A thin thread connects these....

I heart Keith Olbermann. Even though he has silly eyebrows. I like his special comments. They are special and they make me happy. I like his newscast even though he talks about Britney Spears and the war in Iraq in the same hour.

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You guys should all watch Brian Williams on NBC nightly news Monday night to see how sales of RVs are going down because white trash everywhere can no longer afford to fill them with gasoline. And how declines in RV sales lead to recessions. You'll see a graph like this and you'll think, "How come all the economists don't know about this?

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Now watch Puff Daddy and Ma$e act like doofi in front of a camera. You know why people think Puff Daddy is cool? Cause he told people he was cool. If you don't believe he's cool then just ask him if he is. His rapping is widely acclaimed by deaf people everywhere.

Fotoshop

I desire the ability to make cool photos with photoshop. This desire is becoming burning. But like so many desires, once fulfilled could leave me empty with a piece of software I never use. That happened to me with Quicken. I was convinced it would change my life. That I would magically become responsible with money and that magically, I wouldn't have to wonder if I could afford my over-priced hair do. And it didn't. In fact, it just pissed me off: "why can't it just do it like my spreadsheet does it" was the oft repeated lament. It just takes up space on my hard drive.


As with all my burning desires, I have become slightly inquisitive. Which is to say that my level of research is becoming obsessive. Now, Adobe's website is not very helpful. You go here and there are these people who are all: "We use Photoshop and our lives are perfect. See Photoshop make men want to fuck me. See Photoshop make me a successful person with power and money." Whatevs. There's no entry for dorky wannablogger who wants to paste her face next to Brad Pitt's nipples with amazing realism. So now we list our options:

1. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended ($999) - Cause that $1 will really make the shit expensive. Basically, with this version I could not only paste my face next to Brad Pitt's nipples, but I could animate it so I was chomping down on them in 3D and then busting Angelina's ass just for fun. It's good for film, video and multimedia professionals. I'm none of those, but I could be if I were as creative and visual as I am anal retentive and engineer-like.
2. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended ($999) - Ok, so this is listed as a different thing, but it really looks like the same fucking thing to me. Again, cause I'm not creative. Or, in this case cause I'm not a manufacturing and design engineer, medical professional, architect or engineer/scientific researcher.
3. Adobe Photoshop CS3 ($649) - This is not extended. This is good for graphic designers, web designers, and artists. I am none of those. According to the webiste with this product, I can: "Experience powerful, multilayer editing with live, re-editable Smart Objects and more than 100 effects filters, including new, nondestructive Smart Filters." Which in English translates to: we had someone who knows nothing about explaining technical things to non-technical people write this cause we are a bunch of dipshits here at Adobe marketing.
4. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ($199) - This is an add-on to number 3 for professional and serious amateur photographers. What this thing does is turn your house into a dark room. Seriously, it's totally fucking cool. It takes over your light bulbs, turns them all off and allows you to feel like you are really developing photographs when you are, in fact, doing no such thing. But it's totally worth that $199 to feel like an old-fashioned photographer. It's called nostalgia bitches.
5. Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 ($99.99) - Cause the $0.01 will make that shit out of reach. They wrote the description for this product in English: "Make your photos look their best with step-by-step editing assistance and amazing compositing capabilities." Words like step-by-step are much more enticing to me than multilayer editing. And I will make my photos "look their best" not "enable 3D editing while tweaking Brad's nipples".
6. Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition (Free) - This is made for housewives who want to look at pictures of their kids. This product is probably one of those things that has a bunch of greyed out buttons that when you roll the mouse over them say "Available with Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 which costs less than $100"

What these people need is an application that let's you enter your requirements for the system and then spits out which one you should use. Like this:

Now listen up Adobe, I'll sell this idea for a web form to you for less than $1000.

Christmas Songs

I have a whole thing about Christmas. Basically, it makes me tense. Christmas decorations make me tense. Christmas songs make me tense. Buying gifts makes me tense. Receiving gifts makes me tense. Whole fucking thing makes. me. tense. Now, admittedly, I have a problem with being tense in general. But that does not excuse the commercial demons from making my ass tenser.

