Girl (Disem)Power?

How modern pop music discourages individualism and urges young women to stifle their own identities.

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

Let me start off by saying I don’t know shit about modern day pop music. Sure, I hear the songs on the radio, but as far as I am concerned, it’s all an indistinguishable blob of overproduced junk. There’s no way I can tell the difference between a Ke$ha song and a Katy Perry song, nor do I detect the slightest aural difference between the “music” of Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez … and that’s not even getting into the blurry miasma of figuring out which one-to-two-hit wonder is which nowadays. Are we even 100 percent sure Rachel Platten, Meghan Trainor and Iggy Azalea aren’t sharing the same vocal cords?

Needless to say, there is quite a bit of interchangeability when it comes to radio-friendly, Top 40 music. Go ahead, just try and describe the subtle differences of any Justin Bieber, One Direction and Five Seconds of Summer single. The really interesting thing to me, however, is how this uniformity in sound seems to disproportionately affect female artists. For every singer with a smoky, heavy and idiosyncratic lilt like Adele, there are at least five or six whiny, pitch-less performers like Miley Cyrus, Ellie Goulding and Alessia Cara to go around. Yes, I know the recording industry is the domain of soulless hucksters and unprincipled marketers whose only scruples are to make money hand over fist, and that exploitation of starlets is nothing even remotely new for the business. But what gets me is how this absolute obliteration of female individuality is running concurrent with an overabundance of ditties half-heartedly celebrating female individuality.

First of all, many of these “individuals” have been factory-produced pop cultural commodities since childhood. Take Demi Lovato, for example. While she’s now crooning about the virtues of exploratory lesbianism (if not actively encouraging it), back in the day she was a bit player on Barney and Friends and was later farmed out as background dressing for a slate of Disney Channel programs as a high schooler. She’s been a media creation – a human being built for maximum marketing efficiency – literally her whole life; ultimately, she’s no more an individual artist than a chunk of processed cheese … assuming processed cheese can suffer from bipolar disorder and smuggle cocaine, of course.

Speaking of Lovato, her fifth album was ironically titled Confident, when the entire pop music machinery she represents constantly bombards young listeners with the central message that they’re simply not good enough. Don’t let red herrings like Colbie Calliat’s phony, allegedly anti-media hit “Try” throw you for a loop; even though the songstress in question is championing the liberation of a life sans holding oneself up to the “unobtainable” standard of beauty established by the media, she herself embodies the media ideal of what a young woman should look like. She may have ditched the concealer and foundation for one video, but when she performs live, her face is drenched in enough cosmetics to stock an Ulta store. Ironically, while she eschewed the eyeliner as some sort of attempt at a social statement, she nonetheless kept the expensive clothing and ritzy jewelry; apparently, unrealistic media archetypes are only negative when they apply to physical standards, while wholly unobtainable materialist and consumption ideals are somehow A-OK.  Ironically, the emerging subgenre of body image affirmation pop seems to reinforce the importance of consumerism as some sort of over-compensatory penance for not being thin. So a modern pop starlet can be overweight, but she has to make up for it with lavish – and wholly unsustainable - fashion tastes, which are far beyond the means of any real young woman’s financial capabilities.

While sensations like Nicki Minaj and Jessie J extol the fairly misogynistic message that desirability to males should be a paramount objective, there seems to be another incipient theme in female-driven pop music becoming much more commonplace. Let’s call it the “Lena Dunham Effect” – music that embraces XY aimlessness and celebrates female self-loathing like a hometown Super Bowl victory parade. At the head of this nihilistic vanguard are children of wealth and luxury Lana Del Rey and Tove Lo, whose synthetic synth-pop vaunts indolence like public service announcements for defeatism. I’m not quite sure what kind of message young women are culling from lyrics about vomiting up Twinkies in bathtubs, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t one that’s going to inspire them to do too many great things with their free time.

When you realize that junior high girls are absolutely barraged by such torrents of superficiality and negativism day-in, day-out and that these performers and their works are establishing their own conceptualizations about female identity, it’s hard to not be a little perturbed. How confused they must be, indoctrinated with the singular importance of being yourself from media creations who gained their fame and fortune by changing everything about themselves and submitting to the slightest whims of their recording label Svengalis. Even compared to the plastic fruit of yesteryear like Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson, these new pop heroines are shamelessly insincere and unremarkable, fumbling through their marketing-by-the-numbers lyrics with all the passion of a William Shatner cover tune. The coy introspection of Carole King and even the square-terrifying bombast of Madonna is a thing of the past; as demonstrated by the popularity of Sara Gilbert lookalike Lorde, humdrum is the new hotness.  

This would be much less unnerving a trend if it these “artists” weren’t so ubiquitous as cultural figures. Whereas boys embrace semi-sociopathic sports heroes and macho rock and rollers and rappers as their heroes (which is just as disturbing), you’re not exactly seeing Adam “Pacman” Jones on the cover of every magazine at the grocery store, and you’ll never hear a 2 Chainz or 36 Crazyfists blaring at Starbucks. Meanwhile, the pop star goddess figure is more or less depicted as the zenith of the female form to middle school Americans of both genders. Even as supposed proponents and advocates of girl power, they remain subservient and endlessly celebrated for their appearance, with many just as guilty of capitalizing on the shameless appeal of hyper-sexuality and other forms of aggressive behavior as their boisterous male counterparts.  Even as feminine ideals, they are expected to be dependent upon males (or, at the very least, in perpetual pursuit of impressing them), and lyrically predictable, with easily malleable personalities, and to promote trifling excesses and utter vapidity over anything of substance, merit or even good taste. Even their political and social activism rings of hollowness and artificiality – their campaigns against homophobia and sexism little more than transparent coats of cheap paint slathered on their woefully bland personalities, designed to give the illusion of any kind of perceivable depth or thoughtfulness.

These types of artists don’t have the longest shelf-lives. The Spice Girls went from ruling entertainment to painfully passé in one year’s time, and even aughties titans like Brittany Spears are viewed as hardly anything more than nostalgic throwaways today. Alas, their legion is many, and while the names, faces and sounds may change, the core identity-suppressing motif lingers on throughout the decades.

Perhaps it is giving these pop tarts and bubblegum divas too much credit to insist they impact the psyches of young women so much. Nonetheless, their sociocultural impact is impossible to ignore, and so is the amount of weight they share as “role models” for the women of tomorrow. If we only celebrated these pop cultural figures as insignificant, low-culture entertainment, there wouldn’t be any problems. Unfortunately, we’ve collectively promoted these manufactured icons as the loftiest women can aspire to – and the end results, I fear, are anything but empowering.  

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Robocop: The Animated Series - The Pilot Episode!

Because why not turn one of the goriest, anti-capitalist screeds of the 1980s into a cartoon for the kiddo consumers?

