The Five Worst Covers of All Time According to Me

Disclaimer: In the interests of preserving my faith in humanity, I prefer to believe that the five truly worst covers of all time have either been forgotten or were never heard by many people to begin with. This, therefore, is a list of the five worst covers that have managed to wedge themselves into humanity's collective memory.

5: Jem – Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney)

At first listen, this cover appears to be totally innocuous. Comparison to the original, however, shows Jem's version to be weak, boring, and lacking in vocal talent. “Maybe I'm Amazed” as McCartney intended it is a work of good, solid rock and roll. This cover never gets off the ground. Between the irritatingly breathy vocal, minimal acoustic arrangement, total absence of dynamics, and consistently dirge-like tempo, Jem's cover is exactly the right sort of music for lighting some candles, eating a bottle of Vicodin, and taking a nice hot bath.

4: 311 – Love Song (Robert Smith / Simon Gallup / Porl Thompson / Roger O'Donnel / Boris Williams / Laurence Tolhurst)

Another apparently innocuous cover, this is on my list mainly for the same reason as Jem above: it's a flaccid abortion of an arrangement that completely fails to pay homage to anything but itself. 311 get so caught up in being all groovy and dubby and ska that their massive ego trip sucks all the soul out of the song. The Cure's success with the original was a smashingly great pop song with very personal, honest lyrics. None of that shines through in 311's cover. Instead of a timeless wedding gift from a songwriter to his bride, we hear mediocre generic reggae glossed over with a positively snide-sounding lead vocal.

3: Limp Bizkit – Behind Blue Eyes (Pete Townshend)

If the concept of failure could be distilled into something tangible and capable of making noise, it would sound like this. A forcibly pitch-corrected vocal with disingenuous delivery and some clichéd and unimaginative synthesizer arrangements are the misdemeanor charges in my indictment against the aptly named Limp Bizkit for this travesty. The much more obvious felony here is the murder of one of The Who's best bridges and the desecration of its corpse.

2: Scissor Sisters – Comfortably Numb (Roger Waters / David Gilmour)

And now, on a lighter note, some amusing electro-schlock. Really, this cover is barely even recognizable as “Comfortably Numb.” The first few seconds before the excessively falsetto vocal sound like they were sampled out of the intro of “Run Like Hell.” The iconic guitar solos have been omitted, and I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. It is very confusing indeed to hear one of the saddest songs from The Wall turned into a chirpy upbeat mix that would sound totally inappropriate anywhere but in a dance club.

1: William Shatner – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)

Four words: Captain Kirk vocal delivery. I really shouldn't have to say any more than that, but I will. This rendition is so bad it's hilarious. It could also be classified as musical blasphemy and as psychological warfare.

The Problems of the World, and How to Solve Them!

There is a type of machine called a Von Neumann machine, and it has one primary function. Anything else it does can be considered a byproduct of performing its primary function. The primary function of a Von Neumann machine is to make more Von Neumann machines. Okay, kids, now give me a description, in a single word, of what a Von Neumann machine is.

Stupid? That's subjective.

Pointless? Maybe.

Recursive? For sure.

The word I'm looking for here is... life.

Life is the Von Neumann machine. This applies to everything from us humans to the bacteria living in our shit.

But we humans are special, or at least we like to think we are. Maybe there are other forms of life like us, and we just haven't met them yet or haven't yet figured out that they're like us. The thing that makes us special is that we can choose not to reproduce. Through sheer force of will, we can break our programming as Von Neumann machines. That's pretty cool ain't it? Except for one little detail...

Most of us don't.

Why do I say this? Well, simply put, it's because there's at least eight billion of us living on this planet. And this figure keeps growing. Eight. Fucking. Billion. I don't know about you, but I can't fully comprehend how many that is. Sure, I can wrap my head around it mathematically; it's eight times the ninth power of ten. But I can't produce an emotional response to a number with that kind of magnitude. You probably can't either.

Here's some more food for thought. For most of us eight billion people, life really sucks. And I don't mean the "I'm an overworked, underpaid, too-old virgin" kind of sucks. I mean the kind of sucks that neither you nor I will ever experience. I mean the shitty kind of life where you've barely got enough to survive, you spend your whole day working your fucking ass off for some slave driver (literally) who doesn't give a shit whether you live or die, and if you're lucky, you get a shack to sleep in and some barebone rations of a very poorly balanced diet.

Why does life suck like this for so many people? Well, there are three main reasons:

1. Large population
2. Limited resources
3. Monopoly of the vast majority of the limited resources by a very small minority of the large population.

