Speaking in Absolutes

Longtime fans (or enemies) of mine will recall a podcast that my brother and I used to make. Due to the limitations of the internet that podcast had to go the way of the buffalo, but I’ve started up a new one for people who like to hear me talk. A lot. I could tell you about what a great waste of time this podcast is, or I could just let you listen to the inaugural episode here:

Listen to the web based version of the Speaking in Absolutes podcast

As soon as I get a solid iTunes link, I’ll post that as well so you subscribing types can subscribe. UPDATE: Subscribe to the podcast right here! I’ll also be doing an accompanying vodcast to go along with it on my youtube channel (link below). Like anything I do, I love getting feedback from all of you about things you love or hate, so don’t hesitate to give me your questions/comments. Party on, Wayne.

UPDATE 2, Here’s the companion video:

Play on,
Dustin

Back by popular demand: a picture of me shirtless with my dad, whom I’ll be visiting along with my mom and sister at a resort in Palm Springs this week. So there’s that.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

The Imaginary Goodbye

I have struggled for the better part of a decade with whether or not to post what I’m about to share with you. Not because it’s all that profound or deep or even that interesting. But because it is one of the most intensely personal things I’ve ever experienced, and somehow not putting it out there publicly was a way for me to protect myself and pretend that, to a certain degree, it didn’t really happen. To let some, small, secluded part of my brain live in a happy land where bad things don’t take place. Ultimately, that’s not a fair thing to do to our loved ones, or ourselves. In the light of broad tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombings, or reminders of personal devastations like what would’ve been little Deacon’s recent birthday, it just seems selfish of me to shut out the wonderful memories I have of these people just because I don’t want to accept the unpleasantries along with the rest. So yeah, this isn’t going to be one of my humorous posts. Maybe check back next week.

 

The summer of my senior year of college, I was on a date with a girl (seeing one of the Harry Potter movies, couldn’t tell you which one) who told me that she’d seen a story about my college in the paper (yes, that’s how old I am, people were still getting some of their news from the actual newspaper when I was in college). I asked what the story was, and she told me that someone from my college had passed away unexpectedly. I went to a pretty small school (3,000-ish undergrad enrollment at the time), so I expected that even if we hadn’t been friends, it’d at least be a name I’d recognize.

 

Unfortunately, “recognize” would turn out to be a massive understatement.

 

I don’t need to walk any of you through what mourning the loss of a loved one is like. The sad truth of this broken world is that most — if not all — of us have experienced such a loss.

Brittany was a year younger than me, had transferred in from a different college after her freshman year, and as a result had a significantly smaller circle of friends than the rest of us (which I assume is why I heard about her passing by such happenstance vs. from a mutual friend). In retrospect I would say that we dated for a while, though this was college in the pre-facebook era, so defining the relationship was a lot more ambiguous than it is now. Or maybe (definitely) I was just more of a schmuck then than I am now. Probably a combination of the two. But despite the shifting title of what we were, we’d remained fairly close through it all, and I always kind of had the feeling that Brittany could be the sort of girl I’d end up with (though I wouldn’t have phrased it that way at the time…and indeed her loss may have inadvertently triggered/exacerbated “commitment-phobic Dustin”). Regardless of the context, Brittany was the first close person in my age range that I’d ever lost before, and I wasn’t equipped to handle it very well (though I honestly don’t think that anyone ever is, or ever can be, or ever should be ready for that sort of loss).

A couple months later, I wrote a song about her and I wrote a letter to her parents.

I never sent it.

I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe it just felt too presumptuous to impose myself and my less-significant grief on her family like that, or maybe (definitely) I was just too afraid to make her loss fully real by acknowledging it.

After all these years, I don’t know if any of that has changed, and I certainly don’t feel any braver than I did that night we walked out on that Harry Potter movie so I could go sit on a park bench and cry. But maybe (definitely) I’ve been selfish long enough, and it’s time to realize that moving on isn’t the same as forgetting about. That letting go isn’t the same as giving up.

