however, with the good, always comes the bad.
and there’s a lot of bad.

being around this many people every day, you get to see just how popular trends and styles are among the masses. i have a problem with a lot of them. trends in general piss me off because it’s kind of a herd mentality thing.
like uggs.

my general distaste for uggs has ALWAYS been overtly clear.
[note: when i type the word uggs into this text file, it changed it automatically to UGH. hilarious.]

my office is right by an all female dorm for a university in midtown so needless to say i see a lot of uggs tucked into sweatpants which make the wearer look like they’d be better off standing in a row shoring up hillsides with their fucking treetrunk legs.

they are hideously unstylish. frumpy. useless in the snow. and contrary to popular belief they are not good for your feet as they offer no support. without hesitation if i could, i would set every single pair of uggs on the planet on fire, as well as the entire company — employees, buildings, factories, and everything else related.

also to note, as pictured here, the abominable crime against humanity that is leggings as pants. leggings as pants are about as attractive as they are flattering, which rings in at a solid 0%. somehow, going up the subway stairs, i am always directly behind some awful chick wearing leggings as pants and i can count the cellulite ripples in their asses as they heave their trunks up the steps. related keywords: cameltoe. fupa. saddlebags.

which brings me to sweatpants. sweatsuits? tracksuits?

whatever you’d like to call them. i loathe them with vitriol.
i’ve come to understand my hatred fully encompasses anything that you could / would wear to be comfortable around your own house. sweatpants, knit pants, velour tracksuits, pajama pants, shitty raggedy college sweatshirts that are two sizes too large. you look like walking shit in public wearing any of it. is it really that hard to fucking throw on a pair of jeans? christ.

also re: words across your butt. you’d have thought this had died out already. your ass is not ‘juicy.’ chances are if you’re wearing these pants, your wobbling rear has already squeezed out two kids and could use some support that velour cannot solely handle.

already mentioned briefly here but completely worthy of revisiting: useless and abnormally large eyewear.

you. look. like. a. fucking. unimaginable. incomprehensible. ASSHOLE.
every time i see some piece of shit rocking these like they’re god’s gift to alternative fashion i want to punch them in the face with a cinderblock.
who suddenly decided that they were cool?
i was forced to wear those when i was younger. i had a pair of huge frames that my parents picked out that i HATED, and when i look back at pictures of me when i was 9, i look exactly like some faggot hipster from brooklyn. thank fuck my dad threw a softball at my face and my fumbling ass didn’t know how to catch so they broke and i was finally able to pick out a different pair. thanks, dad.

on to what i call ‘mom pants’ as i’m not sure how else to address this disaster.

to be honest, i don’t really see that many people wearing these but judging on the frequency of mannequins that are wearing these in the windows of american apparel you’d think these were the biggest thing since slap bracelets. put these on and your ass will look a mile long.

and these.

every other woman, and i’m not exaggerating, is carrying one of these on the subway. i finally looked up the bag to see what the big deal was. turns out that this boring shapeless sack of flapping shit fucking costs $150. i can buy a regular tote bag that can carry just as much for $5. are you serious? i understand the aspect of mass appeal but if something is boring and expensive why do so many people own it?

a quick note about fur as it came back in a big way this winter and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. when done right it can look vintage chic and classy. when done wrong you look like a goddamned fraggle.

and lastly.
fucking. animal head hats.

these are suffering from the ubiquity of being sold on every corner in tourist areas in the city. which basically means every idiot is wearing one.

if you own one of these. let me be the first to tell to you: you are wearing an animal head. on top of your head.
just fucking end it.

+ end of year lists. top ten lists, top ten ‘top ten’ lists, years best [insert anything here]. i don’t give a shit. stop clogging up every website that i read with lists. i read all of these things already.

+ any and all news articles about snow. it’s winter. it snows. planes are cancelled. people’s plans get fucked up. this happens every year and every year the media flips such a fucking shit that you’d think it was the first time that we’ve encountered this phenomenon.

+ idiots. i think it’s my life’s special plan to constantly be surrounded by a variety of fools, dimwits, imbeciles, and god damn, fucking morons.

+ the fact that skins is being remade by mtv. it will never have anything close to the amazingness, the rawness, honesty and feeling of the original. fuck mtv.