Number 3 is the most important, the most overlooked, and sadly, the least escapable of these. Humans are greedy bastards. How did the ones on top get there? Read a history textbook for that one. This is a philosophy essay. Why are humans such greedy bastards? Because we're Von Neumann machines. "The more easily all of you fuckers can go and make more of yourselves, the harder a time I'll have of it," compute the machines on top. "So, I'll do what pappy did, and what grandpappy did, and so on, and keep depriving you of as much resources as I can, all the while enslaving you. That way, you'll spend so much time working for me that you'll only have enough time left over to keep reproducing my disposable workforce. Then I can reproduce as much or as little as I want, have myself a sole heir, and train my heir to rinse and repeat when I finally snuff it for some damn rich bastard reason. So please understand, it's not about having more for me, it's just about having less for you."

Number 2 is pretty self-explanatory. Mother Earth is just one planet. Her renewable resources can only turn over at a limited rate, and she can only give so much. We can conserve resources, and we should, but even that only goes so far.

Number 1 is the clincher. The larger a population is, the more it feels the effects of the limited resources. So, where does our large population come from?

Babies.

But where do babies come from?

Fucking.

That's right. The human population is so fucking large because and only because we are Von Neumann machines and most of us do not break our programming as such. But why don't most of us break our programming, even though probably all of us know that doing so would make life suck so much less for everyone?

The answer is "because life sucks." When your life sucks, even trivially so, you seek entertainment as an immediate remedy. Also, the easiest way to make a human do something is to turn it into entertainment. We are Von Neumann machines. Our primary function as Von Neumann machines is to make more of ourselves. We do this by fucking. We can break the program by will, but will often crumbles in the face of entertainment. So the program turned fucking into our most primal, cheapest, and easiest form of entertainment.

Life sucks, so humans fuck, which makes more humans, causing life to suck more. Rinse, repeat.

How the fuck do we solve this? The obvious solution is to spread knowledge and materials for contraception, but let's back up to the monopoly factor. (It was number 3 in the above list of reasons life sucks, remember?) A few generous souls may try to carry out the obvious solution by grassroots missions, but realistic, large-scale proliferation of birth control, even as simple as condoms, requires the cooperation of the monopoly, and it's not the monopoly's best interests to allow it.

Jonathan Swift had a rather modest proposal for solving this problem, and I think it could work. Just expand it to the global scale, ignore the fact that it's the oldest and greatest dead baby joke in English literature, and Bob's your uncle. There's just one problem. Swift hints at it, but I'll say it straight out.

The rich eating the poor isn't really all that different from what's going on already.

We outnumber them millions to one. We can take their fucking asses. Milk them for every goddamn drop they've got. Beg, sponge, swindle, and steal from those above. Borrow and collect from peers. And when you see someone worse off than you (no matter who you are, you will,) give.

Feed the poor. Eat the rich.

And for fuck's sake, try a little harder to break your fucking programming!

Dirty Hippie Experiment Update

I know what you must be thinking. You must be thinking "Holy hell, he's actually making a post that has actual direct relation to a previous one! Better start checking for other signs of the Apocalypse!" Fucked-uppedness of that aside, though, I promised an update on the Dirty Hippie Experiment, so an update on the Dirty Hippie Experiment you're going to get, even though it's a few weeks late.

A couple days after the previous post, I discontinued use of conditioner. Within seven days of the start of the experiment, my hair had stopped greasing the hell out of itself and looked great. The strands affected by split ends are mostly shed out by now, so I'm going to use that as an excuse to continue my indefinite postponement of a haircut.

Also on the topic of my shaggy mop-top, I'd like to give a shoutout to Frosty, whom I haven't seen since high school. The first to leave a comment on my blag in quite a while, he said:

"I've gone many days at a time without using shampoo or conditioner for my hair and had wonderous results. Also, as unbelievable as it may sound, beer gives hair an amount of body and silk uncomparable to any modern hair cleansing chemical. Hope it goes well."

Well, man, thanks for reading. Good to know somebody does. Also, thanks for the beer tip. Now the world can finally know that there in fact IS a use for American-style light lager other than as theatrical urine.

In other news, I'd like to ask a question of anyone reading this: Do you have stairs in your house? Post your answer as a comment on this post.

Blah blah blah feces blah dead babies blah blah fuckshitpisscuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits blah blah blah.

Whee!!! I'm going out of my fucking mind!!!

