A couple of years ago, I made an animation about Lauren Cleri, a lady who had an embarrassing appearance on the defunct Fox “reality” game show, Moment of Truth.  The show was a relatively hot topic on the internet at the time and has retained enough relevance in the land of memes for the video to still get views and comments to this day.  All in all, I’d say that about 97% of the comments that were ever left on that video were completely useless.

Before going into specifics, I’ll post the video here for the hyperlink-impaired:

Anyway, here are a few of the examples of comments nobody should ever, ever leave on a YouTube video.

1) “Hahahaha”:  Really any variation of this is unacceptable.  Hahahas, LOLs, ROFLs and LMAOs are all equally useless.  Congratulations, you laughed at something.  While I appreciate the sentiment of trying to inform me that you enjoyed my video, I really don’t need to know unless you have something a little less vague to say.  This isn’t a comedy club.  Video uploaders don’t feel bad if they don’t hear enough LOLing.

2) “wtf”:  All this means to me is that you’re easily confused.  I already know that most of the internet is comprised of idiots.  I don’t need more confirmation.

3) “mr.whiskers i knew it!”:  Yes…I know the video contains this line.  I wrote it.  Don’t ever comment with nothing more than a line from the video.

4) “fuck this vid can u say gay ?”:  On the other side of rule #1 above, I also could care less if you didn’t like the video.  However, if you insist on insulting a video, you could at least do your best to maximize your impact by not sounding like a complete moron.

5)  Over-reactive rants:   Perhaps my favorite useless comments are those where someone spends an entire paragraph explaining why I’m sexist, or how my video proves that America is “going down the toilet,” or about how I should be ashamed about how horrible and offensive I am.  I’m just a guy who made a pointless cartoon in his spare time.  Save your outrage for something that actually matters.

NB:  All of these rules go immediately out the window when dealing with the “vlog” community.  You know who I’m talking about.  Kids who spend 5 minutes talking about their feelings in front of a webcam every day.  These people feed off of your attention, no matter how useless your comment actually is.  So, feel free to throw a “wtflol” to them whenever you see them.  It just might stop them from crying that night.

A friend of mine once coined the phrase “Audioslaving.”  It was meant to describe the act of combining two things that are awesome (e.g. Chris Cornell and Rage Against the Machine) and ending up with something horrendous (e.g. the phrase’s namesake).

It occurs to me that the opposite could also exist.  The Reverse-Audioslave, if you will.  I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, but I’m willing to bet that countless food recipes are, to some extent, Reverse-Audioslaves.  Plenty of ingredients are pretty terrible on their own, yet somehow compliment eachother when mixed together.  It would be an interesting experiment to try combining awful artists to see what miraculous results could occur.

Similarly, I’ve recently been reminded of the existence of The Tyler Perry.  This is when two terrible things come together to make something astoundingly even more terrible.  If I might speak directly to Tyler Perry for a moment:  You aren’t good at comedy, nor are you good at drama.  Stop trying to combine these things into dramedies.  In fact…stop doing either, period.

Tyler Perry’s works are like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, except made out of dead puppies and Jerry Lewis routines.

Godwin’s Law, as it’s called, states:  “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

When referring to a humorous observation as a law, people tend to take it much more seriously than they should.  Is the adage true?  Well, technically, but no more so than if you were to replace Nazis and Hitler with Puppies and Kittens (In fact, I now decree that version to be Cutaia’s Law).

However, the more widespread this supposed edict becomes, the more people misuse it.  Recently, I saw someone in an online discussion bring up the Nuremberg Trials in an attempt to illustrate that a state of war does not excuse dishonorable actions by those involved.  Immediately, some Wikipedia reading know-it-all showed up with this to say, “Thank you for invoking Godwin’s Law[…]It’s not like that besmirches the honor of the holocaust survivors or anything, you witless turd.”

