Friday, July 20, 2012

Bad Person Spotlight: Appropriating Tragedies for Stupid Reasons


Commenting on tragedies more than likely makes you a bad person. Let’s face it – you’ve more than likely never met or encountered any of the individuals involved, more than likely never been to the place where it happened, and more than likely never experienced anything even remotely similar to the ‘tragedy’ event itself. In other words, commenting on tragedies is more than likely a form of appropriation. Seeing as how I’m a bad person who already  knows he’s a bad person, let’s go ahead and make a comment on a tragedy.

It’s interesting that the 24-hour news machines’ behavior with respect to tragedies is akin to an episode of CSI: Albuquerque (or whatever). Actually it’s not interesting at all—this has always been the case. I don’t think we really expect our media institutions to simply provide a report that an event occurred, and then move on to report other events that are also occurring. Fetishizing a single instance of violence is the bread-and-butter of the United States, maybe even the apple pie—we fixate on an event, twist and contort it into a ‘tragedy’ and squeeze every last drop of blood out of the victims until we know all the excruciating details of their deaths. In fact, their deaths are all that really matter to us—they are worth so much more as bullet-strewn corpses than they ever were as breathing, working people. What characterizes the media’s reporting on these events is an obsession with details: what was the layout of the room, what was the perpetrator wearing, what weapons did he wield, and so on. To make it even worse, we have to become intimate with the victims; we have to know how they felt. We attempt to discern this by listening to interviews of people who were there and listen as they tell us what was going through their mind: did they think about their spouse or their children, their mothers and fathers; did they see people as they died; did they try to help others? Our thirst for a fully-painted picture of violence is a vicarious living of that event; in a way, we yearn to be on the front lines, to be in the middle of a bloodbath and named a victim. We pine for the nearness of death so that its reality can be confirmed to us, a people hopelessly detached from a real and authentic world. Why was there a market—literally, a market—for the crime scene photos from the Columbine school shooting in 1999? Because we want to know what happened so that it can be made real. What’s a tragedy without the intimate horror of dead bodies and pools of blood? Just an event, somewhere else far-removed from our living room couches.

Why do Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have to alter their campaign schedules so they can issue remarks about a ‘tragedy’? What about an isolated instance of psychotic violence makes it a national event? Granted, mass shootings seemed to be a distinctly American ‘thing’ (just like serial killers and movies about anthropomorphic prehistoric animals) up until Anders Breivik murdered 69 people in Norway almost a year ago from today. However, what makes Breivik’s rampage different is that he targeted the kids of prominent Norse political figures; he had a white nationalist agenda with a clear political purpose for his violence—a collective denouncement on behalf of the world seemed appropriate. Now today, we have our political candidates denouncing…well…something. I for one am glad our presidential contenders can agree that dressing up like a batman villain and killing people is wrong, but what other than the event itself is at stake? I wish I knew. Even the lame (but somehow effective) politicizing news machines are having a hard time making their tired ‘it’s about gun control’ talking points stick. I think it’s the emptiness of the event itself that brings it to our attention, its very senselessness. But even as this senselessness piques our hunger for knowledge, it reveals our own obsession for novelty. What makes each act of psychotic and unknowable violence so alluring is precisely because it resists incorporation into our ready-made rules of thumb for understanding the world. Structural violence and poverty? Boring. We already ‘know’ about that—it’s nothing new. Massacres of women and children in Syria? State-sponsored, so nothing interesting. Man slaughters people in a theater? Now that’s new AND interesting. And each event of senseless mass murder might as well be the first we’ve encountered because it’s this very senselessness that grants it the status of being eternally novel. This helps explain why we become so enamored with the details—in lieu of some broader reason for the violence, we must study the violence itself, make it into an object of scrutiny in order to, ironically, bring it to life. Little do we know that we are engaged in the performance of the emptiness that mirrors everything else we do as a society; we obsess over the body and forget that it ever died.

Because events like today’s are so senseless, it renders them visible just like the parade of other empty, unknowable images on television that we encounter every day. Emptiness and visibility have a strange symbiosis in our society; they feed into one another and sustain an entire ecosystem of emptiness and senselessness. It’s no wonder Obama and Romney were obligated to speak out today—if they want to win in November, they’ve got to pay homage to our favorite national pastime.  

Friday, July 13, 2012

Bad People Update: 156-160


156. ‘Swag’
157. Jerry Sandusky
158. Joe Paterno
159. Viacom
160. Occupy Wallstreet

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Inauguration of the List Par Excellence

A spectre is haunting America—the spectre of the List. All the powers of new America have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: President and Actor, Michael Bay and Christian Slater, Hipsters and Young Republicans.

