Attention Whoring, Gender, Horny, Indignant, Media, My favorites

My Non-Monogamous Relationship With Hulu

I originally wanted to break this fast by writing about my adventures in facial hair. The post sucked. The only sentence I liked was “it started as a novelty on my neck” and that’s only because I’m into alliteration.

I watched Chuck and Lie To Me this morning to wake myself up. It’s not because I don’t have things I need to do – I have a lot of chores to accomplish before work today, but because I missed Hulu.

This is the way I should start this post.

Hulu is the best girlfriend I’ve ever had. She’s always there when I need her to tell me stories as I cuddle with my giant u-shaped body pillow that I got off craigslist for free. She’s there to give me vague sexual arousal that can transition nicely into porn. And most importantly she doesn’t need me when I’m busy and when I come back has just stored up hours of time for us to hang out in her neat little queue. I love her little queue. The bigger it gets the bigger I get. She’s perfect because she allows me to have the non-monogamous relationship that I always wanted – one where the relationship part is still accented highly.

I have a confession to make.

I like my relationships. I like the ones I get in. For the most part they are healthy. I enjoy being in them. I’m happy.

Whew. That was tough. I didn’t want to have to admit that.

The point is that I like being in a relationship. I just like to be able to put it on the back burner for anything else. Hulu lets me do that. It’s not that I need to be able to sleep with other people – though Hulu wouldn’t care. It’s just that I want Hulu to feel comfortable sleeping with other people because she knows I don’t care. It’s not that I need her to not pester me when I have more important shit than her needs – Hulu always gives me a number in parenthesis next to the word “Queue” that lets me know how long it’s been since we’ve hung out, which directly corresponds to how guilty I need to feel. It’s just that I want her to know that I will come back and spend obsessive hours fawning over her glossy moving images and full screen buttons, but sometimes I work on other things and may need time away.

I watched trailers on Hulu for 2 hours last night.

I needed to catch up.

There are five movies out right now about people attempting to have non-monogamous relationships and failing because love is too strong.

First is Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis deciding to be Friends With Benefits. Which means that they are like totally friends and then they decide that they should also have sex because they are beautiful. But like she’s totally cool with that even though she’s a woman – which we can tell because she likes to chest bump and watch football. This is not how non-monogamy is done. This is how patriarchy is enforced.

Then it’s Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman try to do something where they have No Strings Attached. This one is totally supposed to work because it is totally the girls idea!!! She’s the one that’s too busy and men don’t have feelings and don’t want to get attached anyway – especially men who have friends like Ludacris! Don’t worry guys though. Even though she says she doesn’t get jealous and hates monogamy, when he starts playing the field (you know, like we men do) she realizes that they need to settle down and tell their kids about the time Ashton brought a bouquet of carrots to the hospital because of that inside joke with bunnies.

Then Adam Sandler pretends to be cheating on a wife that doesn’t exist to get a series of girls to Just Go With It. But then! Love! Ahhh! Big boobs! Slow walking! Big boobs! Love! Big boobs! Blonde! Now he has to follow through with the lie and pretend Jennifer Aniston is his wife. Wacky! She has kids. She’s a woman who lives like a normal person whereas the man is sooooo weird and wants sex all the time – whoaaaaa! And now he just wants to settle down but his lies are catching up to him. This movie is about honesty, guys. That and enforcing gender roles.

What about Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway experiment with Love and Other Drugs. This is about a guy who likes sex so much that he starts selling a exist pill that allows guys to have sex even when their bodies are telling them no and in no way help a woman. Then a girl comes around who lives even more free spirited. Why’d I say “even more free spirited?” Because that’s what it’s called when a man lies to a bunch of girls to sleep with them and then enforces his capitalist position of power to ruin lives just to get his rocks off. She on the other hand is bizarre because she’s into just sex too. WEIRD! Don’t worry, she’s not. She’s dying and she can’t handle the fact that she’s dying so she’s just doing a bucket list of sex with hot dudes to distract herself. If she were a real woman, she’d want to settle down as soon as the guy does – like a good little girl.

Also there is Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis getting a Hall Pass from their wives: Christina Applegate and Pam from The Office. A hall pass is where they get to fuck who ever they want for a week. Obviously they can’t fuck anyone because only marriage is the safe way to stay in a happy sexual relationship.

Sometimes Hulu can be a bitch. Sometimes she expresses the wrong opinions. But that’s what I love about her. That’s what I love about our relationship.

We don’t always have to agree but we’re always willing to listen, and that’s really the key to a non-monogamous relationship – because as soon as I find someone I agree with on everything I’ll want to settle down because it would be like hanging out with a mirror that fucked me.

