They Can't Even Make Themselves Say It

This beer sucks. You know it, I know it and, apparently, the good people in the Natural Light marketing department know it, too. They can't bring themselves to use the word "natural" in their own logo.

In this first installment of a series I'm calling "Natural Plight," I'll examine the first of five Natural-Light-spawned marketing mockeries called "Nattyisms." The fact that they even attempt to position their beer as anything but a cheap way to forget that you're a complete loser is laughable. If you think about their marketing plan in any more detail than that, it might do serious damage to your central nervous system.

Natastrophe: According to the fine folks at "Natty Light," a natastrophe occurs some time just after some klutzy shit-for-brains wanders into a party at his older brother's frat house. Naturally, said shit-for-brains has brought a twelve pack of "Natty" with him to show his brother's brothers that he knows how to party. A resounding "nattaboy!" from the Northface chorus immediately drowns out whichever Jack Johnson song happens to be playing at the time, and young SFB feels accepted. His comfort level peaks as the featured artist changes from Jack to Rascal Flatts, and then he notices the throng of scantily-clad dick bait howling the lyrics of Maybury (or whatever the Hell that song about Cherry Coke is) atop every raised surface of the house. Distracted by his overpowering horniness (he's not used to seeing that much self-esteem-induced desparation this side of a computer screen), he backs into some chick and dumps all the Natural Plight everywhere. Uh oh--the night's ruined.

Spilling Natty Light is a catastrophe like spilling toxic waste is a catastrophe--you have to stop ignoring its presence, someone has to take responsibility for introducing it into the environment in the first place and, finally, someone has to come into contact with it in order to clean it up. Here's the bad news: unlike waste disposal professionals, the one responsible for a "natastrophe" has to clean up that liquid virginity with their bare hands. I'm pretty sure that's what made the Toxic Avenger the man he is today.

Ryan, How Can I Tell When a Movie Critic Blows at Their Job?

That's easy. All you have to do is look for evidence of any of the following causes of shitty criticism:

a) They didn't watch the whole movie, so they're ignorant.
b) They think they're anticonformists, so they're in high school.
c) They're just undeniably retarded, so they post on Pajiba.

If you know me in real life, then this post will make you sick. I'll be talking about the critical reception of the Saw series and why I completely disagree with the lot of it.

Here's a gem aimed at Saw III which I can justifiably use to represent all the trite, masturbatory, fiery language aimed at decent movies all over: "Face your fears. A lesson worthy of praise, if the film preaching them weren't so completely full of shit."

That line by itself illustrates that the author possesses at least two of the qualities I listed above. Have you seen Saw III? Do you remember its premise? You're not the guy who wrote the line above, so there's a chance you do. The major lesson the movie teaches is that the virtuous forgive while the damned harbor grudges. Side lessons include: "don't drink and drive," " the justice system should be taken seriously," "families are precious and should not be taken for granted," and "silence isn't always golden."

I will admit this: one might say that the movie urges its audience to face their fears when it makes Jeff burn his son's belongings in order to save the drowning judge. But then again, one might also be an idiot. Jeff was certainly afraid of letting go of his dead son, but that test's message was still absolutely one that promoted the virtue of forgiveness. By sacrificing his attachment to his son, Jeff demonstrated his departure with the vengeful grudge he'd harbored against those responsible for his son's killer's freedom.

Finally, in one motion I'll remove all bias from this post--I'll list a line written by another "wundercritic" about Saw. Who knows? Maybe they make a legitimate point.

"I'm stupid."
-Anonymous "Wundercritic"-

Wow--that is a good point.

Constipated? Five Horror Movies that Will Help Ease Your Bowels

Today, I'm a movie critic.

Man, are you lucky or what? Not only do you get a healthy dose of my opinion, but you also get to learn about the cure-all for all things constipation: any of my top five horror movies of all time. I'll brief you on my criteria, so you know I'm legit.

Out-of-the-Chair (OOTC): On a scale of 1 feet to 5 feet, how high are you likely to leap from your chair during the movie?

Nightmare: The film's "stickiness factor." On a scale of 1 lifetime to 5 lifetimes, how long will memories of the movie torment your soul? If I had lived in the time of my parents' youths, then I would have given The Birds and Psycho fives. Now, however, I think those movies' premises are pretty tame.

