Why can't this "fitness for duty" claim be qualified with a written exam -- preferably one with a lot of essay questions, not just a bunch of multiple choice like a psych 101 exam -- as opposed to a purely physical one? Ostensibly the most important job in the world, and all you need is a physical for someone to say "Yup, he's good to go." I'm not saying that physical health isn't important for his position, but c'mon now. Where else can you get away with this? Pretty much just athletes, and we know how smart the general lot of them are.

If something serious really were wrong with Bush, do you think they'd tell us? Of course not -- this isn't the goddamn West Wing. And who really gives a shit what Dumbass's cholesterol level is, anyway?

Since I'm currently on board the Bitter Express on my way to Sad Sack Junction (as if I'm not already living there), I feel even more compelled than I normally would be to link this Diesel Sweeties comic from the past couple of days. Indie Rock Pete is a stupid dickhead (so unlike me), but I think I might have to adopt that slogan as one of my own.

Speaking of comics, there is nothing worse than Cardboard Tube Samurai.

When I first saw this article linked off Slashdot about a supposedly very realistic looking female android that some Japanese researchers had created, my first question, naturally, was what does it/she look like? After clicking over to the article, I'm like, that's not a bad looking robot, but I didn't expect it to look so... Old. On a relative scale, I mean. Seriously.

Anyway, when I read that they had created a life-like female robot, I'm thinking to myself, ten-to-one it looks like a 12-year-old. But once I see the picture, I'm like, what the fuck? This isn't the Japan I know. Look, I don't purport to be in tune with every facet of the Japanese or their culture, but we have a certain... Understanding on things. Especially when it comes to the nerdier element of their society, which robotics people certainly fall under. So the question remained: what the hell is going on here?

Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguro developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl.

There it is. Not only was one of their creations young-looking, as expected, but they even one-upped me by going into U-10 territory. Bravo! There's still no explanation as to why the second one was post-pubescent, but knowing that the first one looked like a five-year-old more than makes up for my disappointment and disorientation over their latest android.

Okay, I don't normally do this since I feel dirty when I explain the joke (and not a good kind of dirty, either), but you may be wondering what exactly "U-10" refers to. You can probably figure it out, but I'll be nice and help you today. You might also be asking, what, is this some kind of pedophile code? Well, um, basically. When it comes to Japanese models in magazines, photobooks, etc., they have these codes that are used to designate various age groups. The "U" is for "under" -- U-18, under 18, U-15, under 15, etc. Oh, and also, the "U" designation is inclusive, so U-18 (and so on) is both under 18 as well as 18 years old. We all know how good the Japanese are with English. But anyway, there you have it. Now if you're looking at some form of Japanese media involving models of some sort and you see "U-10," you know to quietly back away from it. I mean, unless if that's what you're into.

Alright, so back to the article. When I see things like this, it makes me think that I've missed my true calling in life. Maybe I should have gone into robotics and worked on the kind of stuff that those Japanese guys are working on. I'm probably not smart enough to succeed in the endeavor of creating a life-like female android, but I'd have mad motivation seeing as how I'm going to be alone until the end of time.

I know, I know. "Dude, a robot could never really love you or care for you. It wouldn't have the emotions or the blah blah blah..." Yeah, and how does that differ from how things are and will continue to be? Besides, if I did a good enough job in creating her, I might be able to fool even myself. Hey, I've convinced myself (or tried to convince myself) of some pretty stupid shit, so the idea of a robot being a suitable companion isn't a huge stretch at this point. Hey, not any dumber than acid wash.

One hundred gurr

So Fe has reached the 100,000 hit milestone. After more than two years in operation, we have hit this ostensibly impressive but ultimately meaningless number. Meaningless since, well, we know what has caused the vast majority of those hits. And not as impressive when you consider that, at one point, I was working to keep this thing up to date with a shitload of new posts every day. Meanwhile, the Sailor Schoolgirl site is way more popular even though I rarely update it (can't imagine why) and was able to get over 100,000 hits in a single day one time.

