5 Suggestions for Terrorists

Is the word ‘terrorists’ just another word for ‘freedom fighter,’ a sort of revolutionary who is misguided in their use of force? I don’t know about being a revolutionary and all that, but the use of force by terrorists is indeed misguided. After all, what’s the point of terrorism? The point is to instill fear in the enemy, disrupt the lives of the enemy, and make the enemy take notice of the terrorists’ agenda/rightful place in the world. I guess one-out-of-three isn’t bad, if you’re a baseball player. I mean, sure, terrorists create fear but it isn’t enough to disrupt the lives of their enemies. The targets of terrorism, Joe Q Public, still goes to work, still shops for Christmas on Thanksgiving night, and still drowns themselves daily in a three-pump, two-shot Grande Venti Mocha Frappuccino Latte with whipped cream. Plus, Joe Q Public doesn’t care about a terrorist’s agenda because when terrorists have to blow stuff up to make a point, Joe Q Public cares more that people died than what the terrorists stand for. In this way, terrorists can safely be considered morons, but they are also morons for terrorizing in an oh-so-last-century fashion. If terrorists really want to change the world in their favor, if they really want the Western world to sit up and take notice of their agenda, terrorists need to bring their game into the 21^st century. To that end I offer terrorists some suggestions. And, since terrorists will never consider these suggestions because they go for spectacle over subtlety 99.9% of the time, I’m not really aiding any terrorists. (Did you get that NSA? I know you’re listening. Eric Snowden said so.)

5 – Help pass laws that allows gays to marry. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Why in Allah’s name would I do that?” Hear me out. The fact that gays are being allowed to marry in several U.S. states really, really upsets a great many “patriots” (read: Bible thumpin’ Fox News watching homosexual men who make lots of money pretending to be straight). If you can help gays get married in all 50 U.S. states, imagine the lifelong suffering you would incur among the most primitive members of American society. If no one else, the Southern states will listen to your demands.

4 – Still want to kill, don’t you? Okay, fine, but how about killing only people who actually deserve it, like the people who appear as contestants on American Idol and The Voice? I don’t need to remind you Islamic terrorists in particular that your holy book is meant to be sung when recited…do you really want Taylor Swift to convert to Islam and sing the Koran? I sure as fuck don’t. She’d turn it into a story about some dude breaking up with her and that would be, like, exhausting, and I never ever everrrr want that to happen. Plus, killing all the wannabe singers would spare the world of those really deep insights that are the prerogative of the shows’ judges, especially those ham-fisted analogies about baby seals being clubbed.

3 – Need a little R&R after all that killing? (You did include everyone who showed up at auditions, right?) How about you travel abroad and attack the coffee supply. Ethiopia, South America, wherever; if you really want to demoralize The United States, rob them of their elixir of life – coffee. Slash, burn, poison crops; do whatever you’ve got to do to reduce American consumption of coffee and I assure you the U.S. economy will collapse beyond repair within three months. Nothing will ever get done in America again. (Bonus: A third of America’s workforce – baristas – will be unemployed and unable to pay for their godless liberal college education. Collateral damage is awesome! ) 

2 – Okay, so going after the coffee supply isn’t the immediate payoff y’all have come to love. You still want spectacle and the time-consuming, blood-soaked deaths of warblers didn’t grant immediate satisfaction. Okay, how about blowing up a Budweiser factory or two? Despite the fact that anyone who chooses Budweiser over any other beer is a step below moronic, and there are a LOT of those people, blowing up a macro-brew factory is sure to give even the most die-hard redneck a big, dry lump in their throat. But whatever you do, DO NOT kill the Budweiser Clydesdales. Everyone fucking loves those horses. 

1 – Look, I know you guys are financed by very wealthy people so I know you’ve got the money to pull this one off: Buy all the toilet paper. ALL OF IT. John Lennon wanted us to imagine there’s no heaven? Imagine Americans without toilet paper! Among very few other things, Americans pride themselves on not smelling like ass. That being the case, toilet paper is one of the MOST essential items of consumption in The U.S. seeing how bidets are too complicated and French to use. Best of all, buying all the toilet paper is perfectly legal. No Gitmo for you lot! The U.S. would cower in the face of this ingenious plan. Now say it with me…ha…ha ha…mwah ha ha…MWAH HA HA HA HA!

The Cult of Banality

Considering the number of things that I find troubling, I really should meditate more…

I saw an entertainment headline a few days ago, something about drugs being found on Justin Bieber’s tour bus in Amsterdam. Okay, great. Who cares? Everyone it seems; the people who aren’t his fans regard this incident as another in a long line of incidents that point towards the young lady’s self-destruction while Bieber’s fans would defend her even if the tween idol chopped up a baby and served it with a glass of wine. And that’s what I find troubling – why are Justin Bieber’s off-stage antics more important than her art?

I remember many years ago when I, as a die-hard Judas Priest fan, learned lead singer Rob Halford was gay. The news did not phase me; I didn’t care because I care more about the man’s art than who he has sex with. Gay or not, Rob Halford can scream like a sonofabitch and that’s a part of what makes him a good music artist. Really, it’s the art that is important. Or maybe that’s a misperception on my part as the art of a musician or actor is now a distant second to what news the artist’s life generates.

Case in point, Taylor Swift: She really has very little musical skill either as a writer or performer, yet she is terribly famous. Why? Mostly because she’s a perfectly pretty lily white girl, so pretty that people apparently have no choice but to root for her as she dates a platoon of men who dump her as soon as they figure out she has no talent. Justin Bieber floats in the same boat, more famous for his homosexual attributes than for his music. Is anyone going to remember any of his songs decades from now? No, but people will remember that he started acting out as soon as his balls started to drop and realized he doesn’t have to date someone equally untalented. Worse, you have celebrities not famous for anything besides being rich and having hired a publicist, e.g. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton. Yet the general public snaps up news of these people’s lives. Is it because seeing how the other half lives is inspiring? No.