Yeah. Twelve hours in a summer semester is certifiably insane, right? So far, I seem to be holding up rather well, but it's still only the third week in. More results will follow as the experiment continues.

As I mentioned two posts ago, I went and saw The Cure two days ago. The Austin Music Hall has a general admission capacity of about 4000. It was a sold-out show. They could have just as easily sold out the Frank Erwin Center, which is, for those of you who don't know much about Austin, much bigger. Anyway, I got to the Music Hall early enough to get a good place to stand. I ended up about five rows of people shorter than me back from the stage and pretty close to the center. Pretty damn good. So was the show. The opening band, 65 Days of Static, was worthy, and as for The Cure themselves, they put on a spectacular show, playing a lot of live rarities and filling both encore sets entirely with oldies. You have to admit that there's something admirable about a band that's been going strong for 30 years and is still willing to end a show with their first single.

I've also started something else to see how it turns out. It's at the recommendation of my mother (did I mention I'm going out of my fucking mind?) and I call it...

The Dirty Hippie Experiment!!!

Anyway, the basic premise is that it will be better for my hair to stop using shampoo. I'm on my second day of just using conditioner. Supposedly it will stop being visibly greasy after a while. On the positive side, I've got less frizz and more body. I'm still going to have to cut it to get rid of the biblical plague of split ends. More results will follow as the experiment continues.

Normally, this would be the part where I end the post with a stupid failure of a joke about shit or dead babies or something equally distasteful, but I have to hit the can and I can't think of anything else.

The Ten Stupidest Songs I've Ever Heard

Before I begin here, I'd just like to point out that being on this list doesn't necessarily make a song bad. Some of the following songs I absolutely love, some I can't fucking stand. So, let's begin!

#10: Type O Negative - Kill All the White People
This song is just bloody hilarious. It's intentionally stupid because of the irony that it's by a bunch of white guys. "Kill all the white people!" we can here Pete Steele shouting, "Then we'll be free!" This, of course, will never work.

#9: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
Honestly, I would be perfectly happy if I never had to hear this song again, but it unfortunately resides in the regular playlists of classic rock stations across the country, so it's something I'll just have to tough out. The music is uninteresting at best, and the lyrics are a moronic redneck pride rant based out of a severely misguided rebuttal to Neil Young's "Southern Man." Next, please.

#8: The Searchers - Love Potion Number Nine
What the blue hell is the significance of the cop on 34th and Vine breaking the bottle? And come to think of it, wouldn't "Slut Potion Number Nine" be a more appropriate name for the titular concoction?

#7: DJ Alligator Project - Blow My Whistle (Bitch)
"Blow yo' whistle like a laser-guided missile!" Need I say more?

#6: The Beastie Boys - Time to Get Ill
How could I possibly compile a list of stupid songs without mentioning the Beasties? These guys could very easily be said to have a very stupid repertoire, but I think "Time to Get Ill" really takes the cake as a shining example of Beastie stupidity, not to mention the shamelessness with which they sample. By the way, last time I got ill, it wasn't a very pleasant experience. Quit bastardizing my language, hip-hop. Sick is not a good thing to be.

#5: Mindless Self-Indulgence - Bitches
MSI is another group that just can't escape being on this list. Unlike the Beastie Boys, though, I can't fault MSI for their stupidity. "Bitches" is a brilliant work of dada poetry, designed purely to make you laugh and say "what the fuck?" So, like the song says, "POW!!! Motherfucker."

#4: Right Said Fred - I'm Too Sexy
Too sexy? I dunno. Definitely too self-absorbed.

#3: Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers - The Monster Mash
Elvis Presley described this song as "the stupidest thing I've ever heard." It is now regarded as a classic of '50s hokeyness, but it's still just as stupid today as it was when the King laughed it off.

#2: Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots - Disco Duck
I don't know whether to laugh or puke. This song was meant to be satirical, but the sheer accuracy with which it portrays the stupidity of the '70s disco scene is stupefying. Disco Duck? More like Stupid Fuck! Aww, shit, that's right, I went there. I'm just too edgy for TV. That, and the Donald Duck-esque spoken voiceovers give my inner child nightmares.


#1: King Missile - Detachable Penis
I challenge you to find or write a stupider song than this. Not because I want to be proven right in my assumption that it is the stupidest song ever written, but because I really want to know if it's possible to write a stupider song. Seriously, I want to know how you top something that opens with the lines "I woke up this morning with a bad hangover, and my penis was missing again. This happens all the time. It's detachable." Sure, he goes on to explain the story of his wayward member very logically, but that doesn't change the fact that a detachable penis is the most amazingly stupid premise for a comical song. But hell, it's funny, so I will say that "Detachable Penis" has the honor of being the stupidest song I've ever heard.

