Hey, did you miss all my old ranting?

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't had a good rant for a while. Part of that is because I haven't been following news from back home or anything, and it's way easier to rant about your own culture (or at least something nebulous and abstract, like the Catholic Church). But for those of you who have missed my ranting, here are two, one which is at least tangentially related to my life here and the other not really at all. Oh yeah, some of you probably never really liked my rantings. So maybe there is something more wholesomely entertaining for you here.

Rant One: Where have all the Socks gone?
My socks have been slowly disappearing. The ones that haven't disappeared have been subjected to various tortures of too much detergent and extra-hard water in random laundromats in places like the Salar de Uyuni (it's a desert; they probably use the same water 20 times). So, I've been buying new socks. But I'm starting to think that there are no good socks in South America. I bought three pair in Bolivia, and one has been thrown out because it got holes in the heels, and the other two are going the same way - even though they're only 2 months old. And the had all these loose strings inside, which not only made them hard to get on, but also forced me to hasten their self-destruction as my toes snagged on what was supposed to be holding the damn things together. I bought three more pairs here in Chile, which ended up not even pretending to stretch to the size of an adult foot. They LOOKED like they were the same size as my other socks, but my other socks don't perfectly maintain their shape even when a big fat foot is stuffed inside. And those socks are coming apart already, even thought they're only 2 weeks old. In short, my old, US socks are outlasting my new, LA socks - even thought they were kind of old and ratty when I started the trip 8 months ago.

What gives? It's not like I don't believe that there are something like 3 big factories in Shanghai that make 99% of the worlds socks, some good, some bad. I mean, just slap a different address label on the shipping container and good socks can come to LA too! Just one more little thing that's great about living in the Land of the Free, Home of the Well-Clad Foot that we don't even realize is so awesome.

Rant Two: Was pop music always this bad?
So one song that gets a lot of air time on certain radio stations down here (like it does fucking EVERYWHERE, I understand) s that "Girlfriend" song by Avril Lavigne. Which, HOLY SHIT, JUST CAME ON THE RADIO IN HERE. Good timing. Now I can remember all the shit I hate about it... although really there are two things: first, it's stupid, insipid, and vaguely offensive (is that three things? I guess we could lump those into the general catagory of "it sucks")Basically, this song makes me think "who the fuck do you think you are, Avril?" Oh, you don't like my girlfriend? And you're obviously way, way better, because you're a "motherfucking princess," "can do it better," and "are gonna make me feel alright"? What, you think I'm such a stupid asshole or such a whimpy loser that my girlfriend is some asshole loser too? In which case, why the fuck are you interested in me anyways? This whole melodic pile of shit is just one more piece in the dynamic development of the American female into Paris Hilton-esque snotty, self-important bitches who spend all their time obsessing over their looks and wondering how they can fuck with boys and build up their egos (and not worrying about how to be engineers or doctors or something). Admittedly, boys are easy to fuck with (creating tempting targets), and have been on top for a long time; and I'm all for self-confident, assertive women, but Jesus this song makes me want to puke.

Of course, all of this assumes that Avril actually wrote this song, and actually wrote it to some unspecified audience of one because of actual emotional occurrences in her actual life - you know, the way artists create. But I think much more likely is that the lyrics were suggested to her by a room full of marketing experts, who focus-tested a group of 16 year old girls from SoCal and designed the perfectly consumable song. It's pretty much to music what Red Robin's or TGI Friday's is to restaurants.

Which leads me to the second thing I hate about that song - it's designed to be perfectly consumable, so I actually LIKE the fucking thing and it always gets stuck in my head (just like I LIKE going to Red Robin's, although it's more fun if you wear silly clothes and see how much you can abuse the bottomless fry policy). It's got the perfect formula of chorus/verse/bridge that makes it perfectly fucking catchy. It's like my own free will of musical sensibility has been hijacked by the executives of RCA, and I can't get it back until I pull the baseball bat out of my toilet and smash my radio into a thousand tiny bits. And that makes me mad.

What happens in the meadow at dusk? Everything? Or nothing?


OK, not my greatest rants, but I'm a little rusty. Please stay tuned.