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

The 1980s were a strange, strange time in American consumer culture, especially in terms of kid-targeted marketing. On one end - and keep in mind, this was well before the Disney-Marvel-Star Wars pop cultural Wehrmacht came to exist - you had stuff that was pretty straight-forward, kid-baiting capitalist claptrap, sans any real subtext, intentional or unintentional - your Smurfs, your Super Marios, your Care Bears and so on and so forth. This being the Reagan Era, of course there was a lot of pseudo-political stuff being repackaged as preteen entertainment, as well; it's no coincidence that G.I. Joe suddenly came back into vogue right around the same time America was transitioning from its post-Vietnam non-interventionist stance to today's always-battle-ready global protectorates (David Sirota's entertaining 2011 tome Back to our Future is a great read for anyone looking to see how jingoistic media in the ALF years helped create a culture of militarism in the U.S. that is still reverberating today.) 

But on the other side of the toy store aisle - across the way from all of the Glo-Worms and My Little Pony dolls and Pound Puppies - you had stuff that seemed, well, just a wee bit outside the domain of juvenalia. Right next to Atari 2600 cartridges based on properties like E.T. and The Empire Strikes Back, there were video games inspired by ultra-violent splatter films like The Evil Dead and raunchy sex comedies like Porky's. Side by side with the hula hoops and Slinkies were startlingly realistic replicas of the machine guns used by Rambo and the A-Team, with some "playsets" more closely resembling the contents of Timothy McVeigh's tool shed than an elementary schooler's toychest. Wedged in between The Karate Kid action figures and plastic WWF pro wrestlers, one could find licensed playthings celebrating everything from a cybernetic assassin cop-killer to a horribly-disfigured, mass murdering child predator. And if you think that's a little age-inappropriate, just wait until you flip on the slate of Saturday morning television programming!

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, there were, at various points in time, kid-centered cartoons based on all of the following, adult-themed licenses: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Police Academy, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, Highlander, Conan the Barbarian, Little Shop of Horrors and, god help us, even The Toxic Avenger. Granted, these programs couldn't replicate the gross-out humor, sexual innuendos, and occasional disembowelings of their parent I.P., but they did what they could to soften up and reserve the properties (almost always with a corresponding toyline and video games out the wazoo) to America's consumption-hungry adolescent masses ... which, naturally, makes the existence of the 1988 Robocop cartoon series all the more ironic. 

It may have taken some major liberties with
the source material, but at least they kept in
the part where Eric Foreman's dad shoots
Murphy 40-bazillion times at point blank range.

My adulation for all things Robocop is no secret. Shit, I'll even go as far as to cite Paul Verhoeven's original 1987 film as the single greatest anti-consumerist satire in history, and probably the most palatable cinematic interpretation of Das Kapital that will -- or can ever -- exist. But even if you look beyond Robocop's less kid-friendly components - the dudes being melted by toxic waste, Red Foreman having his trachea ripped open with a metal spike, "bitches, leave," etc. - the central message of the film is that brain dead consumer culture is the root of all societal evil, and that mass marketed anything just stands to make us less happy and less intellectual citizens. So why the hell not repackage that thematic into a TV program for the booger-eater set?

The first Robocop cartoon series - a joint Marvel Productions/AKOM Productions venture - ran for one season in 1988. While the general gist of the Robocop mythos was left intact - the program even began with a toned-down re-imagining of Alex Murphy's execution! - the show made quite a few tweaks here and there, primarily, to expand the toy line ... I mean, in-show universe. While the program certainly didn't live up to the lofty precedent set by its source material, for what it's worth, it wasn't that bad of a little cartoon, and a few of its ideas actually bordered on ingenious. The execution - in more ways than one - may have been flawed, but you at least have to give the writers some points for trying; all in all, had the basic storyline of the show been used as the general basis for the Robo-sequels, Parts 2 and 3 probably would've turned out as way more entertaining movies. 

The pilot episode, titled "Crime Wave," introduces us the series' primary antagonists, a gaggle of criminal mischief-makers named the Vandals who share more than a passing resemblance to the Cretins from the Class of Nuke 'Em High franchise. Their shenanigans begin with a heist of the OCP-branded blood bank - why plasma in Future Detroit is so guldarn valuable, however, the episode never tells us. Carrying laser weapons, the scoundrels tell the po-po to kiss their "big toes" and threaten to blow the building sky high. They set an I.E.D. to go off in 12 minutes (not real time, of course), and here comes Robocop and his sidekick Officer Lewis to shoot the guns out of the bad guys' hands and prevent a few of them from making a getaway in a stereotypical 1980s rape-wagon. Robocop, with eleven seconds to spare, decides to get rid of the explosives by throwing them really high in the air, where the contents safely explode overhead and totally don't send shrapnel raining down on innocent citizens below.

Believe it or not, it does look like the cartoon included the
full frontal female nudity of the source material, though.

After a still exterior jump-cut which appears to feature a poster of a topless woman lets us know we're back at the precinct, Robocop recounts his "prime directives," which irritates the station sergeant who believes OCP never should have made cyborg cops to begin with and that those no-good ruffians wouldn't have even set off the damn dynamite had that walking refrigerator powered by Peter Weller guts not intervened. From there, we hop to an OCP boardroom meeting, where the metal-fisted (literally) Dr. McNamara says that Robocop is causing too much collateral damage and it's time to bring out the old enforcement drones as replacements. Cue the all new ED-260 traffic control guards, which are basically the ED-209 sentries from the first movie, albeit with red and green lights welded onto them. As you'd expect, the unit tends to overreact when people make illegal U-turns, and before long, its rampaging down the streets of the Motor City, machine gunning people for not using their blinkers. 

Following the embarrassing incident, Dr. McNamara comes up with a pretty creative way to save face. Traveling to the local arcade - complete with coin-ops titled Rambo and Cobra - he throws down a briefcase full of cash before the Vandals (it's never explained how they got out of jail for the blood bank heist, however, nor why the fuck they have a robotic wiener dog in their gang) and tells them he'll supply them with all of the high-tech weaponry they need to embark upon a rampage across Detroit. The idea, essentially, is to convince his Omni Consumer Products higher-ups that the crime level in town is so out-of-control that Robocop alone can't handle the volume, thus necessitating the roll-out of those aforementioned ED-260 bots. 

This being a children's cartoon, their mayhem is limited to pretty PG-stuff, like driving dune buggies through department stores and setting teddy bears and Voltron action figures on fire. Still, it's more than enough tomfoolery to rouse the ire of the stereotypical black police chief, who speaks almost entirely in sports metaphors. After inquiring to the whereabouts of Robocop, we learn he is downstairs, having an "upgrade" installed by technician Dr. Tyler, who gets into a brief argument with Lewis, who accuses her firmware patches of wiping the "humanity" out of Robo's brain. 

You know what's sorely missing from today's cartoons? Sociopaths with chainsaws.

The Vandals - now equipped with all sorts of high-end weapons, including electro-shock gloves, chainsaws and even a pair of boots that can cause mini-earthquakes - are causing a ruckus at a shopping mall, and the local police are no match for their, uh, bowling balls. Thankfully, Robocop shows up and uses his expert marksmanship to shoot down a pile of twisted metal to create a makeshift kennel for a cyborg dachshund (no, really), but LOLOOPS! He ends up getting crushed under a pile of rubble, complete with his arm popping off. 

