If you've followed this website for any period of time, you should know by now that every once in a while I need to get some shit off my chest that really pisses me off.  I'm usually a pretty mild-mannered mofo, but the only way to really preserve my sanity in real life is to vent about shit that fucking drives me crazy on my interpage.  So here's another update featuring Amazing Ben bitching and complaining about irrelevant and meaningless shit that makes him upset.

ESPN Page 2 Sucks Now

Do you remember when Page 2 was full of witty sports content and articles that contained more than fifteen words and/or a hastily-produced photoshop that looks like something I would have thrown together in about ten minutes for a content-deficient article on this website I didn't get started on until 4PM Friday on I day I'm leaving work early?  When did it degenerate from being pretty much the only place on the internet where you could get sports-related pseudo-humor from people who actually had a modicum of understanding for the games to a garbage dump for rush-job punch-out articles containing only two sentences about how the Arizona Cardinals Suck, retarded high school quiz-style Flash games and cheesy Reggie Bush-Matt Leinart erotic slash fan fiction?

I guess it's still all the same writers, but it seems that (with the exception of the Daily Quickie) they've just accentuated the suckfest and craptasm that was once in the minority and did away with anything that was moderately enjoyable to anyone who isn't a brain-dead douchebag in danger of choking to death on their own tongue in a rainstorm. They gave the infrequently humorous self-aggrandizing cockfest "Sports Guy" Bill Simmons his own Blog-o-Matic weekly column section thingy on there so that he can be pretentious and bitch about his double-tall Starbucks mocha lattes with almond syrup, and it's still painfully obvious to anyone who's ever read anything he wrote that he needs to spend more time being something other than a complete fucking talentless hack assclown and less time going down on Tom Brady and Bill Belichick like a DC-10 with an oral fixation in a phallically-shaped lollipop store.  They also seem intent to keep forcing the stupid-ass "Uni Watch" on us, since they know that if there's one thing guys really love to read about it's which NFL team has the sexiest-looking uniforms or whether some idiot thinks the Lakers should go with their throwback jerseys when they play the Celtics this week or just go topless like a trashy skank on a European beach during mating season.  Holy shit, if I cared about lame crap like that I'd read the fucking "Best Dressed at the Emmys" articles on People.com or Playboy's "Girls of the ACC".  At least then I could probably get a boner out of it.  I go to ESPN to read shit about actual sports, not which pair of baseball pants give Alex Rodriguez the best package definition without making his ass look too big.

Page 2's take on why Palmiero wears earplugs:  He doesn't hate boos -- he hates Sabbath!
That's comic gold!

Wicca Is for Hypocrites

Now I'll go on the record here saying that I'm usually not one to comment on other peoples' religious beliefs.  I generally feel that it's a pretty personal thing and everyone is entitled to believe in whatever stupid fairy tale crap they want to as long as they don't try to convert me because generally speaking I'm too apathetic, emotionless and jaded to give a shit about anything not involving what I'm going to be eating for my next meal or where the nearest bathroom is at any given time.  However when hippies, vegans and ecoterrorists think your religious practices are a little bit too eccentric and nature-oriented, that's probably a pretty good sign that you've got problems.  Well, that's the case with Wicca.

For the lucky few who don't know any eccentric losers desperate for attention and acceptance but unsure how to get it, Wicca is a religion where people dress up like fairies, run around in the woods making voodoo dolls out of sticks and pretending it's the seventeenth century before returning to their air-conditioned homes, cooking vegetarian meals on their electric stoves, watching the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD and then pretending to be serious about committing suicide in a "subtle but meaningful" manner by slashing their wrists in a final testament to their complete fucking generic triteness.  Occasionally, Wiccans will go to renaissance festivals or Halloween parties to smoke pot, show off their homemade "totally authentic" medieval witch clothing and sort-of dance around aimlessly so that it looks like they just fell out the back of an Amish horse wagon and landed in a mountain of GHB.  Wiccans also like to fancy themselves as wizard/sorcerer/dungeon master/witch types and have been known to scour their front yards from time to time searching for roots, berries, candles and newt tongues that they can use in their homemade cauldron altars to cast fake magic spells and make the cool boys at school like them better (or at least stop throwing rocks and Everlasting Gobstoppers at them).  It's sort of like The Blair Witch Project only somehow more retarded and the nausea I feel isn't largely motion sickness-related.

