I finally came up with a term that perfectly describes punk rock and its derivatives: they’re musically sterile. Before you little spikey-haired bastards start going red in the face and throwing your Black Flag records at me, let me explain my reasoning first.

I’ll begin by explaining how punk rock is one of the most conservative forms of music out there, rivaled only by blues. By “conservative,” I don’t mean politically; I’m referring to the genre’s musical structure. Since punk’s inception over three decades ago, the song structure, chord changes, and even the lyrical styles are largely unchanged. Even punk’s primary offshoot, hardcore, hasn’t changed much in terms of musical structure. While that’s certainly to the genre’s credit, as they’ve stuck to their roots while every other genre has drastically changed over the years, it’s also kept punk treading water in a musical sense.

If the chords and structure are still the same, that means you’re not evolving, expanding the art form, or breaking any barriers. You don’t even have to be a progressive rock band to evolve musically; genres from jazz to heavy metal have all done it. Punk has not. Sure, there’s been a few changes since the 1970s, especially in terms of production quality. However, the basic structure is still the same old thing. It’s technically been an endless rehash ever since the beginning!

Even worse is the trap many punk bands (and fans) fall into when they try to break out of their boundaries. They’re either decried by the “old school” fans for not being “true” punk (which is utter nonsense), or they’re claiming to be another genre, when they’re still punk rock through and through. Let me examine both of these phenomena in a bit more detail.

“Old school” punk fans love to rail against groups like Blink 182 or Green Day, often making the preposterous claim that those bands aren’t real punk. This is certainly due to their incredible success in the pop sphere, and their detractors are simply wrong; those bands still qualify as punk rock. The musical structure is still the same. Opinions, styles, and attitude have absolutely nothing to do with placing music into genres. I don’t give a shit about the whole DIY scene, bands’ activism, or any of that nonsense; punk rock is music, a collection of sounds put to a rhythm, and that’s all we’re talking about here. Screw the scenester crap that’s been attached to much of it; if you use opinions, activism, image, and other bullshit as criteria for classifying music, you could logically throw any genre classification out the window, as you’re literally letting style override substance. We’re sticking with the facts, people.

Then we move on the various offshoots that claim to be something other than punk rock, but even a cursory examination of their musical structure proves otherwise. There’s no need to claim you’re a separate genre, when you clearly fit into another one. The latest example of this is metalcore, a genre I deconstructed last year. I made it quite clear in that post that metalcore is really just the latest front for popularizing punk rock, not a proper subgenre of heavy metal. It’s a perfect way for record companies to get impressionable punks into what they deem “metal,” and another lightning rod for longtime punk rockers to attack. Controversy equals interest, which translates to sales more often than not. (Metalcore is likely just a creation of marketing, much like deathcore, its Hot Topic-fueled sibling.) Just because you tune down your guitars and start screaming doesn’t mean you’re not a punk band anymore.

Fans (especially young ones) have loved punk rock for decades due to its simplicity, and record labels will continue to love it for the same reason: it takes little to no effort, talent, or skill to crank out a punk song, and the general public will snap it right up. But as someone with some knowledge of music theory, I need my music to evolve, not stay stuck far in the past with basic chord patterns a six-year-old could play. Punk rock fails the test on every level, and that’s why it’s musically sterile.

Even though I’m a console gaming fan through and through, I’ll be damned if I’m not excited about StarCraft II and Diablo III. Yes, I’ll be buying both of them on day one, whenever that may be; however, there’s one large nit with both titles that annoys me, and many other gamers as well. Indulge my going off a historical tangent for a few moments, and you will understand.

I used to be quite the hardcore computer game fan. This stemmed from the fact that I never actually owned a home game console until my sophomore year of college; I had a Game Boy for most of high school, but that hardly counts. Sure, I played NES and whatnot at friends’ houses, but that didn’t mean squat if I was stuck at home. That’s where computer gaming came in. My family bought our first computer in 1993. It was a Gateway 2000 i486DX system, with a 33MHz processor and a turbo button. Whoa, slow down. It wasn’t a state-of-the-art machine, but it wasn’t a slug, either. I could play a majority of the games available at the time, and since many of my friends had computers of their own, borrowing games was never a problem.

I didn’t get my own personal computer until I was more than halfway through college in 1998. Again, I didn’t get a high-end box, but it was more than adequate for my needs. Computer gaming was huge on campus, and my friends and I spent many an evening playing Quake, Grand Theft Auto (the original one, kids), and Command & Conquer: Red Alert across the school’s network.

So why am I not a big computer gamer anymore? It’s just too damned expensive. Console gaming isn’t cheap, either, but you don’t need to shell out thousands to have a high-end gaming system that way. Plus, there’s no worrying about system requirements with consoles (though, that’s sadly starting to change). More importantly, though, is that I’m a Mac user. I’m fluent in Windows, don’t get me wrong; I maintain Windows machines for a living. I just would never use one as my home system. They’re far too unreliable and unsafe, and there’s decades of empirical evidence to back up that statement. The tradeoff to using a non-Microsoft operating system is that the number of games available is sharply diminished (though not nearly as much as it used to be).