But you know what? I somehow beat the odds, and my 100,000th hit wasn't from some pedophile. Granted, it was still from Google, but from someone doing a search for "fuck blog." Which, by the way, I am #1 in the search results for! It's not much -- in fact, it's nothing -- but I'll take it.

Yahoo search:

fuck a frog

Okay, not even my dick is that small. I mean, unless if it's a pretty sizable frog.

Spam:

Blonde takes a meat load on her pussy

When they say "load," I can guess what it is that they're talking about, but still, all I can picture is some chick having a bunch of steaks or something dumped on her cooch.

Danny mentioned this short story by Chuck Palahniuk in comments a couple of days back, and since I went through the trouble of finding it, you have to read it. Hold off on reading it if you were planning on beating off anytime soon, though. I mean, unless if you need ideas. And if you actually do get any ideas, I won't be held responsible, but I will laugh at your dead and/or humiliated ass.

Then there's the site that I found the story on, which should probably also be avoided if you actually are epileptic.

Hey, I like to expand my horizons

Some fucking page powered by Google search:

broads with rods

I've never heard that one before, so it's worth mentioning.

Okay, so when I see this, my first reaction is, I hate my friends. Granted, they don't need to be taking out any billboards, but what have they done for me lately? I clearly cannot be bothered to get my shit together in order to find myself someone.

My second reaction is, I'm pretty cool with my friends. I mean, they're pragmatists. They know what the fuck's up -- especially the women. They all know that no woman wants a short, ugly guy with no confidence, a bad attitude, and a bad temper. For all I know, I smell bad, too, and no one will tell me about it until I have this conversation with someone in the SSRC:

"Did you fart?"
"No."
"Well then, you stink."

No, it wasn't me that that happened to, because even I would have taken a hint. What I'm getting at here, though, is that my friends are saving everyone a bunch of trouble and embarrassment.

Just so you don't think that I've personalized this and made the article all about me (I'm certainly not one of those assholes who takes unrelated events and somehow makes it all about them), I have some comments on the article. I don't know whether or not to leave the fact that this is a bunch of fucking Mormons out of it or not. On one hand, we like ripping on Mormons, but on the other hand, it's almost not as much fun. Stupid bullshit is as expected of them as fucked up shit is expected of Japan, so it's pretty much par for the course and just not as special when it happens.

"It kind of came out of discussions we had, that Lance is such a good guy but not married," said Morgan Lynch, CEO of LogoWorks, where Archibald is the director of marketing.

So why don't you marry him, cunt? Unless if you're already married, of course, you wedded cunt. But I'll bet this guy has a bunch of those "just want to be friends" friends who would never ride his Mormon meat. Bonus that Morgan, if unmarried, has the extra excuse that they work together -- added excuses are always handy.

But yeah, nothing sucks more than the "just want to be friends" line, does it, fellas? Well, except maybe finding out that a supposed friend who you have a huge crush on considers you "second rate garbage," as seen previously on Fe. Or hey, remember that MASH game that kids (mostly girls) would play? No, not the shitty ass fucking TV show with the most depressing theme song EVER. No, this was the game where each letter stood for something -- M for who you were going to marry, H for the kind of house you were going to live in, etc (what the fuck were A and S, anyway?). You picked like four or five things for each category, and wrote them down on paper so that one entry in each category could be randomly selected by an algorithm that also escapes me. The trick was that in each category, you had to make at lease one "bad choice." So for instance, under "H" you might list "shack" as your potential future dwelling. Anyway, it's also a lot of fun finding out that a bunch of your female friends were waxing nostalgic and decided to play a game of MASH, and that you got to be the "bad choice" under "M."

Yes, I know, this subject has gotten a lot of run on here lately, and I'm not happy about it, either. But it's for various reasons prevalent on my mind as of late. And hey, what's total bullshit mental anguish if you can't share it with four readers (if not fewer, especially after this brand of nonsense) and a bunch of Googling pedos? Hey, just be glad I'm not giving too many details at this juncture.

But since this isn't about me, go ahead and check out the website they set up for him. Go on, do it. It's really sad that "returned missionary" is apparently his #1 selling point. WTF? Do a lot of them not make it back or something? I'm sure they lose one or two every year to screen door allergies, but it's not like we hear a lot of stories about missionaries getting snatched by bears and shit. And I wonder: if my friends were to set up billboards and a website, would they list "loves kids" as one of my selling points? I know, I know -- the moratorium on those kinds of jokes is not going well, but the question is legit.