With that said, here is the letter. It is unedited from the original draft minus me removing her last name out of respect to her family not necessarily wanting their loss published on the internet, even after this much time has passed.

 

Sept. 25th.

I’m sitting here staring at a blank computer screen, listening to a mix-CD that I made for a girl. A girl named Brittany.

And I am crying.

Not because the songs on the CD are that powerful, or because the memories are that sad, but because I miss your daughter.  We were never best friends, we were never an official “Couple”, we never even hung out as often as we could’ve; but Brittany and I had a strong bond that was somehow indefinable by the world’s terms—something better than the word “friend” could do justice to.

Seeing your daughter made me happy — it’s as simple as that.  Whether it was passing her in a hallway and catching up, sitting in the grass discussing life, or attending a class together just so we could ignore the professor’s lecture and talk to each other — every instance brought a special kind of smile to my face and a unique joy to my day…and my life.  Brittany was prettier than the “popular” girls, kinder than the “nice” girls, and smarter than all of them.  Brittany could’ve been the proverbial queen bee of our college, complete with an army of mindless drones to follow her every command, but she chose to remain true to herself and her beliefs and sacrifice ultimate popularity in exchange for ultimate reality.  She chose to make a difference.  She chose to be better than the world required her to be.  And she chose to be my friend.  The latter of those might be the least important to the world, but it was everything to me.  Sure, lots of people at school know who I am, or know my name or a good story about me, but Brittany knew me.  The real me that most everyone else never took the time to find.  Whenever I saw her name pop up on my cell phone’s caller ID, I didn’t cringe and cancel the call like usual, but rather, I would smile from ear to ear because when Brittany called, I knew that the highlight of my day had arrived and that even if I was having the worst day possible, the next thirty minutes of conversation would be perfect.

Unfortunately, kind words and wonderful memories can’t bring Brittany back or duplicate the sound of her voice, but I wanted you to know that she has always and will always hold a special place in my heart, and that my world has a little more gray in it without Brittany around to brighten it up.  Brittany was a spectacular girl, an extraordinary human being, and genuinely beautiful person — both inside and out.  It will forever sadden my heart to think that ultimately, Brittany’s demise was the result of a disorder that caused her to believe that she could possibly be any more perfect than she already was.  My solace is the knowledge that Brittany walked with God, and that he would never abandon her or exclude her from his love.  I don’t know if that comforts you or lessens your grief as it does mine, but I pray that one day it might.

Someday the tears will stop.  Someday the pain will subside.  Someday the memories will fade.  But the love that friends and family have for Brittany will never dissipate.

It may be clichéd to say that though Brittany’s candle has been extinguished, her light will continue to shine eternally — but it doesn’t make it any less true for your luminous daughter.

The warmth of Brittany’s brightness will always be felt by those who cared for her.

I will miss you, Brittany.  Always.

With the deepest sympathy and love,
Dustin Heveron

 

As I said, I don’t think my letter contains anything revolutionary, it just felt like it was time to give Brittany the respect she deserves and the eulogy I didn’t have the heart to deliver that summer. The Coachella music festival was last weekend, and I always think of her around this time (before she passed we used to discuss the fest a lot — it was much more representative of the underground music scene back then, and we’d made plans to attend the festival that year) so it’s fitting that it coincides with this letter. But the message is a timeless — albeit unoriginal — one: make today count. Whether that means an extra gesture of kindness to those close to you or mustering the courage to start something risky or long overdue, take advantage of today.

We were put on this earth to pursue active love toward one another, don’t wait until your loved ones (or you, yourself) are just memories to start living out your true purpose. One day all men will die, but love lives on. God conquered death not with might, but with love. Love lives on.

 

Much love,
Dustin

 

“For God so loved…”

Memo to Peter Bart: Don’t Be A Dick

I was perusing the trades (that’s slang for entertainment industry trade papers) recently in an effort to live vicariously through the people who actually do what I just imagine doing for a living, and I came across an article by Peter Bart (former Editor-in-Chief at Variety) regarding The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and his foray into the world of film directing (the dickishly titled “Memo to Jon Stewart: Stick with Your Day Job Behind the Desk”).