+ not still being in mexico. not being not in new york city.

and a list of random things i also hate for no other reason than it makes me feel good to make it: people who stare like their mother never taught them manners, the term ‘toaster pastry,’ the words tummy, titties, and panties, small children kicking the back of your seat on a plane, small children screaming daddy 47 times in a row because their dad is tuned out playing on his stupid fucking ipad, small children in general, ipads partially because i don’t have one but mostly because i think they’re fucking stupid, people who are not adventurous eaters, tgifridays in union square [like, are you shitting me?] having to recant my holiday activities to a bunch of people who don’t actually give a shit but instead feel obligated to ask because it’s been twelve days since they’ve put their eyes on my face, not having enough time in the day to do everything that i want to and see everyone that i want to see, mice in my apartment, again i always say it because it continually pisses me off: our countries obsession with ‘celebrity’ gossip, the shit that dominos serves and hilariously calls ‘pizza,’ the fact that every band i love almost solely plays shows in europe, bruce springsteen, when you get really excited about something that doesn’t end up happening, uggs [i mean jesus christ…they're still around? news flash: they are FUCKING HIDEOUS], high fructose corn syrup masquerading as ‘maple syrup,’ things like ‘cheese product’ and ‘mechanically separated chicken,’ women who wear leggings as pants, l’esprit d’escalier, waking up three minutes before your alarm is set to go off, waking up when it’s dark and getting home when it’s dark, people who only update their facebook statuses with bullishit passive aggressive attention-seeking shit, justin bieber even though i don’t understand the appeal [although this is most likely because i'm not ten], youtube commenters, the term ASAP oh my god if i hear that one more time i’m going to fucking lose my mind, hip hop ‘dj’s’ shouting out their name, the year, and the name of the artist with 730 seconds of reverb in the beginning of songs SHUT THE FUCK UP, faggoty hipsters wearing ugly mismatched clothes on purpose YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE JUST STOP IT, the office [tv show, american], adam sandler, anybody who still says ‘that’s what she says’ and thinks they are the pinnacle of comedy, people who are too afraid to admit their opinions, herd mentalities, people who write paragraphs full of shit they expect someone to read, and hypocrites.

here’s some highlights. click the link to read the whole article.

It’s Not Art

First rule of design feedback: what you’re looking at is not art. It’s not even close. It’s a business tool in the making and should be looked at objectively like any other business tool you work with. The right question is not, “Do I like it?” but “Does this meet our goals?” If it’s blue, don’t ask yourself whether you like blue. Ask yourself if blue is going to help you sell sprockets. Better yet: ask your design team. You just wrote your first feedback question.

I Don’t Know Anything About Design

Who cares? Your customers probably don’t know anything about design either, and the project’s ultimate success rides on how they respond to it.

Let the design team be the design experts. Your job is to be the business expert. Ask them how their design solutions meet your business goals. If you trust your design team, and they can explain how their recommendations map to those goals, you’re fine. If you neither trust them, nor can they defend their choices it’s time to get a new design team.

Good vs Bad

Good feedback relates back to goals and user needs. Bad feedback is subjective and prescriptive.

Avoid personal preferences: “I hate green.” There is absolutely nothing I can do with that statement other than feel sorry for you because there are some very nice green things in the world. Like money—which you’re now wasting by giving me bad feedback.

Prescriptive feedback comes along the lines of “Move the buttons over here.” And, of course, everyone’s favorite: “Make the logo bigger!” These may, in fact, be excellent ideas, but if we talked about the problems you’re trying to solve with these prescriptive solutions we might come up with better solutions or possibly uncover a bigger problem in the overall design system.

they fucking suck.

have a nice day.

firstly: i’ve been listening to a bunch of fucking awesome old school swedish death metal lately. nihilist, carnage, entombed, dismember. taste in music is weird. i used to think that death metal, especially old school stuff, was too extreme for me [when i was like 16 and thought the black album was the end-all, be-all of music] but now all i’m doing is reaching back to the beginnings of the genre to scour for more. why did it take me this long to discover this shit? this current fascination led me to purchase choosing death and swedish death metal to learn more about the history….and yeah. it’s all super interesting. i recommend those two books if you’re into the subject.

