I Am A Sellout

Some of you might have noticed something different about the site in the past few days. This probably means you are spending way too much time on the computer looking up useless sites. Anyway, there are now ads on my site. That’s right; I have officially sold out to corporate America and caved in. Of course, it’s not like I had some sort of moral objection to it in the first place. That would require having morals, of which I have very few (none if you don’t consider my hatred of tofu to be a “moral”).

I mean, if I’m going to be writing this stuff and people for some reason keep reading this stuff, I might as well make some money off of it. Sure, it’s not like I’m getting paid a ridiculous amount of money, but seeing as I spend about fifteen minutes on each entry and it requires me to do very little other than sit in front of my computer and spew hateful stereo-types and generalizations, any money I’m making is more than I deserve. I’m pretty sure Bill O’Reilly says this to himself every night before he goes to sleep.

Apparently the way it works is that this program looks at my readers and decides which ads they might be interested in. Now, this worried me, because I’m a little suspicious of the people that read this, and I have a feeling there are going to be some really strange ads popping up on the screen. They also use keywords from my entries to determine which ads they place, which might explain why there have been a lot of ads for cattle prods and Justin Bieber CDs. Then, the more people that see and click on the ads, the more I get paid. But I’m not supposed to tell you to click on the ads. That would be illegal. So definitely don’t click on the ads. (If you could see through my webcam right now you would see my winking very subtly. Then again, you would also see me sitting in an office chair in my underwear, so maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t seeing through my webcam.)

But the good thing is that you don’t have to be worried about me becoming too commercial. You don’t have to worry about me censoring things just because those **ALERT: This portion of the entry has been edited and formatted to fit this site.** And you definitely can count on me to stick to my guns and not over commercialize this site just because all of those **ALERT: It’s time for Music Hour! sponsored by the Disney Channel, with your guest, Joe Jonas!**

But in all seriousness, I’m not one of those guys that think that making lots of money means you’ve sold out. I see this a lot with musical bands. People get all upset with them when they sign a big record contract because they think that all of a sudden they will become too “corporate” and will go away from their roots. If I were these musicians, my response would be something along the lines of “You can kiss my Aston Martin.” Drugs are not free okay? The love of music only goes so far, and integrity doesn’t buy yachts.

Okay, so after that completely random little tangent, let’s get back to ads. As a journalism major, I realize that the media is ruled by the pursuit of advertising revenue. This scares me, because I have met many advertising majors and (while this may be a sort of journalism turf war and I might be biased) ad people have pralines for brains. (By the way, what the hell is a praline? Is it a nut or is like a candy? Somebody should look that up for me.) They rarely come up with good ads, and when they do, they ride them until they are just irritating. Geico is a great example. Sure, maybe the gecko and the caveman and the money with the eyes were funny the first time, but not the next fifty times. The only commercial characters I never get tired of seeing are these guys, this dude, and whatever the hell these are.

But just because I understand my industry is run by ads doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Do you want proof that ads have a way of ruining even the most pure and sacred things? Read this story. Yeah, so in order to make sure their ratings were good, they let five kids who didn’t even spell a word right into the last round. This is stupid because it takes away from the spirit of the competition; namely watching little kids spell a word wrong and break down into tears as their dreams come crashing down before them and their parents disown them. For all I know one of those kids might not be able to even spell their own name (then again, with so many Indian kids in this competition that is nothing to laugh at).

This all happened because of ads and ratings. ESPN took one of my favorite things in the world (the spelling bee, not Indian kids; not that there is anything wrong with Indian kids) and they’ve twisted it into a money-grubbing death machine. Thankfully, even though I now have ads on my site, I will always serve as the watchdog of justice and corruption. I’m going to give those people at ESPN a piece of my **ALERT: We interrupt this program for a special segment, sponsored by ESPN.**

Sibling Rivalry

One of the hardest parts of going to college out of state is that I don’t get to see my family often. Ha ha I’m just joking, it’s actually one of the perks. And don’t get all mad at me for saying that; they would tell you the same thing about me. Because family members do crazy s**t like this to each other.

Now I don’t know too many sisters who are around the same age, and for some weird reason all the ones I do know are twins (don’t ask me why that is). So I obviously have no experience with this type of situation. This of course, will not stop me from jumping to unreasonable conclusions. Sisters do not get along as well as brothers mainly because they are women. Men have the advantage of being able to settle arguments by trying to beat the snot out of each other and then be completely fine in the next five minutes. Girls can’t do that though, so they have to resort to childish games and pouts that often last long after either can remember what they are mad at each other for.

This story is a perfect example of this. From all accounts, these two ladies used to be pretty close until they got in a fight over a few hundred dollars, which women blow on shoes they never wear. Then of course there is the matter of the $500,000 in lottery winnings. I find it pretty funny that the sister who is trying to get the money is like “I love my sister,” while the other one is probably thinking “F**k my sister, I’m rich beeyatch.”

Now what really confuses me is why these geriatric geezers are fighting over this money. They’re both over 80 years old. They’re going to die in a few years; how much more money could they need? And what would they spend it on? Metamucil? Tickets to see The Price is Right? Snuggies? If by some miracle I ever reach the age of 80, the only thing I’m going to be buying are diapers and flyswatters (and please don’t make me explain why I need those two items together). I mean, yeah maybe you could say that they want the money for their children or to cover their funeral expenses or whatever. I always thought this was stupid; I’m dead. I don’t need a goddamn gold-plated coffin. I will put it in my will that my family should just dump my body into the ocean or a dumpster or something cheap. Not that I will need to tell them this; in fact, they will probably do this before I’m even dead.

