Aaron R. Davis

I read Jonathan Franzen’s rant about e-books this week, and I have to say, if everything he writes is this tiresome and unclear, there’s probably not much chance of me finally sitting down with The Corrections.

I see that e-books are the latest thing that’s destroying the charm and tradition of America, according to the hipsters and self-appointed intelligentsia, preciously defending what basically amounts to a personal preference as though it were the last stand of humankind against the oppression of the machines and needless technology.

Now, the hipster argument I understand and dismiss out of hand, because it’s mostly just about how important the tactile experience of sitting with an actual book and reading a slim volume of young adult fiction apparently is. Hipsters just enjoy the appearance of hanging out with books and think that somehow equals a love of literature and the actual experience of reading. That’s why Tumblr is littered with pictures of DIY bookshelves or stacks of books feng shui’d into designs and shapes: because reading is important. Or saying you love books or something is important, whatever.

Hipsters just love being seen with old shit. That’s all it is. They want things to look deliberately outdated — excuse me, retro — because it apparently makes them smarter. Or more aware of old pop culture trends or something. I mean, they have Instagram, which only exists to make new pictures look like old Polaroids, because why develop a genuine hobby and spend time tracking down the cameras and the old film packs when you can, you know, not make much of an effort? If you had a hobby, you’d just be some jerk-off hobbyist putting effort and passion into something, and apparently effort and passion are seriously uncool.

Anyway, on to the self-important intellectuals like Jonathan Franzen, who must spend as much of his time thinking of publicity stunts as he does planning to write yet another in America’s endless series of novels about dysfunctional families.

I honestly have no idea what he’s trying to say other than that he hates e-books and that they’re destroying America somehow. I have no idea how, but that’s okay, because neither does Jonathan Franzen.

Franzen: “The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model.”

Okay, so, after plugging his own novel in a totally-not-self-serving way, he then claims that capitalists hate books and that books are a bad business model because, what? I guess because they never need to be replaced? He’s really wrong on three counts here. First, water can totally ruin a book, it just depends on how bad the spill is. Second, capitalists like anything that anyone pays money for. And third, if no one ever needed to replace a book, they wouldn’t still be printing the Bible.

Franzen: “I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change. Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.”

Well, at least there’s something he admits to not knowing.

Is permanence part of the reading experience? I don’t know. For me the most important part of the reading experience is the actual reading of the words. I really don’t understand — really, truly don’t — how the experience of reading an e-book is fluid and changeable. But if Franzen really thinks books are permanent and unalterable, someone needs to quietly disabuse him of this notion, or at least teach him what the word bowdlerized refers to.

Books are altered all the time. Not only can they be altered by printers and publishers, but hell, they can also be altered by fire, time and ink. Have you ever seen those pictures that go around on the Internet that are supposed to be all arty and deep that are just someone’s book with all but three or five words blocked out by scads of ink? So not only does that waste ink and paper, it also alters someone’s paragraph into a statement about, I don’t know, how awesome pizza is or something.

There are also these book sculptures now, where someone takes a book and hacks the pages into the shapes of mountains or dolphins or some such, which seems like a pretty big fucking alteration to me. I’m sure the author of any book would prefer you read what he wanted to say instead of using it as material for a forest scene. (Oh, because books are dead trees, I get it, it’s ironic and shit.) To me, that’s worse than changing the author’s point, but at least it’s someone being honest about how their love affair with the written word is much more decorative than anything else.

Seriously, it’s like watching someone abuse someone else’s kids. How this is more romantic and vital than reading words on a monitor screen, I don’t know.

Franzen: “But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

I’m sure this wad of bullshit sounded great in Franzen’s head before he used his mouth to shit it into existence, but I honestly have no idea what he means by this. Because we have e-books there will be no more justice in America?

Franzen: “The Great Gatsby was last updated in 1924. You don’t need it to be refreshed, do you? Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

Seriously, what is this guy talking about? I know he’s all smarty-smart and I’m just some blogger, but come on, man. How about saying something that, I don’t know, sounds like you worked really hard on getting the language just right?

I can’t believe I’m saying this to a National Book Award-winning author, but could you work on your clarity, please? On the one hand, he seems to be just griping about change and progress like a lot of people do when they hit a certain age and see something they personally wouldn’t want becoming popular (“You kids and your Justin Biebers!”). But on the other, more insane hand, he seems to be seriously talking about the advent of a piece of technology as though it’s going to lead to the direct downfall of American freedom … somehow. He can’t actually offer the logical connection between “I’m agginst it!” and technology toppling all of our humanity, but he’s just so damn sure it’s there.

And to make sure we all know it, too — and before breaking from that topic to make sure we all know how much of a Franzen fan Barack Obama is and making one of his pretentious art-is-religion testimonials — he went to all of the trouble of arranging a press conference, because what better place to decry the modern ease of communications than appearing before the entertainment media? Because that’s not a mixed message at all, gathering journalists together to use their technology to more quickly spread the word that technology is dangerous.

And there are a lot of hipsters and pseudo-intellectuals out there holding this up as an important and sobering message of the dangerous evils of technology and progress … on the Internet.

Because we live in a world where it’s very fashionable to brag about how you cut yourself off from the noise of the media by not owning a TV and refusing to read a newspaper … on the Internet.

And it’s also very hip to say that a person having alternative, maybe even easier access to reading somehow cheapens the very precious experience of showing the world how smart you are … on the Internet.

So, yeah, I get that Jonathan Franzen thinks Jonathan Franzen is pretty awesome, but do we really need to pretend that a personal preference in reading habits is a political statement, hipsters?

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

I read this week that Katherine Heigl said she wanted back on Grey’s Anatomy. Katherine Heigl stories in the gossip media are always hilarious to me for three basic reasons. 1) Katherine Heigl obviously (and wrongly) thinks she’s a very popular actress and person, 2) there are these bizzaro lady fans she has who troll the news feeds for any remotely negative thing anyone says about her so they can jump to a pointless and impassioned defense of this actress they’ve decided to make the symbol of how everyone obviously hates successful women who speak their mind (doubly hilarious if these people aren’t actually working for Heigl, which I’m not convinced they are), and 3) seriously, it’s Katherine Heigl, if she weren’t such a gigantic bitch, no one would even be talking about her in the gossip media, anyway.

I was also going to add that Katherine Heigl has a crippling lack of self-awareness, but she’s shown an amazing media-savvy for the last five or six years now. It’s just that her presupposition that people like her is the flaw in this savvy that brings down everything she wants to do.

