This is a blog wherein I do complain about stuff, but I do like to generally keep things positive. While there are things going on today that I find irritating to think about and fads that make me think that so many people have been hit on the heads as children, there are some things to be positive about.

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those people that sometimes breaks out into a smile. Because people don’t read my mind, they might assume that I’m just crazy, rather than savoring an especially positive thought (while I do enjoy my privacy, I know that there are some people who I’d welcome to read my mind because they’d learn a few things that could result in them becoming better people).

EDIT: In light of the fact that new, technologically-driven ways to violate privacy are continually being developed, I’m making it clear here that that last paragraph concluded with a joke. No human being has ever been granted my permission to read my mind, including through technologically-assisted methods. So don’t do that.

There are thoughts that bring a smile to my face, and I’m sharing a few of them right here. Mainly, they have to do with certain things that used to be really popular and irked me, but I managed to live to see the day in which they are things of the past. I think of the following fads being over, and it brings a smile to my face.

1. H.I.M. (His Infernal Majesty)
This was some trendy pseudo-rebellious garbage that pandered to black finger nail polish wearing high school kids who wanted a little bit of satanic symbolism to help them be passive-aggressive towards religion for image’s sake. Their associated symbol was a pentagram with two rounded points that made it look like there was a heart in there. What was the point of this? Who cares? The fad is over. I survived, the fad did not.

2. The Emo fad
Another stupid fad that pandered to children, this one encouraged them to act all depressed in spite of the fact that they’re children who have never experienced a real hardship in their lives outside of their mom and dad not letting them borrow the car.

I can think of the following challenges that kids face:

1. Showing up for school. Apparently, they get credit just for that.
2. Not stepping out of line. When everyone else is bigger than you, it’s easy for them to beat you up.
3. Keeping your mouth shut. It’s a challenge for kids to realize that they don’t know better than the adults in their lives who have been at this “life” thing much longer than they have.

There are children out there with very little in the way of food, shelter, and clothing, and they were probably more irked by the emo movement than I was because the emo kids seemed so sad to be reaping the benefits of middle-class life in a first world nation. Not that they’d still be upset about it, because the fad is over.

3. Miscellaneous nineties music
The music was probably the most annoying thing about the nineties. While it may open some wounds to bring it up, it is comforting to know that the garbage that was popular back then is no longer annoying us today.

When was the last time you turned on the radio and heard The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones? Or Third Eye Blind? Or any of that other garbage that likely had some political undertones? Left-wing political undertones, of course. This is the entertainment industry we’re talking about here. It’s not like they trust you to think for yourselves.

For that matter, when was the last time you turned on the radio and allowed it to dictate to you what music you listen to? No thanks, radio. I prefer to listen to my own playlists, without the advertisements.

4. Tight/bangin’ as slang
There have been various iterations of the word “cool” over the ages that come and go. There were a couple in particular that I was really glad to see go: “tight” and “bangin'”. Both seemed to be popular at the same time, and both of them I was really happy to see go, because of the sexual connotation involved that made them cringe-worthy. Here are a couple examples of their use:

“That hamburger was tight, yo.”

That’s “tight” as in a property of a woman’s vagina, because apparently a Burger King hamburger can be compared to the grip supplied by a birth canal during coitus, right?

“Those chicken wings were bangin’!”

To understand the full annoyance of the delivery, imagine a mildly-overweight middle-aged woman trying way too hard to sound hip tilting her head back and to the side on the word “were”, so she can push the word “bangin'” at you so you immediately feel like going home and scrubbing that association between the sexual connotation and her overly-mascaraed face from your brain with steel wool and butane.

When these two slangs were phased out as substitutions for the word “cool”, the collective did language a huge favor.

5. Michael Moore’s career
One thing that really annoyed me about the Bush presidency wasn’t Bush himself, it was the sheer smugness of the self-appointed intellectual superiors who complained about him nonstop, while a bunch of liberal arts majors carried water for them in spite of the fact that they had no idea what was going on. Considering that these people had near institutional control of the information media, it was difficult to escape all of the whining over everything he had ever done. But if I were to pick just one of them that I found more shrill and annoying than the rest, that would be Michael Moore.

