This is the unfortunate result when marketing executives try to appropriate youth culture that they don’t understand. Witness this McDonalds ad, cheerfully featuring a young man that wants to fuck a Double Cheeseburger.
Found on ESPN.com via World Champion.
It’s not that I take delight in watching bad things happen to people. It just that I really like it when assholes whose political posturing really hurts people get exposed as total frauds. That said…
Richard Cohen, an influential figure in the “ex-gay” movement, has been permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association (ACA) due to ethics violations, according to an ACA document.
How bad does the entire ex-gay movement have to look before people stop giving them air time? How many “ex-gays” have to be caught in gay bars? How many counselors have to be booted out of their professional associations? How many times do gay people who have tried it have to insist that it has absolutely no effect? It’s “counseling” without any results, it’s “science” without any proof. It’s also a crock of shit, but yet they’re not treated like their intellectual brethren in the Flat Earth Society. So what do they have to do for the media to stop giving them credibility?
I’ve been busy lately. New sites are getting ready to come online, and established ones are getting a bit of a facelift. All in all things are looking good.
Today sucks—but don’t take my word for it. A researcher at Cardiff University, Cliff Arnalls, says he can scientifically prove that January 24th is the worst day of the year.
I’ve always known this, because my best buddy Camp has a birthday on January 15th, and it’s been consistently bad nearly every year of his life. Each year we look to it with trepidation, both Camp and his friends and family alike. It really sucks to have a birthday around this time of year. Just look at this picture of Camp on his birthday last year1.
At the BBC article covering Arnalls’ revelation, they printed suggestions and comments from BBC readers regarding the lousy mood that January—particularly this part—ushers in. There were no shortage of suggestions for how to pass the time, though, from the good: “Exercise and kisses really are a great boost!” suggests an Amsterdam man; to the idiotic: “You yellow-toothed limeys really know how to whinge. Come on over to Florida—January is great,” the suggestion of the ultimate red-state southerner, a fellow form Pensacola. For what it’s worth, I live about thirty minutes from Pensacola, and it sucks here too.
It sucks here too because January doesn’t just suck because it’s cold. It’s hot here in the Pensacola area and it still sucks. It especially sucks because we know straight 90º marks all summer long are coming, and we’d like to enjoy the cold air while it lasts. We’ll be paying hundreds of dollars a month to have it pumped in in a few months.
But whether it’s bone-chillingly cold or unseasonably hot, January really sucks because of the energy drop after the holidays. We spend months in anticipation of a few days in late December. Our houses are tremendously decorated, we go on shopping sprees for our loved ones and ourselves, and we end it in an orgy of food and presents and parties.
Then January rolls around, your friends and family go back to their homes, we all go back to work, and we realize that the paycheck we’re due for on the 25th is mostly going to go toward covering our debts. So we’re broke, mostly failing on our new year’s resolutions, bored again at work or school, bitching about the weather, and too tired from getting back into our routines to do anything to make us feel better. Not to mention the crappy food we’re eating, particularly compared to the bounties we had laid out for us exactly a month ago. And if your holidays weren’t great—well, especially then—January is even more depressing, as you mull over your unmet expectations.
And last, but not least, for 55 million Americans, we just had to sit through the coronation of our errant prince George. Oh, and there’s that place… you know, that place we heard a lot about last year… that we’re going to hear progressively less about this year as it descends into a giant shit storm…
So, January sucks. But as one keen lady from Bedfordshire, UK, put it: “At least we are alive to see another day and sort things out.” Here’s to that.
1 Ok, that wasn’t really taken on his birthday, but I’ve been wanting to use that picture for a while.
I just got on iTunes and downloaded the self-titled release from Franz Ferdinand, the vaguely (and sometimes unambiguously) queer group of Scots that are such media darlings at the moment. No, I’m not here to give my review of a nearly-year-old album that everyone’s already heard. I finally bought it because I was sick of listening to my crappy MP3s I downloaded from Gnutella. File sharing is fun and all, but one song in particular, Come On Home, was so corrupted that I couldn’t even get a jist for how the song goes. Another, Tell Her Tonight, sounded like a 10khz encoding of a demo recorded in a basement. I got fed up tonight and fed iTunes the required $9.99 for a “Special Edition” of the album with five bonus tracks: This Fffire, Van Tango, Shopping for Blood, All for You, Sophia and Words So Leisured.
Getting the extra stuff is great, but I can’t believe the difference in quality. MP3s always seemed “good enough,” and usually they aren’t that bad. I suppose the benefit of downloading the MP3 first is that once you get the real thing, it’s like getting all new music. So I guess I’m sold, then.
As an aside, I’d like to quote this post on the songmeanings.net entry for Michael.
Look, don’t get me wrong. I heart vagina. But this song is just really, really good. Honestly, I wish it weren’t so difficult NOT to sing along. Funny thing, that one of the best songs on the cd has the most divisive lyrics. Just imagine a girl named Michael. Have you ever met a girl named Michael? No? Well, tell yourself she exists, and she is hell of beautiful.
And has stubble, I guess.
I’m sorry, but the file you’re looking for wasn’t where you looked. Use the search function (conveniently located up there in the light blue bar), and perhaps you will find your joy.
Can anyone help me out with the correlation between that headline and that photo?
Found on—where else—Focus on the Family.
Unless you’ve never been here before or are remarkably unperceptive, I am Matt Thomas has undergone a bit of a remodeling. Note the new roomier window, with more space for my incoherent ramblings. Ogle the streamlined sidebar, which now takes up a minimum amount of space while keeping the navigational features you need. Delight in the new masthead, in glorious new colors. And don’t forget the new typeface—Lucida Grande throughout if you’re on a Mac; Lucida Sans Unicode (thanks to Jeff) if you’re afflicted with Windows. Or the oh-so-unfortunately-old-school informative a:links (links you’ve been to are a different color than the links you haven’t). Even the favicon.ico is new and improved. And to top it all off, a brand-spankin’ new Photo section, now with shorter URLs, bigger images and more pithy captions.
Oh, and that fact that it’s all valid XHTML 1.0 Strict doesn’t hurt.
I’m sure there’s a few bugs that still need to be worked out, so feel free to leave your comments and concerns below.
Upon further consideration, Steve Jobs realized that Apple’s bold decision to locate its prototype retail store in Kuwait City might have been a mistake.
Today we got news that our family is going to be able to do something we’ve wanted to do for a while—buy our family farm house in Demopolis, Alabama. My great grandfather John Miklic built the house after immigrating to the United States from Slovenia. He built the house, then traveled back to Slovenia to bring his wife to the States. My grandmother and her six siblings grew up in the house. After my great-grandfather died, my great uncle Johnny took over the house along with my grandparents, raising cattle, pigs and chickens, tending the garden, and keeping the house in great shape for us kids, who came as often as possible. I spent many a summer in Demopolis with my grandparents and cousins.
As time passed Uncle Johnny wasn’t able to open up the house as often, and aside from a few large family gatherings, we haven’t been up there in a while. A few months ago, everyone in the family received a letter from Uncle Johnny telling us that he had decided he could no longer keep after the house, and that he intended to sell it. My mom sprung into action, rallying together her brothers and sisters to pool the money needed to buy the property so that it wouldn’t leave the family.
To celebrate the occasion, I’ve published a set of photographs from the house throughout the years. Gotta love that 80’s fashion.