While we're back on the subject of this guy's friends, wow, what a pack of fucking losers. They have waaaay too goddamn much free time on their hands if they can actually make as concerted an effort as they obviously have. The people I roll with aren't real social animals or anything, but they do have shit to do in their own lives. I also love that all of "Team Lance" works for the same company as him. I'm guessing that their company isn't what one would call a "wild success." Of course, they are getting some publicity out of this, so that may reveal their true reasons for going through all this trouble.

So the moral of all this: much like owls, friends are assholes.

Google search:

Different ways for men to mastubate

Okay, I'm tired of getting hits like this one, so I'm going to do something about it in hopes that Google will start pointing people to this post. This won't stop the hits, but at least it might prove useful to someone. If you can't figure out how to beat off, or you have run out of new things to try, check out this site (find the "techniques" link once you get to the main page) or this site. If you're wondering why I happen to have links, uh, handy that are related to jerking off, you must be new here.

Here's one technique that many find amusing: get your hand to fall asleep and then beat off so that it feels like someone else is doing it. No, I've never tried that one, mainly since I can never get my hand to fall asleep on purpose.

Hey, so I just noticed that Blogger will let you upload images now. I don't know how long it's been since that has been an option; everytime I see shit about pictures on Blogger I figure it's either that Picasa nonsense or just something telling you how to link to images elsewhere on the web. And you know what?



Yeah, I pretty much just wanted to post that animated GIF. It was found on this amusing page which ETP alerted me to in comments after I posted a link to another page on that site. The rest of that guy's page also has a quite a bit of amusing shit on it.

So it looks like kindofcrap.com won't be making a return as I had once been led to believe. Word out on the street is that an untimely accident has permanently put an end to the dream of Galvin returning to our lives. I guess moving to Delaware wasn't such a hot idea after all.

No it isn't. Dorks are, by definition, dorks, which is not cool. Anyone convinced of this stupid bullshit is just lying to themselves like liberals/progressives and Trekkies/Trekkers. And for anyone who thinks they're clever by taking something and trying to turn it on its head by declaring it the opposite of what it is: STOP THAT.

Hey, I'm about as big of a dork as they come. I went out shopping for a house last year with one of my goals being to get a room specifically for The Girls who, for the uninitiated, are a collection of female anime figures. I see no problem with being a dork, but of course I would -- I'm a dork. There's no real shame in it, just the shame that others try and force on you. But just accept it -- don't bullshit yourself about it.

"We used to not be able to stand the fact that we were in orchestra..."

So if you don't like it, get out of it. And if you do like it, fuck what everyone else says. I know, easier said than done. It's not easy dealing with the pressure of stupid fuck-offs. But you do what you gotta do.

"The O.C.," a TV show popular with teens, has Seth, a comic-book loving nerd played by actor Adam Brody. Bands such as Weezer also feed off the dork image, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and a song about being OK with not fitting the Beverly Hills mold. "Napoleon Dynamite" has a fan club; its Web site claims 150,000 members.

Oh boy. One character on a shitty show (which I've never seen), one decent band (at least at one point), and one shitty movie (which I've also never seen), and suddenly, the tide is turning! Woo hoo! Or it's all just meaningless pop culture bullshit that's been fed to us.

"Now all the people from high school are asking me if I have a job for them. So I guess it wasn't so bad to be a dork."

Well, the dork part is never good in and of itself just for the shit you get because of it, but the fact that a lot of dorks grow up to make good lives for themselves while all those assholes who made fun of them serve them their food.

"It's like (the movie) 'American Pie' with the band geek girl."

Yeah, no. Geek girls are not Alyson Hannigan. And yes, I know that I'm being the shallow asshole now, but you pretty much don't want to go near most geek girls. Just like you don't want to go anywhere near a lot of geek guys. And should a girl with legitimate credentials show up, well...