The Altar Factor: How many goats (1-5) will you be inspired to sacrifice in the name of the movie as a result of the amount and quality of the gore depicted?

Survival Guide: How much would I pay ($1 to $5) for a survival guide to life based on the movie? This is basically how well the movie makes me believe its premise. Obviously, a more valuable survival guide indicates more believability.

Acting: Haha--just kidding.

The Movies

5. Dawn of the Dead

• OOTC: 1.5 Feet
  
• Nightmare: 3 Lifetimes
  
• Altar: 5 Goats
• Survival Guide: $4

This movie excels in gore and believability. If you watch the movie for the ten minutes it takes to see Ana's hubby's throat torn out by the jaws of their undead, prepubescent neighbor, then you'll understand why this movie earned itself 5 goats in my book. As for the survival guide, I'd put a pretty respectable price on it simply because the movie doesn't try to explain the phenomenon. You know exactly what the rest of humanity knows: that dead people get up and eat you. The only "explanations" the movie gives is in the form of the presumably asinine commentary of the movie's background characters.

4. House of 1000 Corpses

• OOTC: 3 Feet
• Nightmare: 5 Lifetimes
  
• Altar: 2 Goats
  
• Survival Guide: $5

House absolutely rules in terms of believability and longevity. To me, there is nothing more frightening than finding oneself trapped in a decaying farmhouse full of satanic, necrophiliac rednecks. The movie gets weirder and weirder as it progresses, which makes it enthralling to watch. The psychotic family is comprised of very realistically sick characters, and the legend of Dr. Satan is grounded just enough in "reality" that it seems possible, even plausible.

3. Poltergeist

• OOTC: 2 Feet
  
• Nightmare: 5 Lifetimes
  
• Altar: 1 Goat
  
• Survival Guide: $5
  

Man, this movie rules. I still have nightmares (and daymares) about the clown under that kid's bed and the tree that grabs him through the window. And you can forget about TVs set to static. Besides all that, who wouldn't believe in the propensity of deceased Native American spirits to attempt the forceful eviction of the jackassy family who builds their house over their former bodies' graves?

2. Saw I

• OOTC: 4 Feet
• Nightmare: 4 Lifetimes
  
• Altar: 2 Goats
• Survival Guide: $5

This one's not only one of my favorite horror movies, but it's also one of my favorite movies altogether. As an audience member, I think that being clueless (or nearly clueless) during many of a horror movie's stages makes the movie infinitely better. The final scene ("Game over, Adam"), instills such a strong feeling of dread in me every time I see it that I can't remove this movie's memory from my list of commonly-recurring unconscious thoughts. This movie, incidentally, is the only one of my top 5 horror films which receives an appreciable OOTC rating. I don't often find the startle factor to be that compelling, but this movie uses it masterfully (Adam's capture scene with the camera).

1. Hellraiser

• OOTC: 1 Foot
  
• Nightmare: 4 Lifetimes
  
• Altar: 5 Goats
  
• Survival Guide: $2

It's not a very suspenseful or logically realistic movie, but who cares? Hellraiser is one of the most supremely dark and relevant horror movies of all time. A movie doesn't need suspense when its subject matter can terrify you where it counts--your illogical, instinctual core. Let's examine.

The premise is this: some dirtbag gets hold of an enigmatic box and wants to play with it. After fiddling with it for a few minutes, the box leaps from his hands, opens and tears him to pieces with chains that apparently enter the room via thin air. What's scary about this is that I would play with the box, too, if I found it. And so would you, unless you're abnormally uninterested in novelty. So, as early as the opening scene the movie already convinces me that, if this box were to exist, it would surely kill me.

Then, an unfortunate accident in the room where our dirtbag was dismembered resurrects his hideous corpse. The accident involves the corpse's former brother, whose wife had an affair with the corpse's former humanity. After the resurrection, the corpse waits for his former form's lover to stumble upon him in the attic. He's disgusting, and he frightens her into luring unsuspecting men into the corpse's den (the attic) so he may suck the life out of them and regain his human-like form. This frightens me, because who wouldn't listen to a bloody, aggressive resurrection of a forceful and morally unscrupulous ex-lover (or ex- anything for that matter)? I'd have given uncle Frank (Frank's the corpse's former name) anything he wanted and, therefore, would have damned myself just like Julia (the dumb wife) did.