Point in case:

How can that shit not make you tense? Franlky, it makes me want to dig a hole in my own head with an immersion blender. Like this:

Avril - Teh Suck

Last night, while in the comfort of my own living room, I made the huge mistake of switching to MTV Hits. The first thing we must address: why would a classy bitch go to MTV Hits? Because there are only so many times you can watch the same LSU touchdown during football highlights before you wonder: DIDN'T ANYTHING ELSE HAPPEN THIS SATURDAY? CAN'T YOU MAKE FUN OF NOTRE DAME FOR BEATING DUKE? So yeah, a litte insanity causes bad decisions.

Bad decisions. During my brief, ill advised visit to MTV Hits, I was treated to Avril Lavigne's latest suckfest, "Hot." This song, off her latest epistle Best Damn Thing, is so clever that one can hardly process it.

First let's talk about the video. It starts with our dear heroine getting out of a limo in a bad wig. The heroine then blows kisses at all of her adorable fans who are screaming and yelling. This is an innovative concept for a video, and I'm surprised our little girl was willing to risk making such a statement. The dramatic juxtaposition of Avril herself, who presumably endures such lines of fans in her actual life (though not in a bad wig) playing a character who is forced to endure such drama is quite startling. It's as if you, the viewer, must think about the hall of mirrors her life has become. How does one, once entering such a hall, find one's way out? Glad you asked.

By performing in a bustier. See, the real Avril, identified by the streak of pink in her hair, (a statement of rebellion and happiness so lacking in the hall of mirrors Avril), bravely goes where no Avril has gone before and performs in a small night club, on a stage, in front of adoring fans and lip synchs in a green bustier. Why? For dramatic irony fools.

Unfortunately, the whole two Avril concept is not really allowed to play itself out, and we are left feeling like the whole situation was set up just so we could laugh at the wig. But maybe that's just me. Or that the whole situation was was set up cause they needed 30 seconds of video and there's only so much green bustier and pink hair we can stand before we wonder if we are just meant to gawk at her punk ass legs.

Now to the real crime perpetrated on millions of pre-adolescent girls by this song: the lyrics. Viola le chorus:

You make me so hot.

Make me wanna drop.

It's so ridiculous.

I can barely stop.

I can hardly breathe.

You make me wanna scream.

You're so fabulous.

You're so good to me baby, baby.

You're so good to me baby, baby.

First I must point out that this song and the rest of the disc was, in fact, written by Avril and SOMEONE ELSE. It took two people to come up with this. I'm not surprised: the rhyming of "hot", "drop" and "ridiculous" is so raw, so daring, so modern that one person can hardly been expected to come up with it.

What one wonders by the third line is what exactly is ridiculous? Is it the desire to drop, in and of itself that is ridiculous? Or the rendering of ones temperature to a higher level by a single person? Perhaps the combination of both leaves our singer baffled.

Then she tells us with stunning honestly that she can "barely stop." Which is, in and of itself, an interesting statement. We are left to guess which of the following she is attempting to stop: being hot, dropping or thinking this entire line of thought is ridiculous.

Her being unable to breathe is not surprising given all the dancing she's doing in a green bustier.

"You make me want to scream" One sympathizes.

Now, this next line is where things really take a strange turn. The entire chorus, to this point, has lead the listener to believe she is singing about a straight man with which she wants to have sexual intercourse. But then, she calls him "fabulous" which everyone knows is what you call women or gay men. Has Avril just come out of the closet? Is she calling her husband of less than one year gay? Or has she spent so long in the hall of mirrors that she doesn't realize you just don't call straight men you want to fuck fabulous?

In all, this stunningly bad song (which is, in the humble opinion of this writer, only slightly better than her song "Girlfriend" whose suckiness is below my sarcasm) reminds us all of why the music industry is going down the tubes.