Two fireman are buttfucking in a smoke filled room

Welcome, potential person who has some skin in the gun control game (one way or the other).

Let me possibly confuse you, first thing: I don’t want to take anyone’s guns away.

Now let me clear that up: You get more views of your content via “shocking” or otherwise manipulative headlines. If that causes you some indignation (as opposed to other sites doing it and just not telling you) then I apologize and I won’t be upset if you stop reading.

This is mainly about mental health. Before you go making assumptions, I realize that there are plenty of people on both sides of the issue who realize that mental health is a very important topic, and that they actually act on it. I also realize that there are plenty of people on both sides of the issue who proclaim they think it’s an important topic but are really just dodging since they are the first to decry mental illness when it “helps” the perpetrator of something like a mass shooting avoid the death penalty.

My sister suffers from mental illness. I care for her greatly, even though I’ve seen her say and do some incredibly terrible things to other family members – and even to me a few times, whereas I’m usually able to talk her down – and every time she goes through a bad period I always find myself upset at how little is done for her by the people who are supposed to help her: mental health professionals won’t take her in as a patient, the ones who do only listen to her for 15 minutes and then give her some drugs, the hospitals’ concern only extends as far payment does, and the police only care that she isn’t harming anyone if they even respond to calls from/about her. She is unable to hold a job due to her illness so she has to receive assistance from the state. My parents help her out when they can, as well, but my family is middle class: there’s little to offer. All that wraps up to be a dire situation and when my sister tells me she’s feeling depressed I can understand.

The point is, the help isn’t there for the majority of people. Even for those with the resources it sometimes isn’t there. This is mainly because people either refuse to or don’t understand what it means to be mentally ill. My example above about the mass shooting illustrates the point perfectly: most people still think that “evil” motivates an Adam Lanza into a mass shooting, as if he rationally sat down and told himself about what he was going to do. This, of course, is asinine – by its very definition those actions defy rationality.

Now, the crux of all my exposition on this topic is not to discredit gun control legislation. I am not a fan of banning things because it ultimately doesn’t solve the problem but I certainly understand the argument: without access to the guns (especially in Lanza’s case) there’s most likely no violence – and I know that other countries have seen positive results from legislation. However, the real problem is getting the right help for people who need it so that someone like James Holmes doesn’t even find himself in a position to “rationalize” killing people. The lobby against gun control is so powerful, as well, that politicians lose their seats as a result of even small attempts to legislate. Of course that isn’t a reason to give up or move on, but imagine if mental illness got the same amount of power behind it that gun control has. People like my sister might be able to see a doctor instead of being turned away simply because she is a ward of the state. She wouldn’t have to be placed into a hospital and discharged a short while afterward when she still isn’t okay. The police would know not to patronize her or, if she does something worthy of an arrest, they would know to handle it gracefully. It would mean that the people who have previously felt there were no paths besides a Columbine/Tucson/Washington Naval Yard/Mission Valley mall would have support and, with any luck, lessen those types of atrocities.

If you’re pro-gun and thinking I’m on your side, think again. As I stated above, I don’t believe we should be outright banning guns. However, I doubt the candor any of the protestations given by the NRA and other supporters, though. Two, off the top of my head: 1) “Criminals don’t care about the law,” and 2) “What about gang violence?” They are, on the surface, decent things to bring up. Per my examples, a person who is going to commit a crime doesn’t care if using a gun is outlawed and gang violence is still a very big concern – but here’s my problem with that reasoning: Those things have nothing to do with the link between guns and mental health and as a result, you sound both uninformed and insensitive. Uninformed because a mass shooter isn’t a criminal holding up a convenience store at gunpoint or a gang member for the very reasons I listed in the first part. Insensitive because those protestations only come off as red herrings, and they aren’t consolations for people who lost loved ones; rather, they seem as attacks. Think about it – in reworked language, you’re basically saying, “This material thing [the gun] is more important to me than the fact that you lost someone.” (I get that it’s about much more than the object.) The same query I posed earlier applies to the gun owners: Think about what would happen if the energy spent on those protestations and lobbying against gun control was spent on advocating for the mentally ill.