We see that damn exterior department matte painting bumper (the third time this episode!) and Dr. Tyler says Robocop may have to go offline for good. This causes Lewis to kvetch about being responsible for Murphy's second demise. For like, two seconds. 

At an OCP meeting, McNamara (boy, I wonder where that name came from?) shows the suits news clips of the Vandals royally fucking up the mall. Apparently, they've acquired jet-boosted vehicles, which kind of begs the question - couldn't the OCP auditors easily trace all of the money used to fund the crime spree back to McNamara, or is he pulling some Superman III/Office Space secret account shit on us?

Using God knows how much money from God knows what funding streams, the hoodlums have managed to build a giant bulldozer-type weapon, which they use to break into the Federal Reserve and steal gold bars. Interestingly enough, they don't encounter the mysterious oil-drum headed mastermind from The American Dream, which alone makes this cartoon a far more realistic take on central banking and fiat capital. 

A half-powered Robocop shows up, and he's immediately knocked out by a steel beam. Lewis makes the save by tossing a smoke grenade in the bulldozer, which additionally gives Robo some time to recharge his batteries. Assailed by thugs, Robocop is mercilessly set ablaze and chainsawed - which, yeah, isn't exactly something you saw happening to the protagonists in that many other late 1980s cartoons. Eventually, though, he powers up to full capacity and starts tossing thugs around like lawn darts. Using one of those handy, dandy steel beams just lying all over the place, he manages to send the bulldozer operator off-course, retrieve his handgun and with his impeccable sharpshooting skills, make the heavy machinery's gas tank explode. And in true 1980s cartoon fashion, despite all of the wanton carnage going on, not only does no one get killed, no one is even seriously injured. 

With the crime wave officially halted, OCP reneges on its plans to introduce the new ED-260 models, with a distraught McNamara vowing revenge and to expose Robocop as nothing more than a pile of "nuts and bolts." Back at the office, the shouty Afro-American chief keeps using sports analogies and Dr. Tyler chides Robocop for going back out into battle knowing he could have been damaged beyond repair. She orders him to hit the electro-charger chair thingy ASAP. "You can't keep a good man down," Lewis states, to which Tyler responds "or a good machine." Cue a somewhat out-of-character smirk from Robocop, and this one is all over. 

And Alex Murphy gives that sweet scientist ass his thumbs-up of approval...

All in all, the Robocop cartoon series - which lasted just one season - was somewhere between better than average and almost great. The show was certainly prone to all of the late 1980s cartoon tropes and thematic devices - with hyena-laughing villains knocking off cookie factories and slapstick humor replacing all of the psychopathic bad guys butchering police officers and satirical gore of the first flick - but it nonetheless had its moments of brilliance. Beating I, Robot to the punch by about 15 years, one episode dealt with rampant anti-robot discrimination sweeping Detroit, complete with the appearance of a hooded, cyborg-hating sect that acted, and looked, just like the Ku Klux Klan, while another dealt with Robocop going rogue to take down some politically-untouchable corporate polluters (which, as fate would have it, predicted the mass contamination of Flint, Michigan's water resources almost 30 years in advance.) The series finale even threw one of the biggest curve balls in animated TV history, when it was revealed that the leader of the Vandals was none other than Clarence goddamn Boddicker himself, who, somehow, had managed to survive having his trachea ripped out with a data spike at the tail end of the first Robo-picture. 

Granted, the short-lived 'toon was really nothing more than a shameless excuse to market tie-in action figures, but to be fair, those action figures were pretty bitchin'. I mean, those motherfuckers doubled as cap pistols, and one of the toys sported a Hitler mustache ... sigh, if only I knew where I could've bought those little translucent blocks that were in EVERY toy commercial in the 1980s, I would have been in elementary school heaven. The Robo-mania would die down for awhile, but there was no corresponding toy line or animated revival by the time the somewhat-under-appreciated Robocop 2 hit theaters in 1990. Looking back on it, the '88 series definitely would have lent itself to an awesome - if not impossibly expensive - live-action Robocop sequel. I mean, who WOULDN'T have paid good money to watch Buckaroo Banzai wearing a refrigerator shoot it out with OCP-hired techno-goons with chainsaws and electro-death gloves welded to their hands? That's right, nobody who isn't a goddamn communist, that's who.

Following the box office disaster that was Robocop 3, Alex Murphy and pals were relegated to a crappy, no-budget live-action syndicated series that was redeemed ONLY by the fact that it featured Roddy Piper played a recurring vigilante superhero. The character got a second shot at animated stardom with 1998's Robocop: Alpha Command, which lasted about 40 episodes. Alas, I've never seen any of them and good God, will my girlfriend probably leave me if I told her I needed to invest a full weekend to binge-watching something intended for latchkey children at the beginning of the dotcom boom. 

The fate of this particular Robo-toon? Well, the Wikipedia says it got a limited video release in the early, early '90s, but due to the restrictive nature of the media format, it only included three episodes. The original cartoon ultimately did get a DVD release in the mid-2000s, but it appears it was limited to the U.K. 

So - unless you were one of those rare souls that had the original-syndicated television shows taped on VHS - it was pretty much impossible for us Yanks to watch the program for a good twenty years. Alas, the same way technology saved Alex Murphy from the icy sepulcher, the Intrawebs brought this antiquated bundle of nostalgia back from the dead. Thanks to the miracle of streaming video and Google's relaxed enforcement of copyright law, you can now watch every episode of Robo '88 online for free, anytime you want...

... you know, if you are a criminal and shit. And we all know how Robocop feels about criminals, don't we?

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41 Things I Hate About Modern Society

Some aspects of modernity make me quite happy. Today, we will not be talking about any of those things…

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for stuff…hence, the namesake “Thanksgiving,” I suppose. That said, there are quite a bit of things I encounter in my day-to-day life that I am not thankful for. In fact, these things, I feel downright unthankful for, because they’re awful and cause me a personal amount of suffering, which fluctuates in intensity from mild irk to carotid-artery-bulging outrage.

Here are a few of the things I'm talking about; forty-one of them to be precise, if we're sticklers for accuracy in reporting and all...

Music -- I know that’s an awfully broad thing for a person to say that they hate, but that’s more or less how I feel about the concept of music as a whole. Of course, I periodically listen to music, and there are quite a few acts that I really like, but compared to other art forms, there’s no denying that music is, intrinsically, annoying. For starters, it’s loud, and omnipresent; you can’t chow down at an Asian buffet without having Huey Lewis and the News songs blaring at you, and goddamn it, sometimes I just want to eat five pounds of shrimp in quietude. Similarly, music fans seem to take their love of whatever kind of music they like to extremes that are WAY more irrational than the fanaticism of, oh say, nonfiction literature or Sega Genesis aficionados. They’re ALWAYS playing their favorite music, as if life itself would come to a sudden halt if they didn’t hear that song on their iPod one more time and at that very instant. They come to more or less worship the artists they like, and at concerts, they act like one of those Southern Methodists that like to writhe around in the floor after the pastor slaps unholy spirits out of them in front of the pulpit. The worst part about it, I suppose, is that “music people”  act so weirded out about others NOT having the exact same instant-gratification needs they do -- they ALWAYS have to have the radio on in their car, they ALWAYS have to have their headphones on while they do stuff and on top of it all, they seem to be the most one-dimensional, homicidally violent, hive-minded kind of fans out there. Music itself may not always be bad, but I assure you that every kinda’ culture fixed around it is sure to be insufferable.