This, That, and The Other

In this cruel, cold, fucked-up world of brothers turned against brothers and babies having babies, I find it very comforting to find that people still love the Beatles. On what am I basing this claim? Panic! At the Disco's new single, "Nine in the Afternoon." Click this link to watch the video. Sergeant Pepper would be proud.

In other music-related news, I'm a-gonna see the Cure live at the Austin Music Hall in June. I'm totally stoked, and it's gonna be totally awesome 'cause it's a pretty damn small venue by Cure standards.

More musical stuff... You've gotta check this band out: Cloud Cult. I was in the crew that loaded their gear on and off the stage of the Red Eyed Fly during South by Southwest, they gave me a free CD for this, their live show was awesome (it involved a violin, a cello, a trombone, a trumpet, and paint,) and now I'm plugging them to everybody I know. Check them out at their website or at their myspace.

I've also got my own musical project slowly in the process of coming to life. Not going to rush it though. It'll be ready when it'll be ready. What I really need is a band, but that's another story.

In news not related to music, I've decided just now to post only good things in my life, funny stories, or random impersonal stuff in this blog. My reasoning for leaving out the bad stuff? If you don't know me, you don't care about it, and quite frankly, you don't want to know. If you do know me and you care enough to want to know, I've probably already told you personally or decided that you would be better off if I didn't. Let's face it, the few (if any) people who read this
probably check it less often than I update it. A lot less often.

So, AggieCon's coming up. That's going to be interesting, hanging out again with all those crazy people I haven't seen in months, watching far too much anime, getting far too little sleep, consuming far too much caffeine and perhaps even a bit too much alcohol... Has fun written all over it, as well as the inevitability of another badge on my con penis.

I'm going to have to replace one of my cell phones soon. The bloody thing keeps bitching at me about its battery. Oh well, I've had it for almost four years now. Not a bad run for a cheap little brick from Finland, and besides, it'll give me a good excuse to thin out my contacts on that line.

Well, until later, all none of you, enjoy your Internet responsibly.

Time for a shit post.

asnboahgqgbna[obianheb[oignrefvjkfcp;jf;ldvjprdlb;gfjg;dmbh;gldjhdp;fgjdp;obmj;flvbmx;.,fmb,mblfnbhlfnb bnjmcvnz;bfjghlkvmnflbnGBGSFGflahgaljgfdgjlkfgjm;jrgjhrlbnbpvorgjprbntrjgignv;dskg

But seriously...

Anywho...

Yeah, I forgot what I was gonna say here.

Ass-Random Observations from My Sickbed

So, yeah, as you can guess from the title, I'm sick. But what's really important here is the weird shit that for some reason, I'm remembering.

One of my roommates plays Starcraft roughly every waking second of his free time. He has honed his skills at playing the Terran race, and while half-listening, I have misheard some interesting dialog from these space-rednecks:

• "Odors, sir!"
• "Elijah 2, sir!"
• "S.O.B. Good to go, sir!"
• "In the butt, bi, bi, bi."
• "Go ahead, jackoff."

The theme from Jeopardy is actually a perverse, corrupted rearrangement of "I'm a Little Teapot."

The basic rhythm similarities between "La Cucaracha" and "Clementine" are disturbing.

Microsoft is probably the only company that could easily be said to have been named after its founder's penis.

Ants are fucking annoying.

I want an electric skateboard.

If you think I'm going to end this post without some reference to feces, then you don't know shit!

Where were you when the world ended?

Well, where were you?

I was right there in the middle of it, man. It was the worst Christmas ever.

I was right there in the middle of it, man. It was the best concert ever.

Wait, the world ended? I was asleep.

I was right there in the middle of it, fucking it up so that it would end the wrong way.

I was walking in the park screaming dead baby jokes at the ducks.

I was in the subway. Couldn't get out for hours until the power came back on.

I must have missed that movie.

I was safely encased in the invincible armor of my mecha.

I was right about to make it to level 60, then I fucking lagged out.

So that explains my hangover.

The end of the world? First I've heard about it. Who threw the first nuke?

WTF, mates?

It ain't the end, man. Just gotta drop in a few more quarters.

I was randomly crawling the Internet for scat porn and came across a post in somebody's blog about the end of the world.

