Twenty-twelve has begun. Meaning the end of the world in the eyes of the misinformed, or a global, spiritual awakening(also in the eyes of the misinformed). For most of us, however, it’s a chance to almost quit smoking for ten days and begin rigorous exercise until at least January 20th. It is a chance to drop all of our bad habits and improve our standard of living with a New Year’s resolution. And in one month, when we’ve all failed our resolutions, it will be a chance not to feel guilty about abusing ourselves until next January, because next January, we will totally turn this life around.

But I’ve noticed a trend on the internet(narcissism’s cosmic egg). People everywhere are standing up and saying: “I don’t need a New Year’s resolution because I was born this way! Perfect! Blah! Blah, blah!”.

This attitude was doubtlessly sparked by mainstream media figureheads like my favourite, Lady(?) Gaga and an ocean of anti-bullying campaigns aimed at loving yourself.

Well I am here today to take a stand against the “love thyself, you are flawless” movement we see in today’s first world culture. Because you aren’t perfect. In fact, chances are, you’re pretty fucking imperfect. You are probably so riddled with psychological and physical flaws that you lose sleep at night, and looking in a mirror and saying “I love me!” isn’t going to change that. So let’s throw away this anti-improvement, ego-maniacal view of ourselves and work towards bettering our lives and the lives of those around us. It’s important to love yourself, yes, but this love should be your motivation to improve yourself, Not to idle the vehicle that is the self and say “Fuck my destination! This ditch is perfect, and I refuse to drive on the highway!”

So make a New Year’s resolution, stick to it as long as you can and if you fail, you fail in flaming glory. But at least you put your fucking foot on the gas.

A human experiences pain like no other creature on the planet. A human has complex, years long relationships. We have desires and fears that run deeper than any animal. Humans can look inside themselves and contemplate massively complicated situations and theories. A human can create things that are beautiful.

It’s easy to say that animals are more important when you live in North America or Europe, or any other 1st world country. It’s really easy to shout from the sidelines at the people being slaughtered and tell them “But puppies are more innocent than you!”

But you have not experiences what they are going through. You and the people you know and love are not dead or dying. How can you say a dog is more innocent? Do you know what these people have done? Are you saying everyone killed in a flood or a roadside bomb kind of deserved it? To say a puppy’s life is more important than a human’s is disgusting and makes you morally fucking crippled.

I don’t know what kind of childhood memories are cached in any given woman’s temporal lobe, for I am not a woman(although I am occasionally a man who is woeful. If the term “woeman” was ever coined, I would fit the bill snugly). The fondest memories for us men, however, usually include the burning, stabbing, shooting, slashing, beating, stomping and destroying of anything we could find, alive or inanimate(including each other). As soon as a boy can throw a rock, he kills a squirrel. As soon as he can hold a hand lens, he kills an ant. Dad buys him a BB gun, life expectancy of anything that can run, crawl, fly or shit in a 4 block radius is slashed to a fortnight.

As soon as we reach adolescence, it’s each other. Fights in the schoolyard are driven by testosterone a lot more often than it’s gushy, female counter-hormone. When I myself was suspended in grade 7 for scrapping in the soccer field of my middle school, the first thing asked to me by my grim-faced father on the ride home was, “Well… Did you win?” (I didn’t.)

And now, with the introduction of more violent, more realistic simulations of mass murder on screen, The niche for male violence is being more widely accommodated everyday. The days of jumping barrels to save a princess from an astronomically implausible, hazardous situation are over. Now, we strap a light machine gun to our back and whip up 150lbs of 6 inch hollowpoint-induced quivering fucking human salsa. And it’s wicked. I love it. You love it.

The sound of angry Europeans over bluetooth in the morning. Sounds like victory.

Oh. Unless you happen to be female(50% percent chance there I think… Maybe 70% since you’re reading a fucking blog). Women(WARNING: generalization imminent) are repulsed by men’s violent tendencies. Men are barbaric, men are idiots, men are hateful, men are always angry, all wars are started by men, most serial killers are men. Why? Why are we so inclined to tearing everything to fucking pieces?

Well. Evolution. Let’s put some perspective on this. In any given village, any time over say, 5000 years ago, men hunted, women gathered and took care of children. Everyone knows this. Men would go out(with friends) and hunt wild animals for everyone to eat. And, of course, there were no fridges then, so anything hunted would have to be eaten pretty much immediately, and then… More hunting.

Did you read that? Men are genetically and evolutionarily engineered to kill a living animal every day. That’s right. We are supposed to kill something every single fucking day.

When was the last time you killed anything, guys? Yeah, I can’t remember either.

