The Jersey Swap
Rugby is one of those sports that I am unfamiliar with and that is pretty poorly represented in my part of the world. In my neck of the woods, it’s only American-style football that gets everyone’s attention. From what little I know about rugby, it’s a far more masculine pastime–less protection and more violence. Plus, I don’t think it’s *quite* as commercialized as American football has become. (I predict in 5 years, American football teams will wear jerseys emblazoned with brand names in much the same style as those jump suits that NASCAR drivers wear.) But rugby seems to be a sport where the men are men–and some advertisers are perfectly content to allow the men themselves to keep the spotlight.
Oddly enough, I haven’t seen any ugly rugby players. You’d think that if they were really that violent with each other, they’d be as bruised, broken and toothless as professional hockey players. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, I suspect there might be a bit of mutual appreciation amongst the rugby players for the degree of physicality involved. As proof of this, you can click the image below and watch an Adidas-sponsored promotion where professional rugby players lose their jerseys and swap them with other rugby players from different teams. You can even watch them do this in slow-motion, if that is your thing. (PS. It is my thing.) I don’t normally fall hook line and sinker for such crass and exploitative fruits of free market enterprise, but shit, you know and I know that you’ve been glancing at that image below ever since you started reading this article.
Musings on Bruno
I finally went last night and watched Bruno. Being a casual fan of Sacha Baron Cohen and hearing the wide range of buzz the film was getting (both positive and negative), I felt I needed to check it out for myself and determine which buzz was more accurate.
In case you didn’t know, the gay community has been fairly polarized on the subject of Bruno. A fairly sizeable minority dislike the movie primarily because it reinforces common stereotypes about gay people. According to these people, when your average American straight who knows no openly gay people sees the bleach-blonde, leather-clad Bruno with various objects in his “arschenhaller”, it’s just going to confirm very negative views of gay people in their minds. Furthermore, some are saying the ignorant and petty Eurotrash with obsessions of sex, fashion, and fame is little more than a modern-day minstrel show, except now it’s “queerface” instead of blackface to ridicule the minority. The overall opinion of the movie’s naysayers is that Cohen doesn’t really care about any potential damage the movie does, as long as the movie rakes in the money.
On the other hand, there is another camp (no pun intended) that believes overall, Bruno will have a positive effect on the gay community. Sure it’s offensive, these people say–that’s Cohen’s schtick–but the movie hits homophobes hard, very hard. Many people may not realize the extent and depth of the homophobia in society at large, so in a way, this movie brings it to people’s attention where it can be exposed for all to see, a la that parable about sunlight being the best disinfectant. And by the way, homophobia isn’t the only topic of interest in Bruno–the movie utterly decimates in other areas also, highlighting ignorance, shallowness and hypocrisy on many fronts, regarding many topics. Furthermore, this movie works on two levels, because the people being targeted aren’t just the ones in the film. Like all of Cohen’s characters, Bruno is as much directed toward the audience as it is to the people Cohen is pranking, and with that, this film is bound to cause viewers to challenge their own views and question their own responses to what they’re seeing on the big screen.
Now, my two cents…
Having seen the film, I think both sides have it partially right. Overall I think Cohen is ridiculing both homophobia as well as some of the more vapid and shallow tendencies in a certain segment of gay culture. I do not think the film was made with any sort of humanitarian purpose in mind–Cohen plays both sides of the fence to make money. But this is to be expected, because his other characters all work the same way as Bruno. Consider a side-by-side comparison between the two characters.