Television -- Pretty much the same deal here as it is with music. Sure, there are good television programs out there, and every now and then, I like to catch a hockey, football, soccer or game on the tube, but this whole idea that TV has to be such an entrenched aspect of one’s life just irks the shit out of me. In a lot of ways, the TV show has kinda’ become a ritualistic surrogate for religious ceremonies; I mean, people spend ALL WEEK waiting for the newest episode of “Breaking Amish” or what-the-hell-ever to air as if the other 167 hours in their weekly lives were just superfluous to that one central point of watching that show they like. You can tell me that shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” are great, but I know better; it’s just more episodic nonsense, that gives one the illusion of enlightenment and an illusory sense of both personal progression and community via parasocial relationships. That, and I automatically feel dumber just by sitting in front of a set, being bombarded by advertisement after advertisement when all I really want is to hear Sophia Petrillo crack wise for a good 22 or so minutes. The most aggravating thing about television, I’d say, is the same thing that’s perhaps the most annoying about music in general -- its ubiquity. No matter where you go -- a gym, Taco Bell, a video game store, wherever -- you’re sure to be bombarded by a television screen of some kind, making the entire medium virtually inescapable.

Bicyclists -- Hardcore bicycle riders have to be the most arrogant people on the planet. Roadways, in case you haven’t noticed, are for AUTOMOBILE USE. That grey stuff between the grass is a vessel authorized for motor vehicles only; that is, machines, designed to transport individuals from location to location via the controlled explosion of combustible fuels, at speeds which fluctuate from five miles to about 70 miles per hour. Bicyclists, it appear, haven’t figured this out, and have no qualms WHATSOEVER about taking their rinky dink contraption out on the nation’s highways and byways, peddling at speeds in excess of ten or so miles per hour, while actual motorists are stuck behind the rider, whom are completely unable to move because of opposite lane traffic. It’s clear that bicyclists have no respect at all for the unstated social system, nor our communal transportation laws. And on top of that, they dress in goofy, pastel-colored spandex, which just makes them look like gay superheroes.

Families that Like to Exercise Together -- They are so many things wrong with people like this, I don’t know where to begin. First of all, where I come from, families aren’t supposed to do ANYTHING as units -- they’re SUPPOSED to be dysfunctional clumpings of people that are, largely, kept together because of court order. And even IF said families were to perform an act together, it sure as heck wouldn’t be for something with positive health benefits, like jogging or aerobics. Long story short: if your family likes to roller skate as an ensemble on the weekends, instead of fist fighting each other over who’s going to get the last drumstick from Church’s, you’re probably a horrible human being that will never amount to anything in life.

White People that are Really into Reggae -- Folks of the sort are just absolutely intolerable. First of all, the reality is, they don’t even LIKE the music, it’s just that they like to smoke weed and feel some sense of cultural connection (primarily, via the works of a violent rapist) outside their own painfully boring (and almost certainly) middle class white person existence. And regarding Caucasians with dreadlocks; in at least 48 states, others should have legal permission to punch your lights out.

Believe it or not, I don't think that's a picture of the dude from "Blues Traveler."

People that Wear Fedoras -- Even outside of all the Brony subculture stuff, it’s just an unsightly fashion choice. But at least it works as something of an unstated social warning: headwear of the sort is more or less the Star of David for boring perverts whom have nothing worthwhile to say about anything, at all.

People that Like to Bump their Stereos at 10 in the Morning -- It’s Tuesday at the Post Office, and there are only two people in the parking lot. Who the hell do you think you’re impressing here? Almost as bad: people that feel the need to blare their custom car sound systems at places that are completely unlikely to draw the attention of like-minded others. Example? Once, I saw a dude bumping and trying to look all gangsta…at 7 PM…on a Wednesday…at Publix.

Post Office Service, In General -- Always staffed by the most incompetent, clearly disinterested people on the planet. Honest to God: I went into the local P.O a few weeks ago, and the desk lady actually greeted me by saying “what are you looking at?” The fact that they always lose your parcels doesn’t really help their case, either.

People that Wear their Sunglasses on the BACKS of their Heads -- The first time I saw someone doing this, I was convinced it had to have been someone with a developmental disorder. Flash forward a few months, and encountering an entire armada of bro-dudes rocking the exact same look made me realize that this ridiculous fashion trend actually exists. When I see someone doing this, I instinctively want to grab a felt tip pen and quickly draw a crude nose and squiggly mouth down the back of their neck. And I’m going to do it someday, I promise.

People that Are in Clearly Unsuccessful Bands, Who Are Convinced They Will One Day Achieve Greatness -- At some point in your life, you’ll probably think about starting a band. That time is called “for about five minutes when you’re 14,” and then you move on to thinking about shit that actually matters. Believe it or not, I know people who are in their 20s, and even by-God 30s in some cases, who are 110 percent sure that their band will eventually lead them to fame and fortune, despite the fact that a.) they’ve never actually been booked for a show before, b.) they don’t have enough money collectively to even record a tape demo (let alone afford the postage to mail them out to anyone) and c.) they’re still trying to find a bassist. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how much music is responsible for the general shiftlessness of today’s generation. David Noebel was wrong about a lot of things, but he sure was right about a whole lot of others…

Nothing pleases the Dark Lord quite like casual Fridays...

People that Are Always Going to Concerts -- A kinda’ inversion of the above, this time from a spectator’s perspective. We all know at least one or two people whose lives more or less revolve around going to “shows” -- they take in at least one a week, and sometimes more, and their Facebook feed is pretty much nothing but pictures from the last show, thoughts about the last show, thoughts about how excited they are for the upcoming show, and reminiscing about that one time that one thing happened at that one show that went to. Most of the time, these people are failed musicians themselves (who, I suppose, at least had the good sense to do something quasi-productive with their lives instead), or really boring, buttoned-down people that thrive off the vicarious thrill of watching others do something they can’t (although, to be fair, most of us COULD be behind-the-stage drug addicts that make $80 a gig at doing SOMETHING, I reckon.) Needless to say, there’s not a whole lot of depth to people of the like; it’s best to ignore them, or at least say all sorts of slanderous shit behind their back while they’re trying to get the drummer’s face perfectly stabilized for an Instagram selfie.

