What Your Favorite "What Your Favorite Book Says About You" Says About You

Insert funny gif of a Real Housewife here. OMG, you like books! But somehow, despite this, you feel the need to let a fucking hack listicle website define you as a person based on what books you like! You would think that reading would help you think for yourself, but instead you rely on some $9/hr sorority-graduate freelance shitbag to do it for you! Find your favorite "What Does Your Favorite Book Say About You" article below and see what it says about you!

1. "What Your Favorite Book Says About Your Personality" by Bustle

You love lists that talk more about your personality than what you are reading. Books are used not as sources of knowledge, but simply as mirrors, showing you what you want to see. You think highly of yourself and you want your quizzes to reflect that. You need to get off the internet.

2. "What Your Favorite Book Says About You" by HerCampus.com

You are an apprentice at a Chinese Fortune Cookie company right before they go bankrupt. You think clever quips and cheap gifs are a good representation of your gender's ability to create internet content. You legitimately think that The Maze Runner could be someone's favorite book. You need to get off the internet.

3. "What Does Your Favorite Book Say About You?" by BookBub

You think that people have one defining trait. You don't believe that anyone could possibly love more than two books at once. You think that people should be defined by a personality quirk or flaw. You need to get off the internet.

4. "What Does Your Favorite Book Say About You?" by Huffington Post

You worry about what your favorite book could possibly say about you. You are embarrassed to read certain books because you have a low self-esteem. You think that a well-stocked bookshelf will win you friends and influence people. You need to get off the internet.

5. "What the Books You Read Say About Your Personality" also by Huffington Post

You think that you can know a person just by looking at the book they are reading. In fact, you'd RATHER look at the cover of the book than look them in the goddamn face and have a human conversation for once in your goddamn pathetic life. You are a robot inside, hollow and metallic and going through the motions until you die. You need to get off the internet.

6. "What Does Your Favorite Book Say About You?" by Book Riot

You read books. You know other people read books. You go online to try to figure out how to relate to other people using these two known facts. You spend your days on the internet. You remain alone. Forever. You need to get off the internet.

7. "What Your Favorite Book Says About You" by Under the Fridge

You read what Oprah tells you to read. You have the sudden realization that your middle-aged female coworker was probably using 50 Shades as spank bank material. You use a brand-new Kindle, and have never set foot in a library. You need to get off the internet.

8. "What Your Favorite Book Says About You" by Thought Catalogue

You don't know anyone cooler than yourself, and it's all because of the books. You'd rather sit in a lush garden on a warm spring day and devour the newest crime novel than have sex with your wife. You for some reason went to page TWO of the google results to find a new quiz about what your favorite book says about you. You are a blank slate, and you let brain-dead 20-somethings spew hot wet metaphorical paint on that blank slate from the comfort of their parents' basement, rent-free. You need to get off the internet.

9. "28 Favorite Books That Are Huge Red Flags" by Buzzfeed

You are an insufferable and unlikable know-it-all. You read a book for the sole purpose of taking its content and making a meme out of it. You like shitting on other people for their tastes, because it makes you feel powerful. You crave that power, because in reality you are weak, you are old gum on the forgotten sneakers of the world, you have nothing except hate and disdain churning inside your gut. When you find a quiz about your favorite book on the internet, you tend to cackle like an Anchorman fan who is hearing "Brick loves lamp" for the 800th time. You are a loser for reading. You like Buzzfeed, for christ's fucking sake. Now tell me what the fuck that says about you. You need to get off the internet.

Hogwarts Kids Can't Read: Scrutinizing the Magical Curriculum

How the fuck is this a seven-year course subject?!

In rereading the Harry Potter series to my daughter, I've found infinite joy in the wonderful, magical writings of J.K. Rowling. I've also, truth be told, found some very minor annoyances. The biggest one, which I'm going to write about today, involves how Hogwarts School is structured. Read on to find out how I'd run shit if I were Hogwarts' first muggle provost.

If you are a kid with magical abilities (or potential magical abilities), then on your eleventh birthday you'll most likely receive a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, announcing your enrollment and asking you to join them in September. Stop and think about it though. Most or all of these children won't be beginning their education at Hogwarts. I started attending school at the age of five, and learned a lot in the subsequent six years. I would assume that children set to attend Hogwarts are in similar situations.

But so it was always curious to me that "normal" subjects didn't exist at magical schools. Children don't learn everything they need to know about Writing and Math in the first decade of their lives. It's a lifelong learning process. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are seen multiple times writing essays on scrolls of parchment, and yet they are never seen being taught how to write an essay.

I didn't get hardcore essay-writing instruction until I was fourteen. Are wizard children teaching themselves? Or does Professor McGonagall just look the other way when Neville Longbottom forgets to include a thesis statement in the introductory paragraph?

And how about math? I know that Arithmancy is taught at Hogwarts, which, sure, has to do with numbers. But that's more to do with how numbers and words interact to explain our world. Basic mathematics are completely ignored in Magical Britain. I know a typical eleven-year-old knows 2+2=4, but what about long form division? How do wizards manage their finances without that basic training? More so than English, I can see Math being solved sufficiently with magic in many occasions, but still, humans need that bedrock of basic understanding of numbers, and cutting that off at the fifth grade level is incredibly irresponsible.

It would be one thing if English and Math were being replaced with more worthwhile subjects, but a lot of the subjects taught at Hogwarts seem way more prominent than they logically should be in the curriculum. A lot of them could probably be combined, or at the very least scaled down dramatically into a two-year requirement or one-semester elective, etc. Certainly not fourteen semesters for a lot of these! Let's go through them.

There's no way that the art of Potions should necessitate seven straight years of practice. Potion-making seems really important in the magical world, I'm not denying that. But from everything we've seen, making potions basically amounts to following instructions out of a book. In fact, in Half Blood Prince, Harry starts succeeding in Potions class because he's following the correct instructions in the margins of his textbook. No extra skill required. I get it—young wizards need to PRACTICE MAKING POTIONS. But they need seven years of practice?! To me, the subject of Potions would make more sense as a two-year requirement in the students' third and fourth years (having been given two years to become confident young wizards first, before fucking around with bottling glory and stoppering death). Advanced Potions could be electives in the final three years.

In my opinion, Charms and Transfiguration and at least 50% of Defense Against the Dark Arts could be combined into one class, at least at the beginning of a witch's training. All three basically amount to point your wand at someone or something and making magic happen. Yes, all three are slightly different—Charms changes how something acts, Transfiguration changes what something is, DADA disarms other magic—but at the end of the day, they all require the same method in magic-making: 1) point, 2) speak, 3) MAGIC.

What I envision for Hogwarts is a double class for the first two or three years called "Spell-Casting." Young magical students start learning about their wands (What is a wand? How is it used? What are the basic rules in using it?). This takes place during the lecture portion of Spell-Casting. The other portion of the double-sized course is a practical portion, or a lab. This is when the students actually practice what they learn about, whether that's causing items to float or changing items into other items or whatever the fuck.

The other half of DADA has to deal with magical creatures, or rather, defending yourself against the so-called "evil" beings that exist in the magical world. Let's combine that with Care of Magical Creatures, because they are on opposites sides of the same coin. Also, fuck it, let's combine it with Herbology as well, because, let's face it, the line between what is a magical plant and a magical animal is often razor thin (since we are in a world where plants act like animals and even humans sometimes). Again, double-sized class, with five lectures a week, and maybe two or three "lab" sessions where you actually deal with these magical creatures head-on.

