Devil’s Haircut

Beck once sang about having a “Devil’s Haircut in (his) Mind”. Well, a dozen years later, I can finally understand what he meant, for I, too, have a devilish haircut on my mind. The only problem is that it’s on my head, as well.

After a couple of minor financial bombs went off in my face, I set out to find ways to downscale my lifestyle. One of the first things I did in accordance was to go to a cheaper barber. I was excited at the prospect of saving $5 over my regular barber.

After years of going through this ritual, I have a pretty good idea of what works for me and how to communicate it to the guy with the shears. “I’d like a number 5 on the sides and back, and 1/2 inch trim on top”, I said.

The State of the American Mind

An End Of The Year Editorial On The State of the American Mind:
Looking At Our Lives
or
I’m Not A Drunk, You Are

Deviant was drunk when he wrote this for us, but not nearly as drunk as you. I think it has something to do with this.

There are too many moments these days where I cannot recognize you.

I appreciated you drunkenly pulling me aside this New Years Eve in the safety of your vomit-spewed bathroom to tell me that I have a drinking problem.

Well sure, I seemed to have been functioning well during the office Christmas party, when in fact I had been in a zombiefied black-out vodka state, and yes I kissed the departing CEO of the company on the lips on a dare, and yes I vomited all over the subway platform on the way home in the early evening…

But I think it’s imperative for you to know that, in this relationship, it is in fact YOU who are the drunk.

I may have gotten us forcibly removed from several watering holes by very large black bouncers, but I want you to note something about my drunkeness and your drunkeness.

I don’t sit at home sobbing to myself, complaining about life, and polishing off two bottles of wine all by myself like you do.

Lead Toys From China: Murder or Salvation?

When I started planning this post, it was going to be just about stupid product recalls. I saw a recall at Wal-Mart for a kite a couple months back and seriously – how the fuck does a kite cause ‘serious injuries up to and including death?’ Of course, this being Wal-Mart, I wouldn’t put much of anything past the fucking drooling hicks that shop there. I went looking for some information about this and I couldn’t find that kite on the internet, but I did find something just as scary.

China is murdering us.

Slowly but surely, they’re trying to kill each and every one of us. First it was our pets. Then they put antifreeze in our toothpaste. But now it’s something even worse. Even more insidious. They’re trying to kill our children, now.

Our fucking children.

Now, this one is really pissing me off. I mean, I don’t actually get to see my kid that much, but I sure as fuck don’t want him to die at the hands of a Chinese toy company.

How are they accomplishing this nefarious task? Lead fucking paint. Okay, when I was a kid, we’d joke about someone being a retard because they ate paint chips when they were a kid. Ten years from now, they’ll still be making this same joke, but with two big differences. First, it’ll be lead from Chinese toys, and second it won’t be a fucking joke.

About 75% of toys in America come from China, and in a two month span in 2006 over a million fucking toys were recalled due to lead content. These toys include everything from the bullshit found in supermarket vending machines, all the way up to relatively high-end toys and games sold at major retailers like Target.

Let’s look at a few specific items that have been recalled recently.

The Ghosts of Greatness Past

 …or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Bomb

 RationReality continues our probe into the minds of modern musicians with examinations of two highly regarded bands: Wilco and Nine Inch Nails. Although they may seem like unlikely bedfellows they are both part of a phenomenon we’ll refer to as manic confusion. This phenomenon has multiple sources. It’s only known cure is Ration Reality Intelligence.

NIN and Wilco have transformed themselves many times. I suppose it was inevitable that this would take a bad turn somewhere along the line. The issue at hand is their latest incarnations. Both acts have stripped away what they saw as artifice in favor of a leaner, less complicated sound, forgetting in the process that their complexity and avant garde tendencies are what got them to where they are today. Both bands began their careers with bare bones type records, Wilco’s A.M. and NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine. A.M. barely caused a ripple when it was first released in 1995 and is almost universally regarded as their weakest album. 1991′s Pretty Hate Machine was a much greater success but in retrospect merely a precursor to much more critically and commercially successful albums.