| Borat | Bruno | |
| Non-American w. ridiculous accent? | Yes | Yes |
| Amalgamation of stereotypes? | Yes (the “ignorant backwoods foreigner”) | Yes (the “shallow, sex-obsessed queer”) |
| Plays on people’s prejudices? | Yes (xenophobia, etc.) | Yes (homophobia, etc.) |
| Exposes other kinds of ignorance? | Yes (racism, misogyny, etc.) | Yes (celebrity worship, ‘gay conversion’, etc.) |
| Uses crude humor to make people in the film uncomfortable? | Yes | Yes |
| Uses crude humor to make people in the audience uncomfortable? | Yes | Yes |
Finding so much similarity in Cohen’s general comedic approach, I feel fairly sure that this movie was not a jab at gays per se, just as Borat was not a jab at the real-life people of Kazakhstan. Rather, Cohen takes a sample from a culture unknown to many “mainstream” people in middle America, and uses their unfamiliarity with that culture for his comedic ends. The extent to which Cohen is ridiculing his own characters is debateable–I believe Cohen’s interest lies in the realm of perceptions and misperceptions, and I do not think Cohen focuses on any demographic defined by any physical characteristic. Via the presentation of his characters, it is clear that Cohen is opposed to the racist bigotry of Borat and the vapid trendiness of Bruno. But he is equally opposed to those ugly world views he draws out of people in response to his caricatures and contrived situations.
In the end, I can say that Bruno is probably the most intellectual movie I’ve ever seen that had full frontal nudity and unsimulated sex scenes. For that, I must recommend it. I’d also recommend seeing it with straight friends to see how they react. As my friend Matt remarked when we walked out of the theater, “it makes you think.”
Gothic Perfection
Ah, if only I could find me a twinky goth boi like Christoph here for those dark, angst-filled nights…
The V-Files: Cracked Lenses
(Commentary: Weird-ass shit that didn’t fit into any other category for this compilation but that I felt was important enough to recycle. I combined the “Epiphany” posts because really, the second one was completely uncalled for.)
The Pants Heist
(Original Air Date: 12/14/05)
The Power of Rock
(Original Air Date: 12/26/05)
Sweaters: Woolen Plague on Humanity
(Original Air Date: 01/18/06)
Epiphanies
(Original Air Dates: 02/06/06 and 02/07/06)
The End is Near
(Original Air Date: 04/19/06)
~~~~~~~
The Pants Heist
THE PANTS HEIST
By Josh, age 24
Oh GOD! Someone has stolen Grandmaster Grandfather’s pants! Who could lead a front-end organization for the Illuminati when the breeze is whistling through your thighs?!
“We don’t have his pants,” said the fellow with the star on his butt. “Go ask Fancy Fred,” said the lady with the excessive cheek exposure. “He runs the pants cartel around here.”
“YES IT WAS I,” said Fancy Fred, “I took Grandmaster Grandfather’s trousers. Soon, my pants collection will be complete, and I can complete my ultimate weapon, the TROUSER TRACTOR BEAM, with which I will destroy the world’s magnetic field! MWAHAHAHA!”
He’s not bluffing, look, there are the trousers! Don’t you need those for the Trouser Tractor Beam? “No,” said Fancy Fred, “I just needed them to complete my ensemble. Also, BEWARE THE SHAPE-SHIFTING LADY ON MY ARM! She will safeguard my operation until my fiendish plot comes to fruition.”
“You’ll never get away with this!” shrieked the tiny woman with the awesome homemade Star Wars headdress. “Not only will we recover GG’s trousers, but we’ll recover ALL the pants you’ve stolen over the years!”
Wait, what’s that sound? Could it be? COULD IT BE?!
OH MY GOD THE LARPERS HAVE ARRIVED
Then there was a great battle. Fancy Fred, Shape-Shifting Lady and all the dastardly minions at Disco Evil faced the might of the Larper Army. Tiny-woman-with-the-awesome-homemade-Star-Wars-headdress was really a spy who had infiltrated the disco using her headdress’s cloaking ability, and she’d been tracking Fancy Fred for several years now. It was a terrible battle; lives, limbs, and fashion accessories were lost forever. In the end, though, the Larpers emerged victorious. Grandmaster Grandfather’s trousers were safely returned to him, and he was free to continue to aid the Illuminati in their quest for global dominance.
The leader of the Larpers, Furry J. Mandible, stuck around after the battle and gave a detailed account of how he singlehandedly laid the smackdown on about 40 pants hijackers. Oh General Mandible, what a cut-up!