The reality is perhaps more depressing. My hypothesis is that people who lap up entertainment news have low self-esteem and no desire to be much of anything in life (not that one needs to make something of themselves). I arrived at this conclusion by thinking about what people get out of reading entertainment news, which oddly has very little to do with entertainment itself: A glimpse into a purportedly glamorous life that for the 99% is unattainable. Entertainment news, that is celebrity news, actually reinforces the notion among lower class people that they belong in the lower class. [I use ‘lower class’ here to mean the people who place celebrities in a status above themselves.] While someone may pick up People Magazine and say, “That’s going to be me some day,” the people who actually become celebrities don’t stop to say such things because they are busy becoming celebrities. That said, I have very little respect for anyone who reads celebrity news as it indicates just how little they contribute to the world.

Of course, I’m not saying all celebrities contribute something positive to the world. Many of the afore mentioned celebrities are in the game for celebrity’s sake; it’s better to be on top than on the bottom so I don’t blame anyone for walking down that road. But, in order to make some kind of contribution to the world, a person must begin with some sense of their own value and a person cannot do that if they are consumed by details of the lives of celebrities. Celebrity news is disempowering, not inspiring. It also reinforces one of the worse tendencies of human beings, the desire the see others fail or become miserable.

The people who keep track of celebrity news to satisfy their lust for schadenfreude are no doubt worse than passive purveyors of celebrity news since they take their disdain for their low class status in a direction opposite from where it should go. Instead of ignoring celebrity news to spend their time more wisely or turn their view of the well-to-do into a force of positive change, they wallow in the muck of celebrity divorces and self-abuse as if doing so could possibly make themselves feel better about their meaningless lives. Either way, news about the lives of celebrities is destructive for those who consume it.

To be fair, talking about the well-to-do has been going on for ages, obviously because the lives of celebrities are more interesting than that of the Average Joe. Only, wouldn’t everyone’s life be like the life of any given celebrity given the fame and fortune? Why then do people consider lives of celebrities more interesting? I suppose people who track celebrity news lack imagination. (Ask them what they’d do if they won the lottery if you want to confirm my suspicion.)

I don’t know what we’re supposed to take away from this other than a good many people do not mind their status among the blissfully ignorant. Personally, I find such an attitude repugnant. I find the desire to put details about a celebrity’s life ahead of their art or professional business even more objectionable, for if the lives of celebrities are more important than their professional lives, why not dispense with what they do for a living altogether and go straight to Free Parking? For a nation that likes nothing more than to pretend accomplishments and talent matter, America sure values its Lindsay Lohans.

Art is dead. Long live the “artist.”

We-EE Hate This Song

Every now and then I listen to one of the pop radio stations to hear what the latest worst songs are, presumably because I hate myself. Rewind to last week when I turn the radio on and catch a song cleverly entitled “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”  Oh. My. Holyshitthissongisaweful. Seriously, wtf? So, I look up who sings the song and, having never heard a Taylor Swift song, was surprised to find out it was a Taylor Swift song. Why was I surprised? Because like most people, mostly women, I sometimes confuse beauty with talent. Yes, I do think Taylor Swift is very beautiful, but then, what musical starlet with no talent wouldn’t be with a S.W.A.T. team of stylists at their disposal? At any rate, anyone with a musical- or objective bone in their body, which excludes most women, cannot possibly like this song.  Let’s examine the song point by point with the less serious offences first.

Musically, the song is derivative. There is nothing remotely interesting about its composition or arrangement; the song merely retreads the well-established protocol of the last 30 years of pop music, meaning it’s boring. (Wait, isn’t Taylor a “country” music star? Oh, that’s right; there hasn’t been much country in country music since the mid-90’s.) Lyrically is where the song descends into Hell, though. First, it is my firm belief that there should be a 50-year moratorium on lyrics about love or relationships gone sour. Second, if you’re going to go down that road anyway, at least be creative about it. In other words, Taylor, a ten year old Alanis Morissett called and she wants her lyrics back. Third, the hook in the chorus involves a scale jump that no one who wrote the song could possibly pull off live. Cue the live performance on Youtube and…yep, I’m correct again. As a final insult, Taylor goes for “the talk over” during the bridge with disastrous results. Frankly, I’ve tried “the talk over” in songs I’ve written and let me tell you that it never-ever-ever, works. Unless you’re a rapper and obviously Taylor's no wigger.

Now, I don’t blame Taylor for trying to speak for the millions of tween girls who try desperately to convince themselves that they are not the reason a guy actually doesn’t love them or are trying to convince themselves not to go back to an asshole after a break-up. Or, whatever. Young women have been bat-shit crazy since the dawn of time, so what else are you going to do after you’ve been dumped for the umpteenth time but air your grievances publically if you have the means to do so? It's just so empowering, right ladies?

Somehow, Rolling Stone magazine named this song the second best song of 2012. Then again, what can we expect from a magazine that hasn’t been relevant since the 90’s? (Wow, the 90’s were really a watershed decade.) In all truthfulness and objectivity, Carly Rae Jepsen’s dreaded “Call Me Maybe” is a better song, and that came in at number 50. They even ranked Taylor’s song higher than Adele’s “Skyfall” which prompted a quick, “Who writes this shit?” from me. Perhaps it is time to rethink that whole legalizing marijuana thing.