East coast vs. West coast

This is going to be a rap only post, so protect ya neck.

I don't even know how to begin so I'm going to start simple:

Fuck Compton.

I was watching "Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood" the other day and I realized that west coast gangsters were super-big cry babies. I also re-realized how super funny that movie is. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, these tough-ass gangstas didn't have anything to bitch about. What the fuck were they fighting over? I'd like to let a few pictures speak for me.

Yes, straight outta Compton. Now, I've never been to Compton but I imagine it's pretty scary. I mean, these guys look intimidating and I imagine where they live is intimidating as well. I imagine that it's pretty run down, lots of drug addicts lying in the gutters, busted up houses, cars missing tires and up on bricks. You know, the usual.

Heeeyyyyy.....what's that? That's a nice little beach house. Cute picket fence. It looks like that house may be located in the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

Why, here's another one! Nice big front yard. This is nice too. But what is that, palm trees? Can't be anywhere on the east coast then...except maybe Florida? Hmm.

Oh my, another! So nice....what's that written there? COMPTON, CA?!?!?!

ARE YOU SHITTIN' ME MAN?!?!? This is the HOOD? The GHETTO!?!

Straight outta Compton. Fuck you. No way.

THIS is the fucking ghetto:

These are all pictures of Harlem, NY in the mid to late nineties, the same period of time that Easy-E was rapping about being gangsta cold runnin' shit.

I'm no good at rappin' and rhymin', but instead of belly-aching about getting pulled over by the cops, Ice Cube should have been rapping about how the bright California sun keeps getting in his eyes, or how "I'm sufferin' from allergies, from all these palm trees" (that rhymes!)

Speaking of Ice Cube, I'd be remiss if I didn't post this:

Wait....wrong one...

That's better.

Sorry, this was a picture-heavy post but it needed to be said.

Again, fuck you Compton.

p.s.

I'd probably get in trouble if I didn't post a few pictures of Baltimore in it's current state.

You know what, now that I think about it, fuck Compton and fuck New York. All these pictures of Baltimore are representational of, in my opinion, at least half of the city. LA and NY can't even touch that. They can consider like, maybe 5% of their city as ghetto. Hells yeah.

Disney and shitty comedy

This is going to be an odd one. An interesting mix of something weird I really, really enjoy and something weird I really, really hate. You could say I should have titled this 'The good, the bad, and the (insert pun here)' but I don't have (insert word I inserted for pun here) to complain about and I'm pretty sure someone else since 1966 has already played off that movie title.

I'm pretty sure Laura is the only person who is aware of this but I love animated Disney musicals. I'm talking Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and of course, Aladdin.

These movies are the shit and I don't care who knows it. It doesn't get any better than belting out "Les Poissons" from The Little Mermaid.

See for yourself.

Hee hee hee, haw haw haw!

That's fucking hilarious. Not only is the song catchy and clever as hell but just great comedy. But the best thing is that they're fun. Here's another one of my favorites. Again, the song is very well written and of course, funny. There's not much more to it than that. It's very simple and perhaps that's what makes this shit so funny to me.

Speaking of 'simple', 'shit' and (the lack of) 'funny', this brings me to my next issue.

Maria Bramford.

You fucking unfunny bitch. I hate you.

I hope you Google your own name and find this. I know you will because at some point you'll forget to take your anti-depressants and you'll be so hungry for attention you'll scour the internet to find people talking about you.

Angry? Yes I am. Why? Because she's a comedian that is not funny. I've seen a lot of comedians that weren't funny and I don't hate them. In fact, she's so not funny that it makes me angry listening to her try to be funny.

My evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-DteBZgT9c

I got to 1:17 before I passed out.

But wait, there's more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCliYhFqC0g

Oh Maria! You're so kooky!!!

No, you're embarrassing.

Now, please notice that I'm not cherry picking any of these clips. They're all this awful. If she gets a half-hour stand up slot she spends 29 minutes of that talking in kooky voices and making sounds with her nose. I first became aware of her when I watched the Comedians of Comedy DVD starring Patton Oswalt (awesome!), Zach Galifianakis (awesome!), Brian Posehn (awesome!) and Maria Bramford (huh?). Adding her to the bill is something I will never understand. I'd rather not think about it. She is honestly the worst comedian I have ever seen.

