Our sound

     I wasn't planning on getting into this, but well, I've come to the conclusion that it's necessary.
     You've lost your way, America. And I don't mean in a cute way, like the ones they talk about on Fox News, with all the God and Fear stuff they hock (I like when Glenn Beck cries those tears of righteous frustration. Lets me know he cares.), but in a much more serious, sanity threatening way. Two of them, in fact:
     Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga.
     First, I know that this isn't a new thing, on either front. "The Beib" (I think they call him that) is just another incarnation of those Jonas kids, and those Hansen ones, and on and on. And "The Gag" (I call her that) is our newest whatever you call that. I know it's all been done before, and soon enough they'll be gone and I'll have to put up with some other steaming pile of pop in their stead.
    Because Americans keep listening to it. How dare you? We gave the world The Blues (musically; I'm not referring to all the other crap we do.), Rock 'n' Roll, even good pop, like Michael Jackson. And now we're doing this? Again, I know this isn't the first time we forgot to flush, but come on, let's practice some corrective behavior, please.
     But wait. Maybe I'm not thinking about this logically. Let's take a step back and look at the big picture. You know what's going to make all of this worthwhile? I bet you do, but just in case: Scandals! Downfalls! Public Embarrassment and Shame!
     I'm telling you, when the music industry does to them what it did to people like Britney Spears, it's gonna be epic. Remember that? When she married that K-Pax* guy and had two more mouths to stuff Starbucks and chili fries into? Then she shaved her head** and beat up that SUV with an umbrella? Who wouldn't want to see that happen again, this time to a 16 year old boy from Canada? We've got to have something to keep the gossip magazines in publication. Brad and Angie can only do so much. Although, as noted, The Beib is from Canada. He may take a bit more prodding before he really Winehouses out.
     The Gag I'm not as worried about. Her first album is called "The Fame." Can't get much more obvious than that. Personally, I think she should start charging more for her tickets, because when she bursts into plastic fueled flames and crashes into the Earth, the fireworks we'll all get to see for free will totally make up for it. From what I've seen, people are going to pay at least as much attention to that as they did to her meat dress.
    So maybe this isn't about the music at all. Maybe it's about the spectacle. Not the vinyl dress and funny hair spectacle, but the one that comes after. That sounds like us.
-John

*The "rapper." Not Kevin Spacey
** That was cool. Like Vin Diesel.

Oh, you lucky people!

     Public school still sucks, there's a bunch of "new" animals in Papa new Guniea, Pee-Wee Herman is trending on yahoo right now, and a bunch of other stuff is happening. But none of it matters, really. Wanna know why? No, stop, don't answer that question. I know you do, and I can't hear you anyway, so reel it in. I'll put it out there for all of us, and save time and precious oxygen:
      Because I haven't been here to tell you how much I hate all of it. (See? Told you you didn't have to tell me.)It's been two states, one social networking site, and a long, long, time, my friends and neighbors. Shall we?
     I think we shall:
     First, since I briefly mentioned social networking sites, we have the daring and possibly inanswerable question, Does your baby need an online presence? Everyone who has a kid these days has pictures of them on the interlattice, which is kind of like showing everyone you know the pictures you keep in your wallet every time you say anything clever, like "I hate my job!" or "Hey! Here's a video of a cat!". In the real world, this often produces what people who work from home refer to as "justifiable homicide." They watch a lot of cop shows.
     Some of these virtual parents even create profiles on Facebook and Whatnot (which is not actually one of these sites as far as I know, but I'm capitalizing it because it probably will be in five or ten minutes. Don't tell me about it; I don't care.) So, assuming this trend continues, and it's dumb, so it will, what we'll have pretty soon is just the best dating site ever for pedophiles. Way to go mom and dad! Kid's gotta learn about the birds and the bees somehow, right? Why not let the proud, respectable members of NAMBLA  take care of that for you? Think it over.
     By the way, the answer is no, your kid does not need an online presence until he or she is old enough to create it his or her self. And judging from a lot of the secretions adults are leaving all over each other's desktops (that was gross) probably not even then.
     Moving on, we're going to begin anew our coolest country in the world competition, because the heads of all these stupid countries can't seem to understand that just because it's three in the afternoon there, it doesn't mean it's okay to call me in the middle of my night time and tell me how awesome things are wherever the hell they are (seriously, Kim Jong, I don't care about your kid. Looks like someone carved a jack-o-lantern face in a potato. A stupid potato.)
     First, Ecuador, because the headline I read used the phrase "witchhunt", and I haven't seen that in a while. Plus it's October. Makes me feel Halloween-y*. They had a mutiny! They kidnapped their own president! It was an attempted coup, people! You know how long it's been since I heard about one of those? All we get in These Somewhat United States is people who argue on television over which one of their opinions is louder, and thus right. I for one feel jipped. Ecuador, you get second prize. Or as we call it in the land where little league games are no longer scored, "First runner-up." (Makes me wanna spit. People lose sometimes, most of them will lose most times, and cookies make you fat. Get over it.)
     But, because I simply cannot help it, and they just refuse to give in to Paraguay's bribes to take a dive, China, our reigning champion, keeps the title of coolest nation on planet Earth.
     A man in China just won the Nobel Peace Prize. His name is Liu Xiaobo, and guess what? He's a literary critic. China is so cool it's citizens don't even have to produce stuff to win. This guy's even a prisoner, and he got the Nobel Peace Prize! Makes me pretty ashamed of our criminal class, let me tell you.
     Anyway, this guy Liu is prison because he's pro democracy, and China is clearly not interested. So China is all, "Not cool, Norway" and Norway's like "Eat it, sucka!" and Obama's all "I won the prize last year. Let this dude go" and citizens in China are totally going "Stop censoring all our gadgets! We make most of this crap here, we oughtta be able to use it!" and citizens in These S.U.S.A. (see above) are all "Let's go see the Facebook movie and get a hot dog!" because we never pay attention to anything anymore.
    See you guys again soon.

* The word "witchhunt." Not Ecuador. Though I think they do have bats there.