The Best Music You've Never Heard (Part 1)

I love music. Ask anyone who knows me. I love all kinds of music. I also love exposing people to music that maybe they’ve never heard before. So I decided to write up a short list of artists that I think more people should listen to. I consider everyone on this list to be talented, enjoyable and worthy of listening to.


Carbon Based Lifeforms

Regardless of your musical tastes, you’ll probably like CBL. Their music is classified as Ambient, but is a little more complicated than that. Some tracks feature thumping tribal beats with sweeping electronic arrangements over the top of that. It is the perfect music to relax to, read to, write to, pretty much anything. It’s fantastic as background music, foreground music, again, pretty much anything. Here’s a sampling of tracks that I feel represent their sound the best, as an added bonus the videos are extremely enjoyable.

World of Sleepers

MOS 6581

 

Photosynthesis

 

Arecibo

Official Website: http://carbonbasedlifeforms.net/

Similar Artists: Sync 24, Aes Dana, HUVA Network, Solar Fields, Cell, Asura, Human Blue

Stendeck

Stendeck is a mixture of ambient and noise. While also relaxing, it strays into territories that Carbon Based Lifeforms doesn’t go. Stendeck carefully blends static with engaging bass lines and droning undercurrents to create something pretty unique.

Catch The Midnight Girl

Like Falling Crystals

 

Waiting For A New Day

Official Site: http://stendeck.com/

Similar Artists: Ginormous, Ab Ovo, Ah Cama-Sotz, Flint Glass

Alestorm
I don’t care if you like metal or not, if you like pirates (who doesn’t?) then you owe it to yourself to listen to Alestorm. Go ahead and get over the fact that yes, they dress like pirates, sing songs about pirates, and perhaps have silly videos. Now that those are out of the way, take a good listen. There is an extremely talented and entertaining band lurking here. Blending several different genres of metal into one and making it extremely accessible isn’t easy, but Alestorm prevails! The music is fun with lyrics that you’ll be singing along to by the third listen even if you’ve taken a broadside of rum to the belly. (As an added bonus, they’re also Scottish, which increases their awesomeness by 11)

Shipwrecked

Keelhauled

 

Captain Morgan’s Revenge

That Famous Ol’ Spiced

Official Site: http://www.alestorm.net/

Similar Artists: Uhh…..? Gloryhammer features Chris Bowes, the maniac on keyboards that sings the songs. His other band is coming soon and is described as “Heroic Fantasy Power Metal.”

Pig
Before Trent Reznor was making Industrial music accessible to a broader audience, there was Raymond Watts. Raymond is an unsung Industrial pioneer, his music is really damn good and he’s been making it for nearly thirty years. When he wasn’t working on his own stuff as Pig, he was co-founding KMFDM and appeared on some of their (in my opinion) best albums such as Nihil and Anger. If you like Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM or Marilyn Manson, you need to hear Raymond Watts’ work. His music isn’t too harsh for non-Industrial music fans and he has one of the best singing voices in music. He also doesn’t care about genre as he has been known to dive into merengue and other styles.

Flesh Fest

 

The Only Good One’s A Dead One

God Rod

Hello Hooray (Alice Cooper cover)

Official Website: http://theswining.com/

Similar Artists: KMFDM, Schaft, Cubanate, Schwein, Slick Idiot, MDFMK, Hellbent, Foetus

Puscifer
You’ve probably heard of Maynard James Keenan, lead singer for Tool and A Perfect Circle. Things have been quiet on the Tool/APC fronts while MJK has been making wine and music as Puscifer. The band started out as a joke when they appeared many years ago on HBO’s Mr. Show. A mock interview featured Maynard muttering about something with the name “Puscifer” emblazoned below them. Fast forward a few years and Puscifer has a couple of albums out, really damn good ones. Albums that completely ignore the concept of “genre” as each track shifts seamlessly from style to style. For my money, Puscifer is better than both Tool and A Perfect Circle.

Man Overboard

Telling Ghosts

Momma Sed

Potions (Deliverance Mix) (Co-written by Trent Reznor)

Official Website: https://puscifer.com/

Similar Artists: Tool, A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails, Carina Round

Negative Format
Negative Format is one of those artists that walks the line between genres and ends up falling through and never getting the recognition they deserve. Alex Matheu is easily one of the most talented artists to ever work in the scene. His music is a progressive blend of synthpop, EBM and trance that is extremely accessible and very, very good. Slow builds lead to fantastic climaxes and sweeping arrangements carry the flow of the entire song from point A to point B without realizing you left A. When he isn’t making really damn good music as Negative Format, Lexsine or The Parallel Project, Alex is hard at work making bad ass iPhone and iPad apps such as Glitchbreaks, which allows you to make music from your phone. You can check out his apps here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glitchbreaks/id520451538?ls=1&mt=8

Echo Chamber

Hues of Grey

Translucent

Deleted Scenes featuring Mark Jackson (VNV Nation) by The Parallel Project

Official Website: http://negativeformat.com/

Similar Artists: The Parallel Project, Lexsine, VNV Nation, Haujobb, Covenant.

Faderhead
A fairly new arrival on the EBM scene, Faderhead is yet another artist that really doesn’t care about changing genres from song to song. Faderhead is very in your face and not for the faint of heart. From stomping EBM to dance tracks comfortable in just about any kind of club, Faderhead is really damn good.