But Uyen Mai says she knows how to spot a true geek, dork or nerd -- and she likes what she sees.

...

To prove her point, Mai has an "I (Heart) Dorks" tank top, which she wears often.

Wait for it...

"My husband ..."

And there you have it. Trust me, I've seen waaaay too fucking much of this. Any girl -- attractive or not -- who shows up will get mobbed by all the desperate guys who have low expectations and lowered standards. And if she is attractive, forget about it.

Liberals: quit thanking the troops for their service. If I hear one more liberal talking to a veteran or someone currently serving and says to them "I thank you for your service," I'm going to throw up. It's pandering. Period. Yes, it is possible for things to not be black and white and for someone to support the troops but not the war, but let's face facts. Those of us on the left -- and this includes myself -- in one way or another like seeing the body count go up in Iraq. What's bad for Bush is good for us. Admit it, fuckers. I will (finally, even though it does nothing). This of course doesn't apply to Ted Rall, who unless if he's recently changed tack has always been willing to say "Fuck the troops -- they're just doing Bush's dirty work."

More and more, I can't stand listening to either the left or the right. While this can appropriately be labeled as flip-flopping in many cases, I don't give a shit. It's still consistent with my long-established position of hating everyone, and more in line with the mantra of "fuck everything." The Karl Rove/Valerie Plame flap is further opening this wound. I realized this morning that liberals, ERRRR, progressives think that it's already an open-and-shut case that Karl Rove was the source of Plame's name or identity because Matt Cooper said that he told him as much. And it's like, slow down. Wasn't the whole issue how Bob Novak found out about it so that he could then report it in his column, thus balbbering it to the whole world? Democrats like Teddy Drunk accuse the administration of moving the goal posts -- and they certainly are; that's one of the things they're best at -- but Democrats are guilty of it, too.

Right now, the story is supposedly that Novak told Rove, not the other way around. Of course, this is just leaked grand jury testimony that may be inaccurate, and even if it's true Novak could be lying (pretty risky lying to a grand jury, but it might seem easier with a promise of "we'll protect you"). So I'm sorry, liberals, but you haven't won yet. Even if he didn't tell Rove but he did tell Cooper, that's still not good on Karl's behalf (especially if Rove told Cooper before Novak supposedly told him, but I don't have all of the timing down at this point). That makes Rove guilty of passing along information even if he wasn't the originator. Even so, the distinction between Rove leaking and Rove passing on gives them enough to muddy the waters to say that no wrong-doing has taken place, so don't celebrate yet, lefties.

On a mostly unrelated note, I realized something a few minutes ago. You know this whole nonsense with liberals calling themselves "progressives"? It's just like Trekkies when they started calling themselves "Trekkers." "Oh, ahhhh, people think that Trekkie means that you're a dork and a loser, so, uhhhh, we're going to call ourselves Trekkers. Yeah! That'll fix everything!" Self-labeling to try and de-stigmatize the label that everyone else gives you does not automatically make you cool and acceptable -- people still know what you are, and they will like you or hate you or not care based on that. Man, I wish I'd thought of this last summer so that I could have referred to the DNC as one big Star Trek convention.

How long has this been going on for now? Jesus, sometimes I wonder why we even bother putting on the charade that we live in a society run by law-abiding, honorable people. We've known since day one that if Karl Rove was responsible, that not a fucking thing would happen to him. Yeah, Bush is going to fire the guy who made his dumb ass president. The same goes for anyone else on Team Bush. The best anyone can hope for -- assuming that the leak came from inside the administration -- is for the person responsible to be found guilty the day Bush leaves office, only to be pardoned by the outgoing president.

I love how at this point, the only ones suffering are part of the so-called "liberal media." Regardless of who was responsible for the leak, this is turning into one big excuse to take a huge dump on the media. TB is good at this -- like with that whole 60 Minutes flap that went from being bad for Bush to bad for the media. I'm not saying that anyone is carefully orchestrating this, but it's not like anyone would be surprised if it was. And if that's the case, they're showing what truly evil fucks they are. Who's one of the people in trouble over this? Judith Miller from The New York Times. She was one of the ones who went along with the whole WMD bullshit in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It's like they're saying, hey, check out what we do with people who will agree with us -- the rest of you assholes can watch the fuck out because we'll find some way to ruin you. I know I'm stretching it pretty thin with the conspiracy theories here, but it's just a thought.