THE END
Few people will contest the power of rock and roll on humanity. People use it on each other to get a variety of desired results. Some people use it to raise money for charities. Others use it to either edify or tear down the establishment. Still others use it to try to expand the boundaries of art and music, through experimentation. Just like real rocks, musical rock has a variety of uses and purposes.
Some of the many varieties of rock include:
- Classic Rock
- Soft Rock
- Hard Rock
- Rap Rock
- Art Rock
- Pop Rock
- Cock Rock
- Stadium/Arena Rock
- Progressive Rock
and the list goes on. This isn’t even taking into consideration all the various types of “metals” there are in the rock world:
- Heavy Metal
- Hair Metal
- Power Metal
- Speed Metal
- Black Metal
- Doom Metal
- Goth Metal
- Nu Metal
ad nauseum. There’s also a great number of newer genres ending with the -core suffix, to somehow make the music seem more authentic or something:
- Hardcore
- Grindcore
- Speedcore
- Breakcore
- Emocore
- Sadcore
Well, you get the idea. There are almost as many different genres of rock and roll as there are bands and musicians to play them, each genre often with a set goal or agenda that is accomplished through its performance. Soft rock, for instance, is designed to be the equivalent of musical wallpaper for work. Bosses will often play soft rock for their employees to save on the embarrassment of actually going out and buying real ambient music; to do that would run the risk of making the boss look like he’s one of “those people,” as in the kind of people who regularly listen to ambient music. It’s almost a guarantee that “bosses of companies” and “people who listen to ambient music” are almost never one and the same, unless your company manufactures sandals, pachouli, or some substance that actually does not pollute the environment or kill animals.
The harder genres of rock have a wide variety of purposes: to be musical wallpaper for bars; to provide the illusion of rebellion while actually maintaining the “booze, bitches, and bad-assness” status quo of the working class American male; to play a musical game of one-upmanship to see who can be the most daring or the loudest; etc. You just might be surprised the next time you give some serious thought into the kind of music played on most radio stations.
However, the main point of this article is to reveal one fact, one basic and (I think) glaringly obvious fact that underscores every genre of rock, including those fruity and smarmy genres like ska and country.
Guitars are nothing more than stringed phalluses. Think about it. To the guitarist, their instrument is a projection of their prowess or their “manliness,” even if the guitarist is a woman. More than the other members of the band, guitarists find themselves in the spotlight, and find themselves with far more groupie fans than drummers or keyboardists ever do. And I don’t even need to mention all those masturbatory guitar solos, where the guitarist gets up there and wails on his instrument like he’s polished the most powerful knob that has ever graced mankind.
Rock. It’s all about the phalluses, sometimes more overtly than other times. That’s the secret to rock’s lasting power, and its success in whatever purpose it is set to accomplish.
Sweaters: Woolen Plague on Humanity
If you are of an apocalyptic bent, then you will probably be vindicated in your beliefs by reading this article. But I must caution you, the images contained herein will shake you to your very core, and you may wish you had never learned some of the things I’m going to tell you. Proceed with caution!
Those looking for signs of the end times often cite things such as strange animal birth defects, unusual climatological changes, and world events that seem to correspond to “prophecies” in the flavor-of-the-week book of one’s choice. All that is well and good, but those who want a sure sign that the eschaton is nigh upon us need look no further than at a JCPenney or other such catalog, for an evil exists among us that has escaped our attention… until now.
This evil that I speak of is none other than the sweater and its insidious offspring, the sweater vest.
I was a particularly sensitive child. Some people might refer to my sensitivity as empathy or pathos or some other Greek-based psychological word. I could look at people and objects and get a more or less accurate “feeling” for whether what I was viewing was good or evil. And from the beginning, every time I looked at sweaters, I got an overriding sense of evil. No words can fully describe the evil I felt by looking at sweaters, but it is one of the most intensely negative feelings I have ever known. In fact, the only thing worse than looking at sweaters, I have found, is actually wearing them.