Fortunately, that won’t be a problem with the new games that I want. Blizzard Entertainment has a good track record of supporting older hardware, so one doesn’t need a top-of-the-line computer to play their titles. Not only that, Blizzard are staunch Macintosh supporters. Like many of their past games, StarCraft II and Diablo III will both be launched as hybrid discs that will work on both Windows and Mac OS X systems. So, not only will I be able to play the games the same day as the Windows crowd, I know they’ll run quite nicely even though I don’t own a Mac Pro. (I’ll have a shiny new iMac this fall.) Last but not least, their Battle.net online gaming service is crossplatform, so I’ll have no trouble teaming up with friends to play; few of them have Macs, and the ones that do aren’t really computer game fans.

All of this sounds fine and dandy, but here’s the big thing that really pisses me off about the two new Blizzard titles: lack of LAN support. It’s already been confirmed that StarCraft II won’t have it, and we can logically assume that Diablo III won’t, either. This is complete and utter bullshit; LAN support was one of the greatest features in the previous games! That’s what we used all of the time back in college. Why should my roommate and I have to connect to Battle.net just to play a skirmish game, when our computers are only a room apart? Blizzard claims the removal of LAN support is due to piracy concerns, but c’mon, we know that’s horseshit. They’re just pushing Battle.net, especially now that it’s an integral part of World of Warcraft, their real moneymaker. We can only hope they don’t decide to monetize Battle.net and start charging for access, like that Xbox Live nonsense.

Speaking of which, even though I think World of Warcraft is stupid, I can’t begrudge Blizzard for supporting that more than anything else, even though it’s meant delays for StarCraft II and Diablo III. Why? Because without World of Warcraft’s tremendous success, StarCraft II or Diablo III may never have made it past the drawing board. Games are insanely expensive to develop these days, and if MMORPG addicts’ money is going to feed development of titles I actually want, then so be it.

Just give me back my goddamned LAN support, please.

I’ve been getting crap from some of my peers about how I shouldn’t be buying movies on Blu-ray, because they may be phased out in favor of digital distribution, perhaps in as little as five to ten years. The obvious logistical problems aside (hard drive space, DRM, bandwidth caps, etc.), there’s a much more simple reason why such complaints are inherently flawed.

Let’s restate the argument first: don’t buy a movie on Blu-ray, because it may be replaced with a digitally distributed version in a few years. If you break that statement down into a simpler form, you get this:

• Don’t buy this product, because a better one will replace it years from now.

So, why does that argument fail to hold water? Look what happens when you apply it to other products and services:

• Don’t buy a car, because more advanced vehicles will be on the market five years from now.

• Don’t buy a computer, because a more powerful model will supersede it later.
• Don’t buy a gaming system, because new ones will be on sale in a few years.
• Don’t buy a house, because better-built houses will be available in a decade.
• Don’t buy an HDTV, because 3D holographic displays will be the standard in the future.

Do any of those make sense? Of course not. You can’t base short-term purchases on long-term projections; it’s as simple as that. As far as the Blu-ray example is concerned, the fact is that if you want to own a film on high-definition optical disc, Blu-ray is your only option. Things will change in years to come, sure, but that doesn’t affect the here and now.

This brings us to what I call the escalation factor: technology is always improving, so if you keep waiting, you’ll never end up with the product! Should movie fans have avoided buying VHS tapes in the past, because DVDs were coming much later? And following that, should they have avoided buying DVDs, because Blu-ray was on the horizon? You can see how it just keeps escalating.

If something better is coming in a few months to a year, then fine, waiting makes sense. But basing a short-term purchase on a long-term projection, which isn’t even a confirmed reality yet, is just foolhardy. Life’s too short to keep putting things off, especially when it comes to simple pursuits such as entertainment.

I got the emissions test done on my car the other day during my lunch break, and before I returned to the office, I got food from the local Wendy’s. Not exactly health food, but it was in close proximity to the test center, and I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands. Anyway, while sitting down to enjoy my order of chili, I saw something disgusting.

Fat people…with fat kids.

Everyone uses this image, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant.

I wanted to barf into my cup. I’ve seen this plenty of times before, but I swear, I’ve fucking had it. I think it’s disgusting that our country is so overloaded with obese people; it’s something like one out of every four adults now. While in some cases, there may be a glandular disorder or other medical condition that causes a person’s obesity, a majority of the time it’s because they’re a lazy sack of shit. Worse, our culture proudly supports this appalling lifestyle choice.

Of course, if someone wants to be fat tub of lard, that is indeed their choice, and who am I to tell them how to live their life? I draw the line, however, when I see them towing around their little broods of fatness. There is no excuse whatsoever for a fat child, let alone several. As a parent, your child’s health is your responsibility, and if your kid is fat, then you’re failing miserably.

