James Cameron's Avatarrrrr

The American movie has come a long way since the days when the Klan were the only people bankrolling a studio. Nowadays we have animated pandas, Mel Gibson and annual Academy slapfights over which movie is most pretentious enough to deserve Best Picture.

Into this morass steps James Cameron, last seen mugging for the camera in 1998 (or 1997?) at the Oscars. The former king of the world turned hermit, going underwater for some documentary about (what else) the Titanic, and then sitting in his lab, concocting what he does or does not consider his magnum opus: Avatar.

This movie has been hyped enough that I don't really need to go on any further. It recently limped onto the screen all over the place, except in Australia (they get everything late except for Peter Jackson films and dingo derby video games), to mostly wild reviews. But so far the box office has not been earth-shattering.

As you may know, I don't play the box office game, so I could care less if it makes money or not... unless it is a truly offensive film. Yes, if a film is bad, then it really deserves to lose money as a sort of stick upside the head of Hollywood's collective Jewdom to stop doing that. That's a naughty Hollywood. Bad! You left this Transformers all over the rug!!

So let's get on with it. Is Avatar a goodfilm or badfilm?

3D or not 3D? Virtually every reviewer agreed that the film pushed the limits of gra-- erm, computer animation to new heights. You see that Bryan Fury fellow on the right? No, you twat, your RIGHT. THE OTHER RIGHT. Yes, that's an actual actor, not a computer-generated character. What's the deal? If you watch Avatar, you'll find it difficult to really tell the difference between him and the blue-skinned Na'vi at the center of this film.

Yes, the gra-- hm, the CGI is that good. The scenery is exquisite and, I guess, realistic (or plausible. Yes, that's a better word. Yes...), but the real achievement comes in the animations of the faces. It's true that the Na'vi "actors"s are motion-capped, but clearly a lot of attention went into their faces so as to not make them wooden or retard-like (no offense to Mr. Rooney). That was actually something I was worried about them fucking up, and thankfully they did not.

Why is this being mentioned first? Because most of the time I feel like getting the bad news first. I'm a "maverick" that way. I "shoot from the hip." But in this case, I'm getting the good news out first. So in that sense, I'm a real "maverick."

Yes, the g-- CGI is the only really redeemable part of the film. Unfortunately, it is not a game-changer. It's not even a dealbreaker, or a doorbuster, or a sexhaver. And believe me, I know all about sexhavering, and this movie is not sex. Though it has sex in it. A bit. It's actually somewhat creepy. Details to follow.

And as alluded to earlier, the movie is available in 3D. That's three-dimensions, not tit expectations. And I did see it in non-red-blue 3D, "like it's supposed to be seen," according to everyone. The 3D effects are not bad or distracting (instead of one very amusing shot of a 2D photograph that actually had fields of depth in it). But 3D itself doesn't impress me. No, not since 3D World Runner have I got the appeal of 3D. I mean yeah, the objects appear to be coming out at you. So what? That's the gimmick right there, summed up in a sentence. The next step of 3D is holograms, and this movie is not a hologram, so it is not the next step. It's a very nice step but not the next step.

Many reviewers contend that the visuals alone are stunning enough to carry the film. No. No no no. As someone who lived through the Console Wars, I know that anyone saying something like this is either a shill or a fucking retard Genesis player (you fucking trogs). It's hokum. And it's a bad sign.

An out of this world space aventure!! Is the tagline of the film. I think. Well that's what it should be, because it is a cliche, a bad one. Misspelled. Hackneyed. And true.

The plot of the movie stinks. It stinks, says Jay Sherman, and for once he's right, as usual. Many reviewers tried to gloss over this by saying that everything else was cool. That's like saying that, aside from all the dough, the doughnut tasted great! No, if the dough sucks, the doughnut sucks. It's crap. Not even sprinkles can save it, and Cameron piled a lot of sprinkles on this.

And yes, it is "doughnut," not "donut" you illiterate bottomfeeders.

"But, but, but our handsome and very admirable host, film is primarily a visual medium!" Yes, but it's a film, as in a piece of art that involves a story. It's not like a fucking flipbook of a man waving his arms up and down. It has to have a story, and the story is integral. Unless you want to argue that Avatar is a 160-minute music video or something, which it isn't because I didn't hear any Meatloaf.

Shit goddamn now I'm hungry.

Anyway, yeah, there's not much going for this film in the story department. Quick recap: Earth is environmentally fucked, Jake Sully goes to Pandora, a moon in Alpha Centauri, to become an Avatar to communicate with these Na'vi people. EVILCORP wants to mine MCGUFFINIUM from under the Na'vi WORLD TREE, and Sully's job is to spy on them and shit. Which he does. Then EVILCORP blows up the WORLD TREE, Sully gets sad, then decides to lead the Na'vi into battle against EVILCORP. At first they're losing, and then they win because Pandora attacks EVILCORP and WINS. Then Sully becomes a literal Na'vi. Eyes open cue theme song FIN.

By the way, the previous paragraph may or may not have been a spoiler.

That's a very slapdash summary but it captures the essence of the film. "Well what's the matter?" you might ask. "Weren't the Terminator films simple at their core? Wasn't Aliens?" Well, if you nitpick and reduce any film enough, yeah, but you don't have to work hard to do that for Avatar. This is a story that makes no bones about the fact that it's on autopilot. Calling it "paint by numbers" is an insult to my favorite type of coloring book, and this one uses all the bland hues. Yes, it's nothing but blue. Literally. Almost literally. The whole blue section of the color wheel in the most predictable film since The Hangover (hint: it's a film about a hangover. BIG SURPRISE GUYS).

Still, most critics defend the movie saying that the action and the CGI make it top notch, and you get lost in the film. Well I had the opposite reaction. The film lost me because it was a story so dumb and, perhaps worse, so shallow that I constantly found myself stepping out (not literally) and asking questions. "Why is every animal on this planet an echo of our animal species but with an extra pair of legs? Why are there very large animals in the middle of a thick jungle? Where is the water for the waterfalls from the floating mountains coming from? And why are those mountains floating in the first place? What is earth like, other than saying that it's an environmental nightmare? How does Sully react to spending five years of his life sleeping on a spaceship?"

And more. And more. Cameron does a good job of painting a picture, but there are so many details in the film that go unexplained. And some of them are rather important. For instance, it's never made clear if the Na'vi are aware of how avatars work, precisely. Because when Sully is done being an avatar for the day, he wakes up in his own body and then hangs out with everyone else and eats and whatnot. But he also has to have some kind of regular sleep cycle because otherwise his mind would be constantly active, which would at least drive him insane within a month. So basically, either he is really awake 100% of the time, which would require an explanation, or he has to take a supplemental nap while his avatar is also asleep, which would mean that his avatar stays asleep longer than normal. Do the other Na'vi think that he's just a really really heavy sleeper? Nobody knows.

Yes I realize that that's a very confusing way of putting it but trust me, if you see the film and think about it, the paradox will become clear.

I'm not asking for an exposition explosion, but the plot is perfectly set up with Sully as the newby curious to learn how the world works and people around to explain it. But nothing is explained. Why is unobtainium so valuable? Because there's a critical supply of floating rocks? Humanity needs them to construct real-life Super Mario Bros. stages? There are supplementary explanations floating around the Internet, but like the whole Harry Potter tertiary shit, it doesn't count if it isn't in the story, and no explanations are given. I could go on and on but without seeing it I'm wasting my time.

Well, surely it has character? Yes, just like porcupine has fur. The movie is filled with characters, most of them... wait, no, all of them pretty much torn from the same cliche-ridden book. Nobody really stands out except perhaps the main Na'vi bitch, Netiri. Excuse me, Neytiri,

Let's see, there's stone-faced grunt curiousman protagonist, sarcastic scientist den mother, ultra-greedy corporate stooge, nail-eating psychopath military guy, milquetoast scientist dude, voluptious exotic one-with-the-earth gaiagirl, Native American spirit warrior chief, angry jealous brooding boyfriend, prickly Hispanic warrior amazon lady, and last but not least, Jamaican witch doctress.

That last paragraph would've worked better if this were a TV show and I could flash you an image of the characters on-screen. Well fuck it, let's move on.

Yes, the ensemble is basically this gang. While I can't complain about the acting, I can complain about how virtually nobody in the movie changes from beginning to end. Our main protagonist is a complete lunkhead, incurious and accident-prone, except when the script calls on him to be magnificent on the battlefield in wrangling flying monsters or putting it to the No. 1 Na'vi sexpot. For a cripple he's surprisingly... adept.

