Exquisite Torture
It is no secret that I love the word “donkey.” I call everyone and everything a donkey, even if only for the most mild and passing of annoyances. So why is that? I think the following “Ten List” will help you all to understand how I view donkies, and why I think they are such an appropriate metaphor for so many Americans, and indeed America itself.
So without further adieu, The Staff of Dominion of Cool is proud to bring you …
Ten Ways in which American culture is a donkey:
1. It is stupid
2. It is ugly
3. It can do a lot of the same things as a noble steed, but it is still, quite obviously, a fucking donkey.
4. It is hard to take a good long look at it without laughing.
5. The laughing reflex is partially because the sheer stupidity of the animal’s appearance is humorous, but also because laughter is often a defense mechanism against things that scare, depress, creep us out, or otherwise horrify us.
6. It stinks.
7. It emits all sorts of irritating, obnoxious, and totally unnecessary hawing.
8. Its greatest aspirations are to the lowest rungs of what passes for mediocrity on a good day.
9. It defecates wherever it feels like defecating.
10. Despite all of the above, it is easy to develop a strange and inexplicable affection for the animal. I call it Howard.
The Sabres have finally gotten rid of that oversized tit Taylor Pyatt. The fact that they got a 4rth round draft pick for him is a steal. A blessing. How did they convince anyone to want a million-dollar oaf who is completely without impact on a game in the first place – let alone to actually give something up to get him? The 4rth round draft pick won’t play in the NHL for six years, if he ever plays at all and he probably won’t. But if he does sneak in six years down the road, and if it is for the Sabres (which is against all odds), he has about a 2% chance of being even slightly more valuable than Pyatt. That’s just the nature of the NHL draft. But there is the most infinitesimal of odds that he turns out to be one of those late-round studs that comes on strong in their late teens and is suddenly a major prospect. Even if the odds of this are fractional at best, that alone is more than we could have hoped for in exchange for shipping that million-dollar wart the shit out of our organization.
Less pleasant news: we signed Roy to a one-year qualifying contract. You saw it here first … Roy will have a terrific season and become a legitimate 2nd-line center on any NHL team at the age of only 23. Even if we keep him beyond this year, his time here, like everyone else’s, is a short ball of yarn that will only stretch so far. Then he’ll vanish and we’ll brag about how we have younger, cheaper players to replace him who will be good in a few years. We’re perpetually “about to be good” here in Buffalo.
Alright, now I do a lot of complaining and reprimanding and mocking and just generally being a cynical ass. But I’m capable of being positive sometimes, and usually about the least likely (or at least expected) of things. That’s what I’m about to do here. You should have been able to figure that out. It’s called an introduction, and if you’re careful you can see clues regarding what is about to follow, which in this case is an unsolicited pitch advocating for the use of MySpace.com by everyone with a computer.
I know what some of you are thinking (it’s “whaaat!!??”, right?). But hear, or rather read me out. I once thought as you do. Simplistically. Scornfully. Skeptically. Suspiciously, and a lot of other “S” words with negative connotation. I dismissed MySpace as the equivalent of that horrid “Village Youth Center” that everyone swore was so cool in Junior High. In other words, it was a stupid place – a place where people went to say irritating and cliché things and try to be popular. I thought MySpace had no place for a mildly intelligent, barely cultured, somewhat independent, vaguely authority-defying, kind of non-cliché, superhero such as myself. “What is this pompous, soap-operatic website that would think to disturb my individual integrity with its garbage?” I asked on more than one occasion.
But hang with me here, chums. Where I’m going with this is that it’s not entirely like the Youth Center. It’s more like a high-school or college house party in the sense that, yah, there’s probably 95% meat heads and donkies and indefensible human mediocrity, but there’s some potential there too. You can always be the kid who turns Jay-Z off of the stereo and pops in Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits. You can always push your way into a shallow-end-of-the-pool conversation and inject some creativity or color into it. You can dance, yell, flirt, steal things, do keg stands, fight, or just kind of stand off in the corner with your beer, striking James Dean-like poses, and just generally being content with how much cooler you are than everybody else (I personally like the latter a lot).