Dirtygrrrls/Dirtybois Featuring Ultimate MC

The Way to Fuck God

Horizon Born

Sexyback (Justin Timberlake cover)

Official Website: http://www.faderhead.com/

Similar Artists: Combichrist, Eisenfunk, Caustic, Haujobb

Hopefully you have some new music to listen to, if not, I hope you were at least entertained.

ShiTexting

So, my friend Joe and I got into this habit of texting each other about our bowel movements. The simple goal of this endeavour is just to make each other laugh by describing our "duties" in amusing and outlandish ways. Below I offer you a sample of some:

"I just gave birth to Shaloob, The Great Worm (from Frank Hebert's Dune). I'm sure there a bunch of guys chasing it through the sewer right now trying to throw hooks in its back so they can ride it."

"I need to call Jeremy Wade for a special edition of River Monsters, I just let loose a Giant Mud Eel that he needs to catch, it is a record breaker. They can call it Toilet Monsters."

"Shore up that anal wall! We be taking on the stink water!"

"Someone spilled a glass of Nestle Quik in here!"

"I think I have a Starbucks in my intestines and the Mocha Frapachino Machine is busted and spewing all over the place."

"I think my Fecal Artery is pierced... it just isn't stopping."

"It's like someone emptied a jar of grape jelly up my ass in my sleep and it is working it's way back out now."

"It looks like someone stole all of Bob Ross' paints and he only had various shades of brown to work with on this canvas."

"I was like Hercules a second ago trying to hulk up on this brown hydra, but everytime I tore one of its heads off it grew two more."

"You mean you've never heard of the Brownlinnium Falcon? It made the Toilet Bowl run in under 2.3 parsecs!"

"I think a Brown Delorian just came out of me going 88 mph, it probably traveled back in time and is back inside my intestines already!"


That is all I can think of for now, enjoy.

Communication and the Internet

Hello again readers, I may start blogging more often as I am really enjoying it. This particular entry I wanted to discuss slang, saying things inappropriately and communication as a whole.

I used to know this guy who was an asshole and while playing video games or discussing things that were “cool” he would frequently say “oh it’s the BALLS.” Well, most slang that anyone uses is usually through being around it and hearing it a lot. It’s natural. I start saying “bitch-hog” a lot and pretty soon “bitch-hog” is added to your vocabulary as well. One day I also called something “the balls” and my wife asked me why balls = cool and it made me think.
If ______ is cool, why would I call it “the balls”? Balls are not cool. They are squishy, vulnerable and not sexy (to me anyway). A heterosexual female or homosexual male could call something they like “the balls”, but for me as a heterosexual male why would I? I can barely tolerate my own balls, let alone anyone else’s balls. It would be more appropriate for me to call something I like “the tits,” since I am a heterosexual and I do think those are cool.

I also noticed recently that I inadvertently say things that are inappropriate to random people. For example, I called my dentist to ask if I should go ahead and start taking my medications prior to my appointment the following week. I explained that “I wanted to double check and make sure before I went ahead and blew my load with them.” Now, it seems like an ordinary thing to say in a casual conversation between friends. “Blowing your load” typically means you just go ahead and do X, Y or even Z. My wife uses the term a lot in casual conversation, you might say she is constantly “blowing her load.”  However, it was only afterward that I put the brakes on and realized that I had just discussed ejaculating to a strange woman at my dentist’s office. It suddenly occurred to me that this is something I do all the time. I’m a pretty friendly guy and I speak my mind almost always, I never noticed that what I respond with might not be socially acceptable.

Grocery Store Employee: Hi, how are you doing today?

Me: Well, I’m not drunk yet, so okay I guess.

It also probably isn’t okay when your server at a restaurant asks if you want something extra, say on your burger or etc, that you say no and call whatever was offered “filth.” I don’t recall where I was, but my wife and I were in a public place when I said perhaps a little too loudly that the crowdedness of this establishment was like a “hogshit menagerie.” Now, I’m not quite sure what a hogshit menagerie is, but it sounds real bad. It’s just a naturally offensive arrangement, like “dumb-shit asshole” or “insipid fuck-knob.”

Since getting married I’ve also become more aware of what I say as it relates to women. For example, I used to say “don’t be a pussy” to people, meaning I wanted them to toughen up and stop complaining. Well, it is scientifically proven that women have a higher pain tolerance than men, so being a proverbial “pussy” would be preferable to being a low threshold dude in agony. (Women having a higher tolerance for pain is not God’s way of saying “it’s OK to beat them.” Just need to clarify in case I have Christian readers.)

There’s also the issue of raised inflection toward the end of a sentence so that everything sounds like a question. Though guilty of doing it in the past, I find it absolutely deplorable and the practice is rampant on college campuses.

“I didn’t bring my book today? Hopefully we’re not going over anything in it?”

Are… are you asking me or telling me? I don’t know how to respond when people do this. My wife even got a voicemail for a job interview where the guy was doing it.
“We’d love for you to come in? for an interview? And I look forward to hearing from you?”

Okay….

Something else I have encountered a lot out here on the West Coast is people saying “pacific” in place of “specific.” Let me give an example.