Any Kind of Electronic Music, for that Matter -- Yeah, I know I’m talking a lot about music here, and I suppose covering music in general up front sort of covers this one by default, but this aural racket is worth a special deriding for at least a few sentences. Trance, Trap, Techno, Dubstep and especially all of that Ambient stuff -- I don’t even think it’s shitty enough to qualify as actual music, to be honest. It’s just a bunch of zips and zaps and these low pitched hums and droning beats, typically worsened by the inclusion of some completely unnecessary secondary audio track -- like, some dude talking about  “Lord of the Rings” or a mandolin solo, or something.  Additionally, I have yet to encounter a single person into music of the like that I would consider a decent human being; maybe there’s something intrinsic about the genre that just taps into the human “asshole” gene, I guess?

People that Care about GMOs -- That’s “genetically modified organisms,” for those of you that aren’t in the know. For whatever reason, a large contingency of folks out there decided to go on a jihad about how GMOs in food are some sort of scientifically-unproven lethal scourge, and a lot of people that are really keen on thinking for themselves decided to become part-time GMO-critics, too. These are the kinds of people that are hell bent on convincing you that Boo Berry and Mountain Dew are utterly toxic chemicals, frequently going on tirades about how “raw milk” and Paleodieting is the only way to keep yourself from contracting aspartame-borne cancer or something. I hope I live to be 100, just so I can stand over their graves and eat a Hot Pocket.

People that Think Comic Books are Legitimate Works of Art and/or Social Commentary -- Look, I grew up loving 1970s Spider-Man comics as much as the next guy, but even as comic-collector in the 90s, I knew the shit was junk culture, nothing more, nothing less. Nowadays, people are utterly convinced that comic books are legit art, on par with, you know, real art, and that said medium has just as much validity as film and the ACTUAL written word. You know, because “Maus” was a much more effective, in-depth look at the Holocaust than “Schindler’s List” in either book and movie-form, and “Miracle Man” is far more enlightening than “The Gulag Archipelago” or “The Human Condition.” Even worse are those purveyors of “comics journalism,” which is an honest-to-goodness attempt to get morons to read news by having overrated and overpaid comic artists draw it for them. If you ever wondered why nobody trusts the media -- or why today’s generation is filled with so many numbskulls -- that’s more or less all you need to know right there.

Anime, in General -- Might as well thrown in manga while we’re at it, and any of those JRPGs that are based on anime or manga, or are trying to emulate anime or manga. The stories are stupid and juvenile, while the artwork is completely interchangeable. Hey, look, some dude with big eyes and a sword-arm is fighting another dude with big-eyes and sword-arm! How inventive. And a lot of it is just pervy as hell - the fact that one of the most popular Japanese cartoons out there is a show about a dude trying to avoid being boinked by his stepsisters (no, really) is really all the proof you need there, I suppose. Even more depressing is that this hogwash somehow inspired an entire subculture. Which, of course, provides a natural segue into…

Some people dedicate their lives to solving social injustices and curing deadly diseases. And others like to dress up like cartoon characters from Japanese  children's programs. 

Cosplaying -- Am I the only person on the planet that realizes how stupid this is? You’re a grown-ass adult, dressed up like a cartoon character, in public. Just think about that for a minute, and let the sorrow sink deep into your marrow.

Commercials -- I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. That’s probably the primary reason I could never get into TV, I suppose. When I hear people talking about commercials, I can almost smell their brains turning into mush. And if you post a commercial on your Facebook page, for any reason, you deserve a good walloping. Several, maybe.

People That Have No Idea What Objective News Is Supposed To Look Like -- How many times have you been in an argument with some lunkhead, who was convinced that this one article completely validated their crazy-ass beliefs on something? So anyway, you take the bait, and what they show you is from WND, Breitbart, or god help you, PrisonPlanet. We live in a culture where millions of young people can’t tell the difference between an official government source or a peer reviewed article from a blog post written by some tinfoil-hat sporting basement dweller, or some conspiratorial dweeb’s YouTube channel. Opinion, fact, truth, commentary…who cares which is which, right?

Plasma Screen Menus at Fast Food Restaurants -- When the shit did all this happen? A couple of months ago, I walked into a McDonalds, and the place was like some sort of post-modern Museum, or a picture from the set of “Demolition Man” or something. There’s a counter, a cash register, and a wall of LCD screens behind you, where the good-old plastic menu board with removable paper slots used to be. And to make things worse, they keep changing, so it takes three or four times as long to figure out what you want to eat now. It’s unnecessary, counterproductive, and technological just for the sake of being technological -- which, in a nutshell, kinda’ describes most of our modern world, anyway.

Radiohead, and Anybody That Listens to Them -- There are a lot of bands out there I hate, but I really, REALLY hate Radiohead. It’s the worst kinda’ hatred too, the kind that you really can’t explain in one or two sentences. It’s a sensorial hatred, I would say, an instinctive hatred that goes far beyond the normal constraints of human reason or understanding. For starters, “Creep” (which gets my vote for single worst thing ever recorded) made whiny-ass-white-boy-rock the default genre standard for the last 20 years, and as far as their critically acclaimed stuff goes -- “OK Computer” and “Kid A” and all that mess -- I honestly don’t know what makes it great, let alone enjoyable listening. As a general rule, people that are into Radiohead tend to be the absolute most boring, herd-minded individuals you’ll ever meet -- a buncha’ pseudo-intellectual dingbats that would listen to the sound of a malfunctioning air conditioner and give it a five star review of you told them Thom Yorke was the person that stuck a nickel in its fan. Avoid Radiohead, Radiohead-like things and especially Radiohead fans, and you’ll probably do pretty well in life, I’d imagine.

Clearly, one of the greatest running back "could've-beens" in NFL history.

People that are STILL Talking About Tim Tebow -- Yeah, he had one or two good games, but ultimately, he had a whole lot more star-breaking performances than stellar ones. Anybody remember that one game against the Bills in Week 16, or that playoff sodomization at the hands of Tom Brady and the Pats in early 2011? He’s a mediocre to under-performing QB, that ONLY gets media attention because even for a professional athlete, he’s an annoying, self-righteous, overly-proselytizing doofus. And remember: this is the same professional sport that gave us both Reggie White AND Ray “Jesus Wants Me to Win the Super Bowl” Lewis.

People on the Internet that Really Hate Justin Bieber -- These people are just utter scumbags, through and through. I understand not liking a musician, but wanting a musician literally DEAD just because you don’t? It’s beyond asinine, and just another indication of how the Internet has totally eroded our abilities to act like civil human beings.

QR Codes in Public Spaces -- AKA, those bar-code thingies you’re supposed to scan with your phone to get advertisements and shit. They’re ugly, intrusive, and every time I see one, it kinda’ makes me want to do a crossword puzzle. Definitely another reason why I’m glad I don’t have a smart phone, even though all 7 billion other people on the planet do.

Bryan Cranston -- The fact that we live in a world where the Dad from “Malcolm in the Middle” is now considered one of Hollywood’s finest thespians says a lot about modernity. And absolutely nothing good, I assure you.

Louis C.K. -- I gave a few of his stand-up routines a try, and I was not impressed. Probably the most overrated comedian on the planet right now, and considering that’s a planet that includes Kevin Hart, that’s probably saying something.