Richard Kyanka Was Right.

For those of you perplexed by the title of this post, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka is the founder, owner, and webmaster of comedy website Something Awful, whose motto has long been "The Internet Makes You Stupid." Well, in recent news nearish my neck of the woods, yet another monumentally stupid thing has happened to corroborate this statement.

A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a "nerd" over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson.

As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome signs at several states' borders, as if to prove to his Internet friends that he meant business.

When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy's trailer down.

This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the blaze.

I believe the victim of this heinous act of stupidity has spoken for us all:

"I didn't think anybody was stupid enough to try to kill anybody over an Internet fight," said John Anderson, 59, who suffered from smoke inhalation while trying to put out the 2005 blaze that caused $50,000 in damage to his trailer and computer equipment.

I am more or less at a loss for words really. I plan to send the link of this story to Lowtax; he can probably make better comic use of it than I can. Needless to say, the Internet does indeed make you stupid, so, gentle reader, remember as you wander away from my blog: In your unending quest for the ultimate manifestation of your particular unspeakable deviancies, take the opinions of others with a massive grain of salt lest you run the risk yourself of... wait, what was I talking about? Oh, fuck it. You know what I mean anyway.

Eiarugh. (No, I don't know how to pronounce that either.)

Well, it's been a few weeks since it happened, but the significant other that I have alluded to in previous posts and I have parted ways. No, I don't feel like telling you about it. Even though nobody reads this. Just thought I'd get it out in the open for the random passers-by who have enough curiosity to divert their attention momentarily from their quest for scat-swapping nun porn (what else would you be looking for to consider holyshitno.blogspot.com a worthwhile link?) to read this garbage. In unrelated news, I've been rather pissed off and disillusioned about my whole direction in life lately, but you don't care. Hell, you probably don't even know me. I'm not really sure why I'm bothering with this post. Jesus Nutbusting Christ on a Fucking Toaster Oven that sounded emo. I'm not really as depressed as I sound though. Just angry and frustrated at the whole world, especially me. Eh. Fuck it. I don't care and neither do you. Go back to looking for SWAP.avi fanfic, you disgusting Internet scum-crawlers.

Title

Post content.

Me again...

And I'm bored off my ass and wasting time, so I figure, "what better way to waste time than by posting in my blog?" Dunno what to write though. That's the problem with this whole load of bullshit that we call "Web 2.0." There's all this capability to develop all sorts of content and publicize it on our own, but how many of us actually have any content worth publicizing? If YouTube is any indication, not many.

I just asked my roommate, whom we'll call "Ginger," if he had any advice on content for this blogpost. He said I should say that he's making out with a dead cat upstairs. This simply furthers my case that 98% of Web 2.0 is crap.

On the other hand, this could just be Ginger being Ginger. He often comes into the apartment late at night muttering insane, quasi-sarcastic conspiracy theories about the Jews. One of my favorite of these rants was about how the Hindu Jewish Lesbian Furries are out to steal our cattle.

Well, I'm tired of making this random shit up for now, so I'm a-gonna just call this post finished because I'm too lazy to come up with an original-sounding ending.

Things, Stuff, and Things Involving Stuff

So yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Great post title." I know, I know, I've really outdone myself this time. Anyway, I suppose I just figured I'd go ahead and post something for no readily apparent reason because you all love me so much and miss reading my blog.

*cough* sarcasm *cough*

Holy shit; I'm going to Japan!!! Yeah, any of you who know me already know this, so I'll just recap for the random visitor that my better half and I saved up our monies all summer in order to buy plane tickets and since then we've been saving spending money. Right now, we're just in a state of "ohmyfuckengodweregoingtotokyoholyshiticantbelieveitohmygodohmygodsqeeeeee!!!!!!" as we prepare for our impending trip. I just sort of worry that my parents will be disappointed to see us come back without having gotten secretly married, what with their understanding of our relationship being so... how shall I say it... nonexistent.

So, that's a tiny fragment of the news from my cold, humid, dark, foetid corner of the Internet. The rest is none of your business. Go back to your search for scat porn, which is probably how you came across this anyway.

Ahoy-hoy!