Where are the antagonists to the empty culture of the West that have not been decried as beholden to the List by their adversaries in power? Where is the opposition that has not been cast out by the lingering taint of association with the List, against the entrenched power of the degenerate cabal of Chris O’Donnell, as well as against its reactionary foes in MSNBC?

Two things result from this fact:

1. The List is already acknowledged by all American powers to be itself a power.


2. It is high time as acolytes of the List that we should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish our views, make known the Bad People who peddle in empty cultural commodities, establish our aims and tendencies, and meet this subordinated tale of the Spectre of the List with its realization in the material world as the List Par Excellence.

 It is no coincidence that the growing chorus of discontent with the passage of western culture into the realm of bullshit and spectacle is met with the compilation of the List Par Excellence. As the product of the steady formation of the new cultural consciousness, the List makes known the grievances held in regards to “Jack and Jill” and the other smut propagated by the sinister figure of Adam Sandler. The new cultural consciousness grows weary with the tired formulas of Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity and demands their exile to a place where their sorry programming will cease to hollow out American discourse. This new consciousness rejects the Jonas Brothers and Bud Light Platinum, opposes Chris Gaines and people who use cassette tapes as fashion accessories, and openly contests the logic of Robert McNamara and Dane Cook.

Followers of the List disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can only be attained by the enumeration of people, both good and bad, into the List Par Excellence. Let Larry ‘the Cableguy’ and The Big Bang Theory tremble at the revolution of the List. The followers of the List have nothing to lose but their prime-time television programming. They have a world to win.

Bad Person Spotlight: Bad People Who Do Not Recognize That They Are, In Fact, Bad People


“Misattribution is the sincerest form of flattery.”
-Ted Danson

As we say in the industry, bad people are those who gravitate towards false understandings of themselves; in other words, those individuals whom we would describe as bad tend to not recognize that they are, in fact, bad. ‘Badness’ is a very clear-cut case in this respect: if you do not find your name on the patent-pending ‘Good People’ list, there is a statistically-significant chance that you are a bad person. Thus the imperative of the ‘Good People’ list: those interested in not being bad people should peruse the contents of the soon-to-be-published list and take a moment to reflect upon those fortunate enough to be named and the deeds that could have earned them their spot, take stock of their own character, and then proceed to stop being bad. It’s really quite simple.

Sure, the ethics of the List may be called into question since we posed as yet another ‘nude celebrity photo archive’ but when you think about it, is there a better way to get a message out there? No. The List does not respect your ethical boundaries as it serves a higher purpose: to systematically expose the good as the bad, and the bad as also the bad. Badness runs amok in our day and age; we cannot hide from it, only follow the rubric of the List and name every bad person on the planet that is or has ever been.

The creation of the List Par Excellence is a watershed moment in the history of western culture. The onslaught being wreaked upon our country today by hippies, NBC/CBS Primetime Television, and Christian Slater cannot be tolerated lest the black hole at the heart of CSI: Miami become our daily reality. A grand gesture of solidarity is now incumbent upon all Americans, old or young, fat or not-quite-as-fat—a collective symbolic exchange which I call ‘mass-masochism’© wherein each Michael Fassbender-loving American will cast their eyes upon the List Par Excellence and discern their place amidst the cosmos. Just as our ancestors joined together to end the threat posed by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, so too now must we unite to stem the steady creep of cultural suffocation wrought by the graft and scheming of Christian Slater and Michael Bay. Our fathers understood the necessity of shared sacrifice in the face of overwhelming evil; we must carry on their legacy and read the List Par Excellence obsessively, every day to ensure the terrorists don't win and a cultural 9/11 (x 10,000) never happens on our fair shores.

America! where will you find yourself upon the List?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Bad Things Update: 136 - 155


136. United Bank of Scotland
137. Barclays
138. GE Capital
139. J.P. Morgan Chase
140. Bank of America
141. Rick Scott
142. Platitudes
143. Inspirational Quotes
144. Reality Television
145. CNN
146. Banking Cabals
147. Chuck Grassley
148. Nancy Pelosi
149. Barbara Boxer
150. Charles Schumer
151. Maroon 5
152. Rogue Self-replicating Nanobots
153. The Higgs-Boson
154. Rick Perry
155. INXS