What prompted me to complain about her is yesterday I listened to her and Aziz Ansari on the Doug Loves the Movies podcast and she spent the entire time talking in her kooky voice and being awkwardly unfunny. I couldn't believe that even in a situation where she just has to sit there and chat she couldn't behave normally.

It's a shame I spent more time bitching about Maria Bramford than touting the joys of Disney movies but seriously...

Just quit already.

KISS and more shitty music. IT'S A LONG ONE.

I was listening to David Cross' audiobook 'I Drink For a Reason' and at one point he talks about his love for the Brooklyn, NY band Les Savy Fav.

If you're not familiar with this band (hey, neither was I at the time) go ahead and do a quick YouTube search on them. Actually, let me do you the favor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNxx6HzURY

I know, right?!?

Wait...just to make sure we're both on the same page here, I'd like to emphatically express, so we're clear, that this band fucking sucks. And here I'm slowly becoming more aware not only of the band, but of their popularity and this infuriates me.

After watching the above YouTube clip of their song "The Sweat Descends", I began to feel a very familiar feeling, one that I usually feel whenever I hear a band that, more or less, is total shit. Usually these bands have a certain, unmistakable "shit sound" that they all share in common; a seeming lack of talent and musical ability, songs without structure or at the least, a catchy melody, and in Les Savy Fav's case, a horrible fucking hipster front man.

The thing that annoys me the most is that I've personally written "The Sweat Descends". Well, not that EXACT song, but one very much like it. See, whenever I'm playing in a band and we're practicing, it's common place to just start making shit up between songs. The drummer just starts playing some silly beat and the guitars begin playing some delayed spastic noise and you do this for a minute or so before stopping and laughing at how incredibly stupid that just sounded. "Okay, back to the real music" you'd say.

But what I've realized is that people are mostly interested in that "incredibly stupid" stuff we just played. People would rather hear the jerk-off spaz stuff we play in between our REAL songs than our actual REAL songs. And the jerk-off spaz stuff sounds almost exactly like "The Sweat Descends".

My mind is blown.

So, basically, I've been trying WAY too hard making, in my opinion, very good, serious music. The masses don't want this. They want something they can shake their neon green fanny packs to while their whippit high from a Cool Whip can wears off. Fuck it, I wouldn't make it in that crowd anyway. To start, I don't live in Brooklyn, plus I like a challenge, it would be way too easy to gain 50 lbs, go bald, keep my beard and wear ONLY bright red shorts and a necktie in public.

Which leads me to my next point which has almost nothing to do with the previous section. The band KISS.

I remember being a kid and my mom telling me not to listen to certain types of music, certain types that she, herself actually listened to as a teenager. Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and of course, KISS. KISS, my mother said, was an evil band who played evil music. And I believed her. I mean, fuck, look at Gene Simmons:

Seriously! This guy looks like he'd eat your face off while fucking you in the ass. Probably with either one of those spikes or that bass guitar. Maybe both. I mean, shit, he's a fucking demon. At that young age, KISS was a band that was incredibly foreign to me and therefore scary. I mean, I almost didn't want to listen to their music because I assumed I'd either shit my pants or the floor will open and Satan himself will pull me under. I thought all these things for quite a long time.

Until I actually heard their music.

"IIIII, wanna rock and roll all niiiiight, and party every day!"


WHAT THE FUCK? Who is this? What? KISS? That satanic, evil band that my mother told me not to listen to? This is what they sound like??? Wait, this is what their drummer looks like?

A FUCKING CAT?!?!?!?

Your bass guitarist dresses up like a demon and you choose a CAT. Dear God this is unbelievable. What a horrible disappointment. The most famous acronym for KISS was "Knights In Satan's Service". Well, if you think Satan listens to this shit, you're an idiot. 

To finish, I hate a lot of music.

No way.

I passed a walking Dan Deacon on the street the other day while riding my bike, and our eyes locked. He nodded, as if to say, "Hey, yeah. I'm Dan Deacon and I notice you, noticing me." and I wanted to yell at him "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT."

