I'm pretty sure that the neo-nutzi thing in Oregon goes back much, much further than the 1990s. It has to do with members of the KKK fleeing the south for honky utopia and logging jobs in the great white north before I was even born. Here's how you can spot them — when the logging industry dried up, they whined with…

When I was young, I used to do sound and lights for a small-town Pacific Northwest punk rock band. It was rare for them to play out of town as they were unambitious, beer-swilling yahoos. Unexpectedly, they were invited to go play the big time: Portland, Oregon! I did not accompany them on this trip due to my being…

Synth-haters were so fantastically prevalent in the 1980s that anyone who reflexively hates synths nowadays should have to wear an honorary ponytail and National Health glasses.

Yep, entertainment figures and reality show "celebrities" should keep their politics to themselves. Nobody cares what they think.

"Thanks, Obama" should be immediately replaced with "Is America Great Yet?"

Eh. The worst trend in trailers is still The Trailer That Spills its Entire Bag of Tricks: That's the trailer that seems like a summary of the movie for people too busy to actually sit still for two hours. After one of those trailers, a friend may ask, "Have you seen that movie?" And you reply, "Seen it? I've lived…

Once you've been using computers for decades a little bad design, non-functionality, or pointless complexity becomes deeply vexing. At this point in time, there's no good reason for it. Look at all the young 'uns bitching about Disqus on this site. It's not like typing text into a forum is some brand new concept that…

Hey, in the Guardian you can read about people who are relieved that they can now say — get this — "Merry Christmas." The long agony of being forced to say "Happy Holidays" is over! So many dead defenders of "Merry Christmas"! Your sacrifice was not in vain! The jackboot of, um, Polite-ically Correct Etiquette has…

Pop music has always shaded towards terrible. When Trent was a young man, Pop music was all there was to listen to. How he raged against its gleaming plastic emptiness! So much anger and despair, like an industrial dirge with a catchy melody so you can sing along. I cut myself just thinking about it. Here there be…

Ah yes, Cafe Gratitude. Exactly as cloying as a bacon-brandishing hardcorenivore would imagine a Vegan restaurant to be. Truly the straw man of such establishments. The food is good though. Excellent desserts.

I'm not even that big of a fan of Metal, but I thought that The Hammers of Misfortune absolutely nailed it:

Screw Bowery Electric — where's Bailter Space?

"Senseless Photobombing Claims Another Victim."

I live in an urban area where it takes years of driving experience and craft to park your mini gas miser. Yet I see Big Trucks owned by man/babies all over the place. Since there aren't a lot of blue collar jobs around here, I suspect that this movie has a bigger audience than anyone is willing to contemplate.

Since this is the internet, it's perfectly acceptable to violently loathe things that you merely dislike or are indifferent towards.

I really miss shortwave radio. You could tune in a numbers station and then wave your hands around the antenna like you were playing a Theremin to modulate the audio. I'll never forget the summer that the numbers stations started making helicopter noises. Those days are gone, dammit (wipes away a single tear).

These guys think they have it bad, but The Slatterns are damn tired of being misrepresented by the media.

I very much enjoy these Mica Levi soundtracks — they stand out in what is gradually becoming a generic field.

The purpose of nomenclature is to exclude.

I had a young friend that was new to the working world. She kept showing up 5 minutes late for work in the morning because she was raising kids. I took her aside and told her, "your manager doesn't actually know what you do for a living and couldn't be bothered to find out. The only measurement of your performance…