I just combined five classes into two, but that doesn't mean that those subjects disappear completely. By the time you are fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, you might find that you have a certain knack for transfiguration, and by that point in your education, there could be electives specifically pertaining to Transfiguration. If you find that you are able to deal with plants way more easily than animals, take up Advanced Herbology as an elective.

Which makes me start to realize that Hogwarts does a piss-poor job preparing students for graduation and entering into the workforce. Maybe there was a lot that happens in Seventh Year that we didn't get to see because Harry was too busy saving the world, but I don't recall any mention of internships or anything like that. I could imagine seventh-year students having afternoons free on MWF so that they can work as apprentices at the Ministry of Magic or something like that.

Better that then waste five years with the other Hogwarts so-called "electives." Divination is an absurd class to offer to students. Professor Trelawney was right, some students just don't have a "The Eye" for seeing the future. She was wrong, though, in quantifying it as "some." It seems like MOST (or ALMOST ALL) students cannot see the future. I could see Divination maaaaybe as a one-semester elective for students who might want to explore whether they are capable of this rare art, but for someone like Ron Weasley, who CLEARLY is not a seer (probably), to spend TEN SEMESTERS pretending just seems like a fucking waste of time.

The Study of Ancient Runes sounds interesting, but again, I don't see how that's five years' worth of material. Maybe you spend a a semester learning how to read the runes, and another semester practicing the reading of them. Any more than that seems impractical to me (again, unless you wanna take advanced electives later on).

Muggle Studies sounds interesting too, though from what little we know about the current syllabus (Hermione has to write an article about electricity, for instance), it sounds like a class that no Muggle-born student should be allowed to take. If it were up to me, the subject material would be changed a little bit, to focus more on broad strokes of the Muggle World, understanding their limitations without magic, and really making an effort to teach about the relationship between Muggles and Wizards, and how Wizards are responsible in maintaining balance in the lopsided global arrangement. I think of Muggle Studies as more of a Diplomacy class or Political Science class than as a class where you learn how to ride a bike or make macaroni and cheese in a microwave.

The only class I have no issues with, ironically, is boring ol' Professor Binns' History of Magic Class. It's important to know where you come from! Maybe just get a better teacher?

I've touched on all the classes that currently exist at Hogwarts (except Astronomy, which, c'mon, total elective), but there are plenty of other subjects besides English and Math that should probably be offered at Hogwarts.

How about a class called Wandless Magic? A two-year requirement that could cover such miscellaneous subjects as Occlumency, Apparating, Magical Objects, etc.

How about a class called Wizardry Around the World? A one-year requirement where students learn about how other sects of witches and wizards in far-off countries operate, compared to Wizarding Britain. For that matter, how about a foreign language requirement? Choose between Spanish, French, Russian, Goblin, and Troll.

How about, I dunno, other similar classes to Muggle schools? Where's the gym requirement? We see students learn how to fly a broom once, and that's it. And yeah, maybe it's possible to improve your health with the help of magic, but wizards or no, it's important for kids to be physically active, isn't it? Riding on a broom, even if it was like a weekly thing, doesn't even seem to fill that need. You sit on your broom, and the broom moves. That can't possibly get your heart rate up! Why doesn't Hogwarts have a track and field program? How about swimming lessons? Surely the wizarding world has sports and games you can play on foot?

(Totally off-topic, but only 28 students out of hundreds are allowed to play the only sport that Hogwarts offers? And those 28 students only play three games a year? Games which could amount to minutes of playing time, depending on the skill level of your Seeker? I want to see more games of Quidditch played. Gryffindor should have to face off against the other three teams four times each per year, with occasional matches against other schools. And the other students should be able to form intramural Quidditch teams for fun weekend tournaments. AND those teams could mix and mingle between houses. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Christ there's so much about Quidditch that's stupid.)

How about Home Ec classes? Baking with magic seems like it could be interesting. And they could be taught by the house elves! How about music classes? There are numerous examples of musicianship in the books (Celestina Warbeck, the Weird Sisters, the choir of musical saws at the Deathday Party), but nothing to indicate that playing a musical instrument is taught. (There's a choir in the movies, sure, but fuck the movies, they are not canon.) What about art classes? Theater? Any fine arts whatsoever?!

Look, clearly J.K. Rowling created this school and its specific curriculum because it all sounds really cool and fanciful, and a lot of the subjects are vehicles to advance the plot. There's nothing wrong with either of those reasons. Obviously, it's my own fault for thinking about this shit waaaaay too much.

Still, though, if you think about it logically for even a minute, you realize that the young witches and wizards at Hogwarts are being terribly underserved in their educations.

EXAMPLES OF COURSE SCHEDULES:

FIRST YEAR STUDENT

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THIRD YEAR STUDENT

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FIFTH YEAR STUDENT

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SEVENTH YEAR STUDENT

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Read more Harry Potter shit here and here and here.

The Albums That Matter: Arm's Way

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Arm's Way

Islands

2008

Let's start with the whole revisionism thing on Pitchfork.com.

I've wavered in my support of the web's "premiere" indie rock website (these days it kind of sucks, but I enjoyed it while growing up), but one thing I definitely can't support is the fact that they delete embarrassing reviews and articles from their past. Pieces, in other words, that got it all completely wrong, and time has shown a light on how wrong they were. For example, you can't find the original review for The Boy with the Arab Strap on the website proper, because it's fucking embarrassing for them; they wrote a course-correcting, 8.5-scored review this year. Wikipedia has a nice round-up of the retrospective narrative adjusters in the site's history.

In my surface-level research for Arm's Way, I came across a 2008 interview with Nick Thorburn, the frontman for Islands, with LA Weekly. In it, they allude to a Pitchfork interview with Thorburn that had just been published. The Pitchfork interview is described by interviewer and interviewee as "harsh," "off-base," and "vindictive." Thorburn describes Pitchfork as a "hegemonic, monolithic take on music criticism" by guys from "Harvard business school."

The thing is, I can't find that Pitchfork interview. They must have deleted it. Typical, right? Something stinks.

...And yet, at the same time, maybe I kind of empathize a little bit. Not the deleting past material part—I think our past opinions should be preserved in writing even if we now think those opinions are wrong. But I empathize with that feeling of embarrassment, that you were on the wrong side of history. Tastes change, of course. We all know that. You can grow to like something that you used to hate. And that's okay!

Clearly, some jamook at Pitchfork didn't like Islands' new album and took it out on Thorburn in an interview. By the sounds of it, the dude was unprofessional in his questioning, so much so that other interviewers were asking Thorburn about it.

Here's the rub: I don't really like Arm's Way either. Or, at the very least, it never stuck with me. Not like Return to the Sea, Islands' first album, a ramshackle collection of fun, almost tropical-tinged pop tunes. Arm's Way is in every way harsher, darker, longer, less party and more funeral. I never thought this sound suited Islands.

We're here, though, going through all my albums. We've arrived at Arm's Way, and I'm going to give it a fair shot. I'm going to listen closely, and see if I can't find some things to like. Who knows, maybe I was wrong the whole time. If I was, then I will NOT be like Pitchfork, and delete the paragraphs above. Tastes can change, there's nothing wrong with it. I hope it does here. Let's find out.

[intermission for 68 minutes and six seconds]

Okay, so it wasn't as mediocre as I remembered. In fact, some of it was quite good! So let's start with the good.

There are exactly two songs that fit the description of "great fucking song." The first of those winners is the opening song, "The Arm," an upbeat tune about surviving a car crash. There are all kinds of uplifting string flourishes, which combined with the guitar hook, makes this song sound really EPIC. Which is crazy, because the subject matter is so dark and disturbing (does the girl die at the end?!).