A lot of people complained that Sam Worthington had no charisma as Sully. Well yeah, it's hard to have charisma when you're puking lines that are cringe-inducing under any circumstances. Humphrey Bogart could've been Jake Sully and it would still have been disastrous.

Neytiri, while Sade-like in exoticness, has no real personality to speak of. She's vaguely environmental and spiritual, but we have no idea of how she was before meeting Sully. We can assume that she's a goddamned flake because she falls head-over-heels for him in like four months, it's ridiculous. Her entire purpose of the movie is to tsundere out, and you can set your watch by her mood swings.

Then there's her boyfriend, whose name I forget because he is the epitome of forgettable character. Her NA'VI boyfriend is the son of the chief or whatever. He's supposed to be a great warrior but naturally he gets his ass kicked by a rookie Na'vi in Jake Sully in a duel over Neytiri's honor. Then he spends the rest of the film sulking like a baby.

The direct analogue, you could say, is that he's like Billy Zane's character in Titanic, except that's completely unfair. Zane's character actually had depth, and we actually saw him in his element, being a prick and all that. You could form an opinion about him. You can't do it with this jealous boyfriend cut-up because he's on screen for like two minutes, then he dies, and nobody gives a shit. Nobody. Not even the character himself, probably.

The only character with any real umph in him is Col. Quattrich, the aforementioned Bryan Fury guy. His character is one-dimensional as shit but at least he makes a great villain in theory. In practice, he's wasted on this film. Quattrich is the kind of guy who probably eats things just to see if his teeth and intestines can handle them. He wants to fight everything, and so in that way he's your stereotypical meathead soldier boy. But he's designed so intriguingly, and the actor (Stephen Lang) does a good job of making him snarl and be priggish.

But he's not a very good villain overall because he's dog stupid. And he has no ambition other than to KILL KILL KILL. He'd make a great henchman to a more capable villain. It looks like Cameron wasted all of his creative juices, and there weren't that many to begin with.

I take it you didn't like it then. No shit? I tried to be generous and give it 2.5/5, a C grade if there ever was one, but that's only because of the 3D effects. Without 3D, it's at most a 2/5. 40%. In most public schools, that's an A. But here, it's a C- and you better believe Cameron's parents are going to hear about this at parent/teacher night. Oh yes. And I can see you giving me the finger under your desk, now you can clean up the work room after school.

Like Titanic, Cameron expects his film's wow-factor to, well, wow everyone over, like a cloak of stupid being pulled over the audience's eyes. In Titanic's case, it was a grandiose plot and a very strong dash of pretentiousness, plus Bill Paxton's dreamy eyes, that made Titanic seem "big." Of course, it was probably Leo DiCaprio who actually brought in the money, but that's not something Cameron would probably like to admit.

But while Titanic was piled up with flaws, it at least pulled itself together for a somewhat compelling third act. Avatar also has a somewhat compelling third act, but by then I was bored with it. I knew what was going to happen even moreso than with Titanic (although admittedly, the ship sinking was a good twist). I mean, the action sequence is fine and all, but by then I felt the movie had pretty much offered up its best shot. And of course, the bad guys lose because Mother Nature (or Mother Pandora, I guess) literally unleashes all of the planet's wildkin on the bad guys and she wins and the bad guys lose because they're bad. So really it was a pointless exercise.

And that's ultimately the film's fatal flaw: There's nothing going on. Cameron is probably thinking he's making a profound statement, but he's not. It'd be like if Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech by dribbling his lips with his finger. And not even as funny. This film is a very shiny, very neat pile of expendible. $500 million worth of expendible.

When directors fail with a big-budget film, they usually fail in cringe-inducing ways, like the excerable Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe, or Peter Jackson's King Kong. Those are films so bad that you feel an overwhelming sense of embarrassment for everyone involved. With Avatar, at least you can say that it was just a piss-poor attempt by a has-been director. You pretend it's not a serious effort. It's Cameron just playing around like a baby and we're all just supposed to stand back and make sure he doesn't hurt himself/anyone else. And every once in a while go, "Oh yes, Jimmy, that's a nice bucket you got there, that's a good boy!!"

The only question left is, is it worse than Titanic? That's a damn good question. Titanic was terrible because it was shocking. How could the guy who made Alien, Aliens and the Terminators cough up such a putrid, cloying, nonsensical lump of a film? It's like walking in on your girlfriend screwing a bear. A grizzly bear. You just don't know how to handle it. I mean, if it was with a great brown bear that'd be one thing, but really honey? A grizzly?

But with Avatar, we walk in and, oh yes, there's that bear again, doffing the love of your life. Just try not to make so much noise, okay? The shock is over. I expected this from Cameron and, by golly, there it is. And don't think I came into the movie trying to hate on it. The film is so flawed that I had to scold myself to not hate on it. I had to tip the scales, and really, when you find yourself doing that, is it worth it in the first place?

But yeah, I think Avatar and Titanic are the same film, really. But at least now we've reached the acceptance stage with Cameron and, like Lucas, understand that he has passed on and we're just left with his retarded shadow of his former self. Unfortunately, we may soon have to say the same thing about Spielberg, but that's for another day.

So yeah. Don't see Avatar unless you are on serious drugs or something. Or if you're a furry. And if you're a fucking furry then you better tell me now because, hey, I no longer have anything left to lose by knowing how crapped up you are.

Fuck You 2009

I'm fucking done with Christmas already so I'm moving on to New Year's. There's no doubt the year 2009 was a very awful year. Even personally. Sure it was okay for the most part, then it culminated in a very wonderfully executed backstab that was totally called for. But beyond li'l ol' me, the entire world continued to cascade towards a very miserable end, a process made all the more apparent in this wretched year.

Lest I sound like a nihilist instead of a cynic, let me describe what did go well this year:

Kept my job, even got a raise and a promotion.
Yankees won the World Series.
The Large Hadron Collider didn't blow itself up and is actually working on shit.

There, those were the nice things. Drowned out by the torrent of shit I will describe next. There were so many wonderful things that happened that I've condensed to the five most prominent things. So enjoy, just for you, the most miserable things that have happened in this the best of all possible years.

1. Tiger Woods is human after all. The Tiger Woods debacle could not have started in a better way. What at first looked like a potentially tragic car accident turned into a mystery, and then a farce, and then a full-on comedy series worthy of Larry David. Woods showed us that it really is the quiet ones you should be keeping an eye on.

Of course, Woods' image was carefully constructed over the years, perhaps moreso than any other athlete in history. So it was inevitable that the facade would crack. He was made to look like a wholesome family man, but that image never really registered with people. Being an athlete, his fans were more interested in him robotically dismantling the competition on the golf course. Which he did. And they were grateful.

Oddly enough, the challenge became to "humanify" him, turn him into just one of the guys. That was the goal from the beginning when it became apparent that he was a prodigy. A young guy, who's also black, playing GOLF?????????? Yes, finally, the PGA would have an avenue to being hip and cool with this robotic youngster destroying the competition.

It worked, sort of. He raked in ratings and interest in golf, but he didn't really succeed in making golf a prominent sport, or any more prominent than it was when he got started. It's really tough to build up a sport when you only have one prominent star, with his only competition being the buffoonish Phil Mickelson. It's even tougher when your sport is more inaccessible to the masses than ice hockey.

But beyond that, Woods' image always appeared to be awkward when he was trying to look like an ordinary person. He's not an ordinary person. Nobody else can be Tiger Woods, not just because we can't golf like he can, but also because... just what was his deal, anyway? He seemed to be just a very reserved person, an impression that shone through whatever image he was trying to build.

And then this happened. Or really, it was happening all along, under our noses. I find it impossible that nobody else knew this was going on. And apparently the wife had more than an inkling that it was happening.

I'm not reveling in Woods' calamitous fall from grace because I never really gave a shit about him in the first place. I'm similarly unmoved by people denouncing him for having tricks on the side. In terms of criminal behavior, his ranks on the low end of the spectrum: distasteful, but what am I supposed to do about it? The guy's a jerk, whoop de do. I'm a jerk too. And so are you. Especially you. How about I denounce you instead? I can denounce every single person on this planet in excructiating detail and it wouldn't make a difference.

About the only positive thing that came from this was a slew of delightful low-rent animations detailing Tiger's infidelities. Enjoy.

2. Michael Jackson got died. MJ's death was about as shocking as the death of your nana. Your 105-year old nana. Who had liver cancer and pneumonia and pluracy. You can't expect someone who's popping that many pills to survive for long, but apparently a lot of people did.

