Stupid Phones

Let me be upfront about this. I do not have a smart phone. I have a stupid phone. I have what is just about the stupidest phone it is possible for a person to have, it being a $20 prepaid cellphone that I have had repurposed for long-term use. It has no web connectivity, no apps, no nothing. It sends and receives calls. That's it. That's all it does. I suppose I should add that sometimes it receives, unbidden by me, a text message, and it can do that, too, although I'd never respond to any such text in kind. I have neither the desire to pay an extra X dollars a month to respond to a text message in kind, or the desire to cultivate the ability to easily type on a phone keypad rather than communicating by means of voice or email, either of which is more convenient and doesn't cost anything.

My phone is very stupid. And yet it is adequate for my needs nearly 100% of the time. I didn't get a cell phone until I was 26--four years ago, some years after cell phones became "ubiquitous"--and I still think that, for the most part, it's a waste of money for me to pay to have one at all. In all honesty, if I were to put my cellphone through the washing machine (again) and not replace it this time even with the cheapest piece of shit possible, I don't feel that my life would be negatively impacted in any serious way.

I receive probably two or three phone calls a week. I make maybe one or two. And my phone, stupid as it is, is fine for this purpose. If I miss a call, my phone tells me the number of the person who called me. It even stores important numbers for me.

What else do I need a phone to do?

Do I need a phone that lets me slice digital images of fruit in half by making strokes across the screen with the tip of my finger? Not really. Would I like a phone that let me slice digital images of fruit in half by making strokes across the screen with the tip of my finger? Eh, maybe. Do I want to pay ten times as much for a phone that lets me slice digital images of fruit in half by making strokes across the screen with the tip of my finger, and pay more every month for the privilege of having a data plan that allows me to download the program to my phone that lets me slice digital images of fruit in half by making strokes across the screen with the tip of my finger? No, I do not.

I might like for my phone to be able to give me a weather forecast, or to let me know if I have any email. But I do own a computer, and the times when I would need to know these things when I am away from a computer--the times when I actually *need* this information on the spur of the moment--are very few and far between.

Smart phones are a fashion. Smart phones are a trend. Smart phones are a bourgeois affectation. And by that I mean to say that smart phones are purchased more for the sense of belonging to a group--a group of tech-savvy, up-to-date, digitally hip people--than they are purchased for any actual utility.

There will come a day, of course, within the next century, when people will feel completely unable to operate in unaugmented reality. I know that day will come, and my resistance will do nothing to stop it. We will *need* to have that level of information about us, at all times. And that will be a horrible day when we betray most of what makes human beings interesting--namely, our capacities for spontaneity, discovery, and originality.

The gentle reader might be screaming in insulted outrage at this point, wanting to chime in and say "Shut your face, you self-righteous late-adopter asshole! I use my phone for X,Y, and Z! I *need* my phone!" And that's as may be, and I may be a self-righteous late-adopter asshole. But what does a phone do that we really *need*? Allow us to be accessible 24-7, wherever we go? Since when did that become a necessity? What the fuck could anybody ever tell me that could ever be so urgent that a response would be required of me immediately, wherever I was?

Worst case scenario, you call me and tell me my parents have been in a car wreck and are now in the hospital. Even then, *even then*, I don't know what sort of response I'm supposed to present that is both timely and meaningful. You might as well let me know that by means of a physical letter, for all the good that my response will do.

If we feel we need to be available to anybody, anywhere with a phone at all times--if others feel that they need for us to be available in this way--I think it's time we seriously re-examine what passes for "needs" among us.

Do I *need* to respond instantly to any email that a person should send to me, such that I need to have the capacity to type up a response in my pocket at all times, type up such a response on a keyboard that was engineered for the slim fingers of a prepubescent Japanese girl rather than the blunt thumbs of an adult Germanic male? What reality do I inhabit that is so brutally urgent? If I inhabit that reality, fuck that reality. I'm opting out, and I'd prefer to be labeled an insane deviant than sane by some metric of eternal accessibility to the demands of others.