While hating on Bush was the fad of the time, Michael Moore took it to an art form. To the point of making a movie to bust Bush’s chops. His arrogance was so astounding, that I actually wanted to see Bush win reelection out of spite. Which was just what happened.

Wonder what Michael Moore is up to now? When was the last time he said anything that you gave a care about?

Exactly.

It’s true that he still does speaking events, but it’s not as fun watching him descend into lunacy as it once was. Besides, right now, we have The Young Turks for that, and those guys are pure unintentional entertainment. If it’s a left-wing meltdown that you’re in the mood for, Cenk Uygur has you covered. Michael Moore is old news.

6. The DaVinci Code
If it weren’t bad enough that we had a fake documentary from Michael Moore, there were a bunch more inspired by The DaVinci Code. If you’ve already forgotten what The DaVinci Code was about, that’s enviable in it’s own sense. It was basically a work of fiction based on the premise that Jesus actually had children, which was then covered up by a mysterious order who somehow benefited by keeping this information to themselves. The order, being highly secretive and cunning, decided that the best way to keep their secret from the public was to have Leonardo DaVinci plant evidence of it throughout his work. The associated media flavored the material with mysterious, moody music and yellow, faded parchment, because you’re supposed to feel as though such a conspiracy actually happened.

Here’s the kicker: The author, Dan Brown, says that the cover up actually occurred. And suckers ate it up. Plenty of them.

So, what happened? One might like to think that the aforementioned suckers realized that they were being conned into buying garbage and doing a media machine’s marketing for them, but it’s far more likely that they got distracted by the next fad theology that came along. In any case, the DaVinci Code fad was over, and the History Channel moved on to marketing another stupid movie.

7. Loose Change
I could have merged this and the previous two into an entry called “Fakumentaries”, considering that all three of Fahrenheit 9/11, The DaVinci Code, and Loose Change came around at about the same time, indicating that there was this unusual demand at the time for being lied to by pseudo-intellectuals with obvious agendas. Our children will think that we were so stupid, but there’s no denying that there were many stupid people around at the time, as evidenced by these three fakumentaries.

What makes Loose Change so special is that it was produced by a film student by the name of Dylan Avery, who made it as an example of the kind of nonsense that 9/11 truthers believe. What Dylan didn’t count on was that, after having released his film to the internet, millions of people were stupid enough to take it at face value. So, did Dylan set the record straight?

No. He gave himself up.

He had something that most film students could only dream of having prior to graduation: a huge audience. If he set the record straight, he’d lose that audience and have to build it up again in the industry, which is something that many in the film industry spend their entire lives doing. So he issued a revised version of his film and gave the suckers what they wanted.

So, why don’t you hear about him today? For one thing, he made the mistake of releasing his video to the internet for free, so no one had to pay him for it. Not a very sustainable way to do business. Since then, he’s worked on several other films, but no one cares about them.

Of course, if more people had thought to ask why a mere film student would possess such insight into the inner-workings of a conspiracy to present a planned demolition as a terror attack, we wouldn’t have heard much about Loose Change to begin with.

8. Truck nuts
Truck nuts are one of those things that you’d see at a store somewhere and think to yourself, “Man, these things are stupid. Only a total dunce would put something like this on their car.” But then you see some people actually mount them on their cars, and you find yourself wishing that you had a rifle in your car so you can shoot them right off while you’re on the highway.

So, what are truck nuts? It’s a pair of plastic testicles that one can hang from their vehicle, right under the license plate. Putting them on your car sends a message, and that message is that you’d buy anything.

One thing I found weird about them is that I didn’t see anyone attempt to hang them on the front of their car, only on the back. Maybe it’s because they are being used to express a desire to [REDACTED].

So, there you have it. A list of fads that I’m glad are over. And sure, a few more annoying ones have popped up since. But at least we know that fads do come to an end, even the annoying ones.