The movie's not scary because I fear an imminent encounter with the box or pinhead. It's terrifying because I know that if I were to encounter this box, the exact same mess would happen to me. Without proper warning, the "puzzle box" is a novelty and, as a human being, I want to make novelty into familiarity. I'd be so dead, it isn't even funny.

What I've Learned Should Piss Me Off as a Marketer

I'm going to take a more educational look at the world with this post. Even though my opinions usually do society a greater service than any mere facts can claim to have done, it's my opinion that a fact or two here or there never made anybody any stupider.

There used to be this foul practice in online marketing (Search Engine Optimization in particular) called "spamdexing." One can spamdex in many ways, but the end result is always a really pissed off Google. If anybody reading this knows anything about pissing off Google, it's kind of like shooting a spitball at God (pardon my sacrilege). Google have the power to knock you down one or a thousand rankings (kind of like demotion), remove you from their index altogether (kind of like excommunication) and generally make your webpage the scourge of the universe if they so wish. Needless to say, I'm writing about spamdexing in order to portray it as an unethical tactic in leveraging the web for corporate (or personal) gain.

Before I continue, I should mention that I'm not the one who discovered this practice nor am I the one who discovered that Google cries and stomps its massive, powerful boot every time someone employs it these days. I am, however, a male college student. So, my ego will help me talk about it as if nobody in the world besides me knows what it is. Consider yourself lucky.

Spamdexing's most rudimentary form uses hidden text on a webpage as a form of keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is an attempt at acheiving the highest level of keyword density (desired keywords on page divided by total words on page) possible. Press ctrl + A and read below this paragraph to see what I mean.

bean burrito delicious taco chalupa gastrointestinal malfunction

If I were a taco stand with internet access and a webpage, I might invisibly stuff my webpage with keywords like the ones above. The fact that I chose "bean burrito," "delicious taco," "chalupa," and "gastrointestinal malfunction" means that I want my site, I'll call it www.flacotaco.com, to appear at the top of Google's rankings when people type them in during a search. Of course, Google wouldn't like it, so they'd find ways to make my computer spontaneously explode and my family disown me, so I wouldn't want to engage in hidden text spamdexing.

I ran across this interesting article about BMW written by a guy from Google. It shows another (more complicated) way of gaming the search engines by using a redirecting landing page. Whoever started this practice thought it would outsmart Google, whose algorithm recognizes hidden keyword stuffing now.

The Night I Faked a Tourgasm

A few nights ago, I managed to catch a little bit of what seemed like the tail-end of Dane Cook's "Tourgasm" special. If you haven't seen it, yet, here's a brief synopsis:

Consider yourself the brand-new owner of your very own hour and a half of unwasted free time, because I just saved you the trouble of sitting through his televised junior high lunch period. If you're still curious, that is if you still really want to know what you're missing (besides a substantial number of brain cells), then read on.

Dane Cook's act is the stand up comedy equivalent of dry humping a bar stool for an hour and a half. He tells stories that would make a 12-year-old boy want to beat him up for his lunch money. For example, did you know that Dane Cook actually saw a guy get hit by a car? He really, really saw it in the flesh and blood...and metal. Doesn't ring a bell? You're lucky, because it means you haven't yet seen a single one of his acts and, therefore, don't know what it feels like when your brain has diarrhea.

Another one of his gems comes right out of the "Things that can Happen to Most People in Real Life that Nobody Cares About" textbook. As it turns out, the pavement in parking garages makes a high-pitched squealing sound whenever you drive over it. What's more is that it doesn't even matter how fast you're going. It really doesn't! Isn't that interesting and funny? You're right--of course it's not. I understand that merely reading about his act can give the average brain some "regularity" issues, so I'll break for a second while you go read a few sentences out of The Economist or something.

All better? Good. I'm sorry you had to go through that, but let's face it--you're too stubborn for your own good. I warned you about reading on, you know.

Of course, if you didn't need a break after reading his paraphrased material and, in fact, think Dane Cook's act is interesting, then you need a CAT scan. It likely means your head was full of diarrhea before you sat down to watch him perform and, therefore, you didn't realize that something was wrong afterward.