That’s a lot of pent up, murderous energy waiting to explode from every orifice. And as much as I love a trip to the grocery store, I just feel it doesn’t possess the same, viscerally pleasing feeling as getting together with a group of friends and tearing into a 6 tonne Wooly Mammoth with sharpened sticks until it bleeds to goddamn death.

But with motion blurs added, it’s a close one.

So, until we live in a post-apocalyptic, nuclear wasteland and have to lobotomize mutated pack rats with a high powered rifle for a snack, You should probably let your spouse crush a little Call of Duty once a day.

It’s no great mystery that, when a foreign movie is reproduced for American audiences, it is consequentially destroyed. The American film industry (Ok, so that’s not fair, I am of course referring to the large production companies) is about two things: Tits and a body count. Anytime an exceptional foreign film is rewritten, re-shot and redistributed in the western world, it will have the sex/violence knob turned up about 6 degrees (hours of tedious calculations resulted in those figures).

Enter “Let Me In”, the American remake of a Swedish horror/romance titled “Let The Right One In” (You’ll notice, hilariously, even the title is subtly dumbed down) in which a twelve year old boy- WAIT. I should warn you. If you’ve seen neither of these movies, don’t read the rest of this article, it will spoil it. You’ve been warned.

Anyways… A twelve year old boy falls in love with a twelve year old girl who moves in next door. She helps him overcome his bullying issues at school, it’s very adorable, also she’s a vampire. Think “Twilight” if it were a good movie; beautifully shot; and the actors were (not so)innocent, complex children as opposed to brooding, brooding, brooding teenagers devoid of a plausible personality.

But I digress, My intention is not to write a review, but a comparison.

Let us cut write to the shit (pun intended, that’s why I spelled it wrong).

SCENE BREAKDOWN:

1st Bullying scene

(Swedish) Bully mouths off protagonist, backs him into a locker, verbal abuse, flicks his nose, degrading.

(American) Bullies hit protagonist, throw him on the ground, swear incessantly, wedgy him until he cries, protagonist pisses himself. I have never seen bullying like that IRL.

Throat cutting scene

(Swedish) Man bends down in front of strung up victim in mid-wide shot, cutting not visible, only a view of the man’s back as he does it.

(American) Extreme close up of knife blade digging into prosthetic flesh, slicing across, blood cascades down victims face.

Acid scene

(Swedish) Man mutters something before tipping vile of acid up onto face, cutaway as soon as it hits flesh. No burning seen.

(American) Man pours acid on face, camera holds on close up as he screams and shakes. His skin slowly starts melting and smoking. He screams more.

Hospital climbing scene.

(Swedish) Nurse walks back into hospital and vampire is seen ascending in background. Stationary shot. Stunt double. No CGI. Subtle, you have to look to catch it.

(American) Nurse walks back into hospital, computer generated vampire starts choppily clawing up the hospital, hopping around. Camera pans up to make sure you saw. Scene goes on about 8 second longer.

Tunnel scene

(Swedish) Long, stationary, continuous wide shot of entire bridge scene. Eerie feeling. Truck loudly passes over top, irrelevant to scene but builds tension. Vampire jumps, some CGI I believe, takes him down within 4 seconds. snaps his neck with remorse. Cries with guilt for what she had to do to live.

(American) Camera follows man down tunnel, Girls face contorts demonically, eyes glow, tons of CGI, she smashes the man around the walls and bites his throat for a good 7 seconds before he falls twitching to the ground. She then looks at him with her ugly demon face and snaps his neck. No remorse. Runs away.

Burning woman scene

(Swedish) Woman asks doctor to open blinds because she is infected as a vampire and wishes to die. She bursts into flames. Real flames. Doctor panics and runs out. Cut away.

(American) Girl is drinking her own blood from her arm. Her eyes go red, Nurse accidentally opens blinds, not knowing she is a vampire. Vampire girl screams and her skin starts going red. Blood pours out of her mouth. She bursts into CGI flames. Then the nurse gets too close and she bursts into CGI flames. They both dance around screaming for a long time before finally dying.

Now those aren’t all the differences, just the ones I remember. The American film also introduced religious aspects that were not in the original. His dad is now a ‘mean atheist’ telling him not to believe all the ‘religious crap his mom tells him’. Because America has to make everything about Christianity, naturally.

So if you’ve seen the original. Spare yourself the trauma of the remake. I can tell you that it is not worth watching. Right now.