I want a mirror that fucks me, but until then I’ll live non-monogamously with Hulu.

You need to watch those trailers – here: TimberKunis, AniSandler, KutchMan, GyllAway, 4way

Attention Whoring, Media

In Which I Piss Off Everyone Who Thinks That I Like Them

Music is a very different artform than any other because it is so much more about the audience that enjoys that music than it is about the music itself. By saying that you like a kind of music, you are not telling someone anything about the music that you enjoy listening to, but rather the people you wish to identify with.

This is why I like how we’ve transitioned away from full CDs and albums and vague musical pretensions from any long form musical appreciation that implies that you gain something besides image from the music that you listen to. Instead the single has become king – and a single becomes king from its video.

I loved freshman year of college because no one has any friends. No one has any friends, so, for once in my life, I’m on equal ground with everyone else. Desperation is the overarching feeling for all and as a result we have constant conversations with people about inoffensive, useless drivel, commenting only with unbridled enthusiasm for the other person’s interests. That sounds like something that I would hate, but it’s the best because it is the time where I get the most attention because I refuse to participate properly. I am most interesting on first meeting and then it just goes downhill as you realize that my desires are boring and self-obsessive instead of quirky and counter-cultural.

One reoccurring question in these first couple weeks of trying to make friends is “what type of music do you listen to?” This is because music is our greatest signifier if the person likes the same things you like without actually bringing up the things you like. Nobody can genuinely be offended that you like Wilco instead of MGMT or that you listen to classical music instead of early jazz, but they can secretly despise you and find other people who say the same thing about The Dead Cranberries early 90s influences.

I like Lady Gaga.

I like Kanye West.

They aren’t musicians – they are icons of our time.

Kanye West’s penis has more influence on our society than half the artists that you think are upcoming, underground, and uberawesome.

This isn’t to say that I only pay attention to music if the artist is famous because fame is the only way to have an influence in music. I almost agree with that, but I think that music has an ability to force people to self-reflect (the only purpose I find valid in art) because it can appeal to a group of people based solely on shallow signifiers while subverting the message that they are typically bombarded by.

If you don’t know her, you should. Princess Superstar is one of a group of maybe 10 people that I think are perfect.

This is what music should be.

Telling someone you listen to Princess Superstar does not tell people that you prefer to dress a certain way and smoke a certain type of cigarette, it rather tells someone the opinions you find valid and the ones you don’t.

Lazy, Media, Pathetic

AHH.. My Life is Over

I went outside and walked in the park sometimes. I wrote a little bit every once in a while.

That was before the incident.

Now I lay bedridden with my laptop bag molding at the foot of my bed and my clothes covering up the floor so that “stay out of the lava” is a really easy game. It’s scary how much this incident has affected me. It’s frightening to notice that the only outside I’ve seen has been what can be glanced at over my shoulder and out my window. It saddens me to think of how little of the outside world I really know.

The incident I speak of is Premier Week. I had to watch Glee, Castle, and Chuck over the past two days and I did not enjoy a single moment of any of it. This new influx of television added to my already annoying obsession with drafting fantasy basketball teams has made me some sort of hybrid between a hermit and a hobo. A hobo because I’m sure that a hermit at least finds the time to shower or eat, but the internet is not allowing me to. All the wonderful auction style drafts and pre-rankings I can do, all the hulu and megavideo I can watch. This is terrible. My life is over.

Indignant, Media

Me: In My 20 Somethings

I haven’t read this now stupid-famous article.

Everybody my age has and has an opinion. I am my age and I have lots of opinions. I should have an opinion on it. I do.

Sorta.

Two writers I respect dearly in their 20 somethings wrote responses that were both reasonable and mildly whiny. These are just two of hundreds of articles written about how the New York Times has misrepresented the almost youth of our country. Beyond the written responses, my peers love to run up to me with their first New York Times Magazine every screaming “did you see this shit?!?!?” Eh.

I feel like from the criticism I’ve heard, and quotes that have been pulled out for me that Arnett (the psychologist who headed up the study) and Henig (the writer of the article) has done a poor job understanding the issues facing a 20 something group heading into a dying job market and using their white privilege to be comfortable while they try out different career paths besides working in offices – which are also dying of people because technology has made most offices near unnecessary. This is not the 20 something’s problem. The fact that they are waiting tables and tending bars or travelling to poor areas and teaching Math and English is not a problem. Those are fine professions. The fact that they aren’t doing what they will be doing in 20 years is not a problem.

The problem with 20 somethings is that they respect 40 year olds.