“Well I pacifically remember it being different than what you are saying now.”

Or

“There was a pacific thing I was interested in.”

Since these people aren’t secretly whales, I assume they are, in fact, not discussing the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know how such a stupid mistake got started but it is awful and makes those saying it look like total morons.

Then there’s the power of assholes on the internet. It seems like you can’t go an hour without someone telling you to perform some sort of sexual act on them. Let me tell you a true story, it happened two nights ago.

My wife is sitting next to me, playing World of Warcraft, she gets into a randomly assembled group to go do a dungeon. Upon entering the dungeon, someone remarks “hey guys, there is a mount that drops from the last boss in here if you didn’t know.” Harmless enough right?

“Tell us something we don’t know you fuckin idiot.”

My wife, attempting to intervene, says “maybe you’re being a little harsh, they might be new to the game.”

“Why don’t you stfu and suck my dick!”

It then exploded into four different people telling one another to simultaneously “stfu” while also sucking their dicks. This sort of explosive, irrational anger is only possible thanks to the power of the internet. Where assholes can do and say whatever they want, to whomever they want without repercussions. Sometimes I wish I could kill people with my mind.

Then there’s stupid Facebook updates. Granted I’ve made a few that might be irrelevant, but for the most part I am trying to keep my family and immediate friends informed on what is going on with me. I can tell everyone only once, without having to do it to each individual. Did Brian get his tooth pulled? His Facebook says yes and it went fine. Easy, right? Now you don’t have to call me and ask while I am not paying attention.

But sometimes it just goes a little too far.

“What a delicious breakfast!” (Insert picture of food.) Here’s a newsflash, no one actually cares what you stuff down your gullet. Unless you’re making something especially unique, amazing, or special (like bacon waffles) it isn’t worth updating us on it. Cool story, I give not a fuck that you had a protein shake with some cereal.
“Goodnight everybody!” Wow, awesome. You’re going to sleep, again absolutely no one gives a shit. You’re just doing it in the hopes that the next day 8 people will be like “omg goodnight to you too! Sleep tight and stuff!” so you can feel special. You’re not, people go to sleep all the time and it isn’t a big deal. Just turn your computer off and go cry yourself to sleep already.

Then there’s internet smartguy who uses anecdotal evidence and doesn’t have credible sources to back anything he espouses as truth. Let me show you, the following is a real conversation between myself and someone else.

“I can honestly say that the hardest thing I've ever tried to do is give up drinking soda. The people who know me intimately are aware that I'm a terrible example of diabetic self-care, but not taking my insulin and always drinking soda are two different beasts. Does anyone have any advice for someone who's chronically addicted to caffeine and has little to no willpower?”

There were some helpful responses like:

“If you just need the caffeine and not the sugar, try black coffee.”

“When I was looking for a healthy replacement for my speed fix I found B12. It gives the same 'up' without the crash or negative side effects. At least as long as you eat something first and drink a lot of water..”

But then this asshole comes along:
Brian H. McLelland: Giant jugs of tea, green/chai/normal with aspartame.
Oh wait, that’s me, I meant this asshole:

Idiot Boy: aspartame is evil, man, stay away from that stuff. It's a neurotoxin. Drink SteaZ Energy Drinks. All natural. There's still a little sugar in it and lots of naturally occuring caffiene and vitamins.

Who was then backed up by a second idiot:

Idiot Girl: Aspartame really is super awful. And yes, soda is fucking hard to quit...I'm always "quitting soda". Also, steaz drinks are sooooper yummy! How is cane sugar for diabetes? I tend to gravitate towards beverages that are sweetened with cane sugar and/or honey that I could recommend if those are okay for you to ingest.

Okay, first of all, sugar, whether cane, raw or even honey are all the same. You don’t suggest “all natural cane sugar” to a diabetic, you might as well tell them to drink a jar of high fructose corn syrup. Fucking moron. But I couldn’t let this stand.

Brian H. McLelland: Aspartame is one of the most tested products EVER. It is perfectly safe for consumption. Do not believe the myths espoused by the scientifically ignorant.
Brian H. McLelland: My mother in law is a diabetic, diet sodas sweetened with aspartame or tea with aspartame are perfectly fine to drink with little to no negative impacts on blood sugars.
Also: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
snopes.com: Aspartame -- Sweet Poison?

www.snopes.com

Is aspartame responsible for 'an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and lupus'?

See that? SNOPES, they debunk shit for a LIVING, I’m not talking out of my ass, I have CREDIBLE SOURCES ON MY SIDE.

Idiot Boy: So? Go ahead. Drink all the aspartame you want. There is a REASON there are so many sites up in arms about it. Until you have experienced an aspartame reaction first hand, you will never understand. There was no reason to insult other people's "opinions". I have no need to defend my own beliefs here.
Brian H. McLelland: Beliefs are not science. Instead of saying that you, personally, do not like aspartame, you offered your erroneous “opinion” as a scientific fact when you stated that it is a neurotoxin. I am not saying that you, personally, are ignorant. You are simply repeating information that is incorrect. Not quite so different from people insisting 20 years ago that Mountain Dew is somehow derived from anti-freeze. The information on offer from you is simply false.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0955286394900329
ScienceDirect - The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry : Aspartame consumption: lack of effects on.

www.sciencedirect.com

See that? That’s an article from the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry explaining how aspartame has zero effect on neurological function!

