and some fries. Sounds boring enough, doesn't it? Well it was boring, thanks especially to the prolonged wait at the window. I know that as a sign that they're making a fresh batch of food - otherwise, there would just be an hours-old pre-made box of whatever your ordered sitting under one of those futile heating lamps. This didn't bother me because, fresh or old, McDonald's tastes exactly the same.

But then the food was done and the drive-thru attendant handed me my bag of grease-soaked, slow death-inducing deliciousness and he looked me in the eyes and solemnly said "Be careful. It's fresh". As if freshness posed a threat to my well-being. Now I can understand that nuggets and fries might be a little hotter than usual when they're right out of the fry-u-lator, but let's recall the situation: I was at the drive-thru. I still had to drive home before digging into the food. Theoretically this would give said food time to cool down. Considering how cold the interior of my car tends to be, it would be downright lukewarm by the time I got to eating it. The risk seems minimal.

I considered the potential danger if I had been an eat-in customer, diving into my fatty foodstuffs right away. Even then, though, the risk seems almost nill. I mean, really. The stuff just ain't that hot even when it's straight out of the oil. The coffee is hotter than any of the food ever gets (and bears a warning label as such). So finally I conclude that this man was not warning me about burning my fingers on my nuggets.

So, what was he talking about then? After careful thought all I can assume is that he was warning me against freshness itself. This food must have been too close to it's original form. It had not been processed and by-processed enough to save me from the very real danger of eating something actually resembling chicken and potatoes.

It's official folks: Real food is just too dangerous for us.

And really, think about it. We live in a society that thrives almost entirely on processed products. We don't eat organic food all that much, and in fact if we did try it it would be so foreign to our systems that we might go into some kind of shock. Craving trans-fats, saturated fats, batter and salt, our bodies would seize up when actual meat or veggies were consumed. The stomach would reject them, leading to terrible illness. Can you imagine if one of those millions of obese Americans (yours truly included) ate an apple or a piece of free-range chicken? We'd fall into fits of retching and vomiting. Our muscles might cramp, leaving us to fall paralyzed to the floor, where we would helplessly drown in our own health-food spew. It would be tragedy on a widespread scale as yet unparalleled in the annals of human history. It would be like introducing breadcrumbs to the air filtration system of a spaceship: doom and catastrophe would follow from such callous tinkering with such delicate and finely-tuned equipment.

So thank you, McDonald's drive-thru man, for warning me of the freshness of my food. Of course, the process of becoming McNuggets and french fries had removed the food from it's true form sufficiently enough that I could offset it with a tall glass of coke and lots of generic brand mustard that was a color of no mustard I'd ever seen before. And it sure tasted fake. Ultimately, I got through the meal safely, and came out of it full. And it's all because McDonald's really cares.

The Concept of "People People": Why It's Bullshit, and How it is Ruining Our Lives

I don't believe in such a thing as "people people". You know, those douchebags who pretend to love nothing more than human interaction? They say that the best thing in the whole wide world is spending time with other people. Fuck those people. If you're one of them, fuck you too. Why? Because you're lying, I know it, and I hate liars.

No one is a "people person". No one in this world likes hanging around other people. Even their friends. I have friends, and they will tell you plainly: I don't hang out. We send messages over the internets, sometimes, and that's as far as it goes. Why? Because I can do it online. Doing things online is quick and easy. You can get it out of the way and then get back to the productive shit in life. If you hang out you have to fill time because no one hangs out for two minutes. Oh no, we humans have a minimum of seemingly at least an hour for hanging out. If you meet at a restaurant or bar, you're their for an hour because the service industry is full of slow ass people and it takes that long for your food and/or drinks to come to you. If you meet at your house or your friend's house, you don't want to seem like you can't stand to be there, so you stay that long to show you can endure it, and it can't be that bad.

And thusly, when you hang out you waste lots of time. All you really want to do is say hi, hear how life's been since you last met, and that's it. Realistically that takes five minutes of talking, or two of typing. I'll take two of typing. And once the two minutes are done, I'm free again to do as I please. Sure, what I please is mindless internet surfing, masturbation, and pro-wrestling, but hey, they please me and therefore, I'd like to experience them and maximize the amount of time dedicated to doing so in a given day.

I think everyone is like that on a basic level. I mean, you know, we all have different interests, but there you go: replace the internets, stroking it, and body slams with whatever you like and the above paragraph suits you. So why, then, are there persons pretending to be "people people"? Simple: it comes down to not wanting to be rude. So many of my fellow humans are utterly terrified of the thought that someone else would think them to be rude. You don't want someone to think you don't care about their BS, do you? You don't want someone thinking you have personal interests.

