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My apartment was designed to double as a Cold War fallout shelter. Or it just has layers and layers of lead paint. Or it was strategically designed as some sort of media-deprivation experiment. Either way, it's the only place in this area that I get absolutely shit cellphone service. And that makes me mad.

Spotty Service- As much as I hate people being glued to their phones, having proper reception has its advantages. Like being able to receive important calls and proceed to live my life, conscious of what's going on around me. I can't say how many fun and exciting happenings I've missed out on due to not receiving a call or text, but I can only assume that the number is in the hundreds and my friends are all just too polite to tell me about them. And it's not even the fact that I'm missing out on shit that makes me the most upset, but rather the seemingly self-aware amount of irony my phone, whom I will refer to as Rodger for the remainder of this article, injects into the timing of when it finally delivers all of my back messages.

If my understanding of cellphones is correct, which I have no reason to believe it isn't, when someone sends you a text and you don't have any reception the phone holds the message in a parallel dimension only accessible by a licensed mobile phone carrier or possibly four British children with a dusty wardrobe. Periodically, I think, your phone is supposed to check in with Narnia to see if you have any waiting messages that couldn't get through earlier due to the lamp post being blown out or something. Which is all fine and good, and I honestly couldn't think of a better way to work it, except for the fact that my particular phone seems to take joy in waiting to check for messages until it's far too late to do anything about them. For example, if I'm supposed to await instructions to meet someone at some place at some time Rodger likes to wait until I'm already at said location to send me the message from four hours ago telling me that the meeting is canceled. Or if someone would like to kindly inform me of something awesome going on, like someone selling magic beans in the town square, Rodger withholds the information until the very last bean has been sold. So while everyone else is up in the clouds stealing golden geese and over-sized novelty hams Rodger and I are sitting alone in my apartment listening to old Our Lady Peace albums and thinking about what to do for the rest of the night. Rodger always wants to play Sorry! but first of all I think that game sucks and second of all he is a cellphone and cannot even move the pieces correctly.

But even within my impenetrable 36 chambers, I still enjoy...

Pretending to Guess Where my Phone is Giving Me Cancer- wait, no, hold on...

Listening as the Ring Tones I Once Didn't Mind Get More and More Grating with Each Passing Day- er, I mean...

Sitting with my Phone Under my Balls so that When it Vibrates it Scares the Living Shit Out of Me- Better, but still not quite...

Trying to Figure Out How to Capitalize Lengthy Title Lines? Fuck it, good enough.

Wibbley-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

The other night I had the opportunity to help out/be an active nuisance at an "Adult Prom" themed party. I don't mean that it was XXX-style "adult" but rather that it was just a prom for adults. So a prom with booze. Or rather, a prom where the booze isn't hidden. It was staffed by some terrific people, but a few of the attendees got me thinking about how much I fucking hate...

Nostalgia- Nostalgia is one of the most subtle and deadly poisons our fragile, human minds are susceptible to. I like to think that it's only natural to daydream about our pasts. We've all done things we're proud of, things we're ashamed of, and things we can't stop laughing about when we tell others. These are usually the best times we have. And it's great to be able to look back fondly on them. But the fact is, throughout our lives, these times are often few and far between. I'm not trying to talk shit on life here, I'm just saying that our memories do a lot of selective editing when we decide what we want to remember. So it becomes easy to feel nostalgic for the past, to start thinking about what awesome times you used to have. From there, the problem is, it's only a short jump to being discontent with your present. And from there it's only another small step to doing things you probably shouldn't. Like showing up to a prom-themed party in your daughter's dress so that the entire crowd can see your leather handbag-style cleavage and looking legitimately disappointed when you don't win Prom Queen (again). And, in related news, that's why the song "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen can go fuck itself.

But, like all good double-edged swords, I still kind of enjoy...

Nostalgia- Who among us hasn't creamed their pants when they remember some cherished childhood toy for the first time in 10-20 years? Or sang along asininely to a favorite old song? Or sat around late at night with friends talking about all the stupid shit you used to get into? No one worth knowing, that's for sure. I'll be the first to admit that I get as caught up in the past as anyone else. I just hope that everything I do worth remembering eventually amounts to some sort of payoff. Maybe if, when I die, I could get a little montage of any dangerous driving, sex, and peeing on churches that I've done all set to, say, "Ace of Spades," then I could expire happily. Even more happily if that montage could then somehow be burned to DVD and sent to my friends and family. I hope you guys like partial nudity.

A Sad Day for Hate

This holiday kind of seems to stand as the antithesis for everything that comprises me, namely my ability to piss and moan about meaningless garbage. I want to try and get back into this, but after spending a nice day with my family it's hard to find the rage, buried as it is beneath so much food and slothfulness. So let's all give thanks and be happy and shit. I promise this thing'll be up and kicking again soon with at least a medium level of vigor. Here's a picture of cats being nice to each other and getting into the holiday spirit.

I understand I've been lazy about writing on here lately. If you're bored, I invite you to read my other garbage. That ought to cover me for all of five to ten minutes.

A Brave New World

Movies are art. Art imitates life. Life is complicated. It stands to reason, then, that movies are complicated. This is not conjecture, it is scientific fact. It irks me when people think movies are just about mindless entertainment; they aren't. They are, in a sense, a hyper-realistic mirror, allowing us to view our lives from an outside perspective for what they really are: a series of hilariously timed, usually vulgar, and ultimately depressing string of events. That's why I fucking hate...