Idiot Boy: (Picture that says “you’re going to have a bad time if you believe everything you read on the internet.”)
Brian H. McLelland: Yes, because the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry is some quack on an Angelfire free webpage making things up.
"Oh god, logic and reason, quick, resort to internet memes!"
Idiot Boy: I sure hope ___ is getting a kick out of all this, because I'm having a great time. P.S.: An opinion can not be erroneous. That's why it's called an opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion
Opinion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hey look, the moron caught on and finally understands you can’t offer your dumbshit asshole opinion as fact without backing it up.

Brian H. McLelland: Debating semantics fails to change the fact that your statement was incorrect, nor does it lend credence to your argument. Please return with something more substantial than anecdotal evidence or internet memes. Also, your comment that "There is a REASON there are so many sites up in arms about it."
Just because many people believe something does not, in any universe, make it true. In order to facilitate evidence to this point I offer EVERY RELIGION IN THE WORLD.

This is my favorite part, where the person, at a loss to defend their stupidness attempts to reach a common ground.

Idiot Boy: Brian, you started out as being rude, condescending, and it did come across as a persona attack, therefore putting me on the defensive. This left me incapable of having a reasonable discussion. Any time emotions enter the fray a debate is immediately doomed, which is why I resorted to memes to lighten the mood for the rest of the poor souls who have been subjected to this pointless debate which you continue to prolong. Several people including myself have had palpable reactions to aspartame, but since it's not been proven by enough "medical science" that it is indeed the aspartame causing a problem, I have to go on what I have personally experienced as my own interpretation of the facts at hand. You clearly place no value in the beliefs, opinions, and personal experiences of others unless verified by an independent source, which, is your right and I commend you for it. By all means, continue to scrutinize the facts, because there is indeed lots of misinformation and propaganda out there, which was the one thing we can actually agree on and my apologies as that was not clearly conveyed in my original retort. One day I truly hope you will be directly shown the scientific proof you need to explain the mysteries of the universe. That's the best I can hope for you. Good luck, and may you one day be touched by his noodly appendages.

Yes, he just equated aspartame to being a mystery of the universe. If the world were run by assholes like this, every bit of anecdotal evidence would be on offer as true. Which means no one could have aspartame because one moron in Florida “had a bad reaction to it!”

I guess I fall into the category of being an asshole on the internet, but I like rhetoric and I love arguing. It's why I've become so fond of Cicero, because he loved that shit too.

(Cicero)

When I say anecdotal evidence I mean someone knew someone who experienced __________. This is not reliable, in court they call it “hearsay.”
So , if there is one thing you take away from this article it should be that you should never believe anything someone has to tell you without checking their source.

“Aspartame is a neurotoxin!”

“Organic food tastes better and is better for you! And it’s better for the environment!”

“I believe it therefore you HAVE to respect my beliefs even if they are wrong!”

All these statements are false. Keep your eyes open, the truth is out there.

Next week: SCIENCE!

Pedophiles don't make things I want.

Pedophiles. I don’t like them. I think child molestation is a heinous act that merits the most severe tortures and punishments. I’m not saying that children should be sheltered from sex. For instance, in the south east a chain of grocery stores, Publix, places plastic covers over the magazines in the checkout isle. Why? Because someone’s child might see some movie star/model’s tits, abs, muscled chest, whatever. We can’t risk having children finding out that people have sex and that they aren’t Immaculate Conception treasures carried down by angels in a giant white sled pulled by storks. But that is another blog, I am getting off track.

Now, in the past I have encountered people who say “oh I don’t care what the artist believes/does; I just like their art/product/stuff.” This isn’t a new concept, in the realm of literary theory, this is based on an idea put forth by Roland Barthes in his essay The Death of the Author. Barthes theorizes that the author should be completely removed from the work that they create. Time of production, authorial intent, authorial meaning, and authorial belief, everything about the author is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what the reader thinks or what meaning the reader derives from the text, Barthes calls this the “Birth of the Reader.”  Literary theory is really dry and complicated but hang in there, I’m going to tie this all together.

I disagree with Barthes to an extent. One of my favorite authors is Clive Barker, who is gay. When I read his work I’m not going, “a GAY dude wrote this, how can I even relate?” It doesn’t ever enter the equation because I don’t care. It doesn’t impact his work at all, he can write a hetero character, a female character, anything, and it isn’t affected by the author’s personal preferences. Lovecraft was racist, doesn’t really bother me either because that wasn’t entirely uncommon in 1930’s New England.

The problem begins when you know someone is a pedophile. Ever seen the film Jeepers Creepers? If you have or haven’t watch this official trailer.

It’s a horror film about a flying demon monster thing that just so happens to also drive a big black rape wagon with a personalized license plate. It has been alive for a long ass time by eating specific parts of teenagers. So in the film, it SMELLS Justin Long and wants to EAT part of him. There are awkward scenes where the demon monster is smelling his face and licking his cheeks. This film is directed by a pedophile. Victor Salva directed Jeepers Creepers and is a convicted child molester. Go Bing it, you can find the information readily available anywhere. Prior to making this film he made another film called Powder. Yes, that Powder. The one where a pale albino (as opposed to tan albinos?) emerges from a cellar and has magic powers. He sees the world differently than everyone else, adults fear and reject him, but the children in the film understand him. He can only relate to young people and/or children and/or molestation bait. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW PEDOPHILES VIEW THE WORLD AND THEMSELVES. It’s only made worse to know the film was distributed by Disney.

