PETA Is Detrimental To The Animal Rights Movement. Yeah, I Said It (Now Move On, Already)

In this new feature called Yeah, I Said It (Now Move On Already), bazookaluca attempts to dole out some simple truths about certain subjects. These maxims might be ignored or suppressed by people who are out to derail the betterment of humanity as a whole. You yourself might even disagree with some of the statements contained within these pages, and I would humbly respect your opinion if it (and you) weren’t, in fact, wrong. But it is (and you are), so listen up:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk is a highly motivated person, but in the way that Osama bin Laden, Ann Coulter, and Reverend Fred Phelps are highly motivated people; which is to say, we’d all be better off if they decided not to get out of bed in the morning.

Like the rest of these cultural pests, Newkirk has used underhanded, shock-and-awe tactics and, more often than not, crazy attention-grabbing stunts, in an attempt to subvert some facet of the establishment. She’s done this mostly to the detriment of her own cause—to stop animals from being eaten, worn, experimented on, or used for entertainment. And while under the right circumstances these are worthwhile causes to champion, it is the belligerent manner with which her organization chooses to attain these goals that is ultimately detrimental to the credibility of the animal rights movement as a whole.

From its very start, PETA was inherently founded on unrealistic and impractical ideals. Their stance on complete animal noninterference by humans is beyond delusional, if not plainly idiotic. They make the assumption that humans are to act as mere spectators in the food chain and not as active participants. Even as a decade-plus vegetarian, I see this as a blatant misconception of evolutionary history.

And what’s more, in their fervor to reject speciesism (the practice of assigning different values or rights to animals based on their respective species), they ignore the benefits of symbiotic relationships in nature, which clearly are integral components of survival. In their failure to recognize that different species stand to gain from each other by interacting, they oppose such innocuous practices as blind persons using seeing-eye dogs and farming bees for honey production.

These acts are not only advantageous for humans, but also harmless for the animals involved. While perhaps humans may stand to gain more than the animals involved in these cases, it’s certainly a victimless crime. In return for their duties, the dogs are fed, loved and taken care of and the bees are merely left to do what they are evolutionarily programmed to do—make honey.

What I find more ludicrous, and what most people might not even know about PETA, is that they don’t want people to have animals as pets. At all. No interaction, whatsoever. This, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of its supporters are proud pet owners themselves. PETA equates pet ownership to slavery and ignores the fact that responsible pet owners can be as committed to their animals as they are to other humans, if not more so. Once again, they fail to recognize that two species can benefit from each other by cohabiting.

Even with a clearly controversial issue such as biomedical research—one that makes most people uncomfortable—the reality is that the discovery and production of medicines such as insulin, penicillin, anticoagulants and pain killers would not have been possible without animal testing, therefore, we as humans have an inherent civic responsibility to pursue testing for the sake of a better existence and progress. However, Newkirk has stated that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”

Not coincidentally, PETA gained notoriety for uncovering cruel practices in a primate research laboratory at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Springs, Maryland in 1981. And rightly, it led to an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act in 1985 that ensured that researchers do not cause unnecessary suffering to laboratory animals. This type of pursuit is commendable because it exposed misconduct by a largely unregulated industry. But PETA’s focus gradually switched from fighting for worthwhile causes and advancing the public discourse on issues regarding animal rights to frivolously attempting to gain international attention as a way to raise funds. This has been attributed to Ingrid Newkirk’s own ambition and moral entitlement.

In this shameless pursuit of attention, PETA’s image has almost exclusively been characterized by exploitative marketing techniques which often include ad campaigns that are demeaning and objectifying to women. They think that they can take a misogynistic approach to selling virtuous principles, as long as it gains press. Newkirk doesn’t deny it:

The fact is we may be doing all sorts of things on a campaign but the one thing that gets attention is the outrageous thing. It simply goes to prove to us each time, that that is the thing that’s going to work; and so we won’t shirk from doing that facet.

– Ingrid Newkirk, Satya, January, 2001

But is it ethical to advance one set of values to the detriment of another?