Where I’m going with all this is simple. It’s a community - for better or worse. I do these blogs on blogspot.com, but I get no more than ten readers, tops. Why? Because doing a blog here makes you like the guy who goes to the campus library to study on Saturday night. You might run into a handful of people you know, and maybe you guys sit down, crack your books, have some pleasant conversation while at the same time gearing yourself up to get a good grade on a crucial test that will effect your class grade, and therefore your semester grade, and therefore your overall GPA, and therefore your future. There’s something redeeming in that. But guess what … you missed your chance to go out, get drunk, meet people, and have a generally more memorable experience. MySpace is easy to dismiss as a cheesy little thing for creeps and tools and geeks and lame-o’s. And it is for the most part. But it’s an opportunity at least. I got in on it to keep a more condensed, more frequent blog and see if more people checked it out. So far I’ve done 22 total blogs, short little things, a paragraph, maybe two. I’ve had my blog viewed 419 times. That’s an average of 19 views per post, and I’m a terribly unpopular MySpacer. I’ve got 20 friends. But I’m not on their searching for people and trying to network – I just want you to read the ridiculous things I write. At almost 20 views per two-paragraphs of my thoughts, I’d say it’s worth my time and effort.
Plus you get to constantly reject friend-requests from "girls who just want to meet for some fun sex." As tempting as that sounds, it seems more likely, and also given that they have 300 myspace friends, that they're an advertisement for a porn site and I take great pleasure in clicking "DENY!" It's a feeling of power. Fight the corporate machine!!
Anyways, do what you want. We here at the Dominion of Cool are unconcerned with your choices. We just like to throw our two cents around as if it was a valuable chunk of change when we know damn well it isn’t. But what we do care about is that your read our other blog, which is significantly shorter, and usually less preachy than this one: myspace.com/ilprimopazzo. See you there, friends.
Leave comments.
A Presto
So without further adieu, The Staff of Dominion of Cool is proud to bring you …
Ten Ways in which American culture is a donkey:
1. It is stupid
2. It is ugly
3. It can do a lot of the same things as a noble steed, but it is still, quite obviously, a fucking donkey.
4. It is hard to take a good long look at it without laughing.
5. The laughing reflex is partially because the sheer stupidity of the animal’s appearance is humorous, but also because laughter is often a defense mechanism against things that scare, depress, creep us out, or otherwise horrify us.
6. It stinks.
7. It emits all sorts of irritating, obnoxious, and totally unnecessary hawing.
8. Its greatest aspirations are to the lowest rungs of what passes for mediocrity on a good day.
9. It defecates wherever it feels like defecating.
10. Despite all of the above, it is easy to develop a strange and inexplicable affection for the animal. I call it Howard.
The Sabres have finally gotten rid of that oversized tit Taylor Pyatt. The fact that they got a 4rth round draft pick for him is a steal. A blessing. How did they convince anyone to want a million-dollar oaf who is completely without impact on a game in the first place – let alone to actually give something up to get him? The 4rth round draft pick won’t play in the NHL for six years, if he ever plays at all and he probably won’t. But if he does sneak in six years down the road, and if it is for the Sabres (which is against all odds), he has about a 2% chance of being even slightly more valuable than Pyatt. That’s just the nature of the NHL draft. But there is the most infinitesimal of odds that he turns out to be one of those late-round studs that comes on strong in their late teens and is suddenly a major prospect. Even if the odds of this are fractional at best, that alone is more than we could have hoped for in exchange for shipping that million-dollar wart the shit out of our organization.