Artist’s rendering of Peter Bart, who believes that creative people should be neither seen nor heard.

 

You can read the article if you like, but the general idea is that Peter Bart spends 600 words essentially just shitting on Stewart’s desire to sit in the director’s chair. How does Peter Bart justify his Debbie Dickhead attitude toward Jon Stewart’s project? Well, Bart points out, Bob Dyaln was a celebrity who directed a movie…and it was bad! Not convinced? Well, Bart says, Madonna was a celebrity who directed a movie…and it was also bad!

So just to recap: because Bob Dylan made a bad movie in 1978, no one should try to direct a movie ever again. Got it. And obviously this has everything to do with the fact that Dylan and Madonna were already established stars that tried to transition into directing, and nothing to do with the fact that they were just bad directors (the Dylan film’s final cut clocked in at OVER four hours long, but yeah, I’m sure it was only a flop because he was a celebrity trying to direct). Double got it.

Bart goes on to reference successful directors (Clooney, Sean Penn, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Elia Kazan, and Francis Coppola) who didn’t release their best work until later on in their directorial careers, and whose first projects either weren’t well-received or just weren’t that good. Basically Bart’s message is if you haven’t already done something, you shouldn’t do it.

Um. What.

Petey, ol’ buddy ol’ pal, if that list of directors had followed your supremely bad logic, then yes we never would’ve had to suffer through their less-than-perfect directorial debuts…but are you really saying you’d sacrifice film masterworks like Coppola’s The Godfather or Scorsese’s The Departed along with a host of other great movies just because you didn’t think Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind did as well as it could’ve at the box office? The simple fact of the matter is that ANY good director only became good because they had the strength of mind to overcome ignorant, shortsighted advice like Peter Bart’s. You can’t make a great movie without making your first movie (although if Mr. Bart knows a secret way to circumvent that system, I’m sure there are studio executives that would love to know).

Jon Stewart has been hosting The Daily Show for over 14 years, and his MTV show an extra six years before that. That’s two decades of doing essentially the exact same job, so if anyone’s earned the right to try their hand at something new, it’s Jon Stewart. And Peter Bart is right: Stewart’s directorial debut may well be a terrible movie — and worse, it may not make a ton of money at the box office.

So what?

Stewart is fortunate to be amongst the smallest percentile of people who actually have access to the resources needed to direct a major motion picture, and if it’s what he wants to do, why shouldn’t he?

“BUT HE COULD FAIL!”

So what?

If he does fail, who cares? If there’s one thing the film industry has proven over the years, it’s that Hollywood is going to release terrible movies regardless of whatever factors are in play (do you have your tickets for Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 yet? I know I don’t!), what does it matter if just one of those failed movies is directed by Jon Stewart or not? Bart also goes out of his way to condescendingly imply that Stewart and his team neither know how to make movies or interact with actors. To quote: “The trouble with making movies is that, while it looks easy, it is in fact a very exacting discipline.” First of all, who said making movies looks easy? Dude, you’re talking to 30-year industry vet Jon Stewart and his team, not an elementary school classroom on career day, I think they know what they’re getting in to — probably even better than most other first-time directors.

I’m sure Peter Bart is a tolerable enough person in real life, and I don’t think his ultimate intent is to be needlessly mean (his article is lightly peppered with half-compliments like “You’re very good at what you do, Jon, but are you really prepared to take another hiatus after your first picture bombs?” and the dickishly-phrased “I like you the way you are, Jon. I hope you stay that way.”), but that doesn’t make the candor, arrogance and overall jackassery with which he writes this article any more acceptable.