The other amazing song is "Jaime vous voir quitter," which I have to assume is about Thorburn being upset that his former Islands bandmate Jamie Thompson (stage name "Jaime Tambeur") left the band ("Can I blame you?" Thorburn asks himself). It's an absolutely brutal song, both in the lyrics ("Shame on you!" he tells his friend), and in the relentless energy with which the band tosses the barbs. After Jaime metaphorically dies in another car crash, the band swings into a BONKERS calypso melody to end out the final two minutes. What a wild ride.

There are two through lines in this album, both of which you can gather from my descriptions of the songs that do it well. First is that every song is a violent, desperate, gruesome look at humanity, featuring multiple car crashes, drownings, buckets of blood and wounds and death, death, death. It's an obsession. When it's done well, it can be thrilling. When it's not done well (sadly a majority of the songs here), it can become repetitive and depressing and not all that fun.

The second through line is that that every song just can't fucking sit still. Islands never settle on an idea and stick with it. Every 30 seconds the band is racing off to do something new. It can be okay for a little bit, but it just gets fucking exhausting after a while, you know what I mean? Like, take "In the Rushes," for example. It keeps building up momentum, but then every time it reaches a point where you think the song is going to take off, everything stops for some more guitar strumming and shaky vocals ("In the Rushes" only truly explodes when they start covering the Who mid-song). This is the same kind of shit that frustrates me about Of Montreal. Just have a song be a song sometimes, ya know? Why does it have to be a series of disjointed 45-second vignettes?

This means that there are PLENTY of individual moments on Arm's Way that are great on their own. But Islands never follows through with them. "Abominable Snow" seems cool at first, with twitchy drums and short bursts of classical orchestra drama, but after the second or third distracted interjection about yetis and moon rocks, it just gets tiring. The chorus singing the title of "Kids Don't Know Shit" is appropriately snotty and snarled, but parts of the verses are a snooze, and it instantly cancels that energy that the hook brought to the table.

By the last three songs, I started to lose steam, and I started to remember why I haven't listened to this album in a while. "To a Bond," "I Feel Evil Creeping In," and "Vertigo (If It's a Crime)" comprise the last 25 minutes of Arm's Way, and honestly, I feel like they could be excised completely and the album would not only not suffer, but probably get a lot better because of the deletion. I almost want to say that "Vertigo"'s extended jam that makes up the second half of its eleven-minute runtime might even justify its existence—honestly, that shit's kind of tight—but then you start to question why the fuck it's even there in the first place. You have to imagine that the band knows you are exhausted by that point, and is just fucking with you for a few minutes longer.

I dunno. It's hard to come down hard on an album that has this many memorable moments. But those moments never cohere into a singular work of art. Arm's Way is terribly disjointed. That's probably by design. Sometimes, bands who create a record of simplistic pop tunes (like on Return to Sea) and then tour for a year supporting those songs, sometimes they go into the studio and all they want to do is do the exact opposite of that shit, because they are sick of it. I guess that's my ultimate hypothesis about Arm's Way. Who knows, man.

I hope you check this album out for yourself when you get a chance, though. There's plenty to enjoy. And hey, maybe it'll work better for you than it did me. I'll probably still keep it around. Tastes change, right? I don't want to be a Pitchfork and forget about Arm's Way. Maybe the Arm will reach for me and take my breath away sometime in the future. For now, I'll say:

Decent album.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Life in Jail"

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Stray Observations:

• If I ever find that Pitchfork interview on the web, I will edit this bullet point. 
• I usually take quick notes on each song the first time I go through the album, just kind of quick reactions and observations in real time. I can use these later to cobble together some discussion about individual songs in the main article. I figure maybe we try something new today, and I'll just post the notes wholesale in the comments of this article. Read away if you wanna see how the sausage is made.
• If you are questioning whether the "death" shtick really does get old on this album, please note that two consecutive songs ("We Swim" and "To a Bond") feature a drowning. It's like, c'mon dude.
• Nick Thorburn is/was in two other bands that I rather enjoy. Before Islands, he was the frontman in the Unicorns. Concurrently with Islands, he is one half of the "Doom Wop" band called Mister Heavenly. All three bands are hit or miss. Islands probably has the biggest ratio of misses to hits, if I'm being honest here. Again, still a lot to like though.
• ALBUM COVER: It appears to be two little red-headed cherubs holding hands, while other, bigger hands make a praying gesture above them. All of this is outlined in what either could be a pink flower pattern, or someone's flesh ripped open. Judging by the fact that every single fucking song has someone dying or dead, I'm going to assume that there is something more sinister going on in that album cover than just flowery displays.
• Wikipedia still states that "the full album is streaming on the band's MySpace page," even though, like, there's no fucking way that's still a thing, right?! I tried to click the link, and nothing happened. I couldn't even see who was on Islands' TOP EIGHT.

NEXT TIME: Art Angels by Grimes

The Albums That Matter: Armchair Apocrypha

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Armchair Apocrypha

Andrew Bird

2007

Leave it to our favorite lyrics-second artist to title his album with a word I had to look up in the dictionary. "Apocrypha" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "writings or statements of dubious authenticity." When something is defined as "armchair," it typically signifies that it is amateurish in nature, e.g. "armchair psychology." So taken together, "Armchair Apocrypha" sounds like Andrew Bird being typically self-deprecating.

It's another way of calling himself out for the lack of meaning behind the words he's singing, an issue we fucking exhausted last time. But is it actually true on this album? Do the words mean nothing? Is this album so devoid of meaning that I what bitterly wrote about it in 2008 is accurate? Probably not—I was a stupid fuck when I was nineteen years old. But let's find out!

First, though, let's establish once more how neat and fun Andrew Bird's music is. He loops his violin, he whistles, and creates these cool little melodies out of thin air. It's all good. Who needs lyrics, honestly? (And indeed, there are two instrumentals on here, so occasionally, he really doesn't need lyrics.)

But yeah, I mean, there's not much here as far as "I know what Bird is trying to say in this song." I can point to the opener, "Fiery Crash," which is about a fear of flying, and possibly "Dark Matter," a morbid epic that seems to be about the futility of trying to avoid death. Other than that, we have a bunch of great songs that sound amazing but don't warrant a much in the way of lyric annotations.

The big question we need to ask ourselves at this point is: DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER? I.e., the question I seem to be obsessing over (for some fucking reason), whether lyrics actually have meaning... does that matter? At all? Something tells me it's fucking stupid of me to be talking about this ad nauseam, because lyrics can serve different purposes other than, like, imparting a message or telling a story.

Like in the first verse of "Heretics," when each of the five lines ends with "about it" which creates a rhythm in the way the words tumble about and then end the same. There's also a rhythm in the chorus, which goes on for many lines, but basically repeats the same three phrases ("thank god" and "it's fatal" and "not shy") but mixes up their order, keeping the listener off-balance.

Another example is "Scythian Empire," whose subject matter by Bird's own admission was chosen just because it sounded nice against the melody. In it, we have jammed together such phrases as "Halliburton attache cases," "Scotch Guard Mackintoshes shall be carbonized," and "thwarted by the Thracians." None of it makes sense, but man, hearing these SAT words in succession is kind of fucking thrilling in its own way.

The genius annotation for "Armchairs" describes the song as "a good example of the complexity of Bird’s lyrics." The tells me that maybe I'm being too harsh, and that there is value in all of Bird's lyrics, regardless of whether you can tell what the fuck he's talking about. Maybe words in certain combinations can make you feel emotions that you can't express. Maybe Bird's lyrics happen to be filled with those combinations of words, and this is where he finds successful on a deeper level than "this is fun."