I will continue to find value in my life in exact proportion to the material affectations I am able to do without, freeing me for meaningful pursuits and *intimate, meaningful, and nuanced* communications with people. I will continue to reject the assumption that my life is meaningful based upon voids which are filled by mere *things* that I *need*.

The great trick of contemporary capitalism has been to alienate people from their natural state, rendering an unaugmented life impossible where it is not illegal, taboo, or outright impossible. Contemporary capitalism creates needs where none before existed--needs for human interaction that are best solved by actual human interaction rather than artificial surrogates, but where human interaction becomes increasingly impossible owing to the mediation of technology. Contemporary capitalism then provides products that encourage a further state of anxiety and alienation that can only be ameliorated by more, better, and new products, when all the while what is out of balance is within the individual himself, and not in his accouterments. It gives us mostly useless toys that we trick ourselves into thinking are indispensable tools, until we've come to rely on them such that we no longer remember how to do without them. Nuts to that, I say.

That being said, I really fucking want that interactive star map app that I've seen in the Droid ads. Oh, fuck, do I want that.

Get Thee Behind Me

Some days you have no other way of describing your experience other than to say you are fighting with the Devil in the desert. You tell him to get behind you; even then he haunts your sleep and he haunts your every step. He's right there when you look up. He is tempting and taunting. And you are malleable and fallible and carnal and mortal. You know damn well that you are nothing more than a man. The devil knows damn well that he is going to outlast you.

A Bit of Absurdity in the World

On my drive home on the southbound 5 through Oceanside, I pass by the Cavalier Mobile Estates. I have often considered this nonsensical juxtaposition of words. Cavalier—as in the dandyish Royalists who fought against the Puritans in the English Civil War? It's hard to imagine such a cavalier laying his belaced head down in a mobile home. Or “cavalier” as in “reckless, pompous, arrogant?” Again, when I think of mobile homes, these aren't necessarily the first qualities that come to mind. Or how about the bizarre idea of a mobile estate? Thinking back to what an “estate” has meant historically, it might well be the hundreds of acres that a nobleman—a cavalier, say—used as his personal hunting reserve and riding range and open space park, et cetera. I guess back in the day an “estate” was a mansion and environs which were expansive enough and subjugated enough such that the common folk working on the estate produced enough wealth to sustain the mansion at the middle. None of that really makes sense when you're talking a paved lot that is about three or four feet bigger on a side than the mobile home at the heart of it. Or how ludicrous is it to be talking about a “mobile estate” in the first place—as though an estate in the classical sense were something so inconsequential that you could pick it up and carry it around?

When I think of a mobile home, I think of depressing poverty. I'm sure there are exceptions to this; I'm sure that not all occupants of mobile homes are depressed or poor. But I very much doubt that very many of them are gallant princes wearing velvet and lace and riding off to show those upstart commoners what's what.

The Broken Cog in the Unmade Watch

Of late I have been given cause multiple times over to think about deterministic universes, and how I seem to personally experience all the guilt and dread of living in one without seeing any evidence whatsoever of any sort of extrinsic judgment of human actions to reward virtue and punish evil--much less any universal definition of virtue and evil--beyond the feeble machines of human institutions, which are often subverted to support systemic cowardice and arrogance and greed for the material and psychic benefit of their subverters. And yet, acknowledging the material and psychic benefits of evil (e.g., believing my country has a God-given right to invade another country and take its shit), I will not allow myself to be evil, whether out of dread of a deterministic universe or out freely willing to generate what good I can so that what reality we enjoy might be less dreadful and painful, all the while suspecting that my perceptions of minimizing my own contributions to a general suffering and contributing in good faith to a general good have been subverted by my own cowardice and arrogance and greed.

I thus seem to have the worst of both worlds.

A Poem Written On The Occasion of a Rain

I fear my friends the funnelwebs shall not feast today, as their webs are full of water: drizzle, mist, and spray. Colorless droplets depend--a frozen moment's unfalling rain; any wary insect should see this and should fly the other way, rather than serve my friends the funnelwebs in some capacity as prey.