Christopher Nolan -- Way too revered for not doing a whole hell of a lot to being with; I liked “The Dark Knight” better back when it was called “Heat,” personally. Also responsible for this absurd idea that all comic book properties HAVE to be retooled into quasi-realistic film projects: you know, quasi-realistic film projects about JFK, Jr. dressing up like a leather wombat and fighting a terrorist clown using military-stolen weapons he purchased via stockholders’ money. Bonus Dislike Points for making all of that incredibly blunt, pro-neoconservative agitprop at the same time.

People that are ALWAYS Smoking Weed -- Probably the closest thing liberals have to a sub categorization that’s as annoying as the NRA wads. Of all the political and social ills you could be fighting -- wealth inequity, institutional prejudices, systemic injustices, so on and so forth -- you’d have to be a pretty dim bulb to make “weed legalization” your default causa sui. It doesn’t help that my neighborhood is SURROUNDED by weed-smoking dingbats, whom prove once and for all that marijuana has some sort of negative impact on one’s cognitive abilities.

Yeah...that's something I wouldn't mind staring over me while I sleep.

Cats -- I just don’t like them. They’re nowhere near as cute as everybody likes to tell you they are, and unlike dogs, you can’t trust them. That, and they have toxoplasma gondii, which according to whom you ask, may turn you into either a delusional cat-lady OR a really good soccer player.

When My Foot Falls Asleep -- OK, so maybe modern society doesn’t have anything at all to do with this one, but that still doesn’t mean that I can’t hate the ever-loving shit out of it when it does. It always seems to happen at the most inopportune moments as well, like, right when you have to get up and do something important, like walk across a stage to receive an award or when you really, really have to spring towards the commode for a sudden shat. Modern medicine can give an octogenarian a boner, but we haven’t come up with a way to properly address this ailment; that alone is reason enough to prevent me from donating money to ANY sort of scientific research.

Reddit -- Far and away one of the worst websites on the Internet. I’m not sure which aspect of the site I hate more; the fact that’s its almost single-handedly responsible for turning Internet correspondence into a jumble of infantilized blurbs and hackneyed sayings (while at the same time, replacing genuine reflection with the irredeemable scourge of “memes”) OR the fact that it’s goaded so many people that ought to know better into believing it’s a viable source for both news and audience-building. Long story short, Reddit is nothing more than a sounding board for people with various mental illnesses to talk about their oddly specific fetishes and obsessions. If you really want to hate humanity as a whole, just spend about five minutes browsing through some subreddits, and the pan-odium is sure to hit you.

Sports Talk Radio -- Whatever the lowest form of journalism is, I’m pretty sure “sports talk radio” is right underneath it. It’s all a bunch of fat, out-of-shape broadcasters, alongside virtual nobodies with absolutely zero professional sports experiences calling in from home, complaining nonstop about what coaches SHOULD have done and why (insert unpopular local sports figure here) needs to be booted out of town. No matter where you go, these programs are all the same. Especially in the qualifier that they all suck, mostly.

People that Hate on Madden Football -- For whatever reason, this appears to be the most hated video game franchise on the Internet, with many a pissed off IGN reader criticizing the franchise for being nothing more than an annual rehash that doesn’t do anything new with the platform -- this, coming from individuals that do nothing but fellate Nintendo and Square every time they release a Mario or Final Fantasy game that looks, sounds, feels and plays just like the last fifteen that came before it. There are a lot of people out there that are still pissed about the NFL 2K5 deal, even though Madden 2005 was CLEARLY a superior football sim that year and Visual Concepts’ attempt to relaunch its football engine in a next-gen title flopped harder than a live trout tossed off the Willis Tower. Madden at its uncreative worst is still better than a good 98 percent of the titles you’ll find on the Wii U right now, so if you have any beef with the series…well, I don’t really care. And  while I’m at it: “Madden ‘94” is a better game than “Super Metroid,” too -- my 300 or so hours playing the former on my Genesis between the years of 1993 and 1996 being all the evidence I need to corroborate my claim.

How Peyton really spent the 2011-2012 season...

Peyton Manning -- Even before he became a Bronco, I hated him. I hate his big, stupid country accent, and the way he talks like he only has one really big tooth in his head. I especially HATE how all of those numbskulls in the sports media perpetually drone on and on about how great he is, when the fact of the matter is the NFL just puss-ified defenses so much that it makes it nearly impossible for DB’s to cover wideouts or for safeties to target him without counting to fifty first. Also, I hate how omnipresent he is as an ad figure, even though if you ask me, he really should’ve stopped after that “Your defense is offensive” Xbox commercial about a decade ago. The only silver lining here? Every year, I can’t WAIT to watch him throw yet another season-ending interception in the playoffs…

People that are Really, Really Outraged about NSA Spying -- If you do something online, people will find out about it. GET OVER IT. Bonus hypocritical points: these same folks are outraged that the government MAY be spying on their e-mails, but apparently, they have no qualms whatsoever about Facebook and Google mining their personal data and SELLING IT TO ADVERTISERS WITHOUT THEIR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

People that React Rationally to Unfavorable Sports Outcomes -- These people make me want to vomit. Sports exist solely as a safe outlet for all of us to return to our primitive roots, where savage violence and fierce tribalism supplants things like “common sense” and “caring about laws and stuff.” If your team loses an important game, simply chuckling and saying “oh, well, maybe next year” just doesn’t cut it with me. As we all know, there’s only one response to such occurrences, and that’s tapping into one’s reptilian brain and saying and doing stuff that a caveman would probably say and/or do. If your team gets booted out of the playoffs, and you DON’T break glass, use profanity loudly or set something on fire, you have no business in my culture, amigo.

Buzzfeed -- Next to Reddit, probably the worst thing about the Internet I can think of. In the long term, Buzzfeed is probably worse, because as awful as Reddit may be, they at least make users say a FEW words in the English language before posting whatever stupid and offensive bullshit they find. With Buzzfeed, we’re watching the slow elimination of language altogether, with animated .GIFS and image macros slowly beginning to replace the concept of “sentences” and “paragraphs” as forms of human communication. Perhaps this is the first step in the long, painful process of the written word deteriorating back into pictographs; 30 years from now, the all electronic-version of “The New York Times” will probably supplant “journalism” with “connect-the-dots” and “color-by-number” infographics.

People that use the term “Straw Man” as a political euphemism -- I’ve never encountered a person that’s used the term “straw man” before that WASN’T a pretentious, smug, self-congratulatory spunk-head. If you ever hear someone refer to an oppositional stance as such, take note that you are assuredly in the company of assholes.

Can you spot the incredibly overrated director in this sea of Elvis impersonators?

Quentin Tarantino -- Mostly, for the part about him being Quentin Tarantino.

Civil War Reenactors -- What a boring ass war to dedicate one's spare time to. It's just a bunch of old white dudes, with white beards, running around in blue and brown and pretending to stab each other; I know, that sounds a little cool in principle, but if you've ever seen a Civil War reenactment in person, you know that it's incredibly underwhelming. Why not start staging reenactments of Vietnam instead? At least that one had Chinook helicopters and Punji sticks in it...