Right now, I'm just looking to be entertained since it's all bullshit anyway. I want to see it come out that Karl Rove was the one who leaked her name and that he did it intentionally for the sake of retaliation, just so that we can watch how the fucking genius gets himself out of it.

You know what people are fucking boring? Submissives. It seems really great in theory -- "Wait, I'm supposed to order you around, and you'll do anything I want you to, and you get off on that?" Yeah, it's great until you realize: you get stuck doing all the work. I mean in terms of coming up with shit to do; you have to do all of it. Look, I don't mind doing my share, but let's have some balance. Maybe dom/sub relationships are different (i.e., better) in real life, but on IRC, they suck. You catch me in the right mood, and I'm like, do this, this, and that, yank yank, squirt squirt. But usually it's like, you know what? Forget it.

Speaking of IRC, you should check out this post of ETP's. What does that have to do with IRC? Well, some people call it a really filthy joke, and some people just call it your average night in chatrooms.

March of the dumbfucks, Pt. 2

Okay, so there was one more part about "Only" that I completely forgot to rip on. I know it's pretty fucking weak that I A) forgot and B) still felt the need to get this out here, but fuck it (I said "butt fuck"). If Trent -- the real Trent -- could release "March of the Pigs" as a two-part single then I think I can get away with this. Just think of it as Halo 2 in my series of reviews as to why Trent Reznor eats balls now.

Here's the verse in question:

There is no you
There is only me
There is no you
There is only me
There is no FUCKING you
There is only me
There is no FUCKING you
There is only me

I know, it's poignant. What really stands out, though, is when Trent starts screaming the word "fucking." There is absolutely no life in it. It's like he put that in there just out of obligation. "You know, I haven't screamed fuck yet. I should do that." It's so completely empty -- even emptier than it used to be. And you know what? Trent isn't even getting any enjoyment out of using the F word.

I just made this post up, to hurt myself.

Speaking of dangers to kids, we definitely don't want to get them into any kind of dangerous behaviors like reading. Okay, the fact that it gets kids reading aside, this Harry Potter shit has got to stop. Anyone, anywhere, getting too excited over anything -- be it football, Harry Potter, some shitty band, Star Trek (shit, especially Star Trek), whatever -- needs to be stopped. I've had it with this. You really need to go out late at night in a stupid costume to pick up a book that will still be available in the morning? Look, I can even get on board with staying up late to spend money, but the other nonsense is right out.

So I've heard the movies are decent. I've heard from other people who aren't five that the books are an entertaining read. I might see the movies some day if I get around to it, but I don't think I'm going to be reading the books anytime soon. And no matter what, if I find myself dressing in some stupid costume over Harry Potter, it's all over.

... said Katrine Skovgaard, 18...

And no, I'm still not interested.

Rowling is now the richest woman in Britain, with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1 billion.

Yes, and rumor has it that she's started noticing boys, too.

"I am always disappointed when publishers sell books directly to the consumer, bypassing their retail partners," said Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association. "Selling it at a discount makes it more frustrating."

Fuck you, asshole. God forbid things should actually work out in favor of the consumer every once in awhile, you greedy prick. Why don't you just come out and say "I hate it when we lose money."

Amazon reported that advance orders of the "adult" edition, which bears a more muted cover than the children's version...

This threw me for a second. Nevermind the fact that there's an adult version of a children's book -- the fact that the adult version is the more muted one didn't make sense to me until I thought about it.

Amazon.co.uk has a secure 200,000-square-foot warehouse to pack the books.

See, this is fucking ridiculous. They're goddamn books -- for children, no less -- not launch codes or spent fuel rods or strains of some super-virus that will turn your vital organs into liquid shit.

Pope Benedict XVI told her in letters written in 2003, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that the books "deeply distort Christianity in the soul."

Hey, so is the goddamn pope dead yet? I can't wait for that guy to eat it.