My conclusion is that Bird is a poet, and I am not a student of poetry. I think that Bird can (and did) reach a higher level with lyrics that hit harder because they mean something, not just when they "sound good." I don't think Armchair Apocrypha really ever reaches the heights that Andrew Bird is capable of.

Still, all that said, I'm glad this album is in my life, and I'm especially glad that Andrew Bird exists and makes such pleasant music and continues to do so. 2009 Joe was an ignorant asshole. Please ignore what he wrote, and listen to this album.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Plasticities"

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Stray Observations

• The weakest non-instrumental song on the album is probably "Spare-ohs," but that too has some nice wordplay. It took me until this current listen to realize that the title was a homonym of "sparrows," which are also sung about in the song.
• I may have given a short shrift to the musical elements of this album, a lot of which are a blast. Check out those slinking, persistent drums on "Simple X"!
• ALBUM COVER: I've always assumed that the front cover's brownish/yellowish shape, laid stark against a black background, was that of a bird, but the backside of the bird. The bird is looking away so you can't see its face. I couldn't find any evidence to the contrary, so let's assume I'm right. I also had a sudden thought... does every Andrew Bird album cover have a picture of a bird?! Because Are You Serious did too! Alas, a quick Wikipedia search showed me that they are the only two with birds, believe it or not.
• Also something I've never considered: Is "Andrew Bird" his real name?! Wiki seems to indicate yes.
• I fell in love with Andrew Bird's music the past two weeks, so I'll probably be catching up on a few more of his albums, not that The Albums That Matter has covered all three that I currently own. But don't worry, for alphabetical reasons, you won't have to read about Bird yet again any time soon.

NEXT TIME: Arm's Way by Islands

Best Pizza of All Time (One Final Word About Pizza from PoYB)

I've been on the keto diet for seven weeks now. It's a fad diet for sure (apparently, Vinny from Jersey Shore is doing it, as well as possibly one of the interchangeable Kardashians), but I'm always up for easy ways to beat down my beer belly, and this fad diet seems to be working. I've lost 25 pounds, give or take, and I'm as light as I've been since probably 2012 (when I went on a crazy exercise regimen while living in Las Vegas).

It's a low-carb diet. That's it. Very little carbs, and the pounds melt off. I don't cheat that much either. For example, I've had three beers in the past seven weeks (vodka, on the other hand, has zero carbs, so take that as you will). I've eaten burgers without a roll. I discovered pork rinds. All kinds of weird shit.

All that to say that, right now, on a Monday morning, stomach grumbling, I would fucking kill for some carbs. I daydream about gooey cheesesteaks. I'd bathe in crab fries if I could. I could fucking sit here at my desk and house a whole fucking pizza if I let myself.

So to continue the self-sabotage, here are the best tasting pizzas in the history of modern America. Let me write about them if I can't eat them, okay? (I've talked about pizza before, of course, but this time it's based on taste alone, instead of, say, pathetically limp nostalgia or drunk exercises in gluttony.)

Top Five Pizzas of All Time

5. Rising Sun Pizza's plain

Shut up Pam, this is far above your typical neighborhood pizza parlor pizza. The cheese is burnt in all the right spots. The sauce is sweet. The crust is buttery and crispy. I've been eating it my whole life and I don't plan on stopping.

4. Liberty Pizza's Chicken Bacon Ranch

After the pizza is slid out of the over, the ranch dressing is drawn on the pizza in a precise swirl right on top. It's as hypnotizing as it is tasty. Nothing says the weekend like a CBR and some PBRs.

3. Pizza Gutt @ WinWin, plain

The newest best pizza is at once ridiculous (you can order via Instagram) and ridiculously worth the hype. I didn't know what "Detroit-style pizza" was before Pizza Gutt, but I took one bite into its thick greasy crust and now I'm looking at real estate listings in downtown Detroit.

2. Vince's plain

Pretty simple. It's thin, it's large, the sauce is on top of the cheese. My buddy Steve used to work there, and when he would walk into McNally's with a leftover pie, well, those nights were complete.

1. Tacconelli's white with spinach and crushed tomatoes

It's a pain in the ass to get, because Tacconelli's is "old school Philly" in all the worst ways. But if you order your dough and wait for an hour and pay way too much, you get the best pizza on earth. So garlicky, so salty, so fresh, so fucking delicious.

Honorable Mentions: Pizza Hut deep dish from a '90s deep-dish cast-iron pan (still crave it despite inducing terrible constipation), Wm. Mulherin's Spicy Jawn (it's bougie but it's fucking on point), Sam's in Wildwood (classic boardwalk fare)

Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do, Part II: The Poem

Welcome to "Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do," a new series here on PoYB. Please first read this blog post I wrote in 2009. There, I listed 22 subjects that I would NEVER write about on this website. Here in 2018, I say: don't fucking tell me what I can't do. For a total of twenty-two posts, I will be blogging about these subjects, in striking defiance of my 20-year-old naiveté.

TODAY'S "FORBIDDEN" SUBJECT: "A poem about how people in my theater group make me sick"

WHY IT WAS FORBIDDEN: It was a joke, because there really was a kid in my theater group who wrote a poem about how his fellow thespians made him sick. It was weird and funny and sad and baffling. The point was that I would never do that, which was the joke, I guess? I dunno, man.

HOW I WILL WRITE ABOUT IT: By posting the poem in question here, and reflecting upon the frenemy who wrote it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Were that my heart was not heavy,
Were that my bile did not rise,
To look upon you.

Shame has no meaning to you,
Nor pride, nor honor, nor glory;
You rest your face calmly in the muck,
And think nothing of it.

Oh! How great You could be,
How great you were, how great you could be yet,
If not for your poison'd will,
Your will that was made weak by Yourself.

Your beginning afar,
Your end is soon,
And You shall know me no more.

Any theater group, no matter the college, is going to be a bizarre melting pot of different types of people. A desire to participate on or behind the stage is a broad enough interest that really anyone can join up and find their place. It's not like the basketball program, because, like, you have to be good at basketball to be part of that team. Any ol' fucker can join theater, especially if you're at a school like La Salle, which was small and generally untalented in any one thing. You wanna be on stage, but you don't have any acting experience? Fuck it, it's La Salle, let's do this shit.

So the point is that there's a lot of weird fucking people in theater (I'll go ahead and include myself in that), and people butt heads, and people fight, and people act like the outrageous teenagers that they are.

We had one kid that was truly an enigma to me personally. A lot of people gave him shit, myself included, because he did a lot of shitty things to people. Trite shit, but still hurtful. Like one time he, for some fucking reason, posted a long screed by the box office, all about my one friend and how she was "unqualified" for an executive board position (yes, our theater program had an "executive board"). It's one thing to have an opinion (my opinion: she was fucking great at the job), but it's another to go out of your way to say mean shit about somebody, ya know?

People are by and large not black-and-white. They are not wholly one thing or another. People have layers. People have great qualities and shitty qualities. It's all quite complicated.

Because, you see, I was lucky enough to see the good sides of this kid as well. We were part of a play in 2010, in which at least half the play, maybe more, was entirely me and him having a dialogue on stage. Rehearsals sometimes were just him and me, honing the craft. And dude, not gonna lie, we fucking pulled that shit off. It was a joint effort, and I sincerely enjoyed working with him.

But during other rehearsals with the whole cast, he would act differently. I dunno. Like there was one time when I guess a bunch of us had been drinking heavily the night before, and maybe it showed at the beginning of rehearsal. This kid, though, says some really snarky bullshit to one of my great friends who was also in the cast. It was totally uncalled for. It was a really uncomfortable day.