Example 1: she gets herself cast in the movie Knocked Up after Anne Hathaway drops out. After years of crappy television and Lifetime movies, she has her first major hit playing an irredeemable, self-centered jerk, because you should play what you know for the sake of authenticity. It makes a lot of money, and it makes her look bankable to Hollywood, and they start building romantic comedies around her assuming that she’s now a movie star.

But then, she decides to go on record talking about how Knocked Up was a terrible movie and it made all women look like bitches. So while she’s smart about how being in a hit film can pay off in other aspects of her career, she’s also publicly an ingrate. That doesn’t make you friends in an industry that is surprisingly over-sensitive about what people think. You’d think money would help you get over it, but I don’t know personally. I’d love the opportunity to find out. I mean, if Katherine Heigl really hated it that much, she’s free to give me some of the cash she made of off degrading herself playing professional make-believe. Just a suggestion.

And so what if her movies are crap? I mean, 27 Dresses, Life as We Know It, The Ugly Truth … yeah, they’re all the same movie, but who cares? All actors and even directors do is make the same crappy movies over and over again. Makes Michael Bay millions. Gets Steven Spielberg called, for some reason, the greatest director of all time. Tom Cruise makes the same movie over and over again, and people go to see those. Hell, Christopher Guest has basically remade This Is Spinal Tap four times, and this supposedly makes him a comedy genius. Her movies make a respectable amount of money, and they probably don’t cost much to make, so more power to her. She found a job that pays a lot of money compared to the actual work that goes into it. (Let’s face it, it’s not like movie stars are teachers, or something where people aren’t compensated in relation to the actual, exhausting work that goes into the damn thing.)

Anyway. Katherine Heigl’s kind of a movie star. I’ll give you that. And she’s got this One for the Money that’s come out, which is going to be a failure, obviously, because the books were popular 20 years ago or something and no one goes to see a movie just because Katherine Heigl is in it (despite whatever you’re going to screech about in the comments section, Heigl defenders, because she was probably someone’s ninth choice to star in this), and there’s not going to be enough profit to justify a sequel (much less a franchise), and if it’s such a great movie with a bankable star in the lead, why is it being dumped in the last week of January when everyone’s going to see whatever got nominated for the Oscars instead? This leads me, roundabout, to my second example.

Example 2: she gets a regular role on Grey’s Anatomy, a show which is inexplicably popular and inexplicably still running. Whatever, not my cup of tea, doesn’t matter. It’s a big ensemble, so when she sees an opportunity to pull focus, she does. She goes out and protests during the writer’s strike when there are cameras present, so she looks like she really cares. When Isaiah Washington calls TR Knight a homophobic slur, Katherine Heigl is there telling the media that this really hurts KATHERINE HEIGL because tr knight is KATHERINE HEIGL’s friend and KATHERINE HEIGL really cares about gay people. She’s smart at recognizing opportunities for Katherine Heigl to make the world (or the few people in it who care) see what a kind and caring person Katherine Heigl is. An orphan baby has a curable heart defect? Make it known that KATHERINE HEIGL SELFLESSLY ADOPTED A SPECIAL NEEDS CHILD. I’m kind of amazed she didn’t decide to frame it as “adoption by Katherine Heigl heals the sick.” Someone at work is an asshole and says something nasty to a gay actor? Tell the media: KATHERINE HEIGL WON’T PUT UP WITH GAY-BASHING! Because what’s the point of being a good person if everyone in the world doesn’t see how good a person you are? It’s not like kindness is its own reward, or anything. Not when there are shitty romantic comedies that need leads and a race for the film quality bottom against Jennifer Aniston to be won!

But here’s the real flaw with it all: she’s still an ingrate. Because she comes out and very ungraciously says “Oh no, I know you Emmy voters think I’m incredibly talented, but don’t vote for me this year because the Grey’s Anatomy writers didn’t write anything good for me, and instead of talking to them or to producers about it, I think it’s much more polite and professional to whine publicly about it.” So when no one wanted her around anymore because she burned all of her bridges there, she just said she was too big for the show and was going to have a grand movie career, anyway.

It’s an astonishing character flaw in a person who is otherwise pretty smart about the way she handles her business. It’s seriously, just rubbernecking it online when people report on her, like looking at someone who has selective self-awareness. Someone who knows how to make her career work, but can’t stop herself from saying really stupid things about the people she works for because she thinks she’s a special little princess and has all of the love in the world. I mean, seriously: was she just hoping to be fired so she could move on, or did she genuinely think that Grey’s Anatomy writers were going to look at what she said and realize she was right and they should do better by her?

I think it shows a real self-awareness on her part that she realizes One for the Money is going to do about as much for her career as VI Warshawski did for Kathleen Turner’s. But it shows a real lack of said self-awareness for her to publicly opine that Grey’s Anatomy should have her back on when she’s done her best to make everyone there never want to see her face again.

Seriously, Katherine Heigl: what is your deal? You should really just stop talking to the media for a few years.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

I know I’ve mentioned before in these pages that I think Chuck Norris sucks and the people who like him kind of suck, but just to remind you: Chuck Norris sucks and the people who like him kind of suck.

I just don’t get this guy or his inexplicable popularity. He’s got that shitty magic – a combination of mere recognition and nostalgia (which, despite what the Internet blathers on about daily, are not actually the same thing), which makes people overlook that fact that a) he’s untalented, b) he’s not interesting, c) he never once made a movie or TV show that could be objectively considered good unless you were eight when you saw it and then never again since or maybe once took a tow-hook to the head or unless it involved Bruce Lee in some way, and even then, no, Chuck Norris’ movies suck. Also, d) he’s a right wing, homophobic, Huckabee-endorsing, other religion-hating birther, which is the absolute worst thing about him except for the fact that he has people on the Internet who think he is awesome despite the fact that he clearly and definitively is not.

But whatever. If people didn’t like stupid shit, half the Internet would shut down.

So, the latest sucky thing about Chuck Norris is this: he’s demanding that The Expendables 2 be trimmed down to a PG-13 rating, or else he refuses to appear in the picture.

…

What?

I know, I know, it sounds like I’m making a joke, but it’s true: Chuck “The Total Gym Guy” Norris is demanding cuts in The Expendables 2 as if he’s anybody that could tell anyone in Hollywood to do anything. Except what’s weird about it is that producer Sylvester Stallone is agreeing to these demands, because apparently the guy trying to put together the ultimate action series actually seems to think that having Chuck Norris in a flick is something so commercially important it can’t be lost. Apparently he never saw Delta Force. Because that was all Lee Marvin.