But why? Why do you care? You do realize, don't you, that you're going to die some day? And once that happens, you have officially run out of time to fulfill your personal wants. You have to achieve those things before you die, and you may as well use all the time you have. Anything else is a waste of life, and life's too precious a commodity to waste. You need to stop wasting time placating others. If you don't care about someone else's crap (and I know you don't care, ever. No one does because we all hate each other, if we're being totally honest), just tell them as much and then move on. With your death and that other person's death, the whole slew of people who actually care that you were callous are gone and your slight is forgotten forever. It's not so bad, really.

Now there are people living in denial who'll read this and tell themselves that I'm all wrong because they're the exception to the rule. Truth is they aren't an exception, they've just deluded themselves to an extraordinarily sad degree. Others will read this and see I'm right, and they'll take my advice. And soon, we'll live in a world almost completely devoid of human interaction, and that will be glorious. It will be quiet and it will be efficient, for no longer will we slow ourselves down with the burden of anyone else's emotional baggage.

Not even God himself could conceive a utopia such as that. After all, assuming his existence, he put us here and has been dealing with us all ever since. Poor fool ain't got time to stroke the Schlong Almighty.

I'm Twenty and Distressingly Old

I'm of the opinion that oldies stations on the radio should play old music. Many of you (all of you) would support me in this and you're probably wondering why I wasted space, time, and keystrokes on that statement. But give me a minute. It needed to be said, believe it or not.

Last night I was driving home from a family dinner and since I hate the crushing silence of a car without the radio on, I pushed the knob on the dashboard and selected number three on my presets list: the local Golden Oldies station. While I, myself, am quite young at the tender age of Twenty years, I enjoy music of pretty much any era prior to the current one, filled as it is with useless rap and a pathetic imitator of "pop". I like listening to the Beach Boys, or Bobby Fuller, or Aretha Franklin, or any other luminary of the fifties and sixties from time to time and I've come to know this radio station as a host of such music. That said, I also like the seventies, eighties, and nineties and have radio stations catering to those needs set to other numbers on the display.

Imagine, if you will, the utter bewilderment I experienced when I turned on the home of "California Girls" and was met with "Little Red Corvette", a song from 1983! A damn fine song, too, but that's not the point. The point is that the Golden Oldies station apparently decided that the fifties and sixties, the Beach Boys and the Temptations, were officially too old to be considered "golden" oldies. I guess they're bronze oldies now, relegated to some iffy on-and-out AM signal. In their place are the seventies (Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" followed "Corvette") and eighties (Hall and Oates' "Kiss on My List" followed "Spirit"). Like I said, I like these eras (indeed, I have a slightly unhealthy fascination with the eighties that will surely make it self evident in due time on this site), but now I no longer have the option of two other decades I liked.

Well, OK, I could probably find that mythic AM signal (but fuck that, AM is hardly listenable with it's tinny, other-end-of-the-tunnel sound quality), or go on the internets and find a true oldies station (though that would do me no good in the car), but I still find this whole thing distressing for another reason: This means that the seventies and eighties are officially old. I was born in the Eighties (the tail end - 1987 - admittedly). Does this make me old, too? I can't imagine being old. In fact, I've more than once sworn to myself that I would commit suicide if natural causes didn't claim me before I hit forty, which isn't even half-way to the average life expectancy these days!

Despite popular belief of the opposite, being old is bad. A tragedy, I would dare say. You're outdated and pretty much worthless for any task other than wasting air us young'uns could be breathing, and slowing us down on the highways and byways of this Earth with your horrendous driving. Everyone who isn't old resents everyone who is, whether we admit it or not. It's just a universal truth, bred into our genes over time. After all, an insane love for the elderly would have been bad for our evolution progress - the young and virile would be eaten because they'd stick behind to help the oldest pack members escape the stampede of elephants or whatever. Meanwhile, the ones who resented the elderly just saved themselves and went on to make babies. In today's world, people who tolerate the elderly face problems like changing grandpa's depends or going ten MPH on the freeway because Grammy wanted to drive today, and then you're just horribly late for everything for the rest of the day. It's just simple logic: being old, or caring for the old, is a negative. And I don't need negatives. I haven't the time for them, being half-way to my self-set life cutoff point. I only have time for positives, like getting where I'm going on time and moving on from WW2 already.

But here I come back to the issue of that cutoff point. When I set it (in the before time, when fucking Stan Bush wasn't a golden oldie), forty seemed old enough because I'd still be technically young, and I would have had a lot of time to do what I wanted to. While the latter point remains true, the former, I fear, may not. If things from the decade of my birth are already old, then I'll be downright ancient by the time forty comes.

To me, this is a dilemma worthy of much consideration and debate. This, I think, should give you a good idea of what kind of person I am, and act as decent introduction to this blog.