rightas[rayne]

Okay, it’s not that I really dislike them – they just annoy me.  But, everybody annoys me.  So either I dislike everyone (which is a distinct and plausible explanation for why I’m ready to kick people in their collective faces most days) or they just really REALLY annoy me.  Probably both.

Anyway.

It could be misconstrued as jealousy, I suppose.  I don’t have enough hair product or eyeliner to be in Green Day and my clothes happen to usually be the correct size.  But it’s not.  Pure annoyance.  To be fair, when it comes down to it, I really actually dislike MTV.

I remember a time when the “M” in MTV stood for Music and not Motherf*ckereverythingonthischannelmakesmewanttogougemyowneyeballsoutwithafork
onlytoeatanddigestthemsoIwon’thavetowatchthissh*tanymore.  They still pretend to, approximately once a year, with the Video Music Awards.  What “Video Music” is, I don’t know, unless a dyslexic came up with that title.  In 2005, Green Day won some of those, though.

By “some of those” I of course mean, like, f*cking all of them.

Here’s where I think I don’t actually dislike Green Day and they just annoy me to the point of ranting…rantation…rantness…ranticlating.  I don’t dislike their music.  The problem, however, is neither does EVERY 12 YEAR OLD IN AMERICA, apparently.  Which, let’s be honest, are really the only people that watch MTV religiously, then and now.  So Green Day won awards in categories that, to this day, my college education has not provided me a definition of.  The difference in the categories “Best Cinematography” and “Best Art Direction” mean about as much to me as the difference between “PNEUMONO­ULTRA­MICRO­SCOPIC­SILICO­VOLCANO­CONIOSIS” and “HEPATICO­CHOLANGIO­CHOLECYST­ENTERO­STOMIES“.  Actually, I take that back.  I might care what the latter two words mean at some point.

At any rate, Green Day won a lot of awards.  All night long.  It seriously got to the point where I half-expected them to announce the category of “Best Video Having Nothing To Do Whatsoever With Green Day, Its Members or Anything Pertaining to Either the Words Green or Day” followed by Paris Hilton, Ashley Simpson or whoever the current blonde one-blank-stare-above-being-a-vegetable was during 2005 announcing “AND THE WINNER IS GREEN DAY!”  That, my friends, is annoying.

When you’re annoying, you breed annoyance.  In Green Day’s case, it’s bred into these same 12-year olds – both physically and just mentally – that buy into this crap.  Not just buy into this crap, but reeeeeealllly buy into this crap.  I’m reasonably certain Green Day’s “American Idiot” came out in the following editions on iTunes -

Deluxe Edition
Special Edition
Deluxe Special Edition
Specially Deluxe Edition
Edition Edition
iTunes-Only Bonus Tracks (read:Too Terrible to Actually be on the Album) Edition
You’re About to Pay Another $12.99 Because This One Track You Want Says “Album Only” Edition
There’s A Reason This Album Is Called American Idiot, You American Idiot Edition

Which people bought up as if somehow iTunes would run out of stock on electronic copies of albums soon.  These kind of sales prompt all sorts of atrocities like multiple concert tours with no new material and a f*cking musical.  A musical.  About an album.  In which the lead singer of the band stars.  Which makes it just an even more shi**y concert.  Not to mention VH1 Storytellers.

Ah yes, talk about a terrible concert.  Who DOESN’T want to listen to stripped down versions of punk-ish power chord rock songs, dabbled in between 45 minute speeches about songs that took 3 minutes to write?  The big problem with things like this, though, is that they allow the “intimate audience” to ask questions.  The “intimate audience” is of course comprised of the same people responsible for all eleventy threeve versions of “American Idiot,” including a particular winner of a human being who asked the following question:

“Hey guys.  I was just wondering…Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I love that song.  Is that a real place?”

adflkjfmvmaoakfahagmcoqoqeppqaja,x,ddd,

That was me.  Literally punching my keyboard, wishing it was that gentleman’s face.  Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  At this point, I wish time travel was possible.  The first thing I would do, right before inventing Facebook before that curly-headed goober and telling my teenage self that hair product was a good thing, is travel to that idiot and scream “SERIOUSLY?!” in his face.

First, you’d have to believe that the idiot that NAMED the Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a distant relative to the idiot that named the Video Music Awards, and happens to live in a town called We Put the Type of the Road Before the Name of the Road-ville.  I’d have to Map Google it, but this would assumably put the Boulevard of Broken Dreams somewhere between Street of 5th and Avenue of Grant.

Second, you’d have to naturally assume the Mayor of WPTTOTRBTNOTR-ville changed the name of his fair city to Let’s Name Our Ass Backwards Roads After the Most Depressing Things We Can Think of City, which would now put the Boulevard of Broken Dreams between Parkway of Abysmal Hopelessness and Plaza of Depression, Denial, Dyslexia and Other Assorted Negative Things That Start With ‘D’.