Sure, I could take this fight below the belt by bringing up the fact that Peter Bart’s best years were 30-50 years ago (his heyday has a studio exec was in the 1960s and ‘70s before he became an editor at Variety in the ‘80s), how he’s out of touch with modern filmmaking, or his borderline racist comments — “The imprisonment in Iran of a journalist named Maziar Bahari…no, not Joy Behar” (was he waiting for a rimshot on that one?) and “We’ve all visited Iran once in ‘Argo,’ but I’m not sure many of us are up for a return trip”. But personally attacking an octogenarian man I’ve never met just to feel better about myself doesn’t address the heart of the issue: that Peter Bart is only ignorantly giving voice to something that we all think at one time or another.

Any time you have the desire to create or try something new, there is almost always an opposite inner voice telling you not to. Telling you that you’re not good enough, not smart enough, not capable enough. That you are not enough. Physicist Isaac Newton would probably define that voice as the equal and opposite reaction to your desire to do something positive or expand yourself. A book called The War of Art (a terrific book that everyone should read at least once) would probably define that voice as “The Resistance” — the innate pessimism that wants to keep you from living up to your potential or utilizing your gifts. No matter what you want to call it, it doesn’t change what it is: wrong. Whether it’s psychological physics, The Resistance, or Peter Bart; that voice of negativity, the one that tells you can’t can’t do something or be something or create something, is wrong. There is too much beauty and wonder and art in the world for anyone to possibly believe otherwise. You were built to be a creature of creativity, a purveyor of positivity, a generator of artistry and anyone or anything that tells you otherwise is either misinformed, ignorant, or both.

Failure is a natural — albeit brutal — part of life, but if you let failure (or the risk of failure) define who you are or what you do, you’ll spend your entire life trapped in a cage of your own making. A cage of inaction and impotence (and not the sort that Viagra can fix). Peter Bart himself belies the fallacy of his own logic by pointing out that some of our greatest film directors only got to that point because they were brave or bullheaded enough to trudge through some initial failures. Indeed those great directors could only become great directors because of failure.

I’ve written a lot about the benefits of failure — as have many other, much more qualified and intelligent authors (I highly recommend Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide for a brilliant, more comprehensive take on the subject) — so I’ll keep this column’s epilogue simple: Peter, get a hobby. You spent years as a successful movie overseer at an executive level, wikipedia tells me you’ve written several books, and it’s clear you still have passions left to express — all I ask is that you direct those passions and skills at creating something useful or positive. Or at the very least abstain from shooting down the passions of others. The world has plenty of self-generating negativity already, so if you’re just here to add to that cacophony, then pipe the eff down. The rest of us are trying to listen to something more worthwhile.

As Kermit put it, “I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it.
It’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

Jon, I hope you do well in your new endeavors…but even if you don’t, I hope you’re always trying to change and challenge yourself for the better — both professionally and personally. Because if you don’t, you risk ending up like Peter Bart. Who’s kind of a dick.

 

Play on, Mr. Stewart.
Dustin

 

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…I don’t even like me enough to keep up with all that.

The Friday Five: Best House of Heroes Music Videos

Those of you that have had the fortune/misfortune of following my escapades will know that I toured with a band called House of Heroes for a while. In addition to being some ridiculously talented musicians, some great friends, and all-around good dudes, these guys have put out some pretty good rock music videos over the years. You can (and should) buy all of their media that you can get your hands on at iTunes, and their rarities/B-sides album that comes out in a couple weeks. Am I biased? Absolutely. But don’t let that take away from the hard work and awesomeness that’s gone in to their body of work. Anyway here are House of Heroes’ Top Five  music videos for this week’s Friday Five. Share and enjoy. Visit thehouseofheroes.com for their info and updates.

 

5) — Song: Ten Months, Album: Ten Months.
Okay so technically this music video comes from House of Heroes’ precursor band, No Tagbacks. But it’s all the same guys bringing the noise and it still holds up. There’s also something to be said about having a career as musicians that predates HD television. That’s what 14 years of touring and playing together looks like.

 

4) —Song: In the Valley of the Dying Sun, Album: The End is Not the End.
Unconventionally catchy is the phrase that pops into my mind every time I hear this single, but the music video does a good job of highlighting the story behind the lyrics, showing the depth that a lot of modern musical acts lack in their writing.