And let’s not be mistaken here, The Expendables kind of blew. It was a neat half-joke concept, that you get all of those aging action stars in one place together and make this awesome, stupid action movie. In execution, it was more stupid than awesome. Like, a lot more. But hey, it made some money, and people got excited for a sequel, so more power to Stallone and everyone involved. Since Mickey Rourke decided he was a serious actor that week and declined to appear in the sequel, Stallone turned to Chuck Norris instead. And Chuck Norris demanded cuts.

Why? Because he doesn’t like the salty language.

Yes, because Chuck is a man of the people (unless you’re gay or an atheist, in which case he hates you and thinks you should either be killed or sent to a re-education camp) and insists on being family-friendly (um … now), he’s insisting the language be chopped down, which I really hope against hope is going to lead to a lot of badly-dubbed swears about fargin’ iceholes and mother-fathers. This is a rare case of a movie becoming its own TV-friendly edit before it’s even released in the theaters. Because Chuck Norris, the near-fascist who nigh-treasonously demands to see President Obama’s long form birth certificate because he doesn’t trust a black guy to lead the country, wants to make sure that children aren’t assaulted by the F-word when they head out for a night of blood-soaked, casually violent family entertainment.

That’s the thing that gets me the most. Chuck Norris is presumably fine with the violence; it’s the language he objects to. Sure, kill as many people onscreen as you want, but for chrissakes, don’t call someone a cocksucker as you depict them being ripped apart by bullets!

Family values!

And like I said, The Expendables was okay, kind of. It didn’t make me want to see an Expendables 2. Chuck Norris being in it makes me want to actively avoid it. I just think it’s ludicrous that Stallone, riding the wave of a comeback after the first flick and Rocky Balboa and the surprisingly awesome Rambo, would actually cave on something that naïve. And I think it’s hypocritical that Mr. “Show Me the Birth Certificate Because I Am Apparently Important” has built his career on the exploitation of violence but rather cartoonishly draws the line at dirty words. If some ass hadn’t created the world’s worst Internet meme around the world’s most ridiculous jackass, no one would care. He’d be in his home working out obsessively and talking about his martial arts championships and about how he used to be in movies a long time ago, one of which involved teaming up with a dog to fight crime.

But hey, I get it, whatever. Encouraging hate crimes in your shitty column, good; saying “shitty,” bad. You got it, Mr. Family-Friendly.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

The night is cold and dark as Twinkie the Kid walks into his office and closes the door behind him. He uncaps his brandy, pours himself a generous helping and sits down in his contoured office chair. Removing his cowboy hat, he heaves a long, deep sigh, exhaling all he can before downing his drink and feeling the burn of the alcohol and his own shame.

“Two bankruptcies in the same decade,” he muses, pouring himself another glass. “Christ almighty, how much longer can we keep this up?”

Wearily, straining, he lifts himself to his feet again and paces the room, looking at a lifetime of decorations on the wall. He is almost amused by how long he’s had this office, the shelf life of a Twinkie being disturbingly long. He was certainly a survivor, and only a little dried out for wear and the financial stress of the Hostess Corporation.

Twinkie the Kid steps over to a dimly-lit corner and opens his humidor, about to reach in for a cigar, when, almost as a reflex, his eyes dart up to the painted portrait of King Ding Dong. The chocolate majesty’s eyes almost seem to stare back at the Kid, piercing into him. And the Kid’s shame and guilt finally come to the surface, moistening his cakey brow.

“It can’t be helped,” the Kid mumbles to the portrait. He tries to avert his eyes, feeling small and naked under King Ding Dong’s stare, and tries to concentrate on the smooth, flowing brush strokes of the King’s frosting mustache. But almost instantly his eyes are drawn upwards to the almost accusing gaze of the glazed ruler.

“What else was I going to do? Profits are down, demand is down. People finally noticed that their kids looked like sausages bursting out of their casings. You know all parents care about is the self-esteem of their little chunklets. It was only a matter of time before we suffered for it. It’s so easy to blame the little rack at the end of the cereal aisle.”

Still, the painted stare of King Ding Dong made the Kid feel withered and impotent.

“I’ll be the first to admit our products don’t really taste as good as they used to,” he reasoned. “Why do you think those assholes in Texas started deep frying Twinkies? I mean, come on, those people were deep frying Twinkies and somehow childhood obesity is our fault? Twinkies have been around since 1930, god damn it! I’m 82 years old, and kids in the seventies didn’t look like McNuggets with legs! Everyone knew Hostess products were full of sugar and fat back then, too, but there were parents to stop their little drones from sitting in front of the TV and inhaling Ho-Ho’s every night of the week! What happened to actual parenting?!”

The Kid gives another sigh, this one deflating him to the core. He sips his brandy, then puts down his glass and finally closes the humidor, defeated. “It’s not our fault parents can’t be responsible about their children’s health anymore,” he mumbles. “Why are we the ones to suffer?”

He starts pacing again, thinking about all that’s gone wrong in this still young century. “Bad enough those Wonder Bread geniuses can’t find a way to cash in on this whole grain craze, as if wheat is going to magically make their little piglets skinny and muscular and perfect. Try not slathering it with hazelnut sludge for a change! Maybe stop pretending that McDonald’s is healthy just because they started putting skinny hipsters in their commercials!”

The Kid sits down in his chair and, at last, voices what he’s been holding in all day. “What was I going to do? Pay out all of those employee pensions? Keep propping up those damn health benefits? How can we show a profit with all of those union costs? There was no other way to save our profits but to file for Chapter 11 and try to roll back all of those union benefits. Those damn workers, always trying to chip away at our profits, always with their demands and their blathering on about dignity and rights … what about our rights?

“Corporations are people, damn it! Corporations are people! What country do those unions think this is?! We’re in danger every second. Fuck, have you seen how the Vachon market share is growing with those May West Twinkie rip-offs? How are we supposed to fight these things? Well I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to be with damn Transformers endorsements! No one eats Sno Balls, anyway. What, you think Fruit Pie the Magician is going to wave his little wand and make our problems go away? Do you think Little Debbie has to deal with this union overhead?! Bad enough their food still tastes good! Have you ever eaten a Nutty Bar?! It’s delicious!!!”

Suddenly, a knock at the door pierces the Kid’s reverie. Shaking with his fervor, he tries in vain to calm himself down, patting down his kerchief before walking over to the door and opening.

“Is everything okay in here?” asks Chauncey Chocodile, straightening his straw hat. “I heard yelling. I know the bankruptcy announcement has you down, Kid.”

“Chauncey? You still exist?”

“Mostly on the West Coast these days,” Chauncey shrugs. “I guess people in the East don’t want to eat a chocolate-covered Twinkie.”

