Archive for January, 2015
How To Avoid Talking About American Sniper
Posted by Keith Spillett in Here's Why I Dislike You So Much on January 23, 2015
In my ongoing refusal to take any “enlightened” debate about American culture seriously, I’ve been working on ways to extricate myself from discussing American Sniper with anyone.
The trick is to say something so outrageous that the person who has sucked you into the discussion will dismiss you as being completely insane or will simply have nowhere to go with the conversation. They will then awkwardly switch topics and begin frantically discussing the weather or the inflation level of the average NFL football.
Often, if done correctly, the person will simply move on to hassle someone else, repeating the same canned, hackneyed monologue about how people today hate good old fashion American heroism or how George W. Bush is about as smart as a bag of kidney stones.
You will have done the only thing that a sane person can do to survive the onslaught of the only product this nation is capable of producing anymore…useless, illogical opinions. Then, you can devote to focusing your mental energy on truly important questions, like who will play drums on the next Megadeth record.
Feel free to use these:
“People say that American Sniper guy was an evil guy and a killer and whatnot, but personally, I think his clown paintings are beautiful.”
“You think being a marine sniper is stressful! You should try coaching high school basketball.”
“Speaking of American Sniper, have you ever seen Gigli?”
“You know, if guns were illegal in Iraq, none of this would have ever happened.”
“You could tell when you were watching Bradley Cooper in that A-Team movie a few years back that he was an actor cut out to make important films.”
“They should make a movie about a hipster sniper. He could carry a ferret with him at all times and hum MGMT songs while he shoots people.”
“American Sniper is probably Leni Reifenstahl’s greatest film!”
“Did you catch the Jessie Ventura cameo?”
“Do you think Clint Eastwood is ever going to do another film with that orangutan?”
“Wouldn’t it have been awesome if Clint Eastwood made the whole film exactly the same way, but instead of having Bradley Cooper play the sniper, he used the orangutan?”
“My only problem is the movie lacked diversity. Sure he killed 160 people, but they were pretty much all the same race.”
“The movie poignantly displays man’s quest to preserve his humanity in the face of having to make life or death decisions in the service of his nation. It speaks to the deepest and most powerful emotions a person can possibly experience. Have you played the Xbox version yet?”
“You want to talk about a talented sniper! I hear the sequel to American Sniper is going to be about a marine who hit a moving, guarded target with 2 shots from almost 3 football fields away in a building three stories up. The future of the Free World was in his hands and his performance was flawless. His aim was so good that, to this day, most people fail to believe he was capable of doing it alone.
His name was Lee Harvey Oswald.”
(thanks to R. Lee Ermey, Gustav Hasford and Stanley Kubrick on that last one)
Umlaut Shortage Causes Cancellation of Motley Crue Tour Dates
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 21, 2015
As the America’s supply of umlauts drops to record lows, some bands are going as far as canceling shows instead of paying the exorbitant cost of purchasing them to put on signs and merchandise. Up until this point, only underground bands like Laaz Rockit have been impacted and had to cancel concerts, but even big name acts like Motley Crue are now being affected.
Motley Crue plans to cancel five dates on their annual final tour instead of spending thousands of dollars per umlaut, the going rate in many parts of the United States. The “It’s Never Too Late To Cash In On The Public’s Fixation With Nostalgia Tour” will no longer be coming to Phoenix, Sacramento and some other places that probably weren’t worth visiting anyway. In Europe, where umlauts grow freely on trees and can be purchased at the same cost as most other punctuation marks, none of the tour dates will be cancelled.
In order to conserve umlauts, some critics have suggested the band could do the shows as Motley Crew. However, according to drummer Tommy Lee, The Crue believe in keeping the integrity of the band’s initial mission sacred. That mission, to bring hard rocking ballads and ironic, faux-European pronunciations to the masses, should not be compromised under any circumstances.