 

3) — Song: Serial Sleepers, Album: Say No More (and/or the self-titled).
The cold open on this video gives me a rock n’ roll erection every time I see it (a rockerection?) and the high note that lead-singer Tim hits during the bridge is a musical moment of badassery on par with the climax of Rivers Cuomo’s guitar solo in Buddy Holly. (I know I said erection and climax in the same sentence, so I’d like to apologize in advance to any angry, overly-conservative moms who read this this).

 

2) — Song: God Save the Foolish Kings, Album: Suburba.
This song is so catchy that it actually made House of Heroes’ label mate, Stephanie Smith (the blonde who does the guest vocal in this video), marry one of the HoH bandmembers (ok don’t fact-check me on that, but still it’s VERY catchy).

 

1) — Song: So Far Away, Album: Suburba.
This may not be the very best House of Heroes song of all time (but only because they have so many SPECTACULAR songs to choose from in their massive musical catalogue), but this video absolutely crushes. You don’t even have to know the guys to appreciate the struggle of a band that’s been touring nonstop for fourteen years, continuing to make great music in an industry that continually shuns quality for gimmickry and a quick buck. This video shows that the HoH guys can tug at heartstrings as effectively as they can guitar strings. It helps that the video’s director (my buddy and yours, Isaac Deitz) is no slouch behind the camera, either.

 

Make sure to check out more from the HoH catalogue on their youtube channel (you may even see me pop up in a few of their old vlogs), and track down their twitter and facebook pages to find them live in a town near you! It’s also worth noting that their current album, Cold Hard Want, is chock full of GREAT music (and some really killer lyric videos on the HoH youtube), but they haven’t had a chance to shoot more than one music video for that record yet, thus why there aren’t any tracks from that album on this list. But go buy it anyway, because it’s sweet (I even sing some background vocals on about half the tracks, so that alone is worth your $8).

Play on,
Dustin

Want to see other sets of five? Check out my Friday Five on Stages of When a Pretty Girl Talks to You and How to Choose Your Karaoke Song.
Want EVEN more? Follow me here (twitter), here (instagram), and here (youtube). New columns go up on this blog every Wednesday at noon (or thereabouts), and other posts (like this one) pop up as often as I have time to be creative. www.dustinfanclub.com

 

19 Reasons Buzzfeed Sucks

Buzzfeed sucks. If that statement offends you, you’re what’s wrong with America. If you don’t know what buzzfeed is (count yourself one of the lucky few), it’s a self-described “snapshot of the viral web in real time.” Basically what that translates into is a bunch of ADHD, zero-thought-required, pandering bulls*** (asterisks make it classy). It takes statements so generic and effortlessly digestible that they barely qualify as original thoughts, wraps them up in some easily google-able pics, tosses in some cat .gifs and voila, one internet. At best it’s a topic statement without the accompanying paragraph, at worst it’s an endless stream of tabloid-magazine cover headlines with even less intellectual content. If mental stimuli were diagrammed like the food pyramid, buzzfeed would be the “fats and sugars” section way at the top that’s supposed to make up only the tiniest fraction of your daily food intake…but just like the actual food pyramid, Americans refuse to exert even the smallest amount of willpower and instead consume as much as they can (“What if we put ice cream IN the rootbeer so I don’t lose those precious seconds between taking bites of dessert and slurping down soda! What do you mean diabetes is a thing?”) and as a result our mental obesity is almost as out of control as our country’s physical obesity (though less immediately outwardly visible).

This is how buzzfeed views its readers.

