Wednesday, January 27, 2010

misanthrope is my favorite word.

quite often i am frustrated by main-stream america. while i can't imagine growing up anywhere else, i am often embarrassed at what has become american culture. this isn't to say that i am not grateful for the privileges i've grown up with. i'm very appreciative of my freedoms, though i don't necessarily believe i enjoy them because of military protection. what i am mostly bothered by are the moronic things that have become popular because so many people award them undeserved attention. nascar, nicolas cage, american cheese, recently elected massachusetts senator scott brown, the new york times fashion&style section- to name a few. i have to feel though that the united states as reached a new low point though when mattel introduced twitter for dogs.

i realize, and enjoy to some degree, social networking- this blog serves as proof. i have always thought that twitter is for the most egocentric of people though. i can think of only a small hand-full of times when using twitter is justifiable: keeping patrons up-to-date on happy hour specials, grassroots organizing, and promotions for food delivery deals. everything else seems like an insult to the inventors of the internet.

back to puppy tweets, this device attaches to a dog's collar and comes with pre-recordings like, "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!" and "YAHOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on."

this all leads me to believe that the type of person who would buy this product is also the type of person who doesn't leave their house enough to need to follow their dog's twitter.

Monday, January 25, 2010

smellements


adding to my argument in an earlier post that axe is awful...


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

gaga for haiti


for only $25 you too can have your very own lady gaga shirt with all proceeds going to haiti relief. i can't wait until i'm famous enough to capitalize on my popularity and lend my face a worthy cause.



Wednesday, January 13, 2010

insomnia is a dish best served cold.

i often have trouble sleeping and find myself lying in bed, anxiously scratching my dry skin and day dreaming. last night my mind began to wonder what celebrities would be like had they not gone into the entertainment business. a few examples:

what if jay-z had decided his true passion was teaching grammar and composition to high school students? would he have been the director of the school's glee club?

what if tina fey had gone to law school and eventually earned the title "her honorable judge elizabeth fey"? would she still eat junk food and make poop jokes?

a darker one, what if a young, precocious ashton kutcher had gotten his hands on the unabomber's manifesto, industrial society and its future ? would he have ended up being the one to send the post 9/11 anthrax letters?

finally, what if brad pitt had finished his last semester and MU and graduated with a bachelors of journalism in advertising? where would he be now? he may have still found himself in los angeles, but it's doubtful he would be raising humanitarian efforts and children with angelina jolie. my guess is he'd be writing jingles and producing commercials for snapple and sketchers.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

about me: well, i'm a walking stereotype of an environmentally and socially conscious, anti-corporate white North American hipster.

but mostly i'm filled with jealousy that someone has created a blog more clever than my own. actually, i've known about christian lander and his blog stuff white people like for much longer than i've been blogging on my own site. his blog is a guilty pleasure i'm not even ashamed to admit i love. it does pain me to admit that of the 130 entries i can easily identify 114 i enjoy. as i write this post i'm sitting at the non-profit job i so desperately wanted for the year i'm taking off before deciding what i want to do for graduate school, drinking coffee, wearing a sweater, and listening to indie music. if the computer i am using were an apple product i might die of white overdose.

something i find more interesting than the blog its self is the reaction it has drawn from critics. lander is a generic looking white male who, if placed in a group of 29 other hipsters with unkempt beards, bed hair, and dark-rimmed glasses one would most likely assume a fleet foxes concert had just let out. other than being quick enough to spot an up-and-coming trend just before it turns from sub-culture to main-stream, he is not particularly interesting. i've read a lot of criticism calling him racist, classist, pretentious, and a bad writer. i have also read and heard several interviews of his. of all the things people say about him the only one that ever bothers him is being called a bad writer- which causes his critics to become all the more offended.

and here's the thing i don't think most people get- christian landers does not give a shit. he is not trying to make an intelligent social commentary on "white culture" because white people don't really have any kind of culture, we steal them from other people. he is not a decorated academic trying to base any truth on what he says, that's why he writes a blog. part of this i think stems from the fact that the popularity of stuff white people like grew incredibly quickly. in three months he became a popular culture phenomenon. but, landers knows that his blog, just like everything he writes about on it, is ephemeral. he just happened to get lucky. when people say the things he writes are racist and classist, that more than just white people enjoy these things, and not all white people enjoy everything on the list he doesn't care. he has said he knows he is not racist, and he bases most of his entries off his and his friend's personal tastes. he never makes a new post with the ill intent of offending anyone, but when people do get offended (#101) it adds even more novelty to his satire.

moral of this post- tell your friends to read my blog. landers was given a $300,000 advance for his book. matthew wants to get paid.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

"New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks..." Mark Twain

it's a brand new year and i'm also about to turn a year older. i know that's a relative thing to say. every year people turn a year older, but my birthday falls one week after new years day. i've got high hopes for this year, too. twenty-two treated me pretty well, but i've got a good feeling about twenty-three. i don't make resolutions, but i do like to get goals for myself. i even made a list of my top ten goals for the year.

1.) start swimming
2.) play with more puppies
3.) buy a subaru
4.) start writing more
5.) grow a beard
6.) start canning
7.) stop blacking out so often
8.) visit dollywood
9.) buy more cardigans
10.) have my starter marriage