I guess here's where the infamous poem comes in. In the Fall of 2009, the Masque was putting on the show Guys and Dolls. Unfortunately, due to family constraints, I wasn't able to be part of the cast, but all my friends were in it, and so I partied with those motherfuckers as much as they rehearsed. The big incident, if you want to call it that, was during the "Fun Run."

A "fun run" takes place in between weekends of the actual show, just a little refresher. No one takes it seriously. The drinkers of the theater program really didn't take it seriously. A fun run in Fall 2008 ended in multiple people throwing up in the theater and a stern talking-to from the seniors; a fun run in Spring 2010 was so blackout I was almost banned from the theater program completely.

I wasn't technically on stage during the Fun Run of Autumn 2009, but I still pregamed the fuck out of it with the cast and went to the theater with them to witness the carnage from the seats. Our star of this blog post was part of the cast, and he was there too, and he was, I guess to say the least, NOT HAPPY. There was no direct confrontation that night, but the next morning, on Facebook, he posted the above poem, and it was pretty fucking clear to all involved whom he was referring to.

The record should be clear that there was no animosity in our drinking that night, nor was there ever, really, when the theater kids drank. It's not like we got drunk and then said terrible things to the kid or anyone else. We were just drunk and acting foolish. Kid stuff. DEFINITELY nothing that would warrant being called "weak" or full of "shame" or having faces "in the muck" or cause "bile to rise." It was a classic, pompous, kind of shitty behind-the-back attack that was completely unwarranted. People didn't take kindly to it.

And I wouldn't even classify the reaction to the poem as extreme or anything of that sort. No one shunned the kid, he wasn't booted out of the theater program, his ass wasn't kicked, nothing like that. The general reaction from everyone was kind of like: "Dude, what the fuck, that is so weird."

So yeah, the kid was an enigma to me. I saw the good in him, and he was clearly doing his best to show his worst to a lot of other people. Either that, or didn't have the ability to make a judgment call as to whether his actions were shitty or not. Some people just don't have a filter.

Making the whole thing even more mysterious, a few months after I graduated, I saw the musical he was in, along with all the other kids younger than me. After the show, me and Pam stuck around a bit, and he came up to me and... apologized. Said something like: "Dude, I know I was shitty to you in the past, and I'm sorry."

Which was kind of weird, because I was the least of all people he needed to apologize to. It hurt when he was shitty to my friends, and I probably cursed his name a few times behind his back because of that and because of his teetotaling. But he never really did anything to me directly that would require an apology. I almost wished he would have instead apologized to some of my other friends more deserving of an apology in the first place, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. It just added another layer to him.

I'm not sure where he is these days. Not in Philly, as far as I know. He's a smart dude, poor social skills notwithstanding, so I'm sure he moved to a different city and is getting his doctorate in something or other. I hope he is doing well. I hope he found a way to connect to people in healthier ways. I hope he hasn't written any Ye Olde-style poems talking shit on people.

I can't say I regret making a joke about the whole situation when I wrote that blog post all those years ago. Posting that poem was the wrong thing to do on his part, and I take out my discomfort in people by making jokes. And on top of that, it gave me the opportunity a decade later to reflect on that whole strange dynamic. College is a weird fucking time. Trust me, I know. I was in the theater program.

Fishtown Bars, a PoYB Top Five List (or Two)

Top Five Bars in Fishtown

Because it's just a Route 15 bus ride away.

5. Saint Lazarus (during the day)

Can't really beat $1 PBR pounders in a dark and dank but friendly dive bar under the El. I feel cooler than I actually am when I slam a few brews at The Saint.

4. Loco Pez

The Mexican food is unimpeachable, the beers are reasonable, and... that's really all you need. It's relaxing at Loco Pez, ya know? Like I feel at home when I'm there.

3. El Bar

Probably the only bar in Fishtown more "divey" than Saint Lazarus, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Like, I've had nights where I'm chilling in their (awesome) backyard area, and the bouncers ask me to please pee in the drain behind a curtain right next to the bar. As long as those same bouncers chill with their constant shushing (as if we're being too loud?!), then I'll keep coming back.

2. Interstate Drafthouse

If you're looking to skip the fancy restaurants and go to a bar for dinner (or lunch, or brunch, or late-night snack), then Interstate Drafthouse is the place to be. I have never had a bad meal. Like Loco Pez, it strikes the perfect balance between that "neighborhood feel" and, like, not being a shithole.

1. Fishtown Tavern

Fishtown's eponymous bar is also its best. There are no frills. It's a shot-and-a-beer type of joint that never feels gross and you never feel unwelcome. When I want to meet people in Fishtown, the first choice is always Fishtown Tavern.

Honorable Mentions: Les and Doreen's (karaoke at its finest), Fette Sau (bangin' BBQ), Murph's (when Pam's not getting kicked out), Kosta's (when it's not too crowded)

Top Five Worst Bars in Fishtown

Because Fishtown is trendy now.

5. Saint Lazarus (at night)

As much as I love The Saint during the day, at night it's just waaaay too much. Cramped, sweaty, rude, loud. Fuck this place.

4. Johnny Brenda's

The bar that "started it all" when it comes to Fishtown's gentrification, so, thanks for that I guess? The problem with Johnny Brenda's is that it's a stuck-up snobby beer bar trying to masquerade as a "dive bar." In trying to split the difference, it fails at everything. The food is consistently disappointing, and the worst concert I've ever seen in my life was on the second floor (didn't help that the bartender stole $20 from Pam and was a huge cunt about it). Nah, leave this place to the tourists who want to believe they are getting the "edgy Philadelphia" experience.

3. Evil Genius

There's a type of person who constantly quotes Will Ferrell lines in an extremely lame attempt to come off as funny. Evil Genius is this type of person in bar form. Do you love Back to the Future memes and expensive, underwhelming beers? Do I have a bar for you!

2. Barcade

"I may have been in a sorority, but guys, I am, like, sooo nerdy too. Let's go to Barcade! And spend $10 on 8 oz. of beer! And try to play a broken Centipede game machine while rubbing up against every fucking meathead I've ever known! LOL."

1. Garage North

Old City is dead. Everyone moved to Frankford and Girard. And they all go to Garage North... that is, after they wait in line for 45 minutes to get in?! Everyone I've ever hated loves Garage North.

Honorable Mentions: Mad Rex (never been, but I have to assume it fucking suuucks), Frankford Hall (I've had too many great times at this fucking awful bar for it to have made the list)

Return to the Pinehive

Esteemed music critic Steven Hyden is dead wrong in his assessment that nothing has been clarified.

First, read this long report from Pitchfork, published today. It's about Pinegrove's rise and fall in the face of sex abuse allegations. The timeline is pretty fucking clear. I will spell it out below for Hyden and anyone else who still feels that they require clarification.