And what about the endless string of publicity stunts that keep them in the news, including but not limited to:

• Putting a naked pregnant woman in a cage to dramatize the plight of pigs.
• Throwing buckets of paint onto people wearing fur.
• Breaking into stores and vandalizing leather merchandise.
• Running celebrity ads where they’d “Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”.
• Referring to factory farming as “Holocaust On Your Plate”.
• Passing out pamphlets comparing the suffering of animals to the plight of slavery, while dressed in KKK outfits.
• Asking the Pet Shop Boys to change their name to the “Rescue Shelter Boys”.
• Demanding that we start calling fish “sea kittens”.
• Saying that feeding your kids meat is child abuse.
• Saying that eating meat will give you a limp dick.
• Asking Ben & Jerry’s to start using breast milk in their ice cream instead of dairy milk.
• Getting Playmates to wear lettuce bikinis at public events.
• Trying to air an overtly sexual “Vegetarianism Is Sexy” ad during the Super Bowl.
• Sending President Obama a Humane Bug Catcher after he swatted a fly during a television interview.
• Pushing to halt the Seattle fish mongers from tossing fish.
• Distributing “Unhappy Meals”, containing a menacing, knife-wielding Ronald McDonald cutout, a ketchup packet disguised as chicken blood, a plastic chicken covered in blood and a “McCruelty” t-shirt.

At what point does this impertinence become self-defeating? Is this progressive or regressive marketing?

In spite of all this, PETA’s credibility is ultimately plagued by its own contradictory company practices. It preaches compassion and equality while condoning the use of violence, extortion and intimidation to achieve its own goals. The group has provided financial support to the Animal Liberation Front, a militant group, characterized by the FBI as a domestic terror threat. Its members have been linked to several acts of arson and plots of violence.

But perhaps what is most hypocritical is the outrageous numbers of pet euthanasia that PETA has been responsible for in the last few years. Since 1998, PETA has put down more than 17,400 animals. In 2006, in Virginia alone, PETA killed 97.4 percent of the animals it took in. Just twelve animals—out of 3,061 the group took in that year—were adopted out to new owners. To put this in perspective, in Virginia the average euthanasia rate for the Humane Society was just 34.7 percent in 2006.

In 2005, police in North Carolina discovered that in the course of a month, 80 animals had been euthanized by PETA shelter workers and criminally dumped in area commercial dumpsters. Animal abuse charges were filed.

PETA has justified their actions by saying that the vast majority of the animals it takes in are unwanted and that the conditions the animals were previously being kept in prevents them from being adoptable. But recently, a number of no-kill shelters around the country have shown that the overpopulation perception is largely just a myth. The Nevada Humane Society has acchieved adoption rates of upward of 90% just by dramatically ramping up volunteer programs and extending work hours in recent years.

Surly, if PETA—the largest and most well-funded animal rights group in the world ($34 million in revenue, 2008)—wanted to, it could acchieve the same kind of success. But their view on pet ownership as slavery prevents them from doing so; they would rather kill an animal than make an effort to get it adopted.

Ultimately, PETA is more of a detriment to the animal rights movement than a benefit. Their claim that they’re merely raising awareness by any means necessary is misguided and dangerous. It raises loads of money by preying on celebrity endorsements and publicity stunts, but does very little in terms of positive, progressive action.

If you care about animals and want to make a real difference, you’re better off giving your money and your time to organizations like these:

The Humane Society

World Wildlife Fund

American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Friends Of Animals

Now stop giving PETA money and move on already!

America Agrees: Guy Fieri Is Still A Douche

I would like to thank certified douche bag Guy Fieri for being the inspiration for Bazookaluca’s most viewed and sought-after post ever: No More Mr. Douche Guy.

Day after day, through his various vexatious Food Network shows and truly terrible T.G.I. Friday’s commercials, people all across America are directly exposed to Mr. Fieri’s douche-baggery and as a result, feel compelled to commiserate about it with other like-minded souls on the internet.

More often than not, they end up within these sympathetic pages.

And I am proud to offer sanctuary to these protectors of good taste for whom Googling the phrase “guy fieri douche” brings temporary relief and the reassurance that it’s still not socially acceptable to wear your sunglasses so casually on the back of your head without suffering severe repercussions.

So thanks, Guy, for directing traffic to my site. I don’t profit from it financially, per se, but I sleep a lot better at night knowing I’m not alone.

I am not alone.

I’m The Man Buying Stocks On The Day Of The Crash

Hey, do you know what’s really interesting about the recent financial crisis?

All the corporate suicides!

