Stupid Old Man

Today in my biology class, we watched a video on psychological evolution. The scientists set up this experiment to test olfactory senses. The experiment called for a group of young men to wear the same white t-shirt for several days without washing it. As the days past, their unique biological "musk" was infused into the shirt. Then, a bunch of ladies were asked to smell the shirts and see which one they found more appealing. As it turns out, ladies found shirts from young men with opposite biological genes more appealing. This means many different things including ethnicity. But they found them more appealing because when people with different genes mate the offspring are more diversified and therefore "stronger" than the parents. The smaller the difference in genes, the weaker the offspring's genes will be. This explains why children whose parents are different races are healthier and, to some degree, more attractive than those from the parents of the same race. So the women are smelling a mate who would provide the strongest offspring. And while the appeal is subconscious, it is strong and convincing nontheless. This isn't a case for "opposites attract" though because this is based around science while that idea is based around nonsense.

Anyway, after watching the video all I could think about was that stupid old man from those eHarmony commercials. You know the guy. He stresses "compatibility" in relationships. Some degree of me believes him but I still see him as a stupid old man who profits off of love, which to me seems terribly morbid.

But it's funny. Our culture does stress compatibility in relationships yet nature stresses difference. Subconsciously we may find someone appealing from either sight, smell, touch, or taste, yet our brain is telling us that another person is better because said person is more like ourselves. Perhaps this is why everyone is so fucked up. We are being pulled in so many goddamn directions we just don't know what to do. Thanks, life.

Required Reading

I work at Fridays and as a result I must interact with the scum of society. After 10pm, the IQs of the customers coming in drops a solid 50 points and I'm left to translate what they think they are reading on the menu. I don't even know what reading level a menu is but it can't be higher than a 3rd grader's. And now I'm sad because so many of these people seriously cannot read a fucking menu. Christ.

Here are two examples from tongiht that made me doubt the future of our species:

Scene 1
Customer: "Gimme that Toucan (as in the tropical bird) Chicken Sandwich"

Me: "You mean Tuscan (as in the place in Italy) chicken sandwich?"

Customer: "WHAT?!?!!"

Scene 2
Customer: Gimme that Chedder (as in the cheese) Salmon Pasta."

Me: You mean cedar (as in the wood) salmon pasta?

customer: WHAT?!?!??!

And I have to correct them not so that I look superior to them, but simply to set expectations. They guy who wanted the Toucan Chicken Sandwich might actually expect a fucking jungle bird in between a two buns. As ludicris as that sounds, I just don't want to disappoint people. And if they get it and it's not a toucan they are eating, they will get upset. And then I have to explain to my boss why they didn't want it. "Oh, yeah, he thought it was Toucan and it's not Toucan. i don't think Perdue sells Toucan meat."

What would be even wierder is if the guy actually could taste the difference between Toucan meat and regular chicken meat. Like if I just didn't want to get into a fight with the guy and he's like, "Is this toucan?" I'm like, "Yeah. It's toucan meat alright." And then he bites into it and is like, 'This is very low quality Toucan meat". That would blow my mind. If that happened I would just admit to the guy that it's not toucan meat and that I was lying simply because he knew the difference or had at least tasted high quality toucan meat.

But it is embarrassing. These words are not to difficult to spell. The cheddar one really gets me. I know english is hard sometimes. Like when does a "c" sound like a "k" or an "s"? But come on. "Ch" makes the "ch" sounds. That's it. There is no "h" in cedar. I'm so accepting of that ambiguous "c" sounding rule that if they said "Keeder" I wouldn't correct them. But again, I can't let them think that they are going to get a pasta with cheddar cheese on it because when they don't they will get upset and then I have to explain to my boss that they don't have to pay for thier meal because they can't read.

Also, it should be noted somewhere (I suppose this will do) that if you're working at Fridays and someone orders a Strawberry Lemonade Slush, it should be assumed that they will NOT tip you.

The Bush Mystique

This article is not about the president or the plant. No this article is about the band with that English guy. I was listening to Bush today and thought to myself, "They are pretty good". But I've never met someone one who told me that Bush was thier favorite band. Why is that? What's wrong with them? What surrounds Bush to attract fans only to a certain point. That point being the "They're good" or the "Yeah, I like 'em" point. They're music can be defined as art-rock but they aren't as pretenious as Genesis or Yes. This is probably because Gavin Rossdale isn't that good of a singer. So they are technically grunge but really they stem from those art-house rock bands of the 70s.