You remember when you were a senior in college and you were at some party with some freshman and the freshman started talking about how good they were at beer pong and then they told you some story about some beer pong experience they had in high school? Do you remember how the story ended? No. You know why? Because you stopped paying attention because you were like: “This fucking child doesn’t understand what they are saying and there is no way they are going to surprise me with some childish story about how they got drunk in their parent’s basement.” That’s fair. You were probably right. You might not have been. That kid with the almost facial hair and the hair that’s too long for the first time because mommy hasn’t forced him to cut it and he doesn’t need to because he’s trying to save money now, which is why he just spent $40 on alcohol tonight could have a badass story about drinking out of solo cups. Probably not. But maybe.

40 year olds like Jeffery Arnett think of us the same way. When we say we are trying to find ourselves he sees himself at our age and wishes that he had learned the things he knows now, then. I look back to every point in my life and wish I had the knowledge that I have now – that’s part of living: Regretting.

So, now Arnett is looking down at 20 somethings for shit he wishes he hadn’t done, just as we’ve all looked down at freshman for staying with their high school boyfriend, or getting too drunk, or being annoying and stupid. Part of life is hating younger people. They are stupider than you because they haven’t experienced what you have experienced. That doesn’t mean they are wrong – they are simply gaining those experiences that you already gained.

People can’t learn calculus before they learned addition. Their is no hierarchy, one just comes before the other.

Sure, Arnett is a dick for demanding that 20 somethings act differently, but we are being annoying and whiny for giving a shit what he thinks. Also, just as Arnett is painting all 20ers with the same brush in his article, we are painting the New York Times readers and writers with a broad brush by assuming that they all agree with Arnett’s “findings.”

Let’s all chill out. We’re only 20 something.

Gender, Media

Hip Hop’s New Accidental Feminism

In Dane Cook’s first Comedy Central special (something I can quote from memory because I spent ages 12-18 watching 12-18 hours of comedy central) he has a joke about how men and women are different because men go to the clubs to find women to go home with and women go to clubs to just dance. “Let’s just dance! Just put our purses in a circle and dance!”

It’s a pretty boring joke from a boring comedian that seems cliched and shows a lack of understanding of the ability for people to defy their gender norms. It’s pretty age old and annoying to assume that all men are hunters and women are the hunted. We have to strive toward and for, while women need simply to show off their goods by dancing. They don’t want it. We want it and we must take it.

Recently we have some songs that accidentally mark the artists responsible as feminists.

Taio Cruz’s song Dynamite makes absolutely no mention of girls but talks exclusively about how great it is to go dancing with your boys.

“I came to dance-dance-dance-dance,
I hit the floor cause that’s my plans plans plans plans,
I’m wearing all my favorite brands brands brands brands,
Give me some space for both my hands hands hands hands.
Yeah, Yeah.”

He talks of dancing, dancing, wearing cute clothes, and dancing. This sounds like the female in the Dane Cook joke. There’s the Bechdel test – “(1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man” to determine if a movie is feminist (I also hate this test because it tends to imply that this is the only way a movie can be feminist, while talking about sex with a man about men can be feminist). In any case, it begs the question: Is a rap song feminist if it has a man talking about doing something in an environment that has women, but refuses to objectify women, or even bring them up? Well this passes the test.

I say accidental because watch the video. This is boring reminiscent of every late ’90s early ’00s rap video where women’s upper thighs and bare backs are constantly zoomed in on for no reason besides more jerk off fodder.

Also Usher has this lyric as the chorus of his new song: “Dance, Dance, Dance like it’s the last, last, last night of your life.”

On another but related note, Lil Wayne gives a woman agency. Despite the fact that we’ve given women sexual (and only sexual) agency in rap songs for a while, this is different. She not only can get what she wants with her pussy, but refuse what she wants with her pussy.

What does this say? It says we’re winning. The journey is obviously not over, but when people are accidentally doing things that are feminist, that means it is becoming a part of mainstream culture. When sexism isn’t cliche, but rather feminism is, then we’ve succeeded. I think the new passion fruit, sparkling, vodka wine that DJ Kahled is forcing into all of his videos is proof that gender roles are being busted up.

In my research for this article I’ve also discovered that Ne-yo is a drunk superhero who makes enemies with one eyed ninjas in white suits, and that is also pretty cool.