Being on the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Some weeks ago I heard about how Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a prominent radio talk show host (who is not, in point of fact, a psychiatrist or a therapist), felt compelled to leave her radio show after she had repeatedly used the word “nigger” on the air and criticized a black woman for feeling offended about it. This caused a number of Laura's sponsors to retract their sponsorship, and Laura then said she was retiring from radio in order to protect her right to free speech.

And yesterday you, student who alternates between talking when I am addressing the class and sleeping in class, who packs up ten minutes before class is to be dismissed, and who has never failed but to address me in a tone more suited to reprimanding a dog than addressing the instructor of your class, told me about how you felt that your own right to freedom of speech was abridged in the classroom environment because you were being evaluated on your adherence to the opinion of the instructor rather than any other factors. I have told you and the rest of the class that this is not how I evaluate your work; that I evaluate the work in my class based upon the strength of the arguments, their clarity and their use of evidence, not if they happen to be in accordance with my own beliefs, outside of my own belief that the best arguments are those based on reason and evidence, that is, and the employment of such is the best way to persuade others of your position. Pursuant to that expressed belief, here is my carefully reasoned counter-argument to show you that your argument that I am abridging your free speech is bullshit:

The text of the First Amendment is as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Nowhere in those lines does it require all instructors to give As to all students for all work.

The right to free speech doesn't give you the right to choose how other people respond to your speech. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from any and all consequences of speech. The First Amendment does not, can not, and should not protect you from other people disagreeing with you if what you say is bullshit. To say that “congress shall pass no law” about something doesn't proscribe the personal reactions of all people all across the country. The federal government won't put you in jail for spewing bullshit, so long as you're not making violent threats against the government; spewing bullshit may still carry social and economic consequences. The First Amendment doesn't pretend to protect you from that. And thank God it doesn't; I'd be very afraid of any law that criminalized the act of thought or the capacity people to respond non-violently to the thoughts of others. Yes, you have the right to burn a Koran, and I have the right to think you are a total asshat for doing so.

I don't accept that you have a right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, inasmuch as doing so infringes upon the rights of the others. Insofar as my limited lights lead me, I don't believe that the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States was ever intended or interpreted by a court to guarantee the right of anybody to say anything, whenever, and that nobody be allowed to voice a dissenting opinion. The disruption of a classroom by means of constant talking, for example, doesn't seem to be protected by the First Amendment insofar as I read it; the First Amendment doesn't seem to guarantee that any one voice always be privileged over others.

The First Amendment does not insist that I hold any and all speech to be equally true, or important, or well-informed. The First Amendment does not demand of me that I not ignore my own personal and professional standards for the evaluation of speech, such that I become incapable of evaluating whether or not any given speech act (i.e., an assignment) measures up to the standards that I and other professionals in my field have established for determining how whether the speech act meets the standards of our profession regarding the well-reasoned, evidence-based, persuasive construction of an argument. I do not claim that a professional writer will always necessarily have more access to knowledge about writing than an incoming student, or that the student's assertions about writing should automatically be discarded in favor of those of the professional writer. I do claim that the First Amendment does not indicate that an uninformed opinion, because it has been the most recently expressed, is automatically allowed to trump an informed one by means of some sort of magical thought law.

In short, your freedom of speech does not extend to your having the freedom to force me to like what you say. My attention to your speech, and my estimation of it as something worthy, are a reflection of my own freedom of speech, which extends to my freedom in choosing what speech I want to listen to. And you must employ discretion in your freedom if you want to gain my attention—you must choose to use your speech in such a way that I choose to listen to you. My attention must be earned, my good will swayed; and what have you done to earn my attention, and what have you done to persuade me of the rightness of your position other than badger me for not accepting what you claim as its inherent rightness? Maybe, student, if you spent more time staying awake and paying attention in my rhetoric classroom and less time sleeping or talking, you'd realize the weakness of your position. Maybe, student, you'd realize that I am trying to give you the tools to make other people pay attention to you and hold your opinion in high esteem, and that arguing from a position of outraged entitlement is not one of these tools.