Buzzfeed capitalizes on all the worst traits of modern quantity-over-quality internet culture and contributes nothing of its own. This is evidenced by the fact that the most popular posts on buzzfeed’s site are their arbitrarily-numbered lists. Lists of what, you ask? Of everything (the 15 most ridiculous world leaders of all time). Of anything (20 reasons why going to the gym is a huge waste of time). Of nothing (20 doodles that show what we’re all thinking during business meetings). Essentially buzzfeed thinks so little of its readership that not only does it acknowledge the shallowness of its audience, it actually highlights it and throws it back in the face of that selfsame audience…and they don’t care! If a real life person condescended to you like that, you’d punch them in the genitals, but because a website has the audacity to publish the “51 Colorful and Delicious Ways to Eat Spring Vegetables” (I’m sorry, do you mean SALAD? Are you just describing what a salad is in 51 variations? Look man, I am a tax-paying adult, you can just say SALAD, ok?), you’re all like “Wow my three favorite flavors: spring, delicious AND colorful; and because it has vegetables in the title this counts as my workout for the day! More Ovaltine please!”

And before you get up in arms and start sending me links of my own numbered-list articles, please don’t be simple enough to think that this is an attack on numbered lists in and of themselves. I’m obviously not saying I have a problem with the idea of counting things, anymore than you’d be dense enough to think that buzzfeed invented numbering (I think MySpace did that with their Top 8. Or maybe it was prehistoric mankind. Hard to say). The problem here isn’t that the people at buzzfeed just make lists all day like some sort of OCD housewife (or househusband, if you’re lucky enough to be one of those), the problem is that buzzfeed doesn’t even have the decency to pretend that it’s engaging any of your higher brain functions. It’s not writing articles or original thoughts/observations to go along with these shockingly broad headlines, it’s literally just stating a category and then listing things that fall into that category. Then it stamps “win”, “WTF”, or “LOL” onto it so there’s no mistaking what you’re supposed to feel and calls it a day. Essentially buzzfeed is saying “All right you dumb f***ers, we both know you’re here just to engage with the absolute minimum of your intelligence but with the maximum amount of emotional payout, so here’s the 22 chubbiest cheeks of all time.” AND YOU STILL CLICKED IT. If the average human only uses about 10% of their brain, buzzfeed truly is the one percent. Hashtag occupy your brain.

But, like with most rants, the most visible issue isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. Buzzfeed exists because it’s run by morons. But buzzfeed is popular because we’re a culture of morons (I said “we” just then to try and dial back the pretentiousness a bit and make it sound like I don’t think I’m better than you. Did it work?). If the government went all China on us and took buzzfeed off the internet tomorrow, it wouldn’t fix the actual issue: that we, as a society, don’t WANT to be engaged deeply. We don’t want thorough cortex stimulation on a daily/weekly/monthly/ever-ly basis, we just want to sit back and look at the happiest puppies of all time or compare ourselves to 47 actors from our childhood who’ve really let themselves go so we can feel better about ourselves. But why? I don’t know, specifically, because it’s probably all different reasons depending on the person or the day or our mood or any number of other factors upon which I could only speculate. But some overarching commonalities are: it’s easy — no opinion-formation or decision-making required, just a cursory knowledge of the subject listed and an affinity for visually-stimulating things; it’s a good time-waster for when you want to procrastinate the next work project or class paper. It’s a coping mechanism for tragedy: when something awful happens like the Boston Marathon attack or a Middle-Eastern wedding bombing or any of the other global atrocities that occur on a daily basis, it can be simpler to take refuge behind a sympathetic tweet and then lose yourself in a world where only happy things take place. But the same way that alcoholics or drug addicts self-medicate to forget or avoid the world of the real and potentially painful, hiding yourself in a bubble doesn’t fix or change anything, it only delays (and possibly magnifies) the consequences.

For all the bold language I’ve used here, I don’t want you to feel condemned or judged by me or anyone for something as silly as going to one website or another. I just want to encourage you (and by so doing, encourage myself) to use the beautiful blessing of our God-given intelligence to affect change in the real and magnificent and important ways that we’re able to, rather than wasting that precious gift on the 27 signs you were raised by Asian immigrant parents. Look, you need to blow off some steam or just unplug for a few minutes after something intense, I get it. But just make sure if you’re gonna have your dessert first that you leave room for your meat and potatoes as well (or your tofurkey for all you vegetarians out there). You’re a wonderful, unique, smart, and creative person, and I just want to see you use those abilities on someone/something that appreciates it, rather than waste your time, energy and skills on the 13 reasons Shakira should be president of the world. (I got nauseous just typing that).