So I'm guessing that someone is over-compensating for the fact that he masturbates thinking of and/or looking at 9-year-old boys. This gem was, not surprisingly, in response to my post on that 11-year-old girl who pitched a perfect Little League game. I don't normally respond to comments in this manner, but one as insightful as this one deserves further study.

I think you are sick...

Thanks for nothing, asshole. If you'd have shown up way earlier, you could have saved me the trouble of finding a therapist.

... and just to let you know if you run a google search on pedo's you come up.

First off, I think you want to say "pedos," not "pedo's." Will you people learn to get fucking apostrophes correct? Yes, there are some cases that I even have trouble with, but this is not one of them. I can tell that Mr. Shae is not trying to imply ownership of anything, nor is he trying to form some kind of contraction.

I went and did a Google search for "pedos," "pedophile, "pedophiles," and even "pedophile blog." I didn't show up on the first several pages of any of those searches, so if you were to find me in any of those lists, you'd have to dig pretty fucking deep. Assuming that you actually did perform such a search, that also leads me to question: did you do this check after finding my page, or did you find my page as a result of doing one of these searches? If it was the latter, hmmmm, I wonder what kind of search you were doing that brought you here? I doubt it could be related to the kind of search that normally brings one here. And before you ask, this was unfortunately gone from my referral list before I got a chance to check it out. Damn you free Sitemeter!

... 11 year old girls are just girls...

No they're not. Sure, some of them are just girls, but some of them are girls who can pitch a perfect game. There's a difference.

... not something for you to jerk off too...

"To," not "too," fuckhole. God, if you're going to call my ass down, learn to use the proper words and punctuation, you dipshit. Now, to your point: who made you Grand Decisioner of What People Can and Cannot Jerk Off Too (sic)? Depending on your local laws, yes, there are bounds to where you can and cannot jerk off, and restrictions on what what witnesses you may have to the deed. But no matter how unsavory it might be, you can think about whatever you want when you wax your carrot. I don't see anyone giving you a hard time about those little boys you seem to enjoy so much. Well, except for me, but you started it.

... you faggot... go to hell and rot you peice of faggot shit

"I" before "e," dumbass. Using the word "faggot" not once but twice in reference to me seems to be implying that this guy thinks I'm a homosexual. But let's break this down. He's accusing me (me!) of masturbating to 11-year-old girls. Girls. I'm a guy. Allegedly masturbating over girls. I dunno, but that doesn't sound too faggoty to me. There are plenty of other things you could call it, but gay isn't one of them.

Thinking about it, though, maybe Shae is just a concerned guy. He's worried about sick fucks like me harming children. And let's face it, I am a danger. I rarely leave the house except for work where I am surrounded by men. When I do go out, I seek to avoid as much contact as I can with outsiders. I stand 5'3" and weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 lbs. Basically, I'm a brick shithouse. Either that, or, quite a few kids are already as tall as me by the time they're 11. It should be pretty easy for me to overpower them, that's for sure. And it's not like it would be easy for them to simply kick or punch me in the nuts when I try and pull something, even if they're small. Oh, and then there's the fact that once I abduct them, I'll be driving off in my red fucking BMW, which surely, no one will notice.

But yeah, Shae could just be a concerned citizen. Maybe a dad to an 11-year-old himself. Well, with refined rhetoric such as his, I sure as hell hope he's not a parent. I'm gonna get him one of these Onion t-shirts just in case. And you know what? What kinda name is Shae, anyway? Sounds kinda fruity to me.

If we lived in Scranton, we'd literally be going apeshit right about now.

I mean, here, let me give you an idea how jaded I am with these goddamn searches:

let me fuck your little horse

As I started reading this line, I first processed "let me fuck your little." Before I got to the end of the line, I was already thinking "I know how this one ends." I was pleasantly surprised to see "horse" at the end, however, in place of what I was expecting. That's where I'm at with my referral list now; horsefucking is a pick-me-up. Actually, if you think about it, this search is just plain funny.

Google search:

Newsradio AND adequacivity

Thankfully, I get the occasional Google hit that makes me smile.