Both sides of the issue, in their hectic dance, overlook the importance of the killer – the root problem that needs to be solved. If your gut reaction to these terrible events is contempt for the perpetrator, or to immediately pull out the second amendment, or to immediately begin crowing about laws to get rid of certain types of guns then I don’t think you are focusing your energy constructively. Like any other kind of social issue in this country it comes down to exposure and awareness. If you’re interested in learning more there are a myriad of resources to look at – a simple Google search for “mental illness awareness” alone will turn up many good ones. If you are one of those folks who needs things to be shared to you, a good start is the NAMI website.

If nothing else, I hope that my words have caused you to think. Perhaps, if you are all too familiar with the struggles of mental illness – be it you or someone you love suffering – you’ll share your story.

There’s a web campaign I noticed today that is trying to end using the word “retard” as a pejorative.

http://r-word.org

Several of my friends shared it because today (March 5th) is their awareness day. I am not here to somehow defend the use of the word or to crap all over the people organizing the campaign, though. I am here to share an embarrassing story of mine as a show of support for this. While I generally don’t mind insulting someone for things like their religion, personal habits, annoying Facebook activities, and a myriad of other criteria they all pretty much have a single thing in common:

You can choose to do or not do any of those things.

Granted, some people have addictions or mental illnesses, and I understand that. But most people choose (consciously or otherwise) to continually use hashtags or pick their noses in public. Someone who falls under the category that the word “retard” used to cover did not ask to be born like that. You’ll probably find that a lot of the things I get super up-in-arms about boil down to that or, at least, are nuanced enough to be in the same vein. Note that I said, “used to cover,” there – that’s because it’s a word that shouldn’t be used to corral all kinds of disabilities together.

My story is this:

After moving to Long Beach, California earlier in my life I started to get more exposure to gay people. While I considered myself a supporter of gay rights I never involved myself in any way and I used to call things “gay” all of the time. “Oh, that shirt is so gay,” and etc. Within some time, my friends started to tell me that while they appreciated me arguing for them with people on the internet and such, that my continual use of the word in a pejorative way was confusing. Initially, I responded in the way that most social Conservatives respond to that sort of thing – “Why are you being so sensitive?” “It’s just a word,” “I hate politically correct language,” “I’ve got all these gay friends so I can’t be a homophobe.”

Of course, in time, I realized how undeveloped and puerile those points of view are. I developed a simple way to weed it out of my vocabulary. Whenever I called something “gay” I would also say, “as in bad.” (To this day, if I slip and call something gay, you’ll hear me add it.) That probably sounds counterproductive but what it did was put it at the forefront of my mind. “This traffic is so gay… as in bad.” “What did that guy do? Wow, that was gay… as in bad.” and so on. It did not take very long for me to realize how stupid and mean I sounded.

It’s tough for me to specifically point out what people are using “retarded” for and to help develop ways to stop people from using it negatively. However, the picture I attached to this story is an example of what I mean. Campaigns like the one I mentioned are great starts and are making good progress. Calling people out for it also works if you’re thick-skinned enough to deal with the kind of dolt who would call something retarded.

If you’re someone who is mature enough to realize you shouldn’t be calling things retarded, or labeling someone some sort of “-tard” yet don’t have the self-control or vocabulary to weed it out, try to find something like I did. When you use it derogatorily like that, you’re implying that there’s something “bad” about having a developmental disorder.

Come to think of it, maybe replacing “retarded” with some of my criteria above or something may be worthwhile. “What are you doing? You’re acting like such a Catholic right now.” “Dude, stop saying that, you sound hashtaggy.” “You just went full nose-picker. Never go full nose-picker.”

(AP) – The state legislature of Arizona today passed a controversial bill which will potentially allow business owners to deny service to handicapped customers, under the assertion of it being in line with their misanthropic beliefs.

The bill passed the state House of Representatives handily, 51-9, and garnered huge support from Arizona businesses. It now is one step away from being law, needing only to be signed by Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican and misanthrope who has owned a small business in the past. When asked what she would do, Brewer told the Associated Press, “If a business owner doesn’t like someone then they should be able to refuse them service. This isn’t discrimination, this is protecting the freedoms of people who don’t like other people.”

The measure is drawing criticism from various groups, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy. A spokesman for Stephen J. Bennett, CEO of United Cerebral Palsy, issued the following statement: “This bill allows private individuals and businesses to use misanthropy to discriminate. It sends the message that Arizona is intolerant and presents the possibility of needless litigation.”