Media, Socialism

Snoopy

I’m getting tired of watching the right wing pundits try to get argued with. It’s difficult. It’s difficult because they say so many stupid things that it becomes hard to focus. Your mind races with so many ways of debunking each of their statements that you end up saying nothing worthwhile. Snoop Dog knows how you argue with them:

You don’t. You play them off as so idiotic that you need not even respond to them. They are motherfuckng pricks. Let’s just start treating them like they told us that they were abducted by aliens. Or like they are children explaining how a goat came barging in the door and stole the last cookies and then placed crumbs gently around their mouths which is why it looks like they ate cookies but they didn’t.

comedy, Gender, Indignant, Media, My favorites, race, Socialism

Conservative Bureaucracy

America’s Got Talent might be the worst show to ever exist. When I say that, I don’t mean that it is the least entertaining (According to Jim got 8 years of television time), and I don’t mean to say that it is badly produced (It is, but that’s not my point). I mean to say that is the most actively harmful show to ever be in America.

As Lady Gaga is finally proposing weirdness as a goal worth aspiring to in the pop culture world and Taylor Swift offering the opposite – a boring cliched approximation of what other’s have already said, but this time as a different overly small white chick – we have to start taking sides. This is more than (but definitely somewhat influenced by) sexism, and racism – but this is at it’s heart a battle for or against change. By letting ourselves fall into society’s booby trap of xenophobia we are accepting our world the way it is despite the fact that all good things have come from changing to something new. (Great article about how shitty Taylor Swift is)

I find it interesting that anti change is at the center of all of the talking points of the right:

1. Keep marriage the same as it has been.

2. Keep poor people poor, and rich people rich (aka- capitalism).

3. Keep women in the kitchen and the bedroom.

4. Keep people of color in different neighborhoods so that we don’t have to look/be scared of them.

5. Evolution doesn’t exist.

I guess this isn’t interesting, but rather obvious. Liberalism is defined as desiring change, and Conservatism is wanting things to stay the same, but it frustrates me that people can buy into Conservatism. How can anyone feel like the best thing to have happen is to have nothing new happen?!? Fuck our world.

Fuck America’s Got Talent.

This guy gets on and is doing something weird. Something new. Something possibly shitty, but possibly really interesting. They don’t even let him do his thing because they don’t like new talents, they like cute white boys pretending to be urban and aspiring to shitty shallow morals because it’s less dangerous when the kid’s dad is a CPA. The show demands that we only like things we’ve already seen before. And it tricks it’s fans into thinking that. It’s fans are mindless citizens of a dystopian future where no one is allowed to voice creativity unless they fill out the appropriate paperwork to make sure it fits some structure of creativity that has been previously determined acceptable. It’s interesting that liberals are the ones who get accused of being too into bureaucracy, when it’s conservatives who are demanding a form of social and cultural bureaucracy that is all encompassing, and that’s not as obvious.

comedy, Indignant, Media, My favorites

Fartin’ Fetus

I find myself often struck with having to make the decision as to whether something is horrifying or hilarious. I can thank horrifyingly hilarious comedian/blogger who has a show tonight for vaguely leading me to this image:

It’s horrifying that they prey on our emotional attachment to cute things to convince us of a political stance that has nothing to do with that thing that is so cute. This is a fetus. It is not a cute little baby. Beyond that, it is trivializing the importance of the person birthing that fetus – it says nothing of the life she has and how she would like to vote. There’s another side to this. What if the ad said “Six year olds vote for more cookies.” I’m sure this is something that most six year olds would agree to, but this is why we don’t let six year olds vote – because our taxpayer money should not be funneled into amusement parks and juiceboxes. This is why my idea for a child rights poster is stupid. Similarly, an unborn baby voting is silly. They can’t hold a pen, and they definitely can’t walk into a voter’s booth. Is that baby writing on the inner lining of its mother’s womb, and how did it get a highlighter, and its eyes are closed how does it know what its voting, and how is anyone else gonna know, is someone gonna go up there with some camera and check what it voted for, and is that invasive, and how much does that cost, and is that gonna be funded by taxpayer money, and what if the procedure hurts the baby, what if it causes the unborn baby to die? Well that would be the most ironic death ever.

Also: “Unborn Baby.” When you look up baby on Wikipedia it redirects you to infant. That’s because babies are born, you can’t have an unborn baby. It makes it sound like they are zombies in backwards land on opposite day. I’ve taken the liberty of correcting some of their errors in my new version of their advertisement:

Or, we could just try to combine all of their hypocritical views into one:

Indignant, Media, Socialism

Conservative Dystopia

I went to college and for five years lived in the 4th congressional district of Minnesota. Our representative was the very alright Betty McCollum. She is a democrat who has done very little interesting in her time. One of the districts next door to us is represented by the very awesome Keith Ellison who has gotten arrested for marching in protests while a congressperson, and is one of the few liberals to ever get on Glenn Beck’s CNN show, where he got insulted racially and kept his cool. The other is represented by #1 crazy person: Michele Bachmann. I read Bachmann’s blog. I can’t get through the poorly written, horribly interpreted quotations of AP articles, and demands that we pray more in order to stop gays from feeling human, but I love checking out the advertisements. The adverts range from annoying but probably harmless to extremely misleading and frightening. Make no mistake, these are propaganda in the form of advertisement.