Unlike the "shocking" death of your loved ones, though, this wasn't merely inconvenient. In fact it was very convenient. His financial handlers were clearly prepared for this and descended on his corpse like the buzzards they are. Before long, his entire musical catalogue was resurrected, and for one and a half blissful weeks in summer, we got to know Michael all over again.

Well not really. We heard a lot from his supposed friends and family, who were caught COMPLETELY OFF GUARD by MJ's medicine-induced terminus. I used to give the benefit of the doubt to his family that they were trying to get him to come clean and stop acting like an absolutely weirdo, but now that the surviving Jacksons are making their own reality show and are trying to break back into music, I can only assume they were in on the plan to. Lucky them. If only we could all get famous by standing on the shoulders of the recently deceased.

The sorry affair reached its apex with the memorial service held reverently in the sacred grounds of a place called the Staples Center. A ton of his closest friends showed up to perform and weep and act sorry. Oh, I didn't know he was friends with Magic Johnson. I wonder why he never spoke about this before. Oh, Mariah Carey is there. And Usher. This is the kind of funeral that would rival the Pope's!

Like a lookie-loo from some third world country, I watched the service and was thoroughly impressed by how psychotic it became. My personal highlight was watching Al Sharpton extoll MJ for advancing the plight of blacks in music, because beforehand you hardly ever heard a black soul on the radio. And he paid them back by turning white.

The only good thing you could say is that his death marked an uptick of his appearance on the radio. As it turns out, he's still better than 90% of the music on today. And that's why I'll always hold out a little bit of respect for MJ no matter how freakish he became.

I don't know if it's ironic or fitting that his death overshadowed the demise of Farrah Fawcett. The only nice thing anyone could think to saying about her was that she was a lovely pin-up girl. I'm sure that went over well with her spouse? And then he also overshadowed the nonsense that was going on in Iran. Remember that? Yeah, I knew you didn't.

Speaking of which...

3. Twitter is for losers. I never understood Twitter. I still don't. I speak of it in the past tense because it is past tense. The fad is over. The technology is dripping away like POGs and I will be shocked if people still use it seriously a year from now.

There's no point in tooting my own horn for not using Twitter. It's like saying I don't floss my teeth with rancid cow entrails. Why should I be proud of that? I think people who brag about how they don't use Twitter are just as dumb as those who do. And I say this with full knowledge that a) I kinda just did anyway and b) a lot of friends use it. But they're dumb for doing so. Everyone's stupid so stop being such a fucking prick about me criticizing it you twerp.

But Twitter strikes me as the culmination of all the banality that the Internat has to offer. I don't care what you're doing at every given moment. Even when I was crazy about you I didn't care. I'm not a weirdo in that way. And I don't find it particularly insightful, and I'm not interested in whatever link you found today that's already four days old and sorry, chum, you're behind the curve and reposting shitty links just reveals you for the bore that you are.

And that's all that people do on Twitter. Hey, check out this video of the otter! Yes the video I heard about two days ago when it first hit the net, aren't I special? Oh wow, look at what this idiot said on the TV! Yeah I saw it live, what do you think about it? Oh you only have 140 characters so you can't interject your thoughts. Haha, isn't it funny what this guy tweeted? If it was so fucking funny why is he only getting exposure on Twitter? You're a dunce.

So in other words, Twitter perfectly captures the inanity that is every single person. It makes me lose respect for folks because I can clearly see that they've joined in on it to fit in. But Twitter is too much. It's too banal. It's too stupid. It's too pointless. Most people can't adequately express themselves in 140-character belches to a pool of disinterested people. And if you can't do that, then shut up. You make yourself look retarded. I don't care if @jackass retweets you, he's only doing so out of courtesy because he's your "follower" or whatever the fuck. Life is full of pointless customs, I don't need them infecting the Internet. Facebook does that well enough.

Twitter has been trying to imprint itself on the public conscience for over a year now, to little success. What a surprise, a service that relies entirely on bare-bones crap has trouble catching on? But instead of trying to make their product worth a damn, Twitter's creators bombarded the news networks with stories about how fucking revolutionary their idiot service was. And it worked. CNN now has a Twitter feed and, to make matters worse, actually solicits the punters to give their input on whatever. I didn't care what @loserfromalbuquerque thinks about Obama's latest speech when I read about it on his feed, why should I care now that some pencil-necked retard on the TV is reading it? I don't know who he is and I don't want to know who he is.

The peak came, obviously, during that little Iranian dustup, when Iranian kids supposedly coordinated by tweeting at each other. That's when I knew they were doomed. First of all, don't rely on the Internet when you're running a revolution in a closed society. Second of all, don't rely on an anonymous messaging service when you're running a revolution in a police state, you dumb stupid fools.

People were expecting that Twitter would magically buttress this revolution, and they would prevail because they all knew to appear in Persian Square at 1 pm for a totally happenin' rally. At first it seemed to be working. They seemed to be scoring propaganda coups against the government and alerting the world that something foul was afoot in the happy state of Iran. But then some people wised up and started telling everyone to shut their mouths because the ayatollahs were listening in.

Too late! The urban kids fell for the Twitter bait hook, line and sinker. While some legit protesters were screaming at the top of their lungs for everyone to not appear at these honeypot rallies designed specifically to capture and savage the protesters, everyone else was gung ho on driving this Twitter revolution to its logical conclusion. And its logical conclusion was that the people who have guns and batons and tear gas and armored vehicles beat the living tar out of the unarmed ones whose only recourse was a shitty Internet service that was more useful for spreading disinformation than anything else.

Evil wins because good is stupid, my friends. And Twitter was the grand-high moron that no doubt contributed to more than a few skulls being needlessly cracked. The revolution didn't go out with a bang, it got covered up by an even larger earth-shattering event: MJ's death. And so the darling of the Twitter cause was snuffed out. What a surprise.

Despite the government intervening and demanding that Twitter stay online (no doubt to assist the CIA in running whatever idiot venture they were), nothing could come from it. And at any rate, Twitter was beaten at its own game. YouTube proved to be a far more valuable propaganda outlet. Retweeting #neda just doesn't have the same effect as watching her die in front of your eyes. But even that wasn't enough.

Twitter will probably vanish within two years, probably earlier when some enterprising people develop twitterbots to make the service even more retarded than it is now. I wonder if they'll keep it up indefinitely, letting bots take over like beetles infesting a corpse.

As for what it is now, the only Twitter feed worth a damn is @THE REAL SHAQ because Shaq understood how stupid it was at the beginning, and thus turned it into something entertaining. Virtually nobody else on the service has the brainpower to figure that out.

But also a quick fun incident that happened recently: When Bengals WR Chris Henry died recently, his death was first reported erroneously on Twitter, on purpose. Someone had the clever idea to impersonate a sports journalist and report that he died. And people went along with it because they are stupid. And then SOMEHOW, I don't know how, it got out that Nelson Mandela died. Except he didn't. But dumb people believed in that too. And then they learned that neither Mandela nor Henry had (yet) died, and became mad. Some even thought that the Mandela death notice was planted by the filmmakers of "Invictus" to increase promotion.

The fun thing about Twitter is that maybe it was. Either way, whoever came up with it is far funnier than any of the deliberate attempts at so-called humor on it. It's easy to just fart out whatever random piece of junk you think will make people laugh. It's quite another to actually expose a whole swath of people for the complete morons that they are. So thanks for that, Twitter. You can quietly die now.

2. Some people just want to watch the world burn. If you don't want to, though, tough. You can't avert your eyes from global climate change. It's queer, it's here, get used to it, because our overlords certainly are.

The Copenhagen Global Climate Summit, recently ongoing, was supposed to be the point at which all the world's leaders got serious about addressing climate change. Right, it was that if you were a dumbass. Nothing good can ever come from a bunch of rich politicians meeting up.

Copenhagen, pronounced Keh-van-hey-gen, or something, has not yet concluded, so maybe a worthwhile framework for combatting climate change will emerge. That means fuck all because frameworks don't do anything if nobody wants them to do anything. And so far all that's really happened was that China drew up some carbon reduction goals and small island nations like Tuvalu are begging the world not to let their islands disappear and Obama got mad and shit. Nobody is expecting anything serious to emerge.

The greatest polluters, bar none, are the Chinese. If you've seen some of the industrial wastelands that are popping up, you'd see it to. Literal rivers of sludge, mountains of garbage, and most of all, smog all over the place. Imagine if Los Angeles split apart like an amoeba and took over the west coast. I'm terribly sorry for inflicting that image on you.