Tom Winshaw, the owner of a gastropub in Kingman, is one of several local businesses boycotting the bill. “It’s insane. There are so many other problems we could be focusing on, like the homos or all of these damned immigrants!” Winshaw later disclosed that he is also against the bill because his wife is blind.

In a televised interview with a Fountain Hills news station, Arizona state Representative John Kavanagh, a Republican, said that the bill would protect various types of employees and owners from the, “increasing number of activist judges who seek to empower those who discriminate against misanthropes for their beliefs.” The Rep. went on to state that Arizona is only looking to protect liberty with the bill.

In Kearny, a small town outside of Globe, the owner of a McDonald’s franchise welcomed the measure. Roberta Gillson has been the operator of several McDonald’s stores in the area for at least 20 years and expressed her hope that Gov. Brewer would sign the bill into law. “I can’t tell you how many complaints I get from customers who aren’t disabled but want to park close to my restaurants. It’s a real financial burden maintaining those spots along with keeping my wheelchair access ramps up to date. This is going to be a huge boon for me because I can just refuse service to the disabled now, and I’ve been forced to tolerate them impinging upon my liberty for too long.”

Rep. Chad Campbell, a Democrat from Arizona, said, “This is truly a very sad day for Arizona. I can only hope that the Governor does not sign. Let there be no doubt: this bill claims to protect freedom but what’s to stop someone from simply claiming a person is disabled to deny them service? This is very dubious, and if we were having this conversation in regard to African-Americans there would be tremendous outrage.”

In a statement, Marcus Ableton, the president of the Center for Arizona Truth and Freedom – a conservative group opposed to disabled rights – said, “This bill has a very simple premise: that Americans should be free to live and work according to their beliefs.”

I apologize for my “srs bsns” post here. (“Srs bsns,” for those of you not in the know, means, “serious business,” in a tongue-in-cheek way.)

Sign This Petition For Net Neutrality

On January 14th a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s rules for ISPs prohibiting them from restricting or otherwise managing web content. Not sure whether you want to sign the petition for Net Neutrality? Check this graphic out.

Since ISPs are not classified as “common carriers” regarding the services they provide, the FCC is now no longer able to keep them from managing their network traffic. Immediately following the ruling, the big companies released statements claiming that they would not do anything. Please double-check the graphic above if you believe that statement. They are corporations and, as such, that plan makes 100% sense from a business standpoint. It’s a good structure to get more money out of people and they would, honestly, be complete fools to willingly avoid switching to it. So disregard their fake assuaging – it’s going to happen at some point… unless we do something.

So sign the damned petition already!

(Credit for the chart graphic.)

We’re a little late in publishing this. You can primarily thank Calliander for that, since he claims to have been too busy to get his votes in. In any event, the tallies are in for the 2013 Unacceptables Awards. This is a review of the incredibly dumb shit that happened in 2013 and a critical damnation/lambasting for how you assholes responded to it. These are not presented in any kind of chronological order, outside of:

Sneak Preview: Fictional Character Surveys

Not much needs to be said about this. Were we not late in announcing this years’ results, these surveys would have garnered their own urgent update – much like Vine got.

You know what we’re talking about. They’re all over Buzzfeed and other sites, they let you find out whether you’re Han Solo or Obi-Wan Kenobi, and – for some inexplicable reason – everyone feels compelled to hit that “share” button so that everyone in their social media circles is inundated with them.

It is not 2006. MySpace is no longer a thing. Cut it out. These surveys are not acceptable.

Continually Annoying: The Hashtag

This special award has been given to the same recipient for the last five years and it continues to become more and more unacceptable with each year that goes by. A little history: the hash sign is ancient but came to prominent use in old-school internet chat rooms to denote a “channel” for talking. Channels were specific areas of relevance so if you wanted to go chat with a bunch of people about Super Nintendo you connected to a chat server and could do that under “#supernintendo” easily. The people who invented Twitter decided that functionality could be used to group discussion topics. You could click on the hashtag for “supernintendo” and find all the Tweets relevant to it because the site was not huge.

Along with Twitter’s popularity came an untenable focus on “trending” topics. With “trending” topics there came ad agencies and news headlines. The original use of the hashtag – completely valid and functionally better than search terms in an honest environment – became polluted with the following things:

• Companies, trying to drum up hype legitimately or otherwise.
• Shameless self-promoter want-to-be-famous types, trying to drum up hype legitimately or otherwise.