Seriously, if a kid’s fat, they’re in for a world of hurt as they grow up. Aside from the potential social issues, there’s all sorts of diseases and other health problems that will rear their ugly heads as a direct result of their obesity. If the parents support behavior and meal choices that make the kids fat, then they should be held criminally responsible. If you went and stuck someone with a dirty needle and they got sick, you’d be thrown in the slammer. The same thing should happen with these fatass parents who can’t take care of their children.

It’s not like making sure your kids aren’t fat is difficult, either. You don’t have to be an asshole and cut off fast food entirely, but just use it as a treat or special reward; for example, an excellent report card earns a trip to McDonald’s. Taking the family out for burgers multiple times a week because you can’t figure out how to cook a decent meal or even throw together a salad is not conducive to proper child development!

I’m no Adonis myself, but I’ve got enough common sense and leftover Roman Catholic guilt to know that if I eat some fattening food, I’d better go for a long bicycle ride to work it off. These fat fucks would do well to take the same advice, and maybe some of it will rub off on their disgusting children. Wii Fit doesn’t count. Get off your ass, and go outside.

There’s a rather disgusting offshoot of the first place culture. I don’t have a clever name for it yet, but it’s the behavior in which fans of a particular medium, service, or product decry the competition to the point where they actually want the entire competing entity to go out of business.

For starters, look at the rivalry between social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. MySpace was the hot shit a few years ago, but now, Facebook is more popular. No big deal, right? That’s what competition is supposed to be about; plus, it’s obvious that the two sites offer plenty of different functions (e.g., MySpace has the massive music section, and Facebook has applications). However, what I see far too often is Facebook aficianados ruthlessly attacking MySpace as a relic from the past, in hopes that the site will crumble. What did MySpace ever do to them? It’s just a website, not some evil entity that devoured their children.

If MySpace fell apart, we’re looking at the loss of a lot of revenue for its owners. And what does that mean? A ton of people will lose their jobs. We’re not talking CEOs here, either; the average joes who maintain MySpace from day to day will get the boot. In addition, all of the artists who maintain their musical profiles there will suddenly have an entire avenue of advertising cut off. Facebook evangelists would do well to remember that when they drop their trousers to piss on MySpace’s continued existence.

In the gaming sphere, we’ve got the whole Xbox 360 versus PlayStation 3 mess. While the fans of both systems rabidly piss on each other, this particular rivalry is notable due to the fact that one of the console manufacturers has gotten in on the mudslinging. It’s no secret that Microsoft wants their competition to fail in a most spectacular manner. They’ve attacked Sony and its various consoles since the launch of the original Xbox, and it’s only gotten more vicious since the release of the Xbox 360. Microsoft does not just want the PlayStation 3 to fail; they want Sony as a company to fail.

Before you go accusing me of being nothing but a Sony apologist, let’s lay out a few historical facts here. Microsoft is no stranger to anti-competitive behavior; they’ve gotten into considerable legal trouble both in the US and abroad for that exact reason. There’s been countless times where Microsoft has forced out or bought out competitors, so they’d have free reign to market their product and their product only. Microsoft supported HD-DVD and created an Xbox 360 add-on for it specifically because Sony championed Blu-ray, even though Microsoft was pushing the Xbox 360 as a gaming system at the time, not a multimedia system. Lastly, Microsoft has on numerous occasions paid off developers to create games exclusively for their platform. That’s the same kind of anticompetitive nonsense that Nintendo used to pull back in the NES days, and for the exact same reason: to push competitors out of business.

Calm down, I’ll be fair: PlayStation 3 fans who relentlessly bash the Xbox 360 in hopes that Microsoft will collapse are just as deluded, if not more so. Microsoft is an absolutely massive corporation that will never go away, so get over it. The difference is that while Microsoft certainly wants Sony to fail, Sony does not want Microsoft to fail. Need I remind everyone that Sony has a rather large laptop computer division? What operating system do you think is installed by default on those computers?

But enough about games, since that’s just an invitation for more bitching and complaining. Let’s look at our last blood feud of the day: General Motors versus Ford Motor Company. The rivalry between these two stretches back for decades. We all know both companies have fucked up royally over the past decade or so; they put profits way ahead of making reliable cars, and as a result, import models outclassed and outsold them. Once the economy tanked last fall, American automakers had to beg the government for help! However, once the bailouts came around, things changed a bit. Ford refused any help, claiming they’d fix their problems themselves. GM wasn’t so lucky; they had to accept government money, and eventually file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now, the federal government owns a majority of the company…and I’ve seen Ford fanatics practically rejoicing in the streets.

I don’t think they realize that the loss of an American automaker actually makes it that much harder for Ford. Too many gearheads fall into the trap of “If our rival goes out of business, then we win!” Well, not quite: that’s just one less American automaker in a sea of more popular and reliable imports. Chrysler already went down the tubes; if GM eventually follows suit, Ford will be all alone in its fight against the imports. Those aren’t good odds, no matter how you’d want to spin it. You don’t want to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond!

I think I’ve made my point. When you want a company to completely fall apart simply because you don’t like it, that makes you a horrible human being. If you don’t like a business, then just don’t support it. No need to be a dick.