But at least the Chinese are claiming to have a plan. The United States has a plan too, sorta. It's called "cap and trade," where we (I think) tax polluting industries, and then take that tax dollars and fund non-polluting industries, or something. It sounds like it could work, but this is the United States and we are a capitalist nation. Cap and trade, as weak as it would be, probably won't even be enacted. And either way, it's a gigantic scam waiting to happen. I could go into detail but I'm pretty sure you would not give the slightest fuck. Sorry to intrude.

For extra fun, there was a recent scandal about some e-mails from some climate research group in England, and those e-mails were released to the public. These e-mails contain scientists talking amongst themselves about adjusting the data they've discovered, fairly innocuous stuff. Well, you can imagine that the batshit right wing of this country went ballistic and used it as proof that global warming is a fraud.

There are a lot of people still invested in the notion that global warming is either a) not real or b) not man-made. They do so because they are scared. Scared scaredy cats, frightened of the "A" word (no, not "Audi"). They want things to just keep going like they do, ~*forver*~, like true love, also another pile of bullshit.

Okay I take that back, true love is not bullshit. It does suck major ass, though.

Anyway, these trogladytes don't want us to do anything about it because it's not their fuckin' problem, you dig? Except it is. I'm not an expert on climatology. I don't know how they do what they do. I only have a slight understanding of their techniques and data and models. But I do know something that doesn't require fancy shmancy degrees.

There is desertification in China. As in, the ground is literally turning into desert. Not dessert. Not sherbet. Not tiramisu or a sundae or, worse, crumb cake. Sand. Miles and miles of sand where crops once grew. How can this be? Well gee, how else does land dry out?

Glaciers are melting and disappearing. Kilimanjaro and other mountains of similar elevations are now bare. No more ice. Rivers are starting to disappear too. I don't think they've moved on to greener pastures, I think they've all fuckin' evaporated. I remember my water cycle. They're all up in the sky near the smiling sun and I don't think they're going to come back down any time soon. How could this be??

The ice caps are melting. The home of Santa Claus is starting to retreat. The Russians know this and have already staked out turf to dig for oil and straggling elves to interrogate so as to learn the ways of Kringle. The Northwest Passage, which was completely frozen over when we found it, now opens in the summer. Pretty soon it'll be taking year-long passes.

Things aren't much better in Antarctica. The ice shelf there is slowly but surely thawing and is not regenerating as robustly as it once was. Recently, a big fucking chunk of ice fell off of it and is now floating to Australia, which goes to show you that Antarctic ice is both melting and a poor choose of vacation spots. Really? What's wrong with Tierra del Fuego?

These things aren't supposed to happen, but they are. I wonder why? Could it be THE PLANET'S ATMOSPHERE IS FUCKING GETTING WARMER? But since this is winter it means it's cold out and then we get the supreme dumbasses going LOL WHERE'S GLOBAL WARMING??? I look forward to them hearing that when they're being drowned by a tidal wave. They'll probably bitch that the water is too cold for it to be global warming.

Did Copenhagen represent the last chance for humanity to stop this? Some say that chance passed even before, but it's clear that come hell or high water, we are going to ride this global climate change jazz out. Or we won't. Funny how cavalier we are about the fate of literally the whole of human civilization, but anything to keep us in our cars.

1. Change you can bereave in. I feel sorry for American liberals. Well, some of them. There are a few smart ones surrounded by mouthbreathers, so in that way I can relate to them.

The big story of last year was the presidential election, so it follows that the big story this year was Year One of the Obama presidency. Finally, we get to see the result of our labors! And by "we," I mean millions of people who couldn't see a Trojan Horse candidate if fucking Achilles himself presented it, and it was literally a giant wooden horse, and every now and then you could hear someone say "Who keeps grabbing at my balls?" in Greek coming from inside.

What did we get? A very nice but boring inauguration, followed by Senator Byrd (I think) collapsing at the dinner, and then the Obamas dancing the night away (with every single fucking shindig they showed up to playing "At Last." Jesus Christ).

And then it just got worse.

Obama has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Perhaps watching Bush fuck everything up has taken all the fun out of it, but Obama certainly did his measure best to ruin all the good will he brought up. I've gone over this before at length, so you know the highlights, but with this latest health care debacle, even his ardent liberal followers are starting to smell the bullshit. Thanks guys, good thing you still have time to undo this mess you've created for everyone.

Time magazine recently named Ben Bernanke as its man of the year. They're wrong. Bernanke exists because men like Obama let him exist. Obama is the master thief that gives Bernanke agency to do whatever the fuck he wants. And we all suffer and die for it. Obama is the man of the year. He takes Peace Prizes for waging wars, he sells the country out with a smile, and he tries to be so accomodating that he graciously lets his corporate adversaries do whatever they want.

He's a charlatan of the rankest order, but this is coming as a surprise to far too many people. I mean yeah, it was cool when he beat McCain, but anyone who was expecting him to be a net positive for the country needed to go back to the crib and take a long fucking nap. The youngsters that came out so enthusiastically for him were just as retarded as their old, crusty senior counterparts who vote purely on whatever lizard impulse springs into their hoary heads. I could just blame Obama for being so slick but I don't like letting people off when they're culpable. So fuck you Obama voters.



Yeah yeah, so much for that. The world's an awful place, man, why are you complaining about it? Because it's more fun than pretending that everything's going to be alright. People who say that are the worst of the worst. No, it's not going to be alright, and when it's not alright, don't come bitching to me with some crybaby story about how baaaaad things are to you. And life is far more interesting when you look at the troubles that need to be fixed instead of the happy, boring shitty stories you pile up and then barf on everyone around you. Trust me, you're not impressing anyone with your stupid anecdotes and your chiding for people to "lighten up." How about you get a life?

The best part about most of these stories is that you can't run away from them, either. No, there was no running and hiding this year, try as everyone might. Some people hate to be wrong when they make dire predictions or proclamations, but not me. It shows that I'm still in touch, right or wrong, and if I'm not in touch, then I'm a helpless babby that has to rely on others to show me what's up. Ignorance is bliss until life punches you in the face. So you can ignore some of these things without penalty, but good luck ignoring the other shit when it starts ripping away planks of your life like an irate scrap-metal harvester.

2010 is shaping up to be another wonderful year, too, because things are on the downslide. We have 2010 midterm elections where Republicans have a better than even chance at triumphing. We have the Olympics. We have some awful movies coming up. And best of all, you never know what'll happen! Maybe we'll bomb Iran? Maybe Pakistan will fall? Maybe I'll find true love? You never know, maybe 2010 will be a good year after all.

But don't bet on it.

Merry Fuckin' Christmas

It's like the one-year anniversary of this retarded blog, which means it's Christmastime again. And things could not be worse.

Christmas 2008 was kinda bland. Obama won, but anyone with a brain could've told you that nothing was gonna change. The corner store was blasting Christmas music. "The Dark Knight" was coming out on blu-ray. All in all, a wash at best.

Flashing forward to today, if that's at all possible metaphorically, and we're not even close to where we were last year. In other words, we were in a hole in 2008. Now we're near the core of the planet, except it's a shitball planet and the core is made of raw sewage.

I'm thinking that the best course of action this year is to just skip Christmas. Cancel the whole rotten thing. Trying to make everyone merry for profit this time isn't going to cut it. Wishing the world a merry Christmas is like walking into the Sahara with an umbrella and going, "It's time for rain!!"

If I need to describe why things are such a bother, then I have to wonder just what the hell you're up to. The economy is teetering like a drunk on a highwire, above a pool with agitated alligators, and maybe a shark, and a swimming scorpion, and Cthulhu for good measure. The only question is who will munch on it first. My money's on the scorpion, actually. Those bastards are dynamite when they're pissed.

And that's not all. Everyone is getting clearly pissed off, even me. Obama is such a turd that even his most ardent Obamatars are taking a good long look in the mirror. His recent foray into Afghanistan can't make anything better. That's just what the country needs on its conscience: more blown up brown people. I sound like a fuckin' peacenik here.

Black Friday came and went without incident. That's actually not a good thing. I'm sure Wal-Mart was all torn up over that worker who was trampled to death last year, but this year was quiet. Too quiet. The hungry capitalist beast does not like quiet, but there it is, you fat bastard. Shoppers did not really come through so far, and it's hard to see why they should.

The biggest items this year are what? Gap is still prattling on about scarves and flannel and sweaters and whatever. Sometimes I wish Old Navy would resurrect that old Harry Caray lady and regale us with more performance fleece. Well who the hell is going to shell out $40 for a scarf when they can just raid the poor house? Oh that's right.