This story is also just another reason why gambling is stupid. I come from Hawaii, where gambling is illegal and we do not have a lottery. This could explain why people in Hawaii always want to gamble. A few years ago, a bunch of us went to visit a friend in Cheney, Washington for spring break. Now before you ask why in the world we would go to a place like Cheney for spring break, you’re missing the point (also, I still don’t know myself). On the trip, my friend Chris was so intrigued by the little scratch games that he spent about $50 in about four days on a bunch of scratch cards. Of course, this could also be because there is absolutely nothing to do in Cheney. In the end, he ended up winning like two bucks.

Anyway, my point is that you never win in gambling. You never hear good stories about lottery and jackpot winners. The only stories you hear are the ones where five years later the winner is divorced, addicted to drugs, homeless and has cancer. You ever notice that every fifth episode of CSI involves people who are dead because they won like $1000 on the slots? Of course, with all that said, there are the ones who win and then get to marry ridiculously hot gold-diggers, like this guy.

So it’s sad that instead of living the rest of their days out in peace watching reruns of Golden Girls together (I like that show by the way), these ladies will most likely spend the rest of their days in court, wasting their winnings on lawyers and splitting their family in half. And I hate it when stories end with lawyers making money.

Now I have a younger sister who for all accounts is a normal, sensible person. Sure she has a tendency to burp in public and is about as coordinated as a cross-eyed fish, but when you were raised around a brother like me that’s probably bound to happen. The important thing is that if she were to ever win a ridiculous amount of money, I’m sure she would split it with me. Or at least she better. I mean I drove her around all the time in high school. She owes me gas money.

The Life of the Rich and Retarded

I’m sure you’re like most people; you think that your life is full of problems. Well you need to just suck it up, because according to Jessica Biel, you don’t know anything about problems until you have been saddled with the greatest burden of all: being really hot. I mean next to that, all of your problems seem pretty insignificant right? I bet now you just feel like such an ungrateful brat, taking your ugliness for granted.

All joking aside, as a fellow hot person I can empathize with Biel. Okay, yeah, that was still a joke. Now I promise I’m done joking around. Apparently Biel recently said that being pretty was a disadvantage during a recent interview with a women’s magazine. (Hey, this is a bit of a tangent, but have you ever wondered why men’s magazines have scantily clad women, but women’s magazines also have scantily clad women? It shows you how disgusting women think we men really are; the entire female population would probably be lesbians if they ever figured out how to have children without men involved.) Anyway, the magazine asked her something along the lines of “Are your good looks a disadvantage for an actress?” to which she answered yes.

Now before we all over-react and call her an airheaded bimbo, let’s take a moment to see where Jessica is coming from and try and see her point of view … Okay that was long enough; Jessica Biel is an airheaded bimbo. Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that happens when you are famous. Normally when people say retarded things, the two or three people that still hang out with them just nod their heads and sigh (I’m a great example). But when these retarded people become famous, every little dumb thing that they say turns into a headline story. This in turn gives other retarded people the opportunity to show how retarded they are by talking about the retarded things that retarded celebrities do. How else do you explain the entire VH1 channel? For every retard that is famous for no reason (Paris Hilton) there is a retard that is famous for talking about retards who are famous for no reason (Perez Hilton). It depresses me watching shows with these celebrity analysts knowing I will have to work hard for the rest of my life to pay for electricity while they are on TV for knowing what Sarah Jessica Parker does with her toenail clippings (I heard she eats them).

If you want to get really depressed you should watch this one show they have on VH1 that is entirely about how much celebrities spend on themselves. You always knew that celebrities spend a lot of money, but just in case you wanted an exact number, this show is for you. Now I would be mad enough finding out that these celebrities spent millions of dollars useful things like cars, mansions, cocaine, African orphans, etc. But you watch these shows and they talk about celebrities who spend millions of dollars on toilet paper because they only use the even numbered sheets in a roll.

So this of course got me to thinking about what I would do if I for some reason became famous and fabulously wealthy. I have a feeling I wouldn’t make a very good rich person, because the first thing that I thought of getting for my mansion was a riding lawnmower and a urinal. (Why do you never see urinals in houses? They are so much easier.) But this past week I went to a beach house for my friend’s birthday party and I now know what I want with all my money. This house was right on the beach and had a bench, four lawn chairs and three hammocks. I guarantee that if I lived at this house I would never be up for more than five minutes or move more than ten feet at a time.

Of course I still have no idea how or why I am supposed to become rich and famous, but then again I’m sure that was what everyone said about Shia Labeouf when he was growing up and now he gets to make out with Megan Fox (of course, people are probably still saying that about him). It was around then that I was struck with inspiration from an unexpected source: American Idol finalist Adam Lambert. I was listening to a radio show talking about how he finally came out as gay (if you were one of the people who were somehow surprised by this fact, I bet you would also be surprised to find that water is wet). I was just about change the channel when the announced said something that caught my attention: American Idol would be holding auditions in Denver. And it suddenly was all clear to me: I will become famous by auditioning on American Idol. As all of you who have ever heard me sing can attest, I have a voice like Jim Morrison, or at least what Jim Morrison sounded like while he was overdosing on heroin. But you don’t need any actual singing talent to get famous, just a memorable audition. So who’s with me? I’m thinking of combining the performances of William Hung and the bikini girl while singing the “I Love You” song from Barney.