one of the most intriguing things i learned via those books is that the death metal movements started out really really tiny…and people spread the word about bands that they liked by making tapes and mailing them to friends and people around the globe. how fucking awesome is that? it made me look at music blogs and sharing digital albums kind of differently…in essence we’re doing the same thing as they did back in the day…sharing music because we like it and we think it should be heard. obviously the audience we reach with a music blog is WAY broader and it doesn’t take as much time or personal effort to zip up a folder as it did to create a tape, pack it and mail it. in some ways i wish things were still analog…i miss the days where i get cool things in the mail. things that people took the time to make me. instead i just get bills and endless credit card offers. seriously, citibank? it’s every other day with this shit. save a fucking tree for once.

even more important than music, is food. i just have one thing to say about food right now: pork [all types, but especially pork belly] is the only god there is.

another random thought i’ve had lately is pondering the persistent and ignorant nature of comments on the internet. why the fuck do people feel like it’s necessary to be a fucking dick via comments on blogs? why is it that news stories and youtube videos bring out the one-celled paramecium brain humans? some of the shit i’ve read seriously make me question the quality of the education in this country. some of the shit isn’t even in english — nor can the ‘writer’ spell a SINGLE FUCKING WORD CORRECTLY. the same goes for the opposite: insane, inane praise. why are you gushing with emotion like everything is the most amazing shit ever? calm down. i feel like if you wouldn’t say something aloud to a person’s face, don’t say it at all.

speaking of the internet as real life, i finally broke down and joined the piece of shit that is facebook. mostly because i just recently went to israel [here's some photos if you want to see how fucking awesome it was], and i wanted to stay in touch with the people that i met. i realize it’s usefulness to stay in touch with people that live too far to see every day, but it’s still annoying. why is it that after you click ‘like,’ is there an option to ‘unlike’? shouldn’t it be fucking ‘dislike‘!? no wonder no one speaks english correctly. thankfully, not a single one of my friends plays ‘farmville.’ the tendency of facebook ads to mirror exactly what my thoughts are at any given time is fucking uncanny. like, get the fuck out of my brain.

a quick note about israel. i’m not going to jump into some sort of political discourse or pretend like i know everything because i went to the country for 10 days, but i just want to run down a quick list of things. the food is fucking amazing. the people are absolutely phenomenal. their bartenders are hot, and their beer is cheap and tasty. beaches in tel aviv rival almost any beach i’ve ever been to [which isn't that many.] the landscape is surprisingly diverse — i’ve gone from city to the coast to dry desert to highlands in a single day. the dead sea is completely overrated. unfortunately, not being a person of spiritual bent, all of the supremely religious sites in the country didn’t leave me particularly moved, but the holocaust museum and the military cemetary fucking destroyed me emotionally. i can’t wait to go back.

moving along: jersey shore and mad men [season 4] are current obsessions of mine. how the fuck can anyone be so enamored with two shows that are such polar opposites? i can’t say much about jersey shore that hasn’t been said already, but my god. and mad men, with it’s supreme attention to detail and subtle humor and character development…i’m glad i can say that i’m present during television history. this is a show that people will be talking about until television is dead, and possibly even after that.

i think that’s all i’ve got.

1. never, ever text and walk. we all do it, and we all deserve to be smashed by the car / truck / bicycle / obese person we failed to see in our paths.

2. in an open office environment, it is completely necessary to put your phone on silent. no one will want to look you in the face after they realize your custom ringtone is beyoncé’s ‘single ladies.’ failing to do so will result in termination of employment as well as residual public humiliation.

3. guidelines for phone calls in certain circumstances:

- in a store: GO OUTSIDE. failure to comply may result in phone confiscation.

- above ground subway cars: limited to 30 seconds. anything longer or in loud, angry, nasal spanish may result in the offender being tossed out of the moving train.

- elevators: absolutely not permitted. you think all seven people who are vacuum-sealed in that little fucking tin can with you want to hear about your stupid vacation home / corporate sounding bullshit / sick kid? no. trying to talk quietly? my ear is roughly a centimeter from your idiot mouth. guess what? i can still hear you. fuck you. hang the fuck up.

- on line, waiting to be rung up by a cashier: HANG UP OR GET HANGED. there is nothing more rude than denying the existence of a cashier because your pointless conversation can’t wait another two fucking seconds.