“And people in the fat states want to deep fry it and blame us when their arteries close off,” the Kid snaps. “Sorry, Chauncey. I am on edge. It’s all falling apart. It’s workers and their damn rights. People are in another one of those snits where they want to be treated like people again.”

“Well, what can you do?” Chauncey shrugs. “I mean, why not be one of those rare businesses that makes its employees comfortable, proud to work here? Aren’t happy workers more productive? And in today’s economy …”

“Today’s economy is slaughtering us!” the Kid yells, past his breaking point. “We can’t afford to deal with unions and still turn a profit, and with this health fad in full swing, we’re not just seen as non-essential, but completely detrimental! Jesus, ‘Twinkie’ is practically shorthand for harmful junk food. Since when do parents not want their kids to eat delicious, crème-flavored chemicals!”

“Sorry, boss,” Chauncey mutters, worried that he’s witnessing the mental collapse of the legendary Twinkie the Kid.

“Will you pray with me, Chauncey?” the Kid asks, now broken.

Chauncey, now seriously concerned, backs away a little bit. “Kid?”

“Pray with me,” the Kid repeats. “Pray with me to Mitt Romney to reassert corporate personhood and institute work-for-hire so we don’t have to deal with these unions.”

“Kid, you’re kind of freaking me out here. Maybe you should go home, get a good night’s sleep and come back on Monday nice and refreshed.”

“You don’t want to pray?” the Kid asks, his suspicious eyes searching Chauncey’s face for signs of betrayal. “Why not? You seem awfully sympathetic to these unions.”

“It’s market reality, Kid,” Chauncey tries to explain. “Who’s going to even buy our products if the workforce can’t afford those kinds of luxuries? I mean, no one really needs to buy a Twinkie, right? Why not give our employees a stake in the company and give them incentive to focus on creating a better product?”

“What are you blathering about, Chauncey? What do you mean ‘better product’?”

And it’s then that the Kid spies the wrapper hanging out of Chauncey’s vest pocket. Twinkie the Kid’s eyes widen, and then narrow again in anger.

“A Little Debbie Nutty Bar, Chauncey?” the Kid seethes. “You dare bring that in here? In this building? In my office!”

“Kid, I … I just …”

“You reptilian bastard.” It’s a cold whisper, but it blares in Chauncey’s ear canals like the report of a pistol.

And that’s when Chauncey sees crème smearing his crappy vest. Suddenly, his legs seem to lose all their strength, and Chauncey collapses to the ground. As he looks up, his vision blurring, all the sound in the world seems to vanish, until all he can hear is Twinkie the Kid, all he can see is Twinkie, looking down at him with utter hatred, his mouth twisted in a scowl, his six-shooter smoking in his hand. And Twinkie the Kid speaks to him one more time: “We’ll be sure to chocolate-coat your coffin, you traitorous redneck lizard.”

And then the darkness.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

I must not have been a very good boy last year, because right after Christmas, my computer finally melted down. It’s melted down before, don’t get me wrong — you’ve seen the breaks I take — but I’ve always been able to reboot, clear out virus problems, fix the registry or, worst case scenario, reformat. But when your computer crashes in safe mode, it’s pretty clearly time to get rid of the damn thing.

I had a Dell from something like 2003. It was still running Windows XP, so at least I got to bypass Vista entirely. It had a frustrating slow processor (for 2011, not for 2003), and I was getting more and more tired of that giant desktop. I had always wanted to get a new computer. I just wanted to wait until I could actually afford one.

But this, no, this had to become a giant paperweight over the holiday break. Of course.

Of course it had to happen when the local library was closed and I couldn’t get to the public computers.

Of course it had to happen when my wife’s Toshiba laptop was in the shop after suffering its second massive crash in the six months we’ve owned it, just before Toshiba mailed it back completely unsecured in its box — a box that showed up with a hole in it, so, you know, thanks for the care and attention to detail, Toshiba.

And of course this has to happen when we’re poor — and we’re always poor, which is why we both can only work part-time/freelance on jobs we find on the freaking computer!

So this was a fun situation to find ourselves in.

The first thing we did was go to some rental places to see if we could float enough money to rent a computer until our tax refund came in with, hopefully, enough to just pay the damn thing off. We were a bit leery of this option, not just because of the hit to our incredibly meager finances, but because we really only had the option of pre-leased machines. Granted, the warranty options were surprisingly generous, but I was just wary of paying for a computer with the possibility of preloaded problems. Was it worth it, or could we hold out until the wife’s laptop came back maybe with its issues resolved?

My mother entered the stage then and tried to help, and I want you all to remember that I appreciate that she had good intentions while I continue to rant here.

My mom dropped off an older Mac she had laying around.

And frankly, in all honesty, I would rather have no computer at all than deal with a Mac.

I know this is an insane point of contention with a lot of people online. There are a whole lot of Mac zombies out there who don’t mind spending the money to constantly upgrade their OS for the wonderful sense of elitism that being a Mac user and part of the whole Apple community apparently provides. And you know what? Fine. That’s cool. Whatever makes life seem worthwhile in this terrible economy and idiotic political climate. I get that. But even with an unlimited amount of cash, you could not pay me to be a Mac user.

Here’s my problem: I need to access my email and a specific website in order to accept and carry out paid work assignments. It’s the same for my wife. And here I was, stuck with a Mac that was running an older OS and that could only be upgraded so far without just springing for a completely different overpriced machine. So out of three browsers loaded on the damn thing, exactly none of them could access my email. IE? Couldn’t access freaking Yahoo Mail, much less either of our work websites, without upgrading to a newer version of IE … which we couldn’t do without upgrading the OS. Ditto for Safari. And Firefox wouldn’t open at all. Chrome? Opera? Couldn’t even download those on the OS this old thing was running. So while we had a computer that was very pretty, it wouldn’t work for literally the only things we desperately needed it to do: access email and our job websites.

This was incredibly frustrating. I managed to find access to a newer OS through a friend of mine, which would’ve given me the minimum of what I needed, but I couldn’t load it from a USB device. I needed a disc. When I searched the web for advice, I found chat room after chat room full of total assholes whose most helpful comment was “If you don’t have a disc, you must have stolen it, so fuck you, we’re not going to help you.” The archons of Apple, jealously guarding their holier-than-thou status by refusing to open the curtains to show you the inner workings of their church. So thanks for nothing, Appleholes.

My experience with the Mac zombies, and the noise of their moaning Wozniak’s name while copulating with their servers, drove me away from the Internet for a few days. I experienced a wider world … well, a wider of world of Star Trek and Saturday Night Live reruns streamed from Netflix through my Wii. But still, it was nice decompressing from the annoyances online of political commentary, snobbery, fanboyishness and the aforementioned Appleholes. I read, I played games, I did some puzzles … I lived. Remember living? It used to be nice, back before we started letting in so much of the damn noise. It was a fun break. Frankly, I think it’s the kind of vacation I need to take more often.