If you have any familiarity with exorcisms or old monster movies, you know that the possessed and/or the minions of the night do not like to come into contact with holy symbols; such contact often burns them or damages them in some way. Think of my reaction to sweaters as a sort of inverse to this, as when a sweater was forced upon me, the intensely concentrated perversion and utter malfeasance of the garment caused my body to react in a very unpleasant manner. Namely, with extreme itching and uncomfortable warmth. It was like Beelzebub himself had sprinkled itching powder into my young and tender flesh, and I was being roasted alive in some Luciferian cauldron filled with yak hair and stiff scouring bristles.
My many unpleasant experiences with sweaters have led me to sound the alarum bell regarding their true, dark nature. “Sweaters,” as a collective group, have some sort of evil hive-mind mentality and are most definitely up to no good. They have fooled a vast number of people into thinking that they actually are “sporty” or “dressy,” clearly illustrating the powerful hypnotic power of the Woolen Plague to cause so many to believe such a preposterous notion. Their true goals remain a secret, as no one in the countersweater resistance movement has been brave (or foolhardy) enough to access the hive-mind to learn their plans. We have, however, successfully rescued several workers from knitting factories all over the world, and after they were unbrainwashed (brainsoiled, perhaps), they revealed to us what they remembered about the Prime Directive of the Sweater Hive-Mind.
We have learned that part of the Prime Directive includes the dissemination and mass approval of a mutant strain of sweater known as the “sweater vest,” which is portrayed by the sweater-puppets in fashion media as being more “functional” and “practical” than sweaters. From a purely objective point of view, the sweater vest is merely a sweater with no sleeves and often with buttons in the front, but not necessarily so. However, this simplicity belies the true nefarious intent of the sweater vest. Our contact from the knitting factory that produced sweater vests was brought to tears when we asked him what the true purpose of the garment was, and all we could get out of him was that it involved “not irritating the arms so more sweaters could be produced.” From this, we speculate that the sweater vest is a sort of parasitic life form that leaves the arms intact so that the hapless victim can be controlled into making more sweaters.
If you thought that was alarming, then you will most certainly be alarmed by the apparently growing bravado and haughtiness of the Sweater Hive-Mind. I must warn you, the next picture is shocking, so if you are sensitive to disturbing images, please read no further and close your browser immediately.
What you are looking at is a sweater knitted from dog hair.
Let me repeat that. That sweater is made from fucking dog hair.
Yes, the psy-ops of the Woolen Plague have progressed much, much farther than anyone might have guessed. If you follow the link above, you can view the website of the wretched victim of the Hive-Mind’s cunning hypnosis. This poor soul, God bless her heart, has become a puppet of the Woolen Plague, and now produces sweaters (and other knit goods) made from dog and cat hair. For what dark purpose does the Hive-Mind have this woman making these travesties against nature? Is this just the first step in an eventual plan to make sweaters out of human beings, to be worn by the aristocracy of tomorrow who have risen to prominence thanks to the demonic intervention of the Woolen Plague? I shudder to consider it.
It is not too late to stop this growing menace, people. Burn all the sweaters you might own, and burn those belonging to your friends and family as well! (Preferably when they are not being worn, but hey, every civil uprising has its casualties.) If we work together, you and I can stop the Sweater Menace before it is too late.
Epiphanies
I have blogged before about my random epiphanies which often strike without warning, and which often have the most bizarre subject matters. I think perhaps I have inadvertently opened a door into another dimension, some bizarro-land where weirdness and the impossible keep spilling through into the unused portions of my brain. There, they sit and wait until I’m not thinking about anything in particular, then they bum rush my cerebral cortex.
These epiphanies are often cinematic, like I am watching a movie. Only rarely (very rarely) do these visions ever come “true” per se, but it does happen. Mostly, these visions are highly improbable scenarios whose strangeness causes them to remain with me for longer than a fleeting moment.
Here are a handful of my more… interesting epiphanies.
- I once had a vision of a world where Hunter S. Thompson had decided to be a dressmaker rather than a journalist. He himself wore a tutu within his shop, but was otherwise the same.
- I’ve had visions of mountains splitting open and whitish-purplish, jagged lightning emerging from the ground and soaring across the sky, only to dive to the earth again and split the ground wide open. Along this line, I’ve also had visions of great gaping holes opening up in the hillsides and either lava spewing forth out of them, or things getting sucked up inside of them.
