Grab-bag

First, let's begin with a taste of pure perfection from the best comedy on TV right now:



With that out of the way, there are a few things I'd like to discuss/complain about. There won't be a general over-arching "theme" to this one, but honestly, I'm strangely comfortable with that. So here we go -

• How ubiquitous is porn in our present day and age? Is there anything that's more obviously out there but more obviously ignored by everyone? It's the devastatingly disgusting fart of our public discourse - a multi billion dollar industry involving thousands upon thousands of people that is literally everyone but is ignored by "proper" society as if it were a dirty little secret. Do a google search sometime of something that could potentially be dirty and check out the results. Porn is fucking everywhere, and no one talks about it. That is very, very strange to me. Like, how cowardly are we? Ask someone you don't really know about porn.. they'll pretend not to like it like they don't have gigs of it stashed in a folder somewhere (probably falsely labled to be school or work related). Isn't it weird that a society that is all about openness and "sharing" simultaneously encourages hiding something that literally EVERYONE does? How can that be healthy?
A couple of other porn-related topics - first, does anyone else find it odd that porn has made many otherwise normal interactions between adults incredibly awkward? For instance, say I'm doing laundry in the laundry room of my apartment building, and a young woman comes down all alone. Any interaction becomes incredibly awkward, for no reason other than everyone knows this is a common porn setting. I feel like if I don't bang her on hampers and clothes (which I of course, won't) I'm a complete loser. Elevators? Same deal. If I was to ever be a pizza delivery man (a possibly outcome that becomes less likely every passing day), that would be incredibly awkward every time a woman answered the door.
Second, how many women have realistically done porn? There are literally thousands of sites that update every single day. Sure, there is overlap, but that is a mind-blowing number of women, literally tens of thousands to upwards of a hundred thousand.. in this country alone. I find it amazing that given this reality, I do not know anyone who has done/does hardcore porn. So how does it work? Do 20% of all attractive women from California and Florida do porn and 0% of the rest of the country? That's the only way I can make the numbers work in my mind. Someone should write a paper on this.

This brings me to my next point -
• It took quite a lot of time, but I think I've finally found my dream job. Not that this job actually exists anywhere so to speak of, but does that disqualify a job from being the stuff of dreams? I should think not. This job is doing research on things and then writing papers on them. Now, before you say "Hey, just like a reporter or a professor", slow up, it's not like I'm a damn Gump who didn't think this one through - no, it's not like that at all. A reporter only does research on lame things - like how Councilman Thomas got his summer home or what the popular gifts are this christmas. A professor gets to do research on whatever he/she would like, but this research is supposed to be exhaustive and definitive - you'll look like a dipshit if not. Hence, academic works are accompanied by hundreds of footnotes, which just makes the whole thing a bore. Don't get me wrong, I do want to do real research, I just don't want to have to formally report on the whole thing so some anal retentive nitwit can comb over the whole thing and search for screw-ups. I want to casually research things and then write a regular ass report on my findings.. kind of halfway in between "newspaper columnist" and "professor" I suppose. I would love to do research why afro-americans in Cincinnati feel the need to disregard crosswalks and traffic signals and just cross any street at any time at any pace without regard for oncoming traffic or what societal norms would seem to dictate and report my findings to the appropriate place - namely, myself and my friends. This is important work we're talking about here. I'd love to research why every fast food place now just keeps taking orders before filling the orders they've already taken. What the hell is the point of that? There's no place for you to stand, and they just keep piling up causing a logjam of awkwardness at the front of the line. In addition, I need to research why people panic every time something out of the ordinary happens. Snowstorm? FUCK, we need MILK!!!! Snowplows haven't been invented yet and we might get caught in the house for 3 weeks!!! Thunderstorm? What if we lose power?!? Heat wave? Hope the air conditioning works!! Cold spell? Holy shit, look how high our gas bill is!! Coup in Persian Gulf? OH MY FUCKING CHRIST!!! Gas went up $.15, it now costs me $26.50 instead of $24.85 to fill up my Nissan!!!!! Why is everyone such a spaz, all the time? I need answers to these actually pressing questions.

So I'm getting fucking sick of Lost. I've stuck with it through all these years while other people bashed it, out of faith for the writers and creative talent behind the show - but at this point, if I didn't have 5 seasons invested and only 15 more hours to put up with, I would quit the shit out of Lost. It's turning out to be all fun myth, and no real cool conclusions. Everything that's been revealed has turned out to be much less cool than originally suggested. The Others? Just a bunch of weird quasi religious zealots who aren't actually all that tough. The Dharma Initiative? Just a bunch of clueless hippies. Lame, lame, and lamer. It turns out that Lost was a gimmicky pop-culture phenomenon all along much more interested in entertaining and fooling its audience through parlor tricks and narrative techniques than actually saying anything substantial. Battlestar Galactica for plebs it is. Shame on you Lindelof and Cuse for pretending you had something smart and meaningful when really it was a complicated soap opera showcasing the love pangs of pretty people. Shame on you sir. I'll continue to watch - but I'm not all that excited about it. I've come to the realization that 90% of the shit that's been thrown out there will never be answered to any satisfying degree, and thus was just a waste of time. There are 15 hours left, and meaningful questions remaining re: basically every single character. Good luck resolving that one.


Sorry, I recognize that this one wasn't my strongest entry - but hey, you win some, you lose some. I'll be back with a vengeance.

Fin.