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Bad Things: 71-135

71. Kenny Loggins
72. Glenn Beck
73. Sean Hannity
74. Rachel Maddow
75. Keith Olbermann
76. Randy Simmons
77. Robert McNamara
78. Richard Perle
79. Paul Wolfowitz
80. Richard Cheney
81. Paleo-Conservatives
82. Pat Robertson
83. CSI
84. NCIS
85. Criminal Minds
86. Hawaii Five-0
87. Oasis
88. The Gallaghers
89. Los Angeles, CA
90. The Loud Man on the deck at the Owl on 07/07/2012
91. Dane Cook
92. Dane Cook fans
93. Jay Leno
94. Strom Thurmond
95. Joseph Lieberman
96. Tipper Gore
97. Joseph McCarthy
98. Paul Ryan
99. Evanescence
100. Organic Farms
101. Monsanto, Inc.
102. Mormon Hipsters
103. Root beer pong - aka 'soda shooting'
104. 19 year-olds who drink too much and pass out at New Year's Eve parties
105. Alan Derschowitz
106. Zionists
107. Bill Engvall
108. Jeff Foxworthy
109. Larry 'the cableguy'
110. Anderson Cooper
111. The Big Bang Theory
112. Yuppies
113. Bands that get back together when, clearly, their careers are over and they should pursue separate interests.
114. The Sex Pistols, the Misfits, the Clash, the Ramones, Richard Hill, NoFX
115. Stereotypes
116. John Denver
117. Blipsters, mope-heads, mob downers, flumph trawlers, bottom dredgers, and wastoids
118. Non-tippers
119. Children
120. Parents
121. Mouthbreathers
122. People who use cassette tapes as fashion accessories
123. Alberto Gonzales
124. Timothy Geithner
125. Lawrence Summers
126. J.F.K.
127. The military-industrial complex
128. Adam Sandler
129. Andy Samberg
130. Pauly Shore
131. Andy Dick
132. Stephen Baldwin
133. Ryan Gabriel
134. People who wear two pairs of sunglasses
135. Warm beer

IT continues

36.Chris Gaines
27.Creed
28.Scott Stapp
39. Coen Brothers' Fans
40.Bad People Who Don't Know They're Bad
41.Hipsters
42.Crimepunks/Mudswagglers/scoootgeeks
43. Seth Green
44. Memesters.
45. Lady Gaga
46.Katy Perry
47. Comic shop patrons
48. Carly Ray Japsen
49. Lance ARmstrong
50. Poli-sci majors
51.Bros who "Ice"
52. Brandi Carlisle
53.LMFAO
54. Applebee's
55.Jimmy the homophobe
56. Skrillex
57.Nathan
59.Elvira
60.Crossword Puzzle Syndicates
61Bud light platinum
62 Wyoming
63.Charlton Heston
64. Zooey Deschanel
65.USU SHAFT
66.Richard Dawkins
67.Hitchens
68.Sam Harris
69.Michael Bolton
70. Michael Bolton
One night, ruminating on our shared apprehension of the people (many of whom are listed below) who endlessly post stupid things (links, inspiring quotes, blog posts, etc)  on the interwebs, Mike and I decided to make some posts of our own. We have compiled here a comprehensive list of things, people, places and substances that are BAD. (Also there is a good list. It is much shorter than the BAD list.)

Pay attention, because The List contains the germinating seed of a modern approach to a total morality that far surpasses the attempts of our listing fore bearers'. (Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Leibniz and The Simpsons'.) Phenomenologically speaking, of course.   

It Begins

THE BAD PEOPLE LIST, PART 1
               ~THOSE WHO HAVE WRONGED US

1. Men who wear plaid shorts.
   1.5 Those who wear white-rimmed sunglasses
2.The imperialistic zionist virgin we met at the comic book ship. (morality based upon Age of Empires)
3.Barack Obama
4.Atheists in General. (but especially Reddit Atheists)
5.The Jonas Brothers
6.People who suck at parking.
7.Farmers Market
8.Ayn Rand
9.Objectivists
10.Ron Paul
11.Libertarians
12. Christian Slater
13.Fort Collins Liquor Store
14.Obamanaughts
15.Teenagers
16.Grad Students
17.NRA members
18.Chris O'Donnell
19.Stephanie Myers
20.Brad Pitt's Mom
21.PSeudo-progressive debate judges
22.Vegans
23.Hippies
24.The layman/Joe Six-Pack
25.Joe the Plumber
26.Europeans
27.Australians
28.Heidegger
29.Baudrillard
30.Mulligan's Bar
31.Hanson Family (temple house)
32.Hanson, Band
33.Limp Bizkit
34.Kid Rock
35.Garth Brooks