There’s been a bunch of ‘em recently. CEO’s, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all over the world are committing hara-kiri like nobody’s business. One nutty blogger even has a running tally of mortgage-related suicides in the US and it’s currently up to seventy two (although I’m not sure when he started counting or what his criteria is.)

Technology hasn’t helped the trend either. According to the Financial Times, in mid-October, at the peak of the financial crisis, the phrase “suicide methods” suddenly rose to a multi-year high on Google Trends, which tracks how often words or phrases have been searched on Google. Some people have gone as far as calling it an epidemic.

Yes, by all accounts, it’s a hard knock life right now for the stinking rich. So much pressure at those ridiculously high-paying jobs! I don’t envy them at all.

The following are some of the more notorious suicides that caught my eye:

-Back in September, Kirk Stephenson, the CEO of private equity house Olivant, jumped in front of a speeding train at a rail station west of London because the value of his company’s stake in banking giant UBS went down 20% from £950million to £770million (that’s British Pound Sterlings signs, kiddies) and apparently he couldn’t handle the stress that went along with that type of loss. He was married and had an eight year old son. I guess he must’ve not been thinking about them when he made the decision to leap onto the tracks.

But you know, poor guy, he had to do it. Do you expected him to downgrade to a 200 foot yacht with just ONE measly helicopter?!? Fuck that. Once you get accustomed to a certain lifestyle, it’s hard to go back. It was best to leap in front of that speeding train. It was courageous, really.

-A few months later, two days before Christmas in New York, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, was found dead at his desk, both wrists slashed and a bottle of pills nearby. Apparently, the esteemed monsieur told the cleaning staff at his office that he wanted them out by 7pm so that he could work late, then locked the door and placed a waste paper basket under his desk to catch the blue blood flowing from his open wrists (how considerate of him.) Security staff found him the next morning, still sitting at his desk, with a box-cutter on the floor beside him.

The guy’s fortune was the definition of “old money”, as his relatives had been ennobled by France’s King Louis XIV after bankrolling his reign –some of them even got guillotined for it back at the height of the French Revolution. Apparently not enough of ‘em, though.

M. de la Villehuchet had lost $1.4billion of his family’s money in the notorious Bernard Madoff scam. When it became obvious to him that the money lost in the Ponzi scheme was unrecoverable, he chose to end it all rather than face life being just mildly wealthy. How noble of him.

-In more recent news, the body of Chicago real estate mogul Steven L. Good was found in his Jaguar (pronounced “Jag-yu-wahr”, of course) just this Monday, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. His firm was responsible for more than 45,000 properties sold for over $10billion in sales, but I guess he couldn’t handle the pressure of the real estate bubble bursting. Maybe he wasn’t much of a saver.

-And the very following day, German billionaire Adolf Merckle, jumped in front of a train in the town of Blaubeuren in southwestern Germany after his holding company, VEM Vermoegensverwaltung (phew, thank god for cut & paste) ran up a significant amount of debt. His personal net worth at the time of his death was estimated at around $9.2billion, down from a previous estimate of $12.8billion. That extra $3.6billion really made a difference, huh?

Oh sure. You might think I’m a jerk for making jokes about these people’s misfortunes, but I don’t feel any sympathy for these materialistic pricks, none whatsoever. If they measured their self worth by their bank accounts and couldn’t go on living because of a slight dip (or even a huge one), then fuck ‘em. They were probably doing more harm than good in the world. I’m not hating, I’m just saying that there’s way more people in the world that are deserving of some pity than these greedy bastards.

And can someone explain what is up with all the death-by-train suicides? What are these rich motherfuckers doing at the train station? Shouldn’t they be jumping from their private jets into molten gold pools while strangling themselves with diamond-encrusted choke chains? That’s what I’d do with my billions. Because, you know, there’s only so much shit you can buy before getting bored –at some point you gotta get creative.

All of this just reminds me of this video, courtesy of the Onion:

Cut The Shit – Let Us Fly With Our Knives

As a former scout and proud knife-carrying citizen (well, technically a resident, if you want to be a jerk about it) I second this motion as put forth on BoingBoing for president-elect Obama to address:

The Right To Bear Pocket Knives

Up until the day the terrorists won, I routinely carried my trusty tool (not an euphemism, for once) in my pocket or backpack on my trans-Atlantic flights to and from Italy, with ne’er a complication. But the fear-mongering institution of Homeland Security put an end to that, and it’s time that someone, in turn, puts an end to their fascist, police-state policies.