On a side note, there is a girl on campus that I saw almost every day last semester who rode a child’s scooter while wearing a panda back pack and a Pikachu hat with multicolored hair poking out. I’m 90% sure she is an FBI agent trolling for pedophiles.

Now that you know Jeepers Creepers was directed by a pedophile, go watch the movie again and prepare to get weirded out. The scene where the Creeper’s lair has naked dead people stitched together all over the ceiling and walls? The scene at the end where a naked Justin Long is strung up by his arms with his eyes eaten out of his head? Fucked up, right?

Here’s another one. I see a lot of people who LOVE Alice in Wonderland. The live action one by Tim Burton, the animated one, the classic novel, makes no difference. Alice in Wonderland shit is EVERYWHERE. I was in Barnes and Noble not long ago browsing books, they have this really bad ass Classics Collection series they have started doing. It’s a leather bound, high quality copy of literary classics. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Jurassic Park/Lost World. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Jane Austen. Dracula. Frankenstein. But I noticed there was also one for Alice in Wonderland, brightly colored and sitting on a table remarkably close to the young adult section and the spot where they were was the one most depleted which means lots of people were buying it with its hot pink cover and crazy designs.

The problem, for me at least, arises from the fact that LEWIS CARROLL WAS A PEDOPHILE. Don’t believe me? Read his Wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
Now the thing that is most readily available on that page is controversy. Nearly everything asserted about him are steeped in bitter controversy, primarily due to the fact that family members are fighting to disprove these things. After all who wants to be related to a pedophile? Even without conclusive evidence a few compelling facts remain:

Alice in Wonderland was written for a young girl, named Alice, who Carroll (Dodgson) had an affinity for.

He asked the girl’s family to take pictures of her nude. (This was a common practice at the time… FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS.)

Carroll’s personal diary has missing entries, removed by a person.

Also, here is a picture of Alice Liddell taken BY Carroll (Dodgson).

(Courtesy of wikipedia)

Now, some scholars dispute these claims, but the very fact that there is something to dispute speaks volumes. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Here’s another one, Gary Glitter. Don’t know the name? You probably know this:

It was featured pretty largely in Disney’s The Mighty Ducks, you know, that movie about YOUNG KIDS playing hockey. Glitter was arrested for making child pornography. He also frequented Cambodia and Thailand, two places famous for child prostitution. Kind of ruins the song, doesn’t it?

Jeffrey Jones is famous for his roles in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow and other films.

In 2002 he was arrested for soliciting a 14 year old boy to pose nude for sexually explicit photos.

There are others but this is kind of spiraling into a downer. Ultimately what I am saying is that I don’t want to purchase or consume anything written or created by a pedophile. In my mind the work is tainted.

It’s like tuna, when I buy tuna I make sure the can says “Dolphin Safe” because then I know there’s no dolphin in there. When I buy a book, a movie, an album, or a painting I want to know it is pedophile safe. Oh this book was written by someone who doesn’t rape kids, this is a good purchase and I am happy for my money to go towards supporting this person.

This blog was going to be funny, but I can’t really make this topic amusing. See you guys next week for something lighter.

The Journey to Education Part 2

Last week I ran my mouth off about the banking industry and my time working in it, the whole post was kind of a downer. This week I’ve decided to focus on my college experiences and some of the mind numbingly stupid things real people have said.

First of all, I value education. When I am sitting in a classroom I understand that I am paying this professor to teach me something. I am assuming this person knows what they are talking about because they have been studying the subject for many, many years. It is for this reason that I listen, try not to interrupt, and don’t second guess my professors. Not everyone seems to understand this.

For example, Core Humanities 201, I took this last semester, it consisted of a 50 minute lecture twice a week with a class discussion once a week. Easy enough, right? As an added bonus the professor giving the lecture was completely awesome. He kept it exciting and interesting, it was great. Except kids in the auditorium talking to each other, loudly, I had to resort to sitting up front so I could hear clearly. Then discussions were even worse. You were required to read the assigned materials prior to class and discussion, these readings were short, relevant and interesting. NO ONE DID THEM, EVER. Discussion class usually consisted of the TA asking a question relating to the day’s readings and, not to brag, but I knew the answer having done the readings, but I would slowly scan the room to see if anyone else was going to speak. There’s lanky jock dude, staring at the blackboard… there’s cheerleader girl pretending to write notes… this continued throughout the entire classroom. No one had anything to say because no one would read the shit! So in this discussion class of about 30 kids we were supposed to do brief presentations throughout the semester in small groups. The TA mentioned that last semester a group had done Jeopardy which resulted in 4-5 presentations THIS semester that were Jeopardy. I mercilessly trounced these kids in Jeopardy. My team won Every. Single. Time. The one that felt best was the Jeopardy presentation on the Bible, not only did I choose the categories, answer my own team’s question, but when the opposing team failed to answer theirs after a minute, I answered THEIRS too. Well, I couldn’t just let this whole event continue on without saying something so I mocked my team and the entire class. “Yeah don’t sweat it guys, let the ATHEIST answer all these BIBLE questions.”