Bush has a few songs that are near-classics like "Glycerine" or "Machinehead". They are songs readily identifiable but no one really knows the words or really cares what they mean. They always seem in the shadow of bigger acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Three Doors Down, or Everclear. They associate themselves as being the "British version of that one band". In a sense, Bush is popular for being unpopular which could give rise to a whole new definition of cool. Maybe those parents who think they are cool because they try not to be cool are, in fact, cool. Maybe they are cooler than thier kids according to the Bush Mystique.

A little side thought: What would happen if Rose McGowan and Gavin Rossdale got married? I think the world would end. Thier names are too similar. It would be a media frenzy. I'm sure some paparazzi is sitting by some super-clock with a massive erection counting down the days to when the two celebs get hitched. And it is certainly possible, the two are of equal celebrity standing. And McGowan has actually dated a rock star already so the change wouldn't be that drastic. But if they got married, I just couldn't handle everyone saying Rosa McGowan and Gavin Rossdale. I swear those names are anagrams or something wierd.

"Oh my God, you're so funny."

I just watched an SNL Digital Short on Youtube. It was fucking hilarious. It was so good in fact that it turned my views on SNL around. I thought that it had lost it's spark since Will Ferrell left the show. But they got some pretty funny guys on there now who could bring it back. At least for me. So I watched about ten videos and as I was scrolling for more, I saw that there are a bunch of copycat videos, which the authors call "parodies". They aren't parodises so much as they are blatant rip-offs. That "Lazy Sunday" skit was "parodied" about twenty times in the same exact way by twenty different people. Another recent skit, "Dear Sister" was parodied the same amount and that premiered last weekend.

Why are people doing this? You are not funny. You are not clever. It's dumb and pathetic. Please stop it, you're flooding the internet with something that it already has too much of: stupid shit. That's all I have to say.

SuperMovie

If you asked a group of people, fifteen years ago if they liked Spiderman, you'd probably hear a room full of crickets. Now though the tables have turned and comics in general are in the mainstream. It is no more a social gaffe to know that Logan is really James Hackett and that he was subjected to the Weapon X experiments during World War II thus creating the animalistic adamantium-laced superhero known as Wolverine. Since X-Men came out in 2000, people and filmmakers have turned thier attention to the box office phenomenon. Because not only do superhero movies make big returns for studios, but they are also very thoughtful and well made films, well at least some are. Here is a short list of some of the major superhero films made as of 2000:

1. X-Men
2. X-Men 2
3. Daredevil
4. Eleckra
5. Hulk
6. Spiderman
7. Spiderman 2
8. Blade 2
9. Blade Trinity
10. Fantastic Four
11. V For Vendetta
12. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
13. X-Men 3
14. Ghostrider
15. Batman Begins
16. Superman Returns
17. The Punisher
18. Constantine
19. 300
20. Catwoman

I added 300, Constantine, LXG, and V for Vendetta even though they aren't traditional comics rather they were adapted from graphic novels. But they have superpowers (John Constantine could see demons, V had super strength. Leonidas didn't have any real super powers other than being a complete and total bad-ass.) I added Catwoman because, even though it was said to be a heaping pile of wasted celluloid, it is still about a superhero.

What I think is great about superhero movies, is that they take away the apparent juvenescence of comics and injected a new maturity to them. These characters are no longer just beings with incredible powers but they have mulitple dimensions with doubts and conflicts. But the thing is, these comics had all of these before. Filmmakers didn't just make all that up for the movies, those qualities have been there since the beginning. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, the majority of people either, couldn't or didn't want to, see that.

I just read an interview with Robert Downey, Jr about his research into Tony Stark aka Iron Man. He said that this character was going to be different because of the core character that Stark is: a womanizing alcoholic who dons a protective armored suit to stay alive after he is mortally wounded. Stark sounds like an anti-hero and the first of it's kind in a mainstream superhero film. Blade could be defined as an anti-hero but that film is and forever shall be under the radar (sadly) of films like X-Men or Spiderman. But Iron Man will be the Hud of superhero films and I personally can't wait to see it.