Flying was bad enough before all these random, unreasonable rules and regulations (the liquids ban and the 1-quart Ziploc bag rule also come to mind –I still think S.C. Johnson & Son is in cahoots with the Bush administration for that one), but it’s been nearly unbearable over the last few years. Most, if not all of the policies are pointless, counter-intuitive, inconvenient and wasteful, and they are so incompetently enforced that they don’t fulfill the purpose they were enacted to serve (kind of encompassing the Bush administration, come to think of it.)

So, instead of benefiting from these sacrifices for collective public safety, we all have lost considerable personal freedoms, not to mention time and money. Let’s cut the shit, all right?

The merits of carrying a pocket knife are numerous and overwhelmingly outnumber the chances of it being used for nefarious reasons. Not a day goes by that I don’t use mine, it’s probably the most useful tool on my person at all times –more so than even my cell phone (actually, I used my knife to open up the impregnable clamshell plastic packaging my cell phone came in, thankyouverymuch…)

Am I supposed to abandon my convenient and practical utensil when I fly somewhere just to satisfy a bullshit sense of security?

Fuck that.

Obama, the ball is in your court. This one’s a no-brainer, do what you gotta do.

Comcast Must Die!

Comcast is testing our patience.

Adrienne and I have been without cable and internet at our new place for two weeks. Comcast missed the first appointment to come set everything up because they didn’t update my current phone number in their system, even though I had previously notified them three, count them, three times about the change (by phone and online). Adrienne waited all day for them to show up or call, but nothing. So of course, they had to set up another appointment –aaand it was for a full six days later.

They actually showed up for that one, but not in the original window they had given us of 11am-3pm. They showed up at 5:30pm. What the fuck? Adrienne wasted her whole day waiting for them –aaagain.

This time they hooked up the cable, but not with our full channel package (no HBO or Showtime) and they had to give us a new cable box, so we lost all the things we had recorded on our old DVR. The technician also set up the internet and assured me that their servers were currently down but that it would start working again later on last night –buuut of course, it never did.

So today, I got in touch with Comcast again (for what feels like the 30th time) and they told me that they diagnosed a non-specific(?) malfunction and would have to send out another technician –aaand that they couldn’t do it until Monday from 3-5pm.

So I’m going to have to leave work early on Monday to go wait for them at home because Adrienne will be in Portland at the time. I get paid hourly, so I’m going to lose money by doing this.

Comcast is now taking food from the mouths of my imaginary children.

All I want to be able to do is watch television while concurrently surfing on the internet. It’s all I ask for.

I no longer want to have to walk down the block with my laptop to use the first available unsecure wireless connection. I don’t want to go down to the Edgewood Caribou Coffee and pretend to drink coffee for an hour so I can check my goddam email and the half dozen social networking sites I belong to.

I also run an online business from my home, which is kind of hard to do without the internet.

I’m seriously considering getting the Dish and DSL right about now. Just the thought of paying Comcast good money for their crappy service after all this makes me very angry.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

Summer Blockbuster Movie Marathon Retrospective Extravaganza Netflix Festival!

With Adrienne out of the country I’ve been able to shift our communal Netflix queue to all the big, dumb, lowest common denominator movies that I’ve missed over the last couple of years. It’s not that Adrienne doesn’t share my love for movies of questionable taste, but for some reason she wasn’t interested in seeing any of these iffy, big budget releases with me.

Plus, when she’s in control of the queue we end up getting twelve depressing documentaries in a row about the plight of goat herders in Bangladesh and one can only take so much human suffering before they have to turn to mindless tales of transforming robots or 300 ft. monsters.

Here’s my thoughts on the first batch of recent viewings:

Transformers – I was looking for a straight-up, no plot, all action movie with explosions and big fucking robots that transformed into cars and shit, but all I found was a pastiche of studio production notes smothering an already devitalized premise.

I can hear the studio executives now:

Can we make at least one of the Autobots more, you know, “street”?

Optimus Prime should have some flames painted on his sides to be more extreme; the kids like extreme. . .

I know that Bumblebee was a VW in the cartoon, but we got all this money from Chevy to pimp out their new Camaro, so. . .