Also if you’re thinking “Hey wait a second, I thought this article was called ’19 reasons Buzzfeed sucks’, where’s the list of reasons?” trust me the 19 reasons are in there, I just respect your intelligence/reading-comprehension enough to assume you’ll be able to absorb an article without me spelling out every single facet of what I’m saying in a bulleted list littered with cat .gifs. You’re welcome.

Play on,
Dustin

PS And the worst buzzfeed crime of all? YOU DON’T START TITLES WITH A NUMBER YOU SPELL IT OUT YOU IGNORANT, ILLITERATE IMBECILES! It’s not “14 Taylor Swift Gang Signs Explained”, it’s “Fourteen Taylor Swift Gang Signs Explained”. For the love of God, can someone donate $14.95 to these assholes so they can buy an AP Stylebook like the one required in ANY collegiate or professional writers’ setting?? It killed me to not spell out the title of this post, but I was mimicking the buzzfeed layout. Yes, I did die a little inside when I did it, thanks for asking.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…I don’t even like me enough to keep up with all that.

As an added bonus for you, here are some extra, post-specific mini-rants on buzzfeed articles that I couldn’t find a way to work into the body of the column. I’m only linking to them to prove that I’m not making this asinine shite up, but don’t misread this as me wanting to send buzzfeed any extra traffic. If you really need to kill some time, then read a book, I beg you.

Also worth noting, the majority of these articles came from the “Big Stories” section of buzzfeed’s front page (or the “BS” section as I prefer to call it).

• Big Story: 26 things you’ll only get if you watch game of thrones. Glad to see that little dustup in North Korea is all taken care of, let’s get to the ACTUAL important news like whether or not winter is coming in a fictional HBO show universe.

• Big Story: Here are two people having sex on google street view. Wow, I guess depending on your context for “big” this story qualifies, I’m not sure how I got through my day before seeing this.

• Big Story: 31 reasons birth control exists. I couldn’t even bring myself to click on this link, although I was under the impression that there was only one reason birth control exists, and really, that should be plenty. I’m certain the next 30 reasons are just a list of reality television stars.

• The 18 clumsiest deer. I actually thought about taking a razor to my wrists when I saw this one, but then I thought “No Dustin, if you do that, the buzzfeeders win.”

• The 17 videos under 30 seconds guaranteed to make you laugh. This is buzzfeed in a nutshell: a finite list so there’s a clear short-term commitment, a 30-second time so your Ritalin-gulping ADD ass won’t have to wait for the generic emotions to start pouring over you, and a guarantee — let that sink in — a GUARANTEE to make you laugh so there’s no chance that your 30 seconds will be wasted for naught. Also if anyone could GUARANTEE you’d laugh at something, they’d be working for a tv or movie company making millions, not freelancing it in the dregs of the internet.

• The 31 reasons Jay-Z and Beyonce are the greatest couple of all time. Only 31? They’re clearly not looking hard enough. Also, this is another of the many that you can file under the “no shit Sherlock” category. Can’t wait to see the buzzfeed article that’s “The 27 reasons sunshine is warm”.

• The 13 most important versions of R. Kelly’s Ignition (remix). Oh well at least they kept it to only the IMPORTANT versions of the remix. I don’t have a dictionary handy, but I’d love to see the definition of the word “important” that can be skewed far enough to incorporate R. Kelly remixes (not even his original songs, freakin’ REMIXES).

Last and also least: This guy is obsessed with becoming a mermaid. But it runs a little counterintuitive to his previous obsession: to eventually get laid or find gainful employment ever again. But who am I to crush his dreams? My next obsession is to control gravity with my mind, I figure he and I have about an equal shot of achieving our goals. …We’ve gotta stop telling our kids that they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up.