BestBuy is being insufferable with some faux wasslers informing intelligent shoppers that they need to buy flatscreen TVs. Is that the best they can do? Big HDTVs? They've been selling those for years now.

Jared now has some new diamond where you can woo deaf women, or something. It looks like a coiling snake, actually. It's called the Pandora diamond. If only it would really unleash chaos. Anyway those commercials are just what you expect them to be.

At least there are no car commercials, yet. No big bows or any of that shit. Then again, it's hard to sell cars when your business model is extinct. Ho ho ho, GM.

They even messed up the Hess truck. Oh wait, it's not a truck, it's a giant F1 racer with, surprise! a mini F1-racer in it. No, neither of those are trucks, Hess. Don't tell me you've run out of ideas.

Beyond the commercials, though, everyone is addled. Cops are getting shot, non-cops are getting shot, flu shots are in a shortage, Hot Shots Part 3 has not yet been made, and the movies all appear to be garbage. Well, "Ninja Assassin" was pretty good. That's what we need this Christmas: a movie about eviscerating others.

Before Thanksgiving (remember that funny little holiday?), they released yet another version of "A Christmas Carol," this time in CG and starring a very old Jim Carrey. People complained that one part of the movie was rather dour, the part where the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals Ignorance and Want to Scrooge and flaunts his bullshit in his wrinkled face. What a surprise, people don't like to be reminded of suffering. Well good luck getting away with hiding that this year.

I really can't imagine Christmas cheer settling in this year. 106.7 is trying its darndest by going 24-hours of Christmas, but their song selections are different this year. They're using more obscure versions of the old hits. Why? They don't sound any better. Maybe they realize that something is off this year, too.

The epitome of this Christmas was Obama's speech announcing the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Not even most Americans think that's the "good war" anymore, so in a way it was a comedy tour de force. And of course it pre-empted "A Charlie Brown's Christmas," arguably the best of all Christmas specials. It's the one where Linus reminds people about Jesus, but sorry Linus, Obama has to look like a tough guy and sentence thousands of people to death only to lose re-election. That's America's Christmas in a nutshell.

The only people who are gonna have any fun this Christmas are, of course, going to be the kids of the rich. I'll try to have fun too, but this year the bothers of Christmas are more apparent than the joys. It doesn't help that I don't really have anyone to send meaningful gifts to now. Scratch that, I do have one but it's not under ideal circumstances. Giving gifts is fun when you put thought into it, but simply vomitting up a wishlist or handing out gift cards is more like buying groceries from a list. I mean sure, you might like what you're getting, but it's so predictable.

And then we have all the stupid Christmas specials. There are some new ones this year but I'm pretty sure they all rely on the tried-and-true formula of furry CGI animal needs to buy someone a gift and can't figure out what to get!!! Stop me if you heard this one before (you should be stopping me right now).

And then we have the post-Christmas letdown, the people becoming suicidal when they can't reach out to anyone (now possibly with a dose of homicide this time), people whining about giving out a hundred Christmas cards when they know they don't need to do that at all, etc. At least football will be on Christmas Eve.

The season of perpetual hope is being drowned out by the realization of perpetual trouble. Nobody can paper over the turd that's being dumped on everyone except the rich, of course, so I expect things to get very, very ugly out there as Christmas nears. And then once we clear Christmas, there comes the death stretch until Easter to remind us all, especially those relying on soup kitchens and holiday clothing drives, that Christmas comes but once a year, now enjoy your winter.

For a cynic like me, this isn't much of a surprise or a shock. It's not me you should be worrying about. It's everyone who hasn't yet accepted that this is as good as it'll get this year, and they outnumber me by about, oh, 250 million to one.

And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Goodbye old friend

NOT the best of weeks here in the [Gorp] household. And to top it all off, some bad news. I'm losing something very close to me, something I didn't think would ever leave me.

I'm talking about this piece of work right here:



This bad boy has a long and storied history. Originally used by my grandma(r), it saw a lot of action. And I mean action. Used to watch Knight Rider on it while playing with army men in her apartment.

Then he came home. Our home. He went to the basement, the boiler room in fact. That's where he is right now, on a shelf. But beforehand he was on a table, captaining one of the sickest gaming rigs of the time. My NES got booted from the basement proper years ago, and the TV that used to be there up and died. This one took its place and was magnificent.

The old TV was prone to fuzzing up and having its vertical scroll go haywire. I don't know if you remember what life was like when you had to adjust that thing, but it was part of the joy that was watching television in the 80s and early 90s.

This new guy was perfectly stable. Pristine signal. Never fucked up. He was dependable. If you wanted to play some Rampart, he was game. When you played Bases Loaded or Ice Hockey, it was like HD. I am dead serious. The colors were sharp and you could see ever square end of every pixel. Hell, he even made the Intellivision look magnificent.

But as time went on, the NES got less and less use as the PlayStation, then the PS2, came in. By 2000, he was in semi-retirement. By 2002, he was done. Not done done, but I was done with the NES. We retired the NES (though the setup is still in its spot, ready to go at a moment's notice) and kicked the TV to the shelf because it wasn't compatible with any cables we had. A computer now occupies its space.

I learned that tomorrow I have to haul the old buddy upstairs so he can be trashed. He'll become one with a landfill somewhere, unless they use some parts for recycling or something. I'm sure he has some nasty chemicals inside there, though.

I think he's okay with it. Deep down inside, every appliance knows that one day this day must come. Just like everyone else, everything has to degrade, break down, retire and get trashed. Except plastics. Those motherfuckers have to be melted or something, they never go away. EVER.

I'm okay with it too. Old buddy was there for me, but he's been replaced now. That's the way it goes with inanimate objects.

It's tempting to say that a lot of memories are going to the landfill. That's not true. They're here with me, and as long as those neutrons are functionl, they are not going anywhere.

So long, dude.

An Okay Book

Another two months, another book down.

This time around, it's Time Wise's "Speaking Treason Fluently," a follow-up to his "White Like Me" book of essays. I heard of Wise a while ago and was interested in seeing what he had to say en masse. This is ALMOST his latest work.

For those of you not "in the know," :quotefingers: Wise is... someone, a consultant I think, who talks a lot about racism. I mean, a lot. I mean, all the fuckin' time. He's also white, in case you couldn't tell. It's rare hearing a white dude talk about racism and not sound like a douche doing so, and Wise almost pulls it off, with some minor stumblings.

Wise's whole deal is that white people have privileges in America, privileges they take advantage of daily, even when they don't realize it. And even though society has progressed (mostly) since outright racism, there are still vestiges around us that keep minorities down.

He backs this up with a solid mix of logical arguments (which isn't hard since racism itself is pretty goddamned illogical) and stastical stuff, though some of his info is outdated in this book. But the studies he uses (for example, criminal studies that show that white people are more likely to possess drugs in traffic stops, even though blacks are overwhelmingly stopped more often) are very effective. Too bad they will mostly fall on deaf ears, because racists usually have earworms and stuff.

Wise uses language well enough to avoid launching walls of text at you, but he runs into another problem. Wise repeats himself. A lot. Not as much as the Chomp, but he usually swings by the same sets of arguments over a span of essays. It's not overly repetitive, but you do notice the repetition. And if it's one thing, I repeat, one thing I really hate, it's repetition. STOP DOING THAT.

OKAY.

He's also pretty good when he stays in his statistical, professional element, but when he delves into certain tangents, he can sound like a bit of a magoo. Case in point: He devotes an entire chapter to defending Barry Bonds. Yeah, him. Barrold, you see, was victimized by racism, and it doesn't matter anyway because the records suck because most of them were taken when whites shut blacks out of ball.

I think the essay was written before the Roidmuffin admitted under oath that he took roids ("unknowningly" :quotemarks:), because he attests that Barry never even admitted to taking them. Well he did. He definitely dog did. Then he tries to argue that roids don't make you a great player, which is missing the point (they allow great players to hit more HRs than they would, which was the entire fucking problem with Barry). As for his Negro League argument, well, I don't know what he wants to do about that because there's no way to prove that the great Negro Leaguers would have done better or worse if the MLB was integrated from the start. It's irrelevant anyway because they have done a lot since integration, including holding both the legit and illegit titles of Homerun King.

But other than that, Wise usually is on point and entertaining. He's even better when he speaks (his cadence, in particular, is cool to watch). In print, though, he suffers a bit from repetition and the occasional odd tangent.

If you're at all interested in racism in modern America and are prepared to learn some shit you might not already know, you should check this one out.

