eight songs that make me want to pour hot wax in my ears.

I like to think I have refined taste when it comes to music. Among my friends, I'm usually the one sharing band recommendations, and I've had more than a few people I used to know contact me later and tell me they're still listening to a band I introduced them to. I would make the best rock critic probably ever.

As a whole, I think the music industry sucks ass and the crap they play on the radio could not be worse. But here are eight songs that I really, really abhor.

Katy Perry - California Gurls

 How subtle. I bet your parents are so proud.

It's not that I think Katy Perry is stupid. It's that I think she's a fucking moron. With a fucking terrible voice. This is one of those songs that sticks to your brain matter like that obnoxious residue from when you rip a sticker off too quickly. The song's premise isn't terrible, I guess, except she pretty much desecrated one of the greatest songs ever to be recorded. It features probably the worst Snoop Dogg appearance ever. And lyrics stating "we freak in my Jeep"? 1997 called, they want their lame-ass lingo back.


Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

There is nothing in the world more heinous than pop groups wearing matching outfits.

Without even getting into how "Pussycat Dolls" is the easily the dumbest name ever, and the fact "Cha" is not even a fucking word, and that I don't even get why there are five broads in this ensemble when only one of them actually sings, this is by far the most phony attempt at female self-empowerment that I've ever heard. Terrible shtick, terrible song. In short, I don't.


Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling

The band is comprised of will.i.am.a.narcissistic.prick, Tabooring, apl.de.ap.iece.of.shit, and the Ferg-monster.

I gotta feelin' that every time I hear the Black Eyed Peas, my entire day is fucking ruined. I can't believe our country is so braindead that they could be sold on a song proclaiming that "tonight's gonna be a good night." Real deep. If you listened really carefully during the moment this song was announced as number one on the Billboard charts, you could hear the sound of classical musicians everywhere dying on the inside. When life imitates art and Idiocracy reflects the state of American affairs, I bet you a million dollars everyone will be listening to the Black Eyed Peas.

I could pretty much make this whole list out of Black Eyed Peas songs, but I won't bore you, and I shudder every time I have to actually type the name of this insufferable, talentless, hideous gang of asshats.  They shall henceforth be known as The Douchebags Who Shall Not Be Named.


Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

Avril, I think you found your true calling.

Hey! Hey! You! You! Fuck off and die, please.


Ke$ha - Tik Tok

You will never fucking be Cher. Don't even try.

I actually kind of liked this song the first two times I heard it. I thought it was sorta campy. And then I heard it another forty thousand times, and I realized that being continually subjected to that song is the equivalent of being locked in a hot, windowless room with vomit and crap all over the walls. If there truly is a God, he invented that song just to show you that in hell, everyone has a nasal voice, there's way too much glitter, every guy is potentially raping you, they use Jack Daniels instead of toothpaste, and there's a loud-ass clock ticking the seconds away. That's enough to make me into a believer.


Nickelback - How You Remind Me

Nickelback is the worst band in popular music today. I'm not even kidding. The intense popularity of Nickelback epitomizes everything I hate about this country. I would say that I want them to meet their end in a bloody plane crash, but that would seal their martyr status and probably make them even more popular than they already are, so I will request that they split up and order all radio stations and Best Buys to destroy all traces that their music ever existed.


Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Goin' Down

There is no way any of these guys had sex in high school.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why teenaged chicks eat stuff like this up. The style of singing is so ridiculously annoying, not to mention completely unintelligible. This is what it sounds like to me:

We goin' dow dow dobeedoobeedoobaaaa
And sugar we gotta down singa
I'll be a numb-er one with a boola
A loaded God complex, caca and pulla


Owl City - Fireflies

I want to punch him in his stupid giant head.

Just admit you completely and totally ripped off The Postal Service, you piece of shit.

we can't be saved from what we love.

I spend most of my time on this blog talking about things that have happened to my vagina and things that irritate the crap out of me. For a change of pace, I'd like to talk about things that move me.