To be fair, there are plenty of hashtags out there that relate properly. Now, though, nobody clicks on them. (And anyone who does is a fucking moron.) They are made up and/or included in the hopes of becoming “trending” and giving the spotlight to their creator. An example: A person posts an update of a smoothie they whipped up – something that nobody gives even one shit about – and writes “#smoothie #raspberry #apple #pear #banana #yogurt #eatclean‬” as their description. This is an entirely annoying and unacceptable way to communicate, and that doesn’t even take into account the level of narcissism involved.

Dumbest Food: Cronuts

The cronut was named one of the best inventions of 2013 by Time magazine. If you were wondering whether Time magazine was still relevant, there is your answer. Cronuts are a pastry that take the production of a croissant and combine that with the shape and deep-frying of a doughnut. The French douchebag in New York City who invented them must have been so proud of his portmanteau, along with its immediate spread amongst foodie circles.

Our dislike stems from three areas:

1. Foodies. No further explanation is needed there.
2. It’s a dumb-sounding word. Similar to our first list and the pronunciation of the word, “GIF,” how a word sounds coming out of peoples’ mouths is quite important.
3. This whole idea of one food item being the fixation of a news article is absurd. Outside of maybe a really good crème brûlée or a particularly good presentation of… nah, never mind. We were going to justify a food-based news article but it really isn’t defensible.

There’s a black market for these things – they sell for $5 and there are knockoffs (the bakery has the name as a registered trademark, by the way) plus scalpers selling them for $100. Make sure to re-read the last five words of that sentence. The amount of pretension involved with these escapades is entirely out right.

Worst Viral Video: The Harlem Shake

This was actually a tie so we were forced to actually think for a bit to determine the actual winner. An equal amount of votes went to “What Does the Fox Say?” by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. Upon review we had to turn down our unfunny, nonsensical entry from Norway. Why, you ask? When it comes down to it, it’s the part in bold about Ylvis. They intentionally made the song to be funny, and even though the level of funny seems to have been switched for the level of annoying, that fact still remains. The intent was funny, and intent definitely matters a lot. Also, the same group is capable of funny things (see “Someone Like Me”).

Our winner was, oddly enough, also intended to be funny. So what puts it in front? For starters, the song is absolutely worse and more annoying than anything the fox says. Secondly, if we are talking about “The [name of group] Version of This Viral Video” quantities, the ones generated by The Harlem Shake make it the winner – and that doesn’t even take quality into account.

The original Harlem Shake video, like Ylvis’s entry, is terrible and unfunny. Stunningly, every single copycat version of it is equally terrible and unfunny. Not even one is good. Take into account that the majority of them were made for the same reason that all of those asshats put hashtags in their Tweets and you have a miserable mess on par with (if not worse) than, “Shit [type of people] Say,” our 2012 winner of this award.

Over-Saturated Celebrity: Jennifer Lawrence

There isn’t a particularly long diatribe to go with this award. Everywhere you turned in 2013, people were talking about some aspect of Jennifer Lawrence – be that her professed love of pizza, her supposed non-conformance to the thin body type of Hollywood, or her status as an idol to preteen girls. We don’t have anything against her at all – we’re just tired of hearing about her (especially since she is definitely thin).

Over-Saturated Television Show: Doctor Who

We have to be honest here. This was 1 vote from being a tie with Breaking Bad and the deciding vote was made with full knowledge of this, and with the hope that Doctor Who fans would read and be angrier. The whole antihero television show idea was run dry by the time Dexter came on (even though Dexter was pretty good for a few seasons) so while some dude making meth may very well be the best show to come out since Six Feet Under, who cares. Doctor Who has been around longer, its fans are provably insane, and listening to them prattle on about it is a million times worse than hearing a Walter White fanatic’s ravings. For some reason, 2013 brought so many of them out of the woodwork and there were news articles, contests, and other tie-ins (including a Google Maps addition). Breaking Bad’s had a steady, rabid fan base mostly the entire time. Who knows what caused the uptick in Doctor Who fan volume, but it is measurably higher and thus puts this show on top.