I'm really bored right now, so I think I'll post something in my blog. Let's see here, last post was something deep and personal, so this time it should be random crap. Hmm... random crap... That's it! Crap! Why do they call it taking a shit? It's output, not input. Logically, it should be called giving a shit. Then there's so many people who say they don't give a shit. That's not just anal retentive. That's outright toxic. But at least that expression of apathy isn't as weird as "I don't give a rat's ass." I don't know about you, but I dont WANT a rat's ass. You don't give a rat's ass? Good. Keep the damn thing if you're that unwilling to part with it. Weird fetish if you ask me, but whatever floats your boat. And where's the rest of the rat? What do these hoarders of rat asses do with the rest of the poor innocent rodents that have to die for their bizarre amusement? I take that back; I don't want to know. Probably involves a fingernail clipper, a cigarette lighter, two and a half used condoms, and a webcam. Before you say anything of what you're probably starting to think, no, I don't know any of this from experience. I am making all of this up... I hope. I'm not going to try to find out. You can if you like, but be warned, the Internet is a huge metropolis with lots of unsavory back alleys. Just look at my blog. Reads like the results of a thousand retarded monkeys hammering away at a thousand typewriters that are all missing the letter e... and I don't mean the paper output.

I Haven't Posted in a While...

...and I'm kinda bored now, so I figured I'd write an update for all three to five of you out there that actually read this. First of all, some clarifications on things I may have said in the past. Yes, I know that my last post, "The Disease" is, biochemically speaking, complete and total bunk. When I wrote it, I was a dumb, sardonic high school senior. It's still kinda funny, though, so I don't fuckin' care.

Now for my update. I could talk about recent events in my life, but the two of my readers that I personally know and trust with my psychological baggage already know. The rest of you, tough shit, not that you really care anyway. I'm not trying to be bitter here, though, and recent events haven't been all bad, but... oh you know what I mean, and if you don't know, you probably don't really care all that much. (This is why I don't update very often, and when I do, it's usually some random crap. I've got to write for my nearest, dearest friends and for total strangers at the same time. Kind of a pain in the ass.)

Anyway, aside from all the weirdness, I'm happier than I've ever been before in my life. Well, perhaps it's better to say that for the first time in my life, I'm actually happy. Those of you who know me know why. As for the rest of you, I'll just tell you that I've found love. It's more complicated than you're thinking, though, and yet also more simple. We're not really anything as complicated and loaded with emotional baggage as a couple; we just love each other very much. It's absolutely wonderful, as though we've found a way to skip the huge societally mandated clusterfuck of mind games, anxiety, and angst that's been built up around love. It's true, it's pure, it's clean, it's free, it's beautiful. Of course, to the outside world, we look like a couple, and as far as my family goes, it's just easier to let them think we are than to explain the real situation. It's really kind of funny. I really feel she's The One, though.

The Disease

I am thoroughly convinced that someday a scientist will spoil the fun of poets across the ages by proving that romantic love is an infectious disease. Think about it. You’ve been in love before. You know what it feels like. It feels like an illness. I am certain that it will be found to be a highly contagious virus acting on the nervous system. Its effects seem primarily to be severe impairment of judgement, apparent loss of concentration*, extreme heightening of the senses, and, in many cases, cardiac pain.

It only happens to a patient who happens to be in a state of total emotional nonbeing. The virus enters the body, probably through the nose and the olfactory bulb, and works its way through the entire nervous system. The incubation period is totally unlike the unaffected state in every way: Instead of feeling nothing, the patient actually feels everything all at once. This strange, unsettling time, unlike most pathogenic incubation periods, which last a specific amount of time, lasts until some association is made by the patient’s subconscious mind between some form of incredibly deep psychological security and a person.**

After this happens and the associated synaptic chemicals are released, the antigens produced by the virus begin the Smiting. The antigens actually inhibit the uptake of the very endorphins that initiated the process. Due to the psychological association that ended the incubation period, the levels of the endorphins are increased every time the patient thinks of the beloved. During this first stage of love, the patient is totally carefree and has the capacity to feel happy despite even the most profound motivations for despair. This is just with normal occupation of the patient’s thoughts. When they are occupied with the beloved, the patient is in a state of total euphoria, as if it were something tangible that one could wrap around oneself like a cocoon. Like a narcotic intoxication, it is a wonderful feeling, and the patient wants to feel nothing else. The patient’s psychological “happy place” becomes no specific place other than at the side of the beloved.