I confess that I have postponed this article. I don’t know if my procrastination was due to my desire not to swim in the mainstream of popular culture, or if I was afraid to lend anymore undeserved attention to a horrifically dressed, former stripper. Maybe I’ve just been lazy; The thought of blogging altogether turning me off. But I have pushed it back to it’s absolute breaking point. I must be heard.

Lady Gaga… Hmm.

Say the name to anyone on the street and you will get a black and white dichotomy of opinions.

“She’s a dumb fucking slut who dresses like a slut and dances like a slut. Her music sucks. Also, she looks like a synthetically produced, sparkly, cybernetic philanderer (robot slut)”

“She is the most creative, powerful woman in popular culture. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks. She is of the uppermost independence; A role model for all ages of women” - Usually phrased less intelligently. I can’t turn mine off for the purpose of example, however. I’m just too much of a genius.

You see, here’s my problem with the latter statement:

Lady Gaga does care what you think. She cares dearly what you think. If she didn’t care what you thought, she would be on stage in PJ’s and a wife beater. Possibly a matte grey hoodie a few sizes too big, because it’s comfortable.

Instead, we are graced with this.

Pictured: A woman who doesn’t care whether you pay attention or not.

This picture shows three things:

1. Red

2. An uninterested man in the background, most likely dragged to the MMVA’s by his girlfriend, or distracted by a topless, underage decoy in the audience.

3. A woman on stage who is just not quite saying, “Look at me! Look at me! Hey! Hey! Look! Hey, look at me! Please look at me… Please, God, look at me… Are you looking? Please… I wasn’t loved a lot as a kid.”

Lady Gaga loves attention. And she gets attention by being purposely outrageous, in anyway possible. Just watch her music videos that go under the guise of creativity and controversy by simply being ridiculously nonsensical  and intentionally objectifying.

And, by the way, controversy is no longer controversy when done simply for the lone sake of controversy(see ‘attention grabbing’ again).

A girl who dresses like a psychotic, back alley prostitute(that I wouldn’t pay for) and sings about riding men’s cocks like it’s another daily trip to the shitty costume store is not independant, nor a role model for women. Any self-respecting woman, who is fighting for any sort of equality or against objectification should be offended by her existence(but I am only a man, so correct me if I’m wrong, ladies).

And finally… The thing that bothers me, possibly the most, out of all of this…

Madonna. Everything she does has been done before. By Madonna. You will even hear people call her “The new Madonna” or “Our era’s Madonna”. The only problem here being: The reason Madonna made it was because she did it first. Doing something groundbreaking after someone already did it 20 something years ago negates the fact, does it not? Or does simply cranking the sexual content and ridiculousness of something that’s already been done make it an original artistic voyage?

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe she really is a self-sufficient, culturally phenomenal genius.

But I’m still going to bank on robot slut.

So upon arriving home(to the internet) today, and preparing to burn my day away on Facebook and DB, I was struck by something that I wasn’t prepared for. I’ll sum it up in a headline:

Twisted Girl Throws Puppies in River **This video contains scenes of repeated animal cruelty**

AHEM. Well that’ll put a damper on a great Monday.

In this video, a blond Caucasian girl in a red hoodie (I didn’t get a look at the face to tell if she was hot or not) muttering a foreign language (or possibly terrible English) is seen picking up black and white, adorably spotted puppies from a bucket and tossing them into the swirling, ice cold torrent of nature’s hate for defenseless, newborn animals (a river).

Presumably they all drown. Very sad If you’ve never, ever been to a farm in your life (not even once) where they drown, strangle and chop the heads off of runts-of-the-litter every goddamn day. In no way do I condone this, but I’m trying to portray it in a different light. Assuming this girl was not from a farm, and was doing it for fun, then yes, she is a sick little bitch who should be counseled. But let’s take a look at some of the comments from the totally-not-sick people of the internet, condemning her organic, fast ball, canine dispatching techniques.

“tie her tubes so she can never reproduce. She’ll treat kids that way too.”

“Kill the bitch”

“HOLY SHIT!!!!! This girl needs to be identified immediately, ya know Dahmer started out like this too; killing animals. I too have been around since Ogrish and this is by far the most horrible thing I have ever seen someone do; esp by a “child”. Ive seen it all from the beheadings of the chechnyan soldier, nick berg etc to the arab dude getting impaled in public.
She needs to be sterilized, and imprisoned. There are few more things Id like to see done but I will not post…”

Wow, they seem angr- Wait did you read that last one?

“this is by far the most horrible thing I have ever seen someone do; esp by a “child”. Ive seen it all from the beheadings of the chechnyan soldier, nick berg etc to the arab dude getting impaled in public.”