Most Overused Meme: Doge

The doge meme is actually not a newcomer to the arena. It first popped up in 2010, when the owner of a Shiba Inu posted the pictures. The spelling, and usage of phrases like, “wow,” “such doge,” and “very like,” to indicate being impressed mock both online newbies who lack the capacity to focus on spelling or grammar and also the mentally handicapped. It rose to incredible prominence in 2013, however, and became such a combination of “incorrect use” and “Chuck Norris” that it beats out all other memes this year handily. Now that there is a cryptocurrency based around the damned thing, it’s pretty safe to say it’s wholly unacceptable now.

Dumbest Popular News: The Royal Baby

The number of people around the world who were wrapped up in the gender and name of William and Kate’s child is staggering. It received more notice than all but one other headline story – beating out actual news like gun control legislature post-Newtown, the Boston Marathon bombing, Obamacare website problems, Edward Snowden, and Syria (to name a few).

To say that anything having to do with the “royal baby” is chaff is to do a disservice to corn and wheat. It would be absolutely mind-boggling that it was one of America’s top news stories if Duck Dynasty wasn’t the number one television program in the country.

Most Useless New Service: Vine

That we had to issue a mid-year, emergency update to address Vine speaks to how utterly pointless of a service it is, and how absentmindedly naïve the people who use it are. If we wanted to watch an animated GIF you know what we would do? We’d go watch an animated GIF! The animated GIF would be of something funny, as well. For the love of all that is sane in this world, why would we want an animated GIF that’s not a GIF, is like three to four times the size of one, and is of some fuckwit’s two year-old pushing around a Laugh & Learn? We wouldn’t, and thus Vine is majestically useless.

The Absolute Most Annoyingly Cloying Sites: TIE – Buzzfeed & Upworthy

This was a tie that could not be broken via discussion, thought, listing cons side-by-side, or any other means of determination. For a brief minute we tried to go with the older site, Buzzfeed, since it’s been around long enough to know better… but then, Upworthy is new and especially annoying. There was much bickering for a while and eventually we decided the only thing to do was to shit all over both sites since both are the crappy, curated feces of the web.

Buzzfeed’s main annoying claim to fame is its formulaic pandering to twenty-somethings and other millenials via arbitrary lists of puerile hodgepodge that they so deeply feel is directly connected to them when, in reality, some dickface in an office scoured information that follows those assholes around the web via the billion marketing firms and told them what twenty-somethings and other millienials are interested in. Put succinctly, Buzzfeed manipulates its readers via the cookies that places like DoubleClick use. These cum guzzlers make money by baiting links via pseudo-provocative titles like, “19 Scientific Reasons You Should Take More Naps.” Most of them are just niblets of information pulled from other web sites and grafted together with animated GIFs, and you should feel bad for even clicking to view them. We hope you feel especially bad if you read the article we mentioned (a real one).

Upworthy is eerily similar but even more malicious because they are playing directly to effete liberals looking to share something they feel is moving or life changing. Usually, an Upworthy “article” (if it can even be called that) is a video they learned of from some other site (possibly Buzzfeed) and then posted with a headline like, “This thing happened. What happened next [will blow your mind/will change the way you think about x/some other saccharine bullshit].” In a majority of instances, this link-baiting headline and pathetic excuse for journalism is political in nature so it helps the snob-o-crat to spread their agenda to other like-minded dipshits on social media.

Both are entirely unacceptable.

Stupidest Buzzword: Epic

Describing things as “epic” has been continually passed over for a few years – even in 2012, when it was arguably at its most overused. “Selfie” was 1 vote behind it, if that gives you any indication, and we really wanted it to be first since it’s been featured in a Garfield comic strip. It’s pretty obvious that you’re engaging in something mind-bogglingly stupid when Jim Davis puts it into his outstandingly banal comics. Alas, it was finally the time for “epic” since this year provided CNN headlines with “epic fail” in the title.

There are so many reasons to have stopped using it as an adjective as early as 2009, but no: you fuckers decided to tell your friend who tripped that it was an “epic” fail or to say that Jon’s beard is so fucking “epic” and the craft brew from XYZ in ABC has some “epic” hoppiness. Everything is “epic” with you dingleberry harvesters. Let’s see what the Greeks think.

An epic (from the Ancient Greek adjective ἐπικός (epikos), from ἔπος (epos) “word, story, poem”) is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.

While one could probably write a lengthy narrative poem about how bad the launch of the Obamacare site was, that’s not really a good use of the format. Additionally, the word has been modernized, so let’s see what the regular dictionary says.

Heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war. Also, of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

The aforementioned items certainly don’t fall under the first part. In no way could the burgers and fries at The Counter be considered heroic, majestic, or impressively great. The second part might possibly fit but think about it for a second: when your friend tripped and hurt his leg, was that really “of unusually great size or extent?” Your laughter at his misfortune was probably of unusually great size or extent, though. (Yeah, we resisted the Mom joke.) Is Jon a member of ZZ Top? Those guys have beards that fit into the definition but we’d be willing to bet that Jon’s does not. His beard is, at best, like the one on the dude from, “Epic Meal Time.” See what we did there?

So shut the fuck up about things that are epic. We dislike it so much that we won’t even wrap up this part with a quaint mention of it – the word is used so much that your mom is jealous. (Yup.)

Most Ineffective Insult: Hipster

This one doesn’t really need too much of an explanation, to be honest. The word, “hipster,” has become so ubiquitous and is used to denote so many things now that labeling something as such means nothing. It’s like slapping the word, “organic,” on a product or apologizing after saying something as preposterous as, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” (No, we aren’t mad because someone called us one or used it to describe something we liked.)

It’s a useless adjective and amounts to nothing, making it unacceptable as an insult.

The Overall Loser of 2013

Previously, we mentioned one headline beating out the Royal Baby. That headline centered around the behavior of a young, female performer at a music awards show.

Of course, we refer to Miley Cyrus. Everything surrounding that performance – from the people decorating their Christmas trees with her “Wrecking Ball” pose (yes, they are related) to the adoption of the word “twerk” by every day white folks – is an absolutely stunning loss for humanity. Anyone who watched the performance, anyone who twerks, anyone who does anything slightly related to Miley Cyrus is now a top shelf bag of dicks. A sack of useless, unacceptable cocks. Parody videos, news headlines, hashtags, Christmas ornaments, TMZ: everyone and everything. We think the sheer stupidity of everything surrounding this tart is probably self evident to the intelligent people, and nothing we could ever say will sway the minds of the rest of you Cro-Magnons. We’re also well aware of the “irony” in our discussing the topic.

So we’ll just leave it at, as always, “Unacceptable.”

Enjoy!

A lot of folks are sharing this post from Vice magazine’s “Noisey” which, from all appearances, was written by a high-schooler who just discovered them. The author claims to understand why people claim that The Beatles are overrated, and then goes ape shit with reasons and excuses about how great they are. I’m guessing people are sharing it for the same reason that the whole, “Who is OutKast?” thing circulated: a sizable number of people take their music seriously. (I’m one of them.)

This article is dumb, though. Let me first say, I like The Beatles. A lot. I have a friend who is beyond super obsessed with them so from time to time I’ll rile him up by claiming they are overrated but there are two reasons for this:

1. He knows that I like them and understand their significance.
2. It allows him to get in some shots about Nirvana being overrated. (Nirvana being another band I like a lot.)

This is the problem with writing an article bashing Beatles-bashers. They fall into two types. One of those types, like myself, is the “pot-stirrer” who just loves getting you all annoyed with their words. You can’t get mad and launch a tirade at them because then you’re just going to look like a putz when they give you a shit-eating grin and ask, “You mad, bro?” The other type is the straight-up musical pedestrian. They may be a young person who absolutely loves utter shit like One Direction or the Biebs but they also may just be a normal adult who doesn’t give enough of a shit, is tired of hearing you prate about musical geniuses, and wants to be left in their morass of Pitbull/Ke$ha/Miley Cyrus.

With the former of that group, they’ll either grow up eventually and realize One Direction is audible feces, abandoning them for The Beatles/Joni Mitchell/Neil Young/etc. or they’ll switch over to Hot 100 FM and turn into the latter. In the event they continue down the path of pop music consumers, there’s nothing you can say or do or exhibit to them that will cause them to change their minds. They are content with filler noise like Katy Perry’s, “Roar.”

So, essentially, in either instance you’re wasting your time. Or, since this is the age of social media, you’ve successfully drawn tons of hits to your site. Hmm.

Check this crap out

So Nigerian lawmakers passed a bill that invoked a jail sentence and some other dumb punishments for gay people – even for just having a gay organization. Today, Goodluck Jonathan signed it into law.