In the mind of the Godwin’s Law devotees, any mention of Nazis or Hitler is automatically inappropriate to the conversation at hand and somehow belittles the terrible nature of the Holocaust.  It never crosses the minds of these folks that these analogies might possibly be common because, oh I don’t know…World War II was a really huge fucking event in our history about which everyone has a reasonable amount of knowledge?

That’s the issue with accepting the ramifications of such a broad aphorism as absolute truth.  It causes people to avoid actually thinking about what’s being said, instead simply jumping to their own conclusion immediately.

Even worse is when the same people make the leap to Godwin’s Law anytime someone mentions fascism itself.  Fascism, after all, is not a concept unique to Hitler.  It’s a political ideology that comes in many levels of extremity.

There are arguably times when governments and politicians do things that would quite literally be classified as fascist.  The danger behind Godwin’s Law is that its biggest proponents seemingly (and perhaps unknowingly) seek to frighten people out of ever mentioning that possibility.

The Nazis didn’t just appear out of thin air, after all.  There’s a build-up required in order to work a country into a nationalistic, Jew-hating fervor.  Understanding that fact and pointing out trends that hint even slightly towards that direction is in no way a bad thing.  If you ask me, the only thing that would “besmirch the honor of Holocaust survivors” would be to let fear silence you into ever allowing anything even remotely similar to happen again.

A far more useful adage than Godwin’s Law, I would think, is one from philosopher, George Santayana:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

People who wish to preserve the memory of the immense evil of the Nazis at the cost of squelching speech about the more minor evils of today’s leaders are doing their cause an incredible disservice.  They’re no more reasonable than puppies chasing their tails around in circles.

Oh, hey, look at that!  Cutaia’s Law…

Exact quote from the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, regarding the rough plane landing in Jamaica (emphasis theirs, not mine):

Of the 148 passengers and 6 crew members on board, seventy-six were US citizens.  Of those at least 40 were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries.  4 Americans were in serious condition.

There was no mention of the non-American statistics because hey, fuck them, right?  Why not at least have the courage to add, “And nobody gives a shit about Jamaicans,” while you’re at it, Katie?

My website has, once again, lost the top spot in a Google search of the word “cutaia.”

This time, the victor in the battle for number 1 is some fucking mobster named Domenico Cutaia (or Dominick Cutaia depending on which part of the Wikipedia page you look at…that’s right, I’m getting beat by an unsourced Wikipedia stub).  Really?  A gangster?

First I have to fight off a couple of crooked mortgage brokers from Florida and now a member of the Lucchese crime family?  What the hell are you people trying to do to the family name?

I suppose I’m going to have to start updating the site again to get back on top.  Either that or I need to get started on a life of crime.  But then, I don’t want people thinking all us Cutaias are crooks.  Some of us make crappy websites, too.

“I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don’t like their health insurance, if it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks.”
-Bill O’Reilly

And the supposed “conservatives” continue to show how ignorant they are.  The free market is something that they don’t actually support because they don’t understand a lick of it.  The thing about free-market competition, is that it requires businesses to succeed or fail on their own merits.

What Billy-boy doesn’t seem to get is that the government’s version of “cobbling together” a policy essentially amounts to a room full of bureaucrats pulling numbers out of their asses until enough constituants are happy enough to get them re-elected next year.  When was the last time the government honestly shopped around for a good deal?  The fact is, they don’t have to.  First off, they’re most likely to just go with the company who gave them the biggest campaign contribution.  If that means sacrificing bargains, they know they can always just print more money to “create” a good deal for the end-user…the voters.  The voters, unfortunately, aren’t concerned that these actions end up affecting the future of our economy or about the Federal-Reserve-propelled decline of the dollar, though, because these are less concrete or immediate concepts.

For years, the Democrats and the Republicans have been force-feeding the public an idea that cheaper such-and-such, right this moment, means that the future is in good hands (pay no attention to the trillions of dollars in debt behind the curtain).