Are you fucking with me? A girl throwing puppies in a river trumps humans getting their heads sawed off and impaled? And then I read this last week’s headlines.

“7 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan”

“Gunmen shoot dead Mexican Mayor”

“Floods devastating Pakistan”

Human beings. Most of them innocent, are dying all over the fucking globe, no none cares. No one looks up. Murder everywhere. Doctors needed in disaster zones. Children dead. Women dead. Men dead. Elderly. All dead or dying, and the Western world is outraged by 6 puppies drowning in eastern Europe?

So what’s worse about the video? Is it that you had to actually witness it? Is it because they’re cute? Or, dare I say it, is it because you view the far away, foreign people of this world as less than dogs? Less than fucking dogs?

I think it’s about time you all gave yourselves a psychological examination.

By the way, here’s the video. I shouldn’t have to warn you it’s graphic.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bb4_1283184704

All women are whores. Every single last one. You talk to any man who has experienced a recent romantic thrashing of that emotional red valve in his chest, and that is what you’ll hear.

Don’t give your heart to a woman. Ever. Not once. Not never. Because, even though this is the sixth relationship in the last 4 years that they’ve grimly witness dancing clockwise into the sewage pipes of the past, it’s going to be the last one. Because girls only want sex. And muscles. And dick(see ‘sex’).

All men are pigs. Disgusting, filthy, sloppy, man-whores whose sole purpose in life is to pursue, pounce on and plunge their man hood into the widest and most abundant variety of vagina walking the face of God’s green earth and if your sappy, female, XX chromosome heart gets broken then fuck you, you should have known better and jumped out of the way.

There you have the woman’s argument. You see, a girl came up to me at work the other day and engaged me in a conversation. It went like this:

Girl: Kevin, why do you guys do it?

Me: Do… Do what?

Girl: Why do guys lie?

Me: Why do girls lie?

Girl: Well I don’t lie.

Me: Well Neither do I…

*Radio Silence*

The conclusion I have come to(and I came to it a long, long time ago. Making me far more intelligent than your average anyone, but you already knew that) is that human beings are whores, liars and cheaters. All of us. Everyone.

Humans want sex. Sex is to make babies. Babies are pretty great because they prevent the world of man from having the curtains closed on it.

What makes you an honorable person in a relationship isn’t what you feel, or what you desire, it’s how you convey and control those desires. And from my experience, men and women are about equally matched in their ability(or inability) to do so.

So put your fucking guns in the ground and, instead of condemning 50% of an entire species because you got hurt, try meeting someone who is better than the other someones. Yes it’s going to be harder, but if you want the recognition of your “soulmate” to be a cakewalk, you deserve to be fucked and chucked.

A much wiser person than me once said: “The only common denominator in all of your shitty relationships is you”.

Don’t know who to credit, but it’s not mine.

When we leave our homes to go about our daily tango of errands, we are bombarded by images. Not billboards, photos or magazines, I’m talking about real things happening to and with real people. Maybe you see a pregnant lady walking her cat (because she can), or a tree frog in the clouds. Maybe you see that same homeless beggar at Lougheed Skytrain Station and tell him ‘no’ like you always do.

Or maybe you see something that cuts you deeper than the most irrevocably horrific images.

A public display of affection.

Repulsive.

PDA’s have become almost universally frowned upon in the modern world. No one wants to stand there while you nuzzle your boyfriends chest and say something cute, yet thoughtless like “omg it’s like hugging a giraaaaaaffe, you’re so taaaaaaallllll”. And no one wants to hear you suck uvula two rows ahead when they’re trying to watch “Toy Story 3” alone for the third time.

Oh did I say “no one”? I meant to say “angry, lonely single people”.

Yeah, I turned that around fast, hey? You thought I was going to bitch about PDA’s and you could read and laugh and relate and continue to hate free love until you die.

But I’m not here to ream on PDA offenders. I’m here to ream on you.

I want you to come up with one good reason why PDA’s are so quick to be condemned. Now once you’ve done that I want you to trace these reasons back to one core cause.

Now if the core cause of your animosity is one of the following, disregard it or blame yourself:

“I’m jealous”

“It’s just offensive (so no reason at all)”

“I’m a heartless void of emotion’s blackest end of the spectrum and I want to see sexuality and affection purged from the living world.”

See, chances are it was the first one. Two people kissing on the bus isn’t hurting you. Hell, watching two people fuck on the bus wouldn’t hurt you, except to remind you that you aren’t the one getting fucked.

So next time you get offended by a PDA, instead of verbally protesting, stop talking and start finding someone who will do it to you.

And you’ll love it.

The Congo. Honestly. But it’s too dangerous…