And that, as they say, "is that." :fingers break doing quotemarks:

ELECTION 2009: AMERICA: THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING, PART 3: JUDGMENT DAY

I don't know what's going on in Poland on Tuesday, if they're having elections for chief comissar or if they're voting on the referendum to rename Lodz to Get a Lodz of Me, but tomorrow is election day. Or erection day if you live in Corea. Corea has the best elections.

But, you might say, it's 2009. An off-year election. How interesting can this shit get? You might not have noticed when you were here, but America has gone kookier than normal, especially your right-winged comrade at arms. In fact, things are downright HECTIC. This year is no different.

There are three elections that people are hyping because a) they're bored and b) they're desperate. Even though these elections will change absolutely nothing pertinent about anything, they're amusing to watch because of all the batshit nonsense implications about them, and because they reveal a glimpse of the background machinations of our shitty political system.

Let's stop chewing the fat and get right down to brass tacks. While we climb the ladder of success, keeping our noses to the grindstone.

ERECTION 1: VIRGINNY GUBENATORIAL. GOOBERNATORIAL?

Name: Creigh Deeds

Party: Democrat

Pros: Professional macker

Possibly rich

Cons: Illiterate

Everyone laughs at him

VS.

Name: Bob McDonnell

Party: All the time

Pros: Loves Jesus

And her boyfriend too

Cons: Not quite Hawaiian

Insane

Virginny went to Obama in the last election, but when it woke up and realized it was sleeping next to a black guy, it quietly panicked and took a shower. That shower is coming in the form of Bob McDonnell, a graduate of Jerry Fallwell's Bible camp. Now all Virginia has to do is wait in the shower until the black dude goes away, then it can come out and confess its sins. Oh wait, they don't do that down there.

McDonnell's opponent is Creigh Deeds. I have no idea who Mr. Deeds is (HEH), but he certainly isn't going to Washington (HEH HEH). Because the governor's house is in Richmond, actually (HEH HEH HEH). But yeah, he's like 13 points down in the polls, so of course the GOP is playing this shit up. It's like when the Dodgers were going to the playoffs and they're like, "HELL YEAH WE BEAT THE REDS. WORLD SERIES HERE WE COME." Then Manny slips on a banana peel and they're eliminated by Jonathan Broxton's shitty pitching.

So yeah, this is a layup for the GOP. But it's also the least important of the BIG THREE.

ERECTION 2: NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR. GUVNA!!!

Name: Jon Corzine
Party: You betcha
Pros: Rich as fuck
Rockin' the beard
Cons: Incompetent as fuck
Exemplies pretty much everything wrong with our system

VS.

Name: Chris Christie

Party: The elephants

Pros: I suppose he's "bonhommie"

Can use fat to survive long winters

Cons: JOWELS

As generic as Republicans can get

Chris Christie vs. Jon Corzine on paper looks like a mismatch. Corzine has tons of money, tons of fans, and tons of some other stuff probably. Oh yeah, he's also the incumbent.

But Corzine has gotten in his own way. First it was getting in a car crash rushing to the aid of the Ruggers women's basketball squad. Then it was fucking up the budget. Then everyone realized that he's the governor of New Jersey.

Amazingly, someone wants to take this job away from Corzine, and that's this guy. Up there. On the right. Chris Christie. He's a lawyer, and probably a really nice dad, and he probably lets his kids smoke weed. I think. He looks the type. But other than that, what does he stand for?

Well, not much. His campaign is basically CUT YER TAXES AND CUT SPENDING. I HATE FRAUD AND I LOVE P(censored). So Republicans have supported his campaign, but not overwhelmingly so.

New Jersey hasn't been Democratic since Christie Todd Whitman, but she was not a maniac right-winger so her tenure isn't looked on so fondly. I don't think Christie will similarly be that nuts, just a bumbling retard but not crazy Jesus retard. I'm not sure NJ can be destroyed much more than it already can be.

To show how confident Corzine is in his election chances, he let loose this devastating salvo.

The race is in a dead heat. That's all. Go away now.

THE MAIN ERENT: NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL-23. TWO THREE.

Name: Bob Owens
Party: Like a rock star
Pros: Doesn't look like he will kill/molest you
Cons: He's Bob Owens

VS.

Name: DeDe Scozzafava
Party: Nobody

Pros: Was a Republican

Can farm beans

Cons: One "De" short of being a Kirby archvillain

No longer in the race

VS.

Name: Doug Hoffman
Party: Co-- wait a second, that's not Doug Hoffman!!

Name: Doug Hoffman
Party: Ahem. CONSERVATIVE
Pros: Will kill babies to win
Has a ton of money now
Cons: Look at him
Just fuckin' look at him

NY-23 started off as a ho-hum affair. The former Congressman, Jon McHugh, a Republican, got picked by Obama to be Secretary of d'Army. So he ditched NY-23, as any thinking person would, and left a vacuum. The local GOP picked DeDe Scozzafava, a liberal Republican, to run for the special election. So far, so good.

No wait, not at all. I don't know how or why, but right wingers noticed DeDe and noticed that she's relatively liberal. She supports gay marriage and is pro-choice. She's also "pro-union," whatever that means. She was endorsed by the Working Family Party, which means ACORN. If you don't understand why ACORN is dangerous, imagine an overweight southerner in a thatch cowboy hat saying it as loud as he can. Not yelling it, but just saying it. Like "ACORN." As in "THAT GAM ACORN TOOK MY DANG RACCOON." It's the devil.

Well right wingers weren't gonna take that. In a move only Stalin could appreciate, GOPers flooded NY-23 like crusaders descending on Constantinople. I mean they got in and owned that P-(CENSORED). Suddenly DeDe was in hot water in a normally safe GOP area.

Enter: Doug Hoffman, an accountant or something who doesn't even live in the district in question. Dougie Doug passed the right-wing purity test. He hates abortion, hates fags, hates taxes and loves business. That's him in a nutshell. Oh yeah, he's also apparently dog stupid.

Let's take a brief intermission to talk about NY-23. NY-23 is hinterland defined. Only the Jersey Pine Barrens are less densely populated in the Northeast. I've been to the area in question. You could carpet bomb it with hydrogen bombs and you'd only kill maybe 1,000 people. It's that fucking empty and boring, so this whole election shit must be like their first Christmas.

When Hoffman jumped in, he immediately split the GOP vote. Now all of a sudden Scozzafava is pulling in less than 25%, while the Democrat, an empty shirt named Bob Owens (who is incidentally more CONSERVATIVE than Scozzafava) took the lead, if only a slim one. As Scozzafava decreased in popularity, Hoffman's surge intensified. The psychos smelled blood.

It became so bad that Scozzafava fell to THIRD. That was enough for her. This past weekend, she quit the race, giving Hoffman a boost (or so I think; I don't know if there's been any solid polling since then). But as a final fuck you to the party that summarily ditched her, she endorsed Owens. Not sure that'll make much of a difference.

The race is currently in a dead heat, or a dad heat if you don't believe in death. The smart money is on Hoffman but it's not a sure bet. If Hoffman wins, he will be nominally a Conservative, not a Republican, but he has the GOP's organized support now. Not that that means anything at all.

So there you have it. Three races, all really not a big deal at all, but all are marked as "bellweathers" about Obama. If the right wingers take all three, then OBAMA IS TOAST. If not, then OBAMA IS STILL TOAST because we are not dealing with rational people here. Basically any vote for these honkies is a vote against the black dude. That's all it boils down to and that's all it's been about since November '08.

Stay tuned for an update!!

It's Halloween and I gotta take a piss

And go to bed.

Before that, I dunno if you've been reading my shit. If you haven't, get wise. If you have, go directly to my latest shit. Do not pass go. Do collect $200. I am a generous Monopoly player.

Echo! (Echo! Echo! Echo! Echo on)

I realize now that I started this blog 10 months ago, so we haven't yet had a proper cliched Halloween entry. Well it's time I stopped spoiling you bastards and written one.

Halloween of course is the time where we face our fears, or at least our retarded getups and slutty womenfolk, which isn't so bad especially when they pull off a Sarah Palin. ........... ah yes....... Well anyway, while that's all well and good, I still believe Halloween should still primarily be about scaring the living shit out of you, and I figure now is as good as time as any to face one of them.

Now if I were to go on and on about some of the things I'm really afraid of, it'd just turn into a depressing bore, and if I depressed you I wouldn't be doing me job. But there is one thing I find genuinely unsettling that is also fascinating and I think worthy of giving a good look at.

I'm talking about :thunder strikes: ABANDONED BUILDINGS.