We have to work a young, attractive girl who happens to be a computer hacker/nerd in the plot, it tested well with 18-30 year old males. . .

That’s the downfall of most of these big budget flicks, too many people with no clue having inputs on the production because they shelled out the big bucks.

I stopped paying attention about halfway through. I occasionally raised my head from behind my laptop to see what was going on, but I rarely kept watching for more than a few minutes at a time. It was actually pretty tedious to make through and I kept waiting for it to end. The dialogue was atrocious and there was way too many failed attempts at comedy.

I should have expected it from a Michael Bay movie, but I always seem to forget how awful he truly is since I only see one of his movies every three years or so. The overblown, turgid excess that plagues Hollywood suits him to a tee (and it’s also what made him a millionaire, by the way, so take notes kids).

I was also reminded how crappy of a storyline the original cartoon had and it amazed me that it got made into a movie at all. I guess they were banking on no one actually remembering the plot from when they were kids. I certainly didn’t, although I’m sure it didn’t help that I watched the original cartoons in Italy, dubbed in Italian. Oh, and I was five years old and didn’t really yearn for good character and plot development quite just yet.

The story goes something like this: rival shape-shifting robot gangs from outer space fight over some alien substance in order to rebuild something or other to regain control of their planet or the universe or something. Oh, and sexy, sweaty human teenagers get in on the action somewhere along the line. And Marines. And secret government agencies. And there’s special glasses that see secret shit. And lots of product placement.

It was really a big waste of time and no one should have to watch it for any reason whatsoever. So, of course, the sequel will be out next year and it will certainly make a billion dollars on opening weekend.

Cloverfield - I had no expectations for this Godzilla-inspired, cinéma réalité, internet hype-machine of a movie, and that’s probably why I enjoyed it so much.

Now, I must preface my review by saying that I love any story involving catastrophic events that force characters to rely on basic survival skills to make it through alive. Love that shit. It’s why I liked Aliens, Predator, 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, Children of Men, The Descent and countless others. I think we all unconsciously wish to be rocked out of our daily grinds by a cataclysmic, society-breaking event or plague that forces us to prioritize down to our basic survival skills. It’s an innate primal instinct that will always reside in our reptilian brain and it’s what really drives my interest in those movies; I fully embrace the survival mentality.

And personally, I can’t wait for the day that we’re all going to be pushed back to our original scavenging existence. Unfortunately, most of you won’t make it, but it’s a necessary sacrifice and maybe you should have been a little more keen on your personal fitness and vestigial wit.

You think I go running five days a week for fun? I’m just keeping prepared. I treat Survivorman and Man vs. Wild as instructional videos. And no matter where I go, I’ve always got an escape route worked out in my head, just in case. When the shit hits the fan, my friends, I’m gonna be okay. Will you?

The movie’s premise is simple enough and doesn’t try to do anything but present you with a first row seat to some really disastrous events caused by a 30 story high monster rampaging through the streets of New York City. There’s no backstory, no intricate explanation on the monster’s origins or how to defeat it or a convenient resolution. Just the fun stuff. I could have done away with the film’s first fifteen minutes or so of character setup and romantic conflict and dove right in the destruction, but that’s just me being a bit nitpicky.

The visuals are great. They’re at times reminiscent of the brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet documentary, 9/11, which was a powerful first person video witness account of the Twin Towers collapsing. I’m sure it was referenced to make the shots realistic, especially for documenting the chaos at the beginning of the onslaught. The shaky camera work made me glad that I saw it on my television instead of a nausea-inducing big screen, but it really wasn’t too bad.

The open ended concept makes this movie tailor-made for a sequel documenting a different point of view on the events and I’m sure we’ll see it soon enough since the movie was a success. Let’s hope they don’t take it overboard though.

Overall, it was entertaining and it satisfied my subverse hunger for wreckage and fulfilled my apocalyptic fantasies. If only it were true.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry - I haven’t been interested in an Adam Sandler production since Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore but this one got my attention because the screenplay was written by Alexander Payne who also wrote and directed Election and Sideways, two movies I liked very much.

This one didn’t really live up to his earlier work. I didn’t hate it or anything. It was fine and had a few chuckles here and there, but overall it was stuck between a gag-filled farce and a sentimental morality tale, never fully committing to either and therefore detrimental to both.