- restaurants / movie theatres: upon pain of motherfucking death. you selfish shitdick.

- funerals: really? get in the casket. you’re going down too.

4. have facebook on your phone?  there’s a place for you in hell: and there’s no service down there so you won’t be able to set your status update to ‘damn, it’s hot lol.’ so sorry.

5. in the event that you lose service and your call is dropped, screaming ‘HELLO?!!!‘ more than twice with your mouth right up against the stupid little microphone is now considered criminal activity. there’s nobody there, you moronic fit twit. furthermore, you are now considered dangerously stupid and may be whisked away out of the general populace for everyone else’s safety.

6. the term ‘app’ is, as of this second, completely and utterly illegal. continuing to use it in any way may result in moderate jail time and / or a stiff fine. getting excited about a ‘sweet new app’ you just downloaded and showing it off to me is, in effect, extremely illegal.

7. using your smart phone to ‘peruse your email’ in a social situation / gathering is hereby forbidden.

8. texting ‘k’ or ‘oh’ as a response, ever, at any time, is now explicitly prohibited.

9. on vacation? at the beach? trying to relax or recreate? it’s required that you switch the damned thing off and put it far, far away. you will not perish if you don’t look at it every thirty fucking seconds. declining to abide by this rule warrants some snot-nosed little kid snatching your phone and using it to dig the B unit.

10. push-to-talk, direct connect, or anything related with that retarded chirpy sound is hereby banned for all time. seriously? it’s 2010.

11. using your phone to update your shitty little twitter feed more than 3 times per day will result in deletion of fingers. try being passive aggressive about how much your life sucks now, you pathetic loser.

12. upon receiving a call: if you do not answer but text immediately back and there is no reason that you shouldn’t have picked up the phone in the first place [unless you are at the movies, at a restaurant, at a store, or are in line to pay for something] you will be incarcerated for the rest of fucking eternity.

please abide by these simple rules at all times. with your help, society at large will benefit and the world will be a happier place. thank you.

after doing a little research, as of may 2010, i found out that People magazine has a circulation of 3.6 million. according to wikipedia, it was named ‘“Magazine of the Year” by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation and advertising.‘ yeah, i know that was over 5 years ago, but i’m still agog at the fact that Advertising Age awarded that to them – ever – when there are a million other magazines out there that are more informative, edited better, designed better, and are not filled with petty bullshit. are they serious? what morons contributed to that judge panel? also as of may this year: out of the top 25 english speaking blogs, SEVEN are solely devoted to celebrity news and gossip. blogs like gawker and TMZ rank higher than something like business insider. goes to show what the citizens of this country care about: celebrities in their sweatpants. awesome.

when did this celebrity obsession happen? aren’t they just a person doing their job? why, though, are their personal lives suddenly and intensely scrutinized? everywhere, every day, people are making horridly racist rants, violating their parole, getting drunk and crashing their cars, dying, going to jail, and raping children. why do we only care when someone subjectively pretty and rich does those things? what does that say about us as a society? apparently that we fucking love building someone sky high and watching them hit every branch on the way down.

i think being under the crushing magnifying glass of the public and the media all the time is what ultimately drives these people to disaster or beyond. think about every decision that you make, every outfit that you wear, being ruthlessly ripped apart by people you have never, and will never meet. people who wouldn’t even matter really, until the advent of the internet came about and everyone who has enough fingers to type could suddenly chime in and have their say. someone like perez hilton would have never even existed if it weren’t for the internet — a fact that makes me loathe it a little bit.

i always wonder why people choose to obsess over the ups and downs celebrities rather than bettering their own lives. yeah, you want to live vicariously through the bullshit and the whatever but instead of buying a copy of US Weekly [something i wouldn't even use to wipe my ass] why not pick up Time? and let me note, rather upsettingly, Time magazine is outranked by People magazine in circulation.

i guess the underlying point of this rant is: stop giving a shit what other people do, especially celebrities. spend time improving your own life and spending time with your family and friends. pick up a book. draw something. listen to music. go for a fucking walk. on your deathbed, i highly doubt that with your last breath you will sigh that you’re glad that lindsay made it out of jail in one piece.