That I continue to allow you to express your opinions in my classroom, calling on you whenever you raise your hand just as I would any other student, is a reflection of my own belief in free speech that goes above and beyond that defined in the Constitution. I am such a believer in the value of the diversity of opinion that I will not, in point of fact, show you this argument, for fear of quelling your voice in my class entirely. I will instead call you in for an individual conference, and ask that we find some way to reconcile your pre-conceived hatred of me and the school experience in general with the necessity of your participating in the class in a constructive way in order to pass it.

But don't think for a minute that, outside of the context of the classroom, I won't think you're in grave error for misrepresenting and abusing the traditions of democracy in this way, and for absorbing this stupid and wrong idea that freedom of speech means you get to say whatever you want and people aren't allowed to respond to it.

Aural Analysis: "Bad Romance" by Lady GaGa

Another commute, another aural assault. This time it was the GaGa-thing’s “Bad Romance.” I had this song stuck in my head for something like five or six days, and only managed to finally expunge it by means of a liberal application of Viking metal and medieval Norwegian folk songs. But then, yesterday, as I surfed through the vaster wasteland yet that is SoCal radio, the GaGa-thing came crashing back at me. As will be evident from an examination of the lyrics, the Gaga-thing is fixated on revenge; I believe she is reaching through the radio to make a personal attack on me. Well, it’s time for me to fight back using the only weapon available to me: Swiftian wit.

It’s notable that I heard “Bad Romance” three times on my way to Orange County, rather than the subsequent single, “Alejandro.” Is this owing to the absolutely outrageous acts of homosexual gang rape and blasphemy and Nazi fetishism in the “Alejandro” video that represent GaGa’s crossing of three too many lines? I wonder.

Before I begin, I should say that I actually have some modicum of respect for the GaGa, if only a modicum. In the intellectual desert that is contemporary pop music, I must concede that she exhibits some shred of originality and talent. She is the best of the worst. She can sing, and isn’t all autotuned to Hell and beyond. She has talent. Her songs are undeniably well-crafted; they are all earworms waiting to happen. She and her collaborators have catchiness down to a science.

But oh, how she opts to expend such on weirdness and fetishism when she could probably use it to make much better music. There is a Tori Amos inside of Lady GaGa, trying to get out but constantly getting beaten back by means of bizarre displays of perversion. So my criticism of the GaGa-thing is a criticism of misused ability, rather than a criticism of an absolute lack of ability, which is the criticism I might level at, say, the current incarnation of the Black Eyed Peas.

You want my revenge, GaGa? Oh, I’ll give you my revenge. As before, my responses to your lyrics are in the brackets. As before, I offer the video up to those who, in their innocence, have been spared the seeing of it. It would be another essay entirely to describe the aesthetics of the video which…I actually really like, much as it tries to toe this weird line between sexiness and repulsiveness which…I actually really like. But whatever. The song still be dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

Let’s go, GaGa. Me and you, toe-to-toe, no maybe.

Oh, and spoiler alert: if you have not already seen Vertigo, you suck.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Caught in a bad romance

[These are the lead lyrics from the lead single for The Fame Monster album, intended to describe the negative aspects of celebrity culture. I think the concept is breaking down here; bad romances are hardly exclusive to trashy celebrities. I, being about as unfamous as it is possible for a person to get, will attest to that.]

Ra Ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma Roma-ma
GaGa
Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[Let me stop you right there, Dame GaGa. Now, I know your name implies that you have only a cursory apprehension of human language (and your video reveals that you have an outsider’s dim and unintuitive appreciation of what human clothing is supposed to be), but that doesn’t mean you have to actually employ strings of baby-talk in your lyrics. You’re an adult, as your video abundantly reveals. You can use adult words. Can’t you?

Okay. Let’s keep going.]

I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free

[Wow. Apparently, being ugly and diseased and poor, I am the GaGa-thing’s ideal lover. Nobody tell my fiancée.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[It really takes something for somebody to make an expression of love sound like “blah, blah, blah.” Thank you, GaGa-thing, for cheapening affection and emotion.

Actually, no. I take that back. I’m not going to thank you for that, not even sarcastically.]

I want your drama

[You do? Okay. I’m going to see a performance of King Lear next Friday night in Garden Grove. Would you like me to get you a ticket? It’s only $14.50 on Goldstar, which I know isn’t free (freeness being apparently the threshold for your love, in spite of your otherwise overwhelming materialism), but it’s close enough to it.]

