In the past two years, the world has seen substantial changes:
1) Sweeping overthrow of oppressive governments in Northern Africa and the middle-east.
2) Destructive Tsunamis have caused mayhem in Japan and the Pacific.
3) Wars and rumors of wars.
4) Those crying "Lo here!" and "Lo there!" falsely predicting the second coming.
5) Some other stuff.
Most importantly, the last two years have allowed me to pursue what I perceive as a critical need in the study of soda(s). It has taken me until now to complete the most recent phase of intense research and clinical studies, and I shall publish my findings here, to the leading clinical publication in all scholarly topics: reviewcityusa.
Soda and Gender:
Women are the lifeblood of our humanoid race, and are responsible for the renewal of our species as well as 84% of all reported traffic accidents/infractions worldwide. The variance of their interests scales the full breadth of human experience, although scientists and clinicians have identified one element common to all females: if given only one choice of beverage, 100% of females will choose Diet Coke (assuming Fiji Water is not an option).
Conversely, heterosexual males will initially suffer a gag-response to their first taste of Diet Coke and must be conditioned to accept the beverage (either by mixing it into a hybrid Diet Coke/Dr. Pepper beverage or by adding prolific amounts of lemon or lime juice). Women find the taste immediately enjoyable, even while rejecting the scientifically proven superior formula of regular Coca-Cola. To explain this phenomenon, allow me to draw from the recent documentary film Napoleon Dynamite. The title-character Napoleon aptly notices that his lady-interest is drinking 1% Milk, whereupon he asks her "Why are you drinking 1% milk? Do you think you're fat?"
Undoubtedly, the answer is yes- she does think she's fat, and this explains her choice of 1% milk as well as society's choice of diet soda in general. Those drinking diet are convinced they are either fat, or going to become fat from drinking regular soda. According to my studies, there was even a small group of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers that were under the unfortunate delusion that diet soda will cause weight loss. Combined with Meth, their hypothesis is correct. However, combined with copious amounts of flamin' hot cheetos and the McRib Sandwich, the results are catastrophic.
On a personal note, I realized the threat of regular soda after going through approx 120 cans of throwback Pepsi during the winter months of 2010. The damage to my body was drastic, evidenced by a 4 inch layer of blubber which congealed around my buttocks, stomach, hands, and face, and private parts.
Diet and Genre:
Some astonishing developments have happened within the past 2 months. Not only have I undertaken reading an incredibly in-depth 7 book Fantasy novel series, but I have also discovered the joy of Diet Mt. Dew. I mention these together because the link should not be surprising. Statistically, there is a positive correlation between open-mindedness of an individual to the Fantasy genre and their willingness to drink and enjoy Diet Mt. Dew. In our studies, this positive correlation is wildy magnified when considering the age of the individual studied and their virginity status. Needless to say, the state Utah is struggling to keep up with the Diet Mt. Dew demand of its citizens. Some have wondered if consumption of Diet Mt. Dew makes it difficult for virgins to become deflowered, while others claim that virgins/fantasy fans are genetically predisposed to seek out Diet Mt. Dew. Further studies are needed to determine the exact cause.
Please continue to read as I publish the remaining results of the study; including "Soda and Economic Standing" and other findings.
-Baercat
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Joel's Semi-Exhaustive Review of Soda Part II
Saturday, May 22, 2010
All-time Best Music Videos
10) "Where the Streets Have No Name"
9) "Give it Away"
8) "Where it's At"
7) "Everlong"
6) "Fell in Love with a Girl"
5) "Thriller"
4) "Buddy Holly"
3) "1979"
2) "Sabotage"
1) "Smooth Criminal"
I know what you're thinking--we all could have done without that weird part in the middle. But it's an amazing song with some of the best dancing ever, and it wouldn't be Michael Jackson without something awkward in it.
Honorable mention:
Honorable mention:
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Look-a-Likes
I know these pictures have been on Facebook for about a year now, but I figured some of you might not have seen them. Also, since there haven't been many new posts lately I was hoping this might get the ball rolling again. We have to make sure Review City remains the number one blog in America, which shouldn't be that hard considering Hasselhoff is our only competition.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Britpop
I'm going to go ahead and say I like Coldplay's new album. And "Yellow" is and always will be a damn good song.
Radiohead has transcended the genre. They've put out a few turds, but it's entirely forgivable considering how awesome their good stuff is. And In Rainbows is one of their best albums.
Never really got into Blur.
This is going to upset Chairman Mel considerably, but Oasis is only as famous as they are because of their massive egos and temper tantrums. They put out some great songs in the 90s, but who didn't? Does that qualify 10,000 Maniacs and Crash Test Dummies to be in the top 10 bands ever, Melzer?
Teenage Fanclub is a little underrated. Good, not great.
