So yes, I eat fast food, I listen to pop music and I occasionally defend Jay Leno from the legions of detractors. However, for the most part I do not watch television or movies and I do not play video games: that is the duality of culture populist and isolationist. A twenty year old male in America who doesn't watch TV or play video games is somewhat of an anomaly, and that assertion is perhaps the biggest understatement on this website. (Furious M specializes in reckless exaggeration and hyperbole, not understatement. If something you read here seems a little too outrageous just reduce the offending statement by 40% and it will usually be close to the true value, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story?) My views on video games have already been thoroughly discussed in this forum, but here's a quick synopsis: they're boring and there is no reward for winning. Video games are solely entertaining and worthwhile as brief and asinine distractions to relax with at the end of the day. The only video games that deserve attention are stupid, mindless and elegantly simple. I don't need no candy-ass avatar to represent myself online and I don't need to be immersed in an interactive and complicated storyline. I've already got a persona immersed in an interactive and complicated storyline: it's called my life and I'm comfortable enough with it that I don't need to fabricate another.

The other form of media I avoid is television. No eloquent argument is needed against the mass consumption of television programming. Everything you need to know is most effectively stated with hick speak. TV shows? Yeah, I seen 'em. Them was dumb. Have you ever watched TV? There's nothing on! Turn on a TV and 90% of the time there's nothing worth watching! Oh, I hear you out there, “But Furious, what about the News? That's how I get information!” Go to Google news. The video that accompanies the TV news almost never supplements the story. Watch the TV news tonight and ask yourself after each story, “did the video augment my understanding?” Of course it didn't. Maybe Brian Williams is trying to get you amped up over an obesity epidemic and while he's rattling off statistics you get to see... slow motion shots of people with fat asses walking down the street. That doesn't aid the story! The only reason to watch TV is for the sports, and that alone isn't enough of an incentive to pay for satellite or cable.

Now corporate, commercial music is a different story. I was a volunteer DJ at the UI campus radio station last year and was exposed to lots of weird, boring and ambient music that was heavily touted as being superior to the supposedly over-produced crap of the music industry. There was only one problem: these obscure bands sucked! If over-producing is what it takes to make music sound good then sign me up! For the most part, bands that sound good become popular. Several times last year I found some really boss music among the stacks and stacks of crap on the new music shelf, and guess what? Three months later I was hearing it on commercial radio! The new music at the station that I listened to and thought, Damn, these m-fers can play ended up enjoying commercial success! There's no point in pretending to love some band who sells their music through MySpace and only manages to play shows in coffee houses for small groups of awkward, outcast 14 year olds. Stop being a loser and go have some fun. I'd rather have fun and enjoy myself than stew in my room listening to lame music just to feel a sense of false superiority.

As I age my sense of humor becomes more ribald. The jokes I laugh at the most these days usually involve either men having sex with dogs or my fixation on a certain channel 2 news anchor. Example: He left for Alaska a skinny guy and came back a husky fucker.

The newest scam at the fast food restaurants is their use of the words small, medium, and large. Terms such as Supersize and Biggie fell victim to the bad press of movies and books, such as Supersize Me and Fast Food nation, so the labels were changed while the portions remained the same. I first discovered this when I went to Jack in the Box and ordered a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger combo. The cashier fired right back by querying what size I would like the meal; since this was a new concept to me I asked what size people typically order. The girl working there eyed me in a way that can only be described as suspicious and said, “for you, probably a small.” So I'm thinking to myself, Hey! I ain't no small! Large baby, large! I ain't gonna LD this burger order. Gimme a large sized combo! Yeah, big mistake. While being presented with my order I was initially disoriented by what appeared to be an extra large bucket of popcorn, you know, one of those wastebasket sized monstrosities that movie theaters sell. I'm thinking, huh? I didn't order any popcorn... Then I realized that I was looking at a Large cola. It was ridiculous. Upon further visits to various fast food establishments I determined that Small combos are still pretty damn big. The marketing geniuses realized that they can continue selling comically oversized portions as long as they choose the proper labeling. The take home message here is to only order Small combos in the interest of good health and moderation. (An interesting side note, a Small Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger Combo and a Chicken Sandwich at the Moscow, Idaho Jack in the Box comes out to $6.66. This led me to dub it The Combo of the Beast. The man known as Unicornicus once used this term to a Jack in the Box cashier, which makes him the man).

That is all.