The Metal Diaries, part 1: Fuckin’ Metallic A

 

Dear Diary,

When I was in eighth grade, Metallica’s “… And Justice For All”  ruled my and nearly every other adolescent within spitting distance of me’s life. Girls, boys, black, white, Catholic, Jew, Zoroastrian, you name it. Kids who weren’t even real Metalheads clung to their cassette tapes like priests at the apocalypse. Our school was overtaken by the epic, crushing riffs, solos, double kick drums and wooden yelling that make Metallica, well, Metallica. I myself had merely dabbled in the Metal arts at this point. In sixth grade I discovered Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” along with every other junior hescher at PS 159 in New York City’s Bayside, Queens. This city/hood/borough was left behind for supposedly greener pastures on the strong and Long Island.

There I was introduced to Slayer, more specifically what is still one of my favorite Metal songs, “Angel of Death“. But on the reals, I hadn’t really dove in head first into the deep end of the Metal swimming pool. “… And Justice For All” was the first Metal album that I took into my heart and gut. I felt it deep down in a funny place. I digested it whole and absorbed every Metal nutrient I could find in the rich and powerful fibers of it’s being. I truly believed that this was as close to perfect as a record could get. Living in Alaska as I did at the time, the pervasive darkness, the desolate nature of things and the ever present sense of doom weighed so heavily upon me that I, at age 13, was sure I would die. “… And Justice For All” came out just as I was about to lose the fight. Waking up to the creeping, sinewy guitar lines that are the intro to “Blackened” seemed to give me the strength to continue the fight. I fought on and eventually triumphed over that frozen nightmare, a task that seemed next to impossible when I arrived wide-eyed from big, bad New York. Now I’m grown and I want to examine this record, this document, to see what it was that I saw, what inspired me to engage in open warfare with such a hostile enemy.

 

Sopranos Without Papers

First of all, let me say this: FUCK YOU ALL. (Except for The Bagel of Everything who is not only the h.b.i.c., but also a conscientious objector to The Sopranos).

Was I the only one who watched that horrendous fucking mess of shit, blood and cum that preceded that totally debatable debacle of an ending? Chase’s attempt to tie everything up with a little yellow ribbon was like a rape joke at an open mic night on a Sunday in the fucking Vatican.

You know what woulda satisfied me? A.J. getting blown by the teenybopper and both of them being subsequently BLOWN UP IN THE FIREBALL to the throbbing bass line of Outkast’s Bombs Over Baghdad. Take that you whining fuck! You and your yellow Nissan Xterra! How is it that you’re clinically depressed and suicidal but you have perfectly groomed Prince-like facial hair? Huh? How? Fuck you, you fucking twerp. You could have been a gangster but you turned into a gayer Al Gore, but with way less charisma, but now your dead and both environmentalists and Detroit automakers rejoice. I’ve been praying for your death since the first season. If David Chase had any balls, sense of justice or true talent, this would be the grand prize for eight years of viewership.

Next, Carmella’s spec house is picked up by a tornado which sends it twirling through the air only to crush her and her stupid Porsche Cayenne (aka the gayest car ever), leaving her tacky acrylic nails hanging out from underneath. Janice finds this seeming disaster and eats a dozen canolli’s from Ferrara’s (best in town, trust me), then takes a huge candy-coated shit in Carmella’s cold dead hand to the strains of Whoomp! There it is! by Washington, D.C.’s own, Tag Team.

Then we have sweet, sweet Meadow… sweet, charmed, spoiled stupid, stupid, stupid Meadow… go to med school, go to law school, go to taxidermy school for all I fucking care, so long as you die a slow, painful and gruesome death. Something Coen Brothers… something with a garden tool… like a weed whacker! That’s the one! She goes to home depot to get glass rods so she can hand blow herself a new dildo and she runs into Phil’s nephew’s daughter’s step-son’s S.A.T. prep coach’s assistant pencil sharpener who recognizes her from Cum Catcher Weekly and asks for an autograph. Meadow is annoyed but begrudgingly obliges. But it’s not enough for the intrepid young pencil sharpener known to his close friends as Puke Skyhooker. PS lures the dimwitted Soprano into the garden supply aisle and whips out his newly acquired cordless weed whacker. The plodding, awful beheading begins sending screams throughout the airplane hanger-like mall of tools. The staff pursue the sound but when they arrive to see PS’s artistry, they applaud and give him an orange vest.

Then, the sound fades away and the screen goes black…

Cut to Tony skipping down the street and whistling Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

The End.

-jody