Late 90s/2000s Britpop=I'm not interested. Doves/Muse/Elbow are uninteresting.
All in all, Britpop is a disappointment of a genre. Not nearly as good as its influences, like post-grunge.
Radiohead has transcended the genre. They've put out a few turds, but it's entirely forgivable considering how awesome their good stuff is. And In Rainbows is one of their best albums.
Never really got into Blur.
This is going to upset Chairman Mel considerably, but Oasis is only as famous as they are because of their massive egos and temper tantrums. They put out some great songs in the 90s, but who didn't? Does that qualify 10,000 Maniacs and Crash Test Dummies to be in the top 10 bands ever, Melzer?
Teenage Fanclub is a little underrated. Good, not great.
Late 90s/2000s Britpop=I'm not interested. Doves/Muse/Elbow are uninteresting.
All in all, Britpop is a disappointment of a genre. Not nearly as good as its influences, like post-grunge.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Ferociousnate reviews the Business Traveler
As some of you may already know, I've been on a business trip for the last couple of weeks. Three cities + two weeks = massive business trip. I have some very insightful observations about the business traveler world which I would like to share with you. This is a bizarre world which most of us observe from the outside, and don't really get to see the inside perspective. I hope this review will help you better understand business travelers in case of future interactions. Having said that, you're going to want to avoid interacting with these people as much as possible.
Business travelers are all about appealing to as many audiences as possible. They want everyone to do business with them. They want to "play it safe" in everything they do so as to not turn anyone off to their business.
The Tuck
This is the a great example of trying to appeal to a wide audience. The business traveler's idea is, "Hey, I want to look corporate and professional, so I'll wear a dress shirt. But, I also want to look hip, and casual, so I'll wear jeans." Unfortunately, tucking a frumpy dress shirt into baggy jeans does not dress up the jeans or dress down the shirt. This is a lateral movement in the direction of Squaresville, USA.
Black Leather Bag
This is a staple to the business traveler and what they believe to be the most essential business accessory of all time. If someone shows up with a brown leather bag, or a canvas bag, they are immediately denounced as "unprofessional" and apparently not worth doing business with. To most people, black leather is associated with bikers and dominatrices. I'm not sure why business people think it is "professional".
The Phone clip
Because time is money and you're saving time by having your phone that much more accessible. Leaving it in your pocket is "inefficient" and not good business. Wearing one of these on your belt could be the third worst sin behind fornication and murder.
Business travelers are all about appealing to as many audiences as possible. They want everyone to do business with them. They want to "play it safe" in everything they do so as to not turn anyone off to their business.
The Tuck
This is the a great example of trying to appeal to a wide audience. The business traveler's idea is, "Hey, I want to look corporate and professional, so I'll wear a dress shirt. But, I also want to look hip, and casual, so I'll wear jeans." Unfortunately, tucking a frumpy dress shirt into baggy jeans does not dress up the jeans or dress down the shirt. This is a lateral movement in the direction of Squaresville, USA.
Black Leather Bag
This is a staple to the business traveler and what they believe to be the most essential business accessory of all time. If someone shows up with a brown leather bag, or a canvas bag, they are immediately denounced as "unprofessional" and apparently not worth doing business with. To most people, black leather is associated with bikers and dominatrices. I'm not sure why business people think it is "professional".
The Phone clip
Because time is money and you're saving time by having your phone that much more accessible. Leaving it in your pocket is "inefficient" and not good business. Wearing one of these on your belt could be the third worst sin behind fornication and murder.
Musical Taste
The business traveler needs to be on the ball with all of the hot new artists. To the business traveler, Coldplay is "all the rage these days". Everybody is listening to them and they have a really chill sound. On the other hand, if you want to get into the underground scene, you want to listen to Radiohead. They are more of the college scene and they are "hip and original". Music is great and all, but business travelers will also try and wow you with their knowledge of other forms of entertainment. The most innovative form of entertainment is of course the Blue Man Group. These guys have incorporated so much into their act. Audio and visual. Sometimes they even hit those drums and you can actually get hit by the water that sprays off. Wow!
Like I said previously, hopefully this helps you to better understand business travelers so you can avoid them in the future.
The business traveler needs to be on the ball with all of the hot new artists. To the business traveler, Coldplay is "all the rage these days". Everybody is listening to them and they have a really chill sound. On the other hand, if you want to get into the underground scene, you want to listen to Radiohead. They are more of the college scene and they are "hip and original". Music is great and all, but business travelers will also try and wow you with their knowledge of other forms of entertainment. The most innovative form of entertainment is of course the Blue Man Group. These guys have incorporated so much into their act. Audio and visual. Sometimes they even hit those drums and you can actually get hit by the water that sprays off. Wow!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Forrest Gump rebuttal: Jake Melzer hates America
The purpose of this post is twofold: to reestablish Forrest Gump in the canon of great American movies, and to prove unequivocally that Jake Melzer hates America.