Whatever.  Like I said, I couldn't give a crap if you believe you're the second coming of the Prophet Mohammed and the Angel Gabriel told you that the path to true enlightenment comes through gargling Sangria from a Windex bottle, lighting lawn mowers on fire and wearing your underwear on the outside of your pants.  It doesn't bother me that it's followers are mostly pretentious hypocrites who claim to want to become one with the fruity nature goddess or whatever the fuck they believe in but have never so much as spent one night sleeping outside the protection of their climate-controlled domiciles.  No, what I don't like about Wicca is that it is completely antithetical to every scientific development in the past two hundred years and if anyone actually strictly followed the ethos they claim to believe in they would set human evolution back about four hundred years.  Luckily, most Wiccans can accept the fact that eating moss and roots isn't going to have the same effect as taking a couple of Advil and that even though the nature goddess hates technology and electricity in all forms other than lightning it's still more effective to IM your friends about the cute guy in gym class who never notices you than it would be to carve the message on a stone tablet and hand deliver it.

A Wicca altar. 
Notice the swords, D&D Player's Handbook and crucifix.

The Campus Skateboarders Bite Ass

Every day when I leave my office I see a different group of dumbass suburban trash skate punks meandering around the main courtyard on campus posturing like dipshits, walking around, trying (and miserably failing) to do routine skateboard tricks and generally just looking like a bunch of dirty long-haired grown-up seven year-olds learning to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time.

I'm probably one of only about ten Americans over age twenty that doesn't think skateboarding is one of the most moronic wastes of anyone's time ever invented.  Sure, I think that a skateboard is about as practical a mode of transportation as putting your car in neutral and then pushing it up a mountain, but I'm also of the opinion that skateboards were not designed to be a reliable method of human transportation.  They were designed to do bitchin-ass tricks where you jump up in the air, flip the board around twelve times in five different directions, slide down a railing, do a backflip and then break your spine on a set of short stairs.  I can respect that -- but these fucking no-nut shitburgers on campus need to learn to either do something cool looking or stop wasting my damn time, because they're about as interesting to watch as live direct-feed internet footage of the janitor's closet in the Washington Monument.  If I wanted to see inept jerkwads with the dexterity of a drunken pregnant gorilla stumble around aimlessly on wheeled objects, I would just go to the Boston Common on a Saturday afternoon or rent Airborne on DVD.  These fuckers are trying as hard as they can to dress and act like Tony Hawk or Rodney Mullen, so I want to see them back it up with something that doesn't suck ass in the lamest way possible and make me want to steal their boards out from under them and break them in half with my skull.  When I see some teenage bitch pushing his board towards a bench, I want to see him grind the rail or ollie it or do something other than flip the board upside down and stumble around while mumbling swears under his breath.  Shit, it would even be funny for me to watch him completely fucking bail out and face-plant the sidewalk or crash head-first into a garbage can or an old person.  Just do something.  These idiots just push around, do half a kickflip and then walk away as their board goes flying.  It's retarded.  Learn some fucking tricks that are going to impress me or stop wasting my fucking time.  I can get out there and kick your board across the courtyard.  That's not a trick.  Ollie the stairs or do a 360 or sprain your ankle or something.  Practice at home if you have to.  Just don't get out here in front of a bunch of people and try to make them think that because you're carrying a skateboard you're not a total loser and a disappointment to humanity, because if you can't do anything even remotely impressive you're only demonstrating the fact that you are a completely miserable fucking failure at life.

It's like this, only not nearly as cool.

Corporate Rock Radio Blows Goats

Ok, I like Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden as much as the next flannel-wearing stoner alternateen bitch with a wool skull-cap living in the mid-nineties, but I think that if I have to hear one more overplayed Alice in Chains song on "Boston's New Rock Station" I'm going to start shivving people with a peanut butter-encrusted Spork named Melindria.  Seriously - Nirvana released its last album in 1993.  That was twelve fucking years ago.  It's time to change your station's label to "The Best Alternative Rock of the 90s:  All Grunge All The Time" or let go of the past and start playing something that was actually released this millennium by someone who's birth year at least post-dates the Jurassic Era.