March of the dumbfucks

While we're on the subject of shitty music, bullshit teenage angst, and things being better when you're angry, I need to talk about Nine Inch Nails. I'm sure it will come a no huge surprise that I was a big NIN fan back in high school. You know, when I was all pissed and depressed, but that was acceptable because that's what teenagers do. Trent Reznor's screaming fit in quite nicely with life at that age. Pretty Hate Machine is pretty much a blueprint for my relationship with my first girlfriend, and that should tell you a lot about me right there. I can't listen to the song "Something I can never have" because I will literally start crying. But this isn't about me; this is about Trent.

Now, Trent Reznor was never what we would call lyrically gifted. "I wanna fuck you like an ANIMAL!!!!" That's real deep, Trent. So yeah, NIN's lyrics were pretty shallow, but they served a purpose. Set against the backdrop of a bunch of noise that sounded pretty good, and it worked. It was what it was, especially for dumbass kids like I was. I'm still somewhat of a dumbass kid, of course, so the old stuff still sounds pretty good. Ignoring "Something I can never have," it doesn't quite resonate with me like it did, but that's life. We've all gotta grow up (more or less) sometime.

Now, when I say "old stuff," I'm talking "The Perfect Drug" and prior work. "Perfect Drug" wasn't even quite up to par -- a little too poppy, I felt -- but it still worked. The Fragile, on the other hand, sucked. I bought it out of some kind of ridiculous obsessive-compulsive obligation just because I had all the Halos up to that point, but I was so pissed at the album that I've never actually listened to the second disc of my copy.

I thought I remember hearing that prior to The Fragile, Trent got happy and shit. That clearly is not conducive to good music.

Enter With Teeth, which is more of the same that we got with the last album, in that it's fucking weak. The title alone is pure bullshit. As ETP put it, spooky language! I haven't listened to all of the album yet, and like with anything else, I'm going to act like I'm still on firm ground to criticize. Oh and I am, because all we need is Exhibit A: Track #8, "Only."

I like this track a lot. Not because I'm laughing with it, though, but because I'm laughing at it. The production work is kind of catchy. Not what one would expect from NIN, the NIN of old, that is. Trent really isn't singing on this track, he's kinda just talking throughout the whole thing. The song is done John McCrea style, and the world will never be complete unless if Cake does a cover of "Only." But let's continue with why "Only" really epitomizes how bad NIN sucks now. Here's a sample line:

Less concerned... About fitting into the world
Your world that is

Whoa-ho, step back! That has got to be the worst fucking lyric EVER. What kind of oh-woe-is-me, I'm-only-14 kind of mentality does it take to write that kind of schlock? I would be willing to bet that Trent stayed up all night thinking that one up, too. I know I said that Trent's lyrics were never exactly hard-hitting, but Jesus. Then there's this:

I just made you up to hurt myself
And it worked
Yes it did!

I just made you up to hurt myself? Way to go, Trent, you bullshit in-denial tough guy. I just made you up to hurt myself? What? And you know, I can't really drive home the significance of the "Yes it did!" line -- you need to listen to it yourself and hear Trent's delivery in order to understand the hilarity. More:

The tiniest little dot caught my eye and it turned out to be scab and I had this funny feeling
Like I just knew it was something bad

Trent, you played the "tiniest little dot" card back with "Down in it" when you still kicked ass instead of fucked ass, so leave it alone, will 'ya?

There was about an 80-year lull between The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. We kept lamenting, "When is Trent gonna release a new, full album?" All the singles and remixes and shit were great, but we wanted something totally new. Well, the wait wasn't worth it. It'd be better if I could convince myself that I just made The Fragile and With Teeth up to hurt myself, but I didn't. Maybe the problem is that I outgrew all that when I turned 16, or maybe the problem is that Trent Reznor isn't good anymore, and he hasn't been for a long time.

I started listening to some of the other tracks on With Teeth one day, but I was like, fuck it, I'll get to this later. I'm sure I'll be listening to the full album in all its shit-glory real soon, now.

In conclusion, if you think that Nine Inch Nails is still good, you're wrong. If you ever thought that NIN was really deep and poignant, you were always wrong.

Hello, my name is: Fermat's Last Theorem

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