Envy Me

Attention Impressionable Youngsters: Please Stop Listening To Terrible Music. Also, Give Me Money.

It has recently been brought to my attention by a credible source who shall here be identified only as 'My brother' that I have a larger audience than I previously suspected amongst the future leaders of America. Upon finding this groundbreaking information out, I immediately said 'Huh'. Then I took a nap. But after I woke up, I realized what I had to do. I then promptly forgot, because I am getting old. So, rather than provide you, my youthful-skewing readership demographic, with whatever groundbreaking, completely brilliant thing I was going to write, I instead have a request for you: Please stop listening to terrible music. Also, give me money. I guess it's two requests.

You see, young people, you wield incredible power that you did not know about until I decided to tell you about it in a couple sentences. In fact, you still don't know it unless you decided this whole thing was getting too long, and skipped ahead. You should probably be on Ritalin®. But that is not my point, at least not until I buy stock in the Ritalin Corporation. Instead, my point is that you control the mass media. I know. Doesn't it make you want to flex your hands in pleasure, feeling your newly-stated power coursing through them. Go ahead and do it. Alright, stop flexing them now. After two times you start to look ridiculous. Anyway, there is a very scientific reason for this, and that is that you control the majority of the country's disposable income, barring that possessed by trophy wives, which is wisely spent on silicon products. This spending on the part of the trophy wives leaves you as the controllers of the almighty dollar (Soon to be Yen) in the entertainment industry. Where you get this money to spend is unknown. Perhaps you steal it from your parents' wallets while they are napping. I won't them tell if you give me some of it. But scientific studies have shown that you are the ones with the purchasing power, and what you want is to be entertained. Again, the Ritalin thing.

Now, I am not going to sit here with rose-colored contacts in and tell you that back in the day, everything to do with the music industry was wonderful (Partly because I am lying down as I type this). Indeed, as those of you who were subjected to the on-screen tragi-comedy that was the Super Bowl halftime show would know (At least the ones of you who have been released from the necessary sessions of post-traumatic therapy), I would be blatantly lying if I tried to peddle this to you. Rather, I would relate to you a story from my days when I was a stupid youth, much like you are now. Here we go: When I was a stupid youth, I listened to absolutely TERRIBLE music, much of which (Such as Creed. Especially Creed) is extremely embarrassing and/or nauseating in hindsight. Now that I am older and know everything there is to know, I have much better taste, consisting primarily of bands that no one has ever heard of whose records are impossible to find in stores, and realize the folly of my younger, stupid ways. So please, young people, don't do it for me, do it for your future selves (Note: If you have plans to die within the next couple years, before you start to sprout nose hairs, you may ignore this advice safely): Stop listening to terrible music.

But you are shouting at your computer screen right now, "But HOLLA(R)! How am I supposed to know what music is good and what is horrible?!? I am merely a young person, and therefore stupid!" I know, and that is why you are lucky I am here to help you. Firstly, stop that shouting at the computer. I can't hear you, unless you have broken into my apartment and are reading this on my laptop. If you are doing this, please leave me some money. The first step to telling what music is terrible is checking the band name. If the band name is 'The Black Eyed Peas', the music will be terrible. This also holds true for the name 'Nickelback'. Or 'Panic! At the Disco'. Just to be safe, you should probably ask me before you listen to any music. Ask away. I will handle any and all questions as I receive them.

If you all stop listening to terrible music in unison, young people, then in a few years we may finally see some results from your laudable choice. Why will it take what is a substantial portion of your life thus far to see results? This is because the music industry is run by people who, rather than asking you directly which bands you would like to spend your parents' stolen disposable income on, instead prefer to keep their heads lodged firmly in a place where it is hard for changing cultural taste, or sunshine for that matter, to reach them. But ideally, within several years they will have to remove their heads due to a lack of oxygen, and will notice the masses of young people out there who, instead of choosing to spend their money on terrible music, have decided to give it to me (Hint hint). The resulting shock will probably cause their feeble hearts to give out, and they will be replaced by people who will know how to respond to changing cultural trends. Those who do not surface for oxygen will die of suffocation, which will help to correct this problem in much the same fashion already outlined. Long story short, it's probably worth dropping the cash to reserve a cemetery plot now before they become overcrowded with music executives and you wind up having to share a casket with the creepy guy who lived across the street.

So what have we learned today, young people? Quite a bit, I think. Maybe. But you do not know this, because you skipped directly to the end, rather than reading all the pearls of wisdom I attempted to bestow upon you. So I will now make you an offer: Rather than forcing you to reread everything you have scrolled past, I will send you a recording of me singing the whole thing for the low, low price of $15.99! This offer is not available in stores, and is only good for a limited time. So go on and steal some money from your father's wallet. He keeps it in the left pocket of his jacket. Make sure to get enough for the stamp, too. You'll thank me when you're older and still have your self-respect intact, by which point I will hopefully have made enough money to move to an undisclosed location so that you can't find me to demand a refund.

Sage Advice

So, once again, I found myself at my place of employment. This time in my official capacity as Company Ambassador of Goodwill and Smoked Fish, I was approached by a woman lacking the normal amount of teeth, who seemed to be operating her shopping cart in a rather military fashion (Here I am thinking of "Left! Right!", not banana republics). She hailed me, so I went over to her and her cart, which featured a large number of bottled sodas carefully arranged in a very random fashion, which flew about and smashed together any time she randomly jerked her cart in a different direction, something that happened approximately two times per second. She then asked me "Can I get a bag to put these in so they won't roll around so much? I'll pay for them up front." Now, would I ever question the integrity of strangers? Yes. Yes I would. So, rather than proffer the requested plastic, I arranged them in a more orderly (Read: A) fashion, which would prevent them from rattling more loudly than the velociraptor pen in Jurassic Park every time she changed course. She admired my handiwork, and then said to me "Thanks, man. Don't smoke weed this early in the morning. It's, um, medical. Marijuana. Don't smoke it."

Duly noted.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

So yesterday I was at the fine French dining establishment at which I work (Le Chopparé du Prix), and we were somewhat busy. As a result of this, I required a certain amount of refortification, here defined as caffeine. To achieve this end, I went over to our coffee shop on my break, only to find that they were out of French roast! Rather than curse my place on this mortal coil, I chose to loiter conspicuously in the area while a new urn was brewed. Whilst I whiled away the time, an elderly gentleman came up to the counter and asked for a senior coffee (Presumably he wanted fresh coffee at a reduced price for some sort of senior discount, as I do not believe coffee ages in the same fashion as fine wine), and was informed that Le Chopparé du Prix does not have this sort of price reduction at the coffee shop. Having been thwarted thusly, the gentleman determined that the only recourse left to him was to turn to me and announce "Why don't you go to war and learn what freedom's all about? You don't have the guts!" While this did nothing to solve either his or my caffeine-related dilemmas, it certainly made me wonder what in the world was going on, and whether that had actually just happened. He kindly ended my befuddlement by repeating his statement verbatim. Seeing as how the customer is always right, I responded with a straightforward "You're right. I don't." I am nothing if not a good company man.

Now, this leaves me with a few questions. Firstly, does he go around saying this to people everywhere on a daily basis? Or was this triggered by some sort of disappointment over not getting a prix reduction on his coffee? If so, how does he handle any sort of major disappointment? Pistols at dawn, perhaps. But more importantly, this gentleman bore most of the major signs of getting up there in years, from seemingly being slightly hard of hearing to walking slowly to facial wrinkling, which means he's very fortunate that I am an ambassador of goodwill while on the clock. Because I think I could have taken him.