A definite redeeming factor, if I’m allowed to regress to a typical, one-dimensional male interest, is Jessica Biel’s stunning body that’s featured numerously throughout the flick. She is pretty magnificent. I’m a fan.

Semi-Pro - All I can say about this one is that Will Ferrell needs some realigning of his comedic talents. He walks a very fine line. I have to admit that both Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby were pretty funny and I’ve probably quoted them both numerous times, but Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro were quite abysmal in comparison.

I know that it’s pointless to treat these films individually since they’re pretty much all about one ridiculous character existing in different settings, but I think some were executed with more attention and care than others. I guess it comes down to the script (if they actually stick to one) and it’s clear that the more recent examples are lacking in this department.

Comedy is hard and requires diligence and loads of trial and error. Will Ferrell should take the time to choose his projects more wisely, although I suspect he’ll keep cranking them out as fast as he can until people stop watching them. Hey, I’ll probably see Step Brothers at some point this year. You win again, Ferrell. You win again.

That’s enough for now, I’ve gone on a bit too much. Here’s to hoping that Hot Rod, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, Feast and Super High Me will be equally as discussion rousing! They’re next on the queue. I’ll chime in with my thoughts if I deem it necessary.

Ad Nauseum

I watch several food-related shows (Top Chef, No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, Iron Chef, etc.) and after a considerable amount of time, the number of food-as-sex analogies, metaphors and similes has finally reached critical mass for me.

Dishes are constantly being referred to as “sexy”, “orgasmic”, “arousing”, “sensual” or causing “an orgy of flavor in one’s mouth” –one chef even going as far as saying that his excitement for a dish resulted in a “culinary boner”.

I understand the correlation between the innate joys of eating and the carnal pleasures of sex, but I’m also very keen to when an expression becomes a trite cliché, depleted of its originality or strength of meaning. This is one of those cases.

Plus, I don’t want a sweaty, overweight, snaggle-toothed British chef to serve me his “sex on a plate”. Keep that shit to yourself, mate. Pish posh, pop around the block, and piss off, tosser!

Let’s find more original analogies for food, shall we?

May I perhaps suggest comparing your mélange of lobster and artichokes with fresh walnuts and foie gras caramelized in quince jelly to Leonard Cohen’s New Skin For The Old Ceremony album? It’s a classic, refined and gratifying, while concurrently expunging presumption with its congenial timelessness.

No?

All right……

It’s Already Been Broughten, Literally…

Don’t ask me how I know this¹, but the Family Channel loves The Cutting Edge and the Bring It On movie franchises way too much for comfort.

Every weekend it’s a marathon of one or the other. They usually spread them out over Friday, Saturday and Sunday night so that we can presumably plan a whole weekend around these gems.

Who knew they even made a second Cutting Edge movie, let alone a third?! And there’s like four(!) Bring It On movies. The first one was entertaining in a harmless, teen movie kind of way, but it certainly didn’t merit three sequels, especially when they don’t even feature Kirsten Dunst’s charming snaggletooth.

And while we’re on the subject, I think the phrase “bring it on” should be retired for good. I hear it daily and people who say it are seldom taken up on the offer. As a matter of fact, the next person that says “bring it on” to me is gonna get clothes-lined on the spot, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now, if you’ll allow me to go all George Carlin on you, here’s some other words and/or phrases that should go extinct:

Diva – I blame VH1 for springing this term into the open for every self-involved, egotistical, conceited cunt to describe herself when they started airing their VH1 Divas concerts ten years ago. The concerts were bad enough, but VH1 gave an epithet to a group of people that really didn’t need any more sense of entitlement.

Genius - This word gets thrown around way too much, usually by people who don’t know any better, especially when it involves some form of art. Just because you’ve never heard anyone take acid before and fart into a microphone with some reverb and delay and call it music doesn’t make the members of the Animal Collective² artistic geniuses, it just makes you sound like an asshole.

Literally - “You literally froze to death while walking to your car this morning?!”, I literally wish that were true.

“I know, right?” - It’s the U.S. version of n’est pas? and if more Americans realized that, they would certainly stop saying it.

Fierce - I hated this word until I saw this SNL skit and now maybe it’s growing back on me. No, I take that back, it’s still quite unpalatable and disagreeable. Thanks, Tyra Banks.