Finally one day, a group of two made their presentation that wasn’t Jeopardy. It consisted of them sitting in the front of the class, reading from the book and ad-libbing an “informative” lecture. It was agonizing to sit through.

My favorite though was in Fall of ’11 I was taking a really awesome class called “Writing About Literature” from a fantastic professor. She knew the subject, was excellent at teaching, enthusiastic and encouraging. The problem is she was teaching it to a bunch of retards. First, there was Obvious Girl, who would usually just reiterate the title of whatever we were reading. So for example we’re going over a poem about seasons, namely, Autumn. The poem has Autumn in the title. The professor asked what people thought the poem was really about or what impressions it gave.

Obvious Girl: “Well the trees being barren of leaves makes me think that this is taking place during like… Autumn?”

You see the trend starting here? Flash forward to a few weeks later, discussing Kafka’s “Metamorphoses” short story…

Obvious Girl: “It seems like he is going through a big change, as if everything about him is transforming…” …LIKE A METAMORPHOSIS?

She did this with all of them, professor asks and her hand was the first one up.

Obvious Girl: “I feel like it is just really stormy and all the characters are tied into this storm and it is really magical.”

Know what that one is? Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is all true, you can’t write shit this stupid and have the characters be believable.

Another thing is that this awesome professor made it clear at the start of the semester that she doesn’t care how something you read makes you feel only what you think about it. Meaning use your brains and figure it out, yet without fail every moron prefaced their thoughts with “I feel like…”

Do you read Frankenstein with your heart? Do you open a little chest compartment and just rub the book against your innards and you read it by osmosis? Sorry but over here in my seat, I read books with my eyeballs and process the information with my brain. I’m old fashioned that way.

Last semester I took an advanced non-fiction writing class. This is a 400 level English course, serious business. Well, people were called up to read their drafts which was extremely painful if, like me, you have low tolerances for stupid. Well I barely went to this class because A. hearing people read their shitty papers out loud doesn’t teach me anything and B. Peer reviewing people’s shitty papers doesn’t teach me anything either. The second paper assigned was a paper about a place you had been to and why the reader should or should not go there, easy right? I wrote mine about the Redwood National Forest, my peer review partner wrote hers about her dog. Now, I know that NOUNS can be confusing, since they can be A. person B. place or C. thing, but a dog is not a place. I didn’t bother explaining this to her because I’m an asshole and it isn’t my job to make sure everyone writes their paper on topic.

Two of the girls in the class in their papers decided to mention how they were in advanced English classes in high school, one of them was reading at a college level in middle school, wow no way! Have an A+ and a scholarship! But their work didn’t reflect this. One girl’s paper was about how a bad English teacher can ruin someone’s education but then she moved into another teacher’s class in high school and it was so much better! She learned so much more, she finally knew what a predicate is! Now, after a person finishes reading the rest of the class can make comments or ask questions, so as soon as she finished I raised my hand and was called upon. My question, you ask?

Me: “What is a predicate?”

Her: “…..I don’t know….”

Also in this class was The “Grad” Student, I had to peer review with him once where he ignored me while criticizing his fucking terrible paper. This is the same kid who boasted about how when he applied to the English graduate school they asked for a sample of his writing, “so I just gave’em my first novel… yep… my novel…” His three novels are all self-published online, anyone can do this. In addition, they just so happen to be the most insipid, uninspired piles of shit I’ve ever heard. I won’t repeat them to you here now because the ideas are too retarded to subject people to reading. So after acting like he is so cool for submitting a novel to the English grad school he finishes the story by telling everyone in earshot that they said he needed to take some more classes. Despite being, what is called a “Grad Special,” the professor and other students continued to call him “The Grad Kid” and “The Graduate Student.”

Let me give you a little diagram of why it is stupid for A. this kid to have an ego big enough to suffocate the air out of a classroom and B. everyone to play along with his ego trip.

You gave them a novel and they told you to take more classes, sorry son but this isn't a story you should go around repeating. It makes you look like a Downs Special instead of the shitty Grad Special you are.

So it comes down to the end of the semester for Advanced Non-Fiction Writing, the final assignment is: Write a persuasive paper that makes an argument. Present opposition to your argument, then refute it in your own words. Your topic must have opposition.

Pretty easy right? I chose circumcision! But other people chose such hot debates as: Tourette’s Syndrome (wait, what?), How I Got Raped Once by Oversharing Girl, I Cut Myself by Awkward Girl, Better Education Paper by Uneducated Girl, and Grad Special’s masterpiece, Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

First off, the paper about Tourette’s Syndrome was well written, but not the assignment. You should get an F, I don’t care how good the paper is, it isn’t what you were asked for. James T. Generic over there wrote his paper on dams, you know what has a lot of opposition and fulfilled the assignment? His boring ass paper about DAMS.