- Not long ago, I had a vision of myself as a very old man living in Norway or some other Scandinavian country. On a great icy precipice, I looked out on the sea and realized that I was completely alone in this world, with no friends or family left alive. In the next “scene” of this vision, I was laying on the ground, tears and snot frozen to my face, and my final expression in death was one of great sadness, in the realization that my greatest fear, being alone, had come to pass.
- I sometimes had visions of Asa and I out in a club, impeccably dressed and dancing to our hearts’ content to both fast and slow songs. We make fools of ourselves but have a good time. I also had visions of the two of us facing each other, wearing tuxes and reciting vows in a small church in some out-of-the-way place. *sigh*
- One of the most shockingly embarrassing visions I’ve had was of a gander dressed up in spats, a monocle, and a top hat, with a black lacquered cane tucked under his wing. This bird was trying to convince people of something ridiculous. It was, after all, a “propa ganda”. I’ve had a similar embarrassing vision of a “rap scallion” that has probably already been implemented in Veggie Tales.
- I frequently have visions of being in a terrible car accident and being in the hospital. About half the time, the visions include me meeting Asa for the first time under that circumstance. The other half of the time, I die before ever having met him.
- My visions of the end of the world don’t involve a religious experience, but involve people being stupid and accidentally nuking themselves to death. Not outright war, just human error. Ooooops, and then everyone’s skin melts off their bones. At least, the lucky ones get to be thusly melted. People flee to Chernobyl, the least-contaminated place left on the planet. There, they feed their three-eyed children six-eyed frogs.
- I’ve had visions of vast armies of the undead marching around, fully armored, on spectral horses and with cursed weapons. (Of course, this might be because of Dungeons and Dragons.) People are run down by skeletal cavalry wielding polearms, scimitars, and falchions.
- I’ve had visions of retaining my human consciousness after I die, but being trapped within my body. Alone and completely in the dark, I am aware of various insects and vermin consuming me, and my entrails liquefying and draining away… This idea bothers me less than you might think.
- I have visions of a world where gay people are the norm and straights are in the minority. The straights are kept on breeding farms and all they have to do is have sex to continue the human race, while the rest of the population busies itself with the other affairs of human existence. For some reason, straights don’t mind being in the minority.
****THIS JUST IN****
…
I just had a vision of Big Bird sitting on my face and calling me Snuffleupagus.
God I’m weird.
The End is Near
“The end of the world is nigh upon us, brethren! We are closer to the end than you could ever imagine.”
My great-grandmother used to talk about how close we were to the end of the world. She’d heard it all her life. But she died before it ever happened. All my life, I’ve heard all about how the world is supposed to end “any day now.” People have been saying that for years, and you know what? It looks like things are still going pretty much as they always have.
Still, I look around and see signs that maybe, just maybe, we are inching ever-closer to a point beyond which there is no return.
It isn’t that people are any more or less wicked than they’ve always been, nor is it a matter of there being too many or too few people around. It’s not that science has made almost miraculous discoveries in the last century, or that man is now beginning to regularly travel into outer space. It’s not because there are more global disasters these days, nor is it because people have turned away from God. (As a matter of fact, the world population of Christians is at an all-time high.)
None of those things are why I think we might be approaching the Apocalypse. So, you might ask, what is it? What is it that signifies to me that the end of the world might be just around the corner?
Stupidity.
Backyard wrestling, people. This is what bored kids do when there’s only reruns on TV. They go outside hyped up on caffeine and sugar and try to imitate real wrestling, jumping off tables and pounding each other senseless. You see, backyard wrestlers generally do it for real, not fake like the professionals.
Did this “sport” really need to have a video game made about it? The only good thing I can imagine coming from this is that it might possibly prevent these kids from actually wrestling in their backyards and potentially hurting themselves. Maybe they’ll be too glued to their Xboxes to fracture each other’s sternums.