So yeah, you know what?  I stand behind my original title.  I dislike you, Day Green Green Day.  I dislike you winning a gajillion awards that don’t mean anything, anyway.  I dislike you coming out with more versions of your album than compilations of Beatles Greatest Hits.  I dislike your fans breathing my air.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just closed on a great new house that I have to get moving into.

It’s on the corner of Turnpike of Better Than You and Alley of Awesome.

xRayne

Contrary to what you may believe, I haven’t always been this awesome.  When I was a child, my awesomeness was slightly more contained, due to my pre-pubescent state.

Also, higher-pitched.

Not unlike Jesus, Hercules, Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump and O.J. Simpson before me, I had to go through a trial to prove I was ready to accept the awesomeacity laid before me in my lower-pitched post-pubescent life.  We weren’t talking about merely being the savior of all Christianity, the star of a cheesy Disney movie, having magic legs or being acquitted by our fair justice system (read: he’s f*cking guilty) here.  No, no.  I was to accept the responsibility of being me. Awesome, awesome, witty, charming, handsome, hilarious, modest me.

I’ll pause here to let the momentousness of the situation sink in.

What sort of tribulation would one as awesome as I were to be have to go through?  Would I have to lose my legs in Vietnam?  No, too costly to reenact.  Shall I do…whatever it is that Hercules had to do?  Nay, my friends.  Nay, I say.  What I had to go through was far worse.  It was a horror so unimaginable that if you tried to imagine it, your conscious would take a human form, put on black gloves and kill you and your lover with a knife before speeding away in a white Bronco.  Allegedly.  What could this horror upon horrors be, you ask?

My 8-year-old self got a splinter.  In his ass. (more…)

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  When it comes to women, men are stupid.

Shocking, I know.

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Let’s just get this out of the way now:

I’m aware that KFC, as a concept, is no health food mecca.  While I certainly won’t be starring in any commercials like that idiot Jared…Jarred…Jarod…whatever, it IS possible to go there a eat a respectable meal, calorie-wise.  Which is what I was trying to do.  So lay off, Mr. Notlayingofferson.

Anyways.

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I get off my plane. I’ve just landed in Indianapolis after flying in a plane only slightly smaller than the last one Buddy Holly flew in. Without hesitation, I walk immediately to where the baggage claim carousels are. I check the screens and stand in front of the carousel my bag is to come out on. Then, I wait.

And wait. And wait.

Considering the fact that I rode in on a cropduster, I recognized the other ten-ish people that were on my flight. They all got their bags and left, leaving me standing at this carousel. Standing there watching the same “FRAGILE” sticker-laden suitcase (Inner monologue: Why in fuck’s name would you even check this bag if it’s fragile enough to put twelvity-five fucking FRAGILE stickers on it?!) circle around ten times.

At this point, it’s been close to 45 minutes. So, I trudged over to the airline’s baggage office with a giant sneer on my face. Directly inside the door, sitting by itself to the left was a bag.

My bag.

Somehow, between my brain and my mouth, my thought of What. The. Fuck. turned into: “Excuse me, I think that’s my bag.”

A woman who, by the tone of her voice, hated her life much more than you or I ever could responded, “Yeah, we’ve been paging you for awhile.” At this point, I was angry enough that my thoughts did not filter before they reached my mouth: “You realize how your paging system works, right? I heard nothing about my name the entire time I walked through the airport, nor was my name, which admittedly has 4 whole syllables in the entire thing, posted on the Visual Paging boards. How long has my bag been here?”

“Almost a couple hours.”

“…I landed 45 minutes ago.”

“Look, sir, it was out there, the caroseul stopped, we took it. We don’t take it if there’s anyone standing out there.”

“I was standing out there.”

“Not two hours ago, you obviously weren’t.”

“That would be because I was slightly on an airplane at the time.”

“Well, then, obviously, sir, your bag arrived before you did.”

That’s right, you read correctly: My bag got a direct flight to Indianapolis; I on the other hand, had a layover in Chicago.

When you’re a Personal Hero, there are all sorts of classes, seminars, keynote lectures, and other such gatherings to attend – which would have a very negative profit margin when you think about it, considering I’m the only Personal Hero in existence.  Anyways, naturally, these events are for the bettering of my heroism.

Of course, when you’re a Personal Hero, which is in itself a career – you don’t exactly have….another job.  At all.  That pays anything.

So, in lieu of the latest seminar – A Very Important and Not Boring Seminar Over Heroes, Heroism, and the Many Ways of Conjugating the Word Hero – I went to what is obviously the second best avenue of furthering one’s self through the purchase of useless shit – THE DOLLAR TREE!(tm)

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I’ve decided to live-blog my experience with trying to download Windows XP Service Pack 3 on a clean install of Service Pack 2. I figured I’d have time, since I’ll probably be at the computer here for another 3 days or so. Updates at the top!

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