White People That Claim Indian Ancestry -- Sometimes referred to as "The Billy Jack Syndrome," this occurs when people who are whiter than a mayonnaise snowflake attempt to reinforce their inherent "Americanism" by claiming to have a certain percentage of Native American blood flowing through their veins. You know, because being 1/64th Choctaw completely negates the other 63/64ths of you being "Anglo-Saxon Dickhead," somehow.

People that are always complaining about modern society, that never offer any constructive solutions as to how to remedy those same problems -- I mean, they are just the worst.

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Why I Refuse To Acknowledge Anorexia as a Real Disease

Why body image afflictions of the like are symptoms of consumer excess, not psychological dysfunction

Apparently, we here in the States have a problem with body image.

It’s a rather ironic predicament, no doubt, seeing as how half of the country is overweight and a nearly a third of the population qualifies for status as obese. Compounding that is the notion that “food security” levels are diminishing across the country, with some urbanized areas experiencing under-reported “food riots” like something out of the Egyptian uprisings. And there - within the poles of an increasingly starving population and a diabetes-savaged majority - there’s the issue of “anorexia”; a “disorder”, as the headline above tells you,  that is something I refuse to recognize as real social malady in any regard.

Of course, if you did nothing but kick back and soak up think tank reports all day, you would think that every female under the age of 30 in the country is saddled with a psychologically-skewed concept of self. Despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of females of all ages are considered “overweight” in the U.S., we’re still being assailed by almost weekly reports about the “growing” dangers of anorexia - a made-for-Oprah social pandemic that, as our children’s massively expanding guts sort of tell us - isn’t anywhere near as problematic or commonplace as we’re hearing.

Alas, “anorexia” is one of those plights that never really seems to dissipate from national discourse, primarily because people, I imagine, want something to talk about in hushed, concerned tones instead of tackling the nation’s real epidemic of surging obesity and childhood diabetes. That, and it gives feminists and other cultural barnacles the opportunity to do what they do best - blame all of the nation’s ills on a heteronormative, male-centric media hegemony.

It always strikes me as a little funny - and then, horrifically ironic - that so many activists, advocates and irked fatties are so quick to blame media images for the relatively atypical instances of anorexia that do occur. Per the self-knighted moral crusaders of America, teen-centric beauty magazines and television producers are at fault for young women thinking they are unattractive (or as some generally unattractive people are prone to quip, “setting an unrealistic standard for beauty”), because they imbibe such cultural texts and develop distorted body images due to prolonged exposure to said products.

Oddly enough, those some concerned critics and commentators never seem to note that those magazines and television programs are pretty much paid for by mega-conglomerates, most of which have their hands in one business or another that specializes in hawking decisively unhealthy foodstuffs to the general public. If you’re going to say that these conglomerates are psychologically prodding young women into eating disorders, then you at least have to give those same conglomerates props for offering said young women a solution set in the form of myriad fast food, junk food and soda pop corporate holdings.

Logically, the argument that media images have a “magic bullet” effect on young women in regards to eating disorders is one of those things that can be discounted as soon as you look at the official data and statistics, which say that, no, most young women are far, far from being underweight. In fact, most of them are in danger from the opposite end of the spectrum, perhaps indicating that commercial exposure to the food industry has a more pervasive and profound influence on our youth than ANY form of entertainment or media. And no, it isn’t unusual in the slightest that opponent of “hegemonic male media enslavement”/walking refrigerator Andrea Dworkin and her thunder-thighed underlings never noted that. At all.

That, and nobody seems to be keyed in on the aspect that anorexia nervosa is actually a credit to the functionality of our domestic food industries and delivery systems (whether or not this statement can survive once the Second Depression concludes, however, I cannot tell.) Where else in the world - a world, by the way, in which a good one third of its’ inhabitants are living below what the United Nations considers “the starvation line” - could such a psychological malaise arise? If I was a grad student looking to grab some attention (and probably some easy NEA grant money), I’d hypothesize that anorexia is actually a political statement about the over consumption of American goods as a whole, this new-wave form of social commentary that’s designed to be a “consciousness-raising” exercise for those in the know. Therefore, our barfing and starving daughters aren’t really suffering from a disease as much as they are making a symbolic protest about the excesses of capitalism and industry. Perception, they say, is the key to everything. In that, perhaps we should stop viewing anorexia as a social problem and accept it as a transgressive form of post-post-modern expressionism - lest we forget, there is that fine line between body modification and body mutilation, which makes piercing and tattooing socially acceptable while cutting and hair eating - oppressively, I might add - are not.

It’s not really coincidental that the first reported cases of anorexia nervosa were found in well to do, quasi-aristocratic families in England. Nor is it all that unusual that most anorexia sufferers in the United States are young women that grew up in upper middle class homes, where the notion of “food security” was such a foregone conclusion that “starvation” seemed less likely to occur to them than an alien abduction. Even now, a majority of anorexics in the U.S. share the joint commonality of being both females and beneficiaries of wealthy parentages - clearly, this anorexia is a disease of the privileged as opposed to the downtrodden, making it a bizarre exception to just about everything we know about modern medicine.

Isn’t it funny how anorexia seems to be the one disease that eludes the physically weak and the nutritionally deprived? Tuberculosis, pneumonia, scabies, rabies, dandruff - all plights that affect the poor and penniless, while being virtually alien diseases to the middle class (and absolutely unheard of amongst the wealthy). In subequatorial climates - where diseased both old and newfound fester like ticks on a sleeping hound - anorexia is apparently the ONLY disease on the planet that hasn’t taken a liking to an environment of poverty, weakened immune systems and technological backwardness. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this “anorexia” was the creation of guilt ridden elites - more or less a fad or fashion trend as opposed to a genuine disorder or ailment.

Of course, you can flip through the DSM and see in bold letters that the APA does indeed acknowledge “anorexia nervosa” as a "real" disorder, but if you asked me, the “disorder” is actually a symptom and not the genuine affliction itself. Odds are, if you talk to a person with anorexia, you’ll come to the quick conclusion that “not wanting to eat” is probably not their biggest psychological issue, as the disorder is almost always a corollary to other mental health issues, such as depression or stress. Because, heaven help us, it’s not like college and high school girls EVER suffer bouts of melancholy or frustration. I mean, ever.

To conclude this brief little rant, I cite, as all academics surely must when discussing the matter, that one episode of “Designing Women” where Delta Burke went back to her high school reunion and everybody made fun of her for being fat. For those of you that can’t recall the episode, it ended with Burke giving an impassioned speech about the plight of  famine-ravaged Sub-Saharan Africans, and how we here in the Americas ought to feel so much shame in worrying about our weight when people a couple thousand miles to our right are rotting underneath the sun while we pick extra pepperonis off our pizzas.