That Wierd Kid on the Internet

If you don't know already, Daxflame is, and forever will be, the greatest thing on the internet. He's a 15-year-old kid named Bernice Juach but his handle is Daxflame because "it sounds cool". You can see Daxflame on Youtube. He posts video diaries and "motion pictures" on his site. The diaries are full of emotion, teenage angst, and all sorts of digestable material. It really is a symphony to watch one of his meltdowns. The crux of the show, as I like to call it, is his dealings with Sojax-an amalgamation of a kid named Jacob and his would-be-girlfriend Sophia. His goal is to become friends with Jacob and to get jiggy with Sophia so that they can "rule the school".

What I love about this little social experiment is that Daxflame, even if he does seem like the epitome of wierd, reflects a side of all of us when we were in high school. All we wanted to do was to have friends, be popular, and be the big wolf on campus. That's all that matters in high school. We don't have to worry about jobs or money because we are dependent on our parents. And our grades are subordinate to our social lives because being smart only hurts you in that department.

But Daxflame is a cultural phenomenon, which is why I consider to be the greatest thing on the internet. There is a discrepancy as to the authenticity of Daxflame. Many consider him to be acting and that his exploits with Jacob and his stories are all contrived. This causes a lot of people to be Daxflame-haters. While others on the other hand think that he is genuine and sincere and that he really is crying those tears of loneliness and depression. To be honest, I don't know what to think of him. I know I love his show. See, for me, it doesn't matter if he's faking it or not, if it's all a spectacle and he's acting. I don't care about that. I watch movies all the time and I never think of movies that way. I never say, "Oh well that's just Tom Cruise, he's acting, he could never jump off a building like that." I suspend my disbelief for Tom Cruise and I can do the same for Daxflame. But why can't others do this? What makes Daxflame different from anything else? Is it the way in which he presents his show, like a diary? Perhaps people feel duped because Daxflame's program is shown as a real-life documentary but they someone see through it as an artifice. This manipulation of reality that Daxflame's show deals with, I find fascinating.

What ever the case may be, Daxflame proves that perhaps, people aren't ready for reality.

Happy New Year

I suppose I'm a nice guy, whatever that means. Some people have told me that, although others have told me I'm an idiot. Today I went to Panera Bread with Emily and as I was leaving the parking lot to enter the street, I saw a homeless man there. He had a piece of cardboard that said, "Waiting" which I thought was both strange and ironic as I was on my way to my job at T.G.I Friday's.

So anyway, like I said, I suppose I'm a nice guy and I roll down my window. I give the old guy two dollars and say, "Take care of yourself." I thought that would be the end of it but he wanted to talk and he got my attention with the first thing he said. This was our conversation:

"Happy New Year!", said the homeless man.
"I think you're off by a few months, buddy," I say.
"Oh yeah, it's Easter, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Jail can make you go crazy."
(Among other things)
"You were in jail?"
"Yeah, these cops around here, they put me away for no reason!"
"Just for standing out here?"
"Yeah, they put me away because they can't catch the real criminals."
"Right."
"And them real criminals pay them off."
"Really?"
"Yeah, they been doing it for a thousand years."

He then went on a long diatribe about corruption and conspiracies in the judicial system.

The old homeless man then, in that moment, made my day. You see, all the homeless people I've ever met (which is quite a few considering my time at Happy Helpers for the Homeless) I've never met a crazy, conspiracy theorist, stereotypical homeless person. Sure I've met some crazy ones, like the crazy bag lady who dances in front of traffic in Severna Park, but none that could actually justify their craziness. They were homeless because they were crazy, not crazy because they were homeless. This guy, for example, was a product of government corruption and conspiracy. While it's probably all in his head, he thinks it's true and that makes it so exciting. This guy was really fucking crazy.

Most homeless people are just a bunch of sad-sacks who mope around asking for spare change, but not this guy. This guy was always looking over his shoulder. He was ever-watchful of the Man trying to bring him down. This guy had secrets, or at least he thought he had secrets.

Anyway, it was the most entertaining moment of the day and it's all thanks to my reasonable generosity and love for the homeless.