What ended up happening — since I’m obviously online again — is that I scraped together some holiday money and just bought myself a new laptop (not a Toshiba, that’s never going to happen). I don’t need a tower or an all-in-one; I just need something that gives me word processing and that can access my email and jobs. Frankly, this little laptop is faster and has more space than my old Dell did, so I’m set as long as this thing wants to keep working. I’ve long since lost my fear of losing anything important — I don’t place importance on a lot of things anymore, since it’s just destined to be lost — and now that I’ve reconnected with silence and turning the white noise from the Internet vacuum off, I feel a lot better about the world than I did last week.

Oh, and sorry for the Appleholes crack. People just pissed me off. In the end, it’s not important.

The real lesson of this week: not a lot about the Internet is.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

The Late December Holiday Mash-Up is nearly upon us, and the orgy of corporate-mandated Good Cheer that comes with it, and I want to wish you all a safe and happy season of whatever the season means to you personally and will offend you the least.

I wish you good tidings and a pause to ill news. I wish you a lack of long lines and a decent parking space. I wish you less awkwardness than ever when dealing with your families, especially if you’re interesting enough to have found your own identity in spite of how you were raised.

May all of your technology work the way it’s supposed to for a change. If you have to contact a call center, I wish you help instead of belligerence, and an actual human voice instead of a goddamn recording.

I hope we all learn to drive for a change in 2012. No more of the dozens of daily car accidents we take for granted because we assume people are too stupid to pay attention when cars are trying to merge during rush hour. Seriously, people, pay attention to where you’re going. Oh, and people in Mini Coopers, I know you have a tiny little car, but that doesn’t give you license to weave in and out of traffic constantly like you’re zipping around in a goddamn Vespa. Seriously, what is wrong with you people? You still have to obey the rules of the road. And why the hell are you driving a Mini Cooper, anyway? Look at your life, look at your choices.

Um … I mean … may we all learn to forgive others, and ourselves.

I wish more Muppets for the world in 2012.

I wish us actual good movies again.

May Steven Spielberg finally make a movie that isn’t about penis or how creepily magical little boys are, may Pixar make a movie that isn’t a giant allegory for sexual dysfunction and may Hollywood finally relent and finance some Terry Gilliam movies, since almost every popular movie ever has just been ripping the man off. Alright, maybe I’m too hard on everyone; it’s mostly joking, guys. Except for the boy thing, Spielberg, what the hell? AI was like a damn NAMBLA ad.

May Michael Bay never make another movie again and instead travel the world making explosions that help mankind somehow.

I wish some kind of happiness for the people who lost Community only to get a freaking Chelsea Handler sitcom instead. I wish some serious perspective for NBC. I hope Kate Beckett and Richard Castle finally get together, already; seriously, you’re running out of excuses to keep them apart that aren’t just straight trolling the audience. May all of our sweeps weeks contain something worth watching that isn’t all gimmicky.

May Kat Dennings get everything she wants forever until the end of time, because she is perfect and I love her.

May we each win $20,000 in contests we didn’t even know we entered and that don’t turn out to be scams. May all scammers and people who create viruses drop dead from massive coronary episodes that create immense pain. And may they be revived, only to feel every artery harden, then feel their brains shut down and then finally die once again as the people they victimized kick them repeatedly. And this isn’t a one-day thing, oh no, this goes on for like a week, with one artery hardening at a time, and one synapse in the brain shorting out. Yeah, yeah, and then they have to relive all of their most painful moments, like when their dogs died or that creepy guy with the shed next door touched them inappropriately, and then they overload on the pain, but they can’t even become unconscious or numb to it, they just have to sit there and take it all in, just feel all of that pain and sorrow, they can’t filter that shit out.

Oh. Um …where was I? I mean, of course, may we all find inner peace and enlightenment.

May we all understand the value of other people, or, failing that, may we all somehow find ways to work from home and get paid for, I don’t know, entering data or something. Man, that’d be sweet.

May we all get the exercise we need and eat more fruit.

I wish jobs for the people who need them. May corruption be weeded out of our institutions and may cops stop pepper-spraying people in the face for exercising their rights of free assembly. May anyone who says that pepper spray, hotter than the hottest pepper known to man, is merely a food product, get pepper-sprayed in the face so they can see what they’ve been missing. I wish for a Congress that isn’t filled with traitors, who want to do the best for the people of this country and the Constitution of the United States instead of putting a promise made to Grover fucking Norquist above their oaths of office.

I hope the Republican debates get more interesting. Like, instead of the same idiots saying the same stupid garbage over and over again, they have to make it through the final round of American Gladiators or something. Or the games in Tron. Something to make it exciting instead of an exchange of non-ideas. It’s like watching a Model UN made up of D students. Seriously, you know you’d rather watch Rick Perry have to try to be a cowboy instead of just dressing like one and blathering on about prayer in schools. I bet he gets stomped to death by a bronco, which would just make the world a better place, anyway. And who doesn’t want to see Newt Gingrich crying his eyes out while trying to wrestle a bear?

Oh, and let’s tax the rich in 2012. Fuck the one percent for always asking the rest of us to contribute more and more while they contribute nothing to the economy AT ALL. You can’t take it with you, chumps. (Oh, and before you get all pissy in the comments about “job creators” and other buzz-lies, take a deep breath, realize you aren’t rich and you never will be, that you will never be in the one percent ever at all, and that they in fact laugh at you for defending them while they steal your pensions and your 401(k), and go play with your kids or volunteer at a shelter or just read a book or something. If you’re in the one percent, you’re certainly not reading this.)

Oh, and no more corporate personhood. Give me a fucking break with that.

I wish you no racism in 2012. No sexism. Actual compassion for all people. An end to the irrational fear that because someone is a different religion, they want to kill you.

I wish Pat Roberston a quick and very, very quiet retirement.

No more hate. No more war. No more disparity. No more demonizing other people and bombing them because we don’t want to fix problems at home. Economic recovery. Hell, economic prosperity.

Peace and all that. Live long and prosper. May the force be with you.

See you in 2012. I hope it all works out, but maybe bring a helmet just in case. Ooh, and some sandwiches.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

I’ve been reading a lot of online news lately about the upcoming sequel to JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and despite the fact that the movie itself isn’t even supposed to appear until 2013, I’m already fatigued by it.