The Gross Over-Simplification of Films- In today's example, I'll be covering the shock/gross-out horror film of the year, The Human Centipede. For all the hype that surrounds this movie no one seems to be focusing on anything deeper than the shit-eating. Now, I'm not here to tell you that people don't forcibly eat shit in this movie; I just think the film as a whole goes so much deeper than that.

See, horror films are a type of coping mechanism. They allow us to address our deepest, most unsettling fears in scenarios with no actual impact on our own lives. This approach allows us to distance ourselves from our concerns, thus enabling us to consider them more objectively. In this particular example, it means the difference between having to think about forced fecal ingestion at a distance as opposed to having a plate of poop dropped in front of you and a gun put to your head. But these seemingly specific concerns often betray deeper, more subtle fears.

After the advent of nuclear weapons in our society, for example, we saw a new wave of movies about radioactive monsters. People weren't actually afraid of radioactive monsters (although they should have been), they were just scared of nuclear weapons. Radioactive monsters just happened to be a fun manifestation of that fear. The Hunan Centipede, then, isn't really about how afraid we all are of eating poop; it's a movie about science run amok. Medicine without morals. The crazy, Nazi-type doctor is really just a big metaphor for genetic experimentation, or stem-cell research, or abortion or something. He's not just about scat fetishism. Now just to be clear, does this mean that I feel that stem-cell research, abortion, and medical advancement are a threat to our society? Fuck no. But then again, I don't stay up at night having nightmares about shit either.

So for how worked up people get about some icky red and brown bits, I do have to say that I love...

Missing the Fucking Point Completely- Did anyone ever stop to consider that the concept of a "human centipede" isn't even half as terrifying as a real centipede? I don't care how many screaming Asian men and trashy white bitches you stitch together, it will never be as horrifying as the real thing. Oh sure, I've heard people try to tell me that the common centipede is actually quite beneficial to humans. "They eat other bugs!" people keep shouting at me as I stomp them out of existence with a prejudice rarely seen outside of gang warfare. I don't give a shit. They're gross, they're fast, they're poisonous (even if the smaller ones can't pierce human skin), and goddammit, they're up to something. Something sinister. Would it be too much to assume that they could be learning from our own propaganda and reverse-engineering it into something even worse: THE CENTIPEDE HUMAN? I don't think so. So everybody calm down about feces and Nazi-doctors and focus on the real problem: bugs living among us as people. Please feel free to suspect your loved ones.

A Day or Three Late, Zero Bucks Short

In an appalling display of procrastination, here is the final summation of the greatest zombie-themed media available, originally intended to be posted back on Halloween. Just buy yourself a couple fun-sized candy bars you don't really like and pretend like the holiday never ended.

Best zombie movie:

28 Days Later- I've heard people piss and moan about how these aren't really "zombies." They run instead of shuffling. They retain some limited sense of human logic. They never fully die before turning. To all those nay-sayers who argue that this disqualifies Danny Boyle's gory masterpiece from being considered a "zombie film" I have an efficient, succinct counter-argument: shut up. The first time I saw it, 28 Days Later sent chills up my spine like any zombie film before or since has managed to do. The concept of the running horde is over one million percent scarier than a shambling crowd that you can escape with a brisk walk. Not to mention the cinematography and soundtrack to the film are fantastic as well. I will always be terrified of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and now for more reasons than just being labeled a pretentious douche if people found out I listened to them.

Best zombie comedy:

Shaun of the Dead- With Zombieland as a close runner-up, I have to give victory to Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's masterpiece. SotD is a solidly gory zombie adventure about a crew of deadbeat adults struggling for survival and learning a bit about the world, friendship, and themselves along the way. Actually no, it's more of just a solid comedy about those things that just happens to involve zombies. Hollywood take note: zombies can actually help mend our broken hearts as well as tearing them out of our chests.

Best zombie book:

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks- This may seem like a shoe-in but it still deserves a mention. The Zombie Survival Guide is funny, informative, detailed, and easily accessible even to those who had never considered the merits of the crowbar in a zombie apocalypse (you weirdos). In his work, Brooks has touched the minds and hearts of millions. When I initially started bothering my friends about this topic, sensible zombie-warrior Matty Warbucks reminded about this gem. I'm assuming a lot of people have already read it, but if you haven't please go pick up a copy now so that you too can start annoying the shit out of your friends with hypothetical arguments over bicycles, fire axes and sniper rifles.

Best zombie video-games:

Left 4 Dead 1 & 2- The good people at Valve have a direct line into my heart. I don't know when or how they found it, but it seems to be made out of gory murder and sassy one-liners. When I eventually stopped playing their other gem, Team Fortress 2, long enough to breathe they suckered me into the Left 4 Dead series. Long story short, you play as one of four survivors of a zombie outbreak traveling together, fighting to reach a series of safe spots. Your characters all have separate and unique back-stories that you never fully know but get to glimpse through their dialogue with one another. This helps endear particular characters to particular people (except for Louis, who no one should like) and makes it all the more tragic when you watch them start to get ripped to shreds in front of you. Not only that, but the zombies are spawned randomly in accordance to how well you're playing. If you start out a little shaky, the games seem to take pity and lighten up how many undead rush you at once. If you begin to smash skulls, prepare to get smashed in return. Overall they are a pair of games so ambient, fun and well-balanced that they stand as an affront to God himself. Buy them now.