“You can’t spell Motley Crue without the umlauts. I mean, you wouldn’t spell Jesus without a J. It would just just be “Esus” then. And who would take a guy named “Esus” seriously. No umlauts, no Crue…bottom line!”
Motley Crue’s resistance to compromise on its umlaut usage has struck many Americans as being selfish, particularly in a time of crisis. Many impoverished German Americans have been forced to sign their names without umlauts for several months now because of “umlaut gouging” in cities like Madison, Wisconsin and Fargo, North Dakota.
Umlaut-Starved Crue Members Eating Guitars To Maintain Their Strength
The public health toll of a potential American umlaut famine could be devastating. German infants, who need umlaut milk to avoid vitamin deficiencies and Pointed Head Syndrome, will be hit the hardest. Some mothers have gone so far as to try to supplement the diets of their babies with less nutrient rich asterisks and ampersands. Several parents have even taken to giving their children 1.99 cent a gallon unleaded gasoline in their breakfast cereals.
Jurgen Cathe, head of Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz for the Ethical Treatment of Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, plans to have his group protest several of the remaining American concerts because of the band’s “unwillingness to change their name and confront the most diacritical problem in America today.”
(Due to budget restrictions, Tyranny of Tradition was unable to afford umlauts for this article. If you need to use umlauts in order to understand the text, please print the article out and place appropriate dots above the correct letters)
The Best Metal Albums of 2015 So Far
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on January 1, 2015
The Internet Features Many Pictures Of People In Strange Contexts Often Different From What We Were Expecting
This year is shaping up to be one of the finest in the long, storied history of heavy metal. 2015 is less than 17 hours old and their have already been tens of thousands of great metal albums released to the public.
In fact, since midnight Slayer has already released a remarkable 7 albums, Megadeth has put out 9 LPs (which means around 4 good songs) and Devin Townsend has put out 137 records. In the last hour alone, 91,783 metal albums have been released.
If you took all the albums put out in the last 17 hours and stacked them on top of each other they would go all the way to Pluto…and back!
In order to absorb the amount of albums that have come out, I underwent surgery this morning to have 437 ears attached to my body. In order to accommodate all the new ears, I was stretched to 12 foot 8. Currently, I have 917 stereo systems playing 917 different records simultaneously.
While I’ve only had a chance to listen to the 786,012 albums one time through, I feel confident that I can discern which of these (now 793,124) albums are the 10 best. My only concern is that in taking the time to write this list I will be missing out on nearly 2,354 new albums. I will need to wake up an hour or two early in order to catch up lest I let things snowball on me and, by September, have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 978 million album deficit.
Abbath! Got’cha Again!
Here goes…
10. A Dog Barking At 3:17 AM Waking Me From A Dream In Which Myself And Sophia Loren Are Eating Seal Meat
by Austere Lymph Node
9. The Tape Some Rapper Gave Me At The North Dekalb Mall That I Threw In The Garbage The Minute I Was Out of His Range of Sight
by Yung Elderly
8. The Odd, Porpoise-like Grunting Noise The Guy Next To Me At The Gym Made When Auburn Scored A Touchdown
by Nefarious Old Person
7. A Chevy Tahoe In The Lane Next To Me Needs A New Muffler
by Senseless Barbecue
6. My Feet Grow Cold. I Get Up Out of My Chair In Order to Get A Pair of Socks. The Chair Squeaks.
by Murderous Narcolepsy
5. Flossing For The Second Time In An Hour
by Hypotenuse Death Angle
4. The Kids Are Listening To Some Moronic British Kid Yelling About Minecraft on Youtube
by Iron Steel
3. Mumbling Under My Breath At The Wendy’s Manager Because They Opened Five Minutes Late
by As I Lay Down For A Nap
2. I Wonder Aloud As To Whether Obscure Character Actor Fritz Weaver Is Still Alive. My Wife Ignores This Statement And Continues Reading.
by Iconoclastic Necromyopic Marzipan Blood Colon
1. Otters
by Benign Malignancy
The Tyranny of Tradition 