Thusly Smitten, the patient feels at all times the driving obsessive compulsion to think of the beloved more and more frequently until the beloved occupies every waking (and probably sleeping) second of the patient’s thoughts. This is the beginning of the second stage, the Addiction. Feeling absolutely euphoric all the time is finally recognized as abnormal by the nervous and immune systems, and the brain-mind complex realizes that the fantasy is insufficient and must be made real. The euphoria is replaced by a thirsty, insatiable, heart-shattering, pull-your-hair-out, cry-yourself-to-sleep longing, an unfathomable longing simply to be with the beloved. The patient only feels complete when the beloved is within sight, though the euphoria is still felt at these times. At all other times, though, the patient wishes against all possibility to feel anything so happy as severe mind-crushing depression. The Addiction is just like any normal addiction, only sufficiently stronger as to merit capitalization.

After the Addiction sets in, the virus’s work is essentially done*, and anything following is largely under the jurisdictions of the mind of the patient and the mind of the beloved. The outcome everyone hopes for is the “happily ever after” [expletive deleted], but this hardly ever happens. The far more common ending is for the Addiction to deteriorate into emotional self-destruction. The patient’s actions become increasingly irrational as the desperation of the Addiction spirals deeper into the Abyss. (You know what Abyss I’m talking about.) At the end of it all, the patient reaches the stage of acting like a complete abject fool and feeling nothing but depression all the time. The depression is forceful enough to render the patient completely apathetic. Part of the patient dies when love fails. The course of the disease is run, and the patient deals in his/her normal way with ordinary depression. There is a period of grieving followed by return to the ground state of emotional nonbeing.

This is the process of the disease. This is the melancholy process that Corporate America exploits every February, making a killing on stupid greeting cards, morbid flowers standing in some strange limbo between normal life and death, overpriced jewelry, and a mixture of paraffin, sucrose, and tile grout that they somehow manage to pass off as chocolate.

The real pestilence afflicting us is not the viral infection of love, but the cultural tumor that exploits it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

__________________________
* Apparent because the patient is concentrating, but only upon his/her beloved.
** This could possibly imply that all people inherently start out bisexual, but this is of no import to this essay.

Orphenstein, or: So that's how they get the monkeys to wear those stupid vests...

Recent events have given me an amusing tale of spills and thrills with my bicycle.

On Monday, September 12, I was riding home from class down a sidewalk when I came upon an entrance to a parking lot. There was a car exiting the lot, so I had to steer around behind it, an action which, given my speed of about 30 miles per hour, made it impossible for me to see the truck turning into the lot until I was about a yard away from it. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. My handlebar ends made a dent in the truck’s side panel twice the size of my head. The owner of the truck was able to pop most of this dent out with a plunger, and our settlement resulted in my paying him $75 to go toward paintless dent repair for the three fist-sized dents that remained. I sustained minor scrapes and bruises to my right elbow.

My bicycle was totaled. The diagonal support bar was bent so far down that the pedals were interfering with the front wheel. The top crossbar was shorn open around two thirds of its circumference in response. On Wednesday, I bought a $25 propane blowtorch and some solder, as this was much cheaper than replacing the bike. That night, I bent the diagonal bar back into an operable position and did a very poor job of soldering the tear in the top bar. After these repairs, the bike worked just fine, with the exception that I began to notice a drastic decrease in brake functionality, since the reduced structural integrity of the frame could no longer stand up to such high degrees of torsion.

So that Friday, I was riding home on my soldered-together bicycle on the same sidewalk as before, and still quite fast, when I came to the same parking lot entrance as before. I saw a university vehicle beginning to turn into the lot. At my current distance and speed, I knew that I was probably going to hit it. The phrase “not again” floated through my mind, so my instinct for self-preservation made my hands clench around the brake levers. Tightly.

At this time, three things happened all at once. First, the drive chain derailed. Second, I realized that there had been some shearing in the diagonal bar that I had not seen and repaired as I heard the sound of that bar snapping. Third, my body was thrown forward over the handlebars as the bike flew backwards from under me. “You fucking dumbass, you should have just bailed out,” said my rationality to my instinct in the split instant in which my body was twisting in midair to minimize impact injury. I hit the ground on my left side, catching most of the fall with my elbow and lower leg. Standing up with this new set of minor scrapes and bruises, I saw my bicycle in the sort of position that would make one wince to see human limbs in.

"Fuck!" I said.

Post crash inspection indicated that although injury to the dummy was negligible, the vehicular repair would place an amateur in over his head.

So I took my machine up to the folks at Aggieland Cycling to seek their sage advice. Much to my lack of surprise, they told me that the damage was irreparable, that I was lucky not to have impaled myself on it, and that my best bet was to get either a new frame or a new bike. They recommended University Pawn as a source for a potential salvage frame.