Melzer makes, or should I say compiles, some good points in his review. The plot of the movie is clearly far-fetched and appears to reward stupidity. It’s easy to see why someone such as Melzer might think this makes Forrest Gump a bad movie. But beneath the cool, critical façade of a Forrest Gump hater lies a seditious authoritarian philosophy.
On the first point, I’m going to call out Melzer on his recent applause of the Academy’s decision to name Slumdog Millionaire as Best Picture of 2008. One minute Melzer pretends to hate illogical movies, and the next he’s proclaiming a fairy tale the best picture of the year. On sheer inconsistency, this argument holds no water.
The second point is a little trickier to deal with. Is Forrest Gump a demonstrable idiot who succeeds at everything in life? Yes. Does Jenny, the curious, sexually liberated love interest find anything but misery and squalor in her explorations? No. According to Melzer, this means that the writer of the film and everyone who enjoys it believes that no ability is required to succeed in life and that curiosity and intellectualism should be rewarded with death by STD.
This is too simplistic an argument. Let’s consider two works by the master novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. In The Idiot, the pure-hearted Prince Myshkin lives a life of blameless honesty, only to watch his life and that of those around him wind up in hopeless tragedy. In Crime & Punishment, the protagonist murders and robs his landlady and her servant, but eventually finds a kind of redemption in his relationship with a former prostitute. Were we to apply Melzer’s reasoning to these novels, we would have to conclude that Dostoevsky believed that the true path to happiness was not humble service but murder, thievery, and prostitution. Anyone who has read a work by this supremely ethical novelist would have to agree that the idea is preposterous.
If Forrest Gump does not reward stupidity, what is the message of the movie? Since Melzer possessives a subversive ulterior motive in his critique--which will soon become clear—he is deliberately reading too literally what is meant to be viewed as allegory.
The crucial first step in understanding the allegory is to reconsider the definition of “intelligence,” after which Melzer’s criticism of Forrest Gump suddenly becomes callous and elitist. If intelligence can only be measured by standardized testing, then yes, Chairman Mel, Forrest Gump is a certifiable idiot. But by that measure, black Americans and children from low-income homes are less intelligent on the whole than white, middle-class Americans. Are you a racist, too, Melzer?? Possibly, but that’s a separate discussion. What is clear is that Melzer is betraying a clear bias towards only one kind of intelligence: book smarts.
Forrest Gump can put together a gun faster than anyone else in his platoon. Do we call the rest of his platoon idiots in comparison to his mechanical genius? He plays Olympic table tennis. Are athletes idiots, Melzer, simply because their intelligence lies in their coordination as opposed to their capacity for pointless philosophical exercises? Additionally, Forrest is obedient, helpful, and humble. If the SAT could measure such a thing as “moral intelligence,” Jake Melzer would be a chowderhead by comparison.
The point of the allegory is that anyone can succeed in America. In other countries, biases toward book smarts bar the average person from breaking into the good life. Success is meted out from a rigidly meritocratic ivory tower. In America, success—like power—comes from the bottom up. It is not institutional eggheads that decide who succeeds and who fails, but the common person. This means that all sorts of intelligence are recognized and rewarded, not just the ability to perform well on standardized tests.
Who would be unhappy with such a country? If you follow the money, you can see that ivory tower academicians might be a little miffed at sharing their power with the common man.
FACT: Jacob Melzer was once employed by Brigham Young University, an accredited university, where he had frequent contact with professors.
FACT: Jacob Melzer cites a professor in his review of Forrest Gump.
Clearly, Jake Melzer prefers a country where one can only succeed with the right skin color and test scores. He is bitter, like most academics, with his failure to gain popularity and money through natural talent and a foundation of solid morals. When he sees others succeed, he cannot resist trying to bring them down. What he and other communists (“Chairman Mel?” Could he be more flagrant about his authoritarian sympathies?) don’t understand is that bringing Forrest Gump down won’t raise him up.
But what about Jenny, you say? What does her failure mean in this allegory? As you’ll recall, Jenny’s father sexually abused her. This locked her into a psychological patriarchal dependence, causing her to seek in vain for approval from abusive father figures. The brave Forrest, in contrast, was able to break free from the generational pattern of subservience in the same way that our Founding Fathers declared independence from tyranny.
Similar to Jenny, Melzer is emotionally stunted, needing validation from above in the form of good grades—grades which mean nothing in the real world. Having failed to break into middle management in corporate Korea, Melzer will soon run off to lick his wounds in Panama, where he will try to impress the natives into regarding him as a leader with his theories of commodity fetishism and the labor theory of value.
As you can see, critics of Forrest Gump hate the free enterprise system and would rather hoard authority for themselves. Also, Melzer misused the word “disingenuous” in his review.