One of these ads led me down a path that led to this anti-abortion movie.

The argument presented in the trailer is that Planned Parenthood is an organization out for profit and therefore in order to make money they need to get kids to abort their children so therefore we need to make abortions illegal. Overturning Roe vs. Wade will not stop abortions, and if they were truly demanding that Planned Parenthood should not be striving for abortions, then they should be arguing for federal funding – arguing that these establishments should not be seeking profit, but instead get a set amount no matter how many abortions they complete.

This is the confusing hypocrisy of the conservative movement. They are constantly arguing that the rights of companies and the rights of government are negatively correlated – that is to say that if the government has more rights over you, than the free market has no rights and visa versa. They are also quick to assert that with this power that our government gives us comes an excess of propaganda being shoved down our throats. This stands to reason that if we give the free market a full chance as many Michele Bachmanns argue, then we’d be giving corporations the opportunity to shove propaganda down our throat. This is seen in the advertisements that show up on Bachmann’s and other conservative’s blogs.

I tend to agree that free-market and government oppose each other, but that’s part of the beauty of our system. I would prefer we rely harder on the government side of things than most because we have a voting system and therefore can vote out of office people we don’t like whereas money stays with the person who has it and we can’t rely on Robin Hoods to pull that propaganda power away from the rich. I understand, however, that in America most people would prefer to strike a balance. This balance is meant to cancel each other out. This balance is meant to keep both the conglomerate corporations and the government in check so that neither can be the only voice of propagandizing.

What frustrates me about this Tea-Party movement is that they constantly complain about the propaganda that is supposedly being rammed into their esophagus by Obama and his minions, yet they want to open up the laws to let the markets fully decide everything. Advertisement is propaganda. They are literally the same thing. Pay attention to your views conservatives because soon we’ll all be wearing the same clothes:

we’ll all read the same books:

and we’ll all have the same political beliefs:

and that’s a true dystopian dictatorship, not “ObamaCare.”

Happy Birthday Will.

comedy, Media

New Movies

When Observe and Report came out a friend suggested to me that the big movie production companies had spies that would hear the plot synopses of movies the other companies were coming out with and then would try to beat them to the punch by coming out with the cheesier, more relatable movie: Paul Blart: Mall Cop. This happens all the time from Armageddon and Deep Impact to Avatar and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (they’re both about global warming). I wanted to come out with some cheesy copycat movies and their synopses:

Movie that came out: Precious

Movie that should come out: Valuable starring America Ferrera as the vaguely unattractive, vaguely Hispanic, vaguely poor person. Down on her luck because no one wants to have sex with her except for her creepy dad who keeps impregnating her, Valuable, played by Ferrera, searches for answers at the social work desk. Jayma Mays takes a break from Glee to star as the helpful but quirky social worker who saves Valuable from her crazy, z-snapping, no smack talk taking, very abusive mother played by Mo’Nique. The cast of Soul Plane cameos in this heartwarming tale of learning how to read and not get raped by your relatives.

Movie that came out: No Country For Old Men

Movie that should come out: Bam, Bam, You’re Dead stars Gerard Butler and Rob Schneider as a serial killer and a sales clerk respectively who are stuck in a game of who will shoot last. When Rob’s dog digs up a briefcase in his backyard that contains over $300, he naturally decides to turn it in, but Gerard Butler has other ideas. With his gun made out of an asthma inhaler, Butler chases Schneider all across Santa Cruz demanding he return the money. Funny thing is that is was just a miscommunication and it was a different briefcase, which we find out because Ludacris, as Officer Brumbleberry, comes in last minute showing Butler the money he was missing was in his wallet the whole time.

Movie that came out: There Will Be Blood

Movie that should have come out: Steve Carrell stars as unwitting oil tycoon, David Simplesight, in the coming of age father son movie: Blood Relatives. After Joseph Gordon Levitt moves from the big city to live with his father when his mother dies of cancer and Steve Carrell tries to teach JGL the ropes of oil tycooning. Hilarity ensues as these two find a way to love each other.

Nisse Greenberg

Category Archives: Media