Less pleasant news: we signed Roy to a one-year qualifying contract. You saw it here first … Roy will have a terrific season and become a legitimate 2nd-line center on any NHL team at the age of only 23. Even if we keep him beyond this year, his time here, like everyone else’s, is a short ball of yarn that will only stretch so far. Then he’ll vanish and we’ll brag about how we have younger, cheaper players to replace him who will be good in a few years. We’re perpetually “about to be good” here in Buffalo.
Alright, now I do a lot of complaining and reprimanding and mocking and just generally being a cynical ass. But I’m capable of being positive sometimes, and usually about the least likely (or at least expected) of things. That’s what I’m about to do here. You should have been able to figure that out. It’s called an introduction, and if you’re careful you can see clues regarding what is about to follow, which in this case is an unsolicited pitch advocating for the use of MySpace.com by everyone with a computer.
I know what some of you are thinking (it’s “whaaat!!??”, right?). But hear, or rather read me out. I once thought as you do. Simplistically. Scornfully. Skeptically. Suspiciously, and a lot of other “S” words with negative connotation. I dismissed MySpace as the equivalent of that horrid “Village Youth Center” that everyone swore was so cool in Junior High. In other words, it was a stupid place – a place where people went to say irritating and cliché things and try to be popular. I thought MySpace had no place for a mildly intelligent, barely cultured, somewhat independent, vaguely authority-defying, kind of non-cliché, superhero such as myself. “What is this pompous, soap-operatic website that would think to disturb my individual integrity with its garbage?” I asked on more than one occasion.
But hang with me here, chums. Where I’m going with this is that it’s not entirely like the Youth Center. It’s more like a high-school or college house party in the sense that, yah, there’s probably 95% meat heads and donkies and indefensible human mediocrity, but there’s some potential there too. You can always be the kid who turns Jay-Z off of the stereo and pops in Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits. You can always push your way into a shallow-end-of-the-pool conversation and inject some creativity or color into it. You can dance, yell, flirt, steal things, do keg stands, fight, or just kind of stand off in the corner with your beer, striking James Dean-like poses, and just generally being content with how much cooler you are than everybody else (I personally like the latter a lot).
Where I’m going with all this is simple. It’s a community - for better or worse. I do these blogs on blogspot.com, but I get no more than ten readers, tops. Why? Because doing a blog here makes you like the guy who goes to the campus library to study on Saturday night. You might run into a handful of people you know, and maybe you guys sit down, crack your books, have some pleasant conversation while at the same time gearing yourself up to get a good grade on a crucial test that will effect your class grade, and therefore your semester grade, and therefore your overall GPA, and therefore your future. There’s something redeeming in that. But guess what … you missed your chance to go out, get drunk, meet people, and have a generally more memorable experience. MySpace is easy to dismiss as a cheesy little thing for creeps and tools and geeks and lame-o’s. And it is for the most part. But it’s an opportunity at least. I got in on it to keep a more condensed, more frequent blog and see if more people checked it out. So far I’ve done 22 total blogs, short little things, a paragraph, maybe two. I’ve had my blog viewed 419 times. That’s an average of 19 views per post, and I’m a terribly unpopular MySpacer. I’ve got 20 friends. But I’m not on their searching for people and trying to network – I just want you to read the ridiculous things I write. At almost 20 views per two-paragraphs of my thoughts, I’d say it’s worth my time and effort.
Plus you get to constantly reject friend-requests from "girls who just want to meet for some fun sex." As tempting as that sounds, it seems more likely, and also given that they have 300 myspace friends, that they're an advertisement for a porn site and I take great pleasure in clicking "DENY!" It's a feeling of power. Fight the corporate machine!!
Anyways, do what you want. We here at the Dominion of Cool are unconcerned with your choices. We just like to throw our two cents around as if it was a valuable chunk of change when we know damn well it isn’t. But what we do care about is that your read our other blog, which is significantly shorter, and usually less preachy than this one: myspace.com/ilprimopazzo. See you there, friends.
Leave comments.
A Presto
posted by Il Pazzo @ 2:00 PM
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