Bro - Unless it is being used in reference to one’s actual brother, it is inexcusable and punishable by liberal use of taser. Some frat boys have become aware of this and have promptly switched to kid, which is even more degrading. I say, do away with both and call it a day.

“_______ rocks!” – My friend James already covered this one quite extensively on his blog (btw, I hope he has it set on public view otherwise the link won’t work) so I won’t even get into it.

That’s it for now.

You can thank the Family Channel for this rant.

¹All right, Adrienne makes me watch Gilmore Girls reruns on the Family Channel all the time. That Lorelai Gilmore is kind of hot but she really needs to shut the hell up every once in a while. The dialogue on that show gives me a headache.

²I really don’t mean to rag on the Animal Collective all the time, but it’s just so easy…

Banale Minutia

I’m incredibly bored right now. Adrienne went to bed at 9:30 tonight because she had been up and working since 6:30 this morning. The NBA Playoff game between the Houston Rockets and the Utah Jazz fails to entertain me. There’s nothing on the DVR that I haven’t yet watched. The Netflix dvds are currently en route. And in addition, the internet is no longer amusing.

Crap. Time for a blog.

I spent the day cleaning the apartment and doing laundry with occasional peeks at the NFL draft on television¹. I spent nearly five hours cleaning my 1,150sq ft hovel. Once I get going on the cleaning, I like to be thorough. I swept, vacuumed, washed, brushed, shined, dusted, scoured and scrubbed. I even pumiced. . . and I hardly ever pumice.

I can thank my mother for the innate sense of cleanliness I’ve inherited (although I also blame her for the domineering anal retentiveness, thanks mom!); it’s served me well. I’ve kept every place I’ve lived in progressively and exponentially cleaner. Consequently, I have to imagine that the last few decades of my life will be spent in an aseptic, sterile environment, relegated from the outside world with crazed, delusional thoughts offering the only company and reassurance. But that’s at least another five years or so away, so let’s not worry about that just yet.

I do often wonder if I am slightly obsessive compulsive or if I’m just a dude who likes to keep things neat. I mean, I don’t completely lose my shit if things are placed in the wrong place or anything, it just kind of bothers me to know that they should be placed somewhere else. I justify this behavior with my affinity for not losing things and always knowing where something is; in other words, I just really want to be on top of my shit, 24-7. Is such organizational excellence so out of the ordinary that it needs to be ridiculed and labeled as abnormal? It certainly shouldn’t be.

Let’s put it this way, if I ever need a 3/8″ hexagonal screwdriver I can have it in my hot little hand in six seconds flat because I know exactly where it is and where it should be. Is this a deplorable trait?

Fuck no.

I don’t know who was the first doctor to diagnose someone as having obsessive compulsive behavior but I bet you he was a messy son of a bitch who just couldn’t understand devotion to precision. Pity.

All right, I guess I’m off to bed. Brunch at Canoe tomorrow. Yum.

¹The coverage of the draft has gotten monumentally overblown. It’s the only thing that has been discussed on any sports media outlet for the last month and a half even though only a small portion of the players drafted will make an immediate impact in the season that is still four months away. Jeez, there’s other sports which are actually being played right now, is this kind of coverage really warranted?

The draft was on for twelve straight hours on ESPN today and it will be on again tomorrow morning for the same amount of time. They had a team of at least a dozen analysts there for the duration of the event, as if such massive dissection was really needed.

Who gives a fuck about Brady Quinn’s feelings about sliding down to the 22nd pick?! Should you and I really care that this prick will not make as much money as some misguided people thought he should have? Hell no. This douche will still be a millionaire by next week even though he’s never taken a snap at the professional level (or won an important game in college, for that matter). Why is he getting so much coverage?!

I blame it on the rise of fantasy football leagues which lately have become the biggest exercise in organized gambling in this country. Any idiot that’s part of a league now wants to have a leg up on the competition so we all have to suffer through months and months of speculation and superfluous analysis which is passed off as inside information. Just like in every sport, gambling determines design.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the NFL and I’ve played fantasy football for a few years (never for money), but this is why other sports aren’t given a chance to be popular anymore or are disappearing completely (hockey, anyone?). As a fan of most sports, I think this kind of coverage is displacing other worthy pastimes. I enjoy football, but I don’t need it covered twelve months out of the year.

Good lord, this was a long footnote.