I have always felt an incredibly deep connection to the GLBT community. I self-identify as queer, but I think it goes deeper than just belonging. Through the course of my feminist awakening, my sexual enlightenment, and my growth into an adult, I sought to find an aural or visual experience that depicted the world as I feel it. It's hard to say whether the view or the world itself is broken, but it lies broken nonetheless. It's sharply hued and violent, but silent and subdued. It's where we play with fire and still drown.

And I found Nan Goldin, a photographer who grew up in Massachusetts and made a name for herself photographing herself and her friends, many of them gay, in front of the drug-addled backdrop of New York in the 1970s and 80s.

I feel disconnected from much of the art I experience on a regular basis, and some of the literature. But Nan's work touches me so much. I feel we are cut from the same cloth. I feel we live in the same world together. She has been one with the freaks. She captures the despondency that has so often permeated my life. Her photographs recognize the complexity of the juncture between gender, sex, and mortality.

And yet there is no desperation in what she shows us, sad as it all may seem. It is a reality created in the desire to love things, even if society tells us we are wrong. It is a reality where we all realize that we are going to die and as a result, all we can do is live.

Many of the subjects of Nan's original photographs died by the time she gained recognition for her work. They never knew their raw beauty was seen by thousands of people. They just lived their imperfect lives in a world that wasn't ready for them. They are pure. Their images are haunting.

These photographs always make me wonder: how do we ever really interact with one another? And how can we forgive ourselves for the mistakes we've made?

All of these works, of course, belong to Nan Goldin.

I've got a secret.

One of my greatest character flaws is that I try to pretend to be cultured. I feign interest in the arts; I masquerade as a literature snob. To put it bluntly, I am far more crass than I let on to strangers and loose acquaintances. Outwardly, I am a devotee of the Western canon; inwardly, I want to read any book that has the word "penis" in it.

So I have been acting like I don't enjoy reality television. I know it's pretentious, but the social circles I've been frequenting lately are most definitely of a higher intellectual caliber. As such, I'm sure they find my unending appreciation of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" appalling. I could watch that shit for HOURS. I detest the people on the show and generally find their antics tasteless, but it amuses me nonetheless.

Since I'm 24 and MTV is now the dominion of the teenaged crowd, I've been denying my love for a certain hyper-tanned, Ed Hardy-wearing motley crew of ill repute. That's right, I fucking love Jersey Shore.

Now I know that you, assumed loyal reader and friend, are wondering why a person reeking of cynicism and feminism would support such a vapid entertainment outlet. So hear me out.

It takes a lot of guts to admit you've fucked someone. It takes serious balls to air your dirty laundry in public. It doesn't matter if everyone wants to hear it, or no one does. Imagine if all your weakest moments were videotaped. Imagine if everyone knew you slept with your roommate, and heard your drunken outbursts, and saw your naked breasts as you writhed in a hot tub.

Now, imagine if you didn't give a shit.

This is where the brilliance of this superficial social experiment comes in. 

I love the people on Jersey Shore because they're not attempting to be anything. They're not pretending their tits are real or their storylines are genuine. The whole experience of the show is so contrived that it goes past artificial and somehow comes back to real. We can see past what everyone expects them to do; yet when they do it, we don't blame them. We can't. We created them. They are the manifestation of all the dumbest, purest things we desire. We want sex and tequila and expensive sunglasses covered in rhinestones. The stupidest part is that we deny it.

That's not to say that I'm going to go douse myself in spray tan and bedazzle some crop tops. The greatest part about entertainment is that it can remain just that. I can watch empty people make out and make tons of money, and it really has no effect on who I am or who I will be. It's just oddly comforting that there's a group of people out there, charged with doing nothing but living out the ridiculously selfish fantasies of my generation, and I can watch them make the thousand mistakes I've made. They're not ashamed. And maybe I shouldn't be, either.