1. Pinegrove was a kick-ass indie rock band.
2. Evan Stephens Hall, the Pinegrove frontman, is a dorky indie rock bookworm who gets in way over his head when it comes to women.
3. Hall hooks up with a girl who he met during a concert. They sleep together. The girl had a boyfriend.
4. The girl, who wishes to remain anonymous, feels uncomfortable about the situation, because she feels that Hall pressured her into having sex. The sex itself was consensual, per the anonymous victim, but the pressure she felt to ultimately cheat on her boyfriend was unwarranted pressure, and for that she felt that Hall had sexually coerced her.
5. (Pause here to say that women should be feel safe to come forward when a guy makes them feel uncomfortable. If this girl really did feel uncomfortable, then she has EVERY RIGHT TO SAY SOMETHING, and I'm glad that she spoke her truth. Anyone who says differently is a fucking neanderthal who needs to get his head out of his ass.)
6. Girl talks with Sheridan Allen, founder of "Punk Talks," an organization whose alleged mission is "to connect touring musicians and music industry workers with free therapy."
7. Allen takes this information, and against the wishes of the anonymous victim, contacts the band, their label, and others, informing them of these allegations, stating that "it has not been an easy time working directly to take down the biggest band in indie right now," and insinuating that there are other victims (there aren't, as far as we know).
8. Allen purported to be a licensed therapist and allegedly indicated confidentiality when she spoke to Hall and the victim, but she is not a licensed therapist, and she abused her stature to, again, "try to take down" Pinegrove.
9. Again, nothing Allen did or didn't do changes the fact that Hall did something to this girl that made her feel uncomfortable. Still, what could have been a private matter between Hall and the victim was aired publicly, which wasn't right either.
10. In late November 2017, Hall posted a confusing and lengthy apology / defense / ??? on Facebook, stating that he has been accused of sexual coercion, that he will be entering therapy, and that their tour (for which I had tickets!) would be canceled.
11. Here's where Pitchfork does indeed clarify some stuff, regardless of what people want to believe. In the article, Hall makes it very clear that he was taken aback by the allegations, but, crucially, he does not deny them.
12. He spent the last ten months getting therapy, reflecting, and, again, CRUCIALLY—working with the victim (through a mediator) to rectify the situation and make things right.
13. Pinegrove, as a band, adhered the victim's wishes to take a year off and stay out of the limelight. It is only with the victim's blessing that they are releasing an album on Friday and possibly setting up some tour dates.

Honestly, the only "puzzle piece" that could possibly be said to be missing is the details about what actually happened between Hall and the victim. But that's none of our business! What this ultimately comes down to is how the victim feels about the situation, and if she believes that Hall has done enough to make amends, then we, the listeners, are allowed to believe the same as well.

This bears little resemblance to the recent Louis C.K. situation. Yes, in both cases, a man abused his power to put women in an uncomfortable situation. Both men disappeared for a while. Here's where the paths diverge. Evan Stephens Hall clearly (if this article and the band's testimony is to be believed) has done his very best to make amends. Therapy was part of it, sure. But there was willing and a following through of taking directives from the VICTIM of the abuse. The VICTIM played a key role in the rehabilitation. It is only after SHE said that he has done enough was Hall able to move forward. Hall respected HER opinions on the matter.

When Louis C.K. appeared back on stage at some fucking comedy club, there were a lot of hot takes, but I didn't see SHIT about what his victims thought or felt or wanted. If C.K. made amends to them behind the scenes, and they made that clear, and were okay with it, then maaaaybe C.K. can start on that road to public forgiveness. But all he fucking did was retreat to his fucking mansion and wait it out. Didn't do shit to make amends. Fuck him.

I stand by an assertion that I've made over and over since all this Pinegrove controversy came to light, and, more broadly, since women started coming forward in droves to say Me Too. ***If there is no evidence to the contrary, then the victim must be believed, and the price must be paid.***

The Pinegrove shit was especially upsetting to me because I feel so strongly about the music, music that is so uplifting and positive that I found it extremely difficult to comprehend that Evan Stephens Hall could be a sexual abuser. I didn't listen to Pinegrove for a while, grappling with how to put aside music that I love so fucking dearly.

So I'm thankful for the clarification today from Jenn Pelly at Pitchfork. There was some shitty behavior by Hall, and he was aghast at his own actions, and he took a break for a while, and he worked with the victim to make amends. MRA scumbags ask the hypothetical question all the time: "What, are these men supposed to just disappear forever?! What do you want them to do!?" The answer, it seems, is following Evan Stephens Hall's example. The victim's rights and opinions and needs are FUCKING PARAMOUNT. That's it. That's the answer.

When I listen to Pinegrove these days, I still feel my heart soar, but it's tinged slightly with feelings of melancholy, knowing that we live in a world that men, including myself, including a bookish soft-spoken indie rock cult hero, men who can't fathom that what they are doing sometimes makes women uncomfortable. That men have the responsibility to self-reflect and acknowledge when they fuck up, and that many, many men refuse to take on that responsibility.

In some ways, all this fucking horrible shit almost deepens Pinegrove's music. Their music is already filled with regret and longing and nostalgia and, to put it childishly, fucking EMO FEELINGS.

I wonder how I'll feel when I listen to the band's new album, Skylight, on Friday (released with the victim's permission, all proceeds to charities). Indeed, the Pitchfork article highlights how eerily the songs, written before the allegations came to light, could nevertheless be taken as a response to the allegations and Hall's reckoning.

I am sickened and dismayed that Evan Stephens Hall made a girl feel like shit, and I am proud that he was at least a decent enough human to come to terms with what he did, and to try his best to make things right, and I'm happy that he seems to be there, finally.

So nah, I don't see what the confusion is here. Pinegrove is back. At the end of the day, I'm happy and relieved, because I am a Pinenut (even though I will probably never get that tattoo), and I fucking love this band, and I can't wait to hear more. But I'm also happy that Evan Stephens Hall, who by his own admission sexually coerced a woman, ultimately made things right.

The Albums That Matter: Are You Serious

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Are You Serious

Andrew Bird

2016

Back in the late '00s, when I was first getting into Andrew Bird, I was bamboozled by Andrew Bird himself into not taking him seriously. You saw it when I cheated my way through our discussion of his 2005 effort Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs. There, I just copied and pasted a fool's outlook on Bird discography that I had written in 2009, which basically dismissed everything he had ever done before or after Production of Eggs. They were big words for someone who only listened to one other fucking Bird album (see you next time for a real apology for this when we get to Armchair Apocrypha).

But here's where, I think, Andrew Bird's own quotes made young Joe not really delve into his music as much as I should have. Multiple times in old interviews, Bird describes how he doesn't really think to much of his lyrics, and they basically don't mean anything.

Here's a 2009 interview with NPR: "Bird's lyrics often feature archaic language... which he chooses mainly for their sound... When selecting words for lyrics... he's more interested in feel than in exact, specific definitions."

And a 2008 NYT article written by Bird himself: "What is becoming more challenging of late is dealing with so many fully formed melodies that are unwilling to change their shape for any word. So writing lyrics becomes like running multiple code-breaking programs in your head until just the right word with just the right number of syllables, tone of vowel and finally some semblance of meaning all snap into place."

And Bird in a 2009 AVClub interview: "The melodies come out so strong that I'm like, 'Oh, crap.' It's really better if they could both be kind of able to compromise, but the melodies, even more recently, they come out very fully cast and formed. So you've got one thing that's fixed and another thing that sort of has to accommodate the melody."

Okay, okay, you get the point. I'm not even saying that I'm a "lyrics-first" type of music listener. But still, the way that Bird had constantly downplayed his lyrics, insisting that they weren't as important as the melody, the self-deprecation was kind of a turn-off.

All that to say that Andrew Bird finally put out an album that can have its cake and eat it too with the release of 2016's Are You Serious.

My notes for this post say "Are You Serious is Bird getting serious," which is groan-worthy for sure, but still, I don't have a better way of putting it. Go through the lyrics on this album, and a lot of it reads coherently, which is a huge step for Bird. It's actually kind of wild how well everything congeals here. For a guy who has seemingly spent his whole career saying that he is a musician first, whistler second, and lyricist third, it fucking thrilling to see him grow this poetic talent that, let's be honest, we all knew was strong in the first place.