I went to the pawn shop and bought a piece of shit with its shifter wires completely fucked for $50. I took it back to the bike shop only to find that the rear derailleur (yes, that is the correct spelling) attachment systems were incompatible for a frame transplant. So I stood there with the two derelicts for a while and finally said, "You know what, I'm gonna sleep on this."

In the parking lot, the guy who was helping me bring the bikes out to my truck said to me, "How 'bout I give you another frame for freebie? You know, so you've got plenty to think about?"

"For free?" I queried.

"Free." he said.

"You're joking, right?"

Then he walked me over to a junkheap hidden behind a hedge on the side of the building. Basically, it was a pile of fucked-over used bikes (or the largest pieces thereof) that they had accumulated by means unknown and were going to throw away or strip for parts or some such shit. He pointed out the broken-down frame of a red Peugeot and indicated that I should take it.
This series of events drove home the realization that the folks at Aggieland Cycling are brigands.

Upon my arrival home, I did some careful inspection. The bike from the pawn shop was a busted piece-of-shit Magna Great Divide that would sell new at Wal-Mart for about $100, and its frame was incompatible to boot. It would certainly be a trade down from what my old Diamondback Ascent had been.

The Peugeot was a different story entirely. It was one broken-down son of a bitch, but it was a damn good frame. The mechanisms all seemed to be completely compatible for transplant. Like my fallen steed, this had once been a great horse, and it would probably have cost $700-$1000 when it was new. This would be the new frame.

Feeling somewhat like Orpheus and somewhat like Frankenstein, I spent the rest of that Friday night stripping the frames, transplanting brake and transmission components, and allowing the cold I was coming down with to go to fully incubated virulence. (God damn water fountain kissers.)

The next day, I took the Magna back to University Pawn and sold it back to them for $25. After shutting myself into the cab of my truck, I muttered "Cheap-ass, chrome-dome, child-molesting saprophyte mother-fuckers." It would be quite some time before I could get anything more done with my operation.

By Thursday, September 22, I had succeeded in giving the Peugeot (which I had by now christened Eurydice) the Ascent's drink holder, wheels, brake pads, rear derailleur, handlebars, and brake and shifter levers and wires. I had wired the front brakes and couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to wire the rear ones. I had also succeeded in totally screwing up the front shifter mechanism. Feeling that I was in over my head again and knowing that I would need a new seatpost, I took this unholy crimson clusterfuck into Cycles, Etc, whom I know already not to brigands, but they don't take checks. (I don't like to use my debit card. Most of the time I keep it in my safe deposit box.) Anyway, by the end of this round of bike shop dickering, I had dropped $90 on a new set of shifter and brake levers and wires, a seatpost, a rear brake line stop (that was why I couldn't wire the rear brakes,) and a special order of a seatpost attachment collar that would also hold this brake line stop in place. So I took these parts home, put the seat on the post, wired the front brakes, and discovered what a bitch derailleurs are to wire and calibrate. The rear brakes would have to wait.

Finally, yesterday the seatpost collar came in. I went and got it, took it home, wired the rear brakes, and gave it a test drive. This yielded two observations: the brakes weren't tight enough, and the frontal chainrings were so badly bent out of shape that they would not hold the chain. I finally came to the conclusion that I would need to transplant the Ascent's chainrings and cranks onto Eurydice, but, since I lacked the necessary tools, I would need to go to a bike shop again. Having locked up my debit card again, and not wanting to go back to those brigands at Aggieland Cycling, I took Eurydice and the largest remaining piece of the Ascent over to BCS Bicycles. Thirty dollars later, the chainrings and cranks were replaced, the brakes were tightened, and some necessary adjustments were made to the front derailleur.

All told, I ended up spending $170 on a bike that would probably cost upwards of $700 and $75 as consequences of hitting some guy's truck. I'm just glad it's all over with at last and I don't have to fucking walk everywhere.

Shameless Plug #2

Finnish love metallists H.I.M. have created a new album, and what with their now being signed for global distribution by Sire Records, this album, Dark Light, will be their proper American debut. For more information, check out their website at www.heartagram.com and witness the awesomeness. Dark Light hits U.S. stores September 27. Below, you should see streaming video for their new single, "Wings of a Butterfly."

HIM - "Wings of a Butterfly" -


HIM's">http://www.myspace.com/heartagram">HIM's MySpace Page

Blah blah blah...

This used to be a double post of the post after it. I tried to delete it, but it just came up with a Google map of the United States. Bad webmasters! No biscuit!