Sure you hear a couple of "new" songs every once in a while, but they're all from bands like Green Day, Nine Inch Nails and Weezer who released their best and most successful albums in 1994.  Audioslave?  Velvet Revolver?  All those guys are just holdovers from the 90s as well.  You can't tell me that there hasn't been at least one half-decent new rock band that's released music in the past five years (and no, I don't count Coldplay because they fucking suck) and that the only decent rock music in America is a played-out Pearl Jam B-side from 1992.  I refuse to believe that the gay-ass Kelly Clarkson song the Mix station plays every ten seconds is from the only album released this decade that features both guitars and drums.  Seriously.  There's no shortage of bands out there willing to sell out to "the man" at the drop of a hat, so it's about time we find some of these bitches who don't suck and expose them to the world like a streaker at the United Nations.

Eddie Vedder turned 41 this year.

Anthony Kiedis and Flea are 43.

Perry Farrell is 46.

The Nintendo Revolution Controller Is A Fucking Abomination to God

Now each week I become increasingly more aware of how few of my readers actually give a crap about video game-related information, so I'll make this one brief.  Have you seen the new input device yet for Nintendo's next generation console?

It looks like the illegitimate inbred offspring of an iPod shuffle and a DVD remote slapped together nunchuk-style with what appears to be a portable neck massager.  It's gimmick is that the remote control detects motion and acts sort of like a laser pointer or a computer mouse, which is probably only useful in the sense that you can beat yourself over the head with it for buying such a complete fucking disaster of a machine and the console will be able to detect exactly what you're doing.

Nintendo's idea for this system is that you play the games by waving the pointer around in three-dimensional space while trying to make sure that none of your friends see you being a complete and total dipshit who looks like he's attacking invisible flies buzzing around his head.  It's like a reward for all those parents who played Super Mario Brothers with you and moved the NES controller around as if lifting it to the right would make your character jump while you and your brother just rolled your eyes and though about how lame your folks were.  Well now that shit will work, I guess.  Finally everyone will know what it's like to be a fifty-something professional who is completely out of touch with technology.  Personally, if I wanted to look like a complete fucking toolshed and wave my right arm in the air in front of me for three hours straight I would have joined the Hitler Youth or taken up as an eccentric street mime on the streets of Vienna.  Not to mention that I have to doubt my own ability to hold my non-dominant arm perpendicular to my body for an extended period of time without completely losing all circulation to my fingers and straining my Latissimus Dorsi.  In short, whoever thought this was a good idea should be put into a trash compactor and turned into a doorstop for my office.

Guitar Store Musicians Can Eat My Ass

Few things are as irritating as going into a music store with the intent of buying something musical instrument-related.  Walking from the racks to the counter carrying any sort of band-related equipment is sort of like a combination between running a gauntlet of rabid wolves with seventeen McDonald's cheeseburgers stuck down your pants and going into a steroids bodybuilder gym to do five reps of 100lbs on the bench press while all the greased-up Arnold clones stand around shaking their heads, grabbing their nuts and glaring at you disapprovingly.  Honestly, there's nothing worse than guitar store trash.  If you've ever set foot into one of those bastions of Eddie Van Halen wannabes, you'll know immediately who I'm talking about.  They're the guys who may or may not actually be hired by the store to sit around on the most expensive amps "trying out the equipment" by playing not-quite-right Jimi Hendrix or Black Sabbath guitar solos for eight hours straight while you browse the guitar pick selection.  They're the jackass thirty-something year-old ex-hippies who spent the last fifteen years in a band that "almost made it big" but "got totally screwed over by our manager", so now their revenge on the recording industry is to discourage all potential musicians by sitting in a store playing the most impossible music ever written and giving the evil eye to anyone who's been playing music for less than ten years.  Are you interested in looking purchasing a drum set?  Tough shit, asshole!  I'm on this set right now playing a beat-for-beat recreation of the solo from 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' while doing my taxes and yelling profanity at the same time!  Look at how awesome I am and how my long flowing locks flap around like a long-haired poodle trapped in a wind tunnel!  Pay no attention to the fact that I've been sitting alone in the store for the last four hours because I have no friends and no life outside of music and I sort of smell like cheese!  Oh, interested in the bass now instead?  Hang on, let me go over there and bust out some Primus for you while using a distortion pedal that you'll never afford and can't even figure out how to use anyways!  Do you still want to disgrace this fine piece of equipment with your half-assed wankering, you no-talent hack who will never amount to anything in the music business?