I know, I know. I’m doing that thing I’m always excoriating the Internet for and pre-judging an unfinished product. But what can I tell you? I’m a mass of contradictions, like every actor who thinks they’re fascinating says in every Playboy interview. Or I’m a lazy hypocrite, which is probably more accurate.

It’s not that I didn’t like the first movie (or eleventh movie, if you like), because I did. I’ve caught it on a cable a few times in the past couple of years, and I always enjoy the hell out of it. I know you can make the case that it’s a poorly-written movie, and I can’t really defend it on that level (Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci seem to make their livings writing poorly — I mean, they did write those awful Transformers flicks), but there’s such a fun spirit to the movie that I enjoy it despite its many flaws.

No, my ever-growing disinterest in the sequel is that it’s feeling awfully … re-hashy to me.

It’s this Khan business. Why the hell would you make the decision to do Khan over again?

Here’s what was so great about the reboot: it set the characters up to go in literally any direction the filmmakers could think to send them.

They spent the first movie giving Star Trek this sort of cool, thundering urgency that was, in some ways, an infusion of Star Wars (down to a number of plot elements), but in many other ways made the characters feel more immediate. By trying to combine science fiction elements with space opera grandiosity, they took a trope audiences have long taken for granted — space exploration — and gave it a dark edge, made it dangerous and thrilling again, re-imagined it for a world that was even more laden with faster technology than the world was in the 1960s. Sure, the bridge of the Enterprise may have looked like the inside of an Apple Store, but the filmmakers actually took the time to make the signature Trek technologies — phasers, hand communicators, transporters — seem not only plausible, but new and dangerous.

At the same time, they’d also spent the entire first movie justifying what they were doing to longtime Trek fans that couldn’t get past the first level of being offended that someone was remaking the adventures of Kirk, Spock and company with different actors. So they plugged Leonard Nimoy into the movie and created an explanation as to why things were happening differently: this was an alternate universe created by accident. So the original series, et al, aren’t being overwritten by new data, this is simply happening in, basically, another dimension or something. Since my sensible explanation that everything you ever saw in Star Trek still exists and can be enjoyed on DVD anytime you actually feel like it never seems to actually make sense to people who seem to think that remakes and reboots somehow erase from history all the joy Star Trek has ever given them in the past, it’s as good an explanation as any.

So, after making a cool, fun movie that bends over backwards to justify its existence by swearing up and down that this is an alternate reality and can go in literally any direction, I was really looking forward to a second movie where the filmmakers, no longer bound by creating the set-up, could do anything they wanted to do.

And apparently that’s to remake an episode of the original series.

I don’t know; am I judging them too harshly for this? Am I overreacting? Don’t tell me it’s not going to be Khan in the sequel, because it so obviously is. Back in 2009, when Star Trek was still playing in cinemas, Abrams was already talking about Khan as the villain, with some theoretical bullshit about “people who are always destined to meet.” They’re so hot on trying to cast a Hispanic actor as the villain; the original Khan, Ricardo Montalban, was from Mexico. (It would be nice to see the Indian Khan Noonien Singh played by an Indian actor this time, if they have to do it again. Jimi Mistry would be pretty awesome in the role, just sayin’.)

Hell, even Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have let it slip, after a fashion. IDW just started publishing its Star Trek series, based on their film, and have said it could serve as a prelude to the sequel.

(Actually, they said prequel, in yet another all-too-common misuse of the word; man, that’s become a pet peeve for me lately. Look, gentlemen, a “prequel” is something that comes after something else, but takes place before it. The only way the comic book series would be a prequel to Star Trek 2 is if it came out after the movie, but detailed events taking place before the events of the film. Seriously, guys, you’re writers!)

All that’s happening in the comic books right now is the rehashing of old episodes. The first two issues were the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” with the new versions of the crew plugged in. The second two issues have been “The Galileo Seven.” Literally all they’re doing is retelling episodes of the original series with a slightly harder edge to fit the new characterizations. It’s really disappointing, because, as I keep saying, you could go in literally any direction you wanted after creating a feature length explanation for why this Star Trek is different from that Star Trek … and instead you just want to rehash old episodes?

So I expect this attitude of “the exact same thing, but kind of different,” so thoroughly endorsed by the screenwriters, is the prevailing one when it comes to current Star Trek projects. And I just find that disappointing. They spent an entire movie partitioning this universe off from the old one just to justify doing whatever they wanted … and what they want to do is rehash “Space Seed,” an episode that was well-done the first time and led to the best Trek film ever made.

There’s that Hollywood originality we always expect.

(Oh, and incidentally, the major reason I think it’s obvious Khan is going to be the villain in the sequel? JJ Abrams says it’s not. That tends to be the extent of his ability to shroud his projects in mystery.)

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

Nostalgia is a weird force; it overlooks flaws and romanticizes failings. Growing up is also a weird force; it tends to make people cynical and, in a reflexive way, suspicious of anything new, especially new versions of things that make us nostalgic.

It’s the meeting of these two forces that, at age eight, can make someone gleefully delight when Indiana Jones survives a fall out of a plane, down a mountainside and over a cliff in an inflatable raft, but, at age 32, seethe with anger when Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast by hiding himself in a lead-lined fridge. Both silly, both implausible, both in the same sense of fun, but, to hear the Internet tell it, one a joy to behold and the other an offense by history’s greatest monster.

November saw the financial success of The Muppets, for all intents and purposes Kermit the Frog’s comeback film. Of course, the Muppets haven’t really gone anywhere, they’ve just been doing Disney Channel specials and TV movies — their last major production, Letters to Santa, is only three years old. But since Jim Henson died in 1990, they have been off the mainstream radar in entertainment.

Now they’re back, with a feature film and a Disney-fueled marketing push behind them, and I couldn’t be happier. I loved the movie, and I appreciate the way it tried to make the audience look at the Muppets nostalgically on purpose, and then wonder why the Muppets seemed to disappear in the first place.

The obvious answer is, of course, that Jim Henson died much too early. The movie’s fictional answer is that entertainment got too cynical and hard-edged and the Muppets didn’t really seem to fit anymore. But I think the answer is somewhere in the middle of that.

Yes, Jim Henson died, and then Muppeteer Richard Hunt died a year later, also far too young. After that, I think there was a bit of a struggle over who was going to be in charge of the Muppets from then on. Who was the heir apparent? Was it Frank Oz, one of Jim’s longest collaborators, the genius behind Fozzie Bear and Bert, one-half of puppetry’s greatest double-act? Or was it Jim Henson’s son, Brian, himself a talented puppeteer who was probably feeling the pressure to carry on the family business, but who often expressed doubts about whether he could do anything with the Muppets, or even wanted to?