Gone are the mad libs, and in their place are such songs as "Chemical Switches," a ditty using actual chemicals as a stand-in for romantic chemistry; such songs as "Roma Fade," in which the singer loves a women but is also very much aware that he's probably being creepy too; songs such as "Left-Handed Kisses," written as a duet, a self-aware love song questioning the validity of love songs; songs such as the title track, which most likely tells the tale of how Bird met his wife (and which features the line "This is all non-fiction," which is the skeleton key to the whole album, really).

The melodies, obviously, are still here. They've always been here with Andrew Bird. As always, his tunes are simple and fun and joyful. I've never complained that Andrew Bird wasn't catchy. This shit's great! Take the lead single "Capsized," with its alternating bombastic punches vs. slithering coolness, or "The New Saint Jude," which bops along with a sort of top-button-buttoned, Vampire Weekend-esque swagger.

It's just, with Are You Serious, there's something more. It's a whole product, not just a collection of violin hooks. Take the penultimate track, possibly the best thing Bird has ever done, "Valleys of the Young." It features all the hallmarks of Bird's music, like the lurching, eccentric melody, the soaring ghostly whistling, etc. But it also hits you hard with the lyrics, especially if you're like me and are still adjusting to life with a child. It speaks to the rarely-written-about-in-song feelings of fear and apprehension at the idea of having a tiny person who is solely your responsibility. The song asks these questions as the music just fucking soars around you.

It's a great fucking song, and emblematic of heights Andrew Bird can hit when everything is clicking. Are You Serious is the album where he starts hitting those heights way above his average.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Capsized"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• I know last time I said I was going to write about both this album and Armchair Apocrypha at the same time, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It took me over two months to write about one album, let alone two.
• Andrew Bird dresses really well. I learned in one of those interviews that that is because his wife is a fashion designer for a really well-known company that I've certainly never heard of.
• ALBUM COVER: No evidence online as to what this album cover means, so let us, as we often do here, speculate. The bird, obviously, is a stand-in for Bird. The handshake, I would surmise, is the handshake between melody and lyrics that the bird/Bird finally brings to fruition.
• Andrew Bird charmingly notated his own lyrics for this album on Genius. It works here, because (as if to beat you over the head with this point) his lyrics actually mean something.
• This is the third album in a row where there should be a question mark in the title, but the punctuation mark is conspicuously absent. I guess artists don't want the listeners to think anything but certainty about an album.

NEXT TIME: Armchair Apocrypha by... sigh... Andrew Bird (not sure how I'm going to survive when we have to write about Led Zeppelin four times in a row)

I Don't Eat Jesus

I was at a wedding this past weekend. I usually say "Weddings are always fun," and that maxim held true this weekend for sure. But when I say that, I'm referring to the wedding reception; the wedding ceremony is typically hit or miss. When two people get married in a Catholic church, the ceremony is typically a miss.

I've documented my struggles with Catholicism before, but I took a big step on Friday, at the mass. It was the first time since second grade that I was at Mass and purposefully did not receive Holy Communion. I didn't kneel. I didn't do the sign of the cross or respond "Amen" or say the Lord's Prayer, and so on. I (respectfully) did not participate in the ceremony.

I guess that sounds stupid and ignorant to both sides of the argument, but still, I was proud of myself. It's been years since I've believed the words I was saying, believed that the cracker is actually flesh. But sometimes routines and rituals are soothing, and so I kept doing it during those handful of Masses I attended each year.

And so I get the appeal of religious ceremony and religious belief. It can be a balm when you are troubled. Feeling low? Eat some Jesus, you'll feel better! God is watching over you! If you can bring yourself to believe in magic, you can then believe that there's someone out there who wants to help you, as long as you pray to him.

I think the story of Jesus Christ as presented in the Gospels is a great example of how to live one's life. Love your neighbor as yourself—it's literally the best way to live your life, and it was Jesus' central message to his followers. I try (and very often fail) to live this way, to love my neighbor unconditionally. In this way, I do try to follow Jesus' example, even though, ya know, I'm not doing it because Jesus lived that way.

The problem, though, with the Church is that the institution very often does NOT follow that central tenet. Because, you see, the Catholic Church is the largest secret pedophile ring in history. Not all priests molest children, but many do. I think of priests the same way I do of cops. If you are a police officer who doesn't report bad police officers, then you yourself are a bad police officer. Likewise, if you are a priest who is doing nothing about other priests molesting children, then you are a bad priest.

So yeah, doing the sign of the cross is a habit and could be soothing sometimes to just do it, but why should I watch a bad priest do the sign of the cross, and then follow his lead? Why would anyone? It's easy to say "but I had nothing to do with the child molestations" but if you're still willfully participating in Catholicism in America, you're saying it's okay that children were molested.

It's not a struggle to think this way. It shouldn't be a struggle for anyone to denounce child abuse. The struggle comes in, I guess, when it comes to how to express these opinions in a respectful way. Plenty of people are "Catholics" because they want an excuse for how shitty of a person they are, but plenty of other people are Catholics because they genuinely want to do good in the world. If I truly am trying to spread love in the world, then shitting on people's beliefs just to do it would not achieve that goal.

I don't consider myself an atheist. That whole movement seems weirdly hostile to me. In what other facet of society do we have people so very committed to NOT believing in something? There's no proof that god exists, but there's technically no proof that god doesn't exist. To my scientific mind, a lack of proof is important in determining belief, and if there's no proof of existence, then I don't believe that it exists. But, fuck, who knows, there could be a god. I don't know! Atheism just seems like the other side of the coin. Like Catholics, atheists can't prove what they believe.

But if there is a god up there who chooses his leaders and allows those leaders to rape children, then I want no part of that god. That god, the god that people willfully choose to believe exists, that god can go fuck himself.

Like I said, though, religion is not something I want to be shouting about on corners. There's really no point in trying to prove a believer wrong. It would achieve nothing but sadness. My boss came into work today and told me that her father had a pacemaker put in over the weekend. I told her I'm "praying for her family." I emphatically don't believe that prayer makes a difference one way or the other. I don't believe that prayer would help, but I believe that saying that I would pray would be helpful in that particular conversation. See the difference?

There is also a strong chance that my child(ren) will be attending Catholic school, so I guess these issues won't be going away anytime soon.

A Tale of Mobile Communication in Three Parts

Subtitled: Joe's Hubris in the Age of Expensive Cell Phones

Part I: Death

I debated for the past year whether I should finally give up the ghost and leave my parents' cell phone plan. I don't know how many 30-year-olds are still on their parents' plan. This webpage cites a study that, of all eighteen-and-older humans still on their parents' plan, 32% of those humans were 30 years of age or older. So it's not like I was a freak in hanging on to the cell phone number I've had since I was in high school. Plenty of other people do it.

Still, at the same time... I'm almost thirty. Millennials definitely take their time getting to full-on adulthood, but we get there eventually, and getting my own cell phone bill seemed like the next logical step.

If you can imagine it, up until last summer, I didn't pay for my phone at all. Mom and Dad didn't request money, and it wasn't like I was going to request to pay them, ya know? And just like that time my sister made me look good when she had the misfortune of getting pinched for drugs the same weekend I get cited for public urination, my portion of their family phone bill looked financial chump change next to my sisters', who are on their data-chomping phones all the goddamn time (millennials come in all shapes and sizes).

But that changed last summer. If you'll recall, I did something new every day during the summer of 2017 ("new," i.e. YMMV), and on Day 61, I got a tattoo. If you know my Dad, you'll know that one of his pet peeves is tattoos. This is the same dad who found a baggie of coke after my seventeenth birthday party and didn't have anything significant to say about it, but has threatened me and my siblings multiple times with expulsion from the home if we ever dared to get a tattoo.