The guys who work the counter are no better either.  They're just as happy as the guitar store musicians are to see you be humiliated by watching people who are better than you will ever be in your entire lifetime.  They also never forget to look at you like you're a complete fucking asshole when you buy a 10-pack of the shittiest drum sticks in the joint.  "You know that a serious drummer can't get good sound out of the Vater Specials, don't you man?".  Hey, suck my ass bitch.  You're twenty-eight years old and you work in a fucking guitar store, get off my nuts.  It's a fucking piece of carved wood that you use to hit things.  I like playing drums, but I'm not serious enough about it to drop fifty bucks on something I can get for two dollars just so I can avoid your condescending bullshit advice. 

And God forbid if you ever want to pick up an instrument you're interested in and fuck around with it.  You'd better spend a couple months practicing Guns 'N Roses solos at home before you try that shit or the store manager will come out and break the guitar over your head for disgracing it.  "Well, this stupid fucker just played 'Smoke on the Water' on the Les Paul, so that thing's worthless now.  Let's just use it to kick his ass".  Or even better, they'll be like, "Hm... maybe you should put down the Fender Strat and try out this Yamaha Piece-of-Shit instead.  That might be more your speed.  Just give me a second to turn the volume down so that none of the real musicians here can hear you trying it out."

Don't touch anything, loser.

My Fucking New Neighbors Are Going to Die

My new neighbors in the apartment directly downstairs from me are going to die soon by my hands.  Now I don't know a whole lot about them, except for the assumption that they're probably college students and the fact that they blast the fucking loudest most annoying techno electronica bullshit music ever played at midnight on weeknights and shake all the furniture in my living room like a fucking San Andreas earthquake in the middle of a nuclear apocalypse.  Now when I come home from a long day of being at work for fourteen hours the last thing I want to do is here a fucking electro-remixed version of a shitty Cher B-Side with the bass blasting hard enough to jump-start a jackhammer from ten thousand paces.  These fuckers need to die, and quickly.

I thought about pounding on their door, but that would be useless for a number of reasons.  First off, there's a pretty good chance they won't be able to hear me over the melodious sounds of a five billion decibel high-hat and bass drum loop.  Secondly, if I complain to their faces they'll be able to put a face to the person who is going to cut a hole in their ceiling and pour ten gallons of bleach into their living room when they're asleep at 8 o'clock in the morning.  The only thing really holding me back from that is the internal debate as to whether hat would be more or less effective than calling the FBI and telling them that this apartment is housing thirty-eight Palestinian Zionist Neo-Nazi ex-Soviet Michigan Militia Christian Coalition terrorist cultist Klansmen manufacturing chemical weapon dog bomb nuclear electric glow-in-the-dark pincers of mass destruction with the purpose of destroying British embassies, the nation of Israel, U.S. Landmarks, the New Orleans levee system and every water supply they can find from Seattle to Johannesburg.  It's a difficult debate, only moderated by the fact that I seem to remember reading something about the Federal Government frowning upon it when you make up fake terrorist threats -- probably because that's infringing on the Federal Government's job!  Zing!

Anyways, the point here is that the next time they decide it will be fun to throw a Blade-style internet-podcast techno GHB X-head rave/gropefest sausage party directly underneath my computer desk at 4:30 in the morning on a Wednesday while I'm trying to download porn without waking up Andrea, I'm going to go down there with my trusty Hatchet of Wounding +1, bust down the door and start face-kicking anything with a pulse before throwing their sound system into the middle of the street, smashing it into tiny bits with my forehead, dropping a quaint Italian-style bistro restaurant on top of it, setting the bistro on fire and then sinking the whole thing in the middle of Boston Harbor.

The scene downstairs last night.