It took a decade, but the conflict seems to have simmered and then come to a head during the filming of the 1999 flick Muppets from Space. After that, Frank Oz left the Muppets to focus full-time on his successful directing career, and a few years later, Brian Henson sold the Muppets to Disney to concentrate on other opportunities for the Jim Henson Company. During that decade, the Muppets tried TV again with the unsuccessful (but charming) Muppets Tonight, which was pushed into syndication in its second season and will probably never see the inside of a DVD player, which is a damn shame. It also seems to have been a time when everyone involved with the Muppets had a hard time figuring out who was in charge, and just what to do with the characters.

What I hear now — and what I’ve especially been hearing in response to the new film — is that there should be a new version of The Muppet Show. That tends to be a trigger for me, because I am firmly of the belief that if there were such a show, no one would watch it, and those who did watch it wouldn’t like it. People don’t really want a new Muppet Show; they want to be little kids again and they want Jim Henson to still be alive.

When it comes to something remembered through nostalgia, people are very unwilling to accept that time moves on or that things change. People forget or were always unaware of factors that made the original what it was — factors that can’t be repeated.

Here’s what those factors were for The Muppet Show.

First, American networks rejected the idea of a series featuring the Muppets. Jim Henson had to go to Britain to get the show made for syndication, and in the beginning the concept was so out there that they couldn’t even get guest stars. Most of the original guest stars were actors who had the same agent as Jim Henson. It didn’t really gel until the second season, when people like Rudolf Nureyev legitimized The Muppet Show as a showcase of artistry as well as laughter. A lot of people praise — quite rightly — the anarchic spirit and bizarre non sequitors of the series, but how much of that was born out of the environment of what was essentially an independent British comedy production? The show might have been quite different if it was made in America, and maybe not as long-remembered.

Second, the late 70s were a time when variety shows and specials were much more common on television than they are now. Saturday Night Live was still brand new, and if you watch those early episodes, the sketch comedy is only part of the package. There were variety series full of guest stars, musical numbers, dance showcases, artistic depictions. For The Muppet Show, having Rudolf Nureyev dance ballet or having Mummenschanz perform one of their bizarre, beautiful routines or having Shields & Yarnell do mime and magic wasn’t out of character with other shows of the time.

Today, the variety format only barely exists. Talk shows follow rigid routines that have turned them into pointless commercial platforms for upcoming movies, albums and TV shows. If you have a show with people dancing or singing, it’s most likely a reality competition show with arrogant judges dissecting people who have overestimated their talents. The Muppet Show format doesn’t really exist anymore; back then, they were following an already-established and familiar TV idiom. What would they do today that would both parody and follow the established rhythm of today? Scream at fat people until they cried?

The third thing we can’t overlook: Jim Henson is dead. Richard Hunt, too. Muppets head writer Jerry Juhl passed on a few years ago. Frank Oz no longer works with the Muppets, and neither does Jerry Nelson. From the original group of Muppeteers, only Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire remain with the team, trying to shepherd the Muppets from project to project, and doing it very well, I think. They don’t get enough credit for keeping the Muppets alive and entertaining after everyone predicted that Kermit the Frog would fall by the wayside of entertainment history over a decade ago. And though the current group of Muppeteers is doing a damn good job with the characters now, I run into people who just can’t overlook the fact that it’s not the same people anymore, even if those people have died or moved on. Sorry, it’s just reality. Things change, and if they’re malleable enough, as I think the Muppets are, the necessary differences are woven in organically. If people resent those differences and can’t get over it, well, they don’t need a new Muppet Show.

And the final consideration is, really, Disney. Disney’s great at cross-promotion and marketing, but not much else. Not to disrespect some of their entertainment products, which I quite enjoy, but they’re much better at short term gain than they are at long term planning or growing their brands. If Disney decided it was time to do The Muppet Show again, the best case scenario is that it would be very safe and charming; and it would air in a shitty family time slot on ABC, before being dumped onto Disney Channel. And it would feature a lot of stars from Disney Channel or ABC as a way of promoting other projects (much the same reason that Disney Channel’s Selena Gomez and Modern Family’s Rico Rodriguez cameo in the new movie).

I don’t really know where The Muppet Show would fit in with today’s demographics. Disney would want to aim it at children and families, but what always worked so well about the Muppets is that they weren’t aimed at children and families. Yeah, they were clean and they weren’t cynical, but The Muppet Show was a comedy show with an old-fashioned sensibility, timeless gags and modern jokes. It was free and zany and silly, but it had heart and wit. They aren’t a toy commercial; they’re comedy.

I don’t know … maybe if you put them on Adult Swim and get real comedy writers to do it and worry about the comedy first and the branding second (or fifth or something), and acknowledge that the people who most want to see it are guys in their thirties, you might have something. But does anyone really think that’s going to happen?

All I know is, whatever the future of the Muppets, I’ll be there watching it. And maybe listening to the Internet complain about it, because that’s what the Internet does. And hoping that The Muppets isn’t the last time I ever see Zach Galifianakis as Hobo Joe, because the world really does need more Hobo Joe.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

Black Friday really has become the most American holiday, because only in America would people gleefully create a storm of materialistic violence mere hours after giving thanks for what they already have. “But what’s really important is family … now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to put on my spiked climber’s boots in case I need to step on someone on the way to the discounted wafflemaker.”

Yes, Black Friday has come and gone. The day that is supposedly America’s busiest, most discount-friendly shopping day of the year, even though it’s generally neither. The one day of the year that it’s supposedly normal for people to line up for miles outside of department stores in the middle of the night, because apparently if they don’t the shelves at Target will be completely bare by 9 a.m. The day the news media, suffering from the slow holiday season news cycle, plays up what used to be a stereotype — that Black Friday is a day of shopping so competitive that things get violent — and thus creates a charged, violence-friendly atmosphere.

This is the kind of thing that some civilization is going to look back on a couple of hundred years from now and say: “Well, no wonder they wiped themselves out.” They’re going to look back at Thanksgiving and think it was the warm-up meal to some messed up version of the Hunger Games with slightly discounted flatscreen televisions.

Still, it’s easy for me to overlook this kind of ridiculousness. Who am I to do anything but roll my eyes when I see people lining up to be taken advantage of? The stereotype of the Black Friday shopper — typified by those horrendous Target commercials with the crazy woman in the red jogging suit, which says an awful lot about what Target thinks of its holiday shoppers, doesn’t it? — is pretty silly, and if people want to aspire to that, well, that’s between them, their victimized families and their eventual court-ordered psychiatrist.