I commented on this development on Facebook but, unfortunately, Facebook is not a good forum for calling out this kind of stupidity:

1. The majority of Facebook users are dumb. This is evidenced by their lack of attention to spelling or grammar, sharing of hoax articles, and presence of teenagers.
2. There are religious folks on my friends list and while I truly don’t care if I offend them for believing in Space Grandpa, I also don’t want to hear them bitch and moan about how I’m rude or whatever.
3. I mainly try to keep things only semi-serious where Facebook is concerned.

A head spokesman for GEJ said the following:

“More than 90 percent of Nigerians are opposed to same-sex marriage. So, the law is in line with our cultural and religious beliefs as a people.”

On Facebook, I said, “Your cultural and religious beliefs are bad, and you should feel bad,” in the style of Dr. Zoidberg.

Here, I say then that means that more than 90 percent of Nigerians are useless human beings. I’m glad knowing that I am smarter than them. Is there any way we can take all of the Fundies from America and ship them over to Nigeria? It sounds like they’d have a fun time. Of course, they’d have to contend with Boko Haram but since they are war-loving assholes it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for them to adapt.

This wouldn’t be Insult.org without commentary on the stupidity of Americans and this week it hit a hilarious low. Additionally, I would not be me if I didn’t jump all over the opportunity to call someone a racist and/or a homophobe.

So you probably already know about the Duck Dynasty guy.

I’ll forgo my typical tirade about the lunacy behind this man’s motivations. I know, rare! Instead, I have something different to offer up mainly because there seems to be a huge portion of the populace that doesn’t understand the concept behind freedom of speech.

This man has a right to say what he wants. The government did not retaliate against him, his company did. His freedom of speech has not been impinged. Most employers have conditions in the contract of employment you sign. It appears his did. What he said apparently violated a condition. It is legally acceptable to suspend or terminate him based on that.

It is perfectly legal and ethical to have an employment condition against hateful speech. It is absolutely not legal or ethical to have one against a person of a protected class. Expressing an opinion of a protected class (in this case, a religion) is not inclusive of the class.

The most offensive thing here is this man is part of a reality television show, which should not be a qualification for being interviewed by GQ.

His “beliefs” are stupid, yes, and anyone defending him is a racist and/or a homophobe. But there are two forces at work: the amount of inappropriate/outrageous required to maintain the attention of the trogs who watch this drivel and the amount of inappropriate/outrageous required to be noticed by the intelligent people who don’t watch this drivel. The network certainly knew what they were getting into with this show – an argument can probably be made they picked these morons specifically because of their asinine beliefs – and this Robertson fellow crossed the line by bringing his nonsense to the GQ interview. The street of blame in this city of idiocy is not one way.

But to those who think this is a freedom of speech issue, your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

End of discussion.

You all know I’m the first to call someone racist, oftentimes based on the loosest of reasoning. I am a militant liberal when it comes to social issues.

You also all know that I’m incredibly critical of modern rap, that I draw a distinction between hip-hop and rap, and will argue with you for hours about what makes Lil’ Wayne utter crap. I am the white kid in this Onion article/video. I automatically dismiss your song if it contains even one n-word, denigration of women, or any bragging. New Jay-Z album? Crap. New Kanye album? Crap. You all know this.

So it may come as a surprise that I do not agree with this Feministing blog post about some new, typically overproduced pop song by some young girl from Australia (Lorde). Atypically, the song contains some criticism of the subject matter present in most overproduced pop songs.

My friends and I – we’ve cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this,
We didn’t come from money.

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

The author of the blog post retorts:

Because we all know who she’s thinking when we’re talking gold teeth, Cristal and Maybachs. So why shit on black folks? Why shit on rappers? Why aren’t we critiquing wealth by taking hits at golf or polo or Central Park East? Why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality?

I’m not here to say something mean in response to the blog author because the last two questions are completely valid and there most likely are songs about them – they probably just aren’t mainstream. I mean, off the top of my head, I know The Procussions deal with income inequality in a lot of their songs.

But there also needs to be criticism, specifically, of things like what the author is taking issue with. Gold teeth, Cristal, and Maybachs are indicative of dumb behavior, not “black folks” behavior. It’s entirely okay, and not racist, to call those things out – regardless of how many rappers/black folks seem to be enamored of them (which makes them stereotypes). It’s okay to make fun of those stereotypes, however, because those things are stupid choices – and are just as worthless as golf or polo in Central Park East.