But I don't live at home anymore, and I don't particularly plan on doing so for the rest of my life (unless Pam finally snaps and kicks me out), so with only a hint of malice, I drunkenly told my dad about my tattoo, a small unobtrusive mark on a place where he never would've known about it if I hadn't stupidly fucking told him. But so anyway, after I told him, he was the one laughing, not me, because apparently we had made some fucking deal—a deal I have no conscious memory of making—a handshake deal that if I ever got a tattoo, then I would have to start paying my phone bill.

Had I recalled making such a deal, the 15-pt font on my asscheek would've remained a secret from my ancestors until they died. So it goes. It could've been worse. $20/month is nothing to get worried about. Still though, $240/year looks so shitty next to my previous $0/year bill (I know, fucking upper-middle-class problems, right? Shame on me). So my thought process throughout the year was: how can I get rid of this fucking phone bill? (Sidenote: tattoo removal was not an option.)

The solution was with me all along: I had a separate cell phone that was paid for through my job, and as far as I could tell, there was no oversight as to how I used it. Whenever my personal phone acted up, I always had the work phone as a reliable backup. What was stopping me from using the work phone full-time? I guess the only reason I could think of was that I didn't want to go through the trouble of letting everyone know that my phone number had changed. I didn't wanna be that guy.

Still, my year with a phone bill was coming to a close, and I was leaning toward moving to the work phone. As it turns out, my decision was made for me. I was taking a piss at the Cape May Winery and decided to check my personal phone, only to see very bright squiggly lines lit up on the screen. It kind of looked like how those scrambled porn channels used to look when you'd scroll past them on basic cable in the '90s. Suffice it to say, it was unusable, and after trying every trick I could think of (take the battery out and put it back in, let the battery die then fully charge it again, slamming the phone against a ceramic tile floor as hard as I could, etc.), I pronounced it dead, and went the rest of my Wildwood vacation without a phone.

It was a pain in the ass, transferring all my contacts to my work phone, and texting everyone to make sure they knew that I had a new phone number. Not to mention, I also felt like an asshole, texting people to warn them of the number change, because that means I had the presumption that people even want or need to contact me in the first place. I can imagine that many people got texts and were like, "why the fuck would I need Joe K***'s number?"

Nevertheless, I had a new/old phone, and I was back on the grid, and life was fine.

Part II: More Death, Add Insult

I should've mentioned, however, that my work phone was like four years old already, which in Phone Technology Years is, like, a couple decades old at least. So of course, two weeks into my stint with the Samsung Galaxy S4 provided by **** ****, that motherfucker starts conking out on me too. It wasn't a here-one-day-gone-the-next type deal like my previous phone. This one just started to reset by itself, a few times a day, until eventually it would just keep resetting over and over and over until it became unusable.

No sweat, I thought. I'll just get it replaced. I sent an email to the IT department, requesting what I could do, and they told me to bring the phone up to the IT Help Desk and get it examined. Easy peasy.

The first foreboding sign was that the lady at the help desk couldn't give me an exact length of time that it would take to get it examined. It was that stereotypical government worker "It's not my responsibility so I can't give you any information" bullshit. Wednesday turned into Thursday turned into a holiday weekend without any word from the goddamn IT department about replacing my phone. I was assured multiple times that I was eligible for a new phone and that I would be contacted via email when it was ready.

FINALLY, last Tuesday, I got an email, telling me to please come to the IT department to pick up my new phone. There was also a request to do this before 4 PM. I rushed upstairs at 3:30, only to find the whole IT department empty.

Okay.... FINALLY, FINALLY on Wednesday morning, a full week after I handed in my phone to be replaced, I return to the IT Help Desk. "Ah yes, sir, we have your phone for you." He goes into the cabinet, and pulls out... my old phone. I look at him in disbelief. "Is... is it fixed?" "I don't know, I didn't do anything to it personally." "But they didn't give you any notes on what they did to fix it?" "No, I have no idea." I walk out, stunned that it took a full week for someone to just hand me my goddamn phone back. On the elevator back to my floor, the phone reset itself. Twice.

Clearly someone thought it fit to just wait for a week and give me the phone back without doing jackshit to fix it. Honestly, though, at this point all I can do is roll my eyes at the incompetence of my employers. The city government does not hire the best and the brightest. It's like that old "those who teach gym" joke: Those who can't do, work for the city government, and those who can't work for the city government, work for the city government's IT department.

So I wait, again. Wednesday turned into the weekend, another weekend without a phone. On Monday morning, I was pissed, so sent a strongly worded email to the IT department, asking what the FUCK was taking so long. I received this response:

Good Morning Joseph. Per your supervisor's request you mobile device will not be returned to you. We were recently made aware that you are in a position that does not require a mobile device. As a result of that unfortunately your mobile device has been wiped and is currently in the process to be reassigned to another person who may be in need. Thank you, T**** B***

??????????????

Where did this come from? How have I been using a work phone for sixteen months now in a work unit where I'm apparently not supposed to have one? Seriously, I watched the whole fucking series of The Sopranos on that phone using the city's data, and no one said boo, and now all of a sudden I'm not supposed to have one? And okay, if I accept that (which I guess I have to), then how in the world did it take almost TWO WEEKS for someone to tell me that I can't have a phone back?

I know I did this to myself, the whole not-having-a-phone thing, but still. The whole thing was extended to an absurd degree because of the general incompetence of my superiors. Ughhhhhhhhh.

Part III: New Life 

A shiny new Motorola Moto arrived in the mail yesterday, but more on that in a second.

First I want to talk about how fucking FREE I felt without a phone. Guys, it felt fucking great. Sure, about 10% of the time it was a pain in the ass—missed texts, missed appointments, having to print out Google Maps directions for the first time in years—but the other 90% of the time, I felt fucking great. It felt like I was unshackled from the chains of constant communication.

My eyes felt better by the end of the day, now that I wasn't squinting at a tiny screen all the goddamn time. I kicked my habit of looking at my phone every five goddamn seconds. I slept like a fucking log at night, now that the screen wasn't burning a hole in my retina as I looked on in the dark.

I told my father-in-law that I didn't have a phone, so he'd have to call Pam if he had any trouble with the babysitting, and he said, "Well, we all survived without them for years, I think you'll be okay without one for now." And that's so fucking true. Who really needs a phone? I went two whole weeks without one, and I didn't die. I didn't lose any friends. I got by (with a little help from my wife/secretary and from FB messenger).

And now, yes, I have my own personal phone, with yet another new number. And I think I figured out a path to doing the whole thing on the cheap side, as is my m.o. There is a phone service provider called Ting that I signed up for. On Ting, you pay what you use. So if you send 100-1000 texts, you add $5 to the bill, but if you send 1001-5000 texts, you add $8 to the bill. Same with minutes. Same with data (I turned off data completely, because it wouldn't be a Joe K*** frugal endeavor without a little inconvenience!).

All in all, I'll hopefully be paying, at most, $30 a month for phone service. Which, if you go back to the start of this unnecessary essay, you'll see is more than what I started with. I was paying $20 a month and I didn't even have to work for it. Now I'm paying $30 a month, and that's IF I tell my friends to please include their emojis in the same text as their words and not a different text, and IF I don't use my phone to scroll through Twitter while I'm sitting on the bus.

If I would've just kept my fucking mouth shut about the tattoo, if I would've just bought a goddamn battery for my work phone instead of trying to finagle my way into a free new one, if I would've just shut up and gave my parents a twenty every month, I wouldn't be here.

"Here" being adulthood, paying my own bills, which I guess is a silver lining if you want to think about it that way.

Fuck cell phones.