Getting raped is horrible, I don’t condone it, ever. I also don’t think women who are raped should have to hide the fact that it happened to them. However, a class room of strangers is not an appropriate place to discuss it. I get that you have tattoos, you paint, vegetarian and have ADHD but refuse to take medication because it might suppress your “creativity”, I get all that because you won’t shut the fuck up about yourself. I barely show up for class but I know more about you than the subject being taught. You should get an F.

Weird and Socially Awkward girl reads her paper about how cutting is a real disease and she only cuts to release the pain she is in. People don’t think it is a real problem but it is! She goes on to talk about how most people overreact and believe that cutting leads to suicide. Later in the paper she provides a high statistic that cutting does in fact lead to suicide. However, she DID fulfill the assignment even if her topic is stupid.

“My Dog is a Place” girl reads her paper about how she did so well in high school and how education is important. Children need to learn things. Mind you, while she is reading this her paper is displayed on a projector behind her. It’s awful, misspellings that MS Word doesn’t even know what to do with, terrible grammar, misuse of there/their/they’re. Ugh, I felt more embarrassed for her than anything.

Then we have Grad Special kid talking about his irritable bowel syndrome. I was not there for the day that he presented this jewel, but from what other students told me he frantically reworked the paper to have opposition involving western medicine versus eastern medicine. Either way, he should have gotten an F. People aren’t writing to government officials because of a horrific epidemic of shitpants going around.

 

College is fun, there are plenty of other incidents but that is enough for this week. Next Friday: Pedophiles!

See you then.

The Journey to Education Part 1

I am a college student, an older college student. You see, I started going to school in my early 20’s and sort of floundered around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. The usual major switching, eventually I reached the conclusion that I would rather just hold down a normal job and make money. Money gets you Things.

I found a job working at a local call center that handled cell phone service for a major U.S. cell phone cArrier’s business cusTomers. These were cusTomers who got a deal on their phone through their job, or had a corporate phone and etc. Some of these were small, some were serious business major corporation CEOs and their families sort of thing. I had a feeling something was off when in order to work there I had to pass a drug test but not a background check. I passed with flying colors and started my training class. My first instructor would put on random instructional videos and then text on his phone, after a week and a half, he was fired. So we moved on to another instructor who would teach us something for an hour, then go outside to smoke and bullshit for an hour.

Basically, I didn’t learn much and spent a lot of time outside bullshitting. It was through this process that I discovered that I was a minority working here since I did not have a criminal record. Nearly every single one of my classmates had criminal records, usually drug related, but some were more serious such as embezzlement, theft, vandalism, and being retarded. Now stop and think about that for a second, these people were calling in to find out about their account information and providing personal information over the phone to CONVICTED FELONS and/or UNSAVORY, UNTRUSTWORTHY ASSHOLES. I’d offer to look up someone’s account based on their mobile number and confirm their identity using things like Date of Birth, passwords, or last 4 of their SSN (the rest was blanked out). Some of these customers would begin willingly offering me their ENTIRE SSN to look them up by. Anyhow, a lot of other bullshit happened there such as two people snorting crushed up vicodin in training class, people showing up for work on Meth, and arriving to find my usual desk was being used and there wasn’t a single spare headset in the building to use to even start working. I clocked in via my phone so I couldn’t even start earning money for doing nothing.

Eventually I got a job working at the call center for a major U.S. bank, I can’t tell you Which onE since I am reveaLing their intimate business practices.  I had to pass a background check to work there, but not a drug test. This was a surprisingLy efficient approach and while many of my co-workerS smoked absurd amounts of weed, none of them struck me as criminal types or meth users. Let me give you some inside inFormAtion about banks and the banking industRy in General. Here we gO. (Did you see what I did there?)

First of all, when your bank tells you they can’t do something, they are lying. Seriously. Remember that time you said “well why can’t you just stop my card from overdrawing my account?”

Canned response: “The infrastructure isn’t in place for us to do that and/or we don’t want to stop your card in case you have an emergency and need gas/Starbucks/burgers.”
This is a total bullshit lie, the bank can stop your debit card anytime they want to, they can stop you from overcharging your account by even one cent if so inclined. There are only a few transactions that are “up in the air” until processed such as transactions made as Credit instead of Debit. Credit means that the amount is subject to change, Red Lobster tells the bank that you spent 47.26 on your meal but the tip could inflate that price. Same with gas purchases where you hit Credit, the gas station asks the bank for approval for 1.00 and then submits the full amount when you’re done. They don’t stop you because they want you to overdraw your account. Canned response: “It isn’t the Bank’s responsibility to manage your account.” That is a total asshole line and I’m guilty of using it.

Secondly, most banks but especially the bank that I W.orked F.or used a marketing tactic known as “Cross-Selling,” this is where you sell someone who is already your customer another product. Most businesses do this, “iPod works great with iTunes!” You just got sold another Apple product. Even if you never make a purchase through the iTunes store you hold an inherent dollar value to Apple by installing and using that product, because for everyone one person who doesn’t make a purchase, three people probably will. Anyhow, when you call your bank and they tell you they are pulling up your account information and their “computers are so slow today!” or “your information is loading right now!” this is also bullshit probably 90% of the time. Maybe once every three hundred calls I’d get one that was slow to load, but most of the time your account is already up and loaded. The reason for the delay is they are flipping through your assets, transactions, opening your checks, and looking at where/how you spend your money. I’ll give you an example.