The touch of your hand

[Wow, Lady GaGa. That actually sounds…totally human and relatable. You’re slipping.]

I want your leather studded kiss in the sand

[Oh, good. You’re back to being a freaky weird person again. Don’t ever change, Lady.

On a different note, can you imagine how awful a “leather-studded kiss” would be? It makes me think of studded leather armor. I do not want to kiss boiled leather onto which circular metal plates have been affixed. If my lover’s lips had that texture, I think I would need to get a better lover. Or some serious fucking chapstick.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[When you say that, Lady GaGa, somehow I don’t feel as though you’re being sincere. Something tells me that, in spite of your repeated requests, that if I were to try and give you my love I would very quickly be getting some hate from a bodyguard’s boot.]

You know that I want you

[I do? Well, okay, Lady GaGa. I guess you can have me. But I’m going to wear about seventeen condoms. I don’t know where in the universe you have been, and frankly, I don’t want to know.]

And you know that I need you

[That’s funny. You seem to have been doing pretty well without me up until now. Your vitamin-me deficiency hasn’t much affected your ability to wear spinal-cord extensions and twitch like vat-born abortion that you are.

I want it bad
A bad romance

[Alright, so let’s examine this wanting of the bad romance. What qualities does a bad romance have that you find desirable? Tragic failure? Does that mean you do want to see King Lear with me? Or are you drawn to the emotional or physical abusiveness? If so, I know a certain Katy Perry who, judging by her song lyrics, is desperately looking for a sub to dom over. You girls should hook up.]

I want your love and
I want your revenge

[Well, how convenient for you! ‘Cause that’s exactly what I want to give you!]

You and me could write a bad romance

[You know what? I bet we actually could. The bad romance that you and I would write, GaGa, being drawn together by a volatile mix of queasy lust and utter disdain, would be near-unlimited in its badness. I’ll take the first chapter; you get the second.]

I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge
You and me could write a bad romance

[Yes, I still think we could, too.]

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Caught in a bad romance

[Hey, wait. When did you go from wanting a bad romance to being caught in one? In the space of like two lyrics? You move too fast for me, Lady GaGa! Usually it takes at least eight lyrics for me to commit.]

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah

[Sis-sis, boom bah-bah. Are we doing some role-playing now, Lady GaGa? Are we supposed to be late 19th century college cheerleaders? Are we supposed to be reciting some sort of prayer to the Ancient Aegyptian sun god? Or are we back to talking in proto-linguistic babble syllables again? So now you’re into submission and paraphilic infantilism. That makes some kind of sense, I guess.

Oh God. If Lady GaGa starts to make sense to you, fear for your sanity.]

Roma roma-ma
GaGa
Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[Yes, I know. Your wanting of my bad romance is abundantly clear at this point.]

I want your horror

[Really? First you want to go to see King Lear with me, and now you want to go see Piranha 3D? Well, okay. But we’re going Dutch. International superstars in my company can pay for they own damn tickets. And, seriously, have you seen the prices for a 3D movie these days?]

I want your design

[Uh? Well, I’m not much of a designer, but okay. Besides, seeing your outfits, it’s not like I could possibly do any worse than the designers you already wear. An eyeless ape who has had half of his brains scooped out with a spoon could probably design more attractive clothes.]

‘Cuz you’re a criminal
As long as you’re mine
I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[You know, Lady GaGa, you’re an adult human female (I think?), and I’m an adult human male, so for you to have my love would have would probably be legal in most areas. Then again, I am confident that if anyone could start at consensual heterosexual sex and end up at the point of criminal sexual perversion, it’s you.]

I want your psycho

[So you want me to dress up like a woman and stab you in the shower as you scream and bleed chocolate syrup? Eh…maybe.]

Your vertigo shtick

[So you want me to fall in love with you, whereupon you will fake your own death, whereupon I will fall into a deep depression until I find you again and fall in love with you again, whereupon we will recreate your fake death and end up actually killing you? That’s a pretty complex fantasy to have, Queen of the GaGas.