This is the bottom line behind why a public “option,” is not a true free-market solution.  The government doesn’t understand or care about things like cost vs. profit (or even breaking-even) because, “Hell!  If we run out of money, we’ll just print more!”  No loans, no bankruptcy, no real accountability…just pass it off to the children!  Governments don’t operate under the same constraints of economic reality that a real business must.

So, Bill…you think your current plan is great for you, yet support a government plan for all us lowly peons out there (way to stick to principles you sycophantic prick), but keep in mind:  When the government “option” accidentally (?) creates a monopoly based on their inexperience with actual business practice and their neverending supply of funny money, what exactly do you think will happen to your wonderful plan?  The government can simply offset unsustainable costs by selling off bits and pieces of our future (i.e. printing money, which is for all intents and purposes a hidden tax) and nobody will be the wiser.  Can your plan say the same?  Or will it suddenly have even less money coming in due to customers jumping ship, while still having to support its remaining members?  Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me.

From the viewpoint of the masses, a public “option” appears to be a perfect solution.  They see all these positives for the proles, but the negatives are too obscure for your average American to consider.  And it’s not socialized medicine, right?  Just more free-market competition!  But as I said, competition only works when all the competitors are playing the same game.  A public option is effectively killing or severely crippling the private sector, not because it’s inherently better, but because it’s not based in any kind of economic reality.

I just can’t wait for Bill O’Reilly’s insurance company to go out of business because it can no longer compete with a mob of thieves who just counterfeit money in order to have the “best” plan out there.  Then after 4 years, everyone can pat themselves on the back, get re-elected, and “keep on fuckin’.”

Hey…remember in the book 1984, when children were expected to inform the government if their parents said something against the official view of things?

Good news!  We’re finally here!

According to a blog on whitehouse.gov:

“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

In other words, “Since we don’t have the big brother police state fully set up yet, we need some Nazi recruits to help tell us who might be engaged in the horrific crime of free speech!”

Personally, I think anyone with a blog should begin posting the most ridiculously untrue (hell, even some of the truths may qualify as ridiculous) posts possible about Obama-care.  Flood the government with their out of line request for complete and total obedience.

See you in Guantanamo, folks.

Recently, a gang of robbers stole 170 dollars from me.  They said they needed it because they had lost a lot of money gambling in Vegas and their bookies were gonna break their thumbs!  Since they obviously needed the money, I didn’t really mind the theft that much.

That was until recently, though.  That’s right…I just found out that they gave themselves 16 cents of that money!  16 cents!!!  Can you believe that?  I mean…the nerve of those guys!

Edit:  Nevermind…they’ve already returned 3 cents back to the bookie fund (and I hear that they may return another 5 cents, too).  I guess I spoke too soon, eh?  Boy, I feel so vindicated now! I’d say they’ve really risen to the occasion and I applaud them for it.

Note:  Multiply the above by a billion, and you basically have the AIG bonus scandal.  Now do you see how stupid you sound, America?  Maybe it’s time to focus on the initial theft, instead of squabbling about 0.1% of it?

…and deserves to be goldthroated.  Bernanke and Greenspan, too.

Do you think crucifixion at the National Mall is too much?

Note to people:  If you see someone wearing a heavy coat or running a space heater at their desk…don’t look at them with an incredulous little look on your face and ask them if they’re cold.  If you’ve ever done this to someone, you may have noticed that person then trying to move the conversation along as quickly as possible.  This is because there are only two possible sarcasm-free answers to the question.

1) “Of course I’m cold.  Why else would I be using a space heater, you fucking idiot?”
2) “No, I’m not cold anymore.  I’m sitting in front of a space heater…you fucking idiot.”

Besides, you’re not asking because you genuinely want these obvious answers.  You just think that such a question is somehow less douchy than simply blurting out, “I think the temperature is mild in here and I fault you for disagreeing.”  (It’s not, by the way.)