ugly people

I recently learned who Post Malone is. He’s one ugly crotch rash of a person. Ben tells me that Malone and Justin Bieber are pals, and Bieber has a similar look now too — jailhouse tattoos, greasy messy hair, pedophile moustache. This bothers me. I don’t understand trends where people strive to look unattractive. I know I must be the weirdo here, maybe the kids today legitimately like this gross white trash look, maybe they see others with that look and go “wow, nice” and pop little boners, but I honestly can’t see how that is possible. It reminds me of the high-waisted pants trend for women, that really bugged me too because I wondered how anyone could put those on, look in the mirror, and think, “these are flattering.” Those things did no one any favours. Same with the uber popular millenial look that you see pretty much everywhere now — Jenn and I went to a hip restaurant in a hip town in January and every guy there had slim-fitting dark blue jeans, Blundstone boots, too-tight t-shirt, plaid jacket, thick-rimmed glasses, beard, a toque, and was at least 20 lbs overweight. Every girl had greasy disheveled hair, massive baggy sweater, no makeup/makeup meant to look like they’re not wearing makeup, and some form of unflattering pants. Blech, so many horrible trends.

How do these people ever bring themselves to fuck each other? If I don’t like what I see, I don’t feel like fucking. Do they feel differently? Do they like what they see? Or are they just content to fuck anyone, regardless of how slovenly they look? Do they drink or take ED medications in order to fuck?

I try to remind myself that my parents probably thought the same thing about me. Heck, maybe they still do. Hmmm, I just remembered all the camo and death metal shirts I wore until fairly recently (and still do when doing dirty yard work). Rrrrrrrrrggghh. I guess I can’t talk. Never mind.

And now that I think about it, the grunge movement in the 90’s was wack too. Ok, I guess the point is that what is attractive is highly subjective and constantly changing. I suppose I had crushes on girls that some guys wouldn’t understand either. This is probably more about me getting old and not relating to some trends, but I still think kids look like shit these days.

I guess Post Malone isn’t any worse than Billy Corgan circa the 90’s. For the record, I hated Corgan then too.

Tiger King and bidets

Fuck man, I can’t believe how popular Tiger King is right now. Every time I look on social media or talk to friends, there it is. I wonder if the guy who made that series is rolling in dough right now. Hmmm, more likely the studio that financed him is rolling in dough, now that I think about it. I wonder what the pay structure is for Netflix though, like do they buy the right to show something with a flat fee, or do films get paid per viewing? I bet there are a bunch of different options, and Netflix and the studio figure out something they are both happy with.

Anyway, on one hand I’m really annoyed that everyone is making casual, semi-inside jokes about Carole Baskin or whoever because that’s just annoying. It’s like they’re passive-aggressively saying “look at me, I just watched a hip TV show so I must be pretty hip.” But on the other hand, it’s rare that I get into something at the same time as other people, so I find it a little exhilarating when it happens. It’s neat to feel like I’m part of a wave of something going on across the continent. It was like this with synthwave/chillwave/retrowave a few years ago. So yeah, mixed feelings.

Btw, I’m still nuts about synthwave/chillwave/retrowave. I’ve especially been enjoying it lately. There’s something about the juxtaposition of listening to music that makes you feel joyful while in the middle of a fearful, stressful time — like a pandemic when you can’t see your friends or do normal things. I don’t know how to describe the feeling but it’s like partying as the world burns or something like that. I wish I could describe it better but that’s the best I can do off the top of my head.

A micro trend I am fully excited about though is the Shawnigan Lake bidet trend. Bidets are hot in this town right now, hot, and I’m taking a lot of credit for that. See, Jenn and I listened to a Stuff You Should Know podcast about bidets several years ago, and after that Jenn casually mentioned she wanted one. In typical me style, I made a mental note of that and bought one ASAP, and then gave it to her for xmas. Yup, a bidet for xmas. Sounds like a shitty gift (lol) but she loved it. Ours is just an attachment that goes under the seat but it has a hot/cold temperature adjustment, and a joystick (that’s such a weird word) to move the nozzle around. We’ve had it for a few years now and are big fans of it, and at a campfire earlier this month three of our friends mentioned that they had installed bidet attachments or were waiting for one in the mail. And now old Sassy boy himself just told me he got one too. I’m thrilled this is catching on because a) if you got feces on your hand you wouldn’t wipe it off with paper and say “good enough,” so why is that acceptable for your back door, and b) we were the first of our friends to get a bidet so yup, we’re pretty “far out” as the kids say these days.

I’m a real cool guy.

Will I ever stop raving about Space Trip? Jeez Louise.

Do you remember when I got into synthwave/chillwave/retrowave last year?

Of course you do. Well, it’s funny because when I first flipped my wig for the Space Trip series, they only had a paltry few thousand views. And today when I put it on during some house cleaning, I noticed that the original Space Trip vid now has over 15 million views.

I think that’s really neat. It feels cool to be ahead of the curve on a trend, or at least be part of the initial wave of it. Yeah, trends are generally laaaaame but when it’s something you genuinely dig and it just happens to gain some traction, it’s kind of satisfying.

Further on that idea of being part of a larger movement, the same user who created and uploaded the Space Trip mixes also made a bunch of other similar videos. You can bet your ass I checked all of them out but none of them did it for me the same way Space Trip 1, 2, and 3 did. Those other ones are fine but they don’t have the same lonely, bittersweet, dark, futuristic vibe that really grabs me. And here’s the neat thing: I guess most other people feel the same way, because none of those videos have anywhere near the number of views that the Space Trip videos do. There’s something special about Space Trip that just resonates with a lot of people.

I think that’s crazy, and cool. Once again, I’ve inadvertently been on the same page as hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other people. I wonder, on a technical level, what it is that is so special about Space Trip.

Ack, it just occurred to me that the ‘youtube recommendations’ list might play the biggest part in this. Damn, that’s disappointing. But you know, even if that is the case, it can’t account for all of it. There are probably still tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people who organically had a similar experience as me. That’s still pretty cool.

Btw, Space Trip 4 came out a while after the first three but it’s not as good. It lacks the magic. That’s how I felt after one listen, anyway. But now I feel like I haven’t given it enough of a shot so I’m going to revisit it. Buckle up.

Man, I love the retro graphics once you start playing the vids. At least that part is definitely still rad.