You know, it’s not often that you can site a cultural text starring Jeanine from “Ghostbusters,” that one dude from the “Mannequin” movies and that other Dixie Carter as absolutely nailing it when it comes to criticizing any kind of social construct, but dabnabbit, those perpetually broadcast Lifetime Television skirts were really onto something there.

All around the world, people have real problems, like starvation and warfare and landmines and pirates and tsunamis and marauding death squads.

And here in America, the only thing we have to worry about…is our weight.

Amazing, that anorexia: the only disease in human history that affects people based on their disposable income as opposed to their biochemistry…

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Behold...The Roo Mug!

An Analysis of a Convenience Store Phenomenon...

You may recall an episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer drives by a billboard advertising a clown college so many times that it’s literally all he can think about. Well, that may have been a cartoon, but I assure you - from personal experience - that just such an occurrence is an all-too-real phenomenon.

Case in point: The Roo Mug.

The Roo Mug. THE ROO MUG. For the last year of my life, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the words “ROO MUG” plastered in front of my eyes. Literally every time I’m on the highway, it’s a 100 percent, without-fail guarantee that I’ll encounter the phrase, in some incarnation or another. The Roo Mug, it is everywhere I go.

You may be wondering what exactly a “Roo Mug” is. Well, a “Roo Mug” is a travel-cup sold by a gas station here in the States called Kangaroo - as in, Kangaroo, the gas station / convenience store. Obviously, the logo for the franchise is a cartoon-ized marsupial, and just about everything the company hawks somehow has the suffix “Roo” tacked onto it. For example, some stores boast of a car wash service, entitled, you guessed it, a “Washaroo.” It was something I never really noticed - at all - until early last year, when the “Roo Mug” became an inescapable aspect of my existence. Every single Kangaroo that I drive past has about a million, billion signs in it and around it reminding travelers that, for the low, low price of just $1.59 USD, they too, can be the proud owner of a “Roo Mug.”

It’s on those blinking overhead signs, posted right beneath the gas prices. When you pull up to a gasoline filling station, you’ll see several cardboard displays promoting the cup. There are stickers, there are posters and there are cut-outs everywhere telling you about the “Roo Mug.” And somehow, I’ve STILL managed to run into a couple of stations that have erroneously advertised it as a “Roo Cup,” which proves once and for all just how remarkably little of a shit Americans give about their own surroundings.



After a couple of months of seeing signs for the cup, I got curious. After a half year, I became very, very intrigued. Three quarters of my way through the year, and I was downright obsessed with the damn thing. Roo Mug. Roo Mug. It’s easily one of the greatest two-syllable compounds I’ve ever heard. Roo Mug. Just say it aloud a couple of times. It’s like some sort of magical word, the kind of phrase you would hear a shaman chant right before making it rain or something. It sounds so whimsical and fantastical, yet post-modern and futuristic at the same time.

Roo Mug, Roo Mug. Can’t you hear a tribe of Amazons repeating it over and over while banging on drums made out of buckskin and solid mahogany? Roo Mug, Roo Mug. How can you not picture a platoon of multi-armed robots squealing the phrase like a warning siren as they charge over a mountain of post-World War III rubble?

After a solid year of nonstop exposure, I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. Not only did I HAVE to buy a Roo Mug, I was dead-set on making it my very first purchase of the new year. THIS was going to be the thing that set the tempo for the rest of 2012 - surely, if I got the ball rolling with affordable and convenient drink-ware this early on, everything else was destined to be cream cheese henceforth.

You know, you can learn a lot about a human being by what he or she has on his or her coffee mug. That emblem is something that is going to be, if nothing else, subconsciously associated with you by everybody in your daily life for as long as their communal memory serves operative. A lot of times, you’ll see people with those translucent coffee mugs that have pictures of their children wrapped around them, or maybe you’ll see a guy drinking out of a mug with the logo of a pro or college sports team on it. Right off the bat, you make the assumption that whatever’s on that cup is something that’s important to the person drinking out of that cup. Per, if you see someone sipping coffee out of a mug with a Dallas Cowboys star on it, you’d likely think that person was either from Dallas, has some sort of association with the Dallas area, or at the absolute least, some sort of admiration of the Dallas Cowboys organization. It says a lot about the person in question, without that person saying anything at all about themselves. And I think; what can you determine about a man and his faculties when you see him drinking out of a coffee mug with a kangaroo on it everyday?

I suppose the positive thing about purchasing a Roo Mug is that there’s almost a zero percent chance of the cashier thinking anything even remotely negative about you for buying it. If you ever want to hear some retail horror stories, try getting an earful from an ex gas-station attendant sometime - their yarns about bulk adult magazine and lottery ticket consumers are the kinds of tales that make most armed robbery stories sound downright placid by comparison. Compared to the aggregate shopper’s buying routines, some college kid buying a kangaroo-themed coffee mug out of ironical smarminess is the sort of thing that doesn’t even warrant a mildly batted eyelash.



As for the Roo Mug itself, it’s a pretty standard looking travel-mug. The plastic is rather solid (but not too solid,) and the lid is quite possibly the flimsiest piece of polyurethane shit that’s ever been shaped into something that resembles a circle. Getting the lid on and off is an absolute chore, and the little drinking spout - you know, the part where you flip open the cup so you can actually drink out of it - consists of this snapping case thingy that is gloriously outdated compared to modern sipping technologies. It really could be something out of the late 80s, if you really give the thing a good look-over…just, uh, ignore the url for the Bean Street Coffee company on the side of it, though.

I guess my biggest complaint about the Roo Mug isn’t the design of the cup, but the design on it. The Kangaroo logo isn’t exactly displayed prominently on the thing; in fact it seems as if the company logo is intentionally downplayed, so perhaps random passer-byers will think you’re drinking out of a more reputable coffee store container than some synthetic resin drink ware you picked up at a filling station for less than the price of a two liter soda. Instead, you get a very Starbucks-like coffee cup with the Bean Street logo on it, and the very Ah-nold sounding phrase “WE BREW IT. YOU DO IT.” plastered on the other side.

For less than two bucks, I suppose you could do a lot worse. It’s big enough to store the java necessary for your morning commute, but it isn’t so large that you’ll have about three quarters of a cup left by the time you pull into the parking lot. Supposedly, you get discounted refills every time you lug one of them into a Kangaroo station, but - come on, let’s be realistic - it’s not like you’re scoring premium Joe when you waltz into one of those franchises, either.

So, what’s the verdict, you may be asking? As it turns out, the Roo Mug - not exactly surprisingly - is really just a bunch of invented hype for something that’s really about as impressive as a mildly stumped toe. I really want to know just how much these gas stations are sinking into the promotional campaign for the mug now - is about $100 million too conservative a guess here? Maybe $200 million, or even a quarter of a billion? On the plus side, I guess it is rather easy to mold and put out something that’s only worth a few cents of plastic. It’s the marketing part, obviously, where things get interesting. Say what you will about the shoddiness of the product or the bluntness of the advertising, these Kangaroo folk are absolute winners with this one.

After all, they got $1.59 of my money, didn’t they?



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