Where I get bothered is in two places. First is in the way stores are opening earlier and earlier and earlier. Every year, they test the waters more and more to see how much Thanksgiving space they can encroach on. This year there were stores opening on the evening of Thanksgiving itself, which probably marks the beginning of the end of Thanksgiving as a holiday most people traditionally get off of work. (I’m sure there are movie theater and video store employees scoffing and saying “Hey, welcome to the club,” and having worked on Thanksgiving in both capacities, I do not blame them one scintilla.)

Can you imagine working at Walmart and coming in to find that your schedule includes evening shift hours on Thanksgiving? Doesn’t sound like fun to me. Then again, neither does working at Walmart, but in this economy, if you actually have a job, more power to you.

The second place where I get bothered is, of course, the violence.

Stampedes for $2 wafflemakers? Really, America? This is what we’ve come to now?

These people who get so crazy over deals and discounts and cheap gimmicks … yeah, they exist. We’ve all known people like this, somehow. Maybe our mother is friends with them, or maybe they’re related to us somehow, but we’ve all run across them. Those people who buy everything because they’re getting such a good deal. Never mind the fact that not spending money on these things at all will save you 100 percent on the list price; that concept is wholly foreign to these people. My mother is friends with a woman who was so thrilled when her sons moved away for college because she could fill up their rooms with appliances — many of which never even come out of the shopping bags — that she got incredible deals on. It’s like hunting, but for crazy people.

Yes, I said crazy people, because if you’re trampling another human being just to buy a $2 wafflemaker, there is something wrong with you.

Then there’s this insanity of the woman who fired pepper spray into a crowd of people just to get her hands on a cheap Xbox. Okay, I get how frustration can lead someone to think of casually hurting people — we all have those thoughts, admit it — but to actually do it takes some kind of uncanny leap from reality. It’s like the poor judgment equivalent of getting bitten by a radioactive spider, turning bad decisions into really dangerous ones. I know, I know, Fox News tells us that pepper spray is a food product (which happens to be banned for use in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention), but that thing is hotter than the hottest pepper known to man.

On the one hand, temporarily blinding someone and cutting off their ability to breathe just to get an Xbox is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. On the other hand, it’s kind of the most American thing I’ve ever heard. We should knock down the Statue of Liberty at this point and just put up a statue of that UC Davis campus cop spraying pure capsaicin into the eyes of the less fortunate while standing on a pile of Xboxes.

(Also, as an aside, I think we just got an insight into the kind of home atmosphere that makes those screaming adolescent homophobes that thrive on Xbox Live.)

The final bit of bad news is that sales were up seven percent this Black Friday, so look for things to only get worse next year when people brave the biting cold to shop, spend, deal, save, shove, trample, maim and kill their way into proving how much more they love their families than you do. Me, I’ll be in my Black Friday bunker.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

Aaron R. Davis

I know I spend a lot of time on this column bitching about things that annoy me. (I also spend a lot of time doing that in real life; I am seriously unpleasant to be around.) So this week, with Thanksgiving looming on the horizon, I thought I’d take the time out from dodging my mother-in-law’s cooking and putting up the Christmas tree (yes, we’re already doing that) and tell you some of the things I’m thankful for this year. Sincerely.

I’m thankful for my family. As much as I tend to be the cave-dwelling hermit of my clan, I am thankful that they’re here for me. On the phone, generally, but I still love them.

I’m thankful for Jason Segel and his love of Muppets, because there’s finally a new Muppets media blitz and a new movie, and god damn it, life without Muppets is life without joy.

I’m especially thankful that I’m not having Thanksgiving in the Sandusky home this year. That’s got to be awkward.

I’m grateful to 2 Broke Girls for being my weekly Kat Dennings delivery system. I need the perfection that is Kat Dennings in my home every week. I frankly don’t care about quality or anything else. Just as long as Kat Dennings is there, it keeps me happy.

I’m thankful there’s only one Twilight movie left, and then I probably never have to see Robert Pattinson’s scruffy oiliness and demented, cross-eyed, stalkery smile again because, come on, Hollywood, you know he’s not a leading man.

I’m pleased with Netflix. They may have screwed up their business plan royally by conditioning us for years to expect cheap, affordable streaming content and then realizing they couldn’t sustain that model and so presented us with a higher cost for what we were already getting for 60 percent less and acted like they were doing us a favor by charging us more money … but at least they have every Star Trek series for instant streaming. And I’ve been enjoying watching them all. Of course, when I’m finished with them, I might just dump Netflix altogether, since their instant movie collection is mostly crap and so many other studios are making exclusive content deals because they actually think people want to maintain multiple streaming accounts with multiple sites just to watch Grown-Ups more conveniently, but hey, for now, Star Trek. So thank you for that, Netflix.

Also, because of Star Trek, I’m seeing a lot of Jeffrey Combs. How terrific is Jeffrey Combs? I love Jeffrey Combs. Have a great Thanksgiving, Jeff!

I’m grateful for bunnies. Just am. Just love them.

I’m thankful for Herman Cain. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard during a presidential election cycle. (Except when having “reasonable conversations” with libertarians, which is kind of like discussing the realism of Star Wars with children.)

I’m indebted to bloggers who put up old issues of comic books so you can read them. Seriously, comic books from the 1970s make today’s comics look like garbage. I would much rather read old issues of OMAC, Black Lightning, Kamandi or Conan the Barbarian than 98 percent of what DC has on offer these days. Those old comics do in four pages what today’s comic book “creatives” do in six issues.

By the way, thank you, Dan DiDio, for making today’s DC Comics such a joyless chore to read. Not only do I not feel compelled to spend money on comics anymore, but I have more time to … well, watch Star Trek and be on the Internet.

I’m much obliged to Scarlett Johansson. Thanks to her, we got a charming reminder that our government considers the sanctity of an actress’s cell phone a bigger priority than jobs or infrastructure or finding missing children. Especially if those children aren’t white. I’m not saying all of that is something good, I’m just saying America needs reminders of what’s broken in order to fix it.

I’m thankful for Occupy Wall Street. It proves that no matter how far gone into selfishness and self-pity we decline, people can still get mad enough about the important things to take a stand.

I’m also thankful that we live in an age where a campus cop in riot gear can have his home address and phone number plastered all over the Internet after he casually runs mace across the faces of peaceful protesters, because fuck that guy.

I’m thankful for all of my online friends, who actually make me feel like I’m an interesting person. It’s not often I feel that way, so I’m truly grateful to all of you. I hope all of you Americans have a lovely and safe Thanksgiving, and the rest of you just have lovely and safe days. Lovely and safe lives, all of you.

And everyone reading this. And everyone out there. If I can turn off the cynicism for a few days, then we all can, right?

Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com