Mr. Fells Wargo calls in and I give him the line about his account loading slowly and ask how his day is going, time to go to work while he runs his mouth for a few seconds. He has a checking account, does he have a savings account too? Yes/No, refer him one! Does he make a lot of small purchases at Starbucks or other fast food places? Yes/No, get him the rewards program for check cards! Let me open this check written for over a thousand dollars, looks like it is going for his rent/mortgage/car payment, get him to refinance/renter’s insurance/car insurance/roadside assistance program! And what’s this, he is making regular payments on credit cards with other companies? Get him one through the bank and tell him to take a personal loan to consolidate the debt on those other cards! He got some overdraft fees last month, get him to open a second checking account, one for bills and one for pleasure! (My personal favorite since you’re convincing someone to get a second helping of something they can’t even manage one of.)

This customer has just been referred or “cross-sold” on at least 6-10 different products, all through his bank, how convenient! Wrong. The bank gives not half a shit about your convenience, peace of mind or financial stability. They want to make money off you through fees and services.

Not only was this business practice encouraged, it was mandatory. If you were not telling that grandmother surviving paycheck to paycheck in Omaha that she needed a credit card and to save money by refinancing her house, you were getting into trouble for it. It isn’t enough to just mention a product either, you were highly encouraged to “warm transfer” them to a “Personal Banker.” Which is fancytalk for stick you on hold, bring some asshole working on commissions from the Sales department on the line to convince you to buy more shit. And by “highly encouraged” I mean if you didn’t do a certain number of them per day, your boss called you into his cubicle.  There were “incentives” for doing this, you could earn EXTRA money for referring enough products! But the standards that you had to maintain in order to “Bonus” were impossible. Meaning, you may have just made the bank 100,000.00 dollars but your calls were 27 seconds over the average, ergo you don’t get your bonus money.

Now, how about fees? Overdraft fees, transfer fees, monthly service fees, excessive transfer fees! The canned response is “well when you overdraft your account, the bank is having to front that money for you, you’re basically taking an unauthorized loan.” How sweet, they’re doing you a favor, they spotted you 2.00 for that soda you bought in exchange for a 35.00 Overdraft Fee. Sounds fair! Now, when you ask for the fees to be taken off because you’re already struggling financially, all bank employees are trained and advised to offer you HALF of the fees back to see if you take that. If the person (like me) decides to go ahead and reverse all your fees, we get reprimanded and called into our boss or our boss’ boss’ office to be lectured about giving out too much credit. (As if we were giving away the bank’s money.) Here’s another one, when the bank tells you that they can’t reverse a fee because of A. the Federal Reserve or B. some other bullshit business practice/law this is entirely false. Fees go directly into the pocket of the bank, they can reverse them at will for any amount.

Now here is the salt in the wound, if you bank with the bank that I W.orked F.or, their processing order for paying out transactions, meaning your checks/debit/credit/withdrawals everything is thus:

1.       Deposits. (They need you to have money before they start paying things, as fun as it is to charge you fees they have to make sure you’re somewhat good for it.)

2.       ATM Withdrawals. (This is any cash you went and snagged out, the money is already gone and accounted for.)

3.       Highest dollar amount transaction.

4.       Second  highest dollar amount transaction.

5.       Third highest. (See the pattern here?)

Your paycheck goes in and all those bills start getting paid, oops you ran out of money because the bank covered your rent, car, groceries, utilities and such before paying those nine times you bought yourself a burger off the dollar menu for lunch or you splurged and got a Starbucks. This means that you just incurred nine fees of 35.00 each instead of one fee of 35.00 for your rent, or your car, or any one of the other things that would have covered you.

Canned response: “We process it this way to make sure that your important things are paid first, we don’t want your car getting repossessed or your rent check to bounce!” How nice of them! They paid the important things first. They couldn’t be bothered to cover your small shit first and then go ahead and spot you the last 30.00 on your rent and charge you the one fee? That’s correct.

Ultimately, the job became too much for me. The stress was impacting my health and happiness, it isn’t easy dealing with people screaming at you, getting bitched out by your boss for reversing too many fees or not referring enough products. This isn’t even mentioning the people who call you crying because their account is totally fucked and they can’t afford food for themselves, their pets, their children and you get to tell them “tough shit” because if Quality Assurance catches you reversing more fees or not offering up their bullshit canned responses they will report it to your boss. Then the person asks to speak to a manager or supervisor. Sure, let me put you on hold. Oh, did you think you were going to talk to someone with authority? Nope. You just got the “Team Supervisor” which isn’t actually a promotion, this guy/gal makes a little more money per hour to only take escalated calls, they can reverse slightly more fees than normal people can (we could only do a certain dollar amount) but they still have no real power.

In addition to all this I witnessed people working there who had been working for this company for decades and they were content to stay. They said they loved working for that company and it was so “great!” This is what ultimately drove me back to education, I wanted to make something of myself that was not a wage slave; gaining weight and having breakdowns from stress on my lunch breaks. (A co-worker of mine actually collapsed during one of his shifts from the stress and pressure placed on him by our boss.)

Next week I’ll talk about my journey into education and all the absurdly stupid things college kids say and do. I promise it will be funnier than this one! See you Friday.