It takes a lot to get you off, doesn’t it?]

Want you in my rear window

[Oh, I get it now. All this discussion of classic Hitchcock movies is just a lead-in to you asking for anal sex. Thanks for ruining some of my favorite films for me, Lady GaGa. Never again will I be able to watch Jimmy Stewart and the incomparable Kim Novak climb those fateful stairs without thinking about you taking it in the butt.

You know, Lady GaGa, the other pop stars—they’re just ignorant fuckwits. They know not what they do. But you, you have just enough talent and culture and intelligence to cause actual harm to the things I hold dear. With moderate ability comes moderate responsibility, and it’s unfortunate that you have opted to use your powers for evil.]

Baby you’re sick

[*I’m* sick? Hey, I’m not the one who just turned one of the best movies of all time into a request for butt sex.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[I don’t know. I was having considerable doubts about our love you even before you asked me for all the Hitchock murder roleplay. I don’t know if me repeatedly pretending to kill is a good foundation for a relationship.]

You know that I want you (’Cuz I’m a free bitch baby)

[I doubt that. I’m gonna go with the supposition that you’re actually a ludicrously expensive bitch.]

And you know that I need you
I want it bad romance
Your bad romance

[Yeah, I think we both know at this point that any relationship between us would prove to be pretty fucking terrible. And yet you want it anyway? This song really is a cry for help, isn’t it?]

I want your love and
I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge

[More revenge? I haven’t given you enough yet? Okay, well, we have a bridge and a last verse and one more instance of the chorus to go. I hope to have satisfied your revenge quota by the time we’re done.]

You and me could write a bad romance

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Caught in a bad romance

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma roma-ma

[Roma—like the Roma people of Cenral and Eastern Europe? So we can just flat-out use the names of ethnic groups as non-lexical vocables now? Let me try, using my own ethnicity. “Ger-Ger-German American.” Eh. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.]

GaGa, Ooh la-la
Want your bad romance

Walk walk fashion baby

[How is it that we’re discussing fashion now? This is the second time you’ve brought it around to fashion for no apparent reason, O atrocity that goes by the name of GaGa. I feel like you’re just trying to draw attention to your outfits, which probably don’t need any help in that department.]

Work it, move that bitch c-razy
Walk walk fashion baby

[In _those_ heels? I don’t think so, girlfriend.]

Work it, move that bitch c-razy
Walk walk passion baby
Work it
I’m a free bitch baby

[If that were true, how would you be paying for all those ridiculous clothes? Shit that ugly has got to be super-expensive.]

I want your love
And I want your revenge
I want your love
I don’t wanna be friends

[You don’t? But isn’t being bad friends a good way to lead up to being bad romantic partners?]

Je veux ton amour
Et je veux ta revenge
Je veux ton amour

[Look, you’re just saying the exact same thing in French. You don’t fool me. That’s not really very sophisticated. And yet there’s definitely something about the way your tongue curls around those vowels…ah! No! Must…resist…!]

I don’t wanna be friends
(Want your bad romance
I want your bad romance)
Want your bad romance!

I want your love and
I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge
You and me could write a bad romance

[We’ve been over all this already.]

Caught in a bad romance

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma roma-ma
GaGa

[You know, just because you took your name from the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga,” which criticized the kind of infantile pop music that was “becom[ing] some background noise / A backdrop for the girls and boys / Who just don't know or just don't care” doesn’t mean that you have to continue you to speak baby talk. If anything, Lady GaGa, you are becoming the very thing that Queen set out to criticize. And, in the end, that’s my real criticism of you—that, in your addressing of the topics of materialistic excess, our culture’s obsession with celebrity, and the pop music that is devoid of artistry and serves only to provide an accompaniment for sex, by means of your hyperbole, you seem to be critiquing all of these things by means of hyperbolic excess, but I really don’t think you’re critiquing these things so much as I think you’re reveling in them with an absolute abandonment of self-discipline. You are not satire so much as you are self-parody. I don’t think you’re pop culture’s greatest critic as you are its worst perpetrator.]

Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[You know what? No. Sorry, but no.]