Burning Man, people. Fucking Burning Man. You might think that as an artist, I am sympathetic to the cause of Burning Man enthusiasts, but come on. Naked hippies cavorting in the desert and using their heat exhaustion as creative inspiration. No thanks. Take your art and go to New York like a good little artist, find a nice venue to exhibit your “shocking” new works, and save your “spiritual enlightenment” for the bars of Amsterdam.
The saddest thing is that I bet these are probably some interesting people. They are just terribly, terribly delusional. It’s been my experience that delusional people are the most dangerous, but also the most fun. I guess being around Burning Man fans is like a double-edged sword. Er… maybe a double-edged granola bar.
No.
Just…
No.
OK, these full-size images are really getting me down. I’m going back to thumbnails. Bite me.
Sports fans. Long the subject of ridicule among elitist circles, they are now growing to be mocked by a wider demographic these days. A good friend of mind remarked that “you know, sports are really gay.” Coming from him, that meant a lot. But yes, sports are pretty banal, and diehard sports enthusiasts, the ones who paint their bodies and wear oversized cardboard shapes and/or foam fingers on their hands, are some of the saddest people in all of existence. They work their sad little jobs for their sad little paychecks and honestly look forward to smearing white shoe polish all over their beer bellies and manboobs on Saturday, decked out in fanciful hats and surrounded by people holding homemade signs that are covered with misspellings. All that pomp and circumstance to watch a bunch of those freaky “physically fit people” move some object back and forth across a playing field. The only rationale I can think of is sexual attraction and/or the lust for watered-down beer.
That ended up being sadder than I previously thought. I need a moment.
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…
…
…
Ok, thanks, I’m feeling better now. But not by much. Do you see what I mean about stupidity? I could go on and on, but Lewis Black and Boyd Rice (among others) already base their careers out of misanthropy and I don’t want to cut into their market share. Ignorance, as a whole, is diminished from the old days, but those few remaining pockets out there are much worse than mere misinformation or simple not-knowing. They are notably unreal and potentially more dangerous than any weapon of mass destruction.
Before I wrap up this post, though, I will present to you the most heart-rending thing I’ve ever seen, and the surest sign that ignorance is still flourishing in some places. I just pray they will outgrow their brainwashing.
The Many Faces of Phil Spector
Behold, the man who invented music. Real music, the kind you hear on the radio, not that namby-pamby classical shit. The kind that’s indistinguishable from the advertisements that bookend each song.
The jury is deadlocked on his trial right now. Could the hair, combined with that blue grandma blouse, have been an effective way to rebut the prosecution’s assertion that he was mentally fit to stand trial? I personally hope he goes free… I happen to have a thing for crazy, accidentally-murderous musicians.
About Buffer Posts and Terrible Fashion
I think it would probably be crass to post an inspired, heartfelt Valentine’s Day post just after a post called “Symbolic Orgy” that consisted of nothing but Mars symbols moving suggestively. Hence this, a buffer post.
What is a buffer post, you might ask? It’s a post you put between two posts that otherwise would look awkward or tacky next to one another. It’s cheap, easy content for your blog, and it makes the two posts it separates look better. Afraid or loath to put a writeup of your favorite celebrity’s personal stats next to a post where you pour your heart out about a recently deceased relative? Use a buffer post, and avoid that clashing creative material!
This is my buffer post: it is about terrible fashion and buffer posts in general. That fellow over there is a male model named Chad White who is sort of like a fashion Cassandra: his fate is to have the body for modeling but be destined to end up wearing shitty wardrobes. That getup looks like something that John Waters couldn’t convince Divine to wear… which makes me extra-nervous, seeing as how he’s holding that little dog and everything. Let’s hope the John Waters influence stops with the flowy robe and barbarian harness.
I shall call him, “Gandalf the Fabulous.” I somehow don’t think Sir Ian McKellen would mind.
Tomorrow: something more heartfelt and serious, inspired by the love of my life.
Freaky Friday: Underwear Choices
I think on Fridays I’m going to start posting things of a prurient interest. If that offends you… too bad. So, the first item on the agenda is:
What is the best kind of underwear?
1. Bikinis
2. Briefs
3. Boxer-Briefs
4. Boxers
5. Jocks
6. None of the Above
The Old Popularity Index