Abandoned buildings are really cool, but also really creepy. They're inherently creepy. If you're in an abandoned building, it means that someone went through all the trouble of building one, then inhabiting or working in one, and then one day... gone in a flash. Everyone left, like an audience that accidentally stumbled into a showing of an Uwe Boll film. It means that you're in an area that everyone decided was better to run away from.

So when you get right down to it, aside from the actual dangers that an abandoned building has (rotting floors, shoddy walls, deranged hobos living in them, the fact that a lot of them seem to be in New Jersey), abandoned buildings are a representative of the creeping horror that sometimes befalls places.

Before you consider this concept alien, keep in mind that some of the most famous buildings in the world are really just abandoned buildings. Angkor Wat is abandoned (sorta). The Pyramids are abandoned, though they were pretty much designed to be off-limits anyway. The Coliseum is perhaps the quintessential abandoned building. Imagine Giants Stadium 150 years from now, assuming they don't demolish it. Oh who am I kidding, of course they will. Just hope the Jets are in it at the time etc. etc.

Of course, none of those places really feel like abandoned buildings. The most dangerous things about them basically amount to German tourists, which can be pretty bad, admittedly, or the occasional Italian-American tourist gal, a gal I want to do outrageous things with. RETURNING TO THE TOPIC AT HAND, the Coliseum may be impressive, but it's not scary. It's history. And history is only sorta scary.

Modern or nearly modern abandoned buildings are a whole nother matter. A whole nother? Really? Anyway, unlike the places mentioned above, these places are not kept up and nobody wants to see them, which makes them prime spots for spook hunters. Why don't we take a look ourselves?

This deligftul snap was taken in Kings Park, NY, not far from me grandma actually. This is a former mental insitution, and there are a LOT like them around the country, but particularly in the northeast. Buildings like these are one of Ronald Reagan's lasting gifts since he didn't think that spending money to keep insane people in asylums was really worth it.

Most of these buildings are right delapidated, but they are still standing and, intriguingly enough, are partially furnished, as if the inmates and workers were just taking off for the weekend. One of my favorite pictures of these places, which unfortunately I have not been able to track down for this entry, is of one such hospital room, its floor littered almost completely with what looked like little pill containers. Why were there all these pill containers on the floor like that? I don't know. But there you have it.


Not to leave the ladies out of it, here's another prominent theme in abandoned building exploration (hereon known as "urbexing"): hallways. This photo came from Worcester Park, an abandoned mental health facility in Massachusetts. Perhaps you've been? Hallway shots always strike me as particularly fascinating because hallways are places where people HAVE to be. A room in any given building can be empty, but there always have to be people in the hallway going somewhere, right? Hallways are also good for channeling wind into scary noise to SCARE YOU TO FUCK on windy days, so they have that bonus.

But hospitals aren't the only thing that's been abandoned. As the economy continues to slither towards depression, expect to see more of these: abandoned malls. In fact, there's an entire website devoted to them. Heree's another creepy motif for you: a place of commerce, of people going to and fro, shopping for tennis shoes or ginger snaps or whatever it is ragamuffins buy these days. The noise of people eating, talking, playing arcade games (oh wait, this isn't 1989!!!), of mall cops engaging in savage brawls with skateboarders in front of a Krispy Kreme.

Well, no more. The story of malls closing down is actually rather morbid. First one store closes. Then another. Then another. Before long, entire sections of a mall are nothing but closed stores, shuttered to keep people from rummaging through... the empty shelves I guess? After a while, it no longer becomes economically viable to keep a mall open, and they eventually turn into this.

A good abandoned mall will still have some signage in tact, a reminder of bygone days, of some proprietors holding out until the end, until all that's really left of civilization is a Prada 50% off sale sign, now collecting dust.

(50% off for Prada is still like $300 by the way.)

There are still other kinds of abandoned buildings, but by now you get the picture. The only thing scarier than an abandoned building, though, is of course abandoned towns. Ghost towns.

Above is actually one of the world's biggest ghost towns in the making: Detroit. Imagine Detroit as an abandoned mall writ large, except the suburbs are Walmart, steadfastly holding strong while Trader Joe's and Crate & Barrel (pours a bottle of liquor on the ground) die off. If you think I exaggerate, remember that many of Detroit's skyscrapers are literally sprouting grass. They're that unkempt because nobody is using the damn things.

The quintessential ghost towns can all be found in Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico, i.e. old gold rush towns. But those sites suck because most of them were built with dinky wooden structures that fell over after the last panhandler farted, so there's nothing much to see at all. Actually, ghost towns are pretty rare; well at least a ghost town that's still in tact.

So where are the good ghost towns? Well, old Baghdad is still there, kinda. Jonestown, Guyana is mostly gone so it's probably not even worth the trip.

Ah yes, there is one really big one, and mostly new at that:

Our old friends the Soviets were happy to provide us with one. You know what this is. Someone claims to have taken a bike tour (look here for more info) through it, but even if her story is utter shite, the photos are not. This is perhaps the best raw ghost town on the planet, a view of an entire people disappearing overnight, in many places dropping whatever they were doing. Except not to read, but to get the fuck outta dodge.

Gunkanjima (Battleship Island) is another fascinating place that is mostly in tact, though that becomes less so with each passing year. Gunkanjima was basically a floating coal mine in operation until 1974. People not only worked on it, they also lived there. If you're ever heading back to the Pacific and have time to kill in Japan, you can take a boat out to it as the island reopened for visitors this year.

A more obscure place is Centralia, Pennsylvania. There's hardly anything left of Centralia, actually, except roads that look like this. No, the drivers weren't that bad nor did they keep forgetting to take off their snow tires. The roads, much like everything else that was in the area, were rended under thanks to coal fumes. Centralia was built on top of a coal vein, and when the vein caught on fire, sulfur and CO2 and all sorts of happy shit seeped up through the ground, poisoning the area.

Fortunately nobody died (I think), but naturally the area was uninhabitable, and will be for a few centuries because coal fires are impossible to put out. It turns out that there is not a blanket large enough to smother it, unless everyone in the country wants to make a quilt big enough to cover PA. Hmmmm, actually, now that I think about it, that doesn't sound like a bad idea...

Today Centralia looks like that. You can get a better view on Google maps, actually, but this is the gist of it. Empty suburban lots. I'm not even sure there's a single structure left standing, but there are still roads available. Sometimes I wonder if people attempt to use it as a shortcut when passing through.

Another famous ghost town is the area around Love Canal. The story is baasically the same as Centralia's though, and no, Al Gore was not the inspiration for it. He was the inspiration for the Love Story, get your lies straight. There are a few more ghost towns rendered so by environmental circumstances, but they all basically look like this today.

I don't know what it says about the state (actually I do know and I'm just trying to be noice), but New Jersey has an awful lot of abandoned sites in it. It's a pretty good starting place for urbexing, a "target-rich environment" as we say in the militurry.

The closest I've been to an abandoned building (aside from driving past Kings Park's mental ward a few times) has been in my own town. A house down the block-ish had its inhabitants abruptly take off, leaving behind a rusty ol' house. Actually it wasn't rusty, bricks don't rust you fool. YOU FOOL. The inside was almost totally empty and the outside was remarkably unkempt. I don't think the owners gave much of a rat's ass, which frankly I think is great because if I (we) ever get a house, you can be damn sure I'm not doing any siding, no roofing, MAYBE I'll clean the gutters like once. And don't get any ideas about adding a new wing, we're not doing it. Honey... no, honey, I said no. NO.

Alas, the house was only abandoned for like a week before someone new came in. Now they're renovating. Actually I think they're done renovating. Who cares. For a while the entire front lawn was dead and it was great and we had fun and shit. The house and I, I mean. We had fun. You can't take that away from us!!!

Where will the future's ghost towns be? I can't say for sure, but Detroit is already on its way. With my help, it could be the biggest urbexplace in the planet. Dubai is another candidate now that people realize that building a theme park in the middle of a desert is a less than ideal idea (a lettandealea, if you will). Las Vegas is another candidate. Basically any city that's going to be fucked royally hard by even the slightest bit of climate change, so all of the southwest USA is on notice, as is Florida and New Orleans.

The problem is that abandoned buildings and such are not that accessible. I mean sure, a determined soul can break into an abandoned building, as many have, but it's illegal to do so and there are usually fences and wild animals around to deter you. And exposed metal. Oh my God they're all tetanus factories! Ewwwwwwww...

