Cheating: The fastest route to hell

So I'm in my car this morning driving to work (actually more crawling to work; see the blog on me hating traffic below) and the morning show I was listening to was on the subject of cheating. Now I'm no expert in the matter, as I have absolutely no experience with cheating (unless you count Game Genie), but if I had to pick one thing I hate most in the world it would probably be cheating...and also spiders.

To be honest, I've never really understood the concept of cheating. I've definitely been caught up in my share of totally doable cheating opportunities (no pun intended), so if you're a cheater you can take your "you wouldn't know what it's like" argument and throw it in the garbage along with the rest of your ethically immoral excuses and probably dead puppies....murderer. I cherish my relationships as much as I cherish the first season of Full House (which surprisingly is saying a lot) and I don't need one moment of seized opportunity to screw it all up.

The one thing I will never understand is taking someone back after they cheat. If a person cheats on you it means they are capable of it. Even if they say they will never do it again, they are capable of it. And if they're capable of cheating, they're capable of other things...like rape and terrorism. That person deliberately and with conscious intent thought about your relationship and decided that a random physical act was worth more than your trust. They literally (figuratively) took a dump on your trust, then went ahead and did an entire river dance chorus on it when you took them back. And don't give me the other excuse of "everyone makes mistakes." A mistake is when you accidentally DVR Gilmore Girls or forget to carry the one in long division. Cheating on your partner is not a mistake.

A hypothetical friend for this story just said to me the other day "Aren't you being a little harsh? I mean you don't know every situation. Things change and sometimes shit happens." First of all, "shit happens" is a bumper sticker most commonly found on a pickup truck from the early nineties being driven by a guy wearing a confederate flag t-shirt and listening to "This is Our Country". Anything that can be found on a novelty t-shirt alongside the popular "Waaazup?!" probably shouldn't be passed off as a viable excuse. Second of all, it's true I don't know every situation that could ever happen in a world. But I for the life of me can not come up with a situation where the end results in a life-threatening struggle between cheating or death. Oh wait, that's because it doesn't exist. Although it would make for an interesting plot line for a straight-to-DVD movie starring Steven Seagal.

Cheat or Die: Fists of Justice

Kung fu aside, lets look at the facts. If someone were willing to cheat on their partner, they're not fully satisfied with the relationship. Like chicken nuggets with no sauce. The relationship isn't there. So why risk showing up on the (probably) award-winning show "Cheaters" looking like an idiot literally caught with his pants down, when you could just be single and make babies with everyone? I think I've made my point.

Moral of the story: Don't cheat or do drugs. Also, if you believe in yourself anything can happen...even magic.

Hip-pop: The Death of Music

Everyone has different opinions of good music. You might cherish Shaq's Greatest Hits (which unbelievably exists) whereas your neighbor, God forbid, might enjoy the musical styling of an inspirational Yanni album to compliment a self-choreographed interpretive dance sequence with all 15 of their cats (or whatever the hell else fans of Yanni do.) And while he may be, in your opinion, the best songwriter of this or any generation, being the founder and sole member of his Facebook group does not make it true.

The music industry has been on a downward spiral ever since the release of such gems as "Walk It Out" and "Party Like a Rockstar", which both make about as much sense as crowd surfing at an Air Supply concert. Don't get me wrong, I realize and appreciate the dance functionality of both songs/being able to safely dry hump a stranger's leg in a dark club, but both contain the equivalent musical charisma of an old drunk person shouting at passing cars. With this new trend in music (mixing a 3rd grade vocabulary with obscenities and going all night with sexual references) I'm afraid we're flirting with the Armageddon of music. And not the reassuring, "Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis hold hands and save us before the credits roll" Armageddon. I'm talking about the real thing.

Screenshot from Armageddon.

Don't you ever wonder why we've never really had another Led Zeppelin or Pink Flloyd in this generation? Or why James Taylor and Peter Frampton end up on cell phone and Geico commercials? It's not because people have stopped making good music. It's because good music is now defined by a society that favors mindless, emotion-free, mainstream pop over soulful, revolutionary, musical poetry. I personally don't want to grow up in a world where music classes teach "How to Properly Superman that Ho" and "Bitches and Hos: A History of Pimpin' That Ain't Easy".

The times are definitely changing and younger generations are changing with it. They're being told what to like by mass media (otherwise known as "The Man") and as the appreciation for music slowly waters itself down like an Ice Cube album at WalMart, we're forced to rethink our own appreciation for music. Because even though we still have a handful of rock and roll powerhouses staggering onto stages across the world, they are going to die someday (see Keith Richards) and all that will be left are DJ Unk and Soulja Boy. Can you imagine your sweet little angel faced kids calling THAT classic rock? Well I sir, cannot.

So the next time you're at a bar and hear one of the aforementioned piles of crap on the dance floor, close your eyes and try to imagine the artist and record label execs realistically brainstorming the idea of a song centered around "licking it like a lollipop". It really makes you question whether or not the record label execs are actually immature 2nd graders that still laugh at the word "poop" and make hand turkeys out of construction paper and the glue they just tried to eat. There's not a whole lot of creative juices flowing around that studio. If you don't believe me, check out the sheer poetry of the lyrics on Google. I can't post them here because of the flat-out vulgarity, but it's very similar to what I imagine a script looks like for a poorly directed adult film.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to finish the song I've been working on for the past 15 minutes entitled "Who wants a footlong?"

Additionally, that's what she said.