Melzer makes, or should I say compiles, some good points in his review. The plot of the movie is clearly far-fetched and appears to reward stupidity. It’s easy to see why someone such as Melzer might think this makes Forrest Gump a bad movie. But beneath the cool, critical façade of a Forrest Gump hater lies a seditious authoritarian philosophy.
On the first point, I’m going to call out Melzer on his recent applause of the Academy’s decision to name Slumdog Millionaire as Best Picture of 2008. One minute Melzer pretends to hate illogical movies, and the next he’s proclaiming a fairy tale the best picture of the year. On sheer inconsistency, this argument holds no water.
The second point is a little trickier to deal with. Is Forrest Gump a demonstrable idiot who succeeds at everything in life? Yes. Does Jenny, the curious, sexually liberated love interest find anything but misery and squalor in her explorations? No. According to Melzer, this means that the writer of the film and everyone who enjoys it believes that no ability is required to succeed in life and that curiosity and intellectualism should be rewarded with death by STD.
This is too simplistic an argument. Let’s consider two works by the master novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. In The Idiot, the pure-hearted Prince Myshkin lives a life of blameless honesty, only to watch his life and that of those around him wind up in hopeless tragedy. In Crime & Punishment, the protagonist murders and robs his landlady and her servant, but eventually finds a kind of redemption in his relationship with a former prostitute. Were we to apply Melzer’s reasoning to these novels, we would have to conclude that Dostoevsky believed that the true path to happiness was not humble service but murder, thievery, and prostitution. Anyone who has read a work by this supremely ethical novelist would have to agree that the idea is preposterous.
If Forrest Gump does not reward stupidity, what is the message of the movie? Since Melzer possessives a subversive ulterior motive in his critique--which will soon become clear—he is deliberately reading too literally what is meant to be viewed as allegory.
The crucial first step in understanding the allegory is to reconsider the definition of “intelligence,” after which Melzer’s criticism of Forrest Gump suddenly becomes callous and elitist. If intelligence can only be measured by standardized testing, then yes, Chairman Mel, Forrest Gump is a certifiable idiot. But by that measure, black Americans and children from low-income homes are less intelligent on the whole than white, middle-class Americans. Are you a racist, too, Melzer?? Possibly, but that’s a separate discussion. What is clear is that Melzer is betraying a clear bias towards only one kind of intelligence: book smarts.
Forrest Gump can put together a gun faster than anyone else in his platoon. Do we call the rest of his platoon idiots in comparison to his mechanical genius? He plays Olympic table tennis. Are athletes idiots, Melzer, simply because their intelligence lies in their coordination as opposed to their capacity for pointless philosophical exercises? Additionally, Forrest is obedient, helpful, and humble. If the SAT could measure such a thing as “moral intelligence,” Jake Melzer would be a chowderhead by comparison.
The point of the allegory is that anyone can succeed in America. In other countries, biases toward book smarts bar the average person from breaking into the good life. Success is meted out from a rigidly meritocratic ivory tower. In America, success—like power—comes from the bottom up. It is not institutional eggheads that decide who succeeds and who fails, but the common person. This means that all sorts of intelligence are recognized and rewarded, not just the ability to perform well on standardized tests.
Who would be unhappy with such a country? If you follow the money, you can see that ivory tower academicians might be a little miffed at sharing their power with the common man.
FACT: Jacob Melzer was once employed by Brigham Young University, an accredited university, where he had frequent contact with professors.
FACT: Jacob Melzer cites a professor in his review of Forrest Gump.
Clearly, Jake Melzer prefers a country where one can only succeed with the right skin color and test scores. He is bitter, like most academics, with his failure to gain popularity and money through natural talent and a foundation of solid morals. When he sees others succeed, he cannot resist trying to bring them down. What he and other communists (“Chairman Mel?” Could he be more flagrant about his authoritarian sympathies?) don’t understand is that bringing Forrest Gump down won’t raise him up.
But what about Jenny, you say? What does her failure mean in this allegory? As you’ll recall, Jenny’s father sexually abused her. This locked her into a psychological patriarchal dependence, causing her to seek in vain for approval from abusive father figures. The brave Forrest, in contrast, was able to break free from the generational pattern of subservience in the same way that our Founding Fathers declared independence from tyranny.
Similar to Jenny, Melzer is emotionally stunted, needing validation from above in the form of good grades—grades which mean nothing in the real world. Having failed to break into middle management in corporate Korea, Melzer will soon run off to lick his wounds in Panama, where he will try to impress the natives into regarding him as a leader with his theories of commodity fetishism and the labor theory of value.
As you can see, critics of Forrest Gump hate the free enterprise system and would rather hoard authority for themselves. Also, Melzer misused the word “disingenuous” in his review.
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