Nevertheless, a good birthday gift (ahem ahem) I think would be a trip to one of those places, just to wander around in a world that people decided to flee from. I'd just like to see what people leave behind, because you can tell a lot about people from what they leave behind. If you had to flee your home right this second, what would you leave behind, knowing that future archeologists like the famed Indiana Jones would be rummaging through your shit, looking for the Arc of the Covenant in your stash? (Note to Indy: If you're reading this, it's in the other seat-box thing. Next to the basement fireplace. Just lift up the seat. You'll know what I'm talking about. Basically don't look through my shit though. It's... um, it's really boring. Really really boring. Yeah.)

(In lieu of an abandoned building, I would accept a certain photoshoot of you in a certain football jersey of a certain football team, particularly of a certain football player named a certain Eli certain Manning, certainly. Ahem ahem.)

Well there you have it, kids. Did that creep you out? Well don't be scared, it's not like there are ghosts in them. I mean, why the hell would a ghost hang out in Asbury Park? You're a goddamn ghost, you can go anywhere in the world, and you're just gonna hang out at an abandoned movie theater? Okay, ghost man, I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but...

Still Rock 'n/'r Roll to Me Part 2: The Part 2ening

When we last left our heroes, they were locked in a sex factory closet war of words over the state of rock. Is it dead? The negative side went first, valiantly defending rock against the assholes of unrockertude. But now the affirmative weighs in.

But before we begin, let's give a round of applause to my favorite gal Tina for giving her two ZLOTYS or whatever barbaric currency she's using now. It took her a long time to get to this place so we wanna make her feel welcome so that she'll come backstage and then we can do very, very, very sensual things.

Also I'd like to say that LI is not NJ's hat. No. No, we are NYC's bedpan, and we are quite content to take in that lovely city piss, thankyouverymuch!

Now on with the show!

"Is rock dead?" We ask that question not because we don't know the answer, but because we do. And that is definitely YES. The analogy of the doctors asking if a patient is dead is stupid because all doctors have to do is whatever witchcraft things they do to figure out if someone is alive, and then they know. That's why they're doctors and why I'm not. Okay, look, how was I supposed to know that the lungs were an essential organ? C'mon, look at them, they look so stupid!!

No, the better analogy is coming across a car accident and seeing rock 'n roll, splayed out on the pavement a la Elvis if he drove, and saying, "Is this dude dead?" If you have to ask, then the answer is probably yes.

But what do we mean when we say "rock is dead?" Well, there are still rock acts, rock is still on the radio, it still has a very large following and still has concerts and shit. So how can it be dead? Well I got two words for you: Disco. ... Frankenfeuter. But the important word is disco.

Disco is dead. But you can still hear it on KTU and shit. But disco as we know it is dead. Nobody makes any more music for it. I mean sure, if someone really wanted to, they could make a new disco song, just like people still make new country songs and new freestyle songs and new house songs. But good luck getting anyone to listen to that without rolling their eyes. That's what we mean as being well and truly dead.

It's more accurate to say that rock is dying. It's spitting up blood and its life is flashing before its eyes and some hobo is going through its wallet. Well too bad, hobo, I already cleared out its cash and AAA card, have fun with its library card!!

In 20 years, good luck hearing rock on any Top 40 station outside of the "goofy oldy song we play once in a while" context. And good luck having those songs be ANYTHING other than U2 or something. Rock is in dire straits and it doesn't take a record mogul to see that (and they are seeing it).

Let's wind the clock back a bit. In the gay 90s, the "Is rock dead?" question first started getting asked because Kurt Cobain decided to end it all. At the time, grunge was going to revitalize rock music, if it's possible for grunge to revitalize anything, that is. But Cobain didn't play along, and now rock was doomed to fall into the pop rock routine. This was the fatal blow to rock's future because pop rock turned into a black hole from which no decent rock music could hope to escape.

So basically all mainstream rock we hear today is basically a repackaging of mid-90s pop rock, give or take a few gimmicks. Look at the "big" acts of today (not counting old acts coughing up new records): OK Go (one hit wonders), AFI (dead), Paramore (struggling), The Killers (ha), My Chemical Romance (double ha), Evanescence (holy shit). Simply put, no new musical act since 2000 has had any kind of staying power except Coldplay and MAYBE fucking Fall Out Boy.

Who is dominating the market? Linkin Park (amazingly still), Green Day and occasionally Weezer. Ah yes, it's 2000 all over again.

And there's the key indictment: "all over again." Only Linkin Park really sounds different from other rock groups, and they STILL have trouble getting any real wide recognition (because they are just not that good). But basically everyone sounds the same. Everyone. And people are starting to notice.

When Cobain died, the other question on everyone's lips (not mine, though. I was wondering when the fuck were we going to get personal jetpacks, motherfuckers) was "Who will save rock?" Who will save rock? Is that the question you ask of something that is supposedly alive and well? If your musical genre needs a savior, it's done for.

Cobain was supposed to be that savior, but he failed to rise on the third day. So the industry turned to Indiana Jones to find the lost saviour of rock. Remember those awful days? First it was U2, but people realized that U2 was already an established rock group. Then it was Foo Fighters, but they never really caught on beyond the rock genre. Then it was the Smashing Pumpkins, but then they vanished. Then it was Oasis, but they went nowhere. Then it was Limp fucking Bizkit but even that was too much of a joke to maintain. Then it was the White Stripes, who couldn't follow up anything for shit.

After that, people stopped asking that question. They knew the answer. Nobody can save rock music. Something is wrong with the genre at a fundamental level. Maybe the record companies are too incompetent to give the right people to push rock into a new creative direction, but after decades of rock in a noticable decline (the hair band days did a lot more damage to rock than anyone really wants to admit), rock producers are starting to realize that we've hit peak rock and that indeed motherfuckers would rather do something than rock out.

Like peak oil, industry folks will keep digging deeper and deeper for a decreasing amount of rock. I mean sure, you can write a new rock song and shit, but will it really be that interesting? It'll likely have the same chords, the same beat, the same melodic structure. Like country music, it'll be one giant self-referential mess. Worst of all, everyone will have heard it before and go, "Yeah, I liked that song... when it was fucking called 'Love in an Elevator.' Wait no, I hated that song. AND I HATE THIS SHIT."

Most of rock's glory is rooted firmly in the past. U2, the E-Street Band, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, what's left of the Beatles, all old. Most aren't even truly active. McCartney and Joel have grown bored with rock and are writing fucking classical music now. When two of your giants are bored with your music, you have to realize that rock's creative potential seems to have tapped out.

Really, rock hasn't been taken in a new direction since 2000, when Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park pushed rock/rap hybridization to the fore. But that never really took off, and now rock/rap has been pushed to the fringes where it can do precisely 0 to help mainstream rock. This is a serious problem. Rap and hip hop continue to dominate the airwaves not just because of saturation, but because they do new things, and people will listen to something that is new over something that they've heard before.

No matter what direction rock takes, it winds up back in the mid-90s pop rock funk (and not real funk, lame funk). If it's not Oasis trying to channel the Beatles (stupid move, by the way. If people want to hear the Beatles, THEY WILL FUCKING LISTEN TO THE BEATLES), it's the White Stripes trying to ape psychadelic rock (ditto) or today's modern bands trying to incorporate vaguely punk elements into their style (nothing turns off people more than people trying to act edgy for MTV's cameras, I believe).

This is not a question of rock being successful relative to pop or R&B or rap or whatever. This is a question of rock's ability to entertain people in new and exciting ways. Whatever you think of other musical genres, they are still innovating while rock keeps falling back on the same formulas. And people will get tired of it because they love SHINY NEW SHIT.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it's Top 40 music so the majority of it will always be shit. That can't be helped. But rock being shoved to the fringes of everyone's musical conscience can't really be a good thing. Rock is still a distinctive sound no matter how much pop borrows from it, and it should be preserved like the panda. Because rock is so fucking cute and dawwww look at it go down the slide! You are so precious rock! Yes you are! Yes you are!

Unless someone truly comes along to take rock in a new direction, in 20 years' time, there we will be, attending the 15th Oasis reunion concert, kids on our shoulders, you bellowing out "Wonderwall" and me checking my watch, hoping we get home in time to watch the Space Rangers play tonight's Space Stanley Cup Space Playoff game, the only people on earth still listening to rock music unironically. And you'll still be the sexiest thing I ever laid eyes on. Yes you are! Yes you are! BUT I DIGRESS.

Well thank you, affirmative side. So there you have it, the definitive argument over the state of rock 'n roll. I'd ask you what you think but you already weighed in. Unless you have more to say. Do you? DO YOU????? Only YOU can decide who won.



































































* not really, I decide that.