Holy shit!

This still exists!

I wrote a Maya Angelou-esque poem for Nate:

Child, child
Morning star
As yellow as a ripe banana
You rise and set, wax and wane with the light
Child, child
Thick legs and strong back
You pin me down
Good morning.

Fuck you US Postal Service.

And fuck you too, Delaware.

(p.s. and fuck you too, Bank of America)

I'm sick of it.

There used to be a time when I thought, "Aw, it IS sad that no one sends letters anymore. Poor Postal Service doesn't have any work to do." Well, bullshit, I don't give a fuck. Fuck you.

You know why no one sends letters anymore? BECAUSE THEY DON'T FUCKING GET TO WHERE THEY NEED TO GO. You want to send someone something and you want to know not only exactly when you sent it, whether or not they received it and you want to get a copy immediately and re-send it if needed? And do it for FREE?

SEND A FUCKING E-MAIL.

In October we went through two tolls in Delaware. No cash. Use card? No. (Seriously, who the fuck doesn't accept cards 3 months away from the year 2010? Grow the fuck up.) How can I pay? You will be billed. Okay.

Fast forward a few weeks and I get a letter in the mail from that state that no one cares for or knows anything about. Two tickets for $34 each! What the fuck for? A $4 toll and a $30 administrative fee! Holy shit! $68 fucking dollars for two $4 tolls.

I wrote a letter telling them that legally/technically, I did not break their Delaware Toll code (too descriptive for now) and I do not owe them anything beyond $8. Case closed. No argument. I did nothing wrong legally.

I went to the bank and got two money orders for $4 each. Thanks to Bank of America, I had to pay an $8 charge for each money order. Fuck you, fucking $16 in charges. Fuck you. You print on fucking paper. Not even full 8.5"x11" sheets either, it's like, a fucking 1/4 of a sheet. Fuck you. Ink doesn't cost THAT much.

Mail it.

Wait.

I figure, hey, they must've agreed and dismissed my violation because I haven't heard anything (DC's ticket violation system does this, hence my assumption).

Today I get two letters, each corresponding to one of my toll violations, each informing me that they did not hear from me by the due date and now EACH TOLL IS $50 FUCKING DOLLARS. $100 TOTAL. BECAUSE OF EIGHT FUCKING DOLLARS.

FFFJFD:DFS:KLD:KL JFE :IO[0UR{IOJFE{IOJF[iohjg[a'a'adg'adgskadfskfdkjldfs GFUF FUCK YOU!

WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THE LETTERS GET TO THEM. YOU PUT A FUCKING STAMP ON AN ENVELOPE, STICK YOUR SHIT IN IT, LICK IT, WRITE A FUCKING ADDRESS ON IT AND PUT IT IN THE FUCKING BOX. SOME DIPSHIT PICKS IT UP, A FUCKING COMPUTER SORTS IT AND ANOTHER ASSHOLE PUTS IT INTO ANOTHER BOX WHERE A FUCKING STATE EMPLOYEE SHITHEAD READS IT AND PRESSES "ERASE" ON THEIR FUCKING KEYBOARD.

If I ever read about someone murdering 20 people at a toll lane with an assault rifle, fuckin' let 'em go. They've had enough and so have I. I'll be at the front of the support rally for the next postal employee that fuckin' mows down a roomful of co-workers because I've fuckin' had it.

All this is on the tail end of me buying something online, it not working, and I mail it back as a return. Did they ever get the fucking package? NO. SHIT NO. Did I ever get the package back? NO. FUCK NO. Will I ever get my package or my money back?

FUCK YOU POSTAL SERVICE.

FUCK YOU DELAWARE.


FUCK YOUR STUIPD, SMALL STATE THAT EVERYONE MAKES FUN OF.


Goodnight, and merry Christmas everyone.

THIS IS IT!

It's happening people, this is what we've all been waiting for! Man controls robot arm with mind AND senses touch!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/video_and_audio/8392111.stm

Extras:

Bionic vision:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7923775.stm

More bionic limbs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7774426.stm (